Tag: dessert

Delicious Dessert: Clafoutis!

I’m a sucker for summertime desserts, especially those involving fresh fruit.  Besides pies and crisps, clafoutis is a brilliant one – simple, not full of sugar, and very tasty.  Most ingredients are right on hand, too.  I made this one for people with gut problems (IBD), but put the non-gut-problem ingredients in ( ).

Clafoutis

  • 2 large eggs, beaten
  • 1/2 c. almond milk (or regular milk, half and half, or cream)
  • 1/4 c. honey (white sugar)
  • 2 T. melted butter
  • zest of 1 lemon, more or less depending on taste
  • 1 tsp. vanilla or almond extract
  • pinch salt
  • 1/2 c. oat flour (regular flour)
  • 2 c. fresh fruit – cherries are traditional – I used frozen (other fruits such as berries, stone fruits, etc.)
  • (1 – 2 T powdered sugar for garnish)

Preheat oven to 325 F.  Grease 9″ pan with butter or non-stick spray.

Beat together eggs, milk, honey, melted butter, lemon, salt, extract.  Mixture will be thick like cream, but not heavy batter.  Use a whisk – save some dish washing.  Whisk in flour gradually to keep a smooth batter.  Pour into pan.  Place fruit in pattern or randomly on top.

Bake on middle rack of oven 40-50 minutes, checking half way through to see if you need to rotate pan.

Remove from oven, cool.  If you want to add the powdered sugar for garnish, wait until clafoutis is cooled so it doesn’t melt.  Serve warm or cold.  Great for dessert or breakfast.

Devour!

Honey Vanilla Frozen Yogurt

Ice cream anyone? Really, frozen yogurt. I made some and it is really, really good and rich. I have a Krups freezer that goes around in circles to churn it. So, here is my recipe.

Honey Vanilla Frozen Yogurt

  • 4 egg yolks
  • 1/4 – 1/3 c. honey (vary with your desired sweetness)
  • 2.5 – 3.0 c. SCD yogurt – strained

 

Using a double boiler, heat water below level of upper pan. As water is heating, beat together egg yolks and honey in upper pan. (If you heat the honey to make it easier to pour, watch your temperature. You don’t want to get it hot enough to cook the yolks.) Beat vigorously with a whisk. Put egg-honey mixture pan on top of boiler, continue to beat vigorously. After mixture begins to thicken, beat in yogurt – don’t dump it at once into eggs, but perhaps a cup at a time. Using an instant-read thermometer, beat and heat to 165F. At this temperature, remove upper pan, pour mixture into container to cool. At this point I added

  • 1 T. vanilla extract

Cool mixture in refrigerator until chilled.

Before using the ice cream maker, you may wish to sieve the ice cream if it looks lumpy. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s directions – mine took about 20 minutes.

This ice cream (yogurt) is very rich because of the egg custard. The yogurt adds a tang which is a nice contrast to the honey. I think this could be the basis for all flavors – like raspberry, etc.

Store in freezer-safe container, and then – DEVOUR!

Cool Stuff on Hot Days: Gelato

If there is something dear to the heart of most of us, it is ice cream, or some form of ice cream, especially on a hot summer’s day.  Making ice cream from scratch is a bit intense at times – like when the hand-crank freezer leaks salt into the batch you have been waiting for.  Another disappointment is when it gets chunks of ice when you freeze it in the freezer without having churned it because you don’t have a churn.  You can also put a bowl in a bucket of ice and chill the mixture by hand, stirring, stirring, stirring, but that is a bit primitive.

Enter the electrified, freeze-the-bowl-overnight variety of churn.  We got one for our wedding over 20 years ago, and we still use it.  It looks something like this one, except we have to make the ice cream!  And it works wonderfully well for gelato.

I’ve outgrown my taste for heavy, thick ice cream. Frozen yogurt is okay, but never a favorite. Sorbet is better than ice cream or frozen yogurt, but not quite what hits home.  The other night, we went out shopping and ended up buying gelatos just because. And then the thought hit: why not make it at home?  We just love gelato!

Research began, and at first I was sure I was not finding anything that was gelato as it sounded way too much like ice cream.  The difference, it seems, is that gelato is not all cream, but a bit of cream or half-and-half combined with milk.  Some gelato recipes have egg yolks, and others do not.  Those egg yolks are necessary to absorb water and prevent those nasty chunks of ice from forming, so some recipes that are eggless use a starch of some sort to absorb the water molecules.  Interesting, eh?  You can use cornstarch or potato starch or arrowroot.  Not liking that idea, I used egg yolks in mine, but it is good information to have on hand.  Ya gotta love the internet!

