Archives for category: Desserts
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Giving Thanks

November 21, 2012 //
3

Do I like Thanksgiving? I think so. It’s sacrilege not to. But sometimes the traveling, the stuffing ourselves, the Christmas music (yes, each year it arrives on radios and in stores earlier and earlier), it makes me want to scour kayak.com for flights to the Maldives and get the heck out of dodge. Which yes I am doing in fact. Hoping for a Maldivian Christmas-New Year’s. Wanna come?

But between the damage brought on from Hurricane Sandy a couple of weeks ago—the effects of which are still very much a hard reality in neighborhoods throughout the New York City area—and the fighting in Israel and Gaza this past week, there is a sobering and somber undercurrent this Thanksgiving. I continue to be amazed by the efforts of Occupy Sandy.

Some of the things I do like about Thanksgiving, of course, are the good eats: the turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry-orange relish, seeing my siblings together under one roof (rare these days), and trying new recipes. It’s a time to reflect on all the riches in our lives. For me, relationships and health in particular.

Last year I wrote about a devil food’s cake I tried out that was not entirely a success but not bad either. This year I needed a dessert to balance out the pumpkin cheesecake my sister-in-law—also our host in Northampton, Mass.—was making. You kind of need something with apples on the Thanksgiving dessert table but I didn’t want to make the same ole apple pie so I stumbled upon this salted caramel apple tart via Smitten Kitchen.

You make it using store-bought puff pastry and I recommend Dufour pastry which is made with all butter and not much else (ok, a little flour). You may experience sticker shock as I did at the Whole Foods checkout yesterday ($11.99) but it’s entirely worth it in my opinion.

You can find the entire apple tart recipe here. I am getting lazy about retyping perfectly good, already published recipes. A big shout out to Deb Perelman, from whose blog I’m unabashedly cribbing these days.

Look how pretty those little cubes of butter look on the uncooked apples!

Making the salted caramel is pretty darn easy.

Looking forward to biting into this tomorrow. I’ll try and update the post to let you know how it is. I also want to post about the cranberry-orange relish I made this year but need to go catch the subway! So if you celebrate Thanksgiving I hope it’s a meaningful one for you. Peace out-

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Desserts, Entertaining, Fall, Holidays

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

October 17, 2012 //
1

I really feel like I’m just going out on a limb with this here post. I mean, pumpkin cinnamon rolls? They just seem so…absurd. Immoderate. Decadent. We are still creeping out of a national recession. It is high election season. I have better things to do and think about. Like how I can get in one of those #bindersofwomen.

But, it’s the fall. It was a Saturday. I was cruising Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite blogs, and came across a recipe for these. The recipe is actually from Baked Elements, one of the cookbooks from the the Red Hook bakery I’ve come to know and love on trips to Fairway, Ikea, Sunny’s, and The Good Fork. Photos of these called to me through the screen of my laptop and, against my better judgement, was compelled to get baking.

I happened to have my monthly co-op work shift last weekend so I was able to buy all the spices I needed (ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon), good butter, replenish my flour stash, and get organic canned pumpkin. That’s right, I said canned pumpkin. You can definitely make these by roasting your own pumpkin but I will tell you right now I most certainly did not. Although it would be lovely and tasty if you did. The original recipe only calls for 2/3 c of pumpkin purée anyway, so, yeah.

My fellow blogger over at Smitten Kitchen tweaked the Baked recipe, and now I’ve gone and tweaked her recipe. I reduced the sugar in both the filling and icing; I did everything by hand instead of a stand mixer; lengthened the rising times; and increased the pumpkin. These are certainly tasty and decadent (everything you want in a cinnamon roll), but were the tiniest bit dry. And they are pumpkin cinnamon rolls—I wanted to taste more of the pumpkin than I did. So I think the perfect solution would be to increase the pumpkin quotient.

And while I have your attention…did you see the Food and Drink issue last weekend in the NYTimes? Read the article about Christopher Kimball by Alex Halberstadt. He’s so unabashedly old school. He would probably hate my blog. I love him.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls
Adapted from Baked Elements (and Smitten Kitchen)
Yields 16 buns

Dough
6 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 c whole milk, warm, but not hot
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
3 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/4 c granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
3/4 c (or nearly 1 c) pumpkin purée
1 large egg
Oil for coating rising bowl

Filling
3/4 c light or dark brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon

Glaze
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp milk or buttermilk
1 c powdered sugar, sifted
A few drops of vanilla extract

Make the dough:
Melt the butter in a small saucepan, and once melted, continue cooking over medium heat for a few additional minutes so that it browns. It will hiss and sizzle, and golden brown spots will form on the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly.

Combine the warmed milk and yeast in a small bowl and set aside. After five minutes or so, it should be a bit foamy. If it’s not, you might have some bad (old) yeast and should start again with a newer packet.

If you have a stand mixer, combine the flour, sugar, salt, and spices in the mixer bowl. You can do this by hand just fine too, and can use a large mixing bowl. Add 1/4 c (or 2/3 of the remaining) brown butter and stir to combine. Add the yeast-milk mixture, pumpkin, and egg and combine. If using a stand mixer, switch to the dough hook and run on low for five minutes. If by hand, get ready for a workout. Mix by hand for five minutes until the dough starts to come together.

