Tag Archives: pastry

Pear&Blackberry Tart

Last weekend I wanted to make a cake, I was dreaming about a huge layered cake with delicious and sweet cream, topped with chocolate or strawberries, or blackberries.. At the end of the day I realized that I can’t decide which one to make and I don’t have all required ingredients. 😀 But I have always been a person that needs something sweet after dinner. I wanted a dessert to satisfy my sweet tooth, and better with cream! So I’ve come up with this beautiful and absolutely delicious ‘pear and blackberry tart’. Honestly speaking, I haven’t made this recipe a dozen or even a couple of times, it was perfect from the first attempt! Nutty shortbread base, tender whipped ricotta cream, pear slices and blackberries – all those things merged together into divine combination. I believe that you would find this dessert to be as delicious as it looks! You just need to go to the kitchen, cook it and enjoy! 🙂 I will make it again for sure!

Pear and Blackberry Tart

Servings: 4-6
Time: 1hr 20mins
Difficulty: moderate
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You can use any favourite fruits and berries, like strawberry&blueberry, raspberry&nectarines.

Ingredients

Short pastry (base)

1 large egg, at room temperature

100g plain flour

75g butter, cubed and softened

35g fine sugar

30g ground almonds

Topping

100ml whipping cream (30-35%), cold

1+1 Tbsp icing sugar

1 tsp cognac or brandy, optional

100-120g ricotta

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon zest

1 large pear, sliced

1 Tbsp lemon juice

8-10 blackberries

2-3 strawberries, sliced, optional

1 Tbsp white chocolate chips

Whisk the egg and set aside a half (a bit less then half) for a glaze.
To make the dough, in a large mixing bowl or food processor, mix flour, butter, sugar, half the egg and almonds until combined. Tip dough out onto a floured surface and bring together with hands. Make a flat disk, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 30-40 minutes in a fridge.
On a lightly floured table roll the dough into 21-22cm circle. Brush with remaining egg. Transfer to a paper-lined baking dish.
Bake in preheated 180C oven for 25 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool completely.
Meanwhile, in a bowl beat cream with 1 Tbsp icing sugar and cognac, if using, until soft peak begin to form. In another bowl, combine ricotta, vanilla, lemon zest and sugar. Add ricotta mixture into whipped cream and whip until smooth for a 1-2 minutes.
Spread cream on the base. Sprinkle pear slices with lemon juice. Arrange pear slices, blackberries and strawberries, if using, on the cream, and sprinkle over chocolate chips. Dust with extra icing sugar, if desired. Enjoy!

Cherry Strudel with nuts

First time I have tried strudel at home. It was a frosty winter day, I was at home finishing a homework after school, when my mother came and told me she’d got a new dessert recipe! I was so excited, because it has been a habit in our family, almost every evening we had a tea with some freshly-baked pies, buns or danishes whether it were homemade or store-bought.. Easy to guess, it was a strudel recipe. At that time of the year we could make only apple-raisin filling; compare to today it was impossible to buy even frozen cherries, only if you hadn’t froze it by yourself last summer. So, we had some nice apples, which were picked from garden and kept in a cellar, raisins and walnuts; the recipe worked so good, the pastry turned thin and smooth.. and we liked the result – new, mysterious and so delicious strudel! 🙂 Believe me or not, since then I’m using exactly the same pastry recipe and it works! 🙂

Certainly, you can cheat and use filo pastry, though you should try to make the pastry from scratch at least once, it only sounds complicated. Most of you know, that nothing could beat the homemade pastry! 😉

Do you know, that first strudel recipe is dating back to 1696; strudel legend says that the Austrian Emperor’s chef was perfectionist, he even made an order that strudel pastry should be so thin that you could read a love letter through it!

