TWD Apple Turnovers

I had high hopes for these turnovers, but I never fell in love with them. The dough was too sweet and the apple filling not nearly enough. I hoped the sour cream would make the dough tangy, but the cloying sweetness overpowered it.





The upside is that this is a dessert I didn't go back for seconds on. There's something nice about that.

Julie of Someone’s in the Kitchen picked this recipe as this week's TWD pick of the week. You can find the recipe at her website.

TWD Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie

Linda of Tender Crumb decided on Dorie's Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie as this weeks TWD recipe. You can find the recipe at here at her website.

Love isn't a word I use often, but when a recipe for a 9" pie calls for 2 1/2 sticks of butter in the filling ALONE, I feel cupids arrow honing in on my heart.

I followed the recipe for the filling exactly as Dorie described except I added candied ginger instead of fresh. The custard came together very quickly on the stove top, under 6 minutes. After letting the hot mixture cool in the blender for 8 minutes, I slowly incorporated the butter, letting it blend for a full 3 minutes once it was all in there. The liquid was pourable once done blending, but after chilling for 4 hours it became very thick and ultra smooth.

For the crust, I baked extra cookie dough I had in the freezer. I used the vanilla pepper dough I made a while back. Once the cookie dough had cooled, I pulsed it in the blender with 3 pieces of candied ginger. Once that was finely ground, I added a touch of orange juice to bind the dough a bit. Then I patted the crumbs into my buttered tart shells and froze them for about an hour. After the hour, I baked them in a 400 degree oven for 9 minutes.



The very second I deemed the shells cool enough, I made a swiss meringue. For the meringue I used 4 egg whites, 1 cup of sugar, a pinch of cream of tartar and a little vanilla extract. I love making swiss meringues because it's easy, doesn't required a thermometer and always looks beautiful.






This tart/pie is love. The contrast between the sweet light meringue and the dense creamy lime filling is the stuff poets write of. Also nice was the additional spice/heat from the candied ginger in the tart shell. The ginger wasn't that pronounced, but it brought a beautiful brightness to the overall flavor of the tart.

TWD Classic Banana Bundt Cake

Mary of The food librarian chose banana bundt cake as this week's TWD recipe.

There's not to much to say about this cake other than, make it. Make it now. I loved it. The aromatics of it as it bakes are reason enough to pick up bananas and sour cream at the grocery store. If I could capture the smell of this cake in a candle, I would be a millionaire.

Making the cake is very easy. I halved the recipe and it made 6 mini bundt cakes. They baked for 23 minutes, and looked picture perfect right out of the oven.



How you like them apples? I mean, banana cakes:



(Forgive me, clearly Boston is starting to effect me in a negative way... quoting a movie from 1997. Wow, Good Will Hunting is 12 years old; that makes me...)

For fun, I made three different glazes; chocolate, rum and caramel. Caramel was my favorite because I liked the crunch against the soft cake.

TWD Blanc Manger

Susan of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy selected Raspberry Blanc-Manger as this week's TWD recipe.

I loved the idea of this cake, but the end product was a bit lack-luster. Two things I did that I won't do again. I used natural almonds which created a non-blanc manger. Second, I make the cake in VT, and I accidently grabbed a 10" cake pan instead of an 8". The resulting cake was really thin, maybe only 1/2" tall. I would like a taller cake next time. I did love the contrast between the tart raspberries and creamy almond mousse. I found myself only eating the sections that had both raspberries and cream.



I love the idea of a go-to no bake summer dessert, so I'm going to try this again soon. Next time I'll infuse my cream with thyme, and I will use a smaller cake pan and blanched almonds.

Crepes with Quatre Epice Pastry Cream and Honey Ginger Apriums

Mornings spent with my husband are few and (too) far between. This morning I was so happy to wake up and see him there; I shot out of bed and started making us a celebratory breakfast. Knowing I had apriums to use; I immediately thought crepes. I reached for my copy of Lenotre's Desserts and Pastries for inspiration. There I found a recipe for poached whole apricots with honey and candied ginger, crepes Suzette and pastry cream; with those recipes as I starting point I began to tinker.

I halved the apriums and cooked them in 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup plus 1 T sugar, 1/4 cups honey and 1 T of chopped candied ginger.


Once they were cooked; I separated the liquid from the fruit and cooked the liquid down to a syrupy consistency then strained it.



I followed Lenotre's recipe for pastry cream except I added 1/4 tsp of quatre epice and about 1 T of butter.

