Banoffee Slab: caramelised guilty pleasure

This slab is insane.

I feel queasy just thinking of the amount of butter and sugar that went into it. When I took it out of the baking tray after letting it cool off, the baking paper underneath was covered with an oily yellow substance that continued to slowly leak from the pastry. Even after replacing the paper with paper towels, which are far more absorbent, it took three more paper cycles before the ooze stopped. It was rather unsettling to say the least.

However, despite that I would not cal it a failure. Far from it. This Banoffee slab is utterly devine. The caramel and banana filling complement each other so well and the chocolate pastry is fantastic. The melted chocolate on top can make it difficult to slice, but it just completes the taste overload. PIE suggests serving with whipped cream, but for me that is simply going too far. It is already ridiculously sweet, so much so that my Dad complained he could not get to sleep because it had induced some kind of sugar rush. I have (tried) to limit myself to very, very small slices so far and I can certainly understand how it has the potential to make you feel ill. Like some many rich deserts though, it can be difficult to stop yourself before reaching that point of over indulgence.

Just look at that

As for the baking itself, I used a few tools which Dean might consider cheating. For the first time, I used a blender for the pastry making instead of only using a wooden spoon. And I’m glad I did. I’m sorry, but to reach a ‘creamy’ consistency of butter and sugar is nigh impossible unless you got at it for an hour. Using the blender meant for the first time I was able to get a pastry texture similar to what was asked for in the recipe. So in future, despite what the book may say, I’m going to continue using it.

After baking the pastry blind, I made the caramel filling which consisted of condensed milk, butter and golden syrup. once heated in a saucepan and mixed together, it was poured into the pastry mould. Then the chocolate was melted with another large amount of butter. The method stated in the recipe said to ‘double boil’ where the contents is held over simmering water in a heatproof container. This took forever! I eventually started leaving it in the hot water for short periods to speed the process up, despite the recipe saying you should not do this (sorry Dean).

A quick somewhat shaky shot of the chocolate going onto the banana and caramel. It had to be done quickly or the chocolate would set. So it all done.

I had it all ready for my interview on Monday, only to find out once again that my efforts were in vain. the interview still went ahead, only it was on Skype. At this point I had a quiet chuckle and took it as a sign I shouldn’t take baking to an interview.

And once again, my family is left to devour my creation. Only this I think this one will go quite slowly…

Pecan Tarts

These tarts were made with for a different reason than why I normally do baking. They were made to be a part of an interview, where I hoped to blow the interviewers away with my culinary skills as they have previously asked about my blog. Sadly, the interview was postponed until next week and I now have to share these lovely tarts with my family, much to their delight.

These tarts are a variation of the well known American Pecan pie, which is considered a specialty of Southern Cuisine. It is synonymous with special occasions such as Christmas and Thanksgiving.  Traditionally the primary ingredients are corn syrup and pecans, although there are many syrup substitutes such as molasses, maple syrup or honey.  After doing a bit of research (quickly scanning Wikipedia), it turns out there isn’t any concrete evidence of when the Pecan  pie was created. There are claims it was being made in Alabama during the early 1800’s but no recipe has been found prior to 1886. There are some who claim the French invented the pie after settling in New Orleans and being introduced to pecans by Native Americans. The makers of Karo Syrup claim the dish was a 1930’s discovery, owing its creation to a sales executive’s wife who discovered a new use for corn syrup.

My baking started the night before when I used some ready made pastry to test how molds would work. They were a bit larger than what was used in PIE, but I decided to go ahead with them anyway.

The next morning I got started on the pastry, which was a sweet short pastry. Again the pastry was the most difficult part. When mixing all the ingredients I could tell it was not the same as how it was described in the recipe, with the texture being the main issue. It was rather humid, and I wonder if the temperature has a big effect on pastry texture. Regardless, I finished it up and refrigerated it.

Then I got onto the tart filling.

The filling included the items pictured above, the only variation on the recipe was using golden syrup instead of liquid glucose, but as I understand they’re pretty similar and a bit of googling suggested it was an acceptable substitute. The apricot jam isn’t in the mixture, it gets used for the glaze at the end.

