Peach and Blackberry Custard Tart

We have enjoyed all the fresh peaches at the farmers market the last few weekends and they are always giving out samples (which Audrey loves).  I've gotten several just to eat and decided to bake something with them this past week.  I have also been buying lots of blueberries and blackberries and thought the flavor and color contrast would be nice.

This tart was adapted from a recipe published recently in Martha Stewart Living for Peach-Custard Pie.  I chose to make it a more dainty tart and add the blackberries and I quite like my variation. The instructions for peeling the peaches was amazing and I thought the "naked" peaches were so pretty.  You scored them, boiled them for a minute and then placed them in an ice water bath before peeling.

What's not to like about custard?

I started putting the blackberries just in the center and ended up placing them around the entire tart so everyone would have a bit of blackberries. 

Add a huge dollop of fresh whipped cream and it's complete!

Charming England, Memories of Nan, Afternoon Tea and Custard Galore

It was a bittersweet trip to England this past week, but mostly sweet.  We enjoyed lots of time with family, shared memories of Nan and celebrated her life.  I enjoyed this cup of tea with my Aunt who reminded me these were my Nan's favorite cookies.  I had actually made her some of the traditional palmiers for her last birthday. We had a nice visit with Auntie Vera and she gave us her version of the recipe for "Granny's Christmas Cake" and told us the whole history of when they originally started making it back in India. We'll see how it turns out for Christmas this year!

We had another stop at a nice cafe with my Aunt and Uncle to enjoy some treats and coffee (and an espresso sized milk for Audrey).

Dinner one evening brought us to the Giant's Rest, my favorite pub, where I used to study by the fire with a glass of red wine the winter I went to school there. I was anxious to review their chalkboard of puddings available for the day. 

We chose the butterscotch and apple crisp to share.  It comes covered in custard and we actually asked them to hold back a little on the custard, so they just doused half the dessert with it.  Audrey enjoyed an entire bowl of mandarin organge sorbet.

My cousin and godmother, Ann, always makes nice desserts.  They made a chocolate sponge cake the evening we were there for dinner.  And, again there was more custard.  This was such a yummy warm dessert! 

The day before we left we were able to make it to Alfriston for afternoon tea.  It's our favorite spot and where we often came with Nan.  In fact, we were seated at the same table we always sat with her and I sat in the same chair that I remember her being in when she last went there with us.  We shared a ploughman's lunch and had cream tea with scones.  The clotted cream is amazing!

The Singing Kettle is just a little tea room, but so quaint.

Here are a few sights as we walked around Alfriston that afternoon.  This was such a neat old watering can and the flower arrangements everywhere are gorgeous.

I love the custom painted house numbers.

The shops are full of amazing things and the general store counter is filled with fun pastries, candies, teas and jams.

The streets are miniscule in this town and there are beautiful views of the downs.

You don't see these too much anymore!

There are many days that I think about the quiet and sweet little town of Alfriston.  Why couldn't I just live in this beautiful Rose Cottage and walk up the road to run one of the tea rooms?

Raspberry and Red Currant Crumble Tart

I think I visited the farmer's market at least three times wandering past the stands with the pints of beautiful shiny red currants. I would ponder different uses of them, come home and research some recipes and I just didn't want to settle on using them to make jam. I decided that I had to bake with them. I didn't want to make a boring pie with such an exciting fruit and I had just made a cherry pie. So, after a few suggestions to mix them with raspberries, I settled on making a raspberry and red currant tart. I didn't want to just make one big impersonal tart, but instead I made tartlets with their own little collection of red currants and raspberries meant for individual enjoyment. Plus, this isn't just any tart, it's a crumble tart with a custard filling.

I had the fruit in my kitchen for a few days before I made these and was just taken aback by its beauty and vibrant color.

And, when baked inside these amazing oatmeal and almond tart shells that I made, I knew this dessert would be one to remember. This tart shell will probably be one that I make again for other fruit tarts. It's a combination of ground almonds, oats, brown sugar, flour and butter. After I ground the almonds, it was very easy to make and even easier to work with. I spooned it into the tart shells and used the same spoon to flatten it up against the sides and bottom. These were baked first and then I flattened them back down after baking make sure they filled the shell and made room for the filling.

After I washed and prepared the fruit, I put several red currants and raspberries in each shell, covered it with a custard batter to finish off the filling and it was topped with a crumble topping of almonds, flour and sugar.

While they baked the kitchen smelled of warm sugar, cooked berries and custard. Yum....I'm glad I had an extra one for us to sample! I thought the heavy use of ground almonds and sugar with the custard filling would be too rich, but it ended up being the perfect sweet compliment to the tart tastes of the red currants and raspberries. This was perfect warm out of the oven on its own or would be fantastic with fresh warm custard or vanilla ice cream.

