Almond cream & pear tartlets

So here's what I did with the leftover almond cream from yesterday's not so photogenic galettes--almond cream and poached pear tartlets! This was the very last pear left from my CSA, so I felt quite virtuous about using up a bunch of stuff. My fridge is actually looking quite bare these days: no giant bunches of kale and turnips lurking around. Sniffle.


Since I had all the components on hand (I almost always have some form of pie crust dough in the freezer, for last minute baking emergencies) this took about 15 minutes to put together, and most of that time was for poaching my rather old pear. I gave it a quick bath in a ginger syrup, both to soften it up and to give it some flavor. All you do is press crust into a tartlet pan, spread almond cream across the bottom, and then lay your sliced pear on top. These took about 30 minutes to bake, and then I just brushed a little glaze over the top.

So, anyhow, this is my virtual birthday pie for my mom, whose birthday is tomorrow! Don't worry Mom; I'll bake you a fresh one next time I see you. In the meantime, Mamegoma and Horsie and I wish you a happy birthday and hope you are eating something yummy (although it won't be as yummy as this tart I'm sure ;)).

Butter (maple) Tarts

Oh, the dangers of reading foodblogs--I don't know about you guys, but I am constantly reading other blogs and going "oooh, that looks good, I have to make that." So, of course, I've amassed this huge collection of thinks with recipes I really really want to try which just languish in my bookmarks list, collecting cyber-dust. But once in a while I see something that looks so good that my brain (or my stomach?) won't stop bugging me about it until I try it out. This is one of them!


I first saw these over at Carly's Comfort Zone (go look at her photos, because try as I might, I just cannot get these to photograph well enough to show how truly sticky-delicious they look). They reminded me a little bit (appearance-wise) of a sugar pie that I saw while I was in Vancouver last month, and the ingredients list reminds me of pecan pie (and in fact, you can add pecans to this). And cream cheese tart dough? Hell yes. I am a firm believer in cream cheese pie doughs; that cream cheese, besides providing fat, also gives a nice tangy bite to the crust, which is a nice contrast to the sweet filling.


Doesn't that look gooey and delicious? As I mentioned above, I changed up a couple of things in the original recipe, including using maple syrup in place of corn syrup because I didn't have any, and I did have a jug of lovely maple syrup from Vermont. (Which makes this even LESS Canadian, if you ask our friend who believes the only good maple syrup comes from Canada. Fighting words!) I also reduced the butter and used white whole wheat flour instead of all purpose. I don't think that hurt the recipe any, and I felt slightly less guilty! These are perfect to go with a cup of tea or coffee, especially when they are still warm. Thanks for introducing me to these, Carly!

(Maybe Canadian) Butter Tarts, adapted from Carly's Comfort Zone

Tart Crust:
2 cups white whole wheat flour (or all purpose, or a mixture of regular whole wheat and AP)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
6oz cold cream cheese
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
2 tbsp ice water

Filling:
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup maple syrup
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

For the crust, combine flour, salt, and baking powder and whisk briefly. Grate in the butter on the largest holes of a box grater (it helps if you freeze your butter, actually). Add the cream cheese, cut into small chunks, and mix quickly, until the mixture looks like corn meal. It's okay to have chunks of butter and cream cheese, just not huge ones. Sprinkle the ice water over and toss quickly until the dough comes together. Form into a smooth ball, wrap in plastic, and chill for at least 30 minutes.

After dough is chilled, preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan, or line with muffin liners.

Roll the tart dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/8"-1/4" thick. Cut out approximately 3.5" rounds and press rounds into the prepared pan. (I ended up with a fair amount of dough scraps, which I re-rolled and cut into small cookie size rounds. Sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon sugar and bake. Good snack with fresh berries!) Refrigerate while you prepare the filling.

For the filling, combine all the ingredients and beat until well combined. Spoon filling into the pastry lined cups until almost full. Bake until the piecrust is browned and the filling is bubbling; in my oven, that took about 25 minutes. Cool slightly, and then serve with hot tea or coffee.

Has anyone seen my baking-fu?

I think I am in a serious post-vacation rut. It's been really hard to get back into the swing of work (which I guess might be a sign of burnout) and generally speaking, I feel kind of...blah. I'm actually pretty busy but I sort of wish I could just curl up and hibernate for a while.

The blahness has even extended to my baking. I am just not feeling very excited about it. For starters, it's too hot now to turn the oven on much--one of the big downsides to our apartment is that turning the oven on heats the whole place. So, I either have to wait for a cooler day or do my baking early in the morning or late at night. The net result is that I am just not baking very much.


