make life sweeter!

I never really bother to roll out tart dough: why roll when you can press is my motto ;) I know it is the easy way out but it works fine for me.
It's not the rolling itself I dislike but what you have to do after that: transferring the dough in one piece into a baking tin and making sure it fits nicely.
I don't even remember the first time I did try but I remember I didn't like it....and still don't (like the other roll out thing). However, being a person who bakes on a regular basis I thought I should be able to roll out dough too. So behold: a tart with dough I actually rolled out! It worked out pretty good, even though I need to pratice getting it neatly into the baking pan. I rolled the rolling pin over it before pressing it a little bit against the sides so there was a little bit too much dough in some places...practice makes perfect, right?
Anyway....this is my entry for this month's Hay Hay it's Donna Day. Created by Barbara of Winosandfoodies and hosted by last month's winner: Trinigourmet. This month's theme is tarts!
The crust recipe I used is Donna's sweet shortcrust dough from Classics Book 2. It is the one I use for pretty much all my crusts. I settled for a chocolate ganache filling but wasn't sure about an extra flavour. Should I infuse the cream with something or just keep it as is and add something else to fill the crust? So many important choices a baker must make ;)
In the end I went with something I made for last SHF: Haagse Hopjes or coffee caramels. I still had most of them tucked away in my cupboard. Not because were not tasty but - I did not mention this in the original post - I couldn't cut more than a few caramels because the mixture had cooled down too much. When I first cut them, it was too soon so the cut marks were gone after some time. The second time I was just in time to cut only a few caramels in the middle, the rest of the mixture was already too hard to cut. In other words, I had a few big pieces of caramel that were not very convenient to nibble on. Luckily I discovered that you can recook caramel. You just dissolve the caramels in water and cook till the required temperature. To make the original caramels I cooked them to hard crack stage, this time I cooked them till soft ball. That way the caramel would stay soft. I used the caramel as the bottom layer, the chocolate ganache was poured over the caramel. The dot decoration is white chocolate. I like making dot decoration as you can see here, here and here.
The tart tin I used was about 10 x 34 cm (4 x 14 in).

Notes to myself when making something similar:
- cooking caramels to soft ball is too soft to use as filling at roomtemperature, that is if you don't want the caramel to sip out when you cut the tart (the recipe below is the corrected version of medium ball stage)
- don't rush to finish the tart before you go to bed and pour ganache over caramel that has not properly cooled down. If you do, expect the caramel to creep up at the sides instead of staying on the bottom of the crust ;)
- when piping chocolate dots, lift the piping bag in an upward motion instead of a sideward motion in order to create neat dots that don't have to be corrected by piping bigger dots on top of them
- make sure the tart is level when put in the fridge that way the tart filling will be level too
- don't use your silicon roll out mat because 2 sheets of baking paper works much better

As for the taste: the ganache was delicious in its simplicity. The coffee caramel taste was not very present, I think because mine was to fluid and therefore it blended with ganache too quickly when taking a bite. I suspect that a more set caramel would solve this 'problem'.

Sweet shortcrust pastry (from Modern Classics Book 2 by Donna Hay)

270 g (2 cups) flour
3 tbs caster sugar
150 g (5 oz) cold butter, diced
2-3 tbs ice water

Process the flour, sugar and butter in a foodprocessor until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. With the motor running add enough water for the dough to cling together. Knead lightly and wrap in plastic wrap. Allow to sit in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
Roll out the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper until 2-3 mm (⅛ in) thick. Line the greased tart tin. Blind bake for 10 minutes. Remove the baking weights and bake for another 10 minutes or until the crust is golden.

Coffee caramel

about 300 g (10 ½ oz) Haagse Hopjes (or other coffee caramels)
1- 1 ½ cups water

Dissolve the Haagse Hopjes in the water on low heat. Turn the heat up to medium and allow to cook till 118-121°C (245-250°F or medium ball stage). Pour the caramel into the baked pie crust. Allow to cool completely.

