Tag Archives: dessert

  • Cherry Crumble Pie

    August 16, 2012

    27 Comments

    Cherry Crumble Pie with ice cream.

    Our cherry season never seems to end this year, but we are certainly not complaining. Not only did we get cherries here at the farm, but we enjoyed more on the east coast. And just when we thought it was over, a local farm had one last batch of tasty Bing cherries. We made plenty of cherry cocktails (a Cherry Fling, a Caipirinha and a Manhattan) and desserts like clafoutis, so now it’s time for cherry pie. Many recipes use sour cherries in pies, but they are very hard to find and we like the Bing cherries. It was just a matter of time before the Bing cherries ended up in a pie.

    Hard to wait for this to cool.

    For this pie, Carolyn combines elements from a number of recipes, so it is very much her creation. And it is a very, very good pie. The key, at least to our tastes, is the use of a crumbly, crunchy streusel topping instead of a full dough or lattice top. Not only is it easy, but the streusel adds extra crunch and flavor that, combined with smooth vanilla ice cream and bright, sweet Bing cherries, makes for an excellent dish. This pie was a hit with the kids and adults, and there was nothing left over.

    A food processor makes it easier to make good pie dough.

    Vodka, along with water, makes for a tender crust. It activates less gluten.

    Making the pie is, admittedly, a multi-step process. You must make the pie dough and the streusel and prepare the cherry filling. All of these steps are easy enough (particularly with a food processor), but they do require time. Most of the techniques are also familiar, but we will note the use of vodka along with water in the pie crust. While adding no flavor, the vodka moistens like water but does not activate the gluten in the flour. You get a more tender crust in the final pie- and the booze cooks out. While you do not have to use vodka, we use this recipe for almost all of our sweet pie dough and the texture is noticeably better. Certainly worth a try, and you can make this dough ahead of time.

    Form the dough into a disk, cover with plastic wrap and chill.

    Quickly combine dry ingredients and butter to make a streusel for the “crumble” topping.

    Meanwhile, start making the cherry pie filling.

    Otherwise, making the pie is a straightforward process. Use the food processor to create the dough. Then chill it to make it easier to roll-out. Meanwhile assemble the streusel in a medium bowl, it requires no cooking and it’s quick. It does, however, take some time to make the filling. Pit the cherries and then combine a cup of the fruit with the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook the cherries and sugar to form a light syrup and thicken with a cornstarch mixture. Then add in the uncooked cherries along with nutmeg and melted butter. This may seem like extra effort, but it is worth the work. The filling ends up with deep flavor and a mix of textures. And since the cornstarch is cooked twice, there are no raw or starchy flavors in the filling. Good stuff.

    Combine cherries and sugar.

    Bring to a boil and thicken with cornstarch.

    Place the dough in the pie pan, add the filling and top with the streusel.

    Bake until well colored and the filling bubbles. Cool and serve.

    Continue reading →

  • Macadamia Nut Tart

    July 13, 2012

    10 Comments

    Macadamia Nut Tart.

    Since we eat mostly from our garden (and the farmers market), we tend to cook simple recipes that highlight the main ingredient. And, to us, that makes sense. If we just spent “x” days/weeks/months growing something, we want to actually see and taste it. But we do like “stretch our legs” every once in a while and engage in some real (read: labor intensive) cooking. And recently we did just that. And it was fun. And this dessert was the star.

    So why make a Macadamia Nut Tart? Our friend Scott had a birthday and we had him and Sydney, his awesome wife, over for dinner. Scott is a big fan of the Hali’imaile General Store restaurant in Maui (he even gave us their cookbook, thanks!) and Carolyn and I cooked a dinner from, or at least inspired by, their recipes. We started with a light seafood salad served on nori squares and a picked ginger cocktail sauce and Thai Tuna Tartare with a small salad of shiso and mizuna. Dinner was sesame crusted Opah with coconut rice and curried cabbage (recipe soon). Cocktails started with the Tahitian Postcard, then Zombies and finished with the Otto’s Grotto (recipe soon). That was all good fun, but Scott is a self-described “dessertarian” and Carolyn found this recipe to make sure we had an over-the top-dessert to close out the evening. And a chocolate crust, ringed with macadamia nuts, then filled with macadamia filling and topped with caramelized bananas seemed to fit the bill.

    Make a dough for a chocolate crust.

    Macadamia nuts and sugar, hard to go wrong.

    Process the nuts and sugar for the filling.

    The inspiration for the dessert comes from the Hali’imaile General Store, but Carolyn’s actual recipe is an adaptation of a tart from King Arthur Flour. We like their recipes, as they tend to adapt restaurant-style baking to home kitchens. And in this case, the recipe did not disappoint. While we would never call this “simple” baking, it is less work than you might think and the steps are well-defined. If you like to bake (or have a rainy afternoon to burn) making this recipe is time well-spent. And the tart will certainly taste, and look, great.

    Roll-out the dough for the crust.

    Place the dough in the tart pan.

    Line the crust with whole macadamias and then blind-bake the crust.

    The recipe has a few discreet steps. Make a chocolate crust, blind-bake the crust, create a macadamia filling, assemble, bake and then layer on and broil (or torch) the bananas and sugar. Each step is not hard, they just need be done in sequence, and you need to take your time. The only tricky step is broiling or torching the sugar into a crust on top of the bananas- it requires close attention, but is worth the effort. This tart is not an “anytime” dessert, but it is great for special occasions.