Basic Gelato Recipe
3 c. whole milk / half-and-half / cream combination (largest portion should be milk)
3/4 – 1 c. sugar
4 egg yolks

Heat milk combination over low heat with half the sugar, stirring to dissolve sugar. Watch the heat does not get too high. Beat egg yolks with remaining sugar until thick, heavy, and filled with air. Add a bit of vanilla if you want. Once the milk is warmish, and the yolks are beaten and thick, take about a cup of warm (not scalding hot) milk and beat it into the yolks. This is to equalize the temperatures of both mixtures. If the milk is too hot, you will cook the yolks, which is not what you want to do. Then, beat in the rest of the milk. Once this is done, take a fine strainer or sieve and pour the mixture through it to remove any chunks of cooked egg or whatever. Store in the fridge until cold.  Then freeze, using whatever ice cream maker you have on hand, being sure to read the directions!!!

Customizing your gelato is easy.  Some hints I read about making good gelato, one with a deep rich flavor, is to use over-ripe (but not spoiled) fruits, freeze it until custardy in texture, not hard, and so on.  Too little flavor is not good!  I read about the following types of gelatos:

  • mascarpone lemon gelato
  • chocolate-cardamom-stewed fig gelato
  • toasted coconut gelato
  • raspberry gelato
  • blueberry lemon gelato

You get the idea – you can do anything you want!  What did I choose?

Mint & Chocolate Chunk Gelato
2 c. whole milk
1 c. combination of cream & half-and-half
1 c. sugar
4 egg yolks
fresh mint leaves
vanilla extract
chopped Valhrona 70% or more dark chocolate (1 bar)

Follow the directions above. In the milk mixture, add the mint leaves and leave to soak a bit. Beat the egg yolks and vanilla. When ready to combine the two, I strained out the mint leaves and set them aside. Once the yolks and milk were combined, I took the mint leaves, now soft from being in the warm milk, and chopped them up as fine as I could. Then I put them into the yolk-milk mixture, and put the whole mess in the fridge to cool. Once ready to churn, I set up the ice cream maker and churned – about 20-25 minutes by my watch – and then, before removing the gelato from the churn, added the chopped chocolate.

Freeze, eat, devour.

Altogether, I was very happy with the recipe. I think the chocolate could also be melted and then slowly poured into the gelato as the ice cream machine runs. That could be pretty darn delicious. I know we will be revisiting gelato a lotto this summer.

A Pie!

There is nothing in the world of sweets that pleases me more than a fresh pie.  It’s work, and it is seasonal, but pie made with fresh fruit is always my idea of heaven.  So, for the long weekend, the pie is – as many others are making – Strawberry Rhubarb Pie.  This pie needs to be carefully balanced between sweet and sour, so if you are making it from scratch with a whatever-goes mentality, best to taste it before you bake it.  (Isn’t that another reason to bake – to eat raw dough and taste-test the ingredients?)

Method

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Pie Crust
for a 9-inch pan

2 1/2 c. flour
2 sticks (1 lb.) sweet butter, chilled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 tsp. salt
6-8 T. ice water

Pour a cup of water into a vessel; add ice cubes. Do this before you begin the crust.

Cut together flour, butter, and salt until resembles coarse corn meal. Add 3-4 T. water, blend in gently with fork. Add another 2 T. water; blend some more. If it begins to stick together when you mash it together, you are probably ready to roll it out. If not, add another T. of ice water, gradually, testing the dough, which should stick together. Divide dough into two balls, making one slightly larger than the other.

Roll out the larger of the two dough balls onto a floured board, turning as necessary. Roll out until about 4 inches larger than pan diameter. Place dough into pie pan; drape carefully into pan to make sure dough is not stretched. Trim ends to about 1 1/2 inches outside of pan.

Roll out second ball for upper crust. If you want a lattice crust, cut strips about 1 inch wide. On a piece of waxed paper, assemble latticework. Cover with another piece of waxed paper. Refrigerate until ready to place on top of pie. If you want a plain crust, roll out until it measures about 2 inches larger than pan diameter on all sides.

It is not uncommon to have to patch a pie crust, and the lattice is no different.  For the crust, take a trimmed slice of pie dough, dampen it with water on one side, and place it like a tire patch over the part of the crust that needs to be repaired.  That area should also have a few pats of water on it.  Press to seal.  In the area of the lattice, if a strip breaks, or is too short, do not hesitate to repair it as for the bottom crust, but to make it look nice, hide the broken strip under an upper strip.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Filling

3 T. brown sugar
1/3 c. white sugar
1/2 c. water
3 c. diced rhubarb stems
2 lbs. fresh strawberries, cleaned and sliced
2-4 T. tapioca
Mace, just a pinch of fresh
Juice of 1 lemon
More white sugar to taste

