Sugar Crust with Crème Pâtissièrere

It’s back to reality after the holidays, kids back to school (they weren’t too thrilled!) and we’re back to work.  All the build up for the holidays and poof it’s gone in a blink of an eye.  We spend a lot of that “spring” cleaning.  It feels good to start the year off without clutter.  I’d like to know where it all comes from, seriously I think it multiplies.  I hate the clear outs but I love the results.  It motivates me to try new things and let the creativity flow.

For Christmas my husband and I try to be creative and feed our hobbies for gifts.  We don’t need stuff per se.  The Great British Bake Off has lit a bit of a fire under us to branch out in the baking arena and I knew we were going to bake through the break.  I found a fluted tart pan with the removable bottom for my husband.  Imagine my surprise when I opened the same gift from him!  Luckily we got two different sizes.  Great minds!

Have you ever wanted to bake something and you follow recipes and it comes out completely differently?  Boy did that happen to me.  I wanted to make tarte au citron that Mary Berry does.  I started everything and realised I didn’t have all the ingredients.  You’d think I was new at this.  So I thought well the set lemon tart is a set lemon tart so I used Julia Child.  I ended up with a strange lemon flavoured whipped meringue tart.  Tasted good but definitely not what I was going for.  So I need to get the ingredients for the tarte au citron and try it again!  But I did like the sugar crust so I made it again and decided to use Julia Child’s crème pâtissière.  I could eat bowls of that!

For the crust I used Mary Berry’s recipe for the crust.  It’s not difficult but it is very fiddly.  The sugar weakens the structure.  You also want to keep the butter cold through this process.

In a food processor add 6oz of flour, 3 1/2 oz of butter cubed, and 1oz of icing sugar.

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Pulse until well blended.  Add one egg yolk and 1 tablespoon of cold water to the food processor.

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Pulse again to blend.  Now her recipe says it would come together in clumps.  So far it hasn’t done that for me but when you test it you want the mixture to stick together when pressed.

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Tip out onto to the counter and press the mixture together firmly until the pastry comes together in a ball.  The trick is to not overwork the crust and make it tough.

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Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.  Lightly grease the tart pan.  Now the directions state to lay out parchment paper and to place the bottom of the tart on the paper.  Draw a circle that is an inch and a half bigger than the tart bottom.  This is to give you a guide when rolling out the pastry.  I made this crust twice this week and tried it the first time and didn’t do it the second.  For me it didn’t make a difference but if it helps you go for it.  Flour the bottom and the paper and place the pastry in the centre.

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Flatten out the pastry out then roll.  This is where the swearing begins.  Did I mention it is fiddly?  Keep the rolling pin floured because it will stick!  This is the most frustrating part of the whole process.

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Carefully fold the pastry in on itself so the bottom shows.  Drop it into the tart frame.

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Carefully press the pastry into the flutes.  A trick that is mentioned is to use spare pastry to press in the pastry without poking holes into it.  That works somewhat.  You can also use a knuckle.  Just keep the nails away!  Allow a bit of overhang as the pastry will shrink when blind baking.

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Use a fork to dimple the base without poking completely through. Chill for 30 minutes.  Preheat the oven at 400F/200C. When ready to bake line the pastry with tin foil and fill with dry beans.

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Bake 10-12 minutes.  Remove the tin foil and the beans.  Trim the excess pastry off the edge. Bake again until it is golden brown and cooked through.  Unfortunately I got sucked into Star Wars.  I was getting my geek on!  So I was just a few minutes late in getting back to the oven.  So it browned a little too much!

Set the pastry aside to cool.  On to the crème pâtissière!  This isn’t difficult but you need a bit of elbow grease with the whisk.  I added a bit more milk to Julia Child’s recipe because I didn’t want it to be overly thick but yet have it set.

Using a mixer gradually mix in a cup of granulated sugar into 5 egg yolks.  Keep beating until the mixture forms pale yellow ribbons.

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Gradually and slowly pour 2 1/4 cup of milk that has been brought to the boil.  You need to do this slowly because you don’t want to scramble the eggs with the hot milk.  Add the mixture into a large saucepan and put it over medium heat.  Keep whisking while it comes to a boil.  It will get thick before it gets smooth again.

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Once it comes to a boil, lower the heat and whisk it for a couple of more minutes to cook the flour.  Remove from the heat.

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Add a tablespoon of butter and 1 1/2 tablespoons of vanilla extract.

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Mix well and let it cool.  Once it is cool enough spoon it into the pastry crust.  Let it set in the fridge until it is time to serve.  Slice fruit of your choice.  We had some lovely strawberries to use up.  Dust with icing sugar.

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Not going to lie, this was delicious.  With dishes like this I won’t bother with resolutions to lose weight!  I mean, who am I kidding.  🙂

 

Lemon Cookies with Strawberry Mint Ginger Jam

Stateside we just had our Labor Day Weekend.  The last hurrah of summer.  Best thing about it?  We had the kids!  Saturday was gorgeous so we took advantage of it and spent most of it outside.  Our daughter is trying out for the school’s soccer team and she wanted to practice her shooting.  Off we traipsed to play a bit of footie at the local playground.  Nearly did a split trying to get the ball!  Not a good thing.  Still it was a blast running round with the kids.

And the holiday weekend is never complete without our annual trek to the go-carts.  But dang it if I didn’t get the slow car again!  It was like a Sunday drive.  I want a car with oomph!

The weekend was topped off with marathon sessions of Settler’s of Catan.  That game is seriously addicting.

I came across a delicious recipe for lemon cookies with strawberry jam that looked super easy.  And if you are going to have marathon sessions of games with the kids there needs to be treats available!