After mixing it all together into a brown goopy substance, it went into the fridge.

A few hours later and the pastry was ready to be cut and shaped into the molds.

Once again the pastry proved to be tricky. It kept sticking to the rolling pin (despite plenty of flower and the rolling pin being chilled). It was also impossible to get the pastry to 3 mm in thickness as stated in the recipe. I actually found later on that if the pastry was too thin the bottom would disintegrate when put in the oven.

Here is a quick picture of how they looked with the mixture and pecans arranged on top before going into the oven.

I would be using the new oven for the first time and luckily I decided to do a test with one tart. As it turns out, the new oven cooks a lot faster than the old one.

After burning the test tart, I lowered the temperature and kept a close eye on their progress. The filling rose quite a bit which led to some of it dripping onto the base of the oven. Needless to say mum was not impressed. Aside from that little hiccup, I was pretty happy with the way they turned out.

I then boiled my apricot jam+water and strained it to get my glaze. This was brushed on to the hot tarts, and a few minutes later they were removed from their molds. Amazingly, there were only two out of 8 that had issues. One had a weak bottom and the other somehow got sticky around the outside of the pastry. But 6 perfect tarts was pretty decent.

 I was able to then slice up the two defect tarts for the family to have a taste. Another PIE success. They are very rich and oh so decadent. One is certainly more than enough. As you would expect they’re very sweet and the pecans give it that different texture and flavour. The pastry did a good job of staying in one piece and tasted really, really good.

I had them all ready to go the following day for the interview, only to hear it was postponed to Monday! Now I’m going to have to come up with something else on the weekend, while slowly devouring these terrific tarts.

Getting the oven mitts back on

It has been quite a while since I last put up a pie creation on this blog. It all comes down to two things really. I’ve been pretty busy lately and working more. But mostly I’ve been slack. There have been plenty of idle Sunday afternoons which I could have spent in the kitchen creating something from Dean’s book. Well a week or so ago I opened it up again and got stuck in.

Gooey Leek, Potato and Vintage Cheddar Pie

The finished product

This is unfortunately the only photo I took of the pie, I didn’t really feel like snapping each step as I’ve done previously.

I had a good time making this. I never really realised how relaxing baking can be. It is a good way of distracting yourself from other things weighing on your mind. I found I could just zone out, follow all the steps in the recipe and go through the motions.

It wasn’t all easy. This pie asked for toasted walnut short pastry, and I got pretty frustrated to start with because my pastry wasn’t sticking together. I think this was because I hadn’t quite chopped the walnuts finely enough and not used enough water.However I managed to get it done and have it set aside before getting ready to make the filling. Still, it was no way near as bad as puff pastry.

It was pretty straight forward preparing the filling. The potatoes had to be sliced, soaked and cooked, the leeks cooked briefly in a saucepan with butter.

The cheese, sour cream and other ingredients were mixed together, then the leeks were added.

By this stage I had lined my dish with pastry, so now it was just a matter of putting it all in there.

The recipe said to put alternating layers of leek & cheese to potato so it ending up like:

cheddar

potato

leek&cheese

potato

leek&cheese

potato

pastry

Then into the oven it went.

It was served with a generous helping of vegetables. One big slice for four people left more than half remaining in the dish.

It was incredibly rich. The leeks were lovely and soft, There were a lot of different textures and flavours coming together to make it a real joy. Nutty pastry, gooey cheddar, leeks and soft potato. Once again it got the family seal of approval.

I even had enough to take a slice to work later in the week. A colleague there has fairly decent baking skills so gave my little slice a quick once over. She said the pastry was a little under-cooked in places, but overall it looked really good and she was very impressed that I made the pastry from scratch.

That’s all, hoping I get some time to make another creation soon. I’m thinking i’ll go with a sweet pie, but we will have to wait and see…

Sorry I have been inactive for a while. I am not living at home so I don’t have Pie making tools with me. However at the beginning of next month I should be going back home and have my stuff so I can get back to making pies.

Mushroom, Gouda and Goat’s Cheese Galettes

I finished these on Wednesday, they were great!

Super tasty, the butter puff pastry was easy to make (It was colder!) and although the ingredients list was long it was just a matter of following instructions.

