I struggle following directions, coloring in the lines and wreak havoc on my kitchen, but my super powers have given me the ability to have extra sensitive taste and smell receptors, helping me to create tasty food out of the kitchen chaos.
I wanted to make a special dessert. I had some fabulous pears that I thought would be wonderful to use. I found a recipe for Pear Tarte Tartin that looked amazing....but I didn't feel like dealing with puff pastry, and wanted a more of a pow! crust, so I went with a graham cracker crust, but used the pear tarte tartin filling. I topped with gingersnap granola from Sunflower market. I thought it was a lovely first for me. I accompanied it with homemade vanilla bean ice cream. mmmmmmmm.... of course anything that has you making your own caramel has to be fabulouso!!
Pear Tarte Tatin with Vanilla and Ginger
Ingredients
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (half of 17.3-ounce package), thawed
(I did graham cracker crust instead....1 1/2 packages of graham crackers crust crushed, 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/4 cup sugar, mixed together and pressed into a tart pan. Cook at 350 degrees, for 15 minutes.)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped into small bowl
1 tablespoon grated peeled fresh ginger ( used 1 tsp powdered ginger, a couple dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg)
5 medium-size firm Anjou pears (about 2 1/4 pounds), peeled, halved, cored, each half cut into 4 wedges (I did much thinner slices)
Topping:
1 cup granola
1/2 cup butter
1 Tbsp sugar
Mix together and drop the topping onto the pear tart and bake for 10 minutes, until golden brown.
Preparation
Roll out pastry on lightly floured surface to 10-inch square. Trim edges, making 10-inch-diameter round; pierce round all over with fork. Slide onto rimless baking sheet. Cover and chill pastry while preparing pears or up to 1 day.
Fill large skillet with ice and water; set aside. Stir sugar, 1/4 cup water, and corn syrup in heavy 10-inch-diameter nonstick ovenproof skillet over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil until syrup is dark amber color, occasionally swirling and brushing down sides of skillet with wet pastry brush, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; whisk in butter, then vanilla-bean seeds and ginger (caramel will bubble up). Arrange pears, cut side down and overlapping, in circle in skillet, placing a few around edge, if necessary. Place skillet over medium heat. Cook until pears are tender and syrup thickens enough to coat spoon, about 23 minutes. Place hot skillet atop ice in large skillet to cool pear mixture quickly. (Can be made 4 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)
Preheat oven to 375°F. Place puff pastry round atop pear mixture in skillet; tuck in edges around pears. Bake tart until pastry is puffed and golden, about 35 minutes. Cool tart completely in pan at least 1 hour and up to 6 hours.
Preheat oven to 375°F. Rewarm tart in oven 8 minutes. Place platter atop skillet. Using oven mitts, hold skillet and platter together and turn over, releasing tart. .
Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
Ingredients
(1 servings)
1 c Sugar
1/2 Lemon; juice of
2 lg Eggs
2 c Heavy or whipping cream
1 c Milk
1 vanilla bean, split in half and seeds scraped into cream mix. I also soaked the bean in the vanilla over night.
Instructions
. Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, 1-2 minutes. Whisk in sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. Pour in the heavy cream and milk and vanilla seeds whisk to blend. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer's instructions.
Today is my friend Josh's birthday. He has been a good and patient friend. He is able to deal with the ridiculous and is able to keep me laughing, he is also an excellent listener and whose wisdom and advice I respect. He deserves a great present. So we are having a birthday dinner for him tonight, with homemade personal pan pizzas and I decided to make his favorite ice cream...Rocky Road. I haven't attempted R.R. before, so this is a delicious experiment. I haven't yet made a chocolate ice cream to my liking. I don't really like the custard ice cream bases, too thick. So I modified a custard based with my sweet cream base and used various chocolates to try and kick it up a bit. I think it quite lovely and overly addicting. I hope Josh concurs!! :) Happy ice creaming!!
Rocky Road Ice Cream
2 cups heavy cream
¼ cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (Hershey’s Dark is fabulous!)
1 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup whole milk
½ milk chocolate, chopped (or just use chocolate chips
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup miniature marshmallows, halved
1 cup walnuts, chopped
½ cup chocolate chips
1. Warm 1 cup of the cream with the cocoa powder in a medium saucepan, whisking to thoroughly blend the cocoa. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly. Remove from the heat and add the chopped bittersweet and milk chocolate, stirring until smooth. Then stir in the remaining 1 cup cream. Pour the mixture into a large bowl and refrigerate.
