Black and Blueberry Pie

The Black and Blueberry Pie from Rose's Baking Bible is subtly flavored with just a hint of lemon.  It wouldn't seem possible that such a simple thing could elevate a berry pie to extraordinary flavor, but it does.
Thanks to Monica's coaching,  I put everything dough related in the freezer, including the king size Cuisinart, in the hopes I would have success with Rose's cream cheese pie dough.  Looks can be deceiving; it is super delicious if not rustic by my hand.  No matter, I never met a pie dough I didn't like, the thicker the better.  My brother and I used to plead with our mother to make extra pie dough and roll it out with cinnamon and sugar.

I had an unexpected visitor.  This four year old granddaughter has baking in her Italian genes. She promptly pulled up a chair to measure cornstarch; organic, non GMO cornstarch.  After hearing what Rose had to say about it on the San Francisco panel video, I felt fortunate to find a box at my regular grocery store.

And this is where the picture taking stopped.  It was all I could do to keep up with my  assistant dynamo as she furiously zested lemons, squeezed lemon juice,  weighed sugar, stirred the berries please don't flip them on the floor,  etc etc etc.  I started hearing Diane Keaton's voice from Baby Boom but there's still not a drop of Amaretto in the cupboard..... 

On to the rolling.  It was a bit dodgy at first but with a bit of  perseverance,  it finally reached the requisite diameter.

I can't believe this mini Brio rolling pin is over thirty years old,  has been used by five children and is still as good as new.

With foil protecting the edge, into the oven it went and the look on this child's face when she saw the finished pie was priceless.  I lifted her up onto the counter to admire her handiwork but all she wanted was to lightly touch the crust.  The heartbreaking thing is being extremely dairy intolerant, she can't have any and begged me to make one without butter.  So that is my mission, in between keeping La Biga alive and well for the Panettone.

Unfortunately, the juices did not set.  I have reviewed each step to make certain I didn't skip one but remembered them all.  I have no idea why this has happened.  Any thoughts or suggestions for next time because there will be a next time?  Juicy or not, this pie is delicious as proclaimed by my son who could not wait for it to cool and dipped a spoon into the slit for a taste of the bubbling juice.

Pouring the juice out and microwaving turned it into a delicious thickened sauce.

Chocolate Cuddle Cake

Truly a stunning trio of flavors come together in Rose's Chocolate Cuddle Cake.  The amazing thing is each could stand on their own; the cake would be fine left plain with a dusting of powdered sugar, the ganache rivals any chocolate truffle and the caramel whipped cream is to die for.  Isn't there something called a Fool in the British dessert repertoire? This caramel whipped cream would be the ultimate Fool with fruit gently folded in.

A fairly easy cake, however I remembered the rose nail but forgot the cake strips.  No matter, the entire thing flipped out of my hand as I was putting it in the oven and landed on the kitchen floor. I've never had such a peculiar thing like that happen before.

  

Remembered the cake strips for the second try but forgot the rose nail.  

I seriously expected a massive sunken crater in the middle but there wasn't one, only a minor crack. 

Part one finished, I took Faithy's advice and made the ganache in the microwave.  Easy Peasy.  Came upon a great Lindt chocolate sale and stocked up.  I used an 85% mixed with milk chocolate for the ganache. Not quite sure what that equals in chocolate math.

With these two components finished, it was time to call it a night and try the caramel in the morning lest I burn down the kitchen.

Making caramel takes patience. Lots and lots of patience.

Once cooled and added to the whipped cream, oooo lala, perfection! 

I felt better after reading Evil Cake Lady didn't use gelatin since I'm out of agar agar.  It set up fine.

Total curiosity to see how it measured up.  Anything not flattened on the floor was good in my book.  Since the cake was wrapped and spent the night in a chilly garage, it read 12 C.  The ganache warmed up in the microwave to 24C and went on easily with the back of a large spoon.  I figured when the warmer ganache hit the cooler cake it would set and it did.   I made a rim around the top for the "cuddling" of the caramel whipped cream and grated the rest of the milk chocolate over the top. 

Loads of compliments with this cake!  

Wonder why this is called a Fool?  It's really good!

Frozen Pecan Tartlettes

It's a cold foggy morning and I'm having tea with Rose's Frozen Pecan Tart, uh hum, make that tartlette.  These little gems nearly didn't happen.  I thought I was prepared with golden syrup and a tart pan.  The cupboard still held a bottle of golden syrup from the Heavenly Cake days, problem was the bottle was shy of the needed amount.  Not one of the many nearby grocery stores had any golden syrup then I read  Mendy's post about adding molasses.  

I rolled out the dough and measured the pan as an after thought, and found it to be 10 1/2 inches. The wrestling match with the dough began.  I was about to toss it all and forget the entire venture when I remembered there was a Nordic Ware tartlette pan lurking in a cupboard, rationalizing that a little is better than nothing, and so my What. The. Boody. Hell. attitude kicked in..

