Memories of F&N Class

No I haven't given up on baking or the blog. October was a super crazy busy month for me because my dance company, Dance Theatre Xaymaca, staged their 16th Season of Dance on October 29 and 30. Rehearsals for the performances and the performances themselves pretty much kidnapped all my time, but I'm back now.

When I was in 3rd form in high school we had to take food and nutrition class. There were two desserts we made that I remember. The plantain tarts because they tasted really good and the donuts because we accidentally forgot the sugar and ended up with something similar to fried dumplings. These memories came back when we made these same treats in my baking class. But this time the donuts were divine. I like simple glazed donuts, no fillings, no fandangles. The donuts were tender and delicious and the glaze was to die for with a little tups of lemon mmm. We tried different shapes, round, twist and pretzel shaped. The plantain tarts were pretty good too.

Unfortunately some of the donuts came out a little dark. This is because while in the deep fryer its important to flip them unto the other side very quickly. Being a first-timer I didn't flip them as swiftly as required so the last ones I turned ended up dark on one side. They still tasted great. I think what I need to do is practice doing these over and over at home (wink, wink).

Tropical Treats

For the last few weeks I've been feeling a tropical vibe. It came through in my desserts. Coconut macaroons are something I ate a lot as a child. My mom loves them and used to take them home for us as an occasional treat. Incidentally I happened to be talking to her on the phone for the entire time I was making them, which wasn't that long since they're so easy to make. Too easy in fact, I'm tempted to just through some together for a sweet snack. A temptation I will resist in the name of vanity. When I made the Chewy Lime and Coconut Sugar Cookies, I discovered the beauty of a marriage between the flavours and decided that I'd make Coconut Lime Macaroons. The flavours were just as delicious in macaroon form and I ate one everyday until they were done.

Revisiting things that worked seemed to be the second theme of the last couple weeks. I had a visit from my aunt who happens to be a huge fan of my blog. Since she lives abroad, this was her first opportunity to taste my goods. I remembered her comments about the Nectarine and Mascarpone Tart with Gingersnap Crust  and decided to do a version with mango, one of her favorite fruits. The ginger and lime zest in the tart went very well with the mango. I have to say I prefer this version to the Nectarines, but perhaps I'm biased towards tropical fruits. I served the tart with Moscato which according to my internet research, would go well with the fresh fruit in the dessert. I rushed to make this on the same day it was served, it was a rather busy weekend. But if you make this recipe it really is best to make it the day before and add the fruit topping just before you serve it. That way the creamy filling has more time to set. The piece I had the day after was just perfect! This is by far one of my favorite recipes.

Come Rain or Shine

For about two weeks the rain fell, and fell, and fell. It felt like it would never end. The weather inspired me to make something warm and cozy for the weekend and I selected a bread pudding with spiced rum sauce. I even decided that only a wimpy baker would go buy the bread to make the bread pudding, I on the other hand was a daring baker who did not believe in short cuts! So I decided I'd make cinnamon raisin bread days before and then turn it into bread pudding on the weekend. But, just as my plan came together the sun appeared, blazing with a vengeance and I just couldn't bring myself to execute my plan.

I went back to the drawing board and while in the grocery store I was inspired by a huge bag of limes. I'll make Key Lime Pie, I thought. But these weren't key limes, just regular limes. While talking about it with a friend she made a mistake and called it Lime Cay Pie. I liked the way it sounded and decided to rename my dessert after one of my favorite beaches. After all, this weekend would've been perfect for a trip to Lime Cay plus I'd eliminate the risk of being accosted by purists who are against using anything but Key Limes to make this dessert. I searched for a recipe and found one for Key Lime Tart in Martha's Baking Handbook. I love tarts and thought it would be more elegant and easier to slice so I went for it! Lime Cay Tart!

I ditched the crust in the book and decided to make one from ginger biscuits. The same crust I made for the Nectarine and Mascarpone Tart. I thought the ginger and lime would go well together. Perhaps it could've done with more baking because it crumbled quite a bit at the edges, affecting the look of my tart. After making the crust with processing ginger biscuits and combining the crumbs with melted butter, I baked it for 8 minutes and left it to cool. 

