Recently: Fresh Strawberry and Marshmallow Tarte

So as of last night, I've been added to the blogroll of the Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild (of which I am now a member).  I'm not sure how many of the members actually read blogs, but I figure I should start back to providing actual content in this here space.  So first a few catchup posts.

I started this blog with a vague sense of recording domestic-y things, and most importantly, a desire to participate in the now-completed "Tuesdays with Dorie" project, a years-long bakealong that took I don't know how many home bakers across the US and the world through Dorie Greenspan's Baking:  From My Home to Yours.  When I started with TWD, I was home full-time, on a year-long research fellowship in rural Pennsylvania.  I needed something fun and fulfilling to do on a regular basis to focus on and to distract me from all the other tomfoolery going on (or not going on, as the case may be) in my life, and Tuesdays with Dorie was it for me.  The year ended, and I was fortunate to land another position, but this position is a full-time office based job, and I now live in an apartment with a small, dark kitchen, no air conditioning, and little cabinet space.  It became hard to keep up with the recipes, but I tried to bake and post whenever I could, and so limped on till the project was over.  The group began a new book when we completed Baking..., but I knew I couldn't commit to the new book, which had even more ambitious recipes than this one, so I very reluctantly decided to bow out.

So without that, I didn't really have much I wanted to share.  I share my successfully completed sewing projects on Facebook.  I haven't been baking very much and haven't done a proper decorated cake in about 2 years (though I did do up some cookies for a bake sale last fall).  I don't think my baking will increase much, at least until I get a kitchen more amenable to it, but occasionally I am commissioned to do something, and that leads me to today's project.

I was invited to a Bastille Day party last month, and decided after some thought that I wanted to bring something very French.  Enter this tart from Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets cookbook--her version of a tart served at Laduree, the famous Parisian bakery and tearoom. I spent a few days slowly putting it together, but it restored my faith in my baking abilities.

First, I made a vanilla bean creme patisserie.  There is a local dairy that sells milk at outrageously low prices, and they have this product I've never seen anywhere before:   superrich (richer than whole milk!) milk.

It is the BEST for making milky things like custards, pastry creams, rice pudding, and so on.  I only wish it came in quarts--I cannot bring myself to drink it--but at $1.99 a half-gallon I suppose I cannot complain much. 

The cream was easy enough to make--standard pastry cream.  In addition to the milk, it also had a nice quantity of butter to be mixed in.  Yay calcium!

vanilla bean cream with its first addition of butter

This went in the fridge while I set about making the strawberry-orangeflower marshmallows.
I've made marshmallows once before, a few years ago.  I remember being pleasantly surprised at how easy they are--really, the mixer does all the work for you--

make sugar syrup

whip up egg whites and add sugar syrup and gelatin to make meringue

fold in flavorings--here I used strawberry puree I found in the Latino frozen foods aisle, and orange-flower water

spread out in a pan and let cool for a day.

--but thinking they were too sweet.  This time, per Dorie's instructions, I dusted them with potato starch instead of powdered sugar.  This helped.  However, they developed a weird gelatinous layer at the bottom that I had to slice off.  It was pretty humid out, so I think the weather was not in my favor, but everyone said they liked them, even when I brought the extras to work a couple days later. 

Now on to the shell.  I've used Dorie's recipe for years now, so I always go to it--it rarely fails me.  It's a delightful shortbready crust, and I use almond flour for part of the flour to give it a little extra yum.  You
basically dump everything in the food processor and blitz BRIEFLY, then pat out and freeze.  Then bake.

dough in processor

dough in buttered tin

all patted out!  I like to roll it out but it was too sticky (See:air conditioing, no) so I just went with it.)

cover with buttered foil and freeze

bake from the freezer.  Dorie says you don't need weights when you bake the crust from frozen, but I beg to differ--I've never gotten anything but headaches when I've tried it, so I always figure weighting doesn't hurt anything.

baked crust, ready to fill!  Mine shrunk a bit, but I don't care.  

 The day of the party, all I did was bake the crust and fill it.

I cut up the pretty pink marshmallow block.

I arranged the strawberries in a pan to get an idea of how to pack them in!

Fill the crust with the creme patisserie and spread over some of the berries, macerated with a bit of sugar and mashed.

Cram on halved berries and brush with redcurrant jam

Dot with marshmallows!

It was a hit at the party--so much so that I never got a chance to have any!  It also reminded me of how much I love tarts, so I made myself a lemon tart (my FAVORITE) the next week.  I'll have to see if I have pix of that...

Pies With That: Bourbon Ginger Cream Pie

I was struggling to come up with an idea for this month's You Want Pies With That? theme, which was "Summery Drinks."  Pyrex Priestess Sarah gave me a plethora of ideas, including a bourbon and ginger pie, at which point I was like, um, YEAH!  (In case you don't know:  A bourbon and ginger is just what it sounds like:  ginger ale with a good dose of bourbon in it.  Like a rum and coke, but not.)

So alls I had to do was come up with a way to incorporate the taste of a bourbon and ginger into a pie.  I wanted to really try to capture the hot-sweet taste of ginger ale and the boozy finish of the bourbon. 