I have to thank my mum for finishing it off for me as I had to go to training. She sliced the mushrooms and baked the galettes.

They came out looking excellent! This is definitely one I would do again in the future.

Walnut and Manuka Honey Tart with Orange Greek Yogurt: Pastry Panic, and why you shouldn’t stress the little things

Monday afternoon

Pastry should be made on a cold day.

Advice I’d probably heard, but had definitely not considered yesterday. It wasn’t even that hot, but the benchtop had been in the sun the whole day which is likely to have warmed things up somewhat.

Had I considered that, I may have been a little less stressed when trying to make the basic sweet pastry.

Having read over le recette a few days earlier, I saw basic sweet pastry and thought it would be another walk in the park like the pastry for the praline tart.

Well it wasn’t quite like that.

Carried on from Tuesday

ingredients mixed together without issue, but I noticed the texture was already different when I had a dough formed and the recipe was mentioning a paste. hmmmm. I refrigerated it for an hour or so, which should have been longer.

When it came time to rolling, I had more issues. No matter how much flour I kept adding, the pastry would stick to either the rolling pin or benchtop. It was definitely not as simple as I’d hoped.

It wouldn’t stay together long enough for me to place it into the tart tray so I just had to put strips in and push it into place, similar to how you might make a paper mache thing. Then it had a good couple of hours in the fridge in it’s tart shape.

I used all of the pastry which apparently you weren’t supposed to do, according to the recipe. So I was feeling pretty stressed at this point as I thought the pastry would be a disaster.

I took a break from the pastry and made the orange zest yoghurt, which was a breeze.

I baked it, and it came out crispyish but still soft in places. And then it started leaking fat. Another reminder to use less butter next time.

fat seepage. uh oh

The filling was a lot easier. Butter melted, added manuka honey, sugar and cream. Not toffee disasters like I had with the Praline tart. Chopped up the walnuts then mixed them in.

Then the two were combined.

Wednesday

Into the oven it went, but not before we found something that shouldn’t have been in the oven.

burnt and cracked after being left in the oven to dry. fortunately there’s a spare

Finally it could come out and it was really looking quite good.

The filling was a little wobbly, so it was left in the fridge for a while. I was off to see Godzilla so the rest of the family would be getting to try the tart before me.

When I came home (Godzilla was really good too) I had found they had already been into it. However they had forgotten to use the yoghurt! Well, I did not make that mistake. And the yoghurt really did make it. The tart is incredibly sweet, so the unsweetened yoghurt took away some of that but added a lovely orange flavour to it.

I took some photos of it on Monday morning too.

 

Quite happy with how the photos and the tart turned out. Despite the worries I had with the pastry It ended up being pretty good. A little sticky, but it does the job.

Sorry I have taken forever to get this up, I haven’t had a lot of time to write the last few days. Tonight will be a new recipe though, Mushroom, Gouda and Goat’s Cheese Galettes.

I’ve also remembered I will be house sitting for most of June, so I don’t know if I will be able to do any recipes while I’m away from home. We will see though, right now it’s all about the Galettes.

Tomato and Thyme Tarte Tatin: My first inversion

I’m just finishing off a piece of the praline chocolate tart from last time. I’m surprised it’s lasted this long!

Last night’s project was of course, the Tomato and Thyme Tarte Tatin. I’m going to build up to the finale for this one because I have a short video of the heart in the mouth moment when it gets inverted.

So I went with this vegetarian option because I needed to try making my first tatin, and had already made a dessert recipe so this slightly less conventional option worked for me.

I got started on the olive butter puff pastry at 3. Having learnt many lessons from my first butter puff encounter, I did a much better job this time round.

Sliced up the olives, and mixed them in with the flour, butter and salt. Then water and lemon juice. Took a while for it to start forming a single dough but I got there in the end.

Then, I had to roll it out into a 25 cm square. This time I did everything on the bench top making it a lot easier.

To get the right measurements I had to use a ruler again. But this time I had a rather brilliant idea.

I had to lightly flour the rolling area, so I thought why not use the flour for my square outline?

My flour border

It worked perfectly.

Before rolling.

