RUSTIC PEAR AND STRAWBERRY TART

I follow a blog called Belleau Kitchen and the writer, Dom, currently has something called a Random Recipe challenge.  Basically, you take a favourite cookbook, allow it to fall open at random page and cook or bake whatever is on the open page – the recipe was meant to be for a cake or dessert.

I thought this looked like fun so I decided to have a go.  It didn’t quite work out as I intended.

I do have a lot of cookbooks so first I had to decide whether to choose an old favourite or a new one that I had hardly explored yet.  I decided on the latter but the first book I chose fell open at a savoury tart so that was no good – it was meant to be a sweet baking challenge.

Then I cheated.  The second book fell open at an incredibly gooey, fancy pudding that was very fiddly to make and, quite frankly, we would never eat.  So I rejected that one.

I was lucky with the third attempt.  A marmalade polenta cake, baked with orange and lemon slices around the top and sides.  It looked delicious but required quite a lot of work, cooking the fruit and making a syrup as well as baking the cake. 

Then I ran out of time to do it before the challenge ends and we go on holiday.  Shame.

I diligently took my library books back as they were due to expire whilst we are away, but couldn’t resist a sneaky look if they had anything new in the baking section.  I spotted the absolutely scrummy book you see above.  It was fairly new in the library but already well used with sticky finger marks on the pages.  Always a good sign.

When I got it home I flipped through and it fell open at “rustic plum tart”.  Now there’s an idea I thought.  It looked delicious, yet simple and quick to make.  I could enter the challenge after all.

Except for one thing – I didn’t have any plums. 

The recipe said you could use any ripe fruit and suggested apples.  I didn’t have any apples either but did have some very ripe pears and an unopened punnet of strawberries so I used those.  It was WONDERFUL.

Basically, you make a simple batter and pour it into a lined cake tin, scatter the fruit on top and bake.

The finishing touch is to brush the tart with melted apricot jam.  I wouldn’t normally bother with this but as it was for a challenge I decided to do it – even had to make a special trip to the Spa shop to buy some jam, sliding in just before they closed at 4pm on Sunday.  (We had every other possible variety of jam in the house but no apricot.)  It gave the finished tart a “patisserie” appearance which was lovely.

So there we are, rustic pear and strawberry tart.  It doesn’t look much like a tart to me, more like a cake, but who’s complaining?  Not me, it was delicious.

Here’s what you need.

90g caster sugar

1 egg

40ml vegetable oil

55ml milk

140g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

2-3 drops vanilla extract

3  pears

half a punnet or a handful of strawberries

2tblsp apricot jam to glaze

Here’s what you do.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan), gas mk 4.  Grease and line a 20cm cake tin, preferably springform.

Using an electric whisk, beat the egg and sugar until light and creamy.  Add the all the other ingredients except the fruit and jam and beat again until combined.

Spoon the mixture into the tin and level the surface.

Peel and core the pears and cut into quarters.  Wash and hull the strawberries.  Arrange the fruit on top of the cake mixture.

Bake for about 30 minutes until golden brown, remove and leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes.

To glaze the tart, put the jam in a small pan and heat gently until runny.  Remove the tart from the tin and brush the glaze over the top and sides.  Cool slightly more before serving.

*The original recipe used 6 large plums, stoned and halved and arranged cut side up on top of the mixture.  I will definitely do this again, when I have some plums.

Cuts into 6 slices and leftovers are nice cold, served as a cake.

BLUEBERRY AND LEMON FRIANDS

I have only made friands once before and I was disappointed with how they turned out, because I left them in the oven for only a few minutes too long and some were scorched. 

So I decided to have another go.  This time they were perfect !!

I also decided to buy a friand tin, which makes the nice little oval cakes.  I used a muffin tin last time which was perfectly fine but I fancied doing the job properly.  In any case, a girl can never have too many cake tins (or shoes).

This proved to be a challenge.  I looked in all the cookware shops locally and nobody had any or had even heard of them.  So I Googled it and sure enough the first names to come up were Amazon and Lakeland.

