Waiter there is something in my Pecan Pie!

Wowzers this was just lovely, congratulations to Gourmet magazine again for a truly delicious dessert this thanksgiving!

I decided to submit it for cooksister's naughty 'waiter there's something in my...' as a topless tart: http://www.cooksister.com/2007/11/waiter-theres-s.html

I'm not a great connoisseur of pecan pie, but I gather its often cloyingly sweet and over the top. I'm an enormous pecan fan, and pastry is always a winner done well. This was just wonderful, as advertised, the chocolate contrasted nicely with the sweetness and the nuts mmmmm.

My changes to the recipe were that I used jamie olivers perfect sweet pastry recipe, and I dont even know what dark corn syrup is, so I put maple syrup in instead which worked wonderfully. The crust was overdone, and I think I would probably cook for slightly less time in the future, I'd say keep an eye on it after 35 mins.

1 (3 1/2- to 4-ounces) fine-quality 60%- to 70%-cacao bittersweet chocolate bar, finely chopped (I used trader joes belgian bittersweet chocolate)
Pastry tart shell
2 cups pecan halves and pieces (7 ounces), toasted and cooled
3 large eggs
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup maple syrup


Preheat oven to 375°F with rack in middle.

Break up the chocolate into a bowl and heat in the microwave in 30s intervals at most until melted. Spread over bottom of crust

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt and maple syrup. Stir in pecans and pour over the chocolate into the crust.

Bake for 50-60 mins, check after 30 mins and place foil over the pie if it is browning too quickly.

If baking ahead, reheat in a 350f oven for 10 minutes

Serve with lightly whipped cream.

Short crust sweet pastry-thanks to Jamie Oliver

I find myself frequently dipping into Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver. It helped me with ravioli, he's great at risotto, there are some delicious desserts, and an absolutely killer, super easy chocolate tart.

This is also the source for my favourite pastry recipe. I find this very useful indeed and have used it twice this thanksgiving weekend.

Short Crust Sweet Pastry (from Naked Chef-Jamie Oliver)
makes 2 x 30cm/12inch tart moulds

250g/9oz unsalted butter
200g/7oz icing sugar/confectioners sugar
pinch of salt
500g/just over 1lb flour
4 egg yolks
4 tablespoons cold milk/water

Cream butter, sugar and salt in a food processor, then pulse in the flour followed by the egg until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Pulse in the milk/water and then pat together the ball of dough. Dont work with it too much, just pull together into a long sausage shape, wrap with clingfilm and chill for at least an hour.

Carefully slice off thin slivers of the chilled pastry to around 5mm/1/8 in thick and arrange them in the tart shell, pushing together to make the tart shell.

The pastry is best if chilled for an hour before baking. It can be frozen at this stage until ready to eat.

If baking blind, bake for around 15 mins at 350f.

Thanks Jamie!

WCB-Tina and the Tofurkey

Well, Princess Tina is a strange one indeed. She completely ignored the roast duck right next to her and proceeded to try and get at my tofurkey. What a funny one. Here is her enjoying some leftovers!

Am I a cupcake hero?

A baby shower seemed like the perfect excuse to flex my cupcake baking muscles. I found a delicious sounding carrot cake recipe from the wonderful Delia Smith, the British equivalent of Martha, the last time I saw her on the telly she had so much bright lighting I wondered if her kitchen was based on the surface of the sun. Her recipes are always delicious, she's helped me with marmalade and all sorts of recipes and she has a pretty extensive website with absolutely delicious recipes. This was no exception- a low fat recipe where the addition of syrup after the baking imparts the most succulent gooey cake, more the kind that might be slowly savored with a fork than chomped in hand as a quick snack.

Never having had a fresh cranberry, I popped one in my mouth to see what they taste like and YOWZERS! They are quite tart! So I added quite a lot of sugar. I gather this is a baking faux pas(one should always stick to the recipe or things go horribly wrong), but the cakes came out really delicious. Thankfully the cranberries baked down really nicely and didnt just taste horribly bitter. It seems to me that they need to be cooked to be enjoyed unless you're the kind of person that likes to chew on lemons for a snack.

My changes to the original Delia recipe were adding more sugar, subbing cranberries for some of the cranberries and omitting the raisins. I also added some walnuts as to me, carrot cake has to have walnuts. I left out the lemon juice to the syrup as I didn't need any more tart! The cream cheese frosting needed a little more sugar to my taste.




