Apricot Strip and Apricot Tartlets with Almond Cream

 An apricot pastry party!

5 dollars for a whole basket of apricots and two-for-one French butter – a sure sign as any to make apricot pastries:) Especially since I have less than a year to finish the project, and I won’t have another apricot season to work through. I thought I should finish off the fruit while I had the chance. With a whole basket at hand, I was able to have a raw, unadulterated, unenhanced apricot for the first time in my life – I ate it like a fruit, not a dessert. I thought it tasted quite peachy.

Puff pastry weighted down and ready to go into the oven.

Like many amateur bakers, I harbored a fear of puff pastry and put off tackling it for nearly a year. For good reason. I remember Jamie Oliver saying that, while working with “just as good” store-bought pastry, if you’re making puff pastry from scratch, you need to get yourself a job. Maybe he’s right. Because I did 7 ‘turns’ of the pastry, with thirty minutes of cooling in between each turn (layering). This took an entire Sunday and converted my kitchen into a floured disaster area. Oy!

Naturally, I was quite nervous about how the puff pastry would turn out. Will I be able to achieve the thousand layers? Let alone the layers, what if it turns out hard like pie crust? These fears were further fueled by teensy tears during the rolling (which was like watching my kid skinning its knees), uneven edges (getting bad grades), and even some tiny lumps of dough and butter (why are they there?!). The whole process was filled with a queer mixture of doom and expectation…

And… They turned out beautifully!

Oh yes, there were many layers.

When I was a kid, I hated it when my mom would try to extract a lesson from everything around me. Moralizing is sooo annoying. And yet, I feel the need to do it now. (Perhaps I’m growing up?) I think the one “lesson” that I’m “learning” from all this baking is to just marshal through, no matter what. Because many of my pies and pastries seem like disasters until everything comes together – at the very end. And even then, they’re not perfect; I can list a whole bunch of things I can improve on. But it still tastes ah-mazing! There’s a whole range of good to awesome beneath this mythical “perfect.” I think I needed tangible (taste-able) evidence to believe in this.

I think I may come to worship French butter. The aroma of French-butter-made-pastry was just outta this world. Heavenly, period. Perhaps a good argument for making your own puff pastry. Homemade wins once again! 

Shoofly Pie

Another completely new pie introduced to me by the Pie Bible. The shoofly pie originates from Pennsylvania Dutch country and is made from molasses, coffee, and spices. It’s supposedly so good, you have to shoo the flies away (hence the name).

I know I raved about my own baking in the last post, and perhaps I shouldn’t have because this one was not so good. I could tell even though I’ve never had shoofly pie before in my life; it’s very obviously cracked and over-baked. I was in a rush, so I hadn’t rested the dough properly and the crust burst all along the bottom while baking. And all the molasses and coffee juices just oozed on out. I think it was supposed to be densely chewy on the bottom and crumbly crunchy on top. But I was pretty much left with bread in soggy crust. What can I say? Pies are like children; they somehow know you didn’t give them your undivided attention and rebel against you.

One good thing is that, though the texture was totally off, it still tasted pretty good. I find that even if the baking goes wrong, it’ll still technically ‘taste’ good if you put in all the right ingredients. But, of course, texture is what brings it all together and makes it ‘actually’ good. I sorta want to make this one again, partly because I’m very curious as to what the shoofly pie is really like and partly because I absolutely hate doing poorly on something and usually try again until I’m better. Perhaps once the project is over I’ll do some remakes of the mess-ups. This one will surely be on the list! 

Pecan Pie

 Classic.

Probably the best pecan pie I ever had (even without the chocolate drizzle). One inconvenient side effect of baking is that my bar for sweets has been raised many-fold. Now when I eat store-bought goods, I can’t help thinking, “Mine is better.” Muhahaha! Legendary chef Jacques Pepin claims that his wife says the same thing about his cooking. So I guess there’s a bit of self-aggrandizement involved. But still, it’s good, and I attribute this to two factors.

First, excellent recipes. I love the recipes in the Pie Bible! Everything comes out rich (lots of butter, cream, and egg yolks!) and flavorful without being over the top. I don’t feel the need to reduce the sugar or fat as I do with, say, Paula Deen’s recipes. You can really tell Ms. Beranbaum did a lot of experimentation and test-eating to find the sweet spot with all the pies. This pecan pie, for example, was perfectly moist without being runny or bready (or downright hard like the filling in store-bought pies) and just the right amount of sweet. I say yummy!

Second, freshness. Fresh is always better. Well, I guess there are some exceptions where you want the flavors to mellow or mingle overnight. But, in most cases, nothing beats freshness, especially not freshly baked pie:) Now when I see the same cake at the bakery day after day, yet unsold… Well, ewww, that can’t be very good. I like my pies because they’re usually consumed the day they’re made.

I guess neither is entirely my doing. Perhaps what I really want to say is that homemade is best! I think I may become a ‘homemade’ fanatic.

 With Bokbunja-ju.

Who knew that pecan pie is great with black raspberry wine? Great alternative to the regular old coffee and whipped cream. Delicious new discovery, I’d say!

Raspberry Chiffon Pie

 Oh, what a glorious pie!

I’ve become quite a rare fruit hoarder. I saw this box of fresh raspberries at a nearby store (I’ve also formed a habit of walking into random stores to see what produce they have), and I just couldn’t pass them by. When will I ever see a whole box of raspberries again? (This logic has been proven false many times, but its urgency always seems very convincing at the moment.) It was actually relatively harder to get my hands on the frozen raspberries for the chiffon portion; I had to go to a few stores all around town before I finally found them. One thing I’ve noticed is that Korean raspberries are different from the American ones. They’re more texture-ful and rounded (adorning the top), whereas the American ones are more tart and elongated (in the chiffon). Interesting.

Ok, so this slice didn’t come out too neat. But it’s because the chiffon was airy-billowy and the raspberries very roll-y. The upside is that you can see the all natural bright pink – it’s almost neon! I have newfound fondness for the color.

The one thing about this pie is that it was a real pain to make, what with the raspberry base, whipped cream, and Italian meringue all made separately and then combined (not to mention the crust and berry topping). And I have found a new nemesis in Italian meringue. I don’t think I’ve ever made it properly. This time, the sugar wasn’t completely melted because I heated it too quickly. The pie still turned out fine. But, as I always tell myself, it can be better, and I will master this Italian meringue someday!

 Washing the raspberries… so pretty:)

Apricot Cheesecake

I’m back! It’s been almost a month since my last pie. Gosh, how I missed baking! The terribly distracting thing is over, and now I need a distraction from my previous distraction. So let the baking begin!

Beautiful, dainty, little apricots :)

Lightly poached in sugar water – this is said to bring out the full flavor of the apricots

Baked with cream cheese, cream, and eggs

Et voila!

This was an interesting sort of pie. There’s no extra sugar added, and all the sweetness comes from the poached apricots and the jam glaze. So it was more creamy than sweet. I normally don’t like fruity chunks in my cakes, but I think I may have to make an apricot exception...

Yummy.