I read somewhere that pennies are great pie weights because they are light and good conductors of heat.   Filled little cupcake papers keeping fingers crossed.  

The Nordic Ware pan is dark metal which always makes me twitchy,  so I lowered the temperature

 twenty -five degrees and like an over protective mother hen, constantly checked them. 

So far so good, on to the egg cracking. 

This is the Crack'em gizmo Rose spoke about in the video on her website.

I bought a few for stocking stuffers and it works really well. 

After reading how Monica added a bit of booze to her pecan concoction, I looked through the cabinet of left over dormant bottles from HCB days and found Kahlua.  Voila!  Oh my gosh!  It really rounded out the flavor which is pretty funny considering the most I ever drink is Amaretto but there was none of that.  

It feels a bit naughty and sacrilegious to fiddle about with Rose's recipes but by this time I was so over the edge that sticking to the recipe was the least of my concerns.  How to cover the dozen tartlettes in the Nordic Ware to prevent the crust edges from burning was the big concern.  A sheet of foil with center holes cut out over each tartlette was the best I could conjure up.  Again I lowered the temperature for baking and constantly prodded them with the instant read thermometer.  

A side of chocolate is good with these guys so I may go back and drizzle them.  This dough and I are going to have another go round for a proper sized tart.  This is without a doubt the best pecan tart/tartlette/pie I have ever tasted.  

Almond Coffee Crisps

Everyone likes these cookies!  I easily could have doubled the recipe as quickly as they disappeared.

This was actually an easy cookie for a child to help make. I used a mini Cuisinart.  Perfect for little hands to pulse on and off.  Kids love to get their hands into dough and rolling them into balls was pure delight.  A plate easily smooshed them into shape under wax paper.  Chilling the dough, before and after rolling,  in the freezer didn't make any difference in how much they spread.  The butter was Trader Joe's brand and is not a particularly high fat one. Baking them high in the oven helped them not to brown so quickly after I burned the first batch. 

Pulling the cookies straight off the pan to cool while still on parchment was easier for me than trying to remove them with a spatula.   The only change I made was shaving dark chocolate on top instead of brushing them with coffee powder. 

I appreciated the simplicity of this recipe in the final days of the holiday run-up. 

The Ischler

I come from a long line of Christmas Eve-ers who firmly believed the table should groan from plates upon plates of Christmas cookies and tea breads to go with pots of hot tea while opening presents and singing carols surrounded by dozens of cousins.  Those days are long gone but baking these Ischlers brought back that cozy feeling which surprised me, probably because I forgot to toast the almonds, froze the dough by mistake which made it really easy to handle once it thawed a bit and opted for store bought jam.  In other words, I didn't get too fiddly with these cookies. 

Yesterday I had help mixing up the dough.  This is my youngest granddaughter who is four and half.  She scooted a chair up to the counter and scooted me out of the way.  I did a combination mini food processor and mixer method, opting to grind the nuts with the powdered sugar.  This little one is a real Let Me Do It kid and loved pushing the pulse button.  Not merely content to add cupfuls of flour, I was informed she was quite capable of turning on and off  the mixer after each addition  (with inconspicuous close supervision).   Today I rolled out the dough with this adjustable rolling pin, a gift from my daughter back in the Heavenly Cake days.  It works like a charm. 

I used wax paper instead of plastic wrap and popped the dough back in the freezer to rechill before peeling the cut out dough onto the baking sheet with an off set spatula.   Speaking of which, I noticed a huge difference between baking pans and how the cookies browned.  I have those air cushioned ones but also an older plain one which caused the cookies to bake too quickly.  I also noticed baking them higher in the oven was a better option for me, they didn't brown as fast.  A dough scraper with a sharp edge was the perfect spatula to move the hot cookies to the cooling rack.  I love Trader Joe's organic apricot preserves so that is what I opted for, along with their organic strawberry jam to try on a few for fun, thinking  chocolate dipped strawberries..  They did not have the correct percentage of dark chocolate so I used a mix of Valrohona dark and milk chocolate for the ganache,  

These cookies plain kept reminding me of  Russian teacakes.  I rolled a few in powdered sugar and they were really good!   So Ischlers are apparently quite versatile either using the traditional apricot and chocolate combination or different jams as well as the powdered sugar coating for children's palates.  Now that I've got the hang of rolling,  cutting, rechilling and transferring to the baking sheet, I will make them again will all sorts of different jam fillings.