I based my crepe batter on Lenotre's crepes Susette. Here it is:

40 g of unstalted butter
125g flour
40g oil
30g sugar
3 eggs
1 cup milk

Method:
Brown the butter. Mix flour, sugar, oil, eggs and 1/2 cup of milk till smooth in a bowl. Add the rest of the milk whisking well making sure there are no lumps. Let rest one hour. Cook the crepes for about 1 minute on each side.



To plate spread a little (or a lot) pastry cream on half a crepe, fold over then fold over again. Put 4 filled crepes on a plate. Top with poached apriums and the reduced sauce.

Strawberry Black Pepper Jam

Last night I made strawberry jam using the strawberries we picked at Verrill farm. I loosely followed a recipe from Blue Ribbon Preserves by Linda Amendt. Essentially, I halved the recipe in the book and then decrease the sugar a tiny bit (good idea), added freshly crushed black pepper, a tiny bit of salt and some home-made apple pectin. It turned out lovely. I plan on using the jam in something during 4th of July weekend; though I have found a nice snack in the meantime. Spread a little bit of goat cheese on a black pepper water cracker, then top with the strawberry jam. It's lovely.




Here's my recipe

Strawberry Black Pepper Jam
2 cups hulled strawberries kept whole if small, halve or quarter if large
1 tbsp fresh strained lemon juice
3 cups sugar
1 tbsp of home-made apple pectin

Combine strawberries, sugar and lemon juice in a large pan. Turn the heat on low and stir just about constantly till the sugar is melted.



It seems like way too much sugar, but just be patient and it will melt. Turn up the heat and bring it to a boil, skimming all the foam that rises to the top. Once the mixture reaches 221 F, add your home-made pectin and stir it in well. Bring it back to a boil once again, for me it took about 30 seconds. Turn off the heat and process if you're going to can it.

Strawberry Picking at Verrill Farm

I was lucky enough to go strawberry picking last week before the never ending rainstorms began. Joe and I went to Verrill Farm in Concord, MA. It's a lovely farm that's close to Walden Pond so you can make a day trip out of it (weather permitting). The day we went strawberry picking couldn't have been nicer. It was a cool, dry, crisp morning with the sun shining upon us. As soon as we started picking I felt a sense of tranquility (and a pain in my lower back; squatting for that long is difficult!). Regardless of my back pain, it was a fun experience. We picked a basket full of tiny beauties. When we went to purchase our berries we couldn't help but buy their beautiful english peas, golden beets and easter radishes.



Here's a list of the produce they have available right now:

Peas - shell & sugar snap
Asparagus
Arugula
Bok Choy
Rhubarb
Swiss Chard
Spinach
Parsnips
Micro greens
Lettuce
Strawberries
Scallions
Radishes

If you would like to go strawberry picking at Verrill Farms I posted their hours below. Make sure to call before you go though to make sure the pickings are still good.

Pick-your-own hours depending on conditions:
Mon - Fri: 9 am - 12 noon
Sat & Sun: 9 am - 3 pm

Sour Cherry Vanilla Jam with Salty Almond Cookies

Cherries are my mom's favorite fruit, so this past Mother's day I decided to make her sour cherry jam. Growing up, we had a big sour cherry tree in our backyard. Once we fought past the birds we would pick buckets of cherries during the height of the season. Then off to the kitchen we went for the messy task of pitting the cherries. Covered in cherry juice we would spend the next hour wiping down ourselves and sometimes the kitchen walls. They were juicy.

The following recipe yields a sweet tart jam with a hint of complexity due to (I think) the vanilla and sourness of the cherries. The jam is lovely sandwiched between salty almond cookies (recipe follows).

Sour Cherry Vanilla Jam from Madelaine Bullwinkel's Gourmet Preserves

2 pounds pitted sour cherries

1 pound granny smith apples (2 ½ cups peeled and chopped)

1 vanilla bean

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 ¼ cups sugar

Place the cherries in a good processor and pulse for 15 seconds to chop them medium fine. Peel, core and quarter the apples. Chop them to a medium-fine texture in the processor. Combine the cherries and apples in a 5 quart pan.

Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean, and add the seeds and pod to the fruit. Cover the pan and bring to a boil. Uncover and simmer for 15 minutes to reduce the juices, stirring regularly. The mixture will thicken, but should not stick.

Stir in the lemon juice, and then add the sugar in 4 equal batches, waiting for the liquid to return to the simmer before adding more. Stir frequently. Let the jam actively cook 10 minutes more. It will noticeably thicken and reach a temperature of 210 to 212 F.

Pour the jam into a heat resistant 1-quart measure. Remove the vanilla pod. Fill hot, sterilized jars to within ¼" of lips. Wipe the rims clean; attach new lids and screw caps on tightly. Process in boiling water for 10 minutes.

