Food Republik » fruit

Old-Fashioned Strawberry Pie

Camilla — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:08:52 +0000

Strawberry season! It’s strawberry season! Whoohoo!

Can you tell how excited I am? I mean, amazingly sweet, luscious strawberries are at the market for $0.97 a basket. WOWEEE!

We’ve been eating them on our pancakes, over yogurt, drizzled with vinegar in green salads, and neat. And today, a strawberry pie was my goal.

Yes, I know that most people don’t cook up the strawberries when they make strawberry pies. Most of the recipes I’ve seen have been 1) Strawberry-rhubarb pies, 2) fresh strawberries piled in a pie shell and glazed, 3) gelatinous globs of jello in a pie shell, or something else. I couldn’t for the life of me find a straight-up, cooked strawberry pie from a reputable source. I don’t know why that is. I agree that fresh strawberries are fantastic, but they’re so hard to eat when you stick them in a pie shell and then try to cut the pie into slices. And honestly, I’d rather eat fresh strawberries sans the cornstarch-laced glaze. If I have to eat cornstarch, I’d like it in a gooey berry-full pie filling, please.

Plus, I’ll take any excuse to make a lattice crust. Isn’t there just something about a lattice crust that makes you think…pink gingham aprons, ruffled curtains, open windows, and a vintage ice cream truck pulling over in front of the house? Anyone?

So here’s my version of an old-fashioned, straight up strawberry pie. No rhubarb. No jello. Just delicious buttery pastry and juicy strawberry filling.

I have to say, I outdid myself on the crust this time. It’s really flaky and flavorful. I left larger chunks of butter this time before bringing the dough together with a bit of water, which helped a lot. My strawberries were pretty ripe, so just 3/4 cup of light brown sugar was enough to make them sweet, but not too sweet.

Old-Fashioned Strawberry Pie

Pie Crust
2 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, chilled and cubed
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup ice water (or more)

Filling
5 cups strawberries
3/4 cup golden brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 tbsp cornstarch
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 400F.

In a bowl place the flour, sugar, salt and cubes of chilled butter. Rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips or a pastry cutter, until largest pieces are about pea-sized. Add ice water little by little while mixing dough. When dough holds together when you squeeze it, it’s ready. Gather into a ball. Divide into two equal balls, wrap in plastic, and chill in fridge while making filling.

Wash, halve, and hull the strawberries. Mix with rest of filling ingredients and place aside in a bowl.

Roll out the bottom crust and place it in a pie pan, trimming it about 1 inch over the edge. Place pie pan in freezer while you roll out the top crust.

Roll out the second ball of dough, and cut it into strips with a sharp knife. Remove the pie pan from freezer, and pour the strawberry filling into bottom crust. Place or weave the strips of dough into a lattice on top of the filling and trim strips 1/2 inch over edge. Fold bottom crust over lattice strips and crimp.

Bake 15 minutes at 400F, then lower oven temp to 350F for another hour, or until crust is browned and filling is bubbling. If crust is browning too fast, cover edges with strips of foil.

Let cool and serve!

Nectarine Golden Cake

Camilla — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 06:44:20 +0000

I like to always have a cake around.

It’s so nice to have a not-too-sweet, everyday cake stashed in the pantry, perfect for afternoon cake and coffee, or for breakfast, or for a not-too-decadent dessert. And a slice or two is great for feeding a couple of friends who happen to drop by. I love how you can mix up the batter for one of these simple cakes in just a few minutes, slide it into the oven, and tadaa! Magic happens. On a lazy Saturday afternoon, I love to bake a cake.

Stone fruits are coming into season, and when baked into a humble everyday cake, their sugars caramelize, their juices make them deliciously soft and (for lack of a better word) plummy, their acidity mellows and melts on your tongue, and they are just…mmm!

This cake takes nectarines, smoothing out their slightly sharp sweetness, and turning them into a treat the sorts of which you can rarely find in a commercial bakery. It’s just too humble, too uncomplicated, too special to come out of anywhere but your own kitchen. It evokes sunny afternoons on the patio sipping ice tea and talking about nothing in particular. It is truly, a golden cake.

You can make this entire cake by hand, with a good whisk, if your butter is adequately softened. No need to get out an electric mixer – do it the old-fashioned way. It’s more satisfying that way.

Nectarine Golden Cake
Gourmet Sept 2009

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
generous 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 almond extract
2 nectarines, pitted and sliced into wedges
Confectioner’s sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, cream together the softened butter and sugar by mixing vigorously with a whisk, until pale yellow and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla and almond extracts. Gently mix in the flour mixture to form a stiff yellow batter.

