Skip to main content

Publish or Perish


No I'm not an academic. But here I was tapping my laptop wondering why suddenly all my web disappeared when my brother hasn't unplugged me. Turned out my dad unplugged the router for the vacuum cleaner.

So here is my new purchase. The Usbourne Children's Book of Baking. Bear with me, I'll get it on my side list, especially as I cooked not one but two recipes from this book today. Both were pretty tasty, with minimal messing with.

Pear and frangipane tart
I used apple - sorry I had four giant bramleys left. I will of course next time do the proper pear tart because aesthetically speaking it's more attractive. Also, you can actually slice it properly like they instruct you to, without slicing a little bit out of your finger! (I'd like to say at no point did my blood enter my cooking, and also it was just a fleshwound babe ;) Papercut size and the result of trying to core an apple without breaking it into quarters first. This was parentally approved (the cake not the cut) and at no point did anyone go "Add some red bean paste to this..." and instead they asked if we had any vanilla ice cream to go with. My mother. Whilst yes indeed vanilla would have gone well, I think this culinary demand stems from the fact they went to Burger King yesterday and managed to get apple pie warmed with ice cream. Myself, I still miss the McD's apple pie ala mode...

Ingredients: Pastry
175g plain flour
25g caster sugar
100g butter
1 egg
2 tsp cold water
Frangipane:
50g butter
50g caster sugar
50g ground almonds
1 egg
15g self raising flour
3 small, ripe pears or alternative fruit
Glaze:
2 tbsp apricot jam
1 tbsp lemon juice

Method:
1. Make shortcrust. If you don't know how, I'd worry. Sugar plus butter, add egg, add water, add flour and mush into dough. It is extremely dry but bear with it and knead. Chill for half an hour and then roll out to line a 20cm flan tin before chilling for 20minutes, baking blind at Gas Mark 6 for 10mins with 5 minutes in the open air. Oh and remember to prick before it goes in.
2. Frangipane: Butter, sugar then add a tablespoon of ground almonds.
3. Add the egg, then the ground almonds, then the flour and pour into baked pastry.
4. Cut pears in half lengthways, core and then split the fat bit into a fan, not cutting all the way to the top. Place on top of frangipane.
5. Bake for 35 minutes at around Gas Mark 3 (I ramped it up, especially since I wanted it a bit more brown.)
6. Glaze with warmed apricot and lemon juice mixed together.
Labels:

Comments

The Caked Crusader said…
Ooh, anything with frangipane gets my full attention. This is a lovely looking tart!
5 April 2009 at 19:04
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

Some things should be noted. I'm not a major fan of Rachel Allen. She always seemed such a poor man's version of Nigella. Some trophy wife of a producer somewhere making a lady of leisure's living of cookery shows playing up the Irish accent in a cavernous show kitchen. Perhaps it was because all her helpful "tricks" had already been touted by others a long time ago - like getting the garlic smell out of your hands... But over the years she's kind of grown on me. The format is a little twee, the pink accessories want to make me barf, but she isn't the spawn of all things faux goddess anymore. (FYI I have no idea with regards to her personal life etc, but like my distaste for Ashley Judd, one wonders how she gets good films with little acting skill.) So here I was, tapping away on the internet last week whilst she was on tv, and there it was. A beast of a pie. It was so beautiful. Her job was done. Out I trotted to buy a huge pie dish (we don't own cera...
4 comments
Read more

Low carb diet plan

It's January. I've allowed my weight to grow UP with the Covid curve and somehow it still has not come down. Thanks to a large part to me using up a number of hot chocolate bomb "fails" just before Christmas I think. Wall of text alert - I don't plan on ever writing about this ever again. To be clear, I've never been a fan of carb-cutting. Cutting an entire food group seems wrong. Carbs, as we were taught at school, are cornerstones for growth. I felt like decking a "doctor" at an annual work health check when he told me to cut carbs as a way to get my weight down. The fact he then pushed a blog which was at its infancy at the time felt like a distinct conflict of interest. Anyway, I do absolutely agree I need to cut sugar, and I will never disagree that whole grains are better for you. It is also very, very effective dieting wise on me. We don't know why, I do know I have a lot of water weight which fluctuates a lot in the month and also it does...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ginger fluff sponge with Apple Sauce filling

This is from the Crabapple Bakery cupcake cookbook. I've loved this cake for ages, looking at the picture for some time, but finally I made it. Decoration wise I don't have any flowers to put on top so I put the little chocolate mushrooms I bought from the Japan centre on top. This cake I'd definitely remake, but without the sponge fingers which are decoration only and don't add anything. They stay stiff and unyielding against the cream which is almost a disappointment when you're eating it. Ingredients: 1/3 self raising flour 1/3 cup cornflour 3 tsp ground ginger 1 tsp ground cinnamon 2 tsp cocoa 5 eggs, separated 3/4 cup caster sugar 1 tbsp golden syrup - Apple sauce - Whipped cream - Sponge fingers (250g pack works fine) Method: 1. Mix all the dry ingredients (bar sugar) together 2. Beat egg whites to peaks, add sugar and keep whisking, then add yolks and golden syrup 3. Fold dry into the egg mix 4. Bake in two greased pans (18-20cm round sandwich tins) for 15 mi...
Post a Comment
Read more