Rhubarb and Custard Tart with Cream Cheese topping - yes please!!

Growing up in England Rhubarb and Custard used to be a regular pudding in spring - and I just loved my stewed rhubarb and custard so imagine my delight when my friend and brilliant food blogger Christina at Christina's Cucina posted a recipe for Rhubarb and Custard Bars from Taste of Home on her Facebook page - I knew I had to make it. I ended up making the recipe three times as I halved the size of the Taste of Home RECIPE and made it in a 9" tart pan - it was good, very creamy and delicious but I wanted more custard - so I made it in the same size pan but a deeper one - and that was really good too but I still needed more custard so then I went for a 7.5" x 2" deep pan, and decided to use my Easy Peasy crust instead of the very simple crust in the original recipe which indeed was very simple, and very very good, but I found it hard to squush into the tart pan - it kept sticking to my hands and coming back off the pan so I did this crust instead - it's lovely and again a no roll out crust - you squush this one into the pan too.

EASY PEASY SWEET TART CRUST:

Pre heat oven to 325F
Enough for one tart case 9” shallow or my 7.5 x 2" deep pie pan.

1 1/2 cups/6ozs of unbleached white flour 

1/2 cup/2ozs confectioners/icing sugar 

1 stick + 1 tablespoon/ 4 1/2ozs butter VERY COLD 

1 large egg yolk

1. Sift dry ingredients together into a medium sized bowl. 

2. Grate the butter into the dry ingreds., and rub in until like breadcrumbs.

 3. Add egg yolk and blend and squush carefully until the dough sticks together. This may take a little time but despair not it will come together - just don't let it warm up - pie crusts pastry should always be kept as cold as possible to make it flaky and divine. 

4. Tear dough into big chunks…..place strategically in pie pan and start squushing to a create a smooth even covering of the entire pan…the beauty of this crust is that it does NOT shrink at all…it stays put…good crust!!...and it tastes like a really good shortbread…yum!!

5. Bob into the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

6. Remove from the fridge and prick the pastry all over with a fork - this is to prevent bubbles forming when you bake. Next I lined the pastry with parchment paper and weighed it down with black eyed peas - you can use beans or pie weights but don't go down the road of popcorn as I did once - you can guess at those results.

6. Bake for about 15 minutes, remove from the oven, genteely lift the paper and weight from the shell and bob pastry back into the oven for about another 15 minutes - don't worry when you take the weights out if the pastry looks soggy and sad - it will improve by the next time you take it out of the oven :))

Keep your eyes peeled - you want the crust to be evenly baked but not browned. Keep your oven on at 325F.

Now assemble your pie ingredients:

4.5oz/2 1/2 cups thinly sliced rhubarb
 

6oz/ scant 3/4 cup of sugar
 

6 fl oz/ 3/4 cup heavy/double cream
 

3 medium sized eggs
 

1 teaspoon vanilla essence/extract
 

4 tablespoons white flour
 

1. Whisk flour and sugar together
 

2. Add eggs and whisk then add the cream and vanilla and whisk until smooth.
 

3. Spread the rhubarb evenly on the bottom of the pie crust:

4. Gently pour the custard over - you can fill the crust right the way up, this filling does not expand much:

5. Bob into your pre heated 325F oven and bake for about 45mins - I over baked mine becaue I wanted it to be completely cooked and it made the crust a little too brown and the filling a little too hard - so if it wobbles a bit in the middle that's OK if you don't mind it being a bit harder to cut and maybe even a bit runny - it tastes really good that way!

The top of the tart wasn't too attractive but no worries as we're going to cover it with lovely creamy cream cheese sweetness. So allow the tart to cool completely before adding this deliciousness to the top of your pie:

TOPPING: 

3oz cream cheese
 

1 1/2 ozs / scant 1/4 cup of sugar

2 fl oz/ 1/4 cup heavy/double cream whipped to stiff

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence/extract
 

1. Beat the cream cheese until smooth
 

2. Add sugar and liquids and beat until smooth.
 

3. Fold in the whipped cream until smooth:

4. Then happily dollop atop your cooled tart:

This third tart did cut beautifully but it was just a tad too well baked - tasted great though!!

This pic below of the second tart I made which was shallower - I didn't bake it too long and as you can see it was still a bit soft at the middle - despite looking a bit soggy it did taste really good so I do suggest baking the tart less rather than more:

A close up of the lovely easy peasy tart crust - good and sturdy, reliable and very tasty like good shortbread.

