The Black Tart

It's been a while since my last post.

Maybe for the revamped relationship with my treadmill, that gives me less motivation to bake, maybe for the limping relationship with my new oven. Don't get me wrong, it is a perfectly fine oven, but once you get used with the timing of an inefficient gas oven, baking with a new convection one often leaves you with overcooked and mgnah stuff. We're getting there.

Anyway. I've been wanting to try a couple of things for quite a while, one being a chocolate tart dough, the other a banana jam.

The chocolate dough recipe came from the baking lessons I took last spring:

- 2 cups flour (250gr)
- 3/4 cup sugar (150gr)
- 1 stick + 6 tbsp butter (200gr)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (50gr)
- pinch of salt
- 1 egg

Process in a mixer all the dry ingredients and butter, then add the egg. Form a ball and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight before rolling it out.



As for the banana jam I had made kind of an approach mixing it with raspberries, but as much as you could taste it in there, it was not *only banana* jam.

So I followed this recipe, from a booklet found on the remainders' shelf at the supermarket, mixing and cooking

- 6 medium size bananas
- 1/2 rennet apple
- 1 cup sugar
- juice from 2 lemons



Only recently I was aware of the notion that not everyone madly loves bananas.
The concept can't quite sink in my head, really.
How can you not love bananas?

And, as for everything I love, it just gets better if paired with chocolate.
It's to be tasted in moderation: both the dough and the jam are a concentrate of their respective tastes, one small piece and your tastebuds have quite a party!

What happened to the Blueberries

And now, here's what happened to those 5lbs of blueberries.
Let's get out of the way the classic stuff:



a handful of blueberries, a banana and 3/4 cup of milk became a much appreciated and colorful fresh smoothie.

A couple of breakfasts were cheered up by blueberry pancakes, "with the happy face!" as a long time favourite of my kids, "Curious George makes pancakes" teaches to do:



Besides, I had still some buttermilk that I had bought in Germany (can't find it here), so those pancakes were really a hit!



We didn't go without some blueberry muffins and minimuffins (with the recipe from Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" ):



Which were also well liked.





In the "Oh Berry Day" post, I mentioned the blueberry cjarsons, a kind of savoury wraps/ravioli with a blueberry filling. That day at the fair there was a kiosk serving them, but by the time we wanted to have lunch, they were momentarily unavailable, and we didn't want to wait too much, with two hungry kids under a hot hot hot sun. So we went for something less typical, and I came home with no idea of how blueberry cjarsons were made.

Did it stop me? Nope.

Knowing a little of the local cuisine, I knew that they couldn't be ALL that exotic, so I decided to improvise and make my own filling with ingredients that made sense:

3oz/100gr blueberries
12oz/350gr mashed potatoes
7oz/200gr ricotta
1 or 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
salt
pepper
nutmeg



I first whisked blueberries alone, than mix them with the potatoes and breadcrumbs, then whisked the ricotta in the unwashed blender, so that I could take the most of blueberries, that's why you see different tones of purple.

As for the wrap, I decided for a touch of fusion, and went back to a tecnique learned through a Daring Cooks Challenge, making potstickers...



... which were served with butter and poppyseeds.



Despite of all the salt that I had put in the filling, these potstickers were really too sweet to be a savoury dish.
Beside that, I still had a lot of leftover filling, having used barely 1/6 of it, so I had to think of a way to use it.
I decided to convert it in gnocchetti (small gnocchi).

I took what was left of the filling, added two eggs, 3 tbsp of flour, put all in a pastry bag, and as they were showing in that video I had linked, cut the gnocchetti into a pot of boiling (and SALTED, that made the difference!) water, waited for them to come to the surface, and served with butter and some parmigiano.



This time the savoury-sweet balance was alright, though the color may not be.
Nobody's perfect!


And after all this, came the round of jams.

Again, I didn't want to stop at "only blueberries", so I picked these combinings:



pineapple, redcurrant and yellow kiwi.
Plus one, not portrayed, with pure frozen maracuja pulp.

Again, as with the raspberries, I made a big batch of blueberry jam and at the same time small batches of fruit jam, always keeping a sugar/fruit ratio of 0.6/0.7.




Just two handfuls of berries were saved for freezing.
Frozen blueberries is another thing you don't find easily here, so I hoped to save a little more for the hard winter, but I guess we will have to do with our jams.


And now you know what happened to the berries.

What happened to the Raspberries

This is the chronicle of what happened to those raspberries I bought at the Blueberry/Raspberry Fair.

I won't be long on how much I love raspberries, just long enough to explain that many were eaten as they were, those plumpy, tangy, fragrant, luscious rubies.

Some were used as appetizers, on a toasted little square of bread with some mildly heated lard



About 1 lb went for a raspberry mousse, which is very similar to a Bavarese, only without gelatine.