The filling was soooo easy to make, I beat egg yolks and sugar together until pale and fluffy, then added lime zest, condensed milk and lime juice. I then filled the cooled crust and baked it for 10 minutes. Then I attempted to cover it loosely with plastic wrap but once the plastic wrap touched the top some of it stuck to it. It ruined the smooth finish of the tart :( . Oh, the simple lessons I learn while baking. I placed it in the fridge and left it to cool. I declined to make the garnish. It would take 30-40 minutes of cooking to make and I did not have the luxury of time for such a frivolous undertaking. 

I tasted the tart and it was wonderful. It was tart but sweet, silky smooth and refreshing, just the thing you'd want on a nice hot day. The book suggested that it be served with sweetened whipped cream, which I also didn't bother to make but I can see why they would suggest it. Something to cut the tartness a bit. For me though, it was great without it. Had a lovely zing to it!

On Saturday my fiancé mentioned he felt for ice cream so of course I volunteered to make some for him. I chose Unbelieveably Good Chocolate Blueberry Ice Cream from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours. I couldn't resist trying this recipe. The name was taunting me and I just had to know whether it did its name justice. This was my second time making ice cream but the first time I made one which contained egg yolks and had a custard that needed to be heated. Well I learned some lessons there as well, I cooked the custard into something resembling scrambled eggs twice before getting it right. But finally, on the third try I made the custard and heated it properly. Then I poured it over the chopped chocolate, stirred it until smooth and then put it in my ice cream maker. When it was almost done I added the blueberry preserves. I let the mixture freeze overnight before tasting.

The ice cream was tasty, very chocolaty and had a beautiful dark colour but unbelievably good? No. Just good. So, like the brownies and chocolate chip cookies, I'm still on the search for the perfect recipe.

An American Icon

This week's dessert was a special request from a very good friend. It's also an American icon, Classic Apple Pie. For the recipe I turned to Martha Stewart, it's from her book Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook which I received as a gift from my parents last week. I've been reading this book and the other one they gave me like novels for the past week and they not only have many wonderful recipes but they have clear instructions, many pictures and loads of baking tips and techniques to make you a better baker. This is just the way I like cookbooks to be and I can't wait to put them both to good use. 

Last night I measured the crust ingredients and  set them to cool overnight in the fridge. Cold ingredients make the best crust. Yesterday I went out and bought a food processor, I've wanted one since I started baking but I kept putting it off, not wanting to spend the extra money. Finally I caved and bought a very reasonably priced one at MegaMart. I put it to work this morning on the pie crust. I pulsed the flour and salt together, then added the butter and pulsed a few more times before adding the ice water. I divided the dough in half, wrapped each piece in plastic wrap, formed them into discs and chilled them in the fridge for 2 hours. I could've made the pie crust by hand, but certainly not as quickly or efficiently as the food processor did. I like my new toy :)


After removing the dough discs from the fridge I rolled them both into 12inch discs on sheets of parchment. I fitted the first one to my glass pie plate then I returned both to the refrigerator. While they chilled, I began to prepare the apples. The recipe calls for an assortment of many different cooking apples. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of having many different varieties of cooking apples available to me in Jamaica's grocery stores. In fact the only cooking apple which is readily available is the Granny Smith. However, I decided to take a pointer from Bake!: Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking and use an equal mixture of Granny Smith and Golden Delicious. While peeling, coring and slicing I said to myself, "Buy an apple corer!" It was a nightmare trying to take the core out with a paring knife. 


When I was finally done I combined my sliced apples with lime juice (couldn't find lemons), sugar, cinnamon, flour and nutmeg. Then I piled it into the pie shell. It took me so long to prepare the apples that the pie dough spent more time in the fridge than it was supposed to, and by the time I took it out it was quite hard. But a few minutes in the hot Jamaican weather and it was just right to work with.

I then brushed the edges with egg wash. I made the egg wash with whole milk instead of cream because I already had the milk and it seemed like a waste of money to buy a carton of cream to use only one tablespoon. I laid the top crust over the filled pie shell and pressed the top and bottom together. I used my handy kitchen shears to trim the sides, then I folded the edges under and used a fork to crimp them. I covered the resulting pie in egg wash and gave it a generous sprinkling of sugar. Again I was forced to make a substitution based on availability, I couldn't find sanding sugar so I used granulated sugar. Then I made three slits in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape during baking. I tucked this bad boy in the freezer for 30 minutes.

 After preheating the oven to 400 degrees, I placed my very first apple pie on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper and put it in the oven. I baked it for 20 minutes, then reduced the temperature to 350 and baked it for another 50 minutes, rotating its position from lower third to upper third of the oven half way through. 

