Passionfruit – Nectarine Shortcakes with Angel Butter Biscuits

 Sunday brunch, some assembly needed :)

1. Angel butter biscuits

This is my second time making biscuits (I made butter biscuits about a year ago), and I decided to tackle the “angel” variety. It gets its name because you use both yeast and baking powder to achieve mile-high fluffiness. Ooh-la-la! I also added ginger to half the batter because I loved the ginger-peach-passionfruit combination.

                                                                                                                  

I think I over-mixed the batter because out of eight, this was the single biscuit that puffed up with pride. So, it got its own picture. Hehe~ The rest were still good, though a little dense in the middle. Must stop over-mixing (and over-doing things in general)!

 3. Passionfruit curd and nectarines

I made passionfruit curd with the leftover juice from the ice-cream. There is something glorious about passionfruit! I think it tastes like the sun. And the moon, too (the tartness). Or it’s simply the most exotic fruit I know and I’m attributing celestial qualities to it... Anyways, in ice-cream or curd form, passionfruit is just marvelous, especially paired with peaches and nectarines.

 3. Assembly

This part is pretty self-explanatory.

And I shared this with… myself. It was all for me. I have to say, it was objectively very good, and even the pictures came out beautifully, but I don’t think I enjoyed it as much. I actually cleaned up in between eating the two shortcakes. Food is only really good when you share it. Is it the affirmation (or sometimes disaffirmation)? Because without company, food is just about nourishment (how boring). Or indulgence (how guilt-inducing). Perhaps the next pie will have more luck!

Nadège Tart

I have been making a lot of pie deliveries of late. For reasons I won’t get into here. The biggest problem is that I’m almost out of “transportable” pies, especially in this summer heat. It’s not a good idea to make meringue in the height of summer (especially in this sort of sauna-like weather), but a thin layer shouldn’t be too difficult to manage.

The nadege tart is basically a lemon pie with a thin layer of sponge cake and a much reduced amount of meringue piped into a lattice pattern. The layering came out a little skewed; I ended up with nearly equal amounts of curd, cake, and meringue, when it should’ve been a lot more curd and a lot less cake. Funnily enough, only the meringue came out as it was supposed to.  

But it was still very good:) And no one seemed to notice (or rather, no one really knows what a nadege tart is, including me!). I shared this with my new colleagues as we sat for hours at a “liberally” air-conditioned Starbucks, talking about… well, all the random stuff girls talk about when they get together. I was, however, relieved to find out that I was not the only one to have had a somewhat disappointing 20s (though perhaps no one has had such an uneventfully tumultuous one as me), and to harbor somewhat resigned yet paradoxically hopeful feelings about the future. Hmmm.. maybe I am sort of normal after all. Among like-minded people, at least!

Crustless Peach-Ginger Pie with Pure Passion Ice-Cream

Expect to see a lot of “peachy” entries!

This is a crustless one in a gratin dish (because I didn’t have enough for a full pie). It looks like something you’d have as a meal.

And that’s exactly what we did – we skipped dinner and went straight for dessert!

 With some passionfruit ice-cream.

The gingery-lemony-cinnamony-peach with the tropical-tart-passionfruit were a sublime combination. Not to mention the crispy-soft-creamy textures of the crust cookies, fruit, and ice-cream. Absolutely heavenly! I remember vaguely of hearing about an old Asian myth that they eat peaches in paradise. They’ll be wanting to import some passionfruit, in my opinion!

It all made me forget the sweltering heat for awhile. The entire exterior of my body feels like the underside of a post-it note. And I can feel myself sweating again as I dry myself off from a shower. Oy! There’s no way to wash off the stickiness (or annoyance) before the end of summer. We can only forget for awhile with…

More ice-cream!

Yes, I made a lot of ice-cream. My mini ice-cream maker was hopelessly inadequate, so I ended up stirring it myself from the freezer every hour or so. And it paid off because it was smooth with no ice-crystals. Hehe~ I packed it all in a styrofoam box and brought it to the office for the perfect mid-afternoon snack. With some banana and nuts – another delectable combination! I can see a trend forming here; passionfruit goes nicely with mellow, mushy fruit like peaches, bananas, and of course, mangoes. I’ll be adding that to my repertoire of formulas!