They didn’t have any either.  So I did a bit more digging and found one at siliconemoulds.com.  This company supplies silicone moulds in all shapes and sizes and Sarah-Jane, the manager, also writes a great baking blog, which  you can check out here.

Friands are made with ground almonds and icing sugar and hardly any flour.  You make a froth of egg white, stir it into the dry ingredients, pour into the greased moulds and sprinkle the fruit on top.

They are incredibly quick and easy to make.

I had never used a silicone baking “tin” before.  I always had the feeling that putting anything that thin and floppy in a hot oven just didn’t seem right, never mind entrusting  your precious cake mixture to it. 

In the recipe it said use a “generously buttered” tin so to make absolutely certain my friands were not going to stick, I melted some butter and brushed it into the moulds, giving a good coating.

The recipe also said it would make six cakes but the mould had eight holes so I buttered all of them, just in case.  I used my ice-cream scoop to fill the holes evenly and the mixture made seven exactly.  As the mould was floppy, my instinct told me to place it on a baking tray in the oven.

When they were in the oven I watched them like a hawk – I was determined not to burn them this time.  They turned out beautifully – in all ways.  They looked great, tasted delicious and I was most impressed with the silicone mould.  They all came out clean as a whistle.

Next time I need a new baking tin (there must be some shapes and sizes I haven’t got already) I will definitely consider a silicone one.

BLUEBERRY AND LEMON FRIANDS

Ingredients

100g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

125g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting

25g plain flour

85g ground almonds

3 medium egg whites

1 unwaxed lemon, grated rind only

85g blueberries

Method

Preheat the oven to 200ºC / 180ºfan.  Generously butter a six-hole friand or muffin tin.

Melt the butter and set aside to cool. 

Sift the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl.  Add the almonds and, using your fingers, mix everything together.

Whisk the egg whites until they make a light, floppy foam.  Make a well in the dry ingredients, tip in the egg whites and lemon rind.  Add the melted butter and lightly stir to make a soft batter.

Divide the mixture evenly between the tins and sprinkle the blueberries on top.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until light golden brown and firm to the touch.

Cool in the tins for 5 minutes.  Then turn out and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.  Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Makes 6-7

LEGENDARY RHUBARB PIE

We have a good crop of rhubarb already this year and I picked quite a little pile of it recently.  I fancied doing something slightly different from the usual rhubarb crumble, but not too complicated as I didn’t have much time.

Then I remembered a recipe that a friend gave me years ago.  She got it from her sister-in-law, who lived in Canada for a while.  The implication being that it’s a Canadian recipe, which it may well be as it has cup measurements in it.

It’s called “legendary rhubarb pie”, which is a curious name for a pie and I have no idea what it is about it that’s legendary.  It’s very good, though.

You can actually use virtually any fruit you like.  I have made it with plums, apricots, gooseberries and apples in the past and all worked well.

  

As you can see, we had the old trouble with the free-range eggs.  I used the biggest and smallest in the box and it seemed to work ok.

 

 

I also put in a handful of leftover strawberries I had in the fridge that were looking slightly tired, as they usually make a nice combination with rhubarb.

Basically, you make or buy a pastry case, fill it with fruit, make a sugary sponge topping to pour over and bake.  On this occasion I used a pack of ready-rolled pastry that I found in the  freezer.  It was ok but it is better with home-made, I think. In any case, it was lovely and very quick and easy to make, most of the preparation time being in the preparation of the fruit.

Here’s the international recipe for the mysterious and legendary

LEGENDARY RHUBARB PIE

Ingredients

One shortcrust pastry case, either home-made or bought

About 400g rhubarb

2 eggs

1 cup (180g) caster sugar

2 tablespoons (50g) butter or margarine

1 tablespoon (25g) plain flour

grated nutmeg (optional)

*weights give are my rough estimates for the cup measurements but they seem to work

 Method

Preheat the oven to 200ºC

Roll out the pastry to line a tart tin or pie dish

Prepare the fruit by washing and cutting into 2cm pieces

Arrange the fruit in the case.  Concentric circles look nice. 