It smelled amaaaazing in the last 15minutes of baking when the juices were super bubbly. I let it cool for a painful 3 hours. I really had to try hard not to cut it. My friends arrived just in time to cut their special request. 

I did good, not only was it stunning, it was delicious. The crust was flaky and buttery, the apples were tender and the two types of apples worked well together. If I were to make any adjustments, I would reduce the citrus a bit because I found the filling a little too tangy and I'd add more spice. I'm a spice lover, I love me some cinnamon and nutmeg, so I'd dial that up a bit. My first apple pie, well, my first pie all together was a success, and not nearly as complicated as I thought it would be. 

It's Springtime!!

It's springtime! Not that it makes any difference in Jamaica, it's pretty much always warm. In my opinion there are three seasons here, rainy season, drought and hurricane season. But I know its spring because supermarkets are starting to carry the imported fruits that aren't always available here. Fresh berries, peaches, plums, nectarines. Forgive me if I take advantage of the availability and better prices and use them liberally in my challenges, I don't get to eat or use them often. This week I made a Nectarine and Mascarpone Tart with Ginersnap Crust from Bon Apetit July 2002.

I wanted to make this tart the moment I saw it on Epicurious.com. I mean, look at it, it's gorgeous. I think tarts are slowly becoming my favorite thing to make. I just think they are elegant, delicate, and stunning and fresh fruit makes them even more beautiful. Of course, the fact that the filling contains mascarpone and cream cheese was also a major factor in my choice. In case you didn't get the memo, I love cream cheese. I can't believe how wonderful it tastes in both sweet and savory preparations. Need a sweet tangy frosting for your carrot cake? Cream cheese. Need something creamy to go with your smoked salmon? Cream cheese. Mascarpone is also an ingredient I've never actually used before but I've learnt a lot about it from watching copious amounts of food tv. When I learnt it was a sweet Italian cream cheese, I knew we'd become great friends.

I came home early on Friday and headed straight to the kitchen. I made the crust first. I don't have a food processor but I do have a mini chopper which I used to grind 25 Jamaican Ginger Biscuits for the crust. I combined this with butter and pressed it into my 9" tart pan. The crust baked for 8 minutes, then I placed it on the cooling rack to cool.

While the tart cooled, I made the filling. For some reason both lemons and limes have totally vanished from the produce section at the supermarket. I had some oranges at home, so I used orange zest instead. I combined the orange zest, mascarpone, cream cheese, sugar, sour cream and vanilla and beat them with my hand mixer until the filling was smooth. Then I added a tablespoon of crystallized ginger. At first I was worried about the crystallized ginger at first, wondering if it would be like biting into a big piece of raw ginger when you're eating a nice piece of meat. Ginger is a wonderful spice and can make things taste amazing. But when you bite into a chunk of it, it's rather unpleasant. I decided to use it anyway, mostly because of the many reviews I saw that said it MADE the tart. So many people couldn't be wrong right? After making the filling I spread it into the cooled crust and refrigerated it overnight.

The next morning, I got the nectarines out to make the topping. I haven't actually eaten nectarines before, I have had peaches which are very similar. In fact I read that the difference between the peach and the nectarine basically boils down to the fact that peaches have fuzz and nectarines don't. I found them very hard to cut in half. They were glued to the stone. I tried my best to pry them open without ruining the fruit. I sliced three of them thinly and arranged them on top of the cooled tart. I brushed the topped tart with warm peach preserves and sprinkled it with two tablespoons chopped crystallized ginger.

So now for the most important part, sure it was beautiful, but how did it taste? The filling was really wonderful. The orange zest worked very well, adding a citrus hint to the sweet, creamy filling with a hint of ginger. The crust was also delicious and complimented the filling beautifully. I have a feeling that I'll be using this filling and this crust many more times varying the toppings and zests. There were mixed reviews about the fruit topping. The nectarines, by no fault of their own weren't ripe enough in my opinion. So they were not very sweet and quite crunchy. I would've preferred if they were ripes and sweeter. I guess thats what you get when you use a fruit you're not used to. Some felt as though the fact that they weren't as sweet was refreshing, and that the crunch added great texture to the creamy filling beneath it.

