A Happy New Year: my first oyster, Tim Tam Slams, and Croissant Perfection (really! it happened!)

We kicked 2012 off right! What a fun night! Feasting and games with great friends (thanks S&B!), what could be better? It was an eclectic spread: snacks from the local Bosnian deli, a cheese board (and pears to go with the blue cheese = yummmmmm), oysters, fine chocolate, Blackcurrant-Raspberry wine (thank you SV for the wine!), and a variety of jams and preserves to spread on the dance-worthy croissants (more on those in a minute), and Tim Tams. We didn't even get to the ice cream!

Mulling over which alien baby to eat first.

Since I was on the losing end of the winning tie (in a shoot-out, mind you!) of our rousing game of Apples to Apples, I had to have the first oyster. I was a little afraid, I won't lie, but it was good! Silky, creamy, fresh, and zesty with a squirt of lemon and drop of tabasco. How have I never had these before! Then, later, I introduced everyone to the Tim Tam Slam, which sounds like a drinking game, which I guess it kind of is. The Tim Tam is an Australian cookie/biscuit that is delicious all on its own, but when you bite off the diagonal corners and use it as a "straw" to drink tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, it's really good. Here's a great instructional video featuring CBC's Tim Tamashiro (whom the biscuit is not named after).

Look at those layers! I feel... I feel... I feel happy of myself!

As for the croissants, I'm not sure what stars were aligned yesterday or what wonderful thing I did to deserve such awesome croissant karma, but it happened: after multiple attempts at making croissants from scratch, I have finally hit upon the right recipe to yield the most beautiful and delicious croissants. Here is what I did this time, for the most part using the "construction" steps from here, and the baking steps from here, with some modifications of my own:

Dance-worthy Croissants
500 g flour (I have a gram scale, but some time I think I'll try to convert: 500 grams looked to be about 4 cups)
15 g active dry yeast
90 g sugar
15 g salt
300 ml warm milk
340 g butter, room temperature (3 sticks, unsalted)

1. Stir the yeast into the warm milk with a little bit of sugar, and let sit for a few minutes. (Mine didn't foam too much, probably because I forgot to add the sugar, but it all turned out well anyway. I should have watched this video first.)
2. While the yeast is proofing, measure the flour, sugar, and salt into a food processor or your stand mixer. Add the proofed yeast and mix on low for 8-10 minutes until the dough has a smooth, elastic consistency. (It seemed to be too much for my food processor to knead the dough, so I mixed for about a minute, and then kneaded on the counter for about 8 minutes.)
3. Dust the dough and a large bowl with flour. Remove the dough from the mixer and transfer it into a bowl. Cover it with a tea towel and let it rise until it doubles in size. This should take about 2 hours.
4. While the dough is rising, prepare the "butter slab": between two pieces of saran wrap, flatten the butter, first with your hands, and then with a rolling pin into an 8x10 inch rectangle. Place into the fridge to chill.
5. After the dough has doubled in size, sprinkle it with a little bit of flour. Punch out the air with your knuckles and place it onto a floured work surface. (No brick this time! It actually grew!) Dust the dough with flour and roll it out into a long rectangle that is long enough to wrap fully around the butter slab.
6. Place the chilled butter slab onto the upper part of dough. Fold the dough around the butter to enclose it completely. Turn the folded dough parcel 90 degrees and roll into another long rectangle (sprinkling the counter and dough with flour as needed). Fold the dough into thirds, brushing off the excess flour as you go. This completes the first turn. Wrap in saran wrap and let it sit in the fridge for a good half hour.
7. After it's chilled, place the dough, seam vertical, onto your floured work surface and roll into a long rectangle. Fold into thirds as before. This now completes the second turn. Chill for another half hour, then repeat this step to complete the third and final turn. Make sure the dough is well wrapped before placing into the fridge once more to chill overnight. (Mine sat for 7 hours, and that seemed to be enough time. It had grown a lot in that time and had stretched the saran wrap to the point of bursting, so I think I might wrap it more loosely next time.)
8. Once chilled, cut the unwrapped dough in half. Dust the dough with some flour and roll one half of the dough into a rectangle. Reflour the surface when necessary and continue to roll until the dough is roughly less than half a centimetre thick. Cut it into triangle shapes (I find a pizza cutter is ideal for this). Take the bottom of the triangle at its widest part and using your hands, tightly roll it up into a croissant shape (feel free to roll some chocolate in there too!). You can freeze the other half of the dough for use another time, or repeat the process and make more croissants.
9. Place the croissants onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Loosely cover with saran wrap and let croissants rise on the counter until slightly puffy and spongy to the touch, about 2 hours.
10. Once they've puffed up, place them in the fridge for a solid half hour before baking.
11. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Put the croissants directly into the oven from the fridge. Immediately reduce the temperature to 400ºF and bake for 10 minutes. (I think this "flash bake" scares the butter into place. No pool of butter this time!)
12. After 10 minutes, rotate the baking sheet 180°, reduce temperature to 375°F and bake until croissants are deep golden, about 10 minutes more.
13. Dance. Boogie-down dance like you've never danced before, because your croissants are perfection! No pool of butter, no lumps of unrisen yeast, no uncooked middles, just beautiful, golden, airy layers of deliciousness. Oh yes, it is time to dance.

Happy New Year y'all!