(The pie looks just as good if you just tumble the fruit into the case and spread it out a bit.)

Combine the other ingredients in a medium bowl until a smooth, thick batter is formed.  Pour this evenly over the fruit.

Bake at 200ºC for 10 minutes.

Reduce the oven temperature to 180ºC and continue to bake for 30-40 minutes until nicely brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a while before serving to allow for more setting.

Serve warm or  cold with cream, ice cream, custard or just by itself.

Serves 6

*You can also use plums, peaches, nectarines or apricots or a combination, in which case wash the fruit, remove stones if possible and arrange cut side down in the pastry case.  Apples and pears should be peeled, cored and cut into thick wedges, which look nice arranged in overlapping circles.  Gooseberries should be top and tailed and washed so take a bit longer to prepare.  You could sprinkle a few sliced almonds on top before baking, or add a little cinnamon to the mixture.  Anything seems to work with this recipe so use your imagination !

MY FIRST BROWNIES

Earlier in the year a new face appeared with her own series of cooking programmes on the TV.

Lorraine Pascale is a trained pastry chef and she set about telling us how easy baking is – well she would, wouldn’t she !! If you see anything done by an expert it always looks easy.

Anyway, I liked the look of some of her recipes so I lashed out on the book that goes with the programme and decided to have a go.

I have never made brownies before and thought Lorraine’s recipe looked unusual so this is what I made :

Cookies and cream fudge brownies

The recipe uses lots of eggs, sugar, surprisingly little flour, chocolate and something I had never come across before, Oreo biscuits.

You can see the recipe on the BBC website here.

As it happens, I picked up the ones with the chocolate cream filling rather than the white filling by mistake, not realising there were two types.

You have to break the biscuits into pieces, mix some into the batter then sprinkle the rest on top before putting it into the oven.

The recipe said to put 1/3 of the biscuits in the mixture and 2/3 on top.  I decided to do half and half.

I was a bit concerned that the ones on top would bake dry and become too crunchy, but they didn’t.

My very first brownies, looking exactly like the ones on the telly and the picture in the book.  They were delicious and definitely very easy.

Cookies and cream fudge brownies

Ingredients

165g butter

200g good quality dark chocolate

3 eggs plus 2 egg yolks

2 tsp vanilla extract

165g light soft brown sugar

2 tbslp plain flour

1 tblsp cocoa powder

pinch of salt

1 pack of Oreo biscuits, dark with white cream filling

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°fan/gas mk 4.  Grease and line a 20cm square baking tin.  Leave some paper overlapping the sides.

Grate or chop the chocolate.  Gently melt the butter in a medium pan.  Then take it off the heat and add the chocolate, stirring until smooth.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks, eggs and vanilla using an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Whisk in the sugar in two halves.  Whisk until the mixture starts to stiffen then pour in the chocolate and whisk again.

Add the flour, salt and cocoa powder and stir in.  Break the biscuits roughly into halves and add half of them to the mixture.

Tip the mixture into the tin and level the surface gently so as not to lose your whisked-in air.  Scatter the other half of the broken biscuits on top.  Bake for 25-30 minutes.  They should be just set but soft in the middle.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin.  It will sink and crack on top.  Remove from the tin and cut into squares.  Dust with icing sugar.

Makes 16 brownies, or thereabouts.

A TASTE OF THE SEA

There has been an interesting TV series recently about reviving certain British foods.  A number of TV chefs have adopted something traditionally British that is in decline and attempted to stimulate interest in it.

It was a very good series, not least of all for reminding us of the stranglehold the major supermarkets have on determining what food is available for us to buy. 

One of the foods presented was the crab.  We harvest tons of beautiful crabs from our shores but most of them go abroad for consumption.  We decided we would rally to the cause and have a go at dressing and cooking a crab for ouselves.  But first we would have to find one to buy.