I'm certainly going to try it again with different fruits and riper nectarines. I know it will be even more delicious than it was this weekend and trust me, it was really tasty. So tasty in fact, that my friends have already devoured it. And as for the verdict on the crystallized ginger, lovely, subtle, spicy, perfect in both the filling and sprinkled on top. I should never have doubted it.

An Apple a Day the Otaheite Way

They're everywhere, even at the traffic light. One of my favorite fruits, otaheite apples, are in season. So this week, I decided to bake something with them. I took a recipe for a Rustic Pear Tart http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/healthy-appetite-with-ellie-krieger-/rustic-pear-tart-recipe/index.html
and used 3 otaheite apples instead of pears.

This recipe is by Ellie Krieger, one of the hosts on Food Network. Her show is about healthy eating, so her recipes usually have less fat and sugar than others. This is a risk because I find healthy is not always tasty. But it was a risk I was willing to take, I felt daring.

I started by whisking together the dry ingredients for the crust. Then I cut in the butter with my favorite tool, my hands. I used a fork to add the buttermilk and ice water mixture, formed it into a disk, wrapped it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. While it was chilling I made the filling. I sliced up 3 apples and combined them with the lime juice, corn starch, brown sugar and cinnamon.



After the 30 minutes of refrigeration time was up, I removed the crust from the fridge and rolled it into a 9" (very approximate) circle on a floured cutting board. Then I transferred it to my lined baking sheet sprayed with baking PAM. Now it was time for filling and crust to meet. I made a neat pile of fruit in the centre of the crust with a 2" (another very approximate measure) border. I folded the edges over and put it in the oven.

I baked it for 15 minutes at 425F and then turn it down to 350 and baked it for 40 minutes more. The tart smelt amazing when it was baking. After I removed it from the oven I brushed it with the honey glaze, transfered it to a plate and cooled it for a bit. I was impressed by how lovely my rustic tart looked. Then I cut myself a slice.

When I tasted it, the lovely fresh taste of the apples came out. They were definitely the thing on show here. I think this recipe is best if you use the sweeter otaheite apples, the ones with the very dark purplish skin. This recipe is great as a healthy dessert but I did miss the sugar in the crust, I wanted it to be sweeter. I can imagine making a similar tart with a less healthy, sweeter dough that will be totally bad for me. I can also see myself making it with different fruits.

As more fruits come into season, I hope to find delicious ways to showcase them just as I did with the otaheite apple.

A Sweet for My Sweet

First of all, I'd like to wish all my readers a very Happy Valentines Day. Today marked the official beginning of my baking challenge. I baked my first dessert, my gift to my valentine.
  
I wanted to maximize the time my boyfriend and I would spend together today so I made the tart yesterday and quickly did the glaze this evening when I got home. Like many of the reviewers on Epicurious, I had difficulties finding chocolate graham cracker crumbs, so I used Teddy Grahams instead. I couldn't find the big box of them so I used 4 of the snack-sized packets. I had lots of fun  smashing them in a ziploc bag using the flat side of a meat tenderizer. Then I made the crust. If I ever make this recipe again, I would use 1.5-2 times the amount of crust ingredients because I found that the recommended amount was not enough to get the nice crust in their picture. I baked the crust and set it to cool.

The hardest part of the recipe was actually chopping up the chocolate I had bought. I got it from a baking store that buys a large quantity of chocolate and cuts it up, selling it by weight. The blocks were hard to cut, but after that, I couldn't believe how easy my first tart was. After combining all the ingredients and baking it, I set it to cool.

The tart developed bubbles in it while it was baking so the top didn't end up as smooth as I had anticipated. Still, it looked pretty delicious and I was beaming with excitement and pride. I tucked it in the fridge overnight.

Today when I got home, I allowed it to get to room temperature, made the glaze and applied it to the tart.

After eating a sumptuous dinner prepared diligently by my bf, it was my turn to serve my dessert. I chose to serve it with a little whipped cream.

And guess what? It was deeeeeeeelicious!! Smooth, rich, creamy and ultra chocolaty. So it wasn't completely perfect. It didn't look exactly like the picture but it was a delectable end to a wonderful dinner, my valentine loved it and it was certainly fun. I can't wait to try something new next week. If you'd like to try out the recipe yourself, here's the link http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Glazed-Chocolate-Tart-243610

Oh, and to all my friends who read my blog, feel free to come grab a slice. Tony and I are stuffed!