Posts Tagged august baking project

August Baking Project, Take Three: Cherry Hand Pies

August 18, 2009 at 7:26 am · Filed under baking ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Cherry Hand Pies 2

Cherry hand pies. They don't look it, but they are akin to home made Pop Tarts.

Part three of my August baking project (desserts with summer fruits) takes advantage of the abundance of sweet cherries that are flooding into markets this summer. I found out on NPR that there’s an oversupply of sweet cherries this season, due to a favorable growing season, so producers and grocery stores are trying to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

It may be bad news for cherry farmers, but it sounds like good news to me. Usually I think of cherries as a luxury, but Rainier Cherries been showing up at the Columbia Heights Giant for as little at $2 a pound.

My first impulse was to make a cherry pie but, as I wrote last week, the single studio life doesn’t exactly lend itself to pie baking. Pie, which doesn’t freeze well or keep well after a few days, requires a crowd. However, I saw that The Bitten Word had tried out a Martha Stewart recipe for tomato hand pies, and I wondered if I couldn’t adapt it for cherries.

The Bitten Word had a mixed experience with their hand pies. One of the problems was the crust to filling the ratio – the recipe calls for patting squares of the pastry dough into muffin tins and folding the corners over the top of the filling. It’s a nice decorative touch, but the pies ended up being all crust and no filling. The recipe also didn’t specify to butter the muffin tins, and the pies were almost impossible to dislodge.

Armed with this test case, I wondered if I couldn’t do better. First off, I buttered my muffing tins, and the pies slipped right out. I changed the execution slightly  – instead of folding crust over the filling, I went for a small fluted edge and a couple decorative pastry strips. I also tried to roll the crust fairly thinly, to help the crust to filling ratio. And I added a little bit of shortening to the dough to help it crisp – a trick I learned from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Finally, I halved the recipe – although if you want a full dozen feel free to double it. After all, not everyone already has a freezer full of peach tartlets.

The finished product was still a little crust-heavy compared to a regular pie, but it wasn’t overwhelming. In fact, I think I might even like these hand pies more than regular pie. I love a good, crisp, flaky pie crust – especially when it’s just out of the oven and you can hear the butter in the crust sizzling. Because I baked the pies in muffin tins, the crust were really crisp and perfectly browned, and the cherry filling was sweet, tart, and fresh. The crust to filling ratio wasn’t exactly like a regular pie, but it was akin to eating a Pop Tart. But a really good, sweet, crispy, fresh, Platonic Pop Tart.

Best of all, the pies reheated extremely well – ten minutes in a toaster oven and they were almost as good as fresh-baked. Now find me a regular pie recipe that can do that!

Cherry Hand Pies 1

Mmmm . . .

Recipe: Cherry Hand Pies

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August Baking Project – Take Two, Rustic Peach Tartlets

August 10, 2009 at 6:58 am · Filed under baking ·Tagged , , , ,

Peach Tartlet

Another use for all those peaches. I can only handle going fruit picking once a summer.

Peach pie is the traditional way to use up masses of peaches, but it’s a little excessive without a family, or roommates, or an office to feed it to. There aren’t many days when I wish I lived in a massive group house, but a day when I want to make pie is one of those days.

Instead, I decided to take one of my favorite, easy fruit desserts – the rustic tart – and adapt it to single-serving portions. Tartlets are decidedly less impressive than a large, steaming, golden-brown peach pie, but are much easier to freeze and heat up individually. They are perfect for those nights when baking is out of the question, but you really need a hit of fruit-filled pastry. You can also serve them, in a pinch, to unexpected dinner guests – or expected dinner guests on those weeknights when you don’t have time to bake.

The tartlets’ success hinges on the quality of the fruit itself – lackluster peaches will yield a tartlet that tastes blandly sweet, with a washed-out fruit flavor – like a fruit cup. But with lush, fresh, flavorful peaches, the filling will be sweet and tart and taste like summer on pastry. It was a perfect use for the peaches from Homestead Farms.

As for the recipe itself, it is both simple and adaptable, depending on your desires and pastry-driven creative energies. For instance, you could make these into tiny, two-inch tartlets, and serve them piled impressively high on a serving tray. Or you could make six inch tartlets and serve them topped with a large scoop of ice cream. If you really want to do the “big” showy dessert, you could forgo the tartlet concept and make one big open-faced rustic tart, and serve it cut up into large, irregular wedges. The only thing you’ll need to adjust for these different options is the baking time.

