Plum Almond Tartlets

My 35 degree bike ride to work this morning has finally convinced me that it is in fact fall. Pumpkins and apples are everywhere, my freezer is being stocked with chili and german goulash, and I finally had to turn the heat on. I supposed that it was time to share these late summer tarts with you before the weather turned to

full on winter. That would just be cruel to tout these stone fruit beauties when snow is falling, no? These are such a staple in my dessert arsenal, some puff pastry, either homemade (recipe below) or store bought, almond frangipane, some ripe fruit and a sprinkle of sugar are all you need to make a decadent, yet light and crispy tartlet.

For a fall spin, change out the fruit to apples or pears, or even persimmon if you can find it.

Plum Frangipane Tartlets

Blitz Puff Pastry
adapted from Saus - Advanced Bread and Pastry

16 oz ap flour
16 oz unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
8 oz cold water
1/4 oz salt

Dissolve the salt into the water. In a food processor, pulse the butter and the flour together until combined, leaving the butter chunks fairly large. Add the water-salt mixture and pulse just until moistened. Flatten dough into a rectangular disc, wrap in plastic and let rest in refrigerator for 30 minutes. On a floured surface, roll out dough to a large rectangle the long side should be horizontal to you. Take the left edge and fold it so it reaches the center. Take the right edge and fold it into the center. Now take the left side and fold the entire thing in half, meeting the right edge, like a book. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes. You will repeat this two more times, letting it rest for 30 minutes between each fold. After the last fold, let the dough rest in the refrigerator overnight or freeze for future use.

Frangipane
adapted from Martha Stewart

7 TBL unsalted butter
1/3 cup almond paste
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup AP flour

In a food processor, cream together the butter, sugar, and almond paste until very smooth. Add the eggs, one a a time, blend until smooth. Add the flour and pulse just until combined. Chill until ready to use.

Assembly

1 Book puff pastry
Frangipane
2-3 Ripe but firm plums, sliced thinly
turbinado sugar
almond slices (optional)
1 egg yolk + 1 TBL water

Preheat oven to 400 F. Take one book of puff pastry and roll it out on a floured surface to 1/8-1/4 thickness. Cut as many 4 inch rounds as you can fit. With half of the rounds, cut out the center with the next smallest round cutter, this will be the border for your tart. Swipe a bit of water around the edge of one of the whole circles and place the cut circle on top, lining up the edges. With a fork, dock the bottom surface of the tart shell, but do not dock the cut circle edge. This will allow just the edge to puff up around the filling, keeping the bottom of the tart flat to hold the filling in. Arrange tart shells on a sil-pat or parchment lined baking sheet. Chill completely. When ready to bake, place 1-2 tablespoons of frangipane in the inner circle, do not overfill. Arrange a few slices of plum on top of the frangipane. Whisk together the yolk and water and brush the edges of the puff pastry. Sprinkle a bit of turbinado sugar around the edges and on top of the plums. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the puff pastry is golden brown and the frangipane has set. Let cool completely. Dust with a bit of powdered sugar prior to serving.

Thanksgiving dress rehearsal, part deux.

The remaining parts of our fall feast, lemon popovers, roasted carrots and parsnips, and plum tart for dessert were probably my favorite parts of the meal. I am usually the person at thanksgiving ignoring the turkey and stuffing and gorging myself on corn, Brussels sprouts, and my grandma's homemade buns. Side dishes are not to be ignored.

Dessert was incredibly easy. I can't really take credit for making it, I really just assembled parts and put it in the oven. Frozen puff pastry, ripe plums, homemade raspberry jam, and some fresh whipped cream made for a delightfully light yet decadent ending to the meal.

Roasted Carrots and Parsnips

When carrots and parsnips are roasted, they become caramelized and end up like sweet little candies. I like to add some cayenne pepper to offset the sweetness a bit and give them a little kick.

2 pounds of carrots, chopped on diagonal into 1/2 inch thick chunks

1 pound parsnips, chopped on diagonal into 1/2 inch chunks

Kosher Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh minced thyme

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Toss all ingredients in a large bowl to coat the vegtables. Spread evenly on a baking sheet (I use a sil-pat for even cooking, no sticking, and easy cleanup) and roast for about 30 minutes until the carrots and parsnips are caramelized and cooked through.

Lemon Popovers

adapted (barely) from Food & Wine Magazine

I don't have a popover pan, but I saw this recipe in food and wine for making them in a muffin pan. It worked great, they were just a little more stout than regular popovers. I used lemon zest instead of orange, since that is what I had on hand, but will definitely be trying them with orange in the near future.

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 1/4 cups milk

3 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and divided

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar, and lemon zest. Add the milk and 3 tablespoons melted butter and whisk to combine. In another bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and whisk until combined with only small lumps remaining.