Transfer the dough into a large oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set aside for at least one hour, or as much as two hours, in a draft-free place. It should nearly double in side. While it’s rising, line the bottom of two 9- or 8-inch round cake pans with parchment paper and butter the sides.

Assemble the buns:
Scoop the dough onto a well-floured surface, and flour the top of the dough well. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough to an approximately 16 x 11 inch rectangle. Brush the reserved melted butter over the dough. Stir together remaining filing ingredients and sprinkle mixture evenly over the dough. Starting with one of the longer edges, roll the dough into a tight spiral. It’s ok if some of the filling spills out of the ends a little.

Cut the cinnamon rolls with a serrated knife using practically no pressure whatsoever. Place the blade of the knife on the dough and gently saw your log with a back-and-forth motion into approx. 1-inch sections. Divide buns between the two prepared pans, sprinkling with any sugar that fell out. Cover each pan with plastic wrap and let rise for at least 45 minutes and up until 2 hours. You could, after this point, put them covered in the refrigerator and when you’re ready to bake them just take them out an hour before hand to warm up.

Fifteen minutes before you’re ready to bake them, heat the oven to 350 degrees F and make the glaze. Beat the cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and drizzle in milk until you get the desired consistency: thick like icing (which is what I did) or thin enough to drizzle.

Remove the plastic and bake (un-glazed) for 25 minutes until puffed and golden and the smell of cinnamon and sugar and butter makes you dizzy and brings your neighbors knocking. Let cool before glazing, then dig in. By all means, you’ve earned it.

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories Co-op, Desserts, Fall, Reading

Rustic Harvest Tart

October 8, 2012 //
1

This is what my fruit bowl looked like yesterday – a mélange of fall fruits, ripe and ready for the taking. If you live in or near New York City you know that yesterday was the first cold, fall day. It was also raining. The perfect Sunday to get in the kitchen and crank up my oven.

While making something savory is, in my opinion, more practical than making something sweet, I couldn’t help staring down those fruits and imagining them baking in a pastry crust. I turned to my trusty source for all things dessert, David Lebovitz, for some general guidance. Wouldn’t you know one of his last posts was on a harvest tart, much like the one I had in mind.

I call this a rustic tart because it’s not fussy and not meant to look perfect, like those fruit tarts you see in a bakery case. You quickly whip up the tart dough with nothing more than good cold butter, flour, water, and a pinch of salt. And fill it with whatever fruits you have on hand. I filled mine with Honeycrisp apples, grapes, and two different varieties of plums. (There was no room left for the pears!) I added a handful of hazelnuts, and drizzled a custard-like filling of egg and thick, whole-milk yogurt. (Lebovitz’s recipe called for crème fraîche, which I didn’t have on hand and couldn’t find within a few block radius in my neighborhood.) You roll out the dough larger than the circumference of your pie dish so that the edges can then be folded over the fruit filling just enough to leave some of the center exposed.

Maybe I can get used to this cold weather again.

Rustic Fall Tart
adapted from Kate Hill of Kitchen at Camont (via David Lebovitz)

For the dough
2 c all purpose flour
3/4 whole wheat pastry flour
pinch of salt
9 ounces unsalted butter, cold
2 large eggs
3-4 tbsp water

For the filling
2 lb apples, peeled and cored (approx. 4 large apples)
4 plums, any variety
1 small bunch grapes, stemmed
1/4 c sugar, plus additional for sprinkling
Handful of hazelnuts
1 tbsp brandy or 1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c crème fraîche or thick, plain yogurt
1 large egg

1. Make the dough: in a large mixing bowl stir together the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut the butter into small cubes and mixing with your hands or a pastry blender, combine with the four mixture until it’s in small pieces.

2. Add an egg and the water and mix until the dough holds together. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until it’s about 18 inches in diameter. Transfer to a deep pie dish; the edges should hang over the sides quite a bit.

3. Beat the remaining egg in a small bowl then brush the insides of the dough with the egg.

4. Prepare the filling: slice the apples into eighths and the plums into quarters. Mix them together with the grapes, sugar, brandy or vanilla, and transfer the filling to the tart dough. Scatter the hazelnuts on top of the fruit.

5. In a small bowl, mix the crème fraîche or yogurt with the egg and pour it over the fruit and nuts. Line the edges of the dough and cover the fruit. Brush the top of the dough with a mixture of egg wash and butter then sprinkle with a little sugar.

6. Put the tart on a baking sheet and bake at 425 F for one hour, until the top of the dough is browned and the fruit is thoroughly cooked. You can test by placing a knife in the fruit and making sure it goes right through. If, before the hour is up, the crust starts to turn dark brown you can tent with foil about halfway through.

7. Remove the tart from the oven and let cool before serving. Serve on its own, with crème fraîche, vanilla ice cream, or homemade whipped cream.

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories Desserts, Fall, Farmer's Market, Pastry
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »