Category: Dessert

Cheesecake – impressive dessert and easy to make – a great party trick recipe.

The best thing about this recipe – it makes lovely rhubarb syrup that you can put in a number of different alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. I’ll put some links at the end but you can make everything from rhubarb bellinis to martinis to lemonade.

I have my failings as a gardener (and as a human but that’s another subject altogether) but I can grow rhubarb. I’m a big fan of perennials and the closer they are to the wild thing they came from, the more I like them. Once you establish your rhubarb patch it will repay you with more rhubarb than you know what to do with.

And rhubarb is so hardy. The Davinator was overseeing the hard landscaping done by his contractors. I was away on a business trip. They decided to shift the vegetable garden plot by a metre or so. First, they bogged a mini digger in the plot – I was digging up the odd board and bricks for a couple of years. Second they simply dug up the rhubarb and threw the plants in another corner. Zero TLC and the darned rhubarb flourished.

Rhubarb is very cheap in the stores when it’s in season if you don’t grow your own. This recipe has you make rhubarb syrup, add gelatine and then some fizzy wine. The finished product is mildly alcoholic so you might want to use an alcohol free sparkling wine if you’re making it for kids. Do not waste your good champagne on this. A moderately priced bottle of prosecco or cremante or cava is perfect. I would say use cheap booze but the recipe only uses 200 mls so you have to drink the rest. And life is too short to drink cheap.

Other uses for your rhubarb syrup:

Rhubarb bellini – use the syrup instead of the puree and omit the sugar.

Rhubarb martini

Rhubarb lemonade – alcohol free

Recipe

You might add mint leaves and a bit of whipped cream to your jellies to serve but they are lovely as they are. If you’re offering a non-alcoholic version to kids – tell them AFTER they’ve eaten on that it’s rhubarb based.

Thank you for reading the blog and cooking the recipes. I love seeing your photos and your feedback.

Stay safe and well.

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.

Buttery flaky crust, crisp on top, gooey and sweet in the middle. Nutty and chocolately.

Thanksgiving is a day of feasting, family and friends, practically sacred to all Americans.   You can do your own thing at Christmas time but you better show up at home for Thanksgiving.  Or perhaps – where you are for Thanksgiving is your home.

Pumpkin pie reigns supreme on the dessert buffet on Thanksgiving but pecan pie has always been my top choice.  I will eat (and make) pumpkin pie but there is something a little odd about a vegetable based dessert.  Just saying.

My recipe takes pecan pie to a new  level – making them individual sized and adding chocolate.  Chocolate and pecans – a match made in heaven.   And I’ve noticed that people might be reluctant to grab a knife and hack off a piece of pie and put it on a plate, find a fork and THEN eat.  So much easier to pick up one of these little beauties and pop it in.  Either with or without a little dollop of whipped cream.  It’s all about portion control.

One unique feature of this blog post; the crust recipe makes about twice what you need for 12 mini pies.  I used my usual pie or sweet tart pastry recipe.  I tried making a half batch but the dough just went sulky and wouldn’t come together.  No idea why.  You can try cutting the ingredients in half (or doubling the filling recipe).   Or you can put the extra dough in the refrigerator and wait for inspiration to strike.  And I’m doing mince pies over the weekend.

The only specialised equipment you need for this recipe is a 12 hole muffin tin.  Here we go……

Ingredients

Crust

320 grams plain flour

2 teaspoons caster sugar

1 teaspoon salt

115 grams chilled unsalted butter

95 grams cold vegetable shortening (Trex or Crisco)

120 mls very cold water

(Note: this makes roughly twice as much crust as you need for the mini-pies).

Filling

105 grams brown sugar (light or dark, both good)

1/4 cup or 115 grams of Karo light corn syrup or Tate & Lyle golden syrup

1 egg

15 grams of melted butter

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

85 grams chopped pecans, plus 12 pecan halves for decoration

75 grams dark chocolate or semi sweet chocolate bits

Making the pastry

1.  Make sure your butter and Trex are well chilled.
2. Mix the dry ingredients together in a wide shallow bowl.
3. Cut the butter into cubes.   Try not to touch the butter and Trex with your hands more than you absolutely have to. Here’s an important distinction between dough and pastry.  (say for bread) is all about transmitting warmth from your hands to the dough to encourage the incorporation of any fat and the development of the yeast.   Pastry is about keeping it cool and NOT completely incorporating the fat.  Add the  butter and Trex to the dry ingredients.
   

   Try to handle the butter as little as possible.

4. Cut together the dry ingredients and the fat with either a pastry blender or two table knives working back and forth.  I think a high quality pastry blender is an important tool.   I clean the pastry blender with a table knife, rather than with my fingers.
   Again, trying to keep the butter and Trex cool (rather than melting it into the pastry).   The pastry should look like peas, coated with flour once combined.
   

   Those butter lumps look a bit big in hindsight.

5. Add the water to pastry one tablespoon at a time.  I like to have the chilled water in jug and pour it in, then stir.  The pastry should start to come together but it will look quite shaggy,  even after all the water is in.  Tip the pastry out onto a lightly floured surface and pat it together. (You’re allowed to touch the pastry with your hands here).  Divide the pastry into two equal portions, wrap each one in cling film and refrigerate for at least an hour.
6. Your pastry will have some visible butter lumps in it.  Provided they aren’t too big this is okay.
   

Making the filling

1. Melt the butter in a plastic bowl (15 seconds in the microwave should do it).
2. Combine the butter with the brown sugar, the Karo or golden syrup and the egg.  Stir in the chopped pecans, the chocolate bits and the vanilla.  Beat it together until smooth.

Assembly and baking the individual pies

1. Preheat the oven to 170C (160C fan).
2. Spray the muffin tin generously with non-stick spray (I have coconut based spray that I use for baked goods vs the olive oil one for savoury dishes).
3. Take one of the packages of pastry from the refrigerator.  Cut it into 12 even pieces (weigh it on a piece of cling film and then divide by 12).
4. Press a piece of pastry into a flat disk (yes, you can use your hands now). Place one into each muffin cup.  Flatten out the bottom and press the pastry up the sides of the cup.
5. Put a scoop of filling into each pastry shell.  I have a small trigger scoop that is about the size of a tablespoon.  Or, you could whack the filling in a pastry bag and pipe it in.  You should have just enough filling for 12 mini pies.  Don’t fill above the pastry shells or you’re going to have a sticky mess to clean up when it comes out of the oven.  Put one of your reserved pecan halves on the top of each pie.
   
6. There will be barely enough left in the bowl to make it worthwhile for the Davinator to sneak in and ‘clean’ the bowl.
   
7. Bake the mini pies for 30 to 35 minutes.  The pastry above the filling should be a toasty brown colour.   Cool in the muffin tin for about ten minutes, then gently remove to cool completely. You may have to loosen the pies with a flat knife.  Let them finish cooling before you eat them – or you might burn your tongue.
   

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Gratitude is a choice, count your blessings and be thankful.