Cherry Strudel with nuts

Servings: 6-8
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Ingredients

Pastry:

250g all-purpose white flour

1 egg

50g melted butter

125ml warm water

a pinch of salt

Filling:

700-900g pitted cherries

3-5 Tbsp caster sugar

4 Tbsp finely crushed almonds or breadcrumbs

3 Tbsp walnuts, coarsely chopped

3 Tbsp hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

40g currants (black)

40g golden raisins

3 Tbsp cognac/brandy/rum

40g melted butter, for glazing

1-2 Tbsp icing sugar, for serving

Preparation

The pastry. Sift flour on to a clean surface, add salt, and make a well in the middle. Slightly beat an egg with water and butter, add the mixture into flour. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, time to time punch it down and throw until it becomes elastic and smooth. Wrap it in clingfilm and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven 200C/400F. Line the baking tray with baking paper, grease it with some melted butter or oil.
The filling. In a cup or small bowl, put all washed raisins and cover with cognac; soak for 15 minutes, then pour out remaining cognac. Cut cherries into halves, you may keep some whole.
The pastry. Dust a workspace with flour and roll out the pastry into rectangle as thinly as possible. You can place wet and floured tea-towel, and do it on it. When you can’t roll the pastry any more, begin stretching it using your hands – place back side of your hands under the pastry and stretch it. Keep on going until it is very thin or you can see pattern of the tea-towle through it.
Brush the rolled dough with melted butter. Sprinkle with crushed almonds, leave en edge 3cm uncovered. If using breadcrumbs, brown them in some butter until golden-brown.
Spread cherries, and sprinkle with sugar. Adjust amount of sugar, depending on your taste.
Scatter raisins and remaining nuts on top.
Fold uncovered edges in, then roll up the pastry into a sausage shape.
Gently put the strudel on the baking tray, brush with melted butter. Bake for 35-45 minutes until the pastry is golden.
Allow to cool slightly before serving, dust with icing sugar. Serve while it’s still warm with vanilla ice cream or sauce.

For the vanilla sauce, in a medium pan warm 125ml milk and vanilla bean (don’t allow to boil); add 1 beaten egg yolk along with 1Tbsp caster sugar and 1 tsp cornmeal into pan; stirring constantly, cook on a medium heat for 9-12 minutes, until the sauce thickens a bit. Let it slightly cool and serve with strudel.

Let’s party, lovely bloggers! Let’s drink (ha, only lemonade so far..) and eat all those tasty dishes, that we’ve brought at FF! 🙂

The ruby-red treat

Who doesn’t like a glorious cherry pie? 🙂

One of the good thing about this pie is that you can use different types of pastry crusts and cherries. I like to use fresh sour cherries, but here such cherries are nowhere to be found, I’ve seen only sweet and they are overpriced. So I quiet often use frozen or canned.

I made it a couple of times during the winter and I wish I would have made several more! The pie is quite easy to make and it came out amazing! Moreover, the fact that you can make the pastry ahead of time, makes the pie perfect for company or holiday parties.

Don’t forget that cherries should be pitted! The sugar amount for the filling varies depending on how sweet your cherries, adjust it to suit your personal preferences.

The ruby-red Cherry Pie

Servings: 1-2
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Ingredients (for 13 cm/5 inch pie pan):

Short crust pastry:

190g plain flour

100g butter, chilled and cut into small cubes

1/2 tbsp white sugar

a pinch of salt

30-40 ml cold water

Cherry filling:

300-400ml pitted fresh or canned cherries

1-2 tbsp white sugar, if needed

1 tsp corn starch

1 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tbsp cherry liquor or brandy (optionally)

1/2 tbsp fine semolina

Glazing:

1 egg yolk+ 1tsp milk

1/2 Tbsp granulated white or brown sugar

Preparation:

