Wednesday 27 June 2012

Strawberry Cream Pie

Yields: about 10 servings

Crust Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoons salt
3/8 cup cold shortening or lard
3/8 cup cold butter, chopped
3-4 tablespoons cold water

Cream Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Other Ingredients:
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
red food coloring (optional; I skipped this)
mint leaves or whole strawberries for garnish (optional)

Directions:
Note on timing: There are several components of this pie, but their preparation fits together nicely. You can make the crust dough and while it’s chilling, toast your almonds and set them out to cool. While the crust is baking and cooling, make and refrigerate the cream and slice your strawberries. Assemble these things once the crust is cool, and chill your almost-completed pie while you whip up the glaze. Chill the whole concoction for a few hours before slicing for best results.

Make the crust dough: Pulse flour and salt together to combine. Add scoops of lard and pulse into the mixture has the texture of coarse sand, about 10 seconds. Add in chunks of butter and pulse until butter pieces are no larger than small peas, about 10 pulses. Add minimum amount of water and pulse on low. If dough remains crumbly and doesn’t come together, add another 2 tablespoons of water. Add as little as is required to enable the dough to be rolled into a ball. Form the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.

Toast your almonds: While the crust dough is chilling, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and spread your sliced almonds out on a baking sheet. Toast for about 4-6 minutes, using a spatula to gently flip and stir the almonds ever 2 minutes. They burn quickly, so keep a close watch on the nuts and remove them when they just start to get some color and are fragrant. Mine took about 5 minutes.

Finish making your crust: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Roll disk of dough out to around 2 inches larger than your (9-inch) pie plate and transfer it, situating it in the plate. Fold the excess dough around the edges and crimp, trimming where necessary. Cover the dough with parchment paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans, pressing to the edges. Bake for around 20 minutes. Remove weights and paper, egg wash crust, and bake 5-10 minutes more, until golden brown (you won’t be baking it again, so make sure it has good color — shielding edges with foil if they begin getting too dark). Let crust cool completely.

Make cream filling: While the crust bakes, prepare your cream filling. Prepare an ice water bath in a bowl big enough to accommodate your saucepan. Mix sugar, cornstarch, flour, and salt in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in the milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and cook until thickened, still stirring constantly. Spoon out about 1/4 cup of your hot mixture and gradually drizzle it into your beaten egg, whisking constantly. This will temper the egg so that when you add it back into the hot mixture, it won’t cook. Add the egg into the hot mixture, continuing to stir constantly. Bring this just to boiling.

Set the saucepan in the ice water bath and stir it periodically as it cools. Once cool enough, chill the mixture in the refrigerator. During this time, whip the cream and vanilla together to stiff peaks. Take the chilled mixture from the fridge and beat it to break it up. Stir in about 1/3 of the cream to lighten it, and then gently fold in the rest of the cream until well combined. Chill until ready to use.

Assemble the pie: Cover bottom of crust with toasted almonds, and then dollop in chilled cream mixture, spreading it smooth with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon. Slice about a cup of fresh strawberries and layer them in overlapping concentric circles on the top of your pie. Chill this while you make your glaze.

Make the glaze: Crush remaining 1/2 cup of strawberries and cook with water in a saucepan over medium-high heat for two minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and discard the pulp. Add the juice back to the saucepan over medium-high heat and gradually stir in sugar and cornstarch. Cook until thickened. If you want, you can tint this glaze with food coloring to desired hue, but mine was plenty bright enough! Cool the glaze slightly (I transferred mine to a heat-proof measuring cup with a pour spout to cool for a bit) and then pour over top of strawberry slices on your pie. Garnish with big mint leaves, if you’d like, or whole strawberries. Chill entire pie for at least a few hours for best results; cut with a knife held under hot water and then dried.
Recipe by: Pat Howard
And Brian.