Recipe (derived from How to Cook Book One-Delia Smith)
Cake
7oz (200g) dark brown soft sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature
4 fl oz (120ml) sunflower oil
7 oz wholemeal flour
1 1/2 level teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons mixed spice
1/2 tsp salt
grated zest 1 orange
5 oz (150g) carrots, peeled and grated
5oz (150g) cranberries
1/2 cup (60g) walnut pieces

Syrup Glaze
juice 1/2 orange
3oz (80g) sugar

Frosting
8oz low fat cream cheese
1 1/2 oz (40g) sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325f and put cup cake papers in a muffin tin
Whisk the sugar eggs and oil together in a bowl using an electric hand whisk for 2-3 minutes
Sift together flour, bicarb and mixed spice and mix together.
Fold in egg mixture, orange zest, carrots, cranberries and walnuts.
Spoon the mixture into the cake papers and bake for around 30 mins until a toothpick comes out clean when put into the center of one of the middle cakes.

While the cake is cooking, make the topping by mixing all the ingredients in a bowl until light and fluffy, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 1-2 hours or until needed.

Whisk together the orange juice and sugar, put in the microwave for 30s if it isnt dissolving.

As soon as the cakes are out of the oven, make holes in them with a skewer and carefully spoon sugar and orange juice mixture over each one.

Leave to cool completely and then frost with the cream cheese mixture topping each cake with a walnut piece.

Weekend Cat Blogging-Tina in the box

As soon as I've got my groceries out of a box it becomes Tina's. For some reason she thinks that as long as she's in the box she's impervious to everything. Being a flighty little thing, she has quite a few things that she's scared of, including tin foil, kitchen timers, vacuum cleaner, my bike etc. As soon as she finds a box to sit in she feels safe.

Its weird inheriting a cat at 4 years old as we have no real knowledge of those 4 years. We get a surprise every now and then, we realised this week that she understands exactly what a pill box is and doesnt like pills!!

Home-made power bars for busy days and long bike rides.

I'm so glad I caught Alton Brown on his granola bar episode. These bars have powered me through long afternoons at work, and very long bike rides and they actually taste pretty good too. I get that funny after taste with some bars and all the strange additives dont seem good either. I can also have the right amount, which is around 150 calories on a relatively sedentary afternoon, or I can have little bite sized chunks when I'm powering up Palomar Mountain. I've just made myself a new batch, to keep some in the fridge and freezer, and to help me on my way around the beautiful El Tour De Tucson in a couple of weeks, that I'm riding in to raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

I'm told they taste a little like moon cakes, although I dont really see the similarity, some say they are a little like bread pudding. They are nice and filling, not overly sweet or fatty and I like they are moist instead of dry and crunchy like some bars.

The only down side to these is you need to keep them in the fridge, they cant really languish in a drawer or bike bag for weeks as they will be gross!

Recipe-Alton brown 2005

Prep Time: 25 minutes Cook Time: 35 minutes Yield: 24 (2-inch) squares

4 ounces soy protein powder, approximately 1 cup

2 1/4 ounces oat bran, approximately 1/2 cup

2 3/4 ounces whole-wheat flour, approximately

1/2 cup 3/4-ounce wheat germ, approximately 1/4 cup

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

3 ounces raisins, approximately 1/2 cup

2 1/2 ounces dried cherries, approximately 1/2 cup

3 ounces dried figs, approximately 1/2 cup

2 1/2 ounces dried apricots, approximately 1/2 cup

1 (14-ounce) package soft silken tofu

1/2 cup unfiltered apple juice

2 large bananas

4 ounces dark brown sugar, approximately 1/2 cup packed

2 large whole eggs, beaten

2/3 cup natural peanut butter

Canola oil, for pan

Line the bottom of a 13 by 9-inch glass baking dish with parchment paper and lightly coat with canola oil. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the protein powder, oat bran, wheat flour, wheat germ, and salt. Set aside.

Coarsely chop the raisins, dried cherries, figs and apricots and place in a small bowl and set aside.

In a third mixing bowl, whisk the tofu until smooth(hand blender very handy here).

Add the apple juice, bananas, brown sugar, eggs, and peanut butter, 1 at a time, and whisk to combine after each addition. Add this to the protein powder mixture and stir well to combine. Fold in the dried fruit.

Spread evenly in the prepared baking dish and bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 205 degrees F.

Remove from the oven and cool completely before cutting into squares.

Cut into squares and store in an airtight container for up to a week or freeze for a month.

Notes: I switched around some of the fruit, added 2 thawed frozen bananas and had 14oz tofu rather than 12 but it still was lovely. Figs and bananas go wonderfully together in this recipe. I usually just use whatever dried fruit I have to hand and almond butter subs for peanut butter just lovely. Its a very forgiving recipe!

My favourite thing at the weekend

I'm very lucky to have a little computer with a touch screen pad in my kitchen connected to speakers. So I can look at recipes on the internet and listen to the radio. I mostly catch up with whats going on back home, one of my favourite programs is the food program on radio 4. I highly recommend it if you like to listen to the radio on the internet or download podcasts. This weeks episode they talked about a room that was recently discovered in Chatsworth House, a truly magnificent country mansion, containing lots of really old cooking gadgets.