Strawberry Banana Cream Pie

I saw this neat video about Cupcakes in Ottawa on Apartment 613 this morning.

Cupcake Culture in Ottawa from Dawghaus Studios on Vimeo.

Cupcake culture is alive and well in the capital! I'm really looking forward to the 2nd Capital Cupcake Camp.

Capital Cupcake Camp 2.0 will be held at City Hall on Sunday, September 26, 2010!
You can read about the first camp here.

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I like using invites to a friend's house as an excuse to try new, more involved recipes. It gives me the freedom to not worry about other portions of the meal and to leave my kitchen/house a disaster in order to focus on the dish, if necessary (read: typically necessary).

This recipe was inspired by Joy The Baker's post.

Strawberry Banana Cream Pie
adapted from Dorie Greenspan


for the filling:
2 cups whole milk
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 ripe bananas, sliced
10 fresh strawberries, sliced (I used more)

for the topping:
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

for the tart crust, if not using mini Dufour shells:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoons (9 tablespoons) unsalted cutter, cold or frozen, cut into cubes
1 large egg yolk

to make the tart crust:
Put the flour, powdered sugar and salt in a food processor fit the the blade attachment. Pulse a few times to combine. Scatter the pieces of cold butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut in. There will be pieces of butter that are the size of oatmeal flakes and butter the size of peas. Beat the egg yolk with a fork and add a little of the egg yolk at a time to the flour mixture. Pulse for 10 seconds at a time. When the egg is in, process in longer pulses until the dough forms clumps and curds. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that may have escaped mixing.

Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough evenly over the bottom and the sides of the pan. Press the crust so that the pieces cling to one another, but not so hard that the crust loses its crumbly texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes before baking.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter the shiny side of a piece of foil and fit the foil, butter side down, tightly against the frozen crust. Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil. If the crust is puffed, gently press it down with your fingers.
Bake the uncovered crust for 8 to 10 more minutes on the baking sheet. Keep an eye on the crust. It will brown quickly.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before filling.

to make the filling:
Bring the milk to a boil in a small saucepan.

In a large, heavy-bottom saucepan, whisk the yolks together with the brown sugar, cornstarch and salt until well blended and thick. Whisking without stopping, drizzle about 1/4 cup of the hot milk into the egg mixture, warming the eggs so they don’t cook and curdle. Still whisking, slowly add the rest of the hot milk in a steady steam.

Place the pan over medium heat and, whisking constantly (make sure to get the edges of the pan), bring the mixture to a boil. Boil, still whisking for one minute before removing from the pan from the heat. Mixture will be thick and silky. Be warned, once the mixture starts to boil, it will thicken very quickly. Don’t be afraid to remove the pan from the flame to whisk it smooth.

Whisk in the vanilla extract. Let stand for 5 minutes then whisk in the butter, stirring until fully incorporated and the custard is smooth and silky. Transfer custard to a medium bowl. Cover with plastic wrap so that the plastic touches the surface of the custard and refrigerate until cold throughout. Custard can be refrigerated up to three days.

When ready to assemble the pie, slice bananas and strawberries into thin, round slices.


Whisk the cold custard to loosen.

I started with a layer of custard:

Then bananas:


More custard:


for the topping:
With a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat heavy cream until it just starts to thicken. Add powdered sugar and vanilla extract. Continue to beat until the cream holds stiff peaks. With a rubber spatula, spoon whipped cream onto banana cream pie filling. Top with sliced strawberries.


Serve pie immediately or refrigerate for several hours before serving. This pie is best served the day it is made.

Verdict: After initially tasting the custard, I thought it lacked sweetness. But, all together -- it tasted great. All dinner guests enjoyed the dessert.

Plum Tart

The host of yesterday's dinner party doesn't do well with white flour. Since I was bringing the dessert, I decided to change up another of Ina Garten's recipes by replacing the all-purpose flour for spelt flour. It's really okay to make this change by doing the replacement of 1 cup of spelt flour for 1 cup of all-purpose flour.



Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour (I used spelt flour)
3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
3/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
12 tablespoons cold unsaltd butter (1 1/2 sticks), diced
1 egg yolk
2 pounds firm, ripe Italian prune plums, pitted and quartered lengthwise (I used the larger black plums)

**I added about 3/4 cup of fresh blueberries to this too. I loved this addition and would do it again.
**Make sure you're using ripe plums or your tart won't give you the juice you need in this recipe and it'll be too tart (no pun intended :)


Preheat the oven to 400 F

Combine the flour, walnuts and sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter and the egg yolk. Mix, either by hand or with an electric mixer until crumbly (I tried the electric mixer and found using my hands much easier and faster)

Press 1 1/2 cups of the crumb mixture in an even layer into the bottom of a 9 1/2-inch springform or tart pan. Arrange the plums in the pan, skin-side down, to form a flower pattern; begin at the outside and work your way in.

Sprinkle the rest of the crumb mixture evenly over the plums. Bake the tart for 40-50 minutes or until it's lightly browned and the plum juices are bubbling. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and transfer the tart to a flat plate. Serve warm or at room temperature.






We served this with ice cream - a perfect compliment!!!

Lemon Cream Tart

Last week was a big week... One of the biggest, you could say.


No. Nobody died. I just got a lot of flowers. I successfully defended my thesis and am now, officially "Dr. Psychgrad".


Thank God that's done with. I had been stressing about the defence since starting graduate school five and a half years ago.

For a celebration event, I made a tart. My first tart. I splurged on a tart and some tartelette pans.