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Pie Crust Dough

Pie Crust Dough

Recipe by: Willow Bird Baking
Yield: pie crust for one 9-inch pie

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoons salt
3/8 cup (6 tablespoons) cold lard or shortening (I recommend lard)
3/8 cup (6 tablespoons) cold butter, chopped
3-4 tablespoons cold water
1 egg and 1 teaspoon water, lightly beaten together, for egg wash

Directions:
Pulse flour and salt together to combine. Add the lard in hunks and pulse for about 10 seconds (literally stand there and count!) until it's the texture of coarse sand. Add in the chunks of cold butter and pulse for about 10 pulses (count 'em!) until butter pieces are no larger than small peas. Add 3 tablespoons of ice cold water and turn food processor on low -- the dough should form a dough ball in a few seconds. If the dough remains crumbly and doesn’t come together, add another tablespoon of water. Add as little water total as is required for the dough to form a ball. Scoop the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, form into a disk, and chill for at least 20-30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (if you're blind baking the crust without a filling in it; otherwise, preheat according to your recipe instructions). Roll the disk of dough out between two sheets of lightly floured parchment paper until it's around 2 inches larger than your (9-inch) pie plate all around. Use the parchment to help you drape the dough over your rolling pin, and then use the rolling pin to gently transfer the dough to your pie plate. Situate it in the plate without stretching the dough (lift the edges and let it fall down into the corners of the dish). Fold the excess dough around the edges and crimp, trimming where necessary.

If you're filling the crust prior to baking, fill it and bake according to your recipe. If you're blind baking the crust to fill later, cover the dough with parchment paper and fill this with pie weights or dried beans, pressing to the edges. Bake for around 20 minutes at 450 degrees F. Remove weights and paper, brush the egg wash onto the crust, and bake 5-10 minutes more until golden brown (shield the edges with foil if they begin getting too dark). Let the crust cool completely. Fill according to your recipe.

TIPS:
- When preparing a mise en place for this recipe, chop your butter, measure out your shortening, and fill a jar with ice water first. Stick all of these ingredients into the fridge to get ice cold while you complete the rest of your mise en place.
- Your goal is to keep your fats and your crust dough cold as you prepare it, so don't handle it too much. The cold hunks of fat in your dough are what will create the flaky layers in your crust as it bakes.
- I roll out my crust dough between two sheets of parchment paper with a little sprinkling of flour on either side. Periodically I'll stop to lift the paper from the dough to be sure it's not sticking and flip the dough to check the other side as well. The parchment allows me to use much less messy flour.
-For a double crust pie, double the recipe form into two disks to chill. Roll out each disk separately. Situate the first half of the dough in the pie plate as usual, fill it, and top with the second half. Trim and fold the edges of the top crust under the lip of the bottom crust, crimping the two together. Cut a vent in your pie.

Read more at BakeBakeBake: http://bakebakebake.livejournal.com/3524730.html#ixzz1yv3inuWm

Monday 18 June 2012

Saucy Sticky Date Pudding.


Saucy, gooey stickydate puddings, dressed with a caramel butterscotch sauce and finished with a rich vanilla bean ice-cream.
Ingredients

For the puddings
250g (1 1/2 cups) deseeded dried dates, roughly chopped into small pieces
312ml (1 1/4 cups) water
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
60g (1/4 cup) salted butter, chopped roughly
2 large eggs (we use eggs with a minimum weight of 59g)
1 teaspoon (5ml) vanilla extract
188g (1 1/4 cups) self-raising flour
150g (2/3 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
Peacans for decorating
For the butterscotch sauce
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
60g butter
300ml pure cream
For the ice-cream
2 cups full fat milk
2 cups thickened ( or heavy) cream
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 whole vanilla bean, halved and seeds scraped
5 large egg yolks
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
for the puddings
Place the dates and the water in a medium sauce pan over a high heat.
When the date mixture starts to boil, add the bicarb soda and the butter and remove from the heat.
Set saucepan aside and allow mixture to cool for 25 mins. During this time the butter will melt.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius (356 Fahrenheit) If you have a fan forced oven preheat it to 160 degrees celsius (320 Fahrenheit).
Grease 6 2/3 cup capacity muffin pans or ramekins.
Transfer the date mixture to a medium mixing bowl.
Using a hand-held beater or whisk, add the eggs and vanilla to date mixture until combined ( this should take less than 30 seconds).
Mix the flour and brown sugar together, breaking up any lumps of sugar.
Add the flour/sugar mixture to the date mixture and fold through until combined.
Spoon mixture into prepared pans.
Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Allow to cool in pans for 5 mins and then turn upside down on a plate.
Smother with butterscotch sauce and serve with ice cream and crushed or crumbled pecans ontop.
For the butterscotch sauce (makes 2 cups)
Place sugar, butter and cream in a saucepan over medium heat.
Cook, stirring, without boiling, for 4 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil.
Once at the boil, reduce heat to low.
Simmer for 5 minutes or until thickened.
For the ice cream
In a medium saucepan, over a medium heat, whisk together the milk, cream, half the sugar and vanilla bean ( including the pod).
Bring the milk mixture just to the boil.
while the milk mixture is heating ( ie before it is just at the boil), combine the yolks and the remaining sugar in a mixing bowl and using a hand-held beater on slow speed or a whisk, beat until thick and pale.
Once the milk mixture has come to a slight boil, whisk about 1/3 of the hot milk mixture into the yolk mixture.
Whisk another 1/3 of the hot milk mixture to the yolk mixture.
Return the yolk mixture to the remaining 1/3 of milk mixture in the saucepan.
Using a wooden spoon, stir the mixture constantly over low heat until it thickens slightly and coats the back of a wooden spoon.
This mixture must not boil or the yolks will over cook – the process should only take a few minutes.
Pour the mixture through a sieve or mesh strainer and discard the vanilla pod.
Bring this mixture to room temperature.
Once cooled, cover and refrigerate for 1-2 hours or overnight.
Churn the ice cream in an ice cream maker according to manufactures instructions.

