There's custard...

...and then there's custard.


I'm not going to sugar coat things or wax too nostalgic about My Darling One: the man was an unwilling cook who relied heavily on Bachelor Chow: big box frozen foods, insta this and canned that. Don't get me wrong: when he did cook from scratch, it was very good -- spaghetti, lasagne, chicken oporto, and I'm told his trifle (I never got to try any as there was never any left for me to try--he took a full bowl to the office at Christmas, and it came back disappointingly empty). Those dishes appeared every so often, but mostly, if he made me a meal, it was usually what is known as Bachelor Chow.


When time came to clean out his pantry, a bachelor friend took much of the BC, a few things were kept (rice, pasta, oatmeal) and the rest was binned. One of the few things I kept was a cannister of Bird's Custard--a staple of the aforementioned trifle.


As someone who's only made...um...real custard, I was curious about this white cornstarchy mix that's famous for transforming into an unnaturally yellow pudding and sauce. I mean, how difficult is it to make custard? (Answer: Not very, as is evidenced by my ability to turn out a pretty yummy vanilla ice cream.).


Well...I made some to go with some individual apple crumbly crispy things.


Would I sound terribly boastful to say my home made custard is yummier--richer, vanilla-ier and, well, oomphier than the powdered purveyance? The colour didn't help matters much--I don't think mine comes anywhere close to that particular shade (unless I dribbled in some colourant).


That's not to say that the cannister will find its way into the bin. I have a few recipes that call for a spoon of custard powder here and there to flavour fillings or cookies...and besides, sometimes truly instant pudding is what a soul needs.

The individual apple crisps were the main point of dessert, no mere vehicle for the sauce. I don't really follow any real recipes when making them: half to a whole tart apple, peeled and sliced, with a spoon of jam or maple syrup in each ramekin.


The topping is really easy (and uses pinhead oats)--this amount was fine for six individual ramekins. Please note I'm pretty free-wheeling when it comes to making this...sometimes there's more flour and less oats, sometimes put spices in sometimes there's barely any butter...it all depends on my mood...and my pantry:


25g plain flour
100g brown sugar
40g rolled oats
15g pinhead oats
50g soft butter (or more, or less, depending on your mood)



Rub the topping ingredients together and spoon over apples before baking.


cheers!
jasmine

On My Shelves: The Sweet Melissa Baking Book

Thanks to the kind people at Viking Studio/Penguin USA, I found a copy of Melissa Murphy's The Sweet Melissa Baking Book in my hot little hands.

The Sweet Melissa Baking Book: Recipes form the Beloved Bakery for Everyone’s Favorite Treats
By Melissa Murphy
Viking Studio (Penguin Group USA Inc)
240 pages; $27.00


I’m a bit of a sucker for baking books. Big, little, pie-centric, cake-focussed, full-colour and glossy, home made and photocopied, around the world in 400 pages, wham, bam, bake it ma’am—if I’m not careful my rickety shelves would tumble under the weight of those instructions that list piebirds, spring-form pans and recommend strips of baking parchment. They don’t have to be patisserie-perfect, but it’s usually a treat to read tips and tricks of those who’ve dedicated a part of their lives in pursuit of all things made of fat, flour and sugar (with the occasional fruit or nut tossed in for good measure). Melissa Murphy’s collection of her bakeshop’s treats, The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, gives fans—and those of us who’d like to be fans, but for want of a transporter aren’t—the ability to turn our home ovens into satellites of her famed patisserie.

A graduate of New York’s French Culinary Institute, Melissa Murphy is the chef-owner of the Sweet Melissa Pâtisseries in Brooklyn, New York. Her bake shops have been featured in such publications a Food and Wine and The New Yorker, and she has contributed articles to such magazines as Bride’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and Pastry Arts & Design. Sweet Melissa Patisseries won the 2007 Zagat Marketplace Award for "Best Tarts and Pies" in New York.