Chocolate ganache

200 g (7 oz) bittersweet chocolate (70%)
200 ml (6 ¾ fl. oz) whipping cream

Chop the chocolate in ½ cm (¼ in) pieces. Transfer to a bowl. Bring the cream to a boil. Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for 1 minute. Stir until well combined. Pour the ganache over the caramel filled crust. Allow to cool completely.

White chocolate decoration

30 g (1 oz) white chocolate, chopped

Melt the chocolate and transfer to a piping bag made out of baking paper. Snip off the tip and pipe dots onto the ganache.

This month was the first time I read about HotM. For those of you that don't know what HotM is, details can be found here on Ilva's lovely Lucillian Delights. The theme for this month's HotM is fruit and berries. The recipes you post for HotM should be heart healthy. I thought being a (trained, not practicing) dietician I should enter HotM (even though most of the recipes on this blog don't exactly fit the description 'heart healthy').
When paging through my cookbooks I came across a nectarine ice tea recipe in Entertaining by Donna Hay. It is ice tea with the addition of pureed nectarines and is flavoured with basil and mint. I made some adaptations by replacing the darjeeling tea by vanilla rooibos tea and omitting the mint. The result is a very tasty, silky smooth, refreshing nectarine beverage with a hint of basil. The amount of sugar called for in the recipe was exactly right, making it sweetish but definitely not too sweet. The sugar could be substituted for artificial sweetener for people who want to cut back on sugar ;) Use good ripe nectarines to get a good nectarine flavour.

Vanilla rooibos nectarine ice tea (from Entertaining by Donna Hay)

makes about 1 ½ l (6 ½ cups)

2 tbs of vanilla rooibos tea
1 cup basil leaves
125 g (½ cup) sugar
1 ¼ l (5 cups) water, boiling
5 medium size nectarines, pureed and sieved

Put the rooibos, basil and sugar in a heat-proof bowl. Add the boiling water and allow to steep for about 7 minutes. Remove the rooibos and basil. Add the nectarines and allow to cool down. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.

At YumSugar they want us to show our cookbooks this summer. My favorite cookbook is Modern Classics 2 by Donna Hay. All about the sweet things in life :) It has lots of yummy and well-written recipes but most of all I looove the pictures in the book. Here, here, and here you can find recipes I tried from Modern Classics 2.

Trying to do something else than taking care of the boys, I've decided to make more sweet stuff and blog about it (still not doing as much as I used to do in Tel Aviv....by far). We'll see how long I will keep it up when university starts in September ;)
Started out by making balsamic vinegar tomato paste chocolates which didn't work out because son no. 2 started crying during an essential part of making them. As a consequence I had to reheat the mixture I made and found out the hard way that it was too hot when I mixed in the chocolate....fat separated from the mixture (yes...again) and it looked kind of crumbly. Couldn't be rescued. Did taste it and it didn't really work for me anyway so I won't bother making these chocolates again.
Next recipe has less exciting ingredients but turned out wonderful despite it ;) My first upside-down cake. Have seen quite a few in foodblogs but as it isn't in the Dutch baking repertoire, I never made it before. I found the recipe in Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2. Had to change the recipe a bit cause it called for a round 24 cm (9 ½ in) cake tin. I do have round cake tins but they are all springform tins and that doesn't work well with a liquid. Instead I used a square tin of 21 x 21 cm (8 x 8 in). I kept the measurements for the topping the same, used nectarines instead of apricots and halved the ingredients for the cake layer as my tin isn't very high.
The fun thing I thought about this cake was that you don't know if it will look good until you turn it over....doing so made me very happy cause it turned out very well....even better than I expected. Good thing it tasted very good as well ;) The topping together with the nectarine juice made the cake caramely and moist.



