It took me a couple of weeks and a lot of practice but I finally got it.

The idea for this dessert came from a half-empty bottle of maple sugar. I really wanted to make frozen yogurt with it. Which turned out to be a fantastic idea – the extreme sweetness of maple is but a pleasant hint in the tangy frozen yogurt. Though I’ve had great success with making homemade yogurt, I’ve recently adopted Friendship as my yogurt of choice. It’s sold in the bodega downstairs from my apartment in quarts (the perfect size for blending with sweeteners, flavorings and dumping right in the ice cream machine), is much cheaper than other brands of yogurt, is all-natural and is the absolute thickest yogurt I’ve ever come across, easily beating out Greek yogurts that are four times the price. (Just a note, I don’t have sponsorship from these guys or anything, I just REALLY dig their yogurt.)

Sandy, yummy buckwheat flour.

Shortly after I had mentally filed the concept of maple frozen yogurt into a crevice of my brain, I was inspired by the tasty streusel we made at work for some pear cobblers and decided to play with a buckwheaty streusel to go with the frozen yogurt.

It's from a rectangular pan but I decided I liked triangular slices for this.

Shortly thereafter, I got pan-guilt and decided I NEEDED to use my rectangular tart pan more often – I’d only used it once! The shame!

Not enough apples...a pretty accident.

I also had a jar of tiny wild Maine blueberries that my aunt had preserved with sugar a little cinnamon. Last winter I enjoyed some with yogurt for breakfast many mornings, so I decided Maine wild blueberries were in. While I was at it, I figured an all-out tribute to my original home of Maine was in order, and ordered up a Benriner (I’ve actually already used it three times and it’s really fun) to add a layer of MacIntosh apples to the party. I sliced them paper-thin, and really could’ve gone thicker…after a day in the fridge the pie/tart thingy’s blueberry layer had soaked clear through the apple layer, turning the whole thing a tie-dye of purpleness. But I actually think the dessert is prettier this way…white apples would have made the dessert look kinda stormy; blueberry skies, on the other hand, are pleasant on both land and sea.

Wonderfully blueberry-ish, with tangy yogurt and crunchy, earthy streusel...yum.

Blueberry Sky Beach, Maine

Buckwheat Brisee Crust

1. 155g cake flour
2. 30g buckwheat flour
3. 1/2 tsp salt
4. 1/2 tsp sugar
5. 95g unsalted butter, cut into small chunks and frozen
6. 50 mL ice cold water

Sift together the dry ingredients and place in the bowl of a stand mixer or food processor, or on a bench if working by hand. Add the cold butter and beat, pulse or cut until the butter is the size of small lentils. Slowly add the water and gradually work it in until a rough dough forms. Don’t use all the water if you don’t have to. Work out any dry spots by hand by mixing with a bowl scraper or on the bench and wrap tightly in plastic. Chill thoroughly before using. When ready, roll out to desired shape and size at 1/4″ thick. Line your pan and bllind-bake in a 350F preheated oven until the crust is crispy but doesn’t take on much color. While hot, use the back of a wooden spoon or the end of a solid wooden pastry rolling pin to press down any bubbles in the middle. Allow to cool before filling.

Buckwheat Streusel

1. 155g AP flour
2. 40g buckwheat flour
3. 150g sugar
4. 1/4 tsp cinnamon
5. Pinch salt
6. 110g unsalted butter, melted & cooled slightly

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl. Pour melted butter in and combine with hands until clumpy but still crumbly. Chill thoroughly before using. Once ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350F and spread the streusel evenly on a lined baking sheet. Bake, raking the streusel around every 5 minutes or so, until the streusel is crispy and a few pieces begin to take on color. Allow to cool before using.

Maple Frozen Yogurt

1. 1 quart good quality, thick natural yogurt
2. 1/2 cup maple sugar
3. 1/4 cup sugar
4. 2 Tbsp vodka (or maple liqueur if you’re lucky enough to have some on hand)

Whisk all ingredients until fully combined, then churn in an ice cream maker or by hand. Freeze until hard and scoopable.

The chippy garnish thing nestled in beside the frozen yogurt is a piece of blueberry bark that my mom sent me. It’s basically blueberries that were mashed and dehydrated. They add another textural element of crisp to the dessert, as well as an extra hit of blueberry flavor.

This dessert is very good – earthy and just sweet enough, with a lot of breakfasty flavors that remind me of where I came from. The streusel looks incredibly like the sand at the beach I used to visit with my family and eventually briefly lived near, which has been eroded like crazy over the last few years. I created my own little piece of the beach on one end of the plate and cut the rectangular tart into a wedge that I think resembled both a sailboat and the ocean, with the little squiggly fluted edge like a wave cresting towards the quenelle happily resting on the sand.