English Dried Fruitcake

"We have fruitcake!"  heralded the text to my kids scattered hither and yon.  Rose is solely responsible for converting my offspring to the wonders of fruitcake ever since Heavenly Cakes and they consider it a holiday requisite.  This new old English fruitcake was literally a piece of cake to put together.  Middle granddaughter  who was almost four in this picture and is now eight years old, wants to bake along with me again.  This was the perfect recipe for a child to really get into, save for the apple peeling and chopping, and possibly the rum but as I remember, Mary Poppins was quite fond of rum!

Trader Joe's had a dried fruit mix package of cranberries, blueberries, golden raisins and cherries.  Sounded good to me and it is, but next time I may add more fruit and shred the apples plus up the cinnamon.  I loved the flavor of this cake, just want it to sing falalalala a little bit louder.

So first off, according to granddaughter,  was for her and I to don an apron.  Sad to say the beloved Disney Princesses apron was demoted and she unearthed one of my grandmother's.  I have a picture somewhere of her father standing on a stool stirring up something with his great grandmother who was probably wearing this very apron. We then got the ingredients mise en place, including German high fat butter which was a surprise find at the local grocery store and of course had a bit of a taste test.  The slight tang didn't meet with her approval but I assured her butterfat is the name of the game in baking.

Introducing a child to the kitchen scale was loads of fun, more so for her than me.  It has been awhile and wrapping my brain around a scale again took some effort.  She caught on quickly and cheered excitedly when the exact measurement was scored like a soccer goal.  I cracked one egg, she cracked five.  I got shells in mine.  She didn't and proceeded to reveal her secret for cracking eggs.  Finally the batter went into the cake pans without cake strips because I forgot to call around to see who had cake strips.  Off  to the Google and found out foil over wet paper towels was acceptable in a pinch.  So that's what we did. Into the oven it went and then came the best part....she brought her spa supplies to give me a pedicure and manicure, complete with eye mask and my choice of Hello Kitty nail polish.  I chose hot pink, just in case you were wondering.  And let me tell you, there is nothing more heavenly than getting a foot, hand and face massage while waiting for the timer to ring with cinnamon apple pecan aromatherapy.  .

Since we baked them in two round pans, I let her paint one with rum.  Patience is not a virtue when it comes to cake and we "had" to cut into the other.  It was dry, it definitely needs the twenty-four hours to meld together, the apples giving the cake moisture.  Still, it was good but much better today.  But it didn't matter to her, she loved it.  She declined to take any home out of consideration for her little sister who is seriously dairy intolerant and her mother is gluten free. The fun for her was in the baking and she even brought her camera to photograph the finished product.   Her father, however, was not to be denied and will be back post haste for the rum laden fruitcake.

Kouigns Amann

The aroma from these Kouigns Amann pastries is intoxicating!  Who knew such simple ingredients; flour, sugar, yeast, salt and butter could transform into something delectable?  Okay, the butter was of the extra luscious variety namely the highest butterfat possible but still.....no spices, no filling, no nothing and yet the alchemy of Rose's magical recipe turned these few staples into something I seriously doubted, mostly because the thought of working with yeast was a bit intimidating.  I should have known better, oh moi of little faith.  So this is the type of dough that Starbucks has filled their pastry cases with from La Boulange but no where near as flavorful.  Truly, I am stunned.

After shopping and collecting the ingredients, I eyed them suspiciously for two days, cursed myself for telling Marie to count me in, cursed yeast, cursed not having any idea where in my house this dough could possibly rise, and seriously questioned my sanity.  What was I thinking?  Summing up the inner fortitude to tackle yeast I opened the packet and promptly spilled it.  Baking with yeast baffles me.  It seems to require secret skills I know nothing of.  But that's the thing I should know by now with Rose; she makes it possible to bake extraordinary things with very little in the way of training, skills or talent.  She doesn't hold back, instead divulging all her baking knowledge in such a way that no matter how many mistakes I make, and believe me these KA's were no exception, it all seems to turn out in the end.  The foreboding task of rolling and folding and turning quickly turned into a relaxing, stress relieving activity.  The cold autumn days kept the butter from melting too quickly and it never broke through the dough although the plastic wrap didn't fare as well with the overzealous butter smackdown.  The biggest conundrum was  where to put the dough for the warm rise in this chilly house.  Preheating the oven automatically warms the broken top double oven so after emptying my mishmash collection of baking pans, I popped them in.  

Still, I didn't really hold out much expectation only hope the stapled foil rings would hold, but as for anything edible, not really.  And then, it happened.  Wafting waves of deliciousness started to fill the house, from one end to the other.  Well, it smelled good, but there was no way this could possibly taste good, not the way I rolled out the dough never sure which direction was correct and  flung sugar everywhere.  No one was more surprised than I how extraordinary these little pastry gems turned out.  Honestly, never before have I been so ecstatic over any other thing I have baked because now, a new world of yeast has opened up.  With all the rolling,  fear of pie dough has no hold over me now.  So little KA's, I have a special place in my buttery heart for you.