Spread the batter into a buttered cake pan (I used an 8-inch). Scatter the nectarine wedges over top. Bake for 40-50 minutes until top is golden brown and a knife inserted into cake comes out pretty much clean.

Let cool for 10 minutes, run a knife around edges, then invert and re-invert onto a plate. Dust with confectioner’s sugar if desired, cut into wedges and serve.

Strawberry Shortcakes with Lemon

Camilla — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:01:11 +0000

Summer comes early in our little town in Southern China, and right now in early March it’s already strawberry season. One of the joys of living seasonally is anticipating the various fruit seasons, enjoying the fruit to the utmost while it’s in season (and perhaps canning some for the months to come), and then looking forward to the next seasonal fruit. Strawberries will only be around for about a month, and the brevity of this season makes them all the more delicious. No woody, grassy-tasting strawberries for me in November – no thanks – I’d rather have the best tasting, melt-in-your mouth berries for a few weeks than have less than the best all year.

This is the first time I’ve made strawberry shortcake, and I gotta tell ya – this recipe’s a keeper! Cobbled together from an Epicurious recipe and a few others from around the web, this dessert couples meltingly sweet, ripe strawberries with a lemony buttermilk biscuit and fluffy whipped cream. It’s got the perfect blend of crispness from the biscuit and lusciousness from the macerated strawberries. And I love, love, LOVE the contrast of the lemon zest and the strawberries.

PLEASE don’t use strawberries that are anything less than ripe. This recipe is basically a strawberry delivery system, and if the star ingredient isn’t up to par, it falls flat.

Lemony Strawberry Shortcakes
loosely adapted from Epicurious
Serves 6

Sweet Lemon Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tsp baking powder
1 scant tsp baking soda
2 tbsp sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
½ tsp salt
½ tbsp grated lemon zest
2/3 cup buttermilk, well shaken, plus extra

Strawberries
2 pounds ripe strawberries, washed and hulled
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

Whipped Cream
1 cup chilled whipping cream
3 tbsp sugar

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt together in a bowl. Using your fingertips, rub in the butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the lemon zest and buttermilk. Fold gently into dry ingredients until incorporated.

Transfer dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat (with floured hands) into a circle about 1.5 inches thick. Cut dough into 6 wedges and transfer to baking sheet.

Brush wedges with extra buttermilk and sprinkle with extra sugar. Bake for about 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into middle of biscuits comes out clean.

Meanwhile, cut the strawberries into quarters (or halves if they’re small), and mix with the sugar and lemon juice. Let macerate for about 15 minutes.

Beat the whipping cream with the sugar until it forms soft peaks.

When biscuits are done, let them cool about 5 minutes, then cut them in half. Pile with strawberries and whipped cream, and serve immediately.

Simple Apple Galette

Camilla — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:26:12 +0000

Piecrust freaks me out. I’m sure you’ve been there, right? A successful piecrust just seems to me such a hit or miss thing. Did I add too much water? Did I add enough? Are my lumps of butter too big? Too small? Oh the second-guessing never ends! It’s enough to send me diving into bed and pulling the covers over my head while I wait for the dough to chill. Sometimes I think all my latent insecurities come out in my pie dough.

So I was really glad when this apple galette from Smitten Kitchen turned out all right! I don’t currently own a pie dish (at least not in China), so the rustic form of the galette was perfect for me to toss onto a pan and into my little toaster oven (this is pared down cooking, folks!). And the crust was flaky, buttery and flavorful – maybe not as tender as I’d like (which is probably totally my fault), but sturdy enough to hold together the galette without a pie dish. My husband and I finished the pie in one day…and when we realized we had just eaten ¾ of a stick of butter between the two of us…well let’s just say we didn’t mind as much as we should have.

Et voila!

Simple Apple Galette
Adapted from Alice Waters via Smitten Kitchen

I know this is supposed to be simple, but it was a bit bland to me, even with the bit of cinnamon I sprinkled on top. Next time I might add a bit more cinnamon and some brown sugar.

Crust
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
¾ stick butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
3 ½ tbsp ice water

Filling
3-4 large apples
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp brown sugar
large pinch cinnamon

Crust
Mix flour, sugar and salt. Cut butter into flour with a pastry blender or fork until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal with a few pea-size butter lumps. Add ice water and toss mixture with hands as it clumps together. Add more ice water, a tablespoonful at a time, until dough holds together. Shape it into a ball, wrap with plastic wrap, and flatten into a disk. Stick it in the fridge while you prep the filling.

Make filling and assemble pie

Cut apples into thin slices.