Here in Derbyshire, we are about as far from the sea as you can get in the UK.  I couldn’t think of anywhere I had ever seen a crab for sale other than our visit to Cromer some years ago.  We Googled fishmongers in Derbyshire and found they are a dying breed.  However, we dropped lucky in Tesco’s.  How it pains me to say that, but for the princely sum of £5 we could have our own cooked, but in one piece, crab.  They just had the one for sale and the lady on the fish counter told us that when that was sold they would order another one so they always had one.  Just the one (at £5).  I wondered fleetingly how long they might have had that one but dismissed the idea just as quickly. When we got it home we discovered it wasn’t entirely in one piece as it had three legs missing.

Meet Cyril the crab.

On the programme, Angela Hartnett showed how easy it was to dress a crab, if a bit fiddly and time consuming.  She was right, it was easy.  Nick did it as it is obviously very much a man’s thing – something primeval in a man makes him want to be the one to dress the crab, gut the fish, skin the rabbit, light the bbq and disappear when the washing up needs doing.

You can see how it’s done here, thanks to Delia.

Our crab produced 100 grams of meat.  The recipe calls for white meat only so we discarded everything else.  Next time we will be a slightly braver and keep the brown meat for something, too.

From it we made four small fish cakes with chilli and spring onion, using home-made breadcrumbs, too.  They were delicious and well worth the effort.  They made a lovely starter and we will definitely make them again, especially if we have guests we want to impress !!

The next week, Nick had a wander round the indoor market in Sheffield in his lunch break and discovered you can buy any number of really fresh crabs in all sizes, none of them more than £3 each.

To see the recipe for CRAB CAKES click here.

AN ITALIAN TWIST

I sometimes borrow cookbooks from our local library.

I recently borrowed this book by Rachel Allen.  I have never seen her on TV myself but the recipes in the book looked good.

Browsing through, I spotted one for a fruity twist on one of my favourite puddings, tiramisu.  Instead of the usual coffee, chocolate and brandy (or Amaretto, as per my favourite tiramisu recipe), Rachel uses strawberries, white chocolate and crème de cassis.  The picture looked so pretty and scrumptious that I just had to give it a try.  You can see the recipe on Rachel’s website here.

The only strawberries in the shops in April seem to be the large Spanish ones.  They always look a lot better than they taste and can be rather limp on flavour I find, but they worked quite well in the recipe.

You make the cheese mixture in the usual way, then stir in the melted chocolate, fold in the egg whites and begin constructing the pudding.  You can make it in a gratin dish, a trifle bowl or a number of individual glasses.

Getting your ducks in a row.

You dip the sponge fingers in the syrup and layer up the pudding according to the instructions.  the quantities worked out perfectly – there were only 4 sponge fingers left over using my size of bowl and a tiny dribble of syrup which I poured on top of the second layer of fruit.

The recipe said to melt 150g of the 200g of white chocolate into the mixture and grate the remaining 50g on top of the finished pudding.  50g sounded like a lot of grated chocolate to me so I just reserved a couple of squares to grate on the top and put the rest into the mixture.

I used crème de cassis but next time I think I might try it using crème de framboise and raspberries.  I also used my big trifle bowl to make a large dessert but I bet it would look lovely served in pretty glasses.

It was absolutely delicious and as with all the tiramisus I have ever made, it was even better the next day.

STRAWBERRY AND WHITE CHOCOLATE TIRAMISU

This is what you need

200g caster sugar (in two 100g halves)

400g strawberries (halved if large)

50ml crème de cassis or framboise

200g white chocolate

250g mascarpone cheese

4 eggs

1 box of sponge fingers (also called boudoir or savoyard biscuits)

This is what you do

Begin by making the strawberry syrup.  Put 100g of the sugar in a saucepan with 150ml water, bring to the boil slowly and simmer for 2 minutes.  Remove from the heat.

Leave to cool for 5 minutes then add the cassis or framboise and strawberries.  Put on one side to cool completely.

Melt all but 2-3 squares of the white chocolate, either in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave in 30-second blasts.  Allow to cool slightly.

Separate the eggs.  Whisk the egg yolks with the other 100g of sugar until thick and pale, using an electric whisk.  Beat in the mascarpone until smooth then stir in the melted chocolate.

In another bowl, whisk the egg whites to the stiff peaks stage and then fold into the egg mixture.