Yummmmm

Pie, of course!

You know what’s cuter?

Hooray!

Tiny pie!

Rhubarb is in season and I’d never cooked with it before, so I was sure to buy a few stalks the first time I saw it. I decided to just do straight-up rhubarb, no berries, no nothing.

It looks like the pie is wearing a hat!

Well, all right, a little brown sugar, lemon juice and spices. But that’s it.

I forgot the egg yolk wash on most of them. :(

The pie crust is a simple pate brisee (all butter) crust and bakes up very pretty and flaky. It doesn’t have a lot of flavor on its own, though – I’d prefer a sweeter tart crust in general but this is fine since the tart rhubarb filling is meant to be the focal point.

We meet again, Ugly Ice Cream.

I made some disappointing ice cream a few days ago – it was meant to be mango-blackberry-mint but came out more mint-berry-ugly. It’s still edible, though, and I figured that some sweet, minty ice cream would be a good contrast to the rhubarb, so I piled tiny little melon-baller scoops on top. I also sugared some mint leaves and stuck them in there.

It looks like it should take off flying or burst into bloom or something.

All in all? Tasty! I wouldn’t eat the pie without at least a little sweetened whipped cream, but the ice cream goes very well. I’m not providing the ice cream recipe because I’m not happy with it, but I would recommend serving with a vanilla, mint or berry ice cream. Or just the whipped cream. Mint leaves also optional, but almost the best part.

Tiny Rhubarb Pies

I got 6 large muffin tin pies and 2 oblong ramekin pies. 8 tiny pies!

First, Make the Crust Dough:

1. 2 1/2 cups AP flour, plus extra for dusting
2. 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut in 1/2″ pieces and frozen for 15 minutes
3. 1 tsp fine salt
4. 1 tsp sugar
5. 4-6 Tbsp ice water

In food processor or with pastry cutter, combine the flour, butter, salt and sugar and pulse/cut until the butter is the size of peas and the rest of the mixture is slightly pebbly. Mix in the water 1 Tbsp at a time until the dough just comes together. There will still be visible pieces of butter in the dough. Divide in half and form each piece of dough into a disk. Wrap each disk in plastic and refrigerate 1 hour-2 days (I let mine chill overnight).

For the Pie:

1. Dough disks
2. 4 stalks rhubarb (about 10-12″ each)
3. 2-3 Tbsp dark brown sugar
4. 1 tsp lemon juice
5. 1 tsp ground cinnamon
6. 1/2 tsp ground ginger
7. 2-3 Tbsp AP flour
8. 1 egg yolk
9. 1 Tbsp milk
10. Pinch vanilla sugar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 and butter the inside of a large muffin tin (6 large muffin indentations), as well as two small ramekins. Remove one disk from the fridge and allow to thaw out a little bit while you prepare the rhubarb, but not more than 15 minutes. Clean the rhubarb and chop off the ends. Slice each stalk in fourths the long way, then chop into very small pieces. Toss with brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, ginger and flour, set aside. Remove the second dough disk from the fridge (again, not for longer than 15 minutes) and roll the first disk out to 1/8″ thickness. Cut in eighths and press into prepared baking vessels. Fill with rhubarb mixture. Roll out second disk of dough and cut in 1/4″ strips. Weave lattice top onto each pie. Combine egg yolk and milk in a small bowl and mix well. Brush onto lattice and sprinkle with vanilla sugar, if desired. Bake 30-40 minutes, until the rhubarb mixture slightly bubbles and the crust is golden brown. Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before eating. To remove the pies from the muffin tin, run a sharp knife around any leaked rhubarb goo – the pies should pop right out otherwise.

I’d love to get some more rhubarb and try other things with it. I think next I’ll try making some drinks with it – there have been a lot of really yummy-looking homemade sodas and cocktails floating around lately. But next? A Very Special Tropical Dessert for tomorrow’s big season finale, and a do-able flavor combination that I discovered in my Idea Notebook.

Think this is a normal pie? Clearly you forgot that I'm a small person with tiny bakeware and a taste for the slightly unusual.

Some people (like, oh, the National Pie Council, whoever THEY are) say Pie Day is in January, but 3/14 is easier to remember than some arbitrary date in the stupidest month of the year. So I’m celebrating today. Actually, I forgot about Pi Day until last night, but luckily I made up these tartlets yesterday!

