Caramel apricot mille feuilles

Fresh apricots are wonderful eaten as is but sometimes they start getting a little mushy. This is a good way to get that apricot aroma into a mille feuille.

1 sheet puff pastry
Bake at 400 C for 20-25 minutes sandwiched between two baking sheets. Let cool and cut into 9 equal sized pieces

Apricot puree:

Apricot puree (blend 3 ripe fresh apricots in blender)
1 T sugar
2 t. cornstarch
3 T water

Heat apricoat puree and sugar over med heat. Mix cornstarch and water and add to apricot puree. Stir until thickened.

Caramel mousse

2 T dulce de leche
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 c powdered sugar

Heat dulce de leche in microwave for 20 sec until soft but not too hot. Whip heavy cream to stiff peaks in a cold bowl. Sift powdered sugar into cream and gently whip/stir to incorporate. Add a few Tbs of whipped cream to the soft dulce de leche and stir to mix well. Gently fold in rest of whipped cream until well mixed.

Layer puff pastry piece with apricot puree and caramel mousse.


I also made some apricot mousse that was too soft for mille feuilles so I made "Apricot Benedict" for breakfast with yogurt cheese, apricot puree and apricot mousse. Yum.

Apricot Tart

Towards the end of August, the Sunday farmer's market at our co-op had some delicious fresh apricots. I love to eat apricots by themselves but I never can resist looking up what I can bake with new goodies. I found a recipe for an apricot tart that got rave reviews. The result was delicious. If you ever get fresh apricots, try this tart. The crust seems to get a bit soggy after the first day. All the better to share with friends... or just eat it all yourself in one day and no, I did not do that, you can't prove it!

You want to eat this.

Mascarpone Raspberry Ice Cream

Mascarpone Ice Cream (Makes about 1 1/2 quarts)

2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
16 oz mascarpone
1 cup cream or half & half
2 cups milk
1/2 tsp salt

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs with the sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in the mascarpone until the mixture is smooth and airy.
Blend in the cream, milk and salt with a whisk. Refrigerate overnight. Meanwhile make raspberry sauce.
Freeze the mix using an ice cream machine. Pour raspberry sauce in at the very last and swirl around. Pack into a freezable air tight container and let sit in freezer until sufficiently hard.

Raspberry Sauce
1 cup raspberries
1/4 cup sugar

Bring to a boil and simmer 5 mins. Let cool in fridge overnight.

Lemon Sabayon Pine Nut Tart and Rosemary Bread

Why would I be making these delicious things when I'm in the middle of grant writing? Well, it was for supper club! Anything for the creation of food that will soon be in my mouth. mmm.

So I made the rosemary bread from "Amy's Breads" and the Lemon Sabayon Tart with Pine Nut Crust from French Laundry. The rosemary bread is delicious. I think I've posted it before but when I made it this time I subbed 1/2 cup of high gluten bread flour for the original whole wheat and I think it made the bread moist and chewy while maintaining the crustiness. Great with evoo and balsamic.

I enjoyed making the Lemon Tart. It was quite easy although the Sabayon took a while. But I got to use my new awesome foot long whisk made out of piano wires that I bought from the C-town resto supply store. I have to admit, though, that I have no arm strength and could barely manage that big whisk after the first 10 seconds. So maybe next time it'll be the hand beater...

People loved the bread and liked the tart. Some complained that they could not taste the pine nuts. I decided this was because they did not know what pine nuts taste like because the crust is very distinctly pine nutty. The sabayon was smooth and so tart. Lovely.

Happily a Verrine

I've been putting in long hours at school these days, lab work, writing, lab work, blog reading, writing, writing, writing...

When I get home, it's hard to get motivated to cook too much. But I know that if I make some verrines and leave them in the fridge, I'll wake up in the morning ready for forage for breakfast and find a beautiful delicious this waiting for me:
It would make you smile, no? It's a great way to start the day feeling tres pampered. Verrines are enticingly easy to make. Just layer ingredients you may have on hand. In one I used a berry gelee topped with vanilla yogurt topped with macerated strawberries and pistachios in a blood orange syrup. Delicious.

I made another verrine this morning to share with my advisor. Yes, we have work meetings on Sunday mornings - doesn't everyone? This one started with yogurt gelee which could use some improvement. Then it was topped by mixed berry compote. Then came the layer that made me think,"I'm a fucking genius.": yogurt mousse made with agar. I think I might finally have gotten the way to use agar to make mousse. Of course it took a half hour of searching on the internet and quite a few people have made mousse with agar so really I guess I'm not so much a genius. Damn.

Verrine #1

Berry Gelee
handful of blueberries
handful of strawberries cut up
handful of raspberries
2 spoons of sugar
1 spoon of lemon juice
1/2 t agar powder

Puree berries. Add berry puree, sugar and lemon juice together in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and then simmer for a few minutes. Sprinkle in agar and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Pour into bottom of small glasses. Let cool and set up. Pour some vanilla yogurt on top and chill.

Strawberry Mix:
1/2 cup strawberries diced
1/4 cup ground pistachios
2 t sugar

Mix together and let sit. Distribute over yogurt.

Blood Orange Syrup can be found here Drizzle over top of strawberries.


Verrine #2
Layer 1: sweetened yogurt
Layer 2: berry compote (same as berry gelee just without agar added)
Layer 3: yogurt mousse
1/4 c heavy cream
1/4 c powdered sugar
3/4 c yogurt
1/2 t agar
4 T water

Dissolve agar in water in a small pan. Whip yogurt in a bowl until smooth and slightly fluffy. Whip heavy cream to soft peaks. Whip in powdered sugar. Be careful not to overwhip. Boil agar mixture for 3 minutes stirring to dissolve the agar fully. While whisking slowly pour the agar mix into the yogurt. Stir in 1/3 of the whipped cream until incorporated. Fold in rest of whipped cream.

Layer 4: fresh sliced strawberries

Here's the yogurt mousse:

Pear (Quince) Frangipane Tarts

When I get all stressed after 10 hours of research, lab work, or procrastinating, I like to bake. So last night I looked at what I had in the fridge and found two quinces that I had bought in Flushing over New Years that were crying out to be eaten in some delicious form. Last fall I had made quince tarts out of quinces I salvaged from under a neighbors quince bush and they were good so tart it was. I used this recipe from Tartlette and it was easy, fast and delicious. I have to make frangipane more often! I admit I used frozen puff pastry from Trader Joe's but they make their puff pastry with butter so it's pretty darn tasty.

The tartlettes scared me when they were in the oven because the frangipane melted off to the sides and it looked like I was baking pancakes:

However, it wasn't really a big deal because one the tarts cooled, I chopped off the extra frangipane and was left with cute little tarts that looked like this:

I had at least 1 cup of frangipane leftover from making six little tarts. I cut two more pears in half, poached them, sliced and fanned to make one big "just pear" tart. This one I sprinkled some chopped pistachios on which was delicous and gave the tart more depth.

Plum Apple Pecan Tart

During the summer, I was making tarts left and right using an easy olive oil crust that I had found on several blogs. After making it the first time, I didn't measure anymore or use an exact recipe however La Tartine Gourmand has a great one for starters. The ground almonds can be exchanged for another type of nut. I've use pecans and walnuts successfully. Put the fruit in the middle, drizzle some honey or maple syrup over the fruit, fold over the edges and bake until golden. They came out delicious and the crust was flaky. Any combination fruits would work but I really loved apple and plum tarts.

Wild Berry Tarts and Peach Tarts

Delaware is a pretty lush state and a large variety of plants thrive here including rambling blackberry and raspberry bushes. This is the peak time for these delicate berries so I spend time on Wednesday picking berries with D. We got some thorns and prickers in our fingers but were rewarded with a large bag of sweet berries at the end. I decided to make some berry tarts but wasn't quite sure what to use a vegan pastry cream. I finally settled on one that used flour and soymilk and seemed to work for several people but once I made it, I was disappointed. It seemed too much like sweet paper mache gloop even after I cooled it. But I didn't have time to make another cream since I was planning on bringing these to a group meeting and the meeting was starting in 30 minutes! So I just slathered in into the tart shells I baked earlier and spread a thin layer of blood orange sauce that I found in the freezer on top before arranging the berries over the whole thing.

The blood orange sauce really saved the tarts. The sweet and slightly bitter orange flavor punched up the gloopy pastry cream and made a decadent tart. Still I think next time I would use a cashew cream or a vanilla pudding instead of the faux pastry cream.

