Chocolate Mint Pi(e)s!

Hey y'all, it's Pi(e) day! That's right, March 14, 3.14, the day when nerds and geeks mark the glory that is mathematics - and also pastry. Since the most digits of pi I have memorized are in fact... 3.14 - I can't quite claim geekdom. But pastry... pastry I can do!

Lemon Crumble Tart

No matter what the season, I love lemon desserts - the bright, mouth-puckering flavor and the tangy sweetness are the perfect way to end any meal. And when people think of a lemon tart, they almost always thing lemon-meringue, but I just don't love meringue that much. I still wanted something to top the creamy lemon curd in my tart shell, so I dreamed up a lemon crumble tart. And my dreams are good. 

Pomegranate Tartlets

I have a mild obsession with pomegranates. Those juicy red seeds, bursting with flavor - I've been known to eat a whole one myself. And end up with red-stained fingernails. But I don't bake with them a whole lot, since they're not the easiest fruit to incorporate in to dessert. Enter these tarts - with a pomegranate flavored pastry cream base and a topping of fresh pomegranate arils - they just hit the spot.

Chocolate Orange Mousse Tart

There are some pairings that are totally natural: peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy. For me, I'm pretty partial to chocolate and orange. There's something about the bright citrus taste that pares well with the rich, dark, flavor of chocolate - which is why I was more than happy when we whipped up these chocolate orange tartlets in pastry school.

Pecan Tartlets

Y'all are lucky I'm in pastry school. See, until now, you've gotten recipes chock full of things I love, like chocolate, coconut, raspberry and... chocolate. Since I rarely bake things I don't like, you haven't seen really any nuts (except ground), mangoes, coffee or marshmallows. But when you go to pastry school, you don't get a whole lot of say in what you make, so despite my distaste for them, we made pecan pies last week.

Key Lime Tart

Ah, vacation. Hope you're not too jealous of my fabulous tan and my oodles of free time. To make it up to you, I'm sharing one of the best desserts I've made in a long time. We're talking about a top contender for best treat of 2011. And it's so easy.

Lemon Curd Linzer Torte

 I'm quite convinced that lemon curd is an elixir from the gods. Especially when I can make it in five minutes in the microwave.  So to stop myself from eating it by the spoonful I've been finding new ways to incorporate it in to desserts. These were delicious. This improvised linzer torte is fantastic.

Chocolate Caramel Tart

They say your brain can react to pain before you even feel it: you jerk your hand away from a hot flame before the pain registers in your mind. Basically, your brain is telling you to stop doing something really stupid before you seriously hurt yourself. Unfortunately, my brain doesn't stop me from doing other really stupid things in the kitchen. Things, that just moments after they happen, make me smack my hand against my forehead and wonder why I'm even allowed to go near the stove. This is the tale of the two Chocolate Caramel Tarts. 

Rustic Apple Tart

Sometimes I spend 6 hours trying to make caramel. Sometimes I follow recipes that include melting and whisking and separating and beating and boiling. These things generally happen on Sundays. But sometimes, it's a busy Friday afternoon, I have a drawer full of apples, and ten other things to do. This is when you throw together a rustic apple tart. And serve it to oohs and ahs. 

Classic Linzer Torte

This picture makes me happy. Is this not an incredibly photogenic dessert? Perhaps that is not what you all look for in baked goods, but it surely makes my day. Lucky for you, this happens to be one of my favorite desserts I've made in months. One of. And it's really quite simple. 

Mini Fruit Tarts

The last time I made a dessert at my brother's request, it was to replace something he'd eaten. (Guard your food!) Well this time, it was another story entirely. See, I have one major fear. Bugs. Flies, ants, spiders, cockroaches, beetles - I am terrified. It has long been established practice in my house that upon sight of an offending creature, I scream for help. In high school, I would offer my brother $1 to kill anything that I spied late at night. These days though, I'll call his name for exterminator duty and he'll ask "What will you make me?"

After a particular insect removal incident, (one lady bug and one spider) the bill was settled with these mini fruit tarts. They're filled with pastry cream and topped with slices of fresh fruit.

Apple Galette

As I mentioned yesterday, the Jewish high holidays are coming up and apples - a signature food for the holiday - are everywhere! And here they are for you again today in this pretty and sweet apple galette.

Pear Filled Shortbread

Back to summer fruits! And when you work with the best, freshest and ripest ingredients, you don't want much to camouflage that. This simple shortbread crust is perfect for the sweet succulence of summer pears.