They’re itty bitty little guys, baked in mini tart pans (two were baked in shallow oval ramekins so they’re slightly larger…and oblong-ier). This was my first time blind-baking crust and it turned out great. I was a little concerned because the recipe I used for the crust was weird – it called for only one egg to hold together nearly four cups of dry ingredients. When I added the egg, it was like I hadn’t added it at all, so I threw another one in and it came together immediately. Maybe the first one was a phantom egg or something.

Can you tell I'm into sunny food lately? Oh god I'm so pasty.

Oh, right, you’re probably wondering what that is. It’s a passionfruit-strawberry curd tart with sweet almond crust, orange blossom chantilly cream and a little bit of candied kumquat on top. Yumsters!

The curd was originally meant to be just passionfruit, but one of the two passionfruits I bought wasn’t really ripe enough yet (those guys are tricky!) and when I was blendering it up with a bit of water I, uh, forgot to check if the blender was screwed together tightly. When I lifted the container part to pour the juice through the strainer, juice leaked EVERYWHERE. Luckily, I obsessively disinfect the counters so was able to save some that spilled out, and made up the difference in strawberry juice, which I squeezed from strawberry puree via some cheesecloth. It turned a beautiful sunset color, which was lost to the overbearing yellow of the egg yolks in the curd. So I did add a little red food coloring to the curd to recapture the orange-osity.

Any dessert is better with whipped cream and a cherry - or candied kumquat! - on top.

Since I was only making a few little tartlets, I ended up with a ton of extra dough, so there will be more tarts and pies in my future! Hooray!

Special thanks to Carrie for lending me her copy of The Secrets of Baking, which is where I got the pie dough recipe. This book is really fantastic and I’m reading it cover to cover!

Passionfruit-Strawberry Curd Tartlets

I'm gonna eat the HECK out of this guy after dinner.

For the Curd:

3 eggs

3 egg yolks

5 Tbsp. sugar (6 if you want it sweeter, I like the tartness of passionfruit)

Pinch salt

3/4 cup blended passionfruit & strawberry juices (or just passionfruit…or any pure fruit juice)

1 stick butter, divided into Tbsp

Whisk together the eggs, yolks and salt. Combine the juice and sugar in a saucepan, stir and heat until almost boiling. Whisk the juice mixture into the egg mixture and pour back into the saucepan. Place the pan over medium heat, whisking constantly until it thickens. Once thick, immediately strain (use a nice finely-meshed strainer) into a bowl and stir in the butter until it’s completely melted. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down onto the surface of the curd so a skin doesn’t form. Poke a few tiny holes in the plastic to allow steam to escape and refrigerate overnight.

For the Crust (adapted from The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard):

3/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into 1″ pieces

1 cup sugar

1 1/4 cups cake flour

1 cup AP flour

1/2 cup almond flour

2 eggs (original recipe called for 1, that didn’t work for me as I mentioned above)

1/8 tsp salt

Place the pieces of butter in the freezer to chill for 15 minutes. In the meantime, sift together the sugar and flours into the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the butter and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment for 2 minutes (the original recipe says the butter should be the size of broken walnut meats, which is a bit arbitrary…a little bigger than pea-sized is probably a better description). If there are any super-duper huge pieces of butter left, pinch them flat between your fingers (turn the mixer off first, of course). Combine the eggs and salt in a small bowl and whisk until the egg is evenly beaten and the salt dissolves. With the mixer on low, add the egg all at once. The dough will come together within a few seconds. Don’t mix any more than you have to – just until it’s a cohesive dough with no extra wet eggy streaks. Remove the dough from the bowl and wrap it in plastic, then chill for at least an hour in the fridge.

When you are ready to bake the tart shells, remove the dough from the fridge. Preheat the oven to 350 and place your oven rack in the bottom third of the oven. If you’re using a regular-sized pie plate or tart pan, divide the dough in half and refrigerate or freeze the other half for later use (up to 3 days in fridge or 3 weeks in freezer). Use smaller bits at a time for smaller pans and freeze or refrigerate any leftover dough. Roll out on a lightly floured, clean surface with a floured pastry roller and press into pan (the dough is crumbly so don’t worry if you have to patch it together).  Prick the bottom a few times with a fork and prepare for blind baking. I cut out shapes of parchment paper to match the pans (circles for the tart pans and ovals for the ramekins), set them in the pans and added rice to weigh them down. You can use dried beans or pie weights or whatever. Place in oven and bake 10 minutes for a regular-sized tart, 7-8 minutes for a bunch of mini ones. Turn the heat down to 325 and bake another 10/7-8 minutes. Remove the “fillings” and bake a few minutes more, until the crusts are golden brown. Allow to cool fully on a rack before using.