One thing that finally struck me after making lots of tarts is that the water:butter:flour ratio for pie crusts is as such 1:2:6. So for example 3/4 cup flour: 1/4 cup butter: 2 T water. It's nice to be able to bake sans recipe.


Tart crust (fits about five 4" tart pans)
3/4 cup flour
1 t sugar
pinch salt
1/4 cup Earth Balance
2 T water

Mix flour, sugar and salt together. Cut in butter until pea sized balls form. I do this by hand since I'm missing a food processor. Sigh. Add in water and gather into a large ball. Wrap in wax paper and chill for 30 mins. After chilling divide dough into five parts and pat quickly into balls. In between two pieces of wax paper, roll out each ball until it is slightly bigger than your tart pans. It should be quite thin maybe 1/8". Gently peel off wax paper and drape dough into pans, pressing into the flutes. Cover with wax paper and fill with dry beans. Blind bake at 350 C for 15 minutes. I do this in the toaster oven since it's so bloody hot now.


Tart pastry cream filling is from Vegan Chef.
1/2 cup unbleached flour
2 cups soy milk, rice milk, or other non-dairy milk of choice, divided
1/3 cup unbleached cane sugar
pinch of salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 t. grated lemon zest
1/2 t. vanilla

In a small bowl, place the flour and whisk in 1/2 cups soy milk, and set aside. In a small saucepan, place the remaining soy milk, sugar, and salt, and whisk to combine. Add the flour mixture to the liquid ingredients and whisk well to combine. Cook the mixture over medium heat, while whisking constantly, for 5-6 minutes or until thickened. Add the remaining ingredients, whisk well to combine, and cook the mixture an additional 1 minute. Remove the saucepan from the heat and transfer the mixture to a glass bowl. Place a piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap directly on top of the pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming on the top. Place the pastry cream in the refrigerator for several hours to cool completely. Use as a filling for pies, tarts, pastries, or phyllo dough, or as a topping for desserts.

Yield: 2 Cups

Blood Orange Syrup (from Epicurious)
3 cups fresh blood orange juice or regular orange juice
9 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons grated blood orange peel or regular orange peel

Stir all ingredients in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil until syrup is reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 20 minutes. Refrigerate until cold. Cover and keep refrigerated up to 2 days. I put mine in the freezer and can pull it out to use directly. It doesn't need to defrost since it won't freeze solid or loose any flavor.

Assembly:
Spoon pastry cream into each tart shell and smooth.
Spoon a thin layer of blood orange syrup on top.
Top with fruit.

The tarts got a bit soggy after a while. I should have probably painted the insides of the tart shells with some jam to prevent that from happening.
The peach tart flower idea is originally from Tartlette who mentions that this can be done with thinly sliced fruit. Yeah right, I thought, probably only by a professional pastry chef. But I was so wrong! The flower was delightfully easy to make and even more fun to eat.

Raspberry Lime Tarts and Snowballs

Trader Joe's had stacks of 2 pint boxes of organic raspberries. They were strategically placed at the register so that they gave off a sweet fruity perfume that made your tummy rumble. This coupled with the dozen or so limes that are sitting in the fridge left over from our last theme party makes raspberry lime tarts. Most of this recipe came from Eat Air who apparently got the key lime filling from PETA. I just made it in mini tart form and stuck raspberries on top.


We were on a mini weekend trip to Rehobeth when we passed by a cafe that served Belgium waffles. There's no way we could pass up waffles so in we went. Rehobeth is teeming with international teenagers working minimum wage jobs for the summer. In this particular cafe, it was a Bulgarian girl and a guy named Marcello, who could be from France. They were very cute and friendly but neither knew an iota about making good waffles. Our waffles turned out undercooked, soft on the outside and gummy on the inside. But I didn't know this when I looked in the pastry display case and saw something labeled "Summer Snowball" which looked like this:

This thing was huge and it looked so deliciously light and coconutty. It was about half the size of my head.
Unfortunately, like the Belgian waffles, it was a good idea executed poorly. This summer snowball was nothing more than a custard puff wrapped in an inch thick layer of what tasted like canned icing. So sugary that I had to scrape of most of the icing before I found it slighly edible. Although this particular snowball was a dunce, it gave me ideas on a tastier homemade version, perhaps with coconut whipped cream, choux pastry and coconut custard.