Chocolate Cream Tart

With all the fruit that's been going on around Baking and Mistaking, it's time to get back down to real business. Chocolate business. And does that mean a chocolate tart shell with a rich chocolate custard filling? Yes, it does.

Lemon Tartlets

I have a new toy. No, it's not the American Girl Doll I begged for for most of my childhood (and never got.) And it's not this iPad I've been hearing so much about but can't quite think of a use for. No, instead it's my new mini-muffin pan that's got my heart all a-flutter. Now while I bought the pan to make mini cupcakes (which you'll be seeing in the future), I decided I really, really need to make some adorable lemon tartlets first.
Mission accomplished! Now on to the cupcakes. Oh - you want to hear more about these? Fine.

Well I did run into a little difficulty...see the recipe called for a "tart shaper" - which is about as extraordinarily single-use as you can get (Alton Brown would not be pleased) but does the specific task of forming the dough into the shells.
Now of course with my superior intellect and talent I figured I could accomplish it quite alright on my own, with the use of my fingers and perhaps the handle of a wooden spoon. Well I did manage, but it took forever and was not that easy. Then I spent 20 minutes panicking that they would never come out of their shells, it simply wasn't possible, how would they ever be removed cleanly and then....oh. They did. And how.
Tip of the Day: Perhaps invest in a tart shaper? Or perhaps ask your blog readers for advice on a suitable alternative?

Recipe:

Shells:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg white
1 1/4 cups flour

Filling:
2 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter or margarine, melted
2 tsp lemon zest
3 tbsp lemon juice
Powdered Sugar

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the egg white and blend well.
Add in the flour until just blended.
Press about a tablespoon of dough into each greased tart shell of a 24-cup mini muffin pan - preferably with a tart shaper.
Set aside.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together. Add in the melted butter.
Add in the zest and juice and blend well.
Divide evenly among tart shells.

Carefully transfer to 325 F oven and bake for 20 to 22 minutes or until edges and light brown.
Cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar immediately before serving.

Easy Jam Tart?

I really don't like to follow instructions. I always read them, and then choose to follow or ignore them at will. When it comes to recipes, it generally concerns what ingredients/tools/pans I have on hand. Which, depending on where I'm baking, can be quite limited. That's how I've ended up using a Pam lid for a cookie cutter, dropping my cake, and having not-really-lime-tasting lime cookies.

It's also how I ended up with this slightly deformed David Lebovitz Jam Tart.
The original recipe calls for a tart pan or springform pan, neither of which I had on hand. The closest thing I had was a 9-inch foil pie pan. So of course I went on with the recipe.
I think the pan substitute doomed me in ways I hadn't forseen. The slant of the sides of the pan produced a much too thick crust - as did the too-small pan. That wouldn't be so bad with a standard pie crust, but this cornmeal version was a little heavy with the added bulk.
Then there was the topping - I love the idea of topping a tart with discs of crust, but for a recipe labeled "easy jam tart," this was a little labor intensive. I found cutting the discs quite difficult even when frozen - though again, this was likely due to my lack of even a remotely decent knife.

Anyway, while I didn't love this dessert my friends certainly seemed to, most even going for seconds, so there was obviously some redeeming factors. I'd be happy to experiment with the formula again with some tweaks and changes - plus a real pan!

Tip of the Day: A sharp, thin-bladed serrated knife like this one works best for cutting slices off a log, like in this recipe or most standard icebox-cookie recipes.

Recipe: (from David Lebovitz)

9 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup stone-ground cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 3/4 cups apricot, raspberry or other jam

Beat together butter and sugar until well-combined. Mix in the egg, egg yolk and almond extract.
Gradually add in the flour, cornmeal, salt and baking powder, just until combined.
Divide the dough into 2/3 and 1/3. Press the 2/3 into a disc and refrigerate, and roll the remaining dough into a 2-inch log and freeze it.
After a 1/2 hour press the refrigerated dough into a 9 or 10-inch tart pan.
Spread the jam evenly on top.
Slice discs from the frozen log and lay on top of the jam. Sprinkle with sugar - coarse is best.
Bake at 375 F for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Apples and Tarts

I know, I've been neglecting you, and I can't promise it won't happen again. My life right now is a whirlwind of finals and moving boxes and carpet samples and storage spaces and paint strips and graduation portraits.

