Month: March 2020

I had 3 kilos of apples and ran a Twitter poll: tarte tatin or applesauce. Tarte tatin was the (unsurprising) winner with 83% of the vote. I won’t swim against the social media tide on food – so here we go with apple tart, French style.

This is not an easy recipe and it took me several attempts before my results were reliable. Realistically, three attempts that were edible but not photogenic; full of runny sugar and messy. The fourth time – I resolved to not to chicken out when cooking the apples in the sugar syrup. The point is to make caramel, not syrup. If you’re a candy maker or a jam maker – you should do okay. If you have no experience of working with boiling sugar – don’t start here and don’t start alone. Try making some. caramel sauce first, for example.

I used Cook’s Illustrated recipe. It’s the only cooking website I value enough to pay for. When they say they’ve cracked a recipe, they have. This is a different approach to a classic recipe but the results are worth it.

Want a vegan version? Probably easier than you think. Use vegan puff pastry (most supermarket ready pastry is vegan because they’ve taken the butter out to save money). And use top quality flavourless oil, about 60 mls, instead of butter in the sugar syrup.

There is one important piece of equipment you need. A 23 cm (9 inch) skillet or casserole dish that can go from a high heat stove top to the oven. I have a le cresuet enamelled cast iron dish that is perfect.

Feeling brave enough to venture on? Here we go with the recipe.

Recipe

Pastry Dough

• 230 grams plain flour
• 30 grams icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 110 grams chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes (tip – cut it then chill it)
• 1 large egg
• Water if needed

Caramelised apples

• 110 grams unsalted butter
• 160 grams caster (granulated) sugar
• 1.4 kilos (3 pounds) apples (cored, peeled, cut into halves or quarters)

Instructions – these are in the order I recommend you do them, so start with pastry, move to apples and then assemble.

Method

1. Making pastry using a food processor: combine flour, sugar and salt in the processor with the steel blade. Mix. Sprinkle the chilled butter over the top. Process until well mixed. Mine was about 30 seconds of pulsing. Turn the mixture into a bowl, add the egg and mix with a fork until little balls start to form. Gather into a ball with your hands. If it’s dry, add water a teaspoon at a time to get it to form into a ball. Wrap the dough in plastic, squish into a 10 cm (4 inch) disk. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
2. Making pastry by hand: mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Cut the butter in with a pastry blender or two tables knives. Proceed with adding the egg.
3. After 30 minutes, take the pastry out. Flour your counter top and roll the pastry to 25 cm round. Put on a baking tray, cover and return to the refrigerator.
4. Your pastry is chilling. Now time to get on with the apples. You want to end up with relatively uniform size pieces. I had lots of small apples so I cored, peeled and halved 12 apples. I confessing I had two pieces left over so I ate them.
5. You may feel the urge to put your apples in lemon juice to keep them from browning as you proceed to peel and core the whole lots. It’s not necessary (you’re going to caramelise them and turn them really brown) and it changes the chemistry of the sugar. You can do this but if you do you must rinse the lemon juice off and then dry them. They don’t need to be bone dry but no obvious water on them.
6. You’ve got all your apples pieces ready. Because I’m a little bit obsessed I trim the pieces so that they are roughly the same height. You are stand them up in the sugar and it makes the tarte pretty if they are all the same size. Not necessary though and by now you may well be bored messing around with apples.
7. Melt the second lot of butter in your 23 cm pan on the stove top. Mix the sugar in. Now it’s time to put the apples in. If using small apples like mine – stand them up in the sugar and fit in as many as you can, like doing a jigsaw. If using big apples, quarter them and lay them on their sides in a circle near the edge of the pan. Fill in the centre with a few pieces. Some of the apples will be exposed above the butter and sugar mixture. This is okay.
8. Put your oven on – preheat to 190C, 375F.
9. Put the pan back on the heat and turn it up high. Once it’s bubbling, cook for about 10 minutes. You will be tempted to turn it down. Don’t. I stand over it and watch it like a hawk, rotating the pan 90 degrees on the burner every minute or so to reduce hotspots and scorching. After 10 minutes, remove from heat and carefully using the point of a knife, flip each apple pieces over so the uncooked side is now in the liquid sugar. Cook until the juices turn amber and are visibly thickened, probably another 5 minutes but possibly longer.
10. You’ve turned butter and sugar to caramel, now it’s time to assemble the tarte. Be very careful: hot pan, hot contents. Remove from heat and carefully place the pastry on top of the apples. Press down lightly so that no pastry is overhanging. It doesn’t need to look great – it’s the bottom of the tart. Put it in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes and bake until the crust is golden brown.
11. Remove from oven and place the pan on a wire rack or trivet that will allow it to cool. Leave for about 20 minutes. Now loosen the edges with a knife, place a heat resistant flat plate over the top and flip it upside down. Use a generous sized plate or cake stand and be prepared with some kitchen paper towels for remnants of liquid sugar. Pry out any apples that remained in the pan and stick them back in the tarte.
12. Serve warm or allow to cool. Enjoy with sour cream, whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Thank you for reading, baking the recipes and commenting. I have a special request for a future blog – some spectacular chocolate chip cookies. That may be preceded by a blog on lovely bean soup but it’s coming your way soon.

