Lab Fodder... Shortbread Tarts with Raspberries!

So... Sonja works as a Post-Doc at Caltech. Her lab often has a traditional English tea-time (as a consequence of a number of lab members hailing from 'The Empire') and, in order to increase Son's popularity (and a few of her colleagues waistlines), I provide baked goods. Actually, the truth is that while I like to bake, I also like to eat, and thus off loading my delectable delights allows me to keep my boyish figure (okay, okay... big, round, mannish figure). Not that anyone is complaining; in fact if I hear again that I should open my own bakery I might have to take them seriously... mind you, baked goods always taste good when they're free and you didn't have to bake them yourself so perhaps I should wait for someone to say "Hey, how much can I pay you to bake me a ...?". Fingers crossed 'ey!

Oh, and as a little post script to the above, I should mention that Sonja is allergic to eggs... I know, I know... I can't believe I married someone who can't eat creme brulee, ice cream, brioche, lemon tart, etc. either. Still, she puts up with me so I guess it's a fair compromise... Still it makes me sad that Son often calls tea-time and then has to sit back with her cup of green tea while everyone else gets to devour something her husband has baked. Thus, the following recipe was put together because Son can eat it and therefore, on this occasion, partake in the sugar induced revelry that is the Bronner-Fraser Lab tea time, without the fear of a reprisal led by her stomach!

These little tarts are quite straightforward to bake. I was surprised at how 'wet' the dough was and was concerned that forming little shells would be quite difficult. I overcame that by equally dividing the dough into 24 pieces (the number of holes in my mini-muffin pan), gently rolling them into a ball, and then, with the aid of my dough tamper (the wooden implement as shown on right) pushed down on the balls of dough forming a perfect little tart shell... unfortunately I did forget to refrigerate the dough before baking leading to significant dough puffage and thus my hard work basically came to nought! Oh well, something to improve on for next time...

While a little lighter than I would have liked (due to aforementioned lack of refrigeration), the shortbread was nicely buttery with good crumb, the lemon flavoured filling was fresh and creamy, and the raspberry topped it all off nicely!

Shortbread Tarts with Raspberries

Ingredients

Shortbread Tarts
227 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
72g confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
210 grams all-purpose flour
15g cornstarch or rice flour
1/8 tsp salt

Cream Cheese Filling
227 grams cream cheese - softened
396 grams can sweetened condensed milk
80ml lemon juice (freshly squeezed)
Zest of one lemon
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract


Garnish
Any combination of berries or other fruit such as slices of kiwi.

Method

Shortbread Tarts
Lightly butter or spray your mini-muffin tin (approximately 2 inch (5 cm) in diameter). Set aside. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (170 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. In the bowl of your electric mixer, with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together (approximately two minutes). Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour, cornstarch and salt and mix just until incorporated.

Divide dough into 24 even pieces (or however many holes your mini-muffin pan has) and place one ball of dough in center of each muffin tin. With your fingertips or a dough tamper, press the dough up the sides of the individual muffin tins. Once filled, place the tart pan, with the unbaked shells, in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes so the shortbread dough can firm up (this will help to prevent the shortbread from puffing up during baking... an instruction worth noting). Bake for approximately 18 - 20 minutes or until lightly browned. About halfway through the baking time, lightly prick each shortbread with the tines of a fork, if they have puffed up. Check again after another five minutes and prick again if they have puffed up. Place the pan on a wire rack to cool the shortbread. When completely cooled, remove the tarts from the pan. They are quite fragile so be careful when removing (these may be made in large quantities and frozen).

Cream Cheese Filling
In your food processor or electric mixer beat the cream cheese until fluffy. Add the condensed milk, lemon juice, zest and vanilla and process until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, cover and refrigerate until serving time. The filling can be made several days in advance (actually improves the flavour).

To Serve
Fill the tart shells with the cream cheese filling. The filled tart shells can be made several hours in advance and refrigerated. Just before serving top with fresh berries or cut up fruit.

Love a good Tart... especially when they're easy!