This might be really good made with strawberries instead of rhubarb or with strawbs. and rhubarb, peaches, gooseberries, apricots or raspberries - I want to try them all!

This recipe is part of the The Great British Rhubarb Recipe Round Up at Lavender and Lovage and The Farmersgirl Kitchen

 

The poppies, lupines and iris have just started blooming in my neck of the Maine woods - they are such a beautiful sight to behold each late spring:

Lupine leaves in the dewy air

So Happy Baking everyone - if you make this tart please feel free to post pics of such on my FACEBOOK PAGE!

If you are interested in the background fabrics in these pictures you can find them as print on demand fabric, wallpaper, wrapping paper and wall decals in my online
SPOONFLOWER SHOP 

Mini Christmas Pudding Dried Fruit Balls

Awww - aren't these charming little Christmas Pudding sweeties! Chock full of dried fruity goodness, subtle, tart, almondy, tooth-achingly sweet in a good way balls of deliciousness!

This is a very simple but very sticky recipe - the original recipe which I gleaned from British Country Living's December issue said to work the dried fruit through the finest blade of a mincer - which you can do if you happen to have a mincer but as I didn't I first tried a coffee grinder and when that got quickly clogged I resorted to some serious chopping with a cleaver type knife in small batches by hand and it worked really well albeit somewhat time consuming - so let us begin!

ASSEMBLE YOUR INGREDIENTS:

You can use any combination of dried fruits that strike your fancy - you can see from the dark colours of mine that I chose organic, non-sulphured but whatever tastes good to you should work well - just follow your tastebuds!

This recipe makes 9 hearty Christmas Balls! Recipe multiplies no problem!

2oz/50g of toasted almonds

2oz/50g dried apricots

2oz/50g mixed raisins, white raisins/sultanas and currants

2oz/50g soft pitted prunes

2oz/50g crystallized ginger

1oz/25g dried cranberries - I chose really bright in flavour ones sweetened with apple juice so the end result had a nice tang!!

3 teaspoons honey

Finely grated zest of one unwaxed preferably organic lemon

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 heaped teaspoon of freshly grated ginger

goodly pinch of freshly ground nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon or any combination there of - also you could add a big pinch of ground ginger if you don't put in the grated fresh ginger.

Plate covered in granulated sugar to roll the balls in.

1. Toast the almonds until fragrant - about 5 minutes at 375 but it varies so check regularly they are not burning.

2. Let almonds cool completely.

3. Put almonds in a small plastic bag and bang with a heavy rolling pin until they are broken into small pieces.

4. Grind in a coffee grinder in 2 batches until fine - they may get a bit oily but that's actually OK in this recipe.

5. Chop, chop, chop all the dried fruit in small batches until they get nice and sticky, the pieces are small, there are no chunks and they hold together when pressed.

 6. Mix the fruits, ground almonds, honey, grated ginger, spices and lemon juice and zest with a fork until evenly blended.

7. Take about a small tablespoon of the sweetmeat and roll into a ball, if it doesn't stick together add more honey, then roll in the sugar on the plate and pop into a sweet little paper cup. Ta dah - that's pretty much it except for...

HONEY ICING to make it look like a little Christmas Pudding:

 This is the wing it part - 

2 heaped tablespoons of icing/confectioners sugar sifted so there are no lumps.

Honey and milk - just a tad of each.

Starting with a teeny tiny amount of the honey in a small bowl slowly slowly slowly add some honey and blend until smooth, add a little milk and blend until smooth and work the whole into a dense, thick paste that won't run when you put the tiniest bit on top of one of the Christmas Balls - work it a little to drip as above and then allow to dry. This is the hard part - hard to know how thick, hard to know how SMALL of an amount to pop on the top of a ball, hard to know how little honey and or milk, that can depend on the humidity, to add to the sugar but err on the side of less and least and you'll be fine.

I should have bought some Maraschino Cherries to put on the top - the flavour would have gone well with the almond in the sweets and you can buy non-artificial ones from The Silver Palate so instead I used some raspberry infused cranberries that were redder than the ones in the recipe.

Next time I make these I think I will add a ball of marzipan in the middle and maybe switch out the apricots for dates - I LOVE marzipan and think that would be a real treat!! The flavour does develop a little with time so you can make these a day ahead if you'd like.

Let me know if you make these and feel free to post your pics on my Facebook page HERE 

We are awaiting a big snowstorm here in Maine - Electra is her name! I love blizzards and hope to get some nice photographs - in the meantime here are some pictures from a snow earlier this week.

 A little red squirrel is getting a snack ready for later!

 My favourite apple tree has plenty of apples for the deer who love to come for a midnight snack - last year we didn't get a single apple because of an early springtime frost - you can see we got plenty this year!

This blogpost is part of the December Tea Time Treats over at Lavender and Lovage and The Hedgecombers - do bob over and have a look at all the yummy sparkly delights - click in the box below! Thanks!

The best apple galette ever...seriously!!...for Great Maine Apple Day

I do have to blow my own trumpet and stand behind the title of this post as, indeed, I have perfected this recipe over the last few weeks to an amazing level of sublime. I will tell you in detail how I achieve above pictured deliciousness in hopes you will try this galette and be taken to realms of swooning only thus far imagined in your dreams - OK maybe that's a bit over the top but this is a WINNER!!!!

And one again we start with my go to delight:

STICKY TOFFEE SAUCE:

2 1/2oz/ heaped 1/4 cup sugar 

1 1/2 oz / 3 tablespoons salted butter

2 tablespoons cream or half and half

..and if you really like that salty tang - which I do - a good pinch of extra salt.

1. Put all three ingredients in a pan to melt together, mix and keep mixing whilst letting it bubble a couple of minutes until it gets a bit thick - allow to cool and pour over (reserving about 2 tablespoons for the pecans) about 6 - 7ounces of sliced apples of your choice - I am still using the rag, tag and bobtail apples from my old apple trees behind the house:

 Now add about 12 pecans to the reserved sticky toffee sauce and stir them over medium heat in the pan until they are fragrant and a little toasted - about 3 or 4 minutes - set aside.

Set your caramelled apples aside also and now start making the pastry - if you do it exactly how I am saying you should get a crust that is like a crispy, melting cookie/biscuit - it is glorious!

PASTRY: Please do weigh your ingredients if you can - the result will be much more reliable!

Start with everything cold, cold, cold - I even put my flour and sugar in the fridge for at least 1/2 hour before I start making the pastry!

5ozs/ 1 1/4 cups of white flour

4ozs salted butter - hardened in the freezer

2oz/heaped 1/4 cup of sugar

about 2 to 4 fluid ounces/1/8 to 1/4 COLD water - the amount will vary depending on the weather and your flour

METHOD: This is by hand and not in a cuisinart but if you want to use a machine adaption should be easy - you just swish a couple of times for each step until the dough comes together in a ball.

1. Sift the flour and add the sugar and blend.

2. Grate the hardened butter into the flour:

 3. Gently work butter into flour until it resembles coarse meal or swish in a food processor to achieve the same.

4. Add some of the water and start squushing the pastry and keep adding bit by bit of water until it can be formed into a non-sticky ball - less water is better so squush hard until it comes together:

How your pastry ball should look

5. Put into the fridge to rest for at least one hour - or as long as you like.

TO ASSEMBLE THE GALETTE:

1. Take your pastry ball from the fridge and on a lightly floured board roll out to about 11" diameter - doesn't matter if the edge is raggedy - in fact it adds to it's rusticity!

2. Place the pastry on a well buttered tray - my tray is black so try for a black tray also or you're cooking time will vary from mine - a lighter coloured tray will take longer, I have a nice square baking tray that is perfect for the job, a tray with an edge is preferably to catch the possible running juices - you never can tell if it will run or not.

 Dollop the cold caramel apples in a high blob in the middle of the pastry:

3. Fold the excess pastry over onto the top of the apples trying to make sure there are no little holes/open spaces for the juices to escape...

4. Wet the top of the galette with water, just a little bit to dampen - or use any remaining sticky toffee sauce from the pecans - and sprinkle sugar atop the little darling:

5. Now pop her back into the fridge for about another hour - or longer - as you prefer - this is a necessary step to help the galette keep it's shape.

When you are ready to bake set the oven to 425F and when it's hot put the galette in for about 25 minutes - remember every oven is different so keep an eye on your galette - turn if necessary - my oven does brown more on one side than the other so I turn half way through - don't worry if juices leak, I have only managed a small percentage of none leaking galette's thus far - it will be OK, and bake until it is nice and toasty brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool before tumbling the pecans atop and then make a couple of tablespoon of sugar icing with a little milk (a couple of teaspoons to start) and lots of icing/confectioners sugar - drizzle over and allow to set and VOILA - the best ever apple galette!!

So Happy Great Maine Apple Day - here is a link to MOFGA's events for the day - Happy Baking!!!

On a fragrant note - if, like me, you have lots of grungy windfall apples available that are not fit to cook with I have found you can add them to a pot of boiling water - we keep one on our wood burning stove in the winter months to humidify the air - and let them simmer away and they'll make your house smell like delicious apple sauce!

Just FYI - I have had the occasional partial collapse of the pastry during cooking and don't know the cause but it still has come out tasting fine if looking a little lobsided.

As you can see one of our dear, gnarly old apple trees still has quite the bounty to give up so I see a lot more of these galettes in my future!!

The Pee Gee Hydrangea's are spectacular right now o I thought I'd share a couple of pictures with you!

Be in touch and let me know how your galette goes.

Patricia

This delicious morsel is part of the AUGUST TEA TIME TREATS blog hop organized by the ever lovely LAVENDER & LOVAGE and The HEDGECOMBERS  

Click in the box below to go to the August tea time treats and peruse all the fabulous recipes!

Maple Parsnip Pecan Apple Syrup Maple Syrup Cake with Toffee icing also now known as Harvest Cake - phew!!

This is a simple but time consuming cake - a lot like a light, moist carrot cake but more gingery and just GOOD!!! - doesn't take any particular baking skills but there's a lot of components so please do read through the recipe before you start to see what you need to do and when and whether you think the effort is worth it - the original cake HERE (from Tasting Table - recipe by Michel Richard) didn't have any toffee sauce, apple cider syrup or buttercream so you could do that if you want to keep it much simpler :)

This cake improves with time so you may want to make the day before Thankies!!

First make the Apple Cider Syrup and allow to cool completely before use:

APPLE CIDER SYRUP - make lots of this it is really good on pretty much ANYTHING!

If you use 16fl ounces of apple cider (that would be juice in England not alcoholic cider) all you have to do is gently boil it down until there is only 6fl ounces left - that's it! When it cools it will go syrupy - if it doesn't, depending on the water content of your juice, then just simmer it a bit more.

 Allow to cool.

Now make the Sticky Toffee Apple Sauce:

STICKY TOFFEE APPLE SAUCE:

2 1/2oz brown sugar

 1 1/2 oz butter
2 tablespoons cream or half and half 

6 tablespoons apple cider syrup

1. Heat sugar, cream and butter together in a small pan until sugar has dissolved and allow to bubble for a minute or so.

2. Add the apple cider syrup and stir and bubble for a minute or two again - keep warm but not hot.

NOW MAKE YOUR NUT MEAL:

The original recipe uses just almond meal - I chose to go half almond, half pecan so to make 2 cups/7ozs nut meal:

 3 1/2oz pecans and 3/12 oz almonds - toast in a 350f oven for about 10 minutes until the smell is divine and the nuts are toasted but not burnt - be careful not to burn them so do keep an eye out and check every couple of minutes.

Allow to cool COMPLETELY - if they are not completely cold they will get oily when you grind them.

Take some of the flour from the recipe below and put some nuts and flour in a coffee grinder and grind 'til fine - do not overgrind as the nuts will get oily and that's not good for the recipe OR just buy ground almonds/meal from the shops and stop mucking about with nuts!! 

OKEE DOKKEE here we go - have all your ingredients at room temperature and set the oven to 350F. Please try to weigh your ingredients as it is so much more reliable for the recipe to work.

CAKE INGREDIENTS:

  2 cups/7ozs almond meal or very finely ground almonds or half and half finely ground almonds and pecans

¾ cup/2 1/2 ozs white all purpose/plain flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon - I don't really like cinnamon so I substituted freshly ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup/4 fl ozs pure maple syrup OR 1/2 cup/2 fl ozs maple syrup and 1/2 cup/2 fl ozs apple cider syrup

2ozs toasted whole pecans for decoration

A thing of beauty maple syrup and apple cider syrup together...ahhhh

 8 tablespoons (1 stick)/4ozs unsalted butter, melted - I always use salted myself

2 large eggs whisked

4 teaspoons freshly grated ginger - here's how you peel ginger - with the tip of a spoon - 

2 medium parsnips weighing a total of 4ozs - maybe 5 before you've peeled them - peeled and grated (about 2 cups)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven to 350° and position a rack in the center.

2. Butter the bottom of a 9-inch-round cake pan (I made half the recipe and used a 6" pan as I was testing the cake and there's only two of us but now having eaten the cake I would go for the full size cake as the small one was actually a bit small even for just 2 of us - for Thankies if you want a good sized cake for say 6 people I would actually double this recipe and make a layer cake with more buttercream - always more buttercream!!) and line it with a round of parchment paper. Butter and flour the parchment paper and sides of the pan. (As you can see I stupidly didn't do this parchment part and it would have been easier to extricate the cake if I had!!)

 
3. In a large mixing bowl whisk the almond/pecan meal with the flour, baking soda, cinnamon or nutmeg and salt. Set aside.

 
4. In a large bowl combine the maple syrup, apple cider syrup, melted butter and whisked eggs.

5. Beat at medium speed until well combined, about 1 minute.

6. Stir in the dry ingredients a cup at a time, mixing between each addition until just combined.

7. Finally stir in the ginger and parsnips.

 8. Pour the (very wet) batter into the prepared pan.

 9. Bake for between 40 to 55 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake is shrinking away from the sides of the pan:

 Transfer to a wire rack and let the cake cool in the pan for 20 minutes before unmolding. Let cool to room temperature and either keep it plain like this OR let's gild that lily!!!

As you can see this is not a high rising cake - so more is better - in future I would make two small cakes like this and sandwich with the almond buttercream.

Whilst the cake is cooling make the buttercream:

8ozs/2 sticks room temperature butter (yup - I use salted but I know many people use sweet - here the salt really works with the other flavours)

Bag o' icing/confectioner's sugar

2 tablespoons apple cider syrup

1 teaspoon almond essence/extract

Cream butter 'til light and fluffy - slowly add sugar and liquid flavours and beat between additions until you get the taste you like - if the texture goes wonky because of the liquids add more sugar and beat beat beat it should come back together.

Now pipe the buttercream as you wish - I do a circle on the top which forms a wall for the apple toffee sauce - and place the toasted pecans as you wish - every other piped rosette is the way I go - now admire your work and IF YOU CAN STAND IT wait til the next day to eat it - it improves with flavour overnight!!!! - otherwise get the kettle on and eat the whole thing NOWWW!!!!

 HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!

Happy Baking, let me know if you make it and please post your pics of PARSNIPPY goodness on my Facebook page HERE!!!

I just entered this recipe into the

Extra Veg Blog Challenge

 

held by Kate at Veggie Desserts,  Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle at Utterly Scrummy

 and also this Tea Time Treats Round up at The Hedgecombers and Lavender and Lovage

THANKSGIVING GUIDE
CHEFS' RECIPES
LOCAL PICKS
NATIONAL PICKS
SOUS CHEF SERIES





            



« PREVIOUS
||
Recipes
||
NEXT »



   
         
          
            
              
            



    
    



      Enjoy this story from our archive, originally sent to TT members on 11/4/2010.
    


    
            
    
    
    



              
      



       Carrot's Cousin

An easy cake that screams autumn  

     

Chef Michel Richard is righ

Maple-Parsnip Cake  

Recipe adapted from Sweet Magic: Easy Recipes for Delectable Desserts, by Michel Richard (Harper Collins) 


Yield: One 9-inch cake  

INGREDIENTS 

2 cups almond meal or very finely ground almonds

¾ cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup pure maple syrup

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

2 large eggs

3 teaspoons freshly grated ginger

6 medium parsnips, peeled and grated (about 2 cups)

½ cup toasted pecans


 DIRECTIONS   
1. Preheat the oven to 350° and position a rack

4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and scatter the pecans over the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted






 in the center comes out clean, about 40 to 55 minutes. 






Transfer to a wire rack and let the cake cool in the pan for 20 minutes before unmolding. Let cool to room temperature, slice and serve.





Read more: http://www.tastingtable.com/entry_detail/chefs_recipes/2314//An_easy_cake_that_screams_autumn.htm#ixzz2CcciTOQy