Red Bean Pastry Shells with Honey Cream Sauce

I made red bean soup on Chinese New Year's Eve,

As usual, I was too greedy that I used up a whole package of red beans...

I have to come up with a solution,

There's no way I can finish a gigantic pot of red bean soup by myself.

Let me use a more statistical way to describe how big it was,

If I have a medium bowl of red bean soup everyday,

It'll take me at least 20 days to finish it....at least..it's just a rough estimate.

During the process of making red bean soup,

I've decided to scoop out some beans and make them into other kind of dessert,

Hopefully by doing so,

Me and my friends won't get sick of having red bean soup everyday.

For the red bean soup,

I slightly wash the beans first and soak them in the water overnight.

You'll see the bigger beans the very next day,

They surely can absorb a lot of water.

I boil a small pot of water and toss in the beans,

Simply let it boil for couple minutes,

Dump the water.

Transfer the drained beans into a big pot,

Add a lot of water (since it's for red bean "soup")

Bring to a boil, turn to medium low heat and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.

Add a pinch of salt afterwards, it helps to bring up the flavor,

Also add lots of brown sugar till desired sweetness level.

I mean lots of brown sugar,

I kept adding it and I lost counts of how many tablespoons I used.

But be careful here,

DO NOT add sugar before the beans turn soft,

It prevents the beans from cooking through if you add it too early in time.

So when did I scoop out some beans for other dessert?

After simmering it for 30 minutes.

I took out some beans, actually a lot of beans....

Drain out the liquid and place them to another pot.

Turn that pot to medium heat,

Add granulated sugar and honey, about 1:1 ratio.

Keep stirring it till the sugar and honey are all incorporated with the beans.

Give it a taste once a while and see if you need to add more sugar or honey.

Stirring, stirring, stirring,

You don't want burned red bean filling so please keep stirring it.

It's fairly simple,

All that stirring gives you a wonderful simplified "red bean filling."

*Which gives you two textures: half paste and half whole beans.

So here's what I came up with,

Red Bean Pastry Shells with Honey Cream Dressing-

Ingredients?

1 package of frozen puff pastry shells (6 in one package)

12 tablespoons of red bean filling

3 tablespoons of honey

3 tablespoons of sugar

1 1/2 tablespoon of cornstarch

1/3 cup of 2% milk

2/3 cup of heavy whipping cream

2 egg yolks (beaten)

How?

Prepare the frozen puff pastry shells according to the instruction on the box,

*You can find this product in the frozen food aisle.

In the mean time,

Have a small pot ready and turn to medium heat.

Add 3 tablespoons of sugar, 3 tablespoons of honey, corn starch, 1/3 cup of milk, and 2/3 cup of heavy whipping cream.

Constantly stirring the mixture and bring it to a boil,

You should have a thicker sauce now.

Remove from heat,

Keep stirring it and gradually add in the beaten egg yolks.

About one minute, the honey cream sauce is ready.

When the pastry shells are ready,

Discard the top part to create a hollow center.

Put about 2 tablespoons of red bean filling in the shell and drizzle some honey cream sauce.

If you just take out the red bean filling from the fridge,

Just put it in the shells first,

And then simply pop that back to the oven for another minute or so,

Don't have to do any extra steps to heat up the filling first.

After this dessert and a gigantic pot of red bean soup,

I still have a LOT of red bean filling left,

Please expect a red bean related post in a near future.

Cindy's Rating: 7 (Simple, delicious, and cleans up my excess red beans!)