Creme Brulee

I gave my husband a choice of desserts for a Father's day treat and he chose creme brulee. I've wanted to make it for a while anyway and it's also one of my favorites. It's such a simple yet elegant dessert, but I have to admit that I haven't made it from scratch for some time. I guess I've just found it easy to get the creme brulee mix from the store when I was in a pinch for a dinner party dessert, but never again. I think there was a time several years ago when I didn't have as much patience and did not temper the eggs slowly enough where I ended up with a curdled creme. So, I took a deep breath, gathered the finest ingredients, researched recipes and tried again.

Don't worry - this cream is not burnt or dirty...it's vanilla. Instead of using a recipe that called for vanilla extract, I used a recipe with vanilla bean. I chose to use Madagascar vanilla beans that I got from a local gourmet food store. I scraped the vanilla bean seeds and added the vanilla bean itself and the seeds to the cream to bring to a boil.

While the cream became infused with fresh vanilla, I prepared the egg yolks and sugar.

The vanilla cream was SLOWLY added to the egg yolks to temper them so as to not cook them and end up with scrambled eggs.

This final mixture was added into my ramekins of various shapes and sizes and I baked them in a water bath with the water filled part way up the ramekins. They were placed in the oven VERY carefully so as to not get any water in the custard!

They cooked very nicely and I love the tiny specks of vanilla in the custard.

I added more sugar to the top and placed them under the broiler on high to burn the sugar and make that lovely crunchy sugar crust. I garnished it with a sliced strawberry and a dollop of fresh whipped cream. I had several extras which I wrapped with saran and foil to freeze. When I'm in a pinch for a dessert now, I can just thaw those, top them with the sugar and broil for dessert instead of using a mix!

Rhubarb - Two More Ways

With plentiful spring rhubarb from our gardens, we've made two more rhubarb desserts in addition to the rhubarb upside down cake that I made for Mother's Day. I had extra fresh rhubarb that my mum had brought to me and I decided to try making some rhubarb bars to take to my sister. They were easy to make and were quite like a coffee cake that is traditionally made with a brown sugar crumb topping or sometimes with fruit, like blueberries. This was all rhubarb and while it wasn't my favorite creation or even my choice use of rhubarb, it was a good way to use the extra and turned out quite tasty.

The recipe indicated using butter and parchment for the pan and leaving a few inches of extra parchment on either side to end up with handles to take the bars out of the pan after baking. This was a great idea, but we'll see if it works.

I made a simple crumb topping with butter and blended it with a pastry cutter.

I weighed out my rhubarb and this was mixed with flour and sugar.

I simply forgot to capture anything about the cake batter, but there was indeed a cake batter that went first in the pan, the rhubarb mixture was next and then the crumb topping was sprinkled on top.

The topping was golden and crispy when it came out of the oven.

The handles worked! I lifted the entire pan out to set down and cut the bars. We all thought they tasted good, but could have used even more rhubarb as there was a lot of the crumb topping on them.

Since my sister also had a lot of rhubarb in her garden, she decided to try another rhubarb dessert while we visited. She made these yummy rhubarb custards. They turned out very good and reminded me of the rhubarb custard pie that my mum has always made. Ok, that's enough rhubarb for a while!

Rhubarb Upside Down Cake

Prior to Mother's Day, I gave my mum several different dessert choices including some of her favorite flavors - lemon, cheesecakes, meringues with berries and a few different rhubarb desserts. She chose the rhubarb upside down cake and it's good timing with rhubarb being in season right now. I do have some rhubarb growing at our place, but her rhubarb plants are much more mature. She brought down a few pounds of rhubarb last week and I returned the favor with a rhubarb cake for Mother's Day.

I measured out a little over a pound of nice red rhubarb as I needed about a pound of rhubarb for the recipe after it was trimmed and cut.

I tossed the rhubarb with sugar to get its juices flowing and made a crumb topping with butter, flour and sugar.

Little cubes of butter went in the bottom of the cake pan for the rhubarb to cook in and the rhubarb-sugar mixture went in amongst the butter.

The cake batter was easy to make and was a nice thick and creamy batter that included sour cream, which added a little bite to the flavor of the cake. It also had some fresh orange juice (only a tablespoon) and a little orange zest that gave it such a fresh flavor.

The batter went in the cake pan on top of the rhubarb and the crumb topping was sprinkled on top.

After an hour in the oven, we had a perfectly cooked cake with a crunchy crumb topping (which actually ends up on the bottom).

Here is the cake with the right side up and the soft cooked rhubarb on top.

The cake was so nice and moist and it would be flavorful enough on its own. But, with an English mum, I just had to make custard sauce to pour on top. We enjoyed the cake with juicy sweet rhubarb, dense flavorful cake, crunch from the crumb topping on the bottom and drenched in warm custard. Mum loved it and I sent a few extra pieces home with her.