First, the crust.  I decided to start out big, making a crust from ginger cookies.  I haven't made cookie crust in forever and it was easy to toss together but baking was dodgy.  It initially seemed too buttery, but it cooled fine.

 it ain't pretty but it'll do.

I decided for the filling to go calorie crazy and make a variation of the French Custard from The Whimsical Bakehouse Cookbook.  First I made a ginger pastry cream by steeping chopped ginger in heated milk.

This was pleasantly ginger-flavored but wasn't quite enough to give me the really hot taste, so I added about a teaspoon of ginger directly to the finished cream and let it cool.  Now it had the proper STRONG make-your-eyes-water-ginger flavor, which was going to be important to keeping the integrity of the flavor in the next step. 

When the pastry cream was cold, I stirred in a tablespoon of bourbon and then made a bourbon whipped cream and folded it all together.

This gave me the right taste--gingery with a finish of bourbon.  The crust was a perfect accompaniment and I loved the creaminess of it.  SO SO GOOD.  Hooray!

*Strangely enough, I am typing this from Kentucky.  Go me.*

Bourbon-Ginger Cream pie

Crust:

1 1/2 c ginger cookie crumbs
3-4 T butter, melted
1/8 c sugar
Mix all of the above together and pat into 9 inch crust.  Bake 7-8 minutes at 375 degrees and set aside to cool.

Filling:
1 cup milk
1T chopped ginger
3 egg yolks
1/3 c sugar
1 pinch salt
2 T cornstarch
2 t chopped ginger
1 1/2 c heavy whipping cream
2 T confectioners' sugar
2T bourbon

In saucepan, steep 1 T ginger in milk and heat till boiling.  While the milk heats, beat yolks, sugar, and salt on medium till light and fluffy.  Add in cornstarch.  Slowly beat the hot milk in, then return to saucepan and whisk while returning to a boil over medium-low heat.  Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.  Stir in remaining ginger, pour into bowl and place plastic wrap on surface.  Refrigerate till cold.

When the pastry cream is cool, whip heavy cream, confectioners' sugar, and 1 T bourbon till stiff.  Stir remaining bourbon into cold pastry cream and fold pastry cream into whipped cream.  Fill and garnish pie.  Chill till ready to serve.

You Want Pies With That?: Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza

This marks my inaugural entry into the You Want Pies With That? monthly baking challenge.  This month looked like a good one for tossing my hat into the ring, because the theme is "Pizza Pies," a genre with which I am very intimately familiar.  Last year financial circumstances forced me to do a LOT of on the fly cooking, and more often than I liked to admit I was slapping together leftovers to create some kind of pizza.  I always had cheese and ingredients for pizza crust on hand.

Of all the variations I made, the one that made the most satisfying comfort food-ie version was this one: a cheeseburger pizza.  It's also probably the least healthy, so I haven't made it in ages, but I think it's worth sharing. I do it rather haphazardly, so I hope this is followable!

First, I cook some sort of burger meat.  Ground turkey or chicken are what I usually have about the house.  Beef is of course totally fine too. I put in a little salt and pepper while it cooks.  I also usually brown some diced onions, but to my mortification I found I have none today--what in the world?  I usually have 2 or 3 bags of frozen diced onions in the fridge--so I put in a few minced onions instead.

Then, since I had no onions and needed this to be special for y'all somehow, I cooked a couple slices of bacon.

 I do this for my culture!

Now that the cooking's done, moving on to the sauce.  This is non-negotiable item #1!  Don't use tomato sauce;  you won't get the "cheeseburger" taste!   DO NOT.

I blend ketchup (about 1/8 c here) and about half that amount of mustard and relish (about 1 T each).  This is very mustardy.  I like mustard better than ketchup so that's cool with me.  You should taste to see if you like it and adjust accordingly.

Then I prep the dough.  I do know how to make my own dough--and I think I make a fairly kickbutt pizza dough--but I just got back from driving all over the Northeast in four days so please cut me some slack.  I will admit that I bought dough from my local fancypants grocery.  Don't judge me!

I like to roll/stretch my dough on a lightly floured silpat.  The flour is not really necessary but it makes me feel better.  The silpat allows me to just flip the dough onto the pizza peel, where I then dress the pizza.

Before putting the pizza on the peel, I dust it liberally with cornmeal.  This makes it easier to get onto the hot baking stone.

 

Now I do: sauce, then meat, then mozzerella cheese.  I'm going to go with about 1/2 cup here;  this is a fairly small pizza.  I crumbled one slice of bacon--you could certainly go with bacon bits instead--and then about an ounce of cheddar diced up.

Nonnegotiable item #2:  American cheese. Yes, that's right, good old pale, bland, plasticy, processed cheese food.  A cheeseburger is not really a cheeseburger to me without this stuff.  It's...well, I don't know what, but not a cheeseburger.  Yes, yes, I know you aren't the sort of person who eats such awful things.  Buy the Kraft kind that is actually largely made with milk if you must (I do) but you need this.  I'm gonna use a slice and a half here and for laziness's sake, slice into strips.

Kind of festive, no?

Put pizza on stone, bake till brown and bubbly and and apply to face.