Caramelized pear ice cream

My parents brought me some asian pears and I had been itching to try caramelized pear ice cream. It didn't turn out quite as caramel-y as I would have liked and I have ideas for next time but this is what I did this time around:

2 ripe pears chopped fine
1/4 water
1 1/4 cup sugar
3 cups heavy cream warmed
1 Tbs pure vanilla extract

Place water and sugar in a heavy skillet over medium low heat. Let sugar dissolve then added the pear choppings. Let the sugar and pears cook for a few minutes then raise the heat to caramelize the sugar. When it's bubbling and a dark amber color, pour in the heated heavy cream. Keep stirring the mixture until all the caramel dissolves into the cream. Remove from heat and add the vanilla extract. Chill mixture well and freeze in ice cream maker.

Orange Cream Roll

Today was my advisor's birthday. What better reason to bake a cake? I had been eyeing this lovely lemon roll over at Tartlette's so I finally got over my reluctance to use lots of eggs for a dessert (a lingering effect from starving chinese family during cultural revolution syndrome) and hopped to it. Except I subbed orange for lemon and agar agar for the gelatin. The cream turned out great. The cake was another story. After I carefully measured and whipped and folded, and finally slide the batter gently into the oven, I started cleaning up dishes and found that I had totally forgotten to put the butter in! I took the cake out after 10 minutes and inverted it to find something akin to a 2 by 4. I tried to roll it but the stiffness made the roll rectangular rather than a nice spiral. It was a dilemma for me (Oh!). Bake another cake or just make do with this one? Well, I thought, it only takes 10 minutes to throw together and 10 minutes to bake and I could deal with using more eggs. But this time I used a roll cake recipe from Paula Deen. It turned out beautifully and my advisor (and the rest of the group) was pretty happy.

Orange Roll Cake (adapted from Paula Deen's Jelly Roll recipe)

4 eggs, separated
3/4 cup sugar
zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon vanilla
3/4 cup cake flour, sifted
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Garnish:
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting, sifted
1 cup orange cream

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a jelly roll pan (cookie sheet with sides) with parchment or wax paper.

In a small bowl beat egg whites until soft peaks form and set aside. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks until light and lemony and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar, zest and vanilla, and mix well. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the sifted flour mixture to the egg yolk mixture. Stir in half of the egg whites into the yolk mixture then fold in the rest. Pour the batter into jelly roll pan and smooth out. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until the cake is golden and springs back with pushed lightly with a finger.

Meanwhile, prepare a kitchen towel by dusting it with some powdered sugar. Loosen edges of cake, invert cake onto the towel (Wow! I should really read directions better. That is so much easier than inverting the powdered sugar towel over the cake, which is what I did and ended up with a gentle cloud of powdered sugar descending over the front of my shirt). Gently peel wax paper off cake. Trim 1/4-inch of hard crust off each long side of the jelly roll cake. Begin with the narrow side and roll the cake and towel up together. Cool cake on rack, seam side down, for 10 to 15 minutes.

Once cake has cooled, gently unroll and spread cake with orange cream and re-roll. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar or cover with whipped cream.

Orange Cream (from Pierre Herme by way of Tartlette)

1 cup sugar
zest of 2 oranges
4 eggs
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 Tb agar flakes, softened in 3 Tbs hot water
1 stick butter, cut into 1 inch pieces, softened

Make a water bath by putting a saucepan of water over heat to simmer and placing a metal bowl over, without the bottom touching the water. Rub the sugar and zest with your fingers and add to the metal bowl. Whisk in the eggs and juice.
Cook the mixture over the water bath, whisking constantly until the cream reaches 180 degrees (btw - this is hard to do with my meat thermometer). Put it into a blender with the agar mix until a taste test shows no sign of agar lumps. Let the cream cool to 140. Blend in the butter until smooth. Pour into a container, cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Strawberry Ice Cream

Saturday was a fun day spent with my roommate D. We wanted to go and study in a coffeeshop but crazy Delaware seems to close down at 5pm on Saturdays. Luckily, the "Farmer's Market" was right across the street so we hopped over there to browse. I say "Farmer's Market" in quotes because that is the name of the place but it's really more like a flea market with a Mexican/Asian/even cheaper than Trader Joe's grocery store in the middle. D and I both wandered around with glazed eyes dropping ridiculous things in our shopping cart. Not being one to resist baking ingredients, I gathered up about 5 different boxes of bulk nuts in my arms and went over to D to make sure that I wasn't going overboard buying so many nuts. But at that moment, she was slipping a gigantic case of ramen noodles into the cart as well as cilantro bouillon cubes so I knew we were a lost cause. As you can imagine, we ended up buying lots of ridiculous, but probably yummy in the future, foods and were as happy can be. We also had a great time with "Farmer's Market boy" who we were pseudo-eyeing and whose car, jacket and glasses we are familiar with. Someday we'll find you.