Notes
Before being smothered with the butterscotch sauce, the puddings resemble a light but moist date cake. The more sauce the puddings absorb, the sticker they will become.
The amount of individual puddings the recipe produces will depend on the size of your pudding or muffin moulds. Whatever the size of your moulds, only add enough mixture so that they are 2/3rds full. This will allow room for the puddings to rise.
This recipe can also be used to make one large pudding by placing the mixture in a 20cm diameter pan.
To achieve a more toffee flavour for the sauce, add 25g of golden syrup.

It's a Date...with Saucy Sticky Date Pudding | Art of Baking: "It’s a Date…with Saucy Sticky Date Pudding"

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Thursday 7 June 2012

How to cook perfect tarte tatin.


Toffee apples for grown-ups, the tarte tatin is all about the flavour of the fruit – crisp pastry, firm, juicy apples and that sweet, buttery caramel topping, holding the whole lot together. We may grow the best varieties, but the French really know what to do with them.

Serves 6

7 medium apples: 4 Cox, 3 Granny Smith
200g white sugar
50g butter
175g ready-made shortcrust pastry OR
225g plain flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
120g cold butter
1 medium egg, beaten

1. Peel, halve and core the apples, then put in the fridge, uncovered, for 24 hours.

2. Put the sugar into a 20cm heavy-based ovenproof frying pan along with 50ml water and leave to soak for a couple of minutes, then cook over a medium heat until golden and fudgy. Take off the heat and stir in the butter, and a pinch of salt, until well combined, then carefully arrange the apples in the pan, round-side down, bearing in mind the caramel will be very hot, and put back on the heat – you may need to cut some of the apples into smaller pieces to fill in the gaps. Cook for 5 minutes, then take off the heat and allow to cool completely.

3. If making the pastry, sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar and a pinch of salt. Grate in the butter, then rub together until it is coarse crumbs.

4. Mix the egg with 2 tsp cold water and sprinkle over the mixture. Mix together into a soft but not sticky dough, adding more water (if required) very gradually. Shape into a ball, and then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes before rolling out.

5. Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Roll out the pastry (you'll probably have some left over if you've made your own) to 5mm thick, and cut out a circle slightly larger than your pan. Put back into the fridge to rest.

6. Put the pastry on top of the pan and tuck in the edges around the fruit. Bake for about 30 minutes until the pastry is golden, then remove from the oven. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then place a plate, slightly larger than the pan, on top and then, very carefully, using oven gloves, invert the tart on to the plate. Best served warm, with crème fraîche.

Is tarte tatin the queen of apple-based desserts, or do you prefer a strudel, a crumble, a Charlotte, or even a good old-fashioned apple pie? What kind of pastry do you use, and how far do you go down the route of caramelisation?

How to cook perfect tarte tatin | Life and style | The Guardian: "Perfect tarte tatin"
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Wednesday 6 June 2012

Basic Salad Dressing

Basic Salad Dressing:
 "It's a simple soy sauce flavored salad dressing made with rice vinegar. Ingredients: 2 Tbsp rice vinegar 1 Tbsp soy sauce 1/2 tsp sugar 5 Tbsp vegetable oil Preparation: Mix all the ingredients other than oil in a bowl. Add oil gradually and mix well. *Makes about 1/2 cup"

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