To Assemble:

Spoon the curd into the cooled tart shells and chill – in this case a skin forming on the curd is fine, it won’t affect the flavor and will help keep the curd in place. To make the chantilly cream, whip some whipping cream to soft peaks in a stand mixer, add sugar and flavorings and whip to stiff peaks, then spoon onto the curd. Use a ratio of 2 Tbsp sugar for every cup of cream, and add just a bit (less than half a teaspoon) of orange blossom water. Top with the end of a candied kumquat, or some other bit of candied citrusy fruit.

If you’ve never made passionfruit juice before, it’s easy! Pick a nice, wrinkly passionfruit (they wrinkle as they ripen – the ones that are all smooth and pretty are underripe and won’t be juicy). Cut it in half and scoop the orange pulpy middle, seeds and all, into a blender. Make sure your blender is screwed together tightly! Add some fresh water (not a lot, I added maybe 1/2 cup) and blend briefly. Pour through a finely-meshed strainer into a measuring cup. If you need slightly more juice, you can add a bit more water or make it up with the fresh-squeezed juice of another fruit. Strawberry is what I chose, but you could use any citrus or berry juice. Orange or raspberry would probably both be very nice.

I’ve made two pies with this recipe so far and changed it a little bit each time, like I do with most baked goods.  This version is the most recent, and you can definitely play with the spices or sugars to suit your taste – the most important thing in the recipes is pre-cooking the apples.  This will shrink them down before they go in the pie and the whole thing will stay nice and tall.  If you assemble the pie with raw apples, they’ll cook down right inside the pie and you’ll get what we call the “apple gap” around here.  A gap will probably also cause your top crust to collapse in on the pie, which makes pies look very sad.

Big Fat Apple Pie

Lookit that nice golden crust!

10 medium- to large- sized McIntosh apples (use whatever kind you like, this is my favorite local variety)

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp lemon zest

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp minced fresh ginger (I REALLY love ginger so I keep fresh on hand, your taste may be different)

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

Peel and cut the apples.  You should get between 12 and 16 slices out of each fruit.  Place the slices in a large pot and add the rest of the ingredients, then mix them well, until the apples are fully coated in the mixture.  Put the pot on the stove over medium heat and cover.  Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring and checking frequently.  Once they are cooked through (soft on the inside but still firm on the outside) remove from heat and take off the lid so the apples can cool a bit.  In the meantime, preheat the oven to 400 and prepare your crust.

2 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup light olive oil

1/3 cup water

pinch salt

pinch ground nutmeg, if desired (something I just started experimenting with)

cinnamon sugar, for dusting

Combine all ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and blend with a fork until there’s no more flour on the sides of the bowl, but not more than that.  Take a long piece of wax or parchment paper* and fold it in half so that you have two squares.  Place half of the dough between the squares and roll it out with a rolling pin until you have a disc a little bit larger than the circumference of your pie plate.  Unfold the paper, exposing the dough, and place the pie plate over it.  Flip it upside down and lightly press the dough into the plate, making sure there’s no big air bubbles.  Trim around the edge of the pie plate and fill in any cracks or holes (it’s ok, it happens!) with bits of dough.

Return to the apples.  Either drain them in a large colander before filling the crust or use a slotted spoon to transfer them.  If you have too much extra juice in your pie, it will leak and be sticky and messy in your oven.

Next, roll out the rest of the dough.  Place the disc on top of the pie (this can be tricky, again, just fill in any holes) and go aound the edges, tucking the bottom crust over the top one and pinching all the way around.  If there is a lot of overhanging extra dough, you can try to mold it into a cute little apple or leaf to decorate the top of the pie.  Yay!  Use a sharp little knife to cut slits in the crust for the steam to escape and sprinkle with cinnamon (and) sugar.  Put it in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the edge of the crust is a nice golden brown (see above).  Cool for 30 minutes or so and enjoy with vanilla ice cream (I keep forgetting to buy it so we end up using whipped cream, which works ok) and/or a nice cup of tea.

*If you don’t have either of those kinds of paper, use a clean counter sprinkled with liberal amounts of flour, and coat the rolling pin in flour, too.  Keep that bag of flour handy because you’ll need more…then add wax or parchment paper to your shopping list, silly!

No apple gaps here!

Psst…you can click the pictures for AMAZING DELICIOUS CLOSE-UPS!!!