But there's always time for dessert, right?
Well there was time on my mom's birthday, where the complete failure of the babke was mitigated only by the simple deliciousness of this apple tart. One of the things I love most about tarts - of which I've been on a sort of kick lately - is the complete ease of the dough. After you make it, just press it in to the bottom of the pan - no rolling, no measuring, no ripping holes.
OK so maybe you can kind of see my fingerprints, but that's all going to be covered up with this incredible filling soon. And unbelievably simple too. Starts with sliced up apples, which I hopelessly attempted to arrange in some attractive design.
After failing at that, I simple poured on top the mixture of cream, sugar, eggs and vanilla and baked. Voila.
Much easier than a babke.

Tip of the Day: Freezing the tart dough before baking ensures you don't need to use weights in the pan when baking it empty - known as baking "blind."

Recipe: (from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours)
Alsatian Apple Tart
Note: I used Rich's Whip topping in place of the heavy cream and it worked out fine. You could probably also sub milk/soy milk if you desire (though it might not be as rich).

Tart Dough:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (9 tbsps) frozen butter or margarine
1 egg yolk

Filling:
1 pound apples - about 3 medium apples (I used Golden Delicious)
3/4 cup heavy cream
6 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
3/4 tsp vanilla

Put the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine.
Scatter pieces of the butter over it and pulse until it is cut in and small pieces of dough form.
Break up the egg yolk and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition.
Pulse until the dough forms clumps and then turn out the dough and knead to combine any dry ingredients that weren't mixed in.
Press the dough into the bottom of a 9 inch tart pan.
Freeze for 30 minutes, and then fit a greased piece of foil against the dough and bake for 25 minutes at 375 F. Let cool.

Peel, core and slice the apples. Lay them in the tart shell in overlapping concentric circles.
Whisk together the cream, sugar, egg, yolk and vanilla, and pour over the apples.
Bake the tart at 375 F for 50 to 55 minutes, or until the custard looks set. Let cool.

The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart

I never seem to have much success when it comes to food and thermometers. Though nothing quite tops the shattering of the glass tip of the candy thermometer while whipping my 7 minute frosting, I still was nervous when I used a (new) thermometer to fry doughnuts, and I watched as the temperature dipped up and down throughout the process, resulting in some doughnuts that were browner than others.

I can also never get the thermometer to stand upright in whatever bowl or pot I am using - it tends to slide around and fall over, resulting in a few choice words occasionally heard in the kitchen. Another problem with the thermometer is that it is often not a one person job. Though I prefer to cook in an empty kitchen, I often find myself yelling for help as I attempt to keep the thermometer up, hold the bowl steady, whisk, read the thermometer and check the consistency of the cream. It's enough to make you break a sweat.

So when I attempted The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart (her title) from Dorie Greenspan I was nervous. And with good reason. Ultimately, with major bumps and hurdles, I got an extraordinary tart.
The recipe is actually quite simple - the tart dough comes together quickly, requires no rolling out, and easily presses into a pan.
The lemon curd filling - though made of only 5 ingredients - is where the tricky part comes in.
The instructions (below) state that the mixture must come to 180 degrees F. Additionally, the book wrote, "Getting to temperature can take as long as 10 minutes." Well, after over 15 minutes of whisking and temperature checking and knocking over the thermometer and calling for help and forgetting to whisk and almost knocking over the bowl, while only reaching about 160 F, I gave up. The mixture had thickened considerably and I assumed there was no hope for me to reach 180 F, and instead I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
But this was a dessert I made for my family and then left for the weekend, so I wasn't even around to see if it held up. I left my mother with strict instructions to only reveal to our guests that I had made it if it cut into neat slices. So I arrived home to find the remnants of the tart in the fridge, neat edges all around, and I assumed success.

I assumed wrong. Apparently when eaten Friday night the filling oozed all over the place with every slice, but by Saturday it had set completely - and even turned a darker (somewhat strange - thought not as strange as this picture appears) shade of yellow.
Either way - messy or neat - it was incredibly delicious - the lemon filling was completely addictive, and I had trouble restraining myself from eating it by the spoonful before it made it into the shell, instead contenting myself with licking the bowl clean.
Tip of the Day: Don't be afraid to recruit helpers in the kitchen when necessary (nor to kick them out when they prove unhelpful). If you must go at it alone - keep duct tape on hand to hold things in place you cannot!

Recipe: (from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan)
Note: this recipe requires hours of refrigeration and freezing time, so plan accordingly.