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Roll out the dough into a 12-inch circle (do this between two sheets of plastic wrap to avoid sticking). Arrange apple slices, overlapping, into an approximately 9-inch circle in the center of the dough. Sprinkle cinnamon and brown sugar over apples. Fold up the sides of the dough, pleating when needed.

Brush top of crust with melted butter, then drizzle the remaining melted butter over apples. Sprinkle the whole pie, including the crust, with white sugar. Bake for about 45 minutes until crust is browned and apples are tender.

If desired, brush apples with warmed apricot jam before serving (though I was too lazy to do that).

Plum Crumble

Camilla — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:02:05 +0000

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times’ Food and Dining section about school cafeteria lunches. A few groups of concerned parents have started to get the ball rolling on making more nutritious lunches available at school cafeterias. It’s an uphill battle, but in my opinion, a noble cause. Check it out: “Schools’ Toughest Test: Cooking”.

It is indeed appalling and shocking that most of New York’s school cafeterias are barely equipped to boil water, much less cook fresh meals. And proponents of the new “Wellness in Schools” campaign find themselves battling the processed food industry, budget limitations, as well as the lack of trained cooks. It is kind of sad, really, because I don’t believe that you need to spend a lot to cook fresh, nutritious food. There are so many obstacles in the way of these nutritious meals that really shouldn’t be there.

Anyway, speaking of easy and fresh, I made Orangette’s Plum Crumble this morning for breakfast. I don’t know what it is about Orangette’s recipes, but I always want to cook them, while I’m often bored with the recipes in cooking magazines. I don’t know that this recipe is exactly nutritious – it does have fresh plums, but also ¾ cup of sugar and several tablespoons of butter. It sure tasted good though. The “crumble” part is just rough and crisp enough to form the perfect contrast to the warm, soft, plummy filling, and there is just the right amount of spice to let the flavour of the plums shine through.

You can read the recipe at Orangette’s site. I personally think just a few changes would make it more to my taste – I would use just ½ cup of sugar in the crumble (it was a bit sweet), and I reduced the butter significantly. Otherwise it was a great recipe – just the thing for the fall season.

Upside-Down Plum Cake

Camilla — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:00:39 +0000

One of the cool things about living in China is that you are much more aware of the seasonal cycles of fruits and vegetables. Other than a few staple vegetables that you can get throughout the year (cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers and chilies), everything else is only available seasonally.

It is quite a change from being able to go to a big supermarket back in Toronto, and get anything you want, anytime you want. Of course, we follow the seasons in Canada too – but just not to the same extent (it would be impossible given that our growing season lasts about 4 weeks…just kidding…sort of).

Now, for instance, beautiful dark purple plums are in season in Xiamen, and are selling for less than a dollar a kilogram. They are delicious just fresh – sweet and juicy – practically a drink in a fruit, but they are so plentiful that in honour of autumn I wanted to bake something with them.

When we were in Germany, Ilse, Chris’ aunt, had taught me how to make Zwetschen Kuchen, a plum cake made with a yeasted dough. I was short on time, however, so instead of making the yeast cake, I turned to a simple buttermilk cake recipe from Gourmet. I lined a cake pan with sliced plums, dumped the batter on top, and voilà! A lovely upside-down plum cake was born!

The cake was a little bit like a tart, with its thick layer of plums, a bit like a pudding with the juicy plums soaking slightly into the eggy, buttermilky cake, and quite a bit like a delicious, fruity cake. It was, I think, one of the sexiest cakes I’ve ever made.

And then we ate it.

Upside-Down Plum Cake
Buttermilk cake batter adapted from Gourmet

4-5 medium plums, thinly sliced
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
½ stick (or ¼ of our Chinese blocks) of butter, softened
¾ cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
½ cup buttermilk
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract

Grease an 8-inch cake pan and preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and set aside.

In another bowl, cream the butter and ¾ cup of sugar together, then add the vanilla extract and egg and whisk till smooth. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir until just combined.

Add an extra 2 tablespoons or so of extra butter at the bottom of the pan, and sprinkle with 2-3 tablespoons of sugar. Arrange the plum slices on top. Scrape the buttermilk cake batter onto the plum slices and smooth. Bake for around 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Cool for 5 minutes, then carefully invert onto plate. If any fruit sticks onto the cake pan, just stick it right back on to the cake (you might want to try lining the cake pan with a round of parchment paper to avoid this…that is what I might do next time). Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

Notes: I like my plums pretty tart, but if you have rather unripe plums, or you like them sweeter, add some more sugar in the bottom of the pan before you lay the plums over it. Also, you can make your own buttermilk by adding a tablespoon of lemon juice to half a cup of milk and waiting a few minutes until it gets thick and creamy. Thanks to Smitten Kitchen for this tip.