A Little Something

Jam Tarts

I got the idea to make these one day while we were reading The Story Girl, when the thought of Felicity's perfect jam tarts sounded just about perfect for tea-time. So I made these up, according to my idea of a jam tart: buttery, flaky crust filled with just a moderate layer of assorted tasty jams - black currant, blackberry and peach I had on hand. I baked them in these muffin-top pans that had I picked up at the craft store on clearance, and they worked perfectly for my little tarts. Thank you Felicity (and Lucy Maud) for inspiring these simple, homey treats.

Jam Tarts

3 sticks butter (softened to room temperature)

3 cups flour (we use King Arthur unbleached)

1 egg

1/2 cup sugar

few spoons of cold water as needed

jam - approximately one and a half pints of good quality jam (hopefully homemade), depending on how much of a dollop you put on your tarts. It's nice to use a variety of jams if you have them.

Makes 4 1/2 dozen 3" tarts.

Mix as for pie crust: toss dry ingredients together, cut in butter and egg with a pastry blender or wooden spoon, add water a spoonful at a time just until dough hangs together. Do not overwork. Roll out thinly on a well-floured board or counter. Cut into rounds with a 3 1/2" cutter (approximately). Place rounds in a muffin top pan. Fill each tart with a wad of jam.

Bake in a preheated 375 degrees F oven for 15-20 minutes. Baking time will depend on how thinly you've rolled your crust. They should be nicely browned so they will be crisp and flaky.

Let cool for a minute or two in the pan, then remove them to a rack to finish cooling. These are at their very best on the day they are made, when they are fresh and crisp. You can dust them with powdered sugar to serve if you want to be fancy. A fresh hot pot of tea to accompany them is a must.

Apple Galette

Lydia has mastered the art of the galette and we are all enjoying her culinary skill. Last night when Michael came in the door he took one look and noted she was wearing an apron, and declared it 'a very good sign'. He was right, as three galettes were baking nicely in the oven. We have decided apple galette is even better than apple pie as the bottom crust is crisp and flaky and doesn't get soggy like a pie does. The boys like them as they think they look medieval, and Josiah wants some for movie props. The galette is less juicy than pie and not overly sweet, so you can pick up a wedge and eat it like a heathen if you are a teenager, or have it proper on a plate with ice cream if you are a civilized sort. I am.

As written, the recipe makes one galette which we say serves four - the recipe is easily doubled or tripled. These are very quick and easy to make, and by baking them on parchment paper cleanup is a breeze.

For the crust:

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt*

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup butter

5 tablespoons ice water

Toss dry ingredients together in a bowl. Rub in butter with your fingertips until blended. Sprinkle with water and mix gently until dough comes together into a ball. Roll out on a floured surface until you have an approximate 14" round.

Transfer the round to a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. If you do a good job rolling the dough and don't have any tears, all the juices will stay nicely (and deliciously) contained in the crust.

Peel, core and slice 2-3 large apples. We have been using 2 1/2 huge Stayman apples per galette. Slice the apples into thin wedges and arrange them in an overlapping circle on the dough, leaving a rim of about 3" of dough.
 
 

Keep adding apples, filling in the center with another smaller round of slices. Sprinkle the apples with 1/4 cup sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Dot with about a tablespoon of butter on top of the cinnamon sugar. Fold up the edges of the dough making little pleats as you go around.

 

The galette should be about nine or ten inches in diameter.

Bake the galette in a preheated 400 degree F oven for approximately 35 minutes. I start checking it after about 25 minutes. It should be nice and golden looking and the apples fork tender.
  

Best served warm with ice cream, a cup of tea on the side, of course.
 Edited to add: * If you are using salted butter, 1/4 teaspoon salt per galette is adequate. Of course salt in pastry is a matter of personal taste, so adjust accordingly.

Lydia is still making, and we are still eating, lots of galette. They also make a lovely gift to pass along to a friend as well. We've found that they are best when baked to a nice golden color (not underdone), and eaten right out of the oven. The crust is really superb - crispy and flaky and oh, so delicious when it's hot and fresh - and you don't even think of putting ice cream on such perfection.

Cherry This and Cherry That

We picked lots and lots of sour cherries this year. In addition to seven cherry pies we also made some other things-

 

I came up with this recipe as I wanted a quick pie using what I had on hand and sans the usual cool whip/instant pudding type of ingredients. I assume it tasted good as it disappeared very fast. :-)

 Easy No-Bake Cherry Cheese Pie - Makes 2

2 graham cracker pie crusts (your favorite store-bought or homemade)

Cherry Topping:

4 cups sour cherries, pitted

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup corn starch (scant)

1/2 cup cold water

Cook cherries with sugar over medium heat until soft and juicy (like 5 or 10 minutes). Dissolve corn starch in cold water. Stir corn starch mixture into cherries and cook for a few more minutes until cloudiness is gone. Let cool.

Cheese Mixture:

3 packages cream cheese (8 ounces each)

1 cup sugar

1 pint sour cream

1 tablespoon vanilla

Beat cream cheese and sugar with electric mixer until smooth. Beat in vanilla and sour cream. Spread in bottom of crust. Cover with cherry topping. Chill for a few hours before serving.

