Summer Berry Tart

The town where I grew up has a lot of agricultural areas, so I could always get fresh berries this time of the year. The house that I lived in until I was 5 had many blueberry bushes in the back yard. It seemed like we had tons and tons of blueberry bushes, but I was 5 and I really have no idea how many bushes there were. I do remember that there were spiders in the bushes and I don’t like spiders!

My husband was at Whole Foods the other day and noticed that they had ½ flats of a combination of raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries from a local farm. I happen to drive by this particular farm when I go and visit my parents, so I was really happy to buy berries that I actually knew where they had been grown. We used up some of the berries but still had about half of them left. This recipe calls for precisely the amount of berries we had left. I even had graham crackers on hand so I could make the crust.

I just happened to have the combination of berries that the recipe called for, but you could use 6 cups of any berries that you might happen to have. I also used apricot preserves rather than red currant or apple jelly. It worked just fine. Pureeing the berries was the easy part, straining them through a sieve was tough! This took a bit of patience, but I eventually extracted all of the puree. My puree thickened almost immediately, so I didn’t cook the mixture for 7 minutes. Don’t skimp on the lemon juice, it really adds a lot.

It had been a bit of a baking madhouse at our place when I made this tart, and I was actually worried that the tart had spoiled before I had a chance to try it. The recipe says that it keeps for just a day or so, but this tart was still good 4 days after making it. I’m so glad that it was still good because this tart is excellent. It doesn’t have very much sugar, so you get the natural tartness of the berries shining through. The puree is very intense but really adds everything to the tart. My crust fell apart a little bit, but I think I could have done a better job pressing the crumbs into the pie plate. This was a great tart and was the perfect way to use summer berries.

2 cups raspberries

2 cups blackberries

2 cups blueberries

½ cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons red current or apple jelly

Graham Cracker Crust

1-1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs

5 tablespoons butter, melted

2 tablespoons sugar

To prepare the crust:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Combine the graham cracker crumbs, melted butter and sugar. Pour the crumbs into a 9 inch pie plate. Using the bottom of a measuring cup, press the crumbs into an even layer on the bottom and side of the pan. Bake until the crust begins to brown, 15-20 minutes. Cool completely.

Gently toss the berries together. Puree 2-1/2 cups of the berries in a food processor until very smooth. Strain the puree through a fine-mesh strainer into a small saucepan, pressing on the seeds to extract as much puree as possible.

Whisk the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together, the whisk the mixture into the puree. Bring the puree to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Cook until the mixture is thick, about 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Set aside to cool slightly.

Melt the jelly in a small saucepan and drizzle over the remaining berries. Toss gently to coat. Pour the slightly cooled puree into the cooled pie crust. Top with the jelly-coated berries. Cover the pie loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled and the puree has set, about 3 hours.

Recipe from America’s Test Kitchens Family Cookbook

Chocolate Ginger Brownies

When I am picking cookies to make for Fridays, I usually consider how many cookies the recipe makes. Since I usually take my cookies to work to share with my coworkers, I want to make sure that there are enough for everyone to share. During the summer fewer people are at work so I can make some of those recipes that make a much smaller batch. These cookies bake in an 8-inch square pan, so it only makes about 16 brownies. I figured that would be plenty to take to work on a Friday in the summer.

These brownies are a variation on a one bowl brownie, in this case a one saucepan brownie. This has added gingerroot, ground ginger, cloves and nutmeg. These are very quick and easy to make, just melt the butter and chocolate together and then stir in the other ingredients. The batter was easy to stir together, but it did seem a little oily. I had a little trouble knowing when the brownies were done, as they seemed to be undone in the center but the edges looked done.

When I cut the brownies, they did seem a little under baked. The brownie stuck to the knife so they didn’t cut cleanly. I would refrigerate the brownies before cutting, which I think would help make them easier to cut. The edges were overdone and they were fairly dry. I thought that the ginger and the other spices would have been stronger, but they added a very subtle spice. I really like ginger and I wanted that flavor to be more pronounced. They are a good brownie, nice and moist with a good chocolate flavor, but not something extraordinary. If you are looking for a quick brownie, these are for you. If you want a very gingery brownie, I would suggest adding some diced candied ginger and upping the ground ginger.