First I made the jam.  I usually do the jam with ginger but I wanted to add another layer of flavour.  We have a ton of mint in our garden and I thought it would give a nice balance to this cookie.

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In a small sauce pan add about 1 1/2 cup of chopped strawberries, 2T of lemon juice, and a small handful of mint.  Grate fresh ginger over the strawberries to your taste and bring to a simmer.

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Remove from the heat once it gets to the jam consistency.  Set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C

For the cookie dough you will need:

1 cup butter

2/3 cup sugar

zest of 1 lemon

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Cream the butter and sugar together and add the lemon zest.

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Add the flour and mix well.  If the butter is cold like mine was because I spaced on getting the butter out of the freezer in time you may find it crumbly but that is ok.  The cookies may not spread out as much as warmer butter but it will still be delicious!

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Roll the dough into 1 inch balls.  Use a finger to make dents into the dough and fill with a small amount of strawberry jam.  Bake for 9-11 minutes.

While it is baking mix up a glaze of 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp almond extract, and 2T of milk.  Mix with a whisk.  If it is still too thick add more milk.

When the cookies are still warm drizzle the glaze over the cookie.

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Not only these really easy to make they are fabulously delicious!  And it was a great way to use up some leftover strawberries.

 

Strawberry Cream Puffs

And poof!  Summer is over.  The kids were off to school today.  Both are in the final years at their prospective schools.  Our son is in 5th grade and our daughter is in 8th.  Seems like we were just bringing our son to kindergarten.  It can be bittersweet.  We are so proud of the people our kids are becoming but childhood just flies by.

I wanted to make a summer dessert as a special treat for their last day of “freedom” and we had some fresh strawberries on hand.  I thought cream puffs with a strawberry sauce would do the trick!

Choux pastry is easy to make, you just need a bit of elbow grease to make it happen.  I referenced Julia Child for this recipe.

You will need:

1 cup water

6 Tablespoons of butter

a pinch of salt

a pinch of nutmeg

1 tsp of salt

3/4 cups of flour

4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 425F/220C

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In a small saucepan combine the water, butter, salt, nutmeg, and sugar.  Bring to a boil to melt the butter.

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Remove from the heat and add the flour stirring very well and continuously until the flour is incorporated.

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Put it back on medium high heat, mixing the entire time, for a couple of minutes until the dough starts to leave a film on the pan.

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Remove from the heat again and add the eggs one at a time.  For the first egg you’ll need to move quickly so you don’t end up with cooked egg so stir fast.  After the first egg is absorbed add the next one and so on.

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Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag with a tip that is large enough for the size pastry you want.  For example if you want 3″ pastry use a 3/4″ tip.  Squeeze the pastry onto a greased cookie sheet.  I made the mistake assuming that our baking sheet was nonstick enough.  Don’t do that!  Space the pastry dollops the same distance as the diameter of the dollops.

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Beat one egg and dab the tops of the dollops without letting the egg drip down.  You don’t want the egg to pin the pastry down.

Strawberry cream puff 7 2014If you are doing small pastries that are about an 1 1/2″ or smaller bake for 20 minutes.  If you are doing larger pastries about 3″ then bake for 20 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 375F/190C for another 10-15 minutes until golden brown.  For both sizes put an inch slit in the side of each puff and put it back in the oven with the oven turned off and the door ajar for 10 minutes.  Julia Child did mention that if the dough in the larger puffs are still moist in the centre to scoop it out.

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The strawberry sauce is super simple.  In a small saucepan add strawberries, grated ginger, a bit of lemon juice, and 1/8 cup of brown sugar.  Bring to a simmer for a few minutes to soften the strawberries and melt the sugar.  Because I didn’t grease the baking sheet properly I ended up with puff cups rather than puff balls.  So I turned them upside down and put in fresh whipped cream and topped with the strawberries.

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A nice way to end the summer before getting back into the routine of school and the coming fall.

Strawberry Rhubarb Ginger Crumble, Now That’s a Mouthful!

The past couple of days our strawberries have been coming in and they are so delicious.  The netting over them has worked very well and the birds just have to do without!  Unfortunately they weren’t ready for the crumble we made for Father’s Day so I had to buy the strawberries.

Conor Bofin recently posted a recipe for rhubarb crumble with ginger.  As soon as our rhubarb was ready I was planning on doing a strawbery rhubarb crumble as crumble is a favourite in our house and our son loves to make the topping.  Conor’s idea of adding ginger was a light bulb moment.  Ginger goes so well with fruit so I had to add it to our recipe.

Even though our strawberries weren’t ready the co-op had some lovely organic ones.

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Quarter a pound of  strawberries and place them in a small pan on medium heat.  As it starts to warm up add 1/3 cup of brown sugar.  Stir well as this starts to simmer.

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Grate fresh ginger over the strawberries.  I used a chunk that was about 1 1/2″ all the way round.  If you really like the bite of the ginger use more.

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Simmer until it becomes a chunky jam.  You don’t want the strawberries to disappear completely.  Set aside and slice the rhubarb into half inch bits.  I used 3 stalks for this.

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Mix in with the strawberries and add to the baking dish.  Preheat the oven to 375F/190C.  Our son made the topping from the recipe in the Pillsbury The Complete Book of Baking.  1 cup of rolled oats, 3/4 cup all purpose flour, 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and 1/2 cup of softened butter.

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Bake for 25-35 minutes.

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I was curious as to why the topping didn’t come out as golden as it usually did.  We found out the sugar was left out!  Oops.  But hey he’s 9 and I figure it doesn’t hurt for him to see why all the ingredients are important.  And I love the fact he wants to bake so I’m not stopping him!  Plus we were serving it with ice cream.  So we were fine.

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Adding ginger was a hit and it really worked well with the ice cream.