T: Tea Party (Bonus Post)

Tea for…more than two…

It was quite a while back but my last birthday was certainly one to remember.  I had a wonderful time that was spent with friends and family.  I went to a concert on the night of my actual birthday so I decided to host a little tea party beforehand in order to celebrate with those who could not make it to the show, as well as an attempt to class things up a bit.   

I grew up with my mother throwing beautiful afternoon teas so I wanted to see if I could do hers any justice.  Alice in Wonderland was my theme since it seemed like the obvious choice for a birthday celebration.  Tea was certainly served, as well as a plethora of edible goodies (featured after the jump), however I think the sparkling wine was probably the most popular beverage of the evening!

I started preparing for the party about five days in advance, doing a little bit every day, while trying to juggle that with my work schedule. I prepared some of the food items in advance and then placed them in the freezer. I also tried to get an early start with making the decorations and purchasing the necessary party supplies.  

       

R: Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Whoopie!!! We are back again!!! I have a backlog of blog-post drafts that I baked for and documented ages ago that I have been meaning to edit for about a year now (yikes!).  I will not make any excuses for the long hiatus but will just say that I am ready to put this blog back into full swing and will celebrate my intentional productivity with this Red Velvet Whoopie Pie recipe from Whoopie Pies by Viola Goren. 

Before making these whoopie pies, I had never made or tasted any red velvet recipe before.  For those who haven't either, it has a distinct cocoa flavour which I was a big fan of. They get their red colour from food colouring. I used food paste which is more saturated in colour and it doesn't take a lot to get a vibrant pigment. I found that the batter did not look as red as I thought it should, and so I used much more paste than the recipe called for. I find that the red pigment finally reveals itself  once the cakes are baked and that one really just needs to use the amount of paste that the recipe calls for. 

I used a special whoopie pie pan which gave the cakes a uniform shape since the batter is fairly runny, but you might be able to get away with not using one. I also found that the recipe for the filling made more than enough. I sandwiched a fair amount of it between the cakes and was left with quite a bit extra, so you might want to halve the recipe depending on your fondness for buttercream icing.

Enjoy!

P: Portuguese Custard Pies

"Oh Blog, once again you have been neglected for far too long. I truly do apologize. Things have been so busy with school and work and moving. I have finally found a moment to myself, as I leisurely sit in front of the TV watching the Food Network ('Cupcake Wars', to be specific...aka TV gold)"...

Anyway, this week on Alphabake we are featuring two recipes that start with the letter 'P'. "Two recipes?!?," you ask? Yes, dear reader, and just to let you know, currently in my books the letter 'P' stands for "pain", "problematic", "pest", etc. Maybe I am being  a tad dramatic, but you get the idea.

So, the first attempt to complete a recipe for letter 'P' was in the form of Peanut Butter and Sweet Banana Cookies from Anna Olson's Sugar: Simple Sweets and Decadent Desserts. It is a sandwich cookie recipe and unfortunately something went horribly wrong with the filling.  It must have been something I did because I can't imagine anyone writing a recipe so that it would purposefully taste so horrid. Basically I had to caramalize some bananas and the sugar must have burned. I didn't have it cooking for very long at all but it turned dark so quickly. I used oil instead of butter because I didn't have any left and I think that might have lead to the rapid burning...but I'm not sure. Even though the filling was horrible, the actual peanut butter cookies were amazing on their own so I've posted the recipe at the end of this entry  in case you want to just try making them (or even battle with getting the filling right).

About a week later I decided to try and tackle a new recipe. For quite a long time I had been eyeing one for Portuguese custard pies in Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef Takes Off.  They reminded me of my trip to Lisbon. I also recently saw them featured on Jamie's 30-Minute Meals so they couldn't be too time consuming, right? WRONG!!!  Ok, they weren't too difficult but they definitely took way longer than thirty minutes to make--at least they were super tasty.

My main problem was with the pie shells. The recipe calls for store-bought puff pastry which was easy enough but it took me a while to figure out how to bake it. In the book he uses glass tumblers, turns them upside down, greases and flours their bases, and then stretches and places the dough on top. On his TV show he baked them in a muffin tin. Since I didn't have any tumbler glasses I started with the muffin tin method. It was hard to roll out the dough because it tends to shrink back, and after it baked it formed a very shallow pie shell that wouldn't hold a lot of custard. I happened to have another roll of puff pastry so I started over and this time I took the muffin tin and flipped it upside down and stretched the dough over the cup bases and that seemed to work pretty well.  A couple of other small alterations I made to the recipe were that instead of using vanilla pods and fresh nutmeg, I used vanilla extract and ground nutmeg since that is what I had.

Once I figured out a good technique for making the tart shells, things were pretty simple (although making the custard filling took a little while) and the results were great. The pastry turned out really crispy and delicious and the slight citrus notes in the custard was really pleasant.  They were slightly different than the traditional custard pies I tried in Portugal, but definitely caputured their essence. Enjoy!

L: Lemon and Blueberry Cloud Tartlets

I have less than a week left in Edinburgh before I continue on with my travels. I will be making some stops in different places for a month and then I will fly back to Canada. That being said, I am going to try to push myself to produce as many recipes as possible before leaving the comforts of my apartment here..