Murphy’s 100-plus recipes are sectioned into six: breakfasts, snacks, cakes, fruits, special desserts and candies, all (I assume) from her pâtisseries. Photographs are few and far between—eight full-colour images illustrating a handful of recipes along with half a dozen black and white bakeshop shots—treats in their natural habitat, if you will. The limited illustrations may turn off some potential book owners and perhaps some of the inexperienced or even insecure home bakers, but I think the focus on text is exactly where it should be.

My proclivities lead me not to care what a food stylist does with a slice of cake or the lighting glinting off a fresh berry. I care more about the taste and ease of preparation; the latter is directly linked to the quality and clarity of written instruction. Murphy’s instructions are generally well-considered and ordered making it easy to attempt any of her sweet (and the occasionally savoury) treats. The recipes are easily adaptable to the baker’s palate as she sometimes offers variants to main recipes. Her Chocolate Orange Macaroons (p74) morph into Lemon Macaroons, while her Sweet Muffins recipe (p4) comes with four filling suggestions—Fresh Peach, Strawberry Muffins with Fresh Lemon and Rosemary, Orange Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Crumble and Pear Cranberry Muffins with Gingersnap Crumble.

Murphy’s text offers hints, tips and professional advice—things that many home bakers seek out. Some sections have dedicated pages of advice: in “It’s Somebody’s Birthday!: Special Layer Cakes” Murphy’s seven-page introduction includes words of wisdom about assembling layer cakes, both split and unsplit layer cakes, while “What Will We Do With All This Fruit?” includes four pages that discuss flour, fats, water and techniques for pastry-making. Many recipes include “Pro Tips” such as how to make your own vanilla sugar or what sort of bread to use in bread puddings.

For the most part, this is a good book but there are a few caveats. The first is a general warning about sweetness. Yes, I know this is a baking book, filled with lovely sweetie cakes, squares and pies, but I found the treats to be a bit too sweet for my liking. In each of the sweet recipes I tried, I could have very, very easily reduced the amount of sugar by about 25 per cent and not have undermined the yumminess of the final product. Related to this is my second concern: in this day and age where focus is put on childhood obesity, the rise of Type Two Diabetes and the general free-wheeling of sugar in the North American diet, I found “After-School Snacks” bordering on irresponsible—parents I know would not make these available to children between home time and supper because they’d be so wired (and yes, I know these really are treats and hopefully no parent would regularly provide these goods to their children, but to call them “after school snacks” is really too much). The final thing I didn’t care for was the lack of baking times and temps in the pie recipes. I suppose Murphy thought that as bakers would follow the pastry recipes found on other pages, they’d naturally flip back and forth—I found it annoying and would prefer to have the oven and timer info with the actual recipe. Oh, yes, add my usual displeasure about the use of volume metrics for flour, sugar etc.

And which recipes did I try? This is a book of temptation, to which I succumbed:

Butterscotch Cashew Bars (p54)
Incredibly easy but far too sweet—the butterscotch topping could be halved or quartered and attain a sweet-salty balance. Murphy suggests the quantity was sufficient for 24 bars, written—I cut it into 30 bars and still found it too sweet (even my sugar-loving colleagues thought it was sugar overload).




Carrot Cake with Fresh Orange Cream Cheese Frosting (p 114)
Moist moist moist and not heavy like many carrot cakes I’ve tried. The orange zest in the cream cheese frosting was delicious. I’ve since returned to the frosting recipe, cut down the sugar a bit and substituted extract for zest. The cake will probably be a regular star from my kitchen…probably as muffins.

Double-crusted Caramel Apple Pie (p 156) made with Flaky Pie Dough (p137)
Murphy recommends plain flour for the crust, instead of pastry flour. The crust was flaky enough and wasn’t at all chewy. I will give her full points for the caramel sauce instructions. I have never been able to make an edible caramel before, but I followed her instructions and produced a luscious caramel sauce that rivalled (and dare I say surpassed) any I’ve had from the shops or restaurants.

Savory Muffins: Bosc Pear, Blue Cheese and Walnut Muffins (p8)
This is a variant of the only savoury recipe in the book—which is why I made them. Oh my word these were good—the flavour combination is classic and just ever-so elegant.