2. Whisk the milk, egg and sugar in a bowl
3. Pour the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture until smooth, then stir in the vanilla.
4. Freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Once the ice cream has finished churning, fold in the marshmallows, walnuts and chocolate chips.
My friend Anne and I had the second annual peach picking festival at Apple Annie's in Wilcox this Saturday. It was a beautiful day and highly entertaining. For one, we got yelled at by a gentleman we dubbed "Apple Andy," yes, we are clever. What on earth did we do to get yelled at, by this fella? I will tell ya...ahem...story time:
Apple Annie's orchard offers a ride around the orchard to your fruit picking destination on a flatbed attached to a tractor, driven by Apple Andy. Anne and I had traveled all around the orchard and the tractor finally reached the peach part of the orchard, where a group of people had gathered to get back on after their peach picking experience. Anne and I grabbed our buckets and were set to disembark, when from the tractor we hear Apple Andy's dulcet tones telling us to, "SIT DOWN!! YOU'RE NOT THERE YET!" We confusedly complied, sitting sheepishly back down. The tractor then traveled, about 10 feet, stopped and we heard the Jolly Andy yell, " Peaches!!" Yes, yes...quite entertaining. I still haven't stopped laughing!
Anyway...we drove 2 hours down, 2 hours back, spent 10 minutes picking peaches, and 20 minutes sitting in the orchard eating peaches and talking about what a lovely day it was...and every minute was worth it!! Especially, the snow cones for the ride home. And then, Anne and I teamed up the next day for the peach cooking extravaganza! We accompanied this peachy chaos by inviting a few friends over for "breakfast for dinner" so we could have peach pancakes and use the raspberry-peach syrup (was supposed to be jelly, that didn't gel) onLa Gaufre de Liègewaffles. Which are Belgian waffles, using Belgian sugar. It is a wonderful sweet happy way to eat dinner. But no peach fest is complete without peach pie accompanied with my raspberry ice cream! So let the deliciousness begin!!!
Paula Peach Pie
9 pounds fresh peaches
2 teaspoons Fruit Fresh, (fruit preservative)
3 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons quick cooking tapioca
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1 9-inch pie, top crust
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon or nutmeg
To peel the peaches, first bring a pot of water to a boil. Using a paring knife, score the peaches with an X into the skins only. Gently drop the peaches in the boiling water for approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, remove the peaches and place them in iced water for a minute. The skins should slip off easily. If not, place back into the boiling water for another 30 seconds.
Slice the peaches and put them in a bowl. Sprinkle Fresh Fruit and sugar, and stir into peaches. Stir in remaining ingredients and mix well.
Line 4 pie pans with heavy foil or freezer paper, placing a piece of plastic wrap over foil. Put 4 to 5 cups filling each pan. Loosely fold wrapping around pie and freeze until firm. When filling is frozen solid, remove from pans and wrap tightly. Return to freezer until ready to use.
On pie baking day, for each pie, simply place frozen pie filling in pie shell, add 1/2 a stick of butter and sprinkle with cinnamon or nutmeg. Top pie with an additional pastry crust, seal well, and bake for 50 to 60 minutes in a preheated 375 degree oven.
I did one lattice and one with brown sugar, oatmeal, butter topping
Blushing Peach Jam
Categories: Yield: 2 Dozen
2 c Crushed peeled peaches
2 c Red raspberries; crushed
1/4 c Lemon juice
7 c Sugar
2 pk Liquid fruit pectin
1/8 ts Almond extract
Mix peaches, raspberries and lemon juice; mix in sugar. Bring to a full rolling boil; boil 1 minute. Remove from heat; stir in pectin. Return to a boil; boil 1 minute, stirring. Remove from heat; skim off foam. Add extract; pack into hot jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Seal jars; process in boiling water bath 15 minutes
La Gaufre de Liège This is a type of waffle from the city of Liège, Belgium.
The waffle should be eaten warm. The Perlé sugar gives the waffle a sweet and crunchy taste. Ingredients
2 1/2 cups.