Nectarine upside-down cake

serves 9

95 g (¾ cup) flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
115 g (½ cup) caster sugar
½ tsp ground vanilla beans
65 g (2 oz) butter, melted and cooled down somewhat
topping
225 g (1 cup) sugar
125 ml (½ cup / 4 fl oz) water
75 g (2 ½ oz) butter
3 nectarines, cut into 16 wedges each

Preheat the oven to 160°C (325°F). For the topping, combine sugar and water in a saucepan. Let the sugar dissolve over low heat while stirring. Increase the heat and allow to boil until the syrup is golden brown. Remove from heat and stir tthrough the butter. Pour the caramel into a well greased square 21 x 21 cm (8 x 8 in) cake tin. Place the nectarine wedges snugly in the caramel. (I already did so the evening before I made the rest of the cake)
Sift the flour with the baking powder twice.
Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla for 10 minutes until thick and pale. Fold through the flour and baking powder mixture. Fold through the melted butter.
Spoon the cake mixture over the apricots and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow the cake to stand for 5 minutes before inverting it onto a plate. Serve warm.

Another recipe from the wonderful Coffee & Bites by Susie Theodorou. These individual tartlets are filled with frangipan and apricot. I didn’t use her recipe for sweet pastry but used my favourite Donna Hay recipe. I was a bit disappointed by the – in my opinion - too subtle almond taste. Maybe it was because I cheated and used slithered almonds instead of whole ones. It could be that slithered almonds have less taste. If you like a stronger almond taste I suggest adding a little bit of almond flavouring or maybe adding one or two bitter almonds to the mixture. The apricot however was really delicious; the baking enhanced its natural sweet- and tartness. They look like they might be a little dry but that’s just appearances.

(Again) I didn’t roll out the sweet pastry, it’s not that I have a rolling-out-dough-phobia but I don’t like doing it. The rolling out part is okay but the whole transferring to the tin is nerve-wracking to me. Donna Hay recommends rolling out the dough between baking paper. Very good tip only in Israel I cannot find baking paper on a roll. They sell it ready cut into rectangles and folded twice. The folds cause problems when rolling out the dough. Rolling it out without the baking paper is not really an option because I only use all-butter dough and my kitchen is pretty hot. I promise that after we move back to the Netherlands I shall practice rolling out dough ;)

Sweet shortcrust pastry (from Modern Classics Book 2 by Donna Hay)

270 g (2 cups) flower
3 tbs caster sugar
150 g (5 oz) cold butter, chopped
2-3 tbs iced water

Process the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. While the motor is running, add enough iced water to form a smooth dough and process until just combined. Knead the dough lightly, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.


Frangipan tartlets (from Coffee & Bites by Susie Theodorou



150 g (5 oz / 1 ¼ cup) whole blanched almonds
115 g (4 oz / ½ cup) butter, softened
75 g (3 oz / 1/3 cup) caster sugar
2 medium eggs
6 large fresh apricots, halved, stoned, then cut into 10 wedges
4 tbs apricot jam
2 tbs water

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Place twelve 6 cm (2 ½ in) diameter rings onto 2 baking sheets. Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Thinly roll out each piece (between no-stick baking paper) to line the metal rings. Trim the top, prick the bases and chill for 10 minutes. Line each pastry with non-stick baking paper or aluminium foil and fill with baking beans or dried beans. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the paper with the beans. Bake the pastries for a further 5 minutes or until the bases are pale brown and dry.

Lightly toast the almonds in a heavy-based pan for 1-2 minutes until they begin to release their aroma. Cool the nuts slightly, then process them in a food processor until finely ground. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the almonds. Gradually beat in the eggs.

Reduce the oven to 170ºC (325ºF). Spread 3-4 tbs frangipan into the base of each tartlet. Press apricot wedges into the mixture. Bake the tartlets for 25-30 minutes until the frangipan is just set and the fruit is starting to caramelise at the tips.

Heat the jam with the water and pass it through a sieve. Allow the tarlets to cool for 1-2 minutes before brushing the glaze on the fruit, frangipan and pastry edge. Allow to cool before serving.

1 tartlet – 380 kcal
100 g – 400 kcal

carbohydrate 32 g – protein 6 g – fat 27 g (saturated fat 13 g) – fibre 3 g