Merry Christmas!!
Category: dessert
Summer Classics: Strawberry-rhubarb Pie
I didn’t get many pictures of this dessert (too busy making and serving it), but it turned out really well. My dad loves pie (looooooves pie), so I made him a strawberry-rhubarb pie, one of his favorites, for Father’s day. I considered trying a new recipe, but in the end I stuck with the old tried-and-true from my Joy of Cooking book.
For the crust, I chose pâte brisée (a butter crust). To help keep it flaky, it does have a bit of shortening, but it still has a gorgeous buttery flavor. I made the pie on a warm day, so I was a little concerned about the crust becoming oily, but I left it in the fridge for about an hour before rolling it out, and it turned out to be one of the best crusts I’ve made.
As you can seen from the pictures, I did a lattice top, and I used corn starch for a thickener. Recently, I’ve been reading up on using less sugar in baking. I’ve been cutting the sugar in my fruit pies for several years, and I am happy with the results. As this King Arthur Flour article points out, sugar isn’t key to the structural integrity of pie the way it is to cake. If you’re working with good fruit, it doesn’t need a lot of sugar anyway.
However, this pie is a little bit different, because it has rhubarb. Now, I love rhubarb, but it is extremely tart, and you really can’t make a dessert with it without using a significant amount of sugar. For a pie filled only with rhubarb, Joy of Cooking recommends 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups sugar. With strawberries substituted for half the rhubarb, they instruct to drop the sugar to 1 cup. I cut that down to 3/4 cup, and was glad I did. The strawberries I was working with were wonderfully ripe and quite sweet by themselves, and limiting the sugar meant that the tartness of the rhubarb really shone through without being overwhelming.
I brushed the pie with cream and sprinkled it with turbinado sugar–not only does the sugar look good, but it fools the tastebuds into thinking the dessert is sweeter than it really is. The pie set up beautifully, and sliced easily. It was well received by the whole family, especially by my dad, who said it was the best strawberry-rhubarb pie he had ever had. 🙂
As we finished eating it, everyone started deadpanning about how no one had enjoyed it, and they only ate it to be polite, because that’s just the sort of thing we do, and my sweet five year old niece assured us all: “I enjoyed the pie”. She’ll grow into silly sarcasm in time, I’ve no doubt, but I was touched by her support. ❤
Independence Cake
For family occasions, I am the designated dessert maker. Our traditional Fourth of July dessert is chocolate cupcakes with American flags stuck in them (which I did do last year), but I didn’t have the flags or the chocolate and I wasn’t sure what to do. After turning over and rejecting various ideas (including éclairs), I settled on making a cake.
Surprise, surprise, the recipe I chose is from King Arthur flour (I do love them). It’s a classic, standard American cake, the kind that gets made for birthdays: golden vanilla cake.
It’s pretty much a one bowl cake, but it was more work than I anticipated. Each egg needs to be beaten in individually and the whole bowl scraped down in between each one, to ensure that the cake has enough air, presumably. And my cake had a lot of air: each of the layers domed hugely, making it necessary to cut off the tops. And as the pictures clearly show, there were holes throughout the cake.
To fill and cover the cake, I whipped about 2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream with about 3 tablespoons granulated sugar and 1 or 2 teaspoons vanilla. I didn’t use quite all of the cream: 2 1/4 cups probably would have sufficed. I also layered the cake with raspberries freshly picked (by me) from my parents’ garden, and blueberries (store-bought). Then I slathered more cream on the bottom layer so there wouldn’t be any gaps.
To make sure the cake dish would be neat after I finished frosting the cake, I put four strips of parchment paper in a square underneath the cake and when I was done, I pulled them away: voilà! Clean cake stand. That’s a trick I got from Cook’s Illustrated. My husband helped me by slowing spinning the cake stand while I frosted, and by helping me with garnish (again, raspberries and blueberries for a red, white, and blue cake!). I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the top of the cake until the last minute, when I decided a star was appropriate to the occasion, and I think it turned out really well.
The cake was moist and kept well. In fact, I think it was perhaps even better the second day. All in all, a satisfying endeavour.
Small Sweetnesses
Twin tiny tarts sit neatly
Upon their small glass plate;
Fresh fruit that ripened sweetly
Has been arranged, ornate–
Cold creamy custard, smooth and
Set, and golden pastry crust,
When eaten, leave upon one’s hand
A little sugar dust.
Crème Brûlée
This Christmas I received a very exciting present: a chef’s torch, which neatly combines my love of making fancy desserts with my love of setting things on fire. I have wanted one since I was about 15 years old, and this year my husband obliged me. It was easy to fuel and use, not to mention being a (literal) blast!
The recipe I used was from King Arthur Flour’s website: Crème Brûlée. Straining the custard is very important for achieving the incredibly smooth and creamy texture. I used turbinado sugar instead of demerara, but it worked fine and caramelizing it was really fun. The instructions are simple, but so is the dish! Aside from all the equipment required . . .
Peach Clafouti
It’s peach season! What to do with all those fresh peaches (courtesy of my parents’ fruit trees)?
I looked up peaches in the indices of some of my cookbooks to get some ideas, and I settled on King Arthur Flour’s peach clafouti.
Baking temperature and time: 375°F, 35-40 minutes
Ingredients:
- 3 cups peeled and sliced peaches
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 large eggs
- 1 1/4 cups milk
- 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter a round, 10-inch oven safe pan or skillet (I used a deep pie dish).
- Line the bottom of the pan with peaches and sprinkle the brown sugar over them.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, milk, and vanilla. Blend thoroughly, and then gradually whisk in the flour mixture, smoothing out the lumps.
- Pour the mixture over the fruit and bake for 35-40 minutes until a cake tester inserted into the clafouti comes out clean.
- Serve warm or at room temperature. I would allow it at least and hour and a half to cool and set.
Strawberry-Lemon Profiterole
For Father’s day, I made profiteroles, and I filled them with lemon gelato, over which I drizzled strawberry puree. This flavor combination works really well.
To serve it, I sprinkled the pastry shells with powdered sugar and sliced a strawberry to decorate each plate.
Snickerdoodles
These are delightfully chewy, buttery cookies, and very quick to make. Even after a couple of days, their texture is still good.
Baking temperature and time: 400°F for 8-10 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 3/4 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
To coat the cookies:
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together; add the eggs and beat them in.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and blend. You can chill the dough or make the cookies immediately.
- Roll the dough into small balls and roll each one in the cinnamon sugar mixture.
- On a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, bake the cookies at 400°F for 8-10 minutes
The Browniest Cookies
I was introduced to this recipe by my sister Lizzy, and it comes from the Smitten Kitchen.
They combine the delicious, mouth-pleasing fudginess of brownies with the shape and chocolate chips of a cookie.
Cherry Pie
Another summer classic! A cherry pie. I used butter and lard in the crust, and the dough rolled out more smoothly than any pie crust I’ve ever made, and as a result, this pie may be one of the prettiest I’ve made. I brushed the lattice with cream and sprinkled it with sugar.
I am proud to say I pitted about 2 1/2 pound of cherries with my bare hand in less than twenty minutes.
The Tired Baker 