A Year of Baking

It's been a hectic year full of fun, travel, work, play and yet still lots of baking in between. I just haven't taken the extra time to catalog much of it here. I have enjoyed trying all kinds of fun recipes - usually to make something sweet for dessert when we have friends over and sometimes just to try something new.

This past year, I tackled making croissant dough again, piping beautiful pillowy meringue on tarts, decorating holiday cookies with royal icing and a few things in between. Nothing was perfect, but all of it was fun. It was a way to exercise some creative energy, focus on doing something that made me happy and feel good about sharing something with others to enjoy. I often have wondered why I spend hours pouring myself into baking projects in my very little down time, but my sister recently shared this Huff Post article with me where psychologists explain the benefits of baking for other people. It's so true and after what I've been through in life and to help focus on something beyond the daily stresses of work life, baking has been it for me.

I made a few banoffee pies, including this one with the buttery Digestive biscuit crust and chocolate flakes sprinkled on top. 

I love baking with berries and made this blackberry clafouti for dessert one evening. 

We always have this homemade pecan, coconut and dried cherry granola in the house - whether it's to snack on or top our yogurt for breakfast. 

I've always loved lava cakes and tried a new recipe a few times for these molten chocolate cakes. 

In the summer when we were not up for a heavy chocolate dessert, we made homemade ice cream topped with lemon curd, blackberries and homemade candied pistachios. 

In the autumn after we picked apples, I made this tarte aux pommes for a dinner party. 

With my mum from England, I like trying different kinds of scones, so I made these two kinds of fruit scones and several batches of cinnamon chip scones (not pictured). 

 I love making cakes of all kinds for people's birthdays (and even my dog's birthday) I made a few more cakes after the unicorn this past year.  

This was a pumpkin cake with cinnamon buttercream frosting. 

Our dog, Tootsie, turned 13 and reaching that age deserved a two tier cake!

I love sticky toffee pudding and cake and made this amazing sticky toffee cake with caramel sauce and sea salt. 

I have made my own croissant dough before, but this time I tried making pain au chocolat.  Not perfect, but all my work and they sure still tasted good. 

We had extra lemon curd so I made some lemon curd tarts with meringue piped on top. I have made meringue before, but experimented with getting it the right consistency and piping it in different patterns on the tarts.

 We had our annual homemade cinnamon rolls at Thanksgiving and Christmas this year - all cozy by the fire. 

 I also did lots of fireside cookie decorating at the holidays including these snowflakes, ginger people and ornaments with royal icing.  

I had some white chocolate to use and tried these white chocolate blondies with raspberries and cream. 

I took an amazing puff pastry class and made this puff pastry pear tart with caramel sauce. We also made cheese straws and I used the puff pastry I brought home to make chicken pot pie topped with puff pastry. 

There's a lot more baking in store for 2019. I look forward to learning lots more and trying new projects. 

Rustic Cherry Pie

I had made some appetizers recently with puff pastry and I had an extra piece to use (along with a craving for something sweet). I have made my own puff pastry before, but the store bough frozen puff pastry is so incredibly easy in a pinch. I also had some frozen cherries to use. I started with the idea to make little cherry hand pies and ended up just folding it into one simple rustic cherry pie by folding the edges in. I simply rolled out the thawed puff pastry sheet on flour, made the cherry filling to place in the center and folded the edges in.  I brushed the top with butter and sprinkled it with some sugar. I would prefer using fresh cherries or other fruit, but this was a great way to use up the pastry and frozen fruit and will be an easy go-to dessert option for at home or to take to a dinner party.

It was a lovely spring day and we had all the windows open in the house. While we enjoyed our roast chicken sunday dinner, I displayed the pie in the window sill. This is not always how our weekends go, but we had a particularly wonderful meal planned and it was a relaxing day. We went to the market in the morning also and I decorated many other window sills with poppies and tulips.

Recipe for Rustic Cherry Pie

Ingredients:

One sheet of puff pastry

Melted butter to brush on top

Sugar to sprinkle on top

Cherry filling:

2-3 cups pitted cherries (fresh or frozen)

1/3 cup granulated sugar

Pinch of salt

1 T. cornstarch

1T. fresh lemon juice 

Directions:

Roll out the puff pastry sheet on a floured surface. Mix cherry filling in a bowl. Spoon into the middle of the pastry.  Put a few pats of butter on top of the filling.  Fold the edges of the pastry in and pinch to hold. Brush the top of the pastry with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 375 degrees for approximately 20 minutes. 

Puff Pastry to Palmiers

What ended up as this gorgeous heart shaped cookie glistening with sugar did not start out so pretty. In fact, it started out as a mound of lifeless looking dough that I hoped to turn into puff pastry over the course of a few days to then transform into these rolled heart shaped cookies known as "Palmiers."

It seems as if I'd try to make these pretty little heart shaped cookies for Valentine's day, but the true reason for me making these this month is for my Nan's birthday. Palmiers are her favorite pastry and something I always remember her choosing for a treat. In fact, when I lived with her during college in England, I had several trips to France and would always return home with a bag of Palmiers from one of the French patisseries. They are usually made quite large there, but I wanted to start out small and I love the petite version of these delicate cookies.

You can make these using puff pastry sheets purchased from a grocery store, but I wanted to try to start from complete scratch and actually make my own puff pastry. I used the puff pastry guide in my James Peterson "Baking" cookbook and proved quite helpful.

Here is the mound of dough that I started out with which is sans butter at this point. You scored the top of the dough and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, the scored pieces from the top were folded out and then rolled out. I kneaded the butter into a nice square shape in plastic wrap.

The square of butter was placed in the middle and the dough folds were wrapped around the butter like a little package.

The dough was rolled out to evenly distribute the butter and then folded over a few times before refrigerating again so the butter could solidify more before continue to roll.

The dough was rolled and turned seven times with chilling in between before rolling out the final product of puff pastry. I was hoping I had folded it enough and the butter was even throughout, but I wasn't too sure at this point.

To make the palmier cookies, I rolled out the final dough in granulated sugar and measured it to get a rectangle of at least 9 x 14.

The sugar was so glittery on the ivory dough and I was happy to see all the layers in the dough.

I always thought these cookies were individually shaped into hearts so whoever came up with this method for making these is a genius. The dough was folded in twice with generous sprinklings of sugar in between. Then it was rolled together and placed on its side.

There is the heart shape we're looking for!

The cookies were sliced about 1/4" thick from this log of folded puff pastry and placed on a parchment lined baking sheet.

They baked very nicely and turned out a pretty golden brown with the shiny melted sugar in between the layers of pastry. I was happy that they baked so well as I wasn't sure if my smooshed looking slices would turn into pretty golden hearts like the book.

I hope Nan would be proud of these. I called her on her birthday to let her know I was making them especially for her and I have a cellophane bag of palmier cookies ready to be packaged and sent to Victoria road for her to enjoy.