 

Cherry Yogurt Pops

I just cooked up some cherries with a bit of sugar to taste, then pureed them with my stick blender adding in a tub of vanilla yogurt as described in my other post: Homemade Pops. A very refreshing way to eat your cherries.

 

Cherry Jam

We made a cooked cherry jam that didn't need any store bought pectin. It does take a bit of time as the pot needs to be attended constantly and I had to make sure no little people were anywhere nearby. But the results are delicious! I'm looking forward to using it in yeasted coffee cake braids and such and I think it would be excellent sandwiched between almond scented butter cookies.

Basically you cook your pitted cherries until soft, adding the juice and zest of a lemon or two. I didn't bother chopping the cherries but sort of smashed them with my big spoon as they cooked. Then measure the mixture and add 3/4 as much sugar as you have cherries (that's 3 cups sugar for every 4 cups cherries). Cook, stirring pretty constantly until mixture reaches 230 degrees F. (I think the required temperature varies according to your altitude, but I don't know any details about that. Can you tell I'm a novice jammer?) You can also test the mixture by dropping some onto a chilled plate and sticking it in the freezer for a few minutes - if it gels, holding its shape when you nudge it, it's done. The cherries also get darker red and loose their pink look as it gets near done. Ladle into clean jars, let cool, and store in refrigerator.

 

We had to try it right away so we tested it on vanilla ice cream - yum yum!

Apple Pie

a Thanksgiving photo essay

 

 

 

 

   

A Word About Flour

 

With the current economic climate everyone seems to be tightening their financial belts, ourselves included. Feeding a family of nine is no small business so I've been paying more attention to prices looking for ways to trim the food budget, trying to be a better steward of our family's resources. With food costs skyrocketing along with everything else, we had this conversation in our home some time ago:

me: Do you think we should try using store brand flour? It's cheaper.

him: Why would you do that? Don't you always get King Arthur flour? How much different can the price be - just get the good stuff.

me: Well, the store brand is $1.66 for five pounds and the King Arthur is $3.99.

him: Oh! Why don't you try the store brand?!

And so I did. I ran out of sacks of King Arthur and replaced them with the store brand of both unbleached white and whole wheat. At less than half the price it seemed like a reasonable switch. The whole wheat was very different, and I noticed I needed to add more liquid to most of my recipes to make up for the different consistency. (Note: All of my recipes here on my blog calling for whole wheat are based on 'King Arthur white whole wheat' and you may need more liquid if using another brand, particularly for yeasted breads.) I resisted (mostly) the temptation to call the new flour sawdust, despite its coarse, flaky appearance and tendency to slurp up so much liquid. I also determined that I would not complain about the new, um, heftiness of our daily bread but instead just think of it as hearty whole wheat. I chose to avoid mentioning all those adjectives that came to mind such as chewy, toothsome, heavy, dense, bitter... We were saving lots of money and that's what mattered.

And then I found it.

Hidden away in the back of a pantry shelf was a long lost and forgotten sack of my favorite King Arthur white whole wheat. As soon as the sawdust store brand wheat was gone I opened the beloved sack and made some scones. One bite of that delicious sweet and mellow flavor, the look of that beautiful golden goodness and I knew I could never turn back. Everything tasted brighter and lighter, my yeast bread was the right size again, my scones were back to the right consistency, our cookies no longer resembled hockey pucks...

We've since made other cuts in our grocery bill - we've switched to store brand orange juice and stopped buying yogurt in little cups and things like that. We figure we already save so much money by making all our bread, cookies, muffins and all that we can splurge on the good stuff to bake with as it tastes soooo much better. We're happily back to King Arthur in the flour jar and in my kitchen, the King is here to stay.

Blueberry Pie

There's more to summer pie than raspberry!

I started with King Arthur'sBlue Ribbon Pie recipe. I followed the simplest directions, of course, skipping any optional or superfluous ingredients. I used butter and half whole wheat flour, of course. ;-) Mrs. Anderson helped out to achieve the perfect crust.

Of course I had to make a lattice top because it's so much fun to do and so pretty.

And Kateri sprinkled the top with cinnamon sugar before baking. That adds extra love to the pie and makes it taste better. Of course.

I probably don't even need to mention the necessity of vanilla ice cream!

Walnut Crumb Pumpkin Pie

This version of pumpkin pie features a walnut crumb topping that is a delicious complement to the pumpkin. It also uses a very untraditional graham cracker crust (gasp!) which makes it very easy to prepare, which means there are a lot more pumpkin pies made in this house throughout the fall. Which is a very nice thing.

I always double the recipe and make two.

Graham Cracker Pie Crust (purchased)

1 can pumpkin (15 oz)

1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)

1 egg

1 1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

pinch salt

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 Tbsp flour

2 Tbsp butter

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 425 degrees. In mixing bowl, combine pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, egg, 3/4 tsp cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt. Mix well. Pour into pie crust. Bake 15 minutes.

Meanwhile prepare crumb topping. I am quite generous with the topping ingredients ;-). Combine sugar, flour and remaining 1/2 tsp cinnamon; cut in butter until crumbly. Stir in walnuts.

Remove pie from oven. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees. Sprinkle walnut mixture evenly over pie. Bake for additional 40 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Cool. Serve with whipped cream, of course.