I had a hankering for dessert one evening. Nothing too heavy; didn't feel like chocolate (a rarity), didn't feel like ice-cream (almost unspeakable). I knew I had a punnet (pint) of raspberries that needed to be eaten so rather than dousing them with Grand Manier, a little sugar, and heavy cream, I decided to be a little 'fancier' and knock up a tart. I really couldn't be bothered with the whole drawn out pressing dough into tart pan and baking blind thing, so instead went for something a little more rustic. It has a French name, but for the life of me that name eludes me as I write this (might update this later when I have that flash of memory that will inevitably occur at 3.27am tomorrow morning).

You might be interested to know that raspberries, along with strawberries, apples, plums, and cherries (amongst others) actually belong to the rose family... so is it then fair to say that 'a raspberry by any other name would taste as sweet'? Who knows... but what I do know is that this tart was simplicity personified, the flavoursome, sticky, sweet juice given off by the raspberries was magnificent, and between my wife and I, the whole thing barely lasted 15 minutes... I kid you not!

Free-form Raspberry Tart

Ingredients

Pate Brisee
175g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp granulated white sugar
113 grams unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into 1-inch pieces
1/8-1/4 cup ice water

Filling
2 cups fresh raspberries
2 tbsp granulated white sugar

Method

Pate Brisee
In a food processor, place the flour, salt, and sugar and process until combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal (about 15 seconds). Pour 1/8 cup (30 ml) water in a slow, steady stream through the feed tube until the pastry just holds together when pinched. Add remaining water, if necessary. Do not process more than about 30 seconds.

Turn the pastry out onto your work surface, gather it into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about one hour to chill the butter and allow the gluten in the flour to relax.

Once the pastry has chilled, remove from refrigerator and place on a lightly floured surface. Roll the pastry into an 11 inch (28 cm) round (in the photo to the right I have trimmed the edges to produce a 'sort of round'. It sure didn't look like that after I'd rolled it!). To prevent the pastry from sticking to the counter and to ensure uniform thickness, keep lifting up and turning the pastry a quarter turn as you roll (always roll from the center of the pastry outwards to get uniform thickness). Transfer the pastry to a parchment paper lined baking sheet and sprinkle the pastry with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Leaving about a 1 1/2 inch (4 cm) border all around, cover the pastry with the raspberries, stem ends down. I started by plopping one raspberry in the center of the pastry and work out in concentric circles, making sure the raspberries are placed close together (possibly would have worked better if I'd started in circles from the outside but I just wasn't sure if I had enough raspberries!). Gently fold the edges of the pastry up and over the filling, pleating as necessary, being careful not to squash the raspberries. Sprinkle the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar over the raspberries.

Bake the tart in a preheated 450 degree F (205 degree C) oven for about 20 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown and the raspberries have given off just a little of their juice (you want the raspberries to hold their shape and not be mushy). Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Dust with powdered sugar. Serve plain or with softly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Devour with joy and gusto!

Lemon Meringue Pie on drugs... that's right... it's High!

It's been a while since I've done any noteworthy cooking. Well, that's not to say that we haven't eaten well, only that the less time I could spend in the kitchen the better. You see, it's summertime in Pasadena and the living ain't easy... 100 degrees F plus for a week (that's 38 degrees C plus in Aussie language). That in itself would be terrible. Unfortunately the fact is that the kitchen is on the sunny side of our apartment building and it also contains our hot water system. Oh, and if that isn't bad enough our range has a pilot light that burns so powerfully it heats the oven enough to allow me to dry meringue. That tends to add up to 120 degrees F in our tiny kitchen. It feels like the surface of the sun would be cooler!

So, with all this in mind I realised that the only way I could produce pastry would be to run the air conditioner all night, with my granite pastry board sitting right in front of the a.c. to get it really cool. Having had cooking dreams all night, I awoke early to find the apartment a mild 78 degrees (26C), a temperature more akin to proofing bread than making delicate, buttery pastry. Still it was the coolest start to the day that we've had for a while so I just got down to it.