Well isn’t that a cheery title for a blog post? We are living through something that seems unique in the modern era. Here in the UK, as of the date this is written, many working from home, leisure establishments are closing as of tonight and waves of panicked shoppers are emptying the supermarkets as fast the staff can restock.

My ‘normal’ supply chain for baking supplies is not supermarket dependent; I tend to bulk buy flour of various kinds and mail order speciality ingredients. This for both cost and certainty of supply – I find that supermarkets are increasingly purveying ‘meals’ and processed food and much less likely to have anything but the most commonly used basic ingredients. And those only in smaller packages.

I’m facing some supply chain issues as those stockpiling are turning to alternative suppliers – including mine.

I’m embracing this challenge and will try to use up some of the niche and speciality ingredients in my store cupboards. The likelihood that you will have the same weird assortment of ingredients is very low, but improvisation and imagination are your best friends. I’ll try to describe what can be substituted and how.

First up, buttermilk rye rolls to use molasses, rye flour and potato flour (not starch) and a limited amount of bread and whole wheat flour. The recipe is based on one in King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking.

The flour mix is flexible except for the quantity of potato flour. This is different from ‘potato starch’. Potato flour is dried potatoes ground very fine. If you don’t have potato flour you can substitute a cup of mashed potatoes and reduce the buttermilk by half initially. Keep an eye on the dough, if it seems dry add more buttermilk a tablespoon at a time. Otherwise, flex the flour components to your taste. This version is a little lighter than the Davinator’s favourite version which has much more rye flour.

I kneaded in my new mixer, the Anskrarum Assistent. It’s cool, it rotates the bowl not the hook and I love to watch it. You can hand knead or machine knead. Get the dough smooth and glossy.

Time to dig deep in the store cupboards and make up some yummy baked goods.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 285 mls of buttermilk, heated to lukewarm. If no buttermilk, sour 280 mls of milk with 5 mls of lemon juice, leave it ‘curdle’ for 10 minutes.
• 60 grams of unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons molasses or black treacle
• 60 grams whole wheat flour
• 110 grams rye flour
• 180 grams bread flour or plain white flour
• 2 teaspoons caraway seeds
• 35 grams potato flour
• 2 teaspoons instant dry yeast
  
• Topping – 60 grams of butter, melted

Instructions

1. Combine all the ingredients except the topping butter in the bowl. Mix well then knead until smooth and glossy. Cover with a damp towel, cling film or a shower cap.
2. Allow the dough to rise for a couple of hours. It may not double but it should get puffy and elastic.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled surface. Separate into 12 or 16 pieces. I made 16 rolls of approximately 50 grams each. The dough will weigh about 800 grams.
4. Prepare a baking pan – I used a 30 cm (12 inch) round tin, lined it with paper. Parchment works best.
5. Flatten each piece into a rough circle. Fold from the outside to the middle to make a little bundle that looks vaguely like a Chinese dumpling. Turn over and create surface tension by rolling it under your hand or between your hands. Place in the prepared pan, should not touch each other at this point.
6. Cover the pan and allow a second rise of 2 to 3 hours. Preheat the oven to 170C (160fan) when nearly ready to rise.
7. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Temperature test or tap to hear a hollow sound.
8. Leave the rolls in the pan while you melt the butter. Brush butter over the top, twice then remove from the pan to complete cooling.

