daring baker's june challenge: bakewell tart!

so I am a big dork, and joined a baking-blog collective the daring bakers. I thought it would be fun to challenge myself once a month to do something I hadn't completely planned. This month's challenge was the bakewell tart--basically a crusty pie tart filled with jam and covered with a frangipane cream (my favorite: ALMOND!)

I designed a recipe using a few elements from the Tartine cookbook, one of my favorites. The recipe (with pictures) follows.

Pie Crust (half of the Flaky Tart Crust recipe from Tartine):

1/3 cup cold water
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1.5 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt

Mix salt and water and put both in a bowl in the refrigerator to keep cold (I've never seen this technique before but I like it.)

Cut butter into the flour in one inch pieces. Keep pulsing until mixture forms crumbles. Then, slowly drizzle in the cold water/salt mixture, until the mixture forms what Tartine dubs a "shaggy mass" (which just makes me think of scooby doo.) Continue to mix until a dough forms. Wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Frangipane:

2 cups ground almonds
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. almond extract
salt to taste

cream butter and sugar in a food processor, blender, or by hand. Add eggs and beat well. Finally, stir in ground almonds and extract. It should look a bit like this:

Assembly:

For my Bakewell tart, I used fresh blueberries instead of jam. I lined a 9 inch pie pan with parchment paper and pressed the pie dough flat inside of it, pushing up along the edges to form a crust. I then filled the bottom of the pie with fresh blueberries, which I covered with the frangipane. I baked the pie at 375 for roughly a half hour, until it was brown on top:

And then devoured with a special blueberry-mint sauce:

Blueberry Mint Sauce

1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 tb. water
1 tb. butter
1 quarter chopped mint

Heat blueberries and sugar in a small saucepan with 1 tb. water. Wait until the blueberries become liquid and begin to bubble. Add butter and mint and stir well.


Hooray June--fresh blueberries, fresh mint, and, naturally, almonds....

Rasberry Rhubarb Cobbler

Father's day:

My dad is a southern boy at heart. Nothing comes between him and a pecan pie (except maybe a good old fashioned oatmeal cookie.) But when my mom showed me a recipe in the New York Times for a raspberry-rhubarb cobbler, I couldn't pass it up. Next year, Dad.

Raspberry Rhubarb Cobbler: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/dining/103arex.html

2 pounds rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1/4-inch pieces (about 6 cups)
2 1/2 cups fresh raspberries or 1 (10-ounce) package frozen raspberries, defrosted
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
For the biscuits:
1 cup all-purpose flour, more as necessary
2/3 cup fine cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2/3 cup heavy cream, more for brushing.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. For filling, in a large bowl, toss together rhubarb, raspberries, sugar and cornstarch. Allow mixture to stand while preparing biscuit dough.
2. To prepare biscuits, place flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine (or whisk everything together in a bowl).
3. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal (or use 2 knives to cut butter into flour mixture). Pour in cream and continue pulsing (or stir) until dough starts to come together, scraping down sides of bowl if necessary.
4. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently pat it together. Divide it equally into 8 balls, then flatten them slightly into thick rounds. Biscuit dough can be made up to a day in advance and refrigerated, covered, until needed.
5. Scrape filling and accumulated juices into a 2 1/2-quart gratin or baking dish (9 by 12 inches). Arrange biscuits on top of filling and brush with cream. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until filling is bubbling and biscuits are golden.

I pretty much followed the directions exactly, though of course I added a little extra ginger!!!

Here's how it looked!

Sorry for the long absence! Food to Come!

Hi ya'll!

Thanks to totally unstable stolen internet and a sense of compunction at work, I haven't posted here in a while...but don't worry, I've been baking!! What follows are some recipes I dreamed up this summer. Enjoy!