    Add the macadamia filling and bake.

    Add the sliced bananas.

    Broil or torch the top with sugar, cool and serve.

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  • Cherry Clafoutis

    June 26, 2012

    45 Comments

    Cherry clafoutis.

    Nothing makes us happier than growing, cooking, eating and sharing our own food. But there is a slight tyranny to the seasons. If you have cherries, you are cooking with cherries, period. And our Bing cherries are at their peak, so we picked them all. One small tree gave us four large bowls of cherries…all at once. Happily, cherries lend themselves to all sorts of dishes and cocktails (and we do seem to like eating and drinking). So this week you may see cherries in all sorts of dishes. But for now, let’s start with a classic cherry dessert, clafoutis.

    Fresh Bing cherries form our orchard.

    Clafoutis is a French dessert that combines cherries baked in a light batter, often with some added almond flavor. Think of the batter as “flan-meets-pancake” and you can get an idea of the light, yet rich, texture that rightfully lets the cherries star in the dish. Originally clafoutis featured sour or black cherries with the pits still in. Supposedly the pits add extra almond-like flavor, but as we have Bing cherries and like our teeth, we put pitted Bing cherries and almond extract in our clafoutis. You can also use this basic recipe with other stone fruits or berries, but if you want to be technical it would then be a flaugnarde, but feel free to call it a clafoutis- we won’t tell anyone.

    A cherry-pitter is a useful tool if you like cherries as much as we do.

    As for the recipe, clafoutis is a classic dish and there are many recipes out there. We chose to adapt an Alice Waters recipe that adds a few extra steps, but also adds extra flavor. In this case we season and pre-bake the cherries before we add them to the clafoutis. The extra cooking improves the flavor and texture of the cherries, but also leaves behind the base of a syrup you can reduce and drizzle on top of the clafoutis at service. Good stuff. We also prefer to cook clafoutis (and many desserts) in individual ramekins, we think it looks good and makes leftovers easier to handle, but a large baking dish works for this recipe as well.

    Season the cherries for pre-baking.

    Extra cooking for more flavor and better texture- plus you get cherry juice for a sauce.

    Place a layer of cherries in the ramekins or baking dish.

    Assembling the clafoutis is a pretty easy affair. Pre-cook the cherries, save the syrup, butter your baking dish(es), place the fruit in the dishes, make and add the batter and bake. The batter is the only part of the recipe that requires some extra effort, you need to whip egg whites and then fold them into the batter for the right texture. The clafoutis bakes for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees. While the clafoutis bakes, reduce your cherry syrup for a tasty and pretty sauce. When the clafoutis is done, add the sauce, dust with powdered sugar and serve.

    Make the batter.

    Pour batter over the cherries.

    Bake until browned and puffed. Continue reading →

  • Blueberry Slump: It’s No Slouch

    June 7, 2012

    17 Comments

    Blueberry slump with vanilla ice cream.

    Ok, I cop to the hokey title, couldn’t resist. Or you could call it a “grunt”, “cobbler” or even a “sonker”, but we will get to that later…

    We are in full berry season here at the farm and the blueberries are in their prime.  Two of the bushes are at their peak and we pick 2-4 cups of berries a day. In a week or two, it may be even more, as our slower bushes will catch up. Happy times at the farm. The only problem is what to do with all the berries. These are good problems to have.

    There are a few ways to deal with an abundance of berries; eat them (duh), share them, freeze them or cook/bake with them. We do them all. It is particularly worth noting that blueberries freeze well. One of the problems with trying to cook with freshly picked blueberries is having the volume to make big desserts like the slump. But if you freeze the berries you can build up some inventory, and with almost no loss of quality. To freeze blueberries simply place them on a sheet pan and put them in the freezer for a day (they don’t stick together this way). Then put the berries in a container in the freezer. They will keep for months. In this recipe we ended up using 1/2 fresh and 1/2 frozen berries and it was great.

    We have lots of blueberries, times are good.

    As for cooking and baking with blueberries, we have a pretty constant supply of blueberry muffins and pancakes but Carolyn likes to make other blueberry desserts, and this gets us to the blueberry slump. We recently saw an article on blueberries in Saveur and it included a recipe. You could say we adapted the recipe, but it really was just a reminder. Carolyn makes slumps and cobblers often in summer, as they are an easy way to enjoy fruit in a dessert.

    Making a slump is about as easy as dessert baking gets (Carolyn thinks the “Lazy Daisy” is the easiest dessert- recipe soon). Basically you heat the fruit in a skillet with some sugar and juice, then top it all with a quick biscuit dough and bake in the oven. The whole thing takes less than an hour, and only 10-15 minutes of active time, and you use one bowl and one skillet. You can even make the biscuit dough ahead of time. And the slump tastes great. As it should. Pretty much everyone likes fruit, sugar and biscuits. Add some ice cream and you start getting close to dessert nirvana.

    Make some quick biscuit dough.

    Boil berries, citrus juice, sugar and salt to dissolve the sugar.

    Top the berry mixture with the biscuit dough and sprinkle sugar on top.

    Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

    Continue reading →