Salty Almond Cookies (or JV Snacks-Croq-Télé) from Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets

These cookies are extremely easy to make if you have a food processor. Once the dough was made, I tried 3 different shape cookies. The first as described by Dorie was the easiest, but a little too rustic for me. I formed the rest of the dough into logs and tried to make slice and bake cookies with the dough. It worked, but not very well. The last method I tried was I shaped tiny cookies by pressing the dough into my ¼ tsp and slid them out. They were extremely cute, but time consuming.

¾ cup (100g) blanched almonds

½ cup (100g) sugar

¼ tsp to ¾ tsp salt (I used ¾ tsp of Kosher salt)

1 cup (140g) AP Flour

7 tablespoons (100g) cold unsalted butter cut in 7 pieces

Preheat oven to 350.

In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, process the sugar, nuts and salt till finely ground. Make sure to scrape the bowl frequently. Once processed turn the mixture out of the bowl.

Put the flour in the food processor and with the motor running drop in the cold butter pieces. As soon as the butter is in; switch to pulse mode. Pulse till the mixture looks sandy. Add the sugar-nut mixture and pulse until the dough forms small clumps and curds. Scrape the dough out onto a piece of parchment or wax paper.

To shape the cookies take small pieces (about the size of a cherry) in your hand and form irregular sized chunks. Place the pieces on a lined baking sheet leaving ½" space between them. Bake for 9-11 minutes rotating the pans after 5 minutes. You want the baked cookie to set, but not brown.

TWD Parisian Apple Tartlettes

Jessica of My Baking Heart picked Parisian Apple Tartlettes as this week's TWD "recipe". It's hard to call it a recipe because you're supposed to buy puff pastry, cut it into a 4" round, and top it with half an apple and a bit of butter and sugar and bake. For a Dorie Greenspan recipe, this is as "semi-homemade" as she gets.

Instead of buying puff pastry, I decided to make a dough that acts like a quick puff pastry. Essentially mix equal parts butter, cream cheese, flour and a pinch of salt in a mixer till a dough forms. Chill then roll and use in place of puff pastry. I like making this dough because it's so easy, gets nice layering and I usually have all the ingredients on hand to make it. The dough works best with an overnight rest, but due to time constraints I had to make mine an hour and a half before baking. Even so, I was a little nervous that it would grow out of control, so I docked each tart shell and then topped with the apples.

Once they came out of the oven, I realized that docking them was a bit overzealous. They didn't rise as much as I expected them to, but the dough was still lovely.

The resulting tartelettes were okay. I baked them for an extra 5 minutes because the apples were still leaning towards raw, but that still wasn't enough time. Technically there was no way I could have baked the apples through and not overcooked the dough. Due to its simplicity, I think this recipe has a lot of potential. However, the apples should be sliced thinner, or the chunks should be par cooked before baking. This was so easy to make though, I'll definitely play around with it again.

TWD Tartest Lemon Tart

Today's TWD recipe Tartest Lemon Tart was chosen by Babette of Babette Feasts. For the recipe please visit her website here.

In the Buswell household my husband and I have an undeclared (but very active) war over lemon (specifically zest). I love lemons in everything, but he doesn't like them at all. To him, lemons taste like soap, especially lemon zest. So, I spend lots of time thinking of ways to sneak lemons in desserts without him noticing. Sometimes this works, but I can't count the number of times I've heard "Is there lemon in this?" or "I would love this if you hadn't put lemon zest in it." Oh well, if at first you don't succeed… make the tartest lemon tart ever.

I was unsure if Joe would like this, so I made a half batch of this recipe. I've made the sweet tart dough with almond meal more than a few times, so it was fast to assemble. The filling was fast as well. The only change I made was I blanched the lemon peel 3 times to get rid of some of the peel's bitterness.



Once the peels cooled, I blended them with the lemon, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, cream and melted butter. One thing I loved about this recipe is the ease of making it. The filling really took no time at all to make, and the ingredients are all items that I usually have on hand (except maybe the heavy cream).

Since I knew I would be making a half batch, I decided it was time to get some new tartlet pans. I had heard there was a cute kitchen store in Concord, MA; so I headed over to The Concord Shop before I made the tarts. This store has everything a baker/cook could want and more. They also have a nice selection of newly released cookbooks. While I was there, I picked up two 4" tartlet pans and a small offset spatula.