You may be asking yourself why on earth I would even bother to try to make pastry under these conditions. It was Labor Day and I'd been told that it was considered a 'White Trash' holiday so with that in mind I figured a typically Southern dessert might be the way to go. I've never made a Lemon Meringue Pie before, and I knew that if it failed dismally I could always blame it on the heat! Thus the Lemon Meringue Pie Stars had aligned and this was the one I made. I prefer a tender crumb when eating Lemon Meringue Pie so chose to make an all-butter pastry, however if you like it flakier feel free to replace half the butter with vegetable shortening. Also, I've created an Italian meringue for the top of this pie which, while a little more complicated, creates a more stable meringue (as the egg is cooked in hot sugar syrup) and is safer for the pregnant friend who would be helping to consume it.

Oh So High Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients

Pastry
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
113g cold, unsalted butter cut into 1cm pieces
1/4 cup ice cold water


Lemon Filling
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 cup lemon juice (from 6 lemons)
½ cup water
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ tsp table salt
8 large egg yolks
(reserve 4 whites for meringue)
2 tbsp grated lemon zest
3 tbsp unsalted butter , cut into pieces and softened

Meringue
½ cup water
1 cup sugar
4 large egg whites
pinch table salt
½ tsp cream of tartar
½ tsp vanilla extract

Method

Pastry
Put the flour, sugar and salt into your food processor and pulse to combine. Sprinkle the butter over the flour mix and pulse 6-7 times to cut in well. Remove the lid and fluff up the mix making sure you lift it up from the bottom of the bowl. Sprinkle half the water over the flour/butter mix. Pulse 5-6 times until mixture looks crumbly. Fluff the pastry and sprinkle on the remaining water. Pulse 5-6 times more until the pastry starts to form clumps. Dump the contents into a large bowl.

Test some dough by squeezing it between you fingers. If it feels a little dry drizzle a teaspoon of ice water over the dough and work it in with your fingers. Pack the dough into a ball, knead it once or twice and then flatten it into a 2cm thick disk. Wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour or overnight.

As butter pastry tends to harden when refrigerated, leave it for 10 minutes to soften before rolling. Lightly flour a smooth surface and roll out dough until it is 12-inches in diameter, about 1/2 cm thick (1/8 inch). Working around circumference of pan, press dough carefully into pan corners by gently lifting dough edges with one hand while pressing around pan bottom with other hand . Trim edge to 1/2-inch beyond pan lip. Tuck this rim of dough underneath itself so that folded edge is about 1/4-inch beyond pan lip; flute dough in your own fashion. Refrigerate pie shell for 40 minutes and then freeze for 20 minutes.

Place oven rack in the middle of the oven and heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line the pie crust with foil and, using 1 cup of dried beans, bake the pie crust for 17 minutes. Remove beans and foil and continue to bake for another 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack.

Lemon Filling
Whisk sugar, lemon juice, water, cornstarch, and salt together in large nonreactive saucepan until cornstarch is dissolved. Bring to simmer over medium heat, whisking occasionally, until mixture becomes translucent and begins to thicken, about 5 minutes (see picture to right). Whisk in yolks until combined. Stir in zest and butter. Bring to simmer and stir constantly until mixture is thick enough to coat back of spoon, about 2 minutes. Strain through fine-mesh strainer into pie shell and scrape filling off underside of strainer. Place plastic wrap directly on surface of filling and refrigerate until set and well chilled, at least 2 hours and up to 1 day.

Meringue
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine water and sugar in small saucepan. Bring to vigorous boil over medium-high heat. Once syrup comes to rolling boil, cook 4 minutes (mixture will become slightly thickened and syrupy). Remove from heat and set aside while beating whites.

With electric mixer, beat whites in large bowl at medium-low speed until frothy, about 1 minute. Add salt and cream of tartar and beat, gradually increasing speed to medium-high, until whites hold soft peaks, about 2 minutes. With mixer running, slowly pour hot syrup into whites (avoid pouring syrup onto whisk or it will splash). Add vanilla and beat until meringue has cooled and becomes very thick and shiny, 5 to 9 minutes.

Using rubber spatula, mound meringue over filling, making sure meringue touches edges of crust (this stops it from pulling away from the crust when heated). Use a spatula to create peaks all over meringue. Bake until peaks turn golden brown, about 10 minutes. Transfer to wire rack and cool to room temperature.

Serves 8-10

Oh, and apologies for the lack of photos at the meringue stage. I kinda got distracted with the whole cooking thing!