Do you have any fruit mince in your pantry left over from Christmas? I always do, and it is always a question of what to do with it. You can find last year's fruit mince recipe here. Previously, I have made Fruit Mince Donuts with my leftover fruit mince, but wanted to try something different this time.
For a housewarming gift last year, I bought a friend a copy of Rosie Lovell's book, Supper with Rosie. Before gifting it, I had a flick through the book, and spied Rosie's recipe for Christmas Apple Tart. One of the main ingredients is fruit mince - bingo! I took a copy of the recipe and knew that I had to make it. What's not to love - apples and custard and fruit mince, encased in pastry.
I did not use Rosie's fruit mince recipe, as the whole point was that I had my own that I needed to use up. However, I did follow the rest of the recipe, including for the pastry. I found the pastry to be a bit minimalist in flavour, not even containing an egg, so next time I would use a different shortcrust pastry recipe. The filling was devine. If you are a fan of apples and custard and fruit mince, you will love this tart.
To make it, you will need:
Pastry
350g plain flour
175g butter
60ml cold water
Filling
3 large apples, cored, peeled and diced
juice of half an orange
3 eggs
284ml pouring cream
60ml milk
3 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons fruit mince
1 extra egg, beaten
Spray a 23cm loose bottomed tart pan with oil. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celsius.
For the pastry, in a large mixing bowl, cut the butter through the flour by rubbing the two together with your fingertips until you get a mixture that resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the water and mix together until the dough just comes together into a ball.
Lightly flour your benchtop. Put the dough ball onto the floured benchtop and roll out into a circle that is large enough to line your tart pan. Carefully transfer the pastry to the tart pan and press it into the base and sides. Trim off the excess pastry and reserve it, as you will need it for the lattice top.
Line the tart with baking paper, pour in some baking beans or rice, and bake the tart shell in the preheated oven for 5 minutes. Remove the baking beans and baking paper, and return the tart shell to the oven to bake until the pastry has just dried (around 2 minutes). Remove the tart shell from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool.
Reduce the oven temperature to 160 degrees Celsius.
To make the filling put the apples into a saucepan with the orange juice, and heat over a medium heat until the apples are softened. Remove the apples from the heat and set aside.
In a medium bowl, beat the three eggs together with the cream, milk and sugar to make a custard.
Place the apples and fruit mince into the base of your cooled tart shell. Pour two thirds of the custard mixture over the fruit.
Put the tart into the oven and pour the remainder of the custard into the tart. Bake the tart for 25 minutes.
Roll out the reserved pastry into a long wide strip, and cut into ribbons about half an inch wide. Remove the tart from the oven and place the pastry ribbons over the top of the tart in a lattice pattern, and brush the pastry with the beaten egg.
Return the tart to the oven and bake for 20 more minutes or until the filling is set. if your pastry is not golden at that point, you can monetarily put the tart under a grill to make it golden.
Serve and enjoy warm with icecream, or in a cold slab from the fridge.
This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Bread and Chocolate Coffee Can Brioche Ice Cream Sandwiches. Once you have the brioche, the chocolate icecream "pucks" and the optional salted caramel sauce, it is just an assembly job.
You could bake a brioche from Dorie's book in a coffee can; I had part of a brioche left in the freezer from one of the Dorie recipes we had to make last year, so I used that. I also had some ready made caramel sauce, and I bought some chocolate icecream to mould into a round using a cookie cutter.
The frozen icecream round is placed between two similarly sized toasted rounds of brioche, then warmed caramel sauce is poured over the top to complete the icecream sandwich dessert. My icecream melted a little when the sauce went on, but that just added to the rich sauciness of the dessert.
This recipe would be easy to whip up as a dessert for entertaining when friends arrive unexpectedly - you can keep all of the ingredients on hand for use when required.
To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
A little while back, I had some leftover apple juice that I wanted to use up so as not to waste it. I only had about a cup, so many of the recipes that I found needed more apple juice than I had.
I then happened on this Apple Juice Cake from Laura of Pies and Plots. It uses two cups of apple juice, but I decided to halve the recipe and make 12 muffins/cupcakes instead.