Brush the cups of a 12-cup muffin tin (or two 6-cup tins) with the remaining melted butter. Place the buttered muffin tins into the preheated oven for 5 minutes, until butter starts to bubble and brown. Carefully fill the muffin tins half to three-fourths the way full with the popover batter. Bake the popovers for about 30 minutes until they pop over the muffin cups and are golden brown.

When they come out of the oven, stick each one with a knife to let the steam out so they don't get soggy on the inside. Serve right away. They are great with just a bit of butter, or also with some jam or preserves.

Plum - Raspberry Tart

1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed

3 small plums, pitted, quartered, then very thinly sliced

1/4 cup raspberry jam or preserves

1 egg

2 teaspoons water

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons confectioners sugar, plus more for dusting

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Unfold thawed puff pastry on a sil-pat or parchment paper lined baking sheet. Poke the pastry with a fork all over leaving a 1 1/2 inch border around the edges 'un-poked'. This will help the center stay flat under the fruit, and the edges puff up around the filling.

Arranged plum slices in rows on puff pastry leaving a 1 1/2 inch border around each side. Fold edges of pastry over to encase the plums. Beat the egg together with the water, and brush it on the top of the puff pastry edges. Sprinkle the sugar over the plum center. Bake until pastry is golden brown and plums are bubbly, about 20 minutes.

While the pastry is baking, heat the jam or preserves in a small saucepan over low heat until warm.

In a large bowl, combine the heavy cream with the confectioners sugar and beat with a hand mixer until it forms soft peaks.

Once the tart comes out of the oven, brush the plums with the hot raspberry jam, and dust with confectioners sugar.

Serve immediately with a big dollop of whipped cream.

After all this, you will probably want to take a nap. I did, and it was glorious. Heres hoping your first fall meals warm up your kitchens and your stomachs.

Heather's Squishy Buns

As I add more and more recipes to this blog, you will soon figure out that I am not a huge sweets person. I live for appetizers and savor the main course, but you will almost never find me first in line at the dessert table. For breakfast, you can feed me eggs and bacon until I pop, but I can usually pass on the doughnuts and danishes. Its not that I hate sweets, I usually just prefer more savory treats in my tummy.

This is not to say I cannot appreciate a great pecan roll once in a while, and boy, these are GREAT pecan rolls. They are actually Ina Garten's Easy Sticky Buns, and my good friend Heather made them last weekend at the cabin. I was of course there with my pastry brush and melted butter, providing moral support and and extra hand. She needed that hand, not because she needed help in the kitchen or help with the recipe, but because we were at a cabin and she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, assembling pecan rolls at 8:30 in the morning.

Frozen puff pastry makes these rolls an absolute breeze (even on the floor). Unroll the pastry, sprinkle on some goodies, roll it up, cut it up, put into muffin tins, and presto, you have pecan rolls. Heather's turned out a little tall for the muffin tin we had, so like any great chef, she improvised and made them fit. They were promptly renamed 'Heather's Squishy Buns', and that is what they shall be called henceforth.

'Heather's Squishy Buns'

Adapted from Ina Garten's Easy Sticky Buns

My notes in green

1 package frozen Puff Pastry (17.3 ounces, 2 sheets - defrosted)

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature) - if you forget like we did, just set them on top of a warm stove for a few minutes, or put them in the pockets of your apron as you prep the rest of the items

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup pecans - chopped or whole, your call

2 tablespoons unsalted butter (melted and cooled)

2/3 cup light brown sugar

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Here she calls for raisins...but Heather made the executive decision to omit, I backed this decision. If you want, add 1 cup of raisins.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Place a 12-cup (or two 6-cup) muffin tins onto a parchment paper-lined sheet pan. There is a good chance that they will boil over, so this step saves some cleanup time.

Combine the 1 1/2 sticks of butter and the 1/3 cup of brown sugar together in a bowl. - Ina calls for doing this in a stand mixture, but there really is no need. As long as your butter is soft, a fork and a bowl is all you need to mash these two ingredients up together. Just ask Heather.

Place 1 tablespoon of this mixture into each of the muffin cups, and then evenly distribute the pecans among the 12 cups, on top of the butter and sugar mixture.

Lightly flour a wooden surface - or glass, or plastic, or 30 year old linoleum counter tops, whatever you have available to you - and unroll the puff pastry dough. Brush each pastry with melted butter, leaving a one inch border on all sides. Sprinkle each sheet with 1/3 cup brown sugar, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon - and raisins if you are so inclined...we were not.

Starting at one end, roll up pastry snugly, jelly roll style, and place seam side down.

Cut each roll into 6 even pieces and place one piece into each muffin cup, spiral side up.

This is where things got a little squishy. They were sticking up quite high so we did what any hungry, slightly hungover, unsure cook would do. We squished them down until they looked about even and stuck them in the oven.

30 minutes later, take them out, let them sit for just a few minutes, then turn them over onto a plate and let the gooey, sticky, goodness runeth over.