So it's super frustrating that I DID actually have plans to make some little desserts to bring to a party and it was just a big giant pile of fail. The plan was to make mini raspberry cream chocolate tarts, and at first everything seemed to be going fine--the pastry cream and tart dough both came together very quickly and all I really had to do to finish was to blind bake the tart cases and fold raspberries into the pastry cream. I made the tart cases in my mini-muffin pan (shocking) and they seemed to bake up just fine, with none of the shrinking or cracking that I sometimes get....but the shells, when cool, were SUPER fragile. But since they were meant as single bite desserts, I thought that perhaps this would not be a big problem.

Then I retrieved my pastry cream and it had chilled into a solid mass! I mean, really solid. Like, play-doh solid. I ran the immersion blender through it, which loosened it up (especially once I added the raspberry puree) but...it was a little lumpy and not silky smooth like pastry cream usually is. Sigh. But okay, I can pretend the lumps are raspberry seeds. So, I put together a test tart with a spoonful of cream and a raspberry on top and presented it to Sir Didymus...and as soon as he took it, it fell apart in his hand (and all over the floor). GRRR!!!! Well, at least they look nice in the photos and they taste okay.

So, to cut this already too-long tale short, I left the desserts at home and we bought a bottle of sake instead. Phooey. And now I have shattery tart shells and lumpy pastry cream languishing in my fridge. Suggestions for using them up would be MUCH appreciated!

(I'm not going to share the recipes here since they did not produce very good results for me. I mean, it was probably my fault but I want to tweak them...if I ever dare make this again.)

Normandy Apple Tart (or, Adventures in Applesauce)

I love Dorie Greenspan's Baking book--I've made at least 10 recipes from it by now and every single one has been terrific. I don't know if it's just me but I find that a lot of recipe books lately have a lot of errors (sometimes glaring! like a certain cake recipe from a book-that-shall-not-be-named which neglected to give measurements for flour) or which are converted improperly from the metric measurements. I've never had a problem like that with Baking AND it's beautifully photographed and full of little anecdotes and tips. It's my current favorite book (although my wonderful brother got me a Nick Malgieri book for Christmas so...game on!)

This recipe is no exception. I could not locate my tart ring (a recurring theme with me) so I made it in an 8" removable bottom cake pan. It's a bit deeper than it was intended to be and of course, somewhat more rustic looking (especially in the crust edges as you can see above), but you know, I actually found the ratio of apple to crust to be more to my preference this way. I'm usually a crust person, but this applesauce is SO GOOD.

And now for the "learn from my stupidity" part of the post. When I read instructions that tell me to puree something with a food mill, I usually shrug and reach for a potato masher or a mesh sieve and a spoon. BUT (and you know there is a but), I fell victim again to missing implements--in this case, my large mesh sieve was MIA. "Oh well," I thought, "I have this little one that I use for sifting powdered sugar. So it'll take a little longer...big deal!" Two hours later, I was sweaty, covered in bits of apple, my hand was sore, I had invoked and then cursed a number of deities, and all I had to show for it was a smallish bowl of sauce. Fortunately it was a delicious bowl of sauce (thank you Greenmarket farmers!) or I think I might have cried. Anyway, I have learned my lesson--I'm going to go get a food mill. And when I do, there will be delicious Normandy apple tart for all.

Normandy Apple Tart (recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours)
2 pounds apples (I used a mix of Gala, McIntosh, and Honeycrisp)
1/4 cup water
half a stick of cinnamon
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Topping:
2 medium apples (I used Fuji)

1 9" tart crust, partially baked and cooled

For the crust, use your favorite sweet tart dough; there is an excellent one in Dorie's book, although I used a batch of pate sucree I had left from another baking endeavor.

Peel and core the apples and chop into 1" chunks (of course if you have a food mill, you can cut them larger and leave the skin and cores intact). Place in a saucepan with the water, cinnamon, and brown sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat. You want to cook the apples until they are extremely soft; if the water boils away before this happens, add enough a bit at a time so the apples don't stick to the bottom of the pan. When the apples are soft enough, remove from heat and process through a food mill (or push through a (LARGE) sieve.) Under no circumstances should you use what amounts to a glorified tea strainer. This is your last warning! If the applesauce seems thin, return it to the pan and cook very, very gently until it thickens slightly. Stir in vanilla, transfer the sauce to a bowl, cover and refrigerate.

When ready to assemble the pie, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Fill the baked and cooled tart shell (which you have left in the pan) with the applesauce almost to the top; place the filled pan on a baking sheet. To make the topping, peel and halve the two apples and remove the cores. Cut each half into very thin, neat slices and arrange in concentric circles over the applesauce, overlapping slightly. You could arrange them in any old way, but concentric circles is pretty. Dorie's recipe calls for an eggwash but I skipped it and sprinkled some coarse sugar on top instead. Bake for 50 minutes or until the apples are golden and easily pierced with the tip of a knife. Cool and eat!