These rolls make great sandwiches in the larger version or little buns with cheese in the smaller version. They basically disappeared in my house while still warm each time I made them.

Keep well everyone. Be of good cheer and be good to each other.

Send requests. I’m flexing my baking skills to avoid wasting anything. Let me know if you’ve got any strange ingredients you want to use yp. Thanks for reading, commenting and baking my recipes.

Every recipe has a story. Readers will know that I volunteer weekly at Smartworks (pre-Corona virus hiatus any way). I bring baked goods every Wednesday for the staff, the clients and my fellow volunteers. We have a Wednesday team that does ‘wardrobe’. We have the pleasure of sorting, sizing, hanging and steaming the many wonderful donations from private donors and corporate partners.

Occasionally, I ask the Smartworks team for baking ‘requests’. And one of the Wednesday team, the lovely Daryl, asked for chocolate cheesecake muffins. Never made them before so perused blogs and internet recipe sites. They are an American thing (Daryl, like me, is an American in the UK) but I was looking for a recipe that used weight and metric measurements. Follow Daryl on Instagram here. I can convert from volume to weight but American recipes can call for ingredients that I don’t like to use and tend to be too sweet. I found a recipe here on Allrecipes.co.uk that served as a good base although I tweaked the sugar and the prep instructions a bit.

And thus a classic recipe was added to my repertoire. These muffins are vote winners and relationship builders any place you take them. A couple of bonuses – can be whipped together in a hour or so. And I get to use the 24 cup muffin tin I brought home from America. The recipe makes 18 to 24 nice sized muffins; you could halve it or you could make 12 big ones and then some mini ones. Adjust the baking temperature and time down if you decide to make small ones.

A few tips: first use Philadelphia cream cheese if you can find it. I don’t know what they put in that stuff but it gives the best texture. It also works with Waitrose basic cream cheese and really expensive organic stuff but Philly is easiest to work with. Second, if you’re a regular reader you know my views on chocolate. Use the best quality cocoa powder and chocolate chips you can afford. it makes a difference. Finally, I use a piping bag to fill the muffin tins. Once you get the hang of it – it’s a time saver and it keeps your tin tidy.

Everyone say ‘thank you Daryl’ now and move on to the recipe.

Recipe

Ingredients

Cream cheese filling

• 225g cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 50 grams caster (granulated) sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Chocolate batter

• 200 grams plain flour
• 175 grams caster sugar
• 60 grams unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 250ml water
• 75ml vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon plain vinegar (distilled malt or white vinegar)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

170 grams dark chocolate chips.

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan). Prep your muffin tins (makes 18 to 24) I use paper liners in my muffin tins and give them a quick spray of coconut oil. You can go without the spray oil but I would not do these in an unlined tin even if you grease and flour.
2. Beat together the ingredients for the cream cheese filling. Put to one side.
3. Sift together the dry ingredients for the chocolate batter: flour, sugar, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt.
4. Combine the water, vegetable oil, vinegar and vanilla extract. Mix into the dry ingredients. The batter will appear very thin.
5. Fill a piping bag with the chocolate batter and carefully pipe each muffin tin about one third full. There’s usually too much batter for one bag so use a second one or clip the first one closed with a binder clip (you know those annoying black clips that we used for paper documents). See this video of me filling the tins. I’m working on doing better videos – with narration for one. Bear with me.
6. Fill another piping bag with the cream cheese filling. Pipe a couple of tablespoons on the top of each chocolate batter base. I do one squeeze of the bag all the way around and then circle back to those that look less full.
7. We haven’t forgotten the chocolate bits. Drop 6 or so in the cream cheese filling of each muffin tin. I know this seems fiddly and it’s fine if one or two end up in the chocolate part but it’s the best way to evenly distribute them
8. Put your tin or tins in the oven for 30 minutes, then test for doneness.
9. Remove from the oven and let the muffins cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then remove. If you let them cool completely in the muffin tins the edges can harden.

Enjoy! Thanking you for subscribing, for reading the blog and for baking the recipes. It’s a labour of love – I have no hope of monetisation but it’s fun for me. Please send requests, comments, etc.

Happy Baking.