This recipe once again comes from Tarts by Maxine Clark. Stupidly I didn't look at the recipe closely enough before scanning the page in Toronto. It refers to other pages in the book for making pate brisee  (for the crust) and also to explain how to "bake blind" which is just baking the pastry without the filling; it usually involves parchment paper and beans. These instructions can all be found on the internet but quite frankly I still don't have a food processor and just couldn't be bothered to make pastry so I bought some ready-made shortcrust pastry. Instead of using parchment and beans for "baking blind", I hung a little bit of the pastry over the edge of each ramekin so it wouldn't shrink when I baked it. I baked the crust on its own for approximately 5 minutes but a few more wouldn't have hurt.  For presentation, you can gently saw off this extra crust from the edge once it has been baked with the filling.

Luckily I was able to find ramekins that were quite cheap. If I didn't have any I probably would have used a larger baking dish and I would have baked the dessert at a slightly lower temperature and for longer. If you do have smaller individual dishes, they are much nicer for presentation and I'm not sure how well the tart would fare once sliced otherwise. 

All of my flatmates were very fond of the dessert. The result is an almost mousse-like, yet slightly more solid, texture...kind of like a soufflé. It tastes great no matter the temperature but serving it straight out of the oven is probably better for presentation.  As it cools, the filling sinks and starts to separate from the crust a little bit. 

On a slightly different note, I treated myself to a new camera lens (a Canon EF 50mm f 1.8) which is a bit of an upgrade from the one that came with the camera. It's ideal for portraits and still life so I hope you enjoy all the pictures below!

K: Key Lime Pie

Holy hiatus! I realize it has been a while since I last posted a recipe. My excuse is that I had projects and exams due, I was working, and friends and family were visiting (which was sooo nice).  However, I would like to say that I have tried to prove my dedication to this project by making this key lime pie twice!  I got the recipe from 200 Delicious Desserts by Sarah Lewis. The book was a gift from my friend Hilda who visited back in February. It is compact with lots of great recipes and suggestions for alterations.  The citrus notes of this particular pie really complemented the current transition into spring and summer.  It was really popular with my house mates the first time I made it and there were a couple of tiny tweaks I wanted to experiment with the second time around.

The thing that bothered me the most about my first attempt was that I over whipped the double cream that goes on the top. It looked a bit lumpy and porous and I thought that for presentation it would be nicer if it was smoother. If I were to make it again, I would probably whip the cream for even less time. As long as it is not liquid, it is probably good to go. The other difference is that the first time I did not have any lemons so I just put in extra lime juice. Adding a bit of lemon juice the second time helped balance out the flavours and I think it was a nice subtle touch (that was the general consensus from the flat mates). 

The pie needs a minimum of three hours to chill before adding the cream topping. Both times I made the main part of the pie the night before, let it chill overnight, and then added the topping the following morning. It is probably one of my favourite recipes I have made on Alphabake so far. It is quite easy to execute so if you get a chance to, definitely try it out! 

G: Goat Cheese, Leek, and Walnut Tart

My travels abroad have so far consisted of one week in London where I was staying with my friend Sarah, and the rest of the time in Edinburgh where I have started studying. Thankfully I was able to find an apartment a few days after I arrived here and, even better, it has a kitchen that is sufficiently equipped for my cooking and baking needs. There is an oven, a gas stovetop, adequate counter space, and some other convenient odds and ends.  When I was still in London I was not sure what kitchen conditions to anticipate in Edinburgh.  I thought it would be wise to get a couple of recipes under my belt before I left the comforts of Sarah’s flat so a big thanks to her and her mum for letting me do so.

 This tart (from Maxine Clark’s Tarts: Sweet and Savoury) was so flavourful and delicious and went perfectly with a nice green salad. It was very garlicky but I have a feeling I put an extra clove in (my bad) so it was good that everyone present tried a slice. There were some slight changes I had to make to the original recipe due to the absence of ingredients or tools but they had no major effect on the final result:

1) Extra virgin olive oil was used to replace the walnut oil but I am curious as to how the flavours would compare

 2) I was able to find a log of goat cheese but it had no rind. The exterior was very soft and this made it difficult to slice the cheese in symmetrical circles as the original recipe suggested. I ended up crumbling the cheese which would only be a problem if you are serving the tart to guests who are extremely picky when it comes to presentation...if that is the case I recommend rolling out some interesting shapes from any leftover puff pastry (eg. the letter G, dollar signs, a self-portrait..) to distract them from the cheese's dishevelled state J

3) When I prepared the walnut paste, I used a blender instead of a food processor.  The flat- bottomed shape of a food processor bowl and the length of the blade help evenly chop and combine all of the contents. Instead, the blender combined about half of the content into a paste and left the remaining nuts still coarsely chopped. I thought it was nice having some texture in the paste so I just gave it a stir to even it out.  If you would rather have no crunch, try chopping the walnuts as finely as possible before putting them in the blender. If you have neither a processor nor a blender, chop the nuts finely and perhaps use a little less oil.

A: Apple-Pear Pie

I've been baking for a long time but I haven't had too much experience with pies. This recipe, which I got from my Williams-Sonoma The Best of the Kitchen Library: Baking book, turned out quite well although I do have some reservations towards the pastry. I decided to try out the basic pastry recipe that was in the book. Once the pie was baked, it was really flaky and tasted great, however it was a little hard to handle. It fell apart when I was rolling it out and it definitely didn't turn out as nicely as the picture in the book. When I was mixing the dough, I didn't want to over mix it (as was directed) but maybe my cautiousness caused me to leave it under mixed. I also didn't use the dough immediately so maybe that would have been better. If you have a pastry recipe that you're comfortable with, I would advise using it instead. Besides that, the filling is divine and it's great warm with a nice scoop of ice cream!