The only downside of the Concord shop was the service. I was the only person there and I had to wait 5 minutes to be rung up because a woman I think was the owner was giving the counter girl a hard time about losing an invoice. I was thinking "isn't this something that could wait" as I stood there. Also, I think greeting a customer with a smile is important; and it was frown city in Concord. Lastly when I got home, I realized they had charge me an extra 50 cents for each tart. Regardless of all that, I'm going to hope it was just a bad day there. I really want to like this shop because it has a lot of great kitchen equipment; and few store in the Boston area do. I'll give it one more try before I decide to spend my money somewhere else.

Back to the tarts; they baked at 325 for 20 minutes and then at 350 for 20 more. Total baking time was 40 minutes. I put the extra custard in ramekins and they took another 10 minutes at 350. The tarts looked just as described set with a light sugary crust.





They smelled and looked amazing when I took them out of the oven. The tarts were amazing. So amazing, that Joe even liked them. I bruleed one tart, and kept the other plain. Aesthetically, I liked the look of the unbruleed tart better. I'm also glad that I blanched the peel before making the filling. Other TWDers found the filling to be too bitter, but mine wasn't at all. I will definitely make this tart again.

Easy Banana Walnut Bread

Sure, I have many Banana Bread recipes in my repertoire, but what's wrong with one more.

Today I made a double batch of Easy Banana Walnut Bread from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book. Easy? Yes. Delicious? Yes. So why not add another (healthy) banana bread recipe to your repertoire?

Easy Banana Walnut Bread from King Arthur Flour Whole Gain Baking




Here is a doubled version of the original recipe. The recipe below makes 2 9x5-inch loaves
1 cup (2 sticks, 8 oz) unsalted butter
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract (I only increased this 50%, the original recipe called for 1 tsp)
3 cups (24 oz) mashed very ripe bananas
½ cup (6 oz) honey
4 large eggs
4 cups (1 lb) whole wheat flour
1 cup (4 oz) chopped walnuts.
Preheat 350 degrees. Grease 2 9x5-inch loaf pans.
Beat butter, sugar, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla till smooth. Add banana, honey and eggs beating till smooth. Add flour and nuts, stir till smooth. Spoon into prepared pans. Let rest at room temp for 10 minutes (I forgot to do this, so my breads were a little flat).
Bake for 50 minutes. Lay a piece of foil over top (I didn’t do this) and bake till a cake tester comes out clean 10 to 15 minutes more. Let cool 10 minutes then remove from pan.

TWD Banana Cream Pie

Today's TWD recipe Banana Cream pie was picked by Amy of Sing for Your Supper. As luck would have it, I actually had a reason to make a whole pie this week. My sister and her boyfriend Ben came to Boston for the Red Sox's opening game. Luckily (for me), the game was rained out; so they had to stay another day.

I have to admit, up until about a year ago; I wouldn't touch banana cream pie. The idea of pastry cream, bananas and whipped cream never did it for me. It wasn't until I worked at the Charles Hotel that I discovered how good banana cream pie can be. There we made a pie with pastry cream that was lightened with a rum caramel sauce and whipped cream. We then folded in bananas, put that in a pie shell, topped with whipped cream and drizzled more rum caramel sauce on top. It was so good. The pie crust was just salty enough to add a bit of complexity to the whole pie, it was just delicious.

Due to my relatively new found love of banana cream pie, I was psyched to make this recipe. I made Dorie's good for almost anything pie crust, which I've made before and liked. This time I was in a bit of a rush, so I made it, put in my blast chiller (i.e. freezer) for 30 minutes. Then I rolled it out, put it in my pan and put it back in the freezer while the oven was preheating. Once the oven was warmed up, I docked the pie dough, put in a piece of foil and some beans, and baked it according to the recipe. I was a bit worried the pie might shrink or fall because I rushed it, but it came out perfect.

The pastry cream was easy to make. The flavors in the pastry cream were nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. I added a teaspoon of rum since rum and bananas go together so well. I found the pastry cream to be a bit on the "eggy" side.



On its own it reminded me of pumpkin pie which I'm not a fan of (gasp), so I lightened it up by folding in about ½ cup of whipped cream. Once the pie and pastry cream were completely cooled, the pie was fast to assemble.



In the pie shell you put a thin layer of pastry cream down, top that with half your sliced bananas, more pastry cream, more bananas and then the rest of the pastry cream. Next you top the pie with the whipped cream mixture. I whipped my cream to stiff peaks, added the sour cream and whipped it a bit more because I wanted to pipe the whipped cream on.

All ingredients combined, this is a delicious pie. The "eggy" flavor was no longer noticeable with the addition of the whipped cream and bananas. All four of us cleaned our dessert plates (Joe grabbing another serving), so it was a success. While eating dessert my sister told me that banana cream pie is my father's favorite pie. I had no idea. Next time I go to Vermont to visit my parents; I'll have to make this pie again.