½ cup butter

3 ounces bittersweet chocolate

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup flour

¼ cup cocoa powder

2 eggs

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

½ teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cloves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter an 8 inch square pan and line the bottom with parchment, allowing 2 inches to hang over the sides of the pan. Butter the parchment.

Melt butter and chocolate in a large saucepan over low heat. Remove from the heat and stir in the remaining ingredients. Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs.

Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes and then lift the brownies out of the pan and cool completely.

Recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cookies

Brioche Plum Tart

Denise of Chez Us picked this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. She selected the Brioche Plum Tart. Please visit Denise’s blog for the complete recipe. This is a bit of a different tart, instead of using tart dough you make brioche dough to use as the base. I substituted pluots (a hybrid of a plum and an apricot) since that was what I could find at the store. My pluots were much larger than what Dorie used, as I only used 3 pluots. Dorie used many, many more plums in the original recipe. Also, since I was using a plum/apricot hybrid, I used apricot preserves instead of plum jam.

The recipe says that you can make good brioche dough as long as you have a good mixer and some patience. Since it is summer, I have a little more time to spend baking. That’s a good thing since this tart took over 5 hours from start to finish. It’s been a while since I’ve made anything with yeast, and I forgot how time consuming baking with yeast can be. This seemed to take especially long, as you do a very lengthy second rise, which takes about 2 hours. After the initial rise, Dorie has you place the dough in the refrigerator and chill for 30 minutes, then you deflate the dough, and repeat. For a total of 2 hours or until the dough stops rising.

Once you finally get through this step, you shape the dough into a tart pan and refrigerate another 30 minutes. Finally you spread the dough with the jam/preserves and arrange the fruit on top. This bakes for just 30 minutes, which seems really fast after you’ve spent all of that time waiting for the dough to rise. The recipe has you place the tart pan on a baking sheet while baking, which is a very necessary step! The preserves complete bubbled over and it would have been one big mess in my oven had I not had the baking sheet to catch the drips.

I really liked the combination of the plums and the apricot jam in this tart. It is sweet because of the preserves, but not overly so. The brioche had a great texture and the flavor was good. I don’t think that I had made brioche before and it was very good. This method takes a long time, but in reality it isn’t that labor-intensive. The kneading is done in the mixer, so really all you have to do is pat down the dough every so often. I know that yeast breads don’t normally keep very well, but I really hope that it will keep long enough for me to have some of the leftovers for breakfast the next few days.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 54-55.

Cashew Ginger Bars

There is such a long story to these bar cookies. I think I have mentioned before that my husband’s family is British. We were in England for Christmas 2002 and his aunt gave me this cookbook. It has really interesting cookies with different flavors. I was excited to try some of the bar cookies in this book until I realized what pan I needed to use: a 20 x 30 centimeter lamington pan.

Have you ever heard of a lamington pan? I certainly hadn’t, and any attempt to find one was unsuccessful. With some research (I am a librarian after all) I discovered that a lamington pan is a shallow baking pan. This cookbook is Australian in origin and I could find many lamington pans for sale through Australian sites, but I couldn’t find a place that would ship to the U.S. I figured any shallow baking pan would do, but finding something that is 20 x 30 centimeters (about 8” x 11”) just wasn’t happening.

Several years went by and I had basically given up on finding this pan. Recently I was in Williams Sonoma looking at their baking section and I noticed that they had a rectangular fluted tart pan that was listed as a 29 centimeter tart pan. The metal is a little thinner than a baking pan but it had shallow sides, and it looked like it may be about the right size. I had the sales associate measure the pan and it was 20 x 29 centimeters. Close enough for me! It wasn’t even very expensive, so I was thrilled.

The pan worked wonderfully! I did butter and line the pan as the recipe instructed, which was a little different as you wouldn’t normally grease a tart pan. These are so good! A ginger shortbread crust with a topping of cashews and candied ginger. The measurements for the butter are a little odd since I had to convert the measurement from grams. Also, if you can’t find golden syrup you could substitute light corn syrup or honey. These are super addictive. The ginger flavor is strong but not overpowering. I love ginger, but sometimes it can be too much. These were such a great success that I am looking forward to trying more recipes from this cookbook.