There are a lot of recipes for a raspberry mousse on the Internet. They are basically all the same, only with varied proportions of ingredients. So I went with my own doses, according to what I like and what I had at hand.

500gr /1.1 lbs raspberries
3 egg whites
120 /4 oz sugar
500ml /2 cups heavy whipping cream



Blend the raspberries with the sugar,
whip the cream,
whip the egg whites.
Incorporate the cream and then the egg whites in the raspberry sauce.
Keep in the freezer. This does not contain gelatine, so it can (and it should) be frozen.
About 30 - 40 minutes before serving, pull it out of the freezer.

I added some shaved chocolate for a raspberry-stracciatella



It was good, and everybody loved it.
Yet, feel free to half the doses, because good as it is, I still have a lot of that in the freezer, and I would like to use that space without putting on 10lbs!




The rest (about 1kg/ 2.2 lbs) went for jams.
I can buy a plain raspberry jam every day, so when I make one, I like to match different tastes.




I chose fox grape, peaches and banana (this last just because of a silly Italian song that was very popular in the '90s).

What I did was cook the big batch of raspberry jam and small separate batches (about 1 cup, which came from 5oz of fruit and 3 oz of sugar) of other fruits' jam. Then I would take 1 cup of the raspberry jam and cook it 5 to 10 minutes together with its "mate jam".
Of course I kept some raspberyy-only jam.



And that was it.
I had some sad and crashed leftover berries, which were blended and frozen, for one or two future endeavours (looks more like one than two, I got only 7 icecubes)


Coming up - What happened to the Blueberries.

Daring Bakers Challenge June 2009 - Bakewell tart... er... pudding

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Make sure to check their blog out for the interesting story of how this dessert was born.

In a nutshell:

1 - a shell of sweet shortcrust pastry
2 - a layer of jam
3 - a layer of frangipane

It was not something completely new for me, I remember my mother making something like this for a few years when I was a teenager, only with a sponge instead of frangipane. That was a bit dry, though.

The Shortcrust



225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Rub the (cold) butter into the flour, mix the dry ingredients, add the liquid ingredients, don't sweat it too much, make a ball, let it rest in the fridge.

The Jam

Posted already

The Frangipane



125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds
30g (1oz) all purpose flour

Cream the butter with sugar, add the eggs (one at a time), the almond extract, then spoon the flours in.

The threesome is ready to be assembled:



Now spread:



Now pour:



Aaaand level:



Bake it at 200°C/400°F for about half an hour.







Serve with creme fraiche.

We had a slice a few hours after baking it, and we had different opinions in the house: while my husband thought the jam was way too tangy and predominant, I thought the exact opposite and could taste only the almonds in the frangipane. Either way, it didn't seem a good pair (the kids just gobbled it down and off they went towards new adventures).
That all went away the day after, and it was even better the third day, when the tastes melted together and rounded off, thus giving a good and well chosen combination.


Inspired by other Daring Bakers, who always try to give a savoury version of a sweet recipe and vice versa, I thought of the classic pairing between gorgonzola and walnuts.



I skipped sugar in both the shortcrust and the frangipane, and substituted walnut flour for the almond's. In the jam's place was a mix of gorgonzola and cream cheese.




Good thing I made tartelettes, because the taste is so strong it saturates all your taste buds in a sec.
I had served it with acacia honey just because I thought it was a cute add, but honey is really essential to balance and dilute the strenght of it.

The unexpected currant

We were at my in-laws one Sunday afternoon.
While going around in their vegetable plot, I spotted this huge blackcurrant plant.
"Go ahead!" they told me "A friend brought that plant as a present, it keeps growing and bearing fruits, but we're not making much of it, so if you're interested..."
One minute after I was already in the plot with a ziploc. I must say, I took them on their word, and I didn't leave much behind me: once cleaned, the loot was 1.5lbs of freshly picked, amazingly perfumed blackcurrant.


I let it rest overnight with 1 1/2 cup of sugar (don't like too sweet a jam), the juice of one lime and the rind of half a lime. The overnight thing is just because I didn't want to stay up in the wee hours on a stove, but I also thought it would help to let it macerate a little. Apparently it's not worth it; I thought that the currants would behave like berries and release some liquid, but they didn't. Whatever.


I added one cup of freshly brewed green tea, and cooked about 30 minutes.
Do not cook it too long: blackcurrant is rich in pectin so, especially if you're working with little liquid, its setting could be too firm. For the same reason, there's no need to add apple slices or pectin powder.


The result is a sweet and sour, tart and tangy jam, it goes well in tarts, pies, over pancakes or paired with cheese.
In my case, it was just what I needed for my Bakewell tart... er... pudding .