Filling:
1 cup sugar
zest of 3 lemons
4 eggs
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (from 4-5 lemons)
2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened

Crust:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup confectioners/icing sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick plus 1 tbsp (9 tablespoons) frozen butter or margarine
1 egg yolk

Supplies:
heatproof bowl
pot
thermometer
food processor/blender

For the filling:
Mix the sugar and zest together with your fingers until it is moist and grainy.
Add in the eggs and lemon juice and whisk until combined.
Bring a few inches of water to boil in a saucepan and set the bowl containing the mixture on top.
Whisking constantly, cook until the thermometer reads 180 degrees. It should thicken and begin to leave tracks.
As soon as it hits 180 F, remove from heat and strain into the container of the food processor or blender. Let it stand there, stirring occasionally, until it reaches 140 F, about 10 minutes.
Turn the machine on high, and as it works add the softened butter in tablespoons, about 3 or 4 at a time. Continue until all the butter is added, and then continue to blend for another 3 minutes.

Pour the finished cream into a container, cover tightly with plastic wrap (pressed against the surface) and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.

For the crust:

Put the flour, sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to combine.
Scatter pieces of the frozen butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is cut in.
Break up the yolk and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition.
After it's all in, process in long pulses - 1o seconds at a time, until dough comes together.
Turn out of the bowl and knead any uncombined ingredients - but sparingly.
Press the dough into a oiled 9-inch tart pan. Make sure to press it up the sides of the pan.
Freeze the crust for an hour.
When frozen, tightly press an oiled piece of aluminum foil on top of the tart, and bake at 375 F for 25 minutes.
Remove the foil, and bake for an additional 8 minutes until firm and golden brown.
When crust is completely cooled, and the lemon cream has been refrigerated for at least 4 hours, spoon the filling into the shell and serve.

Chocolate Truffle Tart

This is definitely one for the chocolate lovers out there - dense rich and chocolatey!
This recipe comes from the Good Housekeeping Baking Book, and turned out pretty well.
This was definitely an experiment for me - I made my first pie crust ever, and the fear is largely over. For those of you yet to venture into the dark scary world of pie crust, its basically a mix of flour, salt, cold butter, water and shortening. At least, thats what my recipe calls for, but I didn't have shortening on hand so I substituted a little butter and a little oil instead. Oops! I think it turned out ok anyway. Anyway back to the crust. So you mix that together and chill it for a while, then roll it out (surprisingly easy) and line the pan with the dough and chill it again. All seemed to go as planned, and then I had to do what is called in the baking world "baking blind."
This means that you bake the pie crust without the filling. Generally, you will use parchment paper or foil on top and fill it with pie weights - you can buy these or use dry beans or uncooked rice instead - which serves to weigh the crust down while baking, so it retains its shape for the filling.
Here is what it looked like:Fascinating, no? Anyway, I baked the crust acording to the directions, removing the weights after 20 minutes. The edges got a little brown and brittle, but nothing major seemed to go wrong. Practice makes perfect, right?
The rest of the filling creation went well, and the recipe called to decorate the tart with white chocolate hearts, but clearly, I didn't feel constrained by that. Hearts, flowers, swirls - anything goes! You could even write words and draw pictures for decoration as well.
The recipe said to serve chilled, but we prefered it a little closer to room temperature.
Beware - this recipe is only for chocolate lovers - its very rich!

Tip of the Day: Keep dry beans on hand specifically for using as pie weights, that way you can reuse them each time without throwing them out. But be careful to keep them separate from your other beans - they won't taste very good if you try to cook them!

Recipe:
Chocolate Truffle Tart:

Tart Pastry:
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp cold butter or margarine, cut up
1 tbsp vegetable shortening
2 to 3 tbsp ice water

Mix flour and salt in a large bowl.
With pastry blender or two knives cut in butter and shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Sprinkle in ice water, one tbsp at a time, until dough holds together.
Shape dough into one disk and refridgerate for 30 minutes or overnight.
Roll out dough into 11 inch circle, and line 9 inch tart pan with dough. Prick with fork and chill for 30 minutes.
Line with foil and fill with pie weights, bake at 400 F for 20 minutes.
Remove foil and weights, bake for an additional 10 minutes.

Truffle Filling:
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsley chopped
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup heavy or whipping cream
3 large eggs

Melt chocolate and butter over low heat, stirring frequently.
Stir in sugar and vanilla.
In small bowl with fork or whisk, lightly beat cream and eggs.
Blend some chocolate mixture into egg mixture, then stir egg mixture back into chocolate.
Pour mixture into tart shell.
Bake 20 minutes or until custard is set.
Cool on wire rack, refridgerate to serve chilled.
Decorate with white chocolate hearts decorations!