Perfect 25cm pastry square

After my flour eureka moment, my feelings could be summed up like this:

I’m sure someone has done it before, but damn if it didn’t feel good.

Anyway, then the butter had to be bashed and flattened into a square to fit within the pastry square. I then had to make a pastry envelope like this:

An example of a perfect pastry envelope

Compared to my first puff pastry attempt, I completely nailed it this time.

And once this was done, it was onto the rolling, folding ‘fridgeratin 5 step process.

The pastry was the hardest part really (apart from the inverting, coming soon).

12 medium tomatoes, sprinkled with thyme, doused in balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with parmesan cheese.

I admit I didn’t have thyme sprigs or leaves so just used the dried stuff from the spice rack. And the parmesan wasn’t fresh. No real chef I know.

Once that was done, I could bring out my pastry.

I found out that I only needed half the pastry I made, so I have another half in the freezer. Not sure what I’ll use it for, maybe another tatin? We’ll see.

I also realised I didn’t have an oven proof frying pan so used the same dish I used for the coriander chicken pie.

The seasoned tomatoes went in, then were covered by the pastry and sprinkled with the remaining parmesan.

Before baking

Feeling pretty good about it. I knew the inverting was still to come, but didn’t think I’d have much to worry about.

Into the oven it went for 25 minutes and it came out looking superb.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos before inverting.

I let it stand for a few minutes and then prepared myself.

I put down a chopping board onto the bench and rested the dish there. Slipped on my mis-matching oven mitts and went through a few practice runs. It was crunch time. This was the moment that decided if we were having tatin for dinner or a tomato pastry slop.

Enjoy:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwwqtkHgpnWZQ01nR2ZSQWMzcEk/edit

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Some spillage, slight tatin movement but stayed intact and looks very similar to the recipe image. 8/10

Sister couldn’t wait for a slice

Up close and pastry

 

So it came off! I was initially terrified when the juices started coming out, but it was okay!

Unfortunately I had to go to football practice in the rain, so my chance to savour it came 2 hours after it came out of the oven.

But it was worth the wait. The tomatoes burst on the slightest touch and were so succulent. The balsamic vinegar, thyme and parmesan gave it amazing flavour.

But the pastry was the real winner. Goodness. Just incredible. The flavour from the olives was out of this world. It wasn’t too greasy and it still had a lovely, light flaky texture. A winner all round. And I’ve got more in the freezer!

There you are, my tale of tomato, thyme, tarte and tatin. Hope you enjoyed it.

Next one: Tomato and Thyme Tarte Tatin

Had the family try the Praline Tart last night, got excellent responses. Loved the contrast between crunchy praline and smooth chocolate and Ganache filling. Still a bit left for after dinner tonight!

 

Have decided that tomorrow night I will go for the Tomato and Thyme Tarte Tatin. Apart from the puff pastry, it should be fairly straight forward I think. Given my last experience with butter puff pastry,  I think I’ll use slightly less butter than suggested in the recipe as last time it really was too buttery I think.

Anyway, I’m excited about it and you can look forward to my next post in the next few days hopefully!

Pecan praline and chocolate tart: Where does the time go

I had a great post all set up for my latest PIE creation. Unfortunately, when trying to get a photo in the page seemed to crash on me, losing the few hundred words I’d already done. Not fun at all.

 

So now I can add another thing I’ve learnt. Always save your work! (obviously the daily reminders in high school and university didn’t get through to me)

 

So the tart. I had to wait 18 and a half hours before I got to try it! In future I think adding up the preparation time hours might be a useful thing to do so I know what I’m getting into. A simple pastry and a short filling list does not mean it’s going to be a walk in the park!

Having started at 3:00 pm on Sunday, it wasn’t until 9:30 Monday morning that I got to taste my PPC tart.

The pastry making began at 3:00 on Sunday afternoon. Pretty straight forward and it was in the fridge for the first time at 4:00.

After an hour or so, the pastry ball came out and was shaped into the tart tin. Then back into the fridge.

An hour (or so) later, it came back out and I baked it blind, although I didn’t feel my vision was impaired too much. groan.

Then the praline filling creation began. Brought the sugar and water together over heat, roasted the pecans and drizzled the caramelized syrup over the nuts.