Strain the cooled strawberries over a flat dish suitable for dipping the biscuits into.  Then assemble all your bowls of components in a row to build up the dish as follows: biscuits on the left, next to that the dish of syrup, then your serving bowl or glasses.  Have the strained strawberries and the egg mixture to hand.

Dip the biscuits one by one into the syrup and use them to line the base of the bowl or dishes until about half have been used up.

Place half the egg mixture on top then half the strawberries.

Dip the remaining biscuits and use them to make a second layer.  There may be a few left over.  Then put the rest of the fruit on top of the biscuits and pour any remaining syrup on top of them.  Finish off with the other half of the egg mixture. 

Grate the last few squares of white chocolate and sprinkle over the top.  Chill for at least 6 hours before serving.  Chilling overnight is recommended.

Serves 8-10

A CRACKING GOOD RECIPE

 

I spotted a recipe for CRACKLE COOKIES in a recipe book and thought I would like to have a go.  I haven’t made biscuits or cookies of any kind for decades.

You roll little balls of the dough in icing sugar before baking and they crack attractively.  Hmmm……how does that work, I thought.  Surely the sugar browns in the oven, doesn’t it?  However, I looked up crackle cookies on Google and all the entries had similar pictures so it obviously does work.  That was encouraging.

These days, most recipes seem to specify “softened butter”, except of course where you rub the butter in or melt it.  Now there’s a challenge.  I have tried putting the butter on top of the radiator, microwaving it, or just leaving it out of the fridge for a while, all with variable success.  Then I read somewhere recently that the best way is to grate the butter straight from the fridge and that softens it.  This seemed like a lot of faff but actually it only took a few moments and worked a treat.  I will do that every time from now on, as I prefer to use real butter rather than the spreadable stuff from a tub.

You make a fairly stiff mixture then put it in the fridge for a while.  The recipe said 3 hours or overnight.  That was going to be difficult as I had not planned for advance preparation of the mixture.  But then some other recipes on the internet said chill for only 15 minutes, so I chilled it for about 1½ hours.

My recipe then said take tablespoons of the dough, roll it into balls and it makes 60 cookies.  A tablespoonful seemed like an awful lot to me so I used dessert spoonfuls, about the size of a large walnut, and it made 40 !!

You roll the balls in icing sugar and place on greased baking trays without flattening them at all.

They turned out perfect – well, most of them did.  The interesting thing is that those that were baked on my  lovely Pampered Chef baking sheet spread out like biscuits.  I love this baking sheet as it is thick and almost bombproof, but obviously it cooks things differently.  The ones baked on my old cheap and nasty baking trays –( the type that goes ping in the oven within moments of putting it in as it twists and warps ) - stayed cookie-shaped and came out lovely.

Also the ones that had an unfeasibly thick coating of icing sugar retained their white crackled appearance the best.

I’m sure kids would love to make these, all that rolling and getting very sticky and making a mess of the kitchen !!

They were very nice – a slightly crunchy outside and softer inside and you could definitely taste the spice and the nuts.  They were just as good three days later, too. 

Here’s the recipe for CRACKLE COOKIES

Ingredients

125 g unsalted butter, softened

370 g soft light brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

60 g dark chocolate, melted

80 ml milk

340 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tablesp cocoa powder

¼ tsp ground allspice (yes, only ¼)

90 g chopped pecan nuts

icing sugar to coat the cookies

Method

Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy

Beat in the eggs, one at a time

Stir in the melted chocolate and milk

Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and spice, add a pinch of salt

Stir into the butter mixture, mix well then add the nuts

Chill in the fridge for anything from 1 to 12 hours, depending on how long you can wait !!

Preheat the oven to 180ºC.  Grease two or three baking sheets.

Take dessert spoonfuls of the mixture, roll into balls then roll in icing sugar to give a good coating.

Space well apart on the baking sheets and bake for 20-25 minutes until firm.

Leave on the tray for 3-4 minutes then cool on a rack.

Makes 40 cookies.  They keep for a few days in an airtight tin.