Place all ingredients for the filling in a bowl, and gently combine. If you’re using fresh cherries, let them stand for 20 minutes, then toss it again.
Combine the flour, butter, sugar and salt until coarse meal. Pour water slowly and incorporate gently until the dough begins to hold together. Roll into two ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use (at least 30 minutes). The short crust pastry can be kept in the fridge for a week! I suggest to double the quantity of pastry and make it ahead, thus you can prepare a big pie for the family or several individual pies during the week.
Roll one portion of dough into 22 cm circle and transfer to the pie pan. Keep it in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, while you roll out the top of the pie crust.
Roll the second pastry ball into smaller circle – 18-19 cm. Use a knife to cut vents into the top crust, so the steam has a place to escape while the pie is cooking. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Preheat oven to 180C/360F.
Remove the crusts from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 5-7 minutes so they have time to soften.
Sprinkle the bottom pastry with semolina, and fill the pie.
Lightly brush the rim with egg wash. Top it with second crust.
Brush the entire surface with egg wash, sprinkle with granulated sugar.
Bake the pie for about 35-40 minutes until the crust is golden brown and the cherry juices are beginning to bubble. Let the pie cool on a rack for sometime.
ENJOY! 😀

Khvorost

Khvorost is a traditional Russian crispy sweet which made out of dough, shaped into twisted ribbons and deep-fried. The name means ‘brushwood’, it was given because of similar look to a real brushwood and a sound ‘crack-crack’ when you bite the crunchy sweet khvorost. 🙂

Khvorost was very popular in the 18-19th centuries and commonly eaten among petty bourgeois, shopkeepers, clerks and students, who could gather and spend a little amount of money on this crunchy treat.

When pastry and confectionery industry progressed after 1930-50th, bringing more sweet products such as caramel candies and variety of cookies the khvorost itself became less popular.

Ingredients

3 egg yolks

1 Tbsp sour cream

100 ml full-fat milk

2 Tbsp cognac (or vodka)

pinch of salt

500g flour (white, all-purpose)

icing sugar for dusting

sunflower oil for deep-drying

Method

Whisk well egg yolks with sour cream, milk, cognac and salt. Adding the flour gradually to the egg mixture, knead a dough until soft, cohesive and no longer sticky (thus don’t add all the flour at once, or even add some if needed).

Place the dough in a bowl, cover with a towel or plastic wrap, let it rest for 20-30 minutes.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 1cm/0.4″ thick. Cut strips (2-3cm/1″ width and 8-10cm/3-4″ length), make a small cut in each strip and fold one edge into it.

Heat the oil in a large pan and cook khvorost on both sides until golden (1-2 minutes). Ready ones set on a paper towel to get rid of fat excess.

Sprinkle with a good quantity of icing sugar.

Sugar is not added into genuine classic khvorost dough , that helps to make it more fluffy; thus sprinkle lots of icing sugar or pour some honey over ready ‘ribbons’ .

Enjoy with a cup of black tea or milk, or leave some for the morning coffee! 😉

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Kournik – Russian chicken pie

Hello, dear foodies!

In Russia we really do like pies, to bake and to eat! 🙂 And I’m not an exception. 🙂

Kournik – the festive pie which used to bake for weddings. It was shaped like a dome, interlaid with thin pancakes and stuffed with various fillings: boiled chicken, fried mushrooms, rice, eggs and etc. Nowdays, preparing of the pie is left for weekends. But there is the simplified version of it, which Russian women cook during working-days.

Hope this simple and tasty pie can turn into a family favorite!

So, we need

For pastry:

260-300 gr plain flour

150 gr sour cream

150 gr butter

1 egg

pinch of salt

For filling:

2 chicken breasts

2-3 potatoes

1 onion (big one)

a few small cubes of butter

1 egg for brushing

salt and pepper

Mix the flour, pinch of salt, soft butter, sour cream and egg together in a bowl. Then you need to work on a surface – mix together to form a soft pastry.

Shape the pastry into a ball and cover with a towel. Meanwhile, cut the chicken and onion into cubes and grate potatoes.

Divide the dough into 2 parts, one should be smaller- will be the lid (upper part) for our pie. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry until it’s roughly the size of the pie dish.

Spread the potatoes in an even layer, season with salt and pepper