9 tablespoons butter, softened

¼ cup sugar

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ginger

Topping:

½ cup powdered sugar

4-1/2 tablespoons butter

1-1/2 tablespoons golden syrup

1 cup roasted, unsalted cashews, chopped

¼ cup finely chopped candied ginger

Lightly grease 20 x 30 cm lamington pan. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment, making sure that the parchment hangs over the sides of the pan. Butter the parchment. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (The recipe calls for a “moderate” oven, which is 350-375 degrees.)

Beat the butter and sugar in a large mixer bowl. Beat until fluffy. Stir in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and ground ginger. Press the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake for about 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool completely in the pan.

To prepare the topping, in a medium saucepan combine the powdered sugar, butter, and golden syrup. Stir over medium heat until the butter is melted; stir in the cashews and the candied ginger. Spread the topping over the cooled base, and then cool completely. Once cool, cut into bars.

Recipe from The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbooks: Biscuits and Slices

Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Lisa of Surviving Oz . She chose the Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies. Check out Lisa’s blog for the complete recipe. Lisa isn’t a regular Tuesday with Dorie blogger, but she recently won the Tuesdays with Dorie logo contest, so she got to select this week’s recipe. Lisa, she admits, is not a baker, but if you read her blog entry, she did very well making this week’s recipe!

These brownies are based on ones created by Katharine Hepburn. When Ms. Hepburn passed away, several incarnations of this brownie surfaced. This is Dorie’s inspiration. The brownies are very thin and fudgy, with very little flour. These have added pecans and chopped bittersweet chocolate. They also have cinnamon and instant espresso powder as flavor boosters. I used dark chocolate cocoa powder, so my brownies are especially dark. I liked that these were basically a one saucepan brownie. Not too many dishes to wash!

These were very quick to put together. Chopping the nuts and the chocolate took the longest. The recipe called for lining the bottom of the pan with parchment, but I decided to have the parchment hang over the sides so that I could remove the brownies from the pan easily. I am so glad that I did this, as it made cutting the brownies as easy as possible.

I had read some of the comments that the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers had made, and some of the others had said that there were too gooey when baked for the time specified in the recipe. The nature of these brownies makes it hard to test them in a traditional way, so you just kind of have to go with your gut. I decided to bake my brownies about 10 additional minutes. Others had commented that due to their fudgy nature, they were easier to cut when thoroughly chilled. I refrigerated the brownies quite a few hours before cutting them.

I’m not usually a fan of dark chocolate, but I really liked these brownies. Since I cut them when they were very cold, they cut perfectly. I liked the texture and the big chunks of chocolate and nuts. I think I added too much chocolate, but that’s not a bad thing. I had cut back on the quantity of instant espresso powder, since I didn’t want that to be too strong. You could still taste a hint of the coffee, but it wasn’t too strong. I have to say that these brownies ended up being one of my favorite recipes selected for Tuesdays with Dorie. Thanks for choosing such a great recipe Lisa!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 96.

Snickery Squares

These cookies were selected for the Tuesdays with Dorie group long before I joined, but they looked so good that I’ve had them on my list of cookies to make for a long time. They have all the flavors of a Snickers candy bar: chocolate, caramel, peanuts. All that over a cookie base, how could you go wrong?

The main component of the filling is dulce de leche, which is a very thick caramel topping. I have used this before in another recipe for sandwich cookies, but for some reason this time I had trouble finding it in the grocery store. I had picked up some regular caramel topping, but decided that it would be too thin to work in cookies. Luckily I was out with a friend and we stopped by Williams Sonoma and they had the stuff I needed.

The components of this cookie aren’t too complex, but there are a lot of steps. Probably the most complex thing that you have to do is caramelize the peanuts. I’ve caramelized things before, but you still have to be careful and make sure you don’t burn the caramel. The mixture can go from golden brown to burnt in no time. Luckily I didn’t have that problem. I did have one or two peanuts that got a little burned, but I just took those out and threw them away. Burnt peanuts don’t taste very good.

I allowed these to cool overnight in the refrigerator, which maybe was my problem. These cookies proved impossible to cut. With the hardened chocolate on the top and the soft caramel underneath, there was no way that these were going to get cut without the caramel squishing out all over. Looking at the picture in the cookbook, it looks like my chocolate topping is about twice as thick, which would make it more difficult to work with. I was able to get a few pieces out, but they were really, really sticky and messy. They do taste really good; I love all of the flavors together. Maybe if I had cut the bars right away it would have worked better.