I was ecstatic to find meyer lemons at the grocery store for the first time. Without a recipe in mind, I picked up a pack. I should make a point of encouraging the store management to continue bringing in meyer lemons.


I followed Dorie Greenspan's recipe for a lemon cream tart, a recipe she leared to make from Pierre Hermé


Lemon Cream
1 cup sugar
Finely grated zest of 3 lemons
4 large eggs
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (from 4-5 lemons)
2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons (10-1/2 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-size
pieces, at room temperature

Getting Ready: Have an instant-read thermometer, a strainer and a blender (first choice) or food processor at hand. Bring a few inches of water to a simmer in a saucepan.

Put the sugar and zest in a large heatproof bowl that can be set over the pan of simmering water. Off the heat, rub the sugar and zest together between your fingers until the sugar is moist, grainy and very aromatic. Whisk in the eggs, followed by the lemon juice.


Set the bowl over the pan, and start stirring with the whisk as soon as the mixture feels tepid to the touch. Cook the lemon cream until it reaches 180 degrees F. As you whisk—you must whisk constantly to keep the eggs from scrambling—you'll see that the cream will start out light and foamy, then the bubbles will get bigger, and then, as it gets closer to 180 degrees F, it will start to thicken and the whisk will leave tracks. Heads up at this point—the tracks mean the cream is almost ready. Don't stop whisking or checking the temperature, and have patience—depending on how much heat you're giving the cream, getting to temp can take as long as 10 minutes.

As soon as it reaches 180 degrees F, remove the cream from the heat and strain it into the container of the blender (or food processor); discard the zest. Let the cream stand, stirring occasionally, until it cools to 140 degrees F, about 10 minutes.


Turn the blender to high (or turn on the processor) and, with the machine going, add the butter about 5 pieces at a time. Scrape down the sides of the container as needed as you incorporate the butter. Once the butter is in, keep the machine going—to get the perfect light, airy texture of lemon-cream dreams, you must continue to blend the cream for another 3 minutes. If your machine protests and gets a bit too hot, work in 1-minute intervals, giving the machine a little rest between beats.

Pour the cream into a container, press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to create an airtight seal and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. (The cream will keep in the fridge for 4 days and, or tightly sealed, in the freezer for up to 2 months; thaw it overnight in the refrigerator.)

When you are ready to assemble the tart, just whisk the cream to loosen it and spoon it into the tart shell. Serve the tart, or refrigerate 'until needed.

Serving: It's a particular pleasure to have this tart when the cream is cold and the crust is at room temperature. Dorie also recommends a raspberry or other fruit coulis is nice, but not necessary; so is a little crème fraîche.

Storing: While you can make the lemon cream ahead, once the tart is constructed, it's best to eat it the day it is made. Serve with 1 9-inch tart shell made with Sweet Tart Dough, Sweet Tart Dough with Nuts or Spiced Tart Dough (see book), fully baked and cooled

Sweet Tart Dough
Makes enough for one 9-inch crust

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (9 tablespoons) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk

Put the flour, confectioners' sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut in—you should have some pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and some the size of peas. Stir the yolk, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses—about 10 seconds each—until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before you reach this stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change—heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.

To press the dough into the pan: Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan, using all but one little piece of dough, which you should save in the refrigerator to patch any cracks after the crust is baked. Don't be too heavy-handed—press the crust in so that the edges of the pieces cling to one another, but not so hard that the crust loses its crumbly texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.

To partially or fully bake the crust: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil, buttered side down, tightly against the crust. (Since you froze the crust, you can bake it without weights.) Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake the crust for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. For a partially baked crust, patch the crust if necessary, then transfer the crust to a cooling rack (keep it in its pan).

To fully bake the crust: Bake for another 8 minutes or so, or until it is firm and golden brown. (I dislike lightly baked crusts, so I often keep the crust in the oven just a little longer. If you do that, just make sure to keep a close eye on the crust's progress—it can go from golden to way too dark in a flash.) Transfer the tart pan to a rack and cool the crust to room temperature before filling.


To patch a partially or fully baked crust, if necessary: If there are any cracks in the baked crust, patch them with some of the reserved raw dough as soon as you remove the foil. Slice off a thin piece of the dough, place it over the crack, moisten the edges and very gently smooth the edges into the baked crust. If the tart will not be baked again with its filling, bake for another 2 minutes or so, just to take the rawness off the patch.


Sweet Tart Dough with Nuts: This dough has a slightly more assertive flavor than Sweet Tart Dough above, but you can use the two interchangeably. For the nut dough, reduce the amount of flour to 1-1/4 cups and add 1/4 cup finely ground almonds (or walnuts, pecans or pistachios).

Storing: Well wrapped, the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 2 months. While the fully baked crust can be packed airtight and frozen for up to 2 months, Dorie prefers to freeze the unbaked crust in the pan and bake it directly from the freezer—it has a fresher flavor. Just add about 5 minutes to the baking time.

Much like shortbread, and it's ideal for filling with fruit, custard or chocolate.

The simplest way to make a tart shell with this dough is to press it into the pan. You can roll out the dough, but the high proportion of butter to flour and the inclusion of confectioners' sugar makes it finicky to roll.



Verdict: Overall, I was impressed with the look of the tart. But, I found that the lemon cream filling was too sweet. Maybe it's the meyer lemons that makes it really sweet. But I can't imagine using a normal lemon - seems like it would end up being really tart.(no pun intended) I found the crust to be good-tasting, but a bit too hard to break apart with a spoon/fork. Chewing, it was fine. But, I probably shouldn't have pressed the dough into the pan as hard as I did. I would make the dough again, but probably try another filling that isn't as sweet.