Flour
1 tablespoon
Dry Yeast
1 teaspoon
Salt
1/2 teaspoon
Cinnamon
2
Eggs
3/4 cup
Milk
1 teaspoon
Vanilla
1 3/4 sticks
Butter
1 cup
Perlé sugar(I get mine from AJ's Fine Food in Tucson...they used to have a similar kind at IKEA, but I haven't seen it in awhile.)
Preparation
Mix the flour, dry yeast, salt and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Add the eggs, milk and vanilla
Knead all these ingredients together well until they look like pizza dough. Let it rest for about 30 minutes.
In a separate bowl mix the butter (cut in small pieces) and the pearl sugar.
Add this mixture to the dough and mix thoroughly until the sugar and butter are totally integrated with the dough. Let it rest for another 15 minutes.
Bake on a hot waffle maker – about 2-3 minutes. DO NOT ADD GREASE OR PAM
The number of waffles from this recipe depends on the size. You could get from 10 to 30.
Anne made peach pancakes, she just chopped up the peaches in to small pieces, added the cinnamon-sugar from the pie filling and added it to Bisquick and pancaked away!
The final thing I made, which I don't have a picture for is raspberry icecream. This has been dubbed by me, "The man wooer" I will always make it or creme brulee for a man I am trying to woo. It has not helped me to successfully keep the man for a lengthy period of time, but does, at least, keep him coming back for awhile. I really need to figure out the rest of the wooing part, can't seem to get past the food part, oh well.
So here is the recipe...try your own wooing.
Raspberry Ice Cream
Ingredients
(1 servings)
1 pt Fresh raspberries
1 c Sugar (sometimes a 1/4 more depending on the sweetness of the berry)
1/2 Lemon; juice of
2 lg Eggs
2 c Heavy or whipping cream
1 c Milk
Instructions
Compare to other fresh fruit, raspberries are intensely flavorful and very tart, so to make ice cream you need less fruit and more sugar. Toss the raspberries, 3/4 cup sugar, and the lemon juice together in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, stirring every 30 minutes. Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, 1-2 minutes. Whisk in thr remaining 3/4 cup sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. Pour in the heavy cream and milk and whisk to blend. Drain the juice from the raspberries into the cream mixture and blend. Mash the raspberries until pureed and stir them into the cream mixture. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer's instructions. Makes 1 generous quart. NOTE: If you prefer a chunkier raspberry ice cream, return the raspberries to the refrigerator after pouring off the juice. After the ice cream stiffens, about 2 minutes before it is done, add the whole raspberries.
(I am currently working on a peach crumble...so stay tuned!!!)
My lovely friend Jen is coming into town, so I am making ice cream to bring some happiness to us all! I actually haven't made ice cream very often this summer, which is extremely unusual for me. Well, I looked to see what I had to make ice cream with, I almost always use the same sweet cream base and then add whatever I want, have or has been requested. I had dove dark chocolates and cherries, so Voila!!! Cherry chocolate ice cream! Enjoy!
Cherry Chocolate Ice Cream
Ingredients
1/4 cup chopped chocolate (I love Dove Dark...pick your favorite!)
1/4 cup cherries, chopped
2 large eggs
1cup sugar
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup milk (I use skim and it turns out just fine)
Directions 1.Chop chocolate and cherries.
2. Mix eggs with a whisk in a bowl until light and fluffy and no streaks. Whisk in the sugar until completely blended. Pour in the cream and milk and whisk until completely blended.
3. Put the mix into your ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer’s instructions.
4. After the ice cream starts to thicken (about 5 minutes before it is done), add the chocolate and the cherries, then continue freezing until the ice cream is ready. Though when I am really lazy, I dump it all in at the same time and it turns out just fine. :)
Fill large skillet with ice and water; set aside. Stir sugar, 1/4 cup water, and corn syrup in heavy 10-inch-diameter nonstick ovenproof skillet over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil until syrup is dark amber color, occasionally swirling and brushing down sides of skillet with wet pastry brush, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; whisk in butter, then vanilla-bean seeds and ginger (caramel will bubble up). Arrange pears, cut side down and overlapping, in circle in skillet, placing a few around edge, if necessary. Place skillet over medium heat. Cook until pears are tender and syrup thickens enough to coat spoon, about 23 minutes. Place hot skillet atop ice in large skillet to cool pear mixture quickly. (Can be made 4 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.) 