Anyways, they were giving away free strawberries at the farmer's market (!) so we came home with 2 lbs of fresh red happiness. That was made into the following ice cream. I also tried to make a balsamic reduction to drizzle over it but got distracted watching a movie and ended up caramelizing (ie. burning...) the vinegar so it wasn't great but the concept was good.


Adapted from epicurious

1 c heavy cream
3/4 c half and half
1/8 t salt
3 two inch long strips of lemon peel
2 eggs
1/2 c + 1/4 c sugar (I used raw cane sugar)
1 lb fresh strawberries
1 T lemon juice
1 tsp balsamic vinegar

Combine cream, zest, and salt in a saucepan and bring just to a boil. Or just bring it to a boil like I did (oops). Remove from heat and fish out the zest.

Whisk eggs with 1/2 cup sugar in a bowl, then slowly add hot cream 1/4 cup at a time whilst whisking. Pour cream/egg mixture back into saucepan and cook over moderately low heat, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened and coats the back of a spoon. Don't let it boil.

Fill a big metal bowl or deep baking pan halfway with ice cubes and water and set the custard in the ice water until chilled, stirring occasionally.

While custard is chilling, purée strawberries with remaining 1/4 cup sugar, lemon juice and vinegar in a blender until smooth. Stir purée into custard.

Freeze in ice-cream maker, then transfer to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden.

Fresh pumpkin, frozen blueberries

Over the summer we grew a small patch of pumpkins and what better time to reap the seeds we've sown. I made a little pumpkin pie with one of our fresh pumpkins. It began with the making of a crust:


The pie still survived even though I accidentally put the oven on broil for half the bake time. It was good! Sweetened with honey and full of eggs.


Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

So simple and so good.

2 cups half and half (maybe I'll try some heavy cream next time)
2 cups blueberries
1/2 cup cane sugar
3 oz cream cheese softened

Throw all ingredients in a blender and whizz until smooth. Pour into ice cream maker and churn.

Mille Feuilles

We went apple, grape and raspberry picking this last weekend at Milborn Orchards. The grapes were phenomenal! And I came home with a beautiful box of raspberries.

The first thought that ran through my head was "Napoleons!!!"

It was my first attempt at puff pastry and mille feuille, aka Napoleons. I clearly remember the first time I ate a Napoleon. I was in 10th grade, sleeping over at a friend's house and her parents had just returned from NY city bringing back a big boxful of pastries from a fancy shmancy bakery. I got to have the Napoleon and oh my god, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten. I continued to have an obsession with Napoleons and came across this intriguing recipe on Tartlette's blog last week. I took it as a sign and I gave it a go.

I was up at 6 am, translating grams into our silly english measurements and measuring out crazy shit like 3/4 cup + 1 T + 1 t butter and 2/3 c - 1 T flour, etc. Maybe it's time to get a scale?

Rolling out the dough encased in butter block wasn't intuitive to me. The butter block softened much more quickly than the dough block so whenever I rolled it, the butter block would all squish to the edges. Maybe that's why it's usually the inverse of this inverted recipe. I probably should thrown it in the fridge to firm it up a bit too. But after the 4th hour of rolling, folding and chilling, I had a nice looking dough:


I baked it according to directions by sandwiching the dough between baking sheets to keep it from puffing up. My result was a somewhat heavy and dense puff pastry. It's probably how I rolled out the dough or that the dough got too warm or that my pan was too heavy but the pastry wasn't fall apart flaky bits of heavenly lightness which was disappointing. I decided to cut each piece in half thickwise to lighten it up a bit.






I whipped up some heavy cream with sugar and got out my lemon curd and proceeded to layer. It was good but, again, not the light airy pastry orgasm I had a long time ago. I'll have to fiddle around and maybe get a book out on puff pastry. Note to self: here's a nice video, showing a logical way to make it and here is an illustrated recipe.