Combine together two sugars and water in a sautee pan. Bring to simmer until sugars are dissolved. Add chopped rhubarb, and cook slowly for a few minutes. Remove rhubarb from pan, saving syrup and returning to sautee pan, and mix in with fresh strawberries. Sprinkle tapioca into syrup. Simmer tapioca about 5 minutes, letting water evaporate a little bit from pan.  If you like a bit of juice with your pie, use less tapioca, and use more if you like your pie to stick together.  Taste (cool it a bit!) the syrup, and adjust using the juice of the lemon, and adding extra sugar to taste. When you like the taste, pour syrup over strawberry-rhubarb mixture. Sprinkle a bit of mace onto pie. (I like it plain, or with just a hint of mace – not much as the pie itself is so good!)

Pour fruit mixture into pie pan lined with dough. Cover with second crust, cutting slits into crust if you have not made a lattice; this allows steam to escape. Brush top crust with a egg yolk-water mixture, or an egg white-water mixture, or leave plain.

Bake the Pie!

Make sure oven racks are placed with one on bottom rack, and another in middle of oven. Line a cookie sheet with foil and place on bottom rack. Place pie on middle rack. Bake at 450 F for 10 minutes and then lower temperature to 350 F, and bake another 50-60 minutes until juices are bubbling and crust is golden.  Cool on wire rack, or let cool in oven if really drippy.

When you are ready to remove the pie from the oven, get another pair of hands.  My husband carried the pie, and I followed underneath, with a wire rack crossing the foil-covered cookie sheet, to prevent goo from getting on the floor.

Serve with cream, ice cream, or just pie itself.

A Crostata of a Different Flavor

Sunset Magazine is filled with interesting things. Recipes of all sorts may be found, and the holiday issues are some of my favorites. The Thanksgiving edition had a particularly intriguing recipe, which I made for yesterday’s family get-together. You may find the original recipe here; what makes it particularly interesting is the fact it is made with an artisan flour derived from a different wheat than is in your average flour.  It is made with

Emmer farro flour, made from whole-grain emmer wheat, gives the crostata a rustic texture and great flavor. Because it’s low in gluten, it needs to be mixed with all-purpose flour to hold the crust together

The flour is from Bluebird Grain Farms whose specialty is heirloom organic grains.  While I did not use their flour, I think I am quite likely to try it in the near future.  I’ve added a link to their site under the Farmers to Admire category.

Below is how I made the crostata.  I think that you can use this recipe as a basis for any fresh, seasonal fruit – the frangipane is a wonderful flavor!

PASTRY

  • 1 1/2 c. whole wheat white flour
  • pinch salt
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes (1 stick of butter, and 2 T more)

Use a food processor, as in the original recipe:  pulse flours and salt to mix. Add butter and whirl 3 seconds. Drizzle in 1/3 cup ice water, pulsing until mixture comes together in a shaggy ball but still has bits of butter showing. Form into a disk, wrap airtight, and chill at least 2 hours or overnight.

FRANGIPANE

  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 6 t. white sugar
  • 1/3 cup blanched almonds, finely ground
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 T flour
  • 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. almond extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat together 6 T. of sugar with butter until light and fluffy.  Mix in almonds (I used ground almond meal from Trader Joe’s), egg, flour, extracts, until smoothly blended.  Set aside.

CRANBERRIES

  • 3 cups fresh or frozen cranberries (1 12-oz. package)
  • 1/4 c. white sugar
  • 1 T. water

Mix together cranberries, sugar and water.  Set aside.

ASSEMBLING CROSTATA

Roll out dough on floured surface into a 14-inch circle.  Rotate and flip pastry as you roll it out.  Trim edges, and transfer to a round pizza pan or rectangular cookie sheet.  Line either with a sheet of parchment paper.   (I used a cookie sheet, only to find it was to big for my refrigerator, so I tilted it to fit, and had no problems with any berries escaping!)

Spread frangipane over inside of dough, leaving about a 3-inch border outside your circle of frangipane.

Place sugared cranberries over the frangipane mixture, pressing them in a bit to help keep the cranberries in place.

Fold the edges of the dough up and over the cranberries – do this gently! – and create pleats or folds as you go.  Once you do this, pinch the pleats in place a bit to seal the dough.  This will prevent leakage during baking.

Place crostata in refrigerator for about 30 minutes before baking.  While you do this, preheat the oven to 375 F with the cooking rack in the middle.  I used my oven on convection, but changed nothing as far as temperature or time.

Bake crostata for 45 minutes.  I checked mine at 35 minutes, and then continued.

Cool on parchment paper and cookie sheet, then transfer crostata and parchment paper to cookie rack to finish cooling.

Serve at room temperature, or warmed in the oven.  Great with vanilla ice cream!