It was as easy as it sounded in the recipe.

It was a bloody fiasco.

Dean’s recipe says:

“Mix sugar and water in a small saucepan and stir over a medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil, cook until caramel in colour (6-8 minutes), then pour over peacans. Stand until set (10 minutes) then blend in a food processor until finely ground.”

You could say this is what happened when I tried it. But I feel it would lack a few key details.

The caramelized syrup hardened very quickly after pouring it onto the nuts. I was left with a hardened, sticky clump of candied pecans and heaps of those fibres you see in candy floss machines. After nearly breaking a knife trying to separate the toffee train wreck, it had to go into the oven to soften it up enough just so it could be broken up and put into the blender.

Somewhat smashed up, but still glued together.

Even the blender struggled to separate it. It took several attempts and many goes at it with a knife to get it resembling ‘finely ground’.

After that, the milk chocolate cream mixture came together without a hitch. I added two thirds of the ground pecans and mixed it in. The pastry came in from the cold and the nutty chocolatey goodness was poured in.

Anyone fancy a chocolate bath?

Then, back into the fridge it went for over 90 minutes.

There wasn’t much to do at this point so I watched ‘Making New Zealand’ on Prime. A lovely show, they really need more historical documentary stuff like it on TV. It was pretty neat seeing how they built some of the biggest roading projects in the country and hearing the old men wax lyrical about the good old days.

Back to the Tart. I got onto the last part, the Ganache Topping. Bring cream and dark chocolate together. Stir until smooth. Easy.

Nope. Somehow, probably too much heat, the fat separated from the creamy part and I had to drain a whole lot of it down the sink. But it kept seeping out and the mixture kept shrinking. So I had no choice but to bring out the pastry and filling then spread my fat-seeping Ganache on it. Isn’t that nice imagery.

Back in the fridge for it’s final time, I had to wait at least an hour until it would be ready. Watched Pan’s Labyrinth again, great movie. Despite having studied it in English at high school, I could still watch it and not feel like I was re-living some NCEA essay on the significance of  film themes. Blah.

By the time the tart was ready again, everybody had gone to bed. So it would wait until morning.

I managed to hold off until after breakfast, and at 9:30 I was finally able to taste the fruits of my labour.

It was mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Soo good. The praline, despite having some toffee like chunks, it heavenly. An excellent combination of rich chocolate and pecan flavour. The remainder of the praline sprinkled on top gave it a crunchy texture which really complemented the smooth praline and ganache. The pastry itself is great too, it’s firm but not too hard and has a nice biscuity flavour.

Before eating it though, I took my tart on a morning photoshoot. Hope you enjoy it. Much better photos than I’ve had previously.

Enjoying some sun

Uncut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflection and looking ahead

So with the first pie done and dusted I can start thinking about the next one. I’m keen to try my hand at a sweet pie and Dean’s book has plenty of them.

Just a thought, if you’re keen to find out a bit more about Dean here’s his website: http://www.globalbaker.com/index.htm

So fancy! I didn’t actually know anything about the guy until I looked at his website today. He has his own shows! That might actually make me watch them too!

Back to my next pie. There are so many amazing, mouth watering options in the book. slabs, tarts, pies, shortbread. It’s all there.

So after a quick flick through I decided.

Drum roll please.

It’s going to be Pecan Praline and Chocolate Tart!

Photo from Dean’s book of the tart, taken from livingnorth.com

Why this one? Well they all look and sound incredible, I just have to start somewhere. It does require chocolate sweet pastry which sounds like fun.

I’m thinking I’ll do this one Sunday.

For a quick bit of reflection. I’ve realised making pies is actually a lot of fun. It can be kinda hard and at times tedious but the rewards are awesome. Maybe not the expanding wasitline though.

How do I feel about the pie shop? Well, I’ll have to find ways to make pies a whole lot faster If I’m ever going to do them on an industrial scale. Maybe, sometime in the future once I’ve got further ahead with the recipes and I have a better Idea of where I’m headed, then maybe i can think about getting some experience in a real bakery. Who knows, right now then only thing on my mind is that Praline tart. Mmmmm