The Sweet Melissa’s Baking Book is a good general-purpose sweetie baking book. The flavour combinations are fresh and inspired and will make anyone who follows her instructions a favoured baker.

So how does it rate?
Overall: 3.75/5

The breakdown:
Recipe Selection: 4/5
Writing: 3.5/5
Ease of use: 3.5/5
Yum factor: 4/5
Table-top test*: Pretty much lies flat

Kitchen comfort-level: Novice-intermediate
Pro: Good kitchen tips make these sweet tips accessible to even neophyte bakers.
Con: A little heavy handed with the sugar, but easily fixable.

* I was reminded that a cookbook writer friend judged a cookbook partially on its ability to lie flat on a table, without without (eek!!) cracking the spine. Hey…who really wants to fight to keep a book open while trying to sort out its instructions?

cheers!
jasmine

Pi Day: Tomato and gruyère tart

My maths teachers would be proud...and confused.

Let's face it, I was not known for my stellar work with numbers...English, history, science, geography, French--pretty much anything other that maths and phys. ed and the machine-assisted sewing part of Home Ec, I happily claimed a small part of. Anything and everything beyond BEDMAS made my head hurt...a lot.

Now, ironically, one of the things I've developed a reputation for (at least amongst vendors who works with me) is my somewhat quick and usually annoyingly airtight ability to cut through smarmy numbers...yeah, I'm a favourite in some circles...

Maybe there is a mathy in me screaming to get out. I'm sure it has to do with all my baking and cooking...yet another reason why people should bake more chocolate cakes and make more ice cream...

So when Alanna of Kitchen Parade announced a foodish twist to Pi Day (look at my posting date (omitting the year), if you don't get it), I planned to seize this opportunity to continue making peace with my inner mathy...

Ah...the best laid plans of mince and mandolines...Life got busy so I couldn't bake specifically for this event. I pretty much gave up on participating, until I remembered a tart I made last summer I didn't blog about...

In May I blogged about Georgeanne Brennan's sweet memoir A Pig In Provence, with plans to try a few more recipes. One of which was her Tomato Tart.

Her instructions were quite easy--roll out the crust, fill it and bake it--all done with a voice of someone who's very experienced and matter-of-fact in the kitchen. Quantities aren't specific--you just add as much much as makes sense, season to taste and then bake at the required temp until done.

I didn't want to use a wheat-based crust for my version, instead wanting something that was a little different and had a bit of a texture. Then I remembered Nigella's pastry recipe for tomato tarts used cornmeal...well, I didn't have to go much further than that.

I'll be honest and admit to forgetting if I had to fiddle with quantities for my 30cm fluted tin-- Nigella's is for eight 12cm individually-portioned tarts--but somehow I don't think I had to adjust things. I do recall deciding to form the crust as Edna Staebler used to, by pressing the dough directly into the tin, instead of the usual roll, drape and trim.

I do remember the tart. The crust was crisp and the cornmeal's texture was a nice crunchy-crispy contrast to the soft and gooey cheesey-tomatoey filling. It was the right thing, paired with a leafy salad, for a light supper.

Tomato and Gruyère Tart
Inspired by Georgeanne Brennan's A Pig in Provence and Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess

for the Pastry
125g pastry flour
60g cornmeal
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
115g butter
25g shortening
iced water

For the filling
prepared Dijon mustard
sliced tomatoes
grated Gruyère
salt
pepper
thyme
olive oil


Mix the dry ingredients together, then rub in the fats until the mixture reminds you of coarse breadcrumbs. Sprinkle in enough water so the pastry comes together into a dough. Pat into a disc, wrap in cling and let it sit in the fridge for about half an hour.

When the dough has rested, take it out and press it to about 0.5cm/1/2" thickness into a 30cm x 2.5 cm/12"x1" tart pan. Pop it back into the fridge for another 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Spread a thin layer of mustard on the pastry base. Snug in the tomato slices and sprinkle with thyme, salt and pepper. Spread the cheese over top and drizzle with the oil and sprinkle with more thyme, salt and pepper.