This recipe uses a cornmeal pastry crust, which I fell in love with back in March when I made a rustic apple tart. The cornmeal adds crispness to the dough and an extra dimension to the flavor. The filling is simple – peaches, sugar, a little lemon juice, and cornstarch, to thicken the juices. If I made this again, I would have chopped the peaches a little more finely – I only sliced them, and the tips have a tendency to overbrown (as you can see in the photo).

That’s another hit for the August baking project – desserts with summer fruits. I feel as though all my July cooking mishaps are slowly but surely washing away. Could baking be the new yoga? I certainly think so.

Peach Tartlet 2

Anyone want a peach tartlet? I have six sitting in my freezer.

Recipe: Rustic Peach Tartlets

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August Baking Project, Take One: Peach and Blackberry Cobbler

August 6, 2009 at 7:51 am · Filed under baking ·Tagged , , , , ,

Peach and Blackberry Cobbler 2

Peach and blackberry cobbler. I had to do something with all those peaches.

What with my epic peach and blackberry picking trip to Homestead Farms in Poolesville, Maryland, this month’s baking project had to be desserts that use summer fruits. It was preordained. Careful readers will remember that this was the runner up in my baking project poll back in June.

And, I’ll be honest – even if I hadn’t gone peach picking, I still would have chosen this for my August baking project. July’s project – dinners that won’t heat up your kitchen – was so hit or miss that I needed to return to my roots. I know I’m supposed to like a challenge – it’s good for me, it strengthens my non-dessert skills, it hones my cooking instincts. But not when it results in weird tasting fresh rolls and pathetic salmon sandwiches. Besides, I just turned 27. I’m officially in my late 20s. My psyche is a little, shall we say, fragile.

So let us retreat into the calm, quiet, unchallenging world of desserts with summer fruits. Let us retreat into peach and blackberry cobbler.

Peach - On Tree

Pre-cobbler.

I have been craving cobbler ever since I had the peach cobbler at Eatonville, when my friend Meg was down visiting last month. It’s an odd craving, since I usually don’t think of cobbler as particularly craveable. Milk chocolate? Craveable. Mint chocolate chip ice cream? Craveable. Really good panna cotta? Craveable. But cobbler? It seems so practical – a cheap way to deal with an excess of summer fruit, just like the very situation I was facing.

Still, there it was. A cobbler craving.

Cobbler, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of eating one, is kind of like pie for people who can’t make pie crust. It’s a deep-dish, baked fruit dessert, topped with a thick coating of biscuits. Like pie, cobbler thrives on the interplay of textures and flavors – the crisp and savory biscuit topping contrasts against the soft, sweet-tart baked fruit. But biscuits are easier to put together than pie dough, and there’s no difficult and potentially scary “rolling out of the pie crust” (although, to be honest, rolling out pie crust isn’t all that hard. I think that all this “pie crust is difficult” talk is merely propaganda from the pre-made pie crust industry). Because the biscuits sit on top of the fruit, you also avoid the most vexing pie problem of all – the soggy bottom crust (that’s the real hard part about pie, I think).

This cobbler was all of those good things – and more. Without going on and on about how much better fresh, local, hand picked fruit is (I assume you know by now), I will simply say that it was the excellent peaches and blackberries that really took this cobbler over the top. The filling was a perfect combination of sweet and tart, the biscuits were thick and buttery, and just a little crunchy around the edges. The cobbler craving? Entirely satisfied.

Peach and Blackberry Cobbler 1

This just wouldn't have been as good with store-bought peaches.

I used this cobbler recipe, but I omitted a half cup of sugar from the filling – I really wanted the flavors of the fruit to shine through. Also, there was almost too much biscuit topping – I made this in a pie pan and the biscuits kind of exploded – they expanded over the edge of the pan, causing the filling to spill over as well, and making quite a mess. Depending on the type of pan you’re using and the depth of your biscuit craving, you could definitely cut the biscuit topping recipe in half.

Also, I neglected to serve this à la mode, but it would really be delicious with a scoop of vanilla or ginger ice cream. A dollop of freshly whipped cream or a dribble of crème anglaise are acceptable substitutes.

Get the recipe here: Blackberry and Peach Cobbler, from Epicurious.

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