1 cup flour

¼ cup sugar

2 tablespoons powdered sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 stick butter, cut into small pieces and chilled

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

Filling

1/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons water

1-1/2 cups salted peanuts

1-1/2 cups store bought dulce de leche

Topping

7 ounces bittersweet chocolate

½ stick butter, cut into 8 pieces, at room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan and set aside.

Put the flour, sugar, powdered sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Add the pieces of cold butter and pulse about 12 times, until the mixture looks like coarse meal. Add the egg yolk and pulse until the dough forms clumps, but stop before the dough comes together in a ball. Press the dough into the buttered pan and press it evenly across the bottom of the pan. Prick the dough with a folk all over. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until it starts to take on a little color around the edges. Cool to room temperature.

Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat and set aside. In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the sugar and water. Stir the mixture, over medium high heat, stirring constantly. When the mixture starts to color, add the peanuts and continue to stir over medium high heat until the peanuts are coated with a nice deep amber colored caramel. Spread the peanut mixture on the prepared baking sheet, ad thinly as possible. Once the nuts have cooled to room temperature, finely chop half of the nuts and keep the other half of the nuts in whole pieces.

Spread the dulce de leche over the baked crust and then top with the whole caramelized nuts.

To make the topping, melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler. Remove the chocolate from the heat and stir in the butter, mixing until the butter is fully blended into the chocolate. Pour the chocolate over the dulce de leche and smooth with a spatula. Top the chocolate with the chopped peanuts. Cool for at least 20 minutes in the refrigerator before cutting into bars.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Perfect Party Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection was picked by Carol of mix, mix… stir, stir. Visit her blog for the complete recipe. She picked Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake. The Perfect Party Cake is a lovely lemon-scented white cake with a snow white buttercream. Sandwiched between the cake layers is the buttercream and raspberry jam. The picture in the cookbook really is perfect. Hopefully my cake would turn out somewhat close to the picture. In making the cake, I realized that this cake was quite different from what I was accustomed to making.

The cake is very different from most other cakes that I have made. It only uses egg whites, which is not that unusual. Normally when you make a cake with egg whites, you beat them until they are stiff and fold in the flour. You don’t beat the egg whites for this cake; you just combine them with milk and alternate adding the liquid with the fry ingredients. Very different! The cake came together perfectly well, so I was hopeful. I know that some of the other TWD bloggers said that their cake didn’t rise very much. I have to say that was true for my cake as well. It didn’t rise as much as I had hoped, but it did rise enough.

The other difference was the buttercream icing. I’m used to making a very simple buttercream, which is little more that powdered sugar, butter, and milk. This is a meringue buttercream, which uses egg whites, granulated sugar, and three sticks of butter! This was so unusual for me, but I know there are many types of buttercream, so it’s good to have practice making something different. You beat the egg whites and sugar over a water bath until it is warm. I didn’t know how important this step was, so I followed the recipe exactly, heating the mixture for three minutes. You then whip the mixture and then after you have whipped it for a while you start adding the butter. It takes a while to add the three sticks of butter, but it came together surprisingly easy. After you add the butter you add lemon juice and vanilla. Then you beat the icing for about 10 minutes more, just for good measure. It had a nice texture and tasted good, so I considered it a successful buttercream.

Since my cake didn’t rise all that much, I decided not to split the layers. Dorie’s cake is 4 layers but I just had 2. I also used strained cherry preserves instead of raspberry. My preserves basically soaked into the cake, so you can hardly see it at all in the photo. It was also really hard to ice on top of the preserves, and I was glad I only had to do this on one layer and not three. Even though my cake didn’t rise very much, it had a wonderful texture. It was very spongy, which I really liked. The lemon flavor in the cake and in the icing was a little too strong for my taste, which is odd since I really like lemon. I think had I split the layers and used more raspberry (or cherry) preserves, that would have balanced the strong lemon flavor. Overall, I really liked this cake and I will definitely think about making it when I need a special cake to celebrate a birthday at work.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 250-252.