Bake until the cheese is golden and the tomatoes have softened--about 25 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool for about 15-20 minutes before serving.

cheers!
jasmine

Daring Bakers: Lemon Meringue Pie

I think the kitchen gawds have forsaken me...or at the very least, Zao Jun was on a coffee break when I constructed this month's challenge.

This time around, our very own Jen of The Canadian Baker challenged us to make a lemon meringue pie. What a great idea--perhaps it's the foofy meringue, but I've always viewed meringue pies with a whimsical eye. And what could be better with whimsy, but a couple of girlfriends, a hearty lunch, a pot of tea and a good old-fashioned natter?

This pie could have marked my return to kitchen pottering but, in reality, this pie tested my scullery resolve. Quite honestly, if I were a weaker sort, I'd probably have thrown in the towel and headed to the bigscarymegamart for a "home style pie." Yup this pie was as obstinate as a goat...which would have been fine if it were a chevre tart. But it wasn't.

Since I don't have a food processor, my little fingertips usually busy away, rubbing fat into flour until it feels right. Hestia must have sensed my cockiness and decided to knock me down a peg or two...by virtue of a shard of butter. A bamboo shoot-like shard of butter. A bamboo shoot-like shard of butter that rammed itself under my thumbnail, separating it from the quick.

I shrieked. I jumped. I bled....but not into the pastry.

After I washed off my digit and staunched the bleeding I returned to the pastry. It chilled well and it rolled out well. I got it into the pan in one piece.

As I pondered edge fluting, the pie plate fell off the counter and landed crust side up, disposable plate dented. Gingerly I placed the sheet of dough onto an undented plate...and I gingerly tore it. My futile attempts to fix the rip left me with an ultimatum: toss the dough or re-roll it. Quite honestly, I was short on butter so I re-rolled it, totally accepting the inevitably tough crust which would result.

After chilling it...and chilling out a bit...I blind baked it. It looked fine when I took the pie weights off and returned it to the oven. Five minutes later it ballooned like a puffer fish--I'd forgotten to dock the crust. I quickly evacuated it from mum's oven and refashioned the foil and weights. After a slightly-longer-than-called-for bake, the crust looked beautiful.

That jubilant feeling would be short-lived. Sure the cornstarch, sugar and water came together to a lovely opalescent and viscous consistency, but I was sure I was forgetting something as I stood stirring...staring at the whole lemons on the counter. Yup...standing and stirring and staring...at the lemons that should have been zested and juiced.

And there I was with my owie thumb.

Needless to say, I quickly juiced the fruit before I looked at the naked pith from the inner hulls of two lemon halves...as black as ink. Before she left for India, My Darling Little Mummy told me to use those lemons...I just didn't realise I should have used them the day after she left, instead of two weeks later. Thank goodness I brought four extra lemons...

The next day my two friends arrived for lunch. No problems, I thought. All I have to do is plop the filling into the shell, make the meringue and bake the blessed thing.

So I preheat Beelzebub.

Beelzebub does not preheat.

I fiddle with the knobs. My friends fiddle with the knobs. Nothing. We continue on for a great lunch while my disassembled pie remains in the kitchen, disassembled.

Ten minutes after one of my guests leaves, Beelzebub decides he's needed.

Quickly I pulled the meringue together. Big and frothy, white and poofy I shwooped it onto the filled crust and bunged it into Beelzebub's gaping maw. He was in fine form. Too fine. I had to pull out the pie a tad early as the shwoops threatened to turn from a honeyed brown to charcoal black.

I sliced wedges for my remaining guest and myself, serving it with some home-made blueberry coulis. My worries about the crust were unnecessary--yes, it wasn't as tender as I prefer, but it was pretty good. The luscious sunshiney filling was not too sweet and not too tart. But the meringue was exquisite--sweet and almost marshmallowy-soft with the slightest little crisp on top.

To read what the other DBs did with this challenge, take a meander through our blogroll.

cheers!
jasmine

tags: "Daring Bakers" lemons "Pies and Tarts"