It worked perfectly:
As Laura said, the texture is more like a quick bread than a light, fluffy cake, but I think that is perfect for the ingredients (apple juice, nuts and raisins).
Accordingly, next time you have some leftover apple juice in the house that you don't want to drink, why don't you give Laura's apple juice cake a go (either in its original form or as muffins, like me).
I love Helen Goh's baking recipes in the weekend newspaper, and particularly her recipes which feature fruit.
When a recipe for Lemon and Blueberry Cream Cheese Pound Cake came up, it went "straight to the pool room" of recipes I wanted to make. Lemon and blueberry is a winning combination by itself, but when combined with cream cheese, it goes to the next stage of lusciousness.
To make this cake, you will need:
240g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
230g butter
240g sugar
grated zest of 2 lemons
100g cream cheese
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
200g fresh or frozen blueberries
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease and flour a bundt tin and place in the freezer.
Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl.
Put the butter, sugar and lemon zest into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until creamy. Soften the cream cheese and add to the mixture, and beat until well combined.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Beat in the sifted ingredients in three batches until just combined. Remove the batter from the stand mixer and fold through the blueberries.
Scrape into the prepared bundt tin and bake for 55 minutes in the preheated oven or until cooked through.
Remove the cake from the oven and allow to sit in the tin on the wire rack for 15 minutes before unmoulding onto the rack to cool completely.
Once cooled, optionally decorate the cake with a glaze made from icing sugar and enough lemon juice to make a pouring consistency.
This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Sesame Sea Salt Cookies, a buttery, savoury delight.
I went with Dorie's Bon Idea and used a combination of sesame seeds, poppy seeds and sea salt to top my cookies (I don't have garlic powder or onion powder, so I left those out).
I only made a half batch of these cookies. They were certainly tasty and a nice treat to have as a snack with wine, as Dorie suggests.
To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
Winter has come to Melbourne almost overnight. After enjoying beautiful balmy, sunny days, a couple of days ago, the cold and rain hit. People have become walking bundles of clothes (mostly black - it is Melbourne!), and I have dug out the scarf, wool coat, hat and flannelette PJs. Some people enjoy the cooler weather, but I am not one of them. Unfortunately for me, it is likely to stay cool now until January next year, but the really cold months are now through to September/October.
One of the only good things about winter for me is the food. Soups, stews, curries and hot puddings with warm custard go down a treat in winter. It is also a good excuse to find a pub with a warm fire and snuggle in with your favourite drop.
I recently made this Creamy Coconut Beef and Vegetable Curry, based on this recipe from Taste, which is perfect for the cold weather. It's made in the slow cooker, so is easy on the labour. Next time, I'd thicken up the sauce (mine may have been thin as I used frozen vegetables, adding extra moisture), but flavour wise, it fit the bill. Ginger, coconut and tomato flavours combined with the curry paste made this a wonderful dish.
To make it, you will need:
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
1/3 cup rogan josh curry paste
1.5kg chuck beef, cut into 4cm cubes
400g can chopped tomatoes
250ml chicken stock
500g packet frozen vegetables
1 tablespoon cornflour
270ml coconut cream
boiled or steamed rice
Heat the oil in a large frypan, then add the ginger and cook until softened. Add the curry paste and cook until aromatic. Add the beef and cook until it is just browned.
Put the beef mixture into a slow cooker. Add the tomato and stock, and stir to combine. Cook on high for 5 hours. Add the vegetables and cook for another hour.
Combine the cornflour with a third of a cup of coconut cream, and add to the slow cooker. Cook with the lid off the cooker for 10 minutes or until thickened (which did not happen for me!).
Serve the curry with the rice.
This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Crackle Top Cream Puffs. These are little balls of choux pastry with a crackly pastry top, and filled with whatever you desire.
I made Dorie's chocolate pastry cream, but did not have quite enough to fill my 12 large cream puffs, so I filled two of them with Chantilly cream. Here you can see all the permutations of my cream puffs:
Of course, these were delicious. I have never made cream puffs with a crackle top before, and it was a revelation - so delicious. It adds a sweet, crunchy layer to the top of the cream puff. I have also never made chocolate pastry cream before. Though tasty, it is very rich, so I prefer the vanilla version.
To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