Peaches and Cream Tart

It’s peach season! Time to make pie with some lusciously enticing peaches.

I was concerned about this pie because the chart of ingredients was misprinted in the Kindle edition of the book. (It called for oranges and no peaches… I’m pretty sure that oranges don’t go in a peach tart!) What to do, what to do? I thought about contacting Amazon’s Kindle Department, which was surprisingly tough to find online. Then I considered contacting the publishers, but I probably wouldn’t get a response back for ages. And then I remembered Rose’s blog/website, http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/, and I contacted the grandmaster herself. I told her about my project and asked for the correct ingredients to the peach tart, and to my delight, I got a response almost immediately from her assistant Woody. They even looked at my blog and said my pies were beautiful. Aw, shucks!

 After obtaining the correct recipe from Rose, I got right down to it. This is a rather simple one: an almond cookie tart crust, peaches sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and some cream-sour cream-egg yolk-based custard.

Rose, in her book, says this tart is elegant yet homey. I would say that it’s completely modest because its somewhat humble appearance belies its utter scrumptiousness. Imagine cinnamon-spiked peaches encased in velvety cream that just melts in your mouth. Yuuuum! I think the only thing that was a little off was that the crust had become soggy by the time I got to dig in. Oh well. I wish I could invite people home, so we can devour the pies straight out of the oven!

I shared this with my friend who is pregnant – with twins! Oh, how exciting! I really do think that she has won the baby jackpot. There is just something incredibly adorable about even ‘the idea’ of twins... We ate almost half the tart together, and then she and her hubby finished off the rest at home. I fed a family of four! What a great use of my pie-baking skills:D

Christmas Reminders in Summer: the Linzertorte & Hosting the All-Right-Table at Café Slobbie

 Another regional delicacy, this one from the city of Linz in Austria.

The Linzertorte is made by filling a nut-based crust with raspberry jam. Traditionally, almonds are used, but the Pie Bible recommended hazelnuts for a more intensely nutty flavor. Instead of using raspberry jam, I tried making my own raspberry conserve (which is basically raspberries boiled down with sugar). I’d originally planned to make a half-sized tart, but I over-boiled the conserve and ended up with just barely enough for two mini tarts. But no matter – it just meant extra raspberry flavor! I’m really glad I made my own raspberry conserve because it was so much better than any jam I’ve ever tasted. Most jams are just sweet, but the conserve was also tart and intensely flavorful, like dozens of raspberries packed into every bite.

And the result? Another pie that tasted like Christmas! There is something about tart fruit and cinnamon-nuttiness that just remind you of Christmas. It gives you that fuzzy, hopeful feeling, with just a nip of cold… I guess this wasn’t quite the right pie to make in the middle of summer. Or maybe it was the perfect mental cooler to help beat the heat!

***

I was asked to host a cooking workshop called the “All-Right-Table” at Café Slobbie, a restaurant run by a social enterprise. Each month, someone with a story about food shares her tale by cooking a dish with a group of people. It’s all about sharing through food. How appropriate! I talked about my on-going Pie Bible challenge, while teaching the basics of baking to pie newbies.

Despite the Christmas-connection, I picked the dried cranberry and walnut crostata because of its relative simplicity (you don’t even need a pie pan!). But trying to teach it to baking novices reminded me of how far I’ve come. Things I once struggled with, that I now do with a degree of dexterity, all needed to be explained verbally and backed up visually. Cutting the butter into the flour until it looks like “course meal”… Kneading the dough just enough to hold together, but not so much that it toughens… Teaching really is a whole other art!

I was really happy that all four of the pies came out really well! The filling was a little dry because the pies cracked (not enough time to chill properly) and a lot of the cream oozed out. But other than that, they were all very delicious. I was quite proud of the participants and their first (for most of them) successful pie-baking experience. I was, however, a little concerned that the workshop may have actually discouraged baking pies at home. The general sentiment seemed to be, ‘this pie is really good, but it’s too much work!’ Hmmm.. I can’t deny that it’s hard work, just affirm that it’s always worth it!

But ultimately, the workshop was about sharing through cooking, not pie-baking specifically. I hope it inspired some people to start their own projects or pick up a new, fun, meaningful hobby. Hobbies are, after all, a key ingredient to happiness:D