Mini's!

I found a really great tart recipe as I was doing some research for work.

It's Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Sweet Tart Dough:
1 1/2 cups AP Flour
1/2 cup Powdered Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
Sift

4 1/2 oz Unsalted Butter (Cold, Cubed)
Cut into dry ingredients with a pastry blender or fork

1 Egg Yolk
Loosen and add slowly

Bake at 350 degrees until edges are light golden brown.


The result is a very crumbly and tender crust. It's my new favorite.

I don't have a big tart pan.. and I didn't want to buy a bunch of mini tart molds so I took a look around my kitchen to improvise. And what did I find? Cupcake pans. Works for me.

So I took out my round cutters and found the sized closest to the diameter of the bottom of the cupcake mold. The closest one was 2 1/4".

After making about 50 or so I found that I got the best looking tart shells when I rolled out the dough (it's a little difficult to work with because it is so crumbly..) about 1/8" thick, cutting out circles and then chilling it for about 20 minutes, then working it into the bottom of the pans.



The "lip" on the tart shells stayed up during the baking process and therefore held the fillings in well.

Don't forget to "dock" (or poke holes in) the shells. Otherwise you'll get a big mound in the center.


Now, for the fillings.

I made some ganache using about 5oz of bittersweet chocolate and 3 1/2 oz of heavy cream and melting it together in the microwave in 30 second intervals stirring in between. The mixture sat out at room temp until it set up.


I took the stiffened ganache, whipped it up a bit in a mixer and then added about 5oz of chunky peanut butter.

Then I whipped up about 1 1/2 cups of whipped cream until stiff peaks.
Then I folded the cream into the chocolate PB mixture in 3 batches. It looked something like this:
It was SUPER rich but quite yummy. But.. the only bad thing is that if it sat in the fridge too long it hardened up and had to leave out at room temp for at least 30 minutes before being soft enough to eat.



Another one I made was a yogurute. I just subbed the lemon in the lemon cream I made in a previous post with the Korean version of yogurt. It comes in these small plastic bottles that come in a 5 pack roll.

I made this cream in a 1/2 batch and came out ok. When I went to make it again, I wanted to make the original size batch and intensify the flavor. I don't really know what I did differently but the result was a soupy mess.

So instead of throwing it away I whipped up some cream and added some of the soup to it. I was told it didn't taste like yogurute enough. And the white chocolate garnish I put on top (it was a Ghiradelli vanilla bean white chocolate bar that I shaved using a peeler) overpowered the subtle flavor. In the end it ended up tasting more like whipped cream. Oh well... Looked pretty.


The last one I made was a fruit tart. The custard on the bottom is a pastry cream. I used a new recipe that used whole eggs as opposed to the usual yolks. Thought it would be really good... but it had a sour tang to it that I didn't care too much for. Maybe I misread the directions.. I did get it online. This one looked pretty too.

Total results?

Just.. "eh". Or as the Yelp-ers like to say, "meh." Looked pretty though... haha.

Funny how things seem so ingenious in my mind.. and ends up NEVER living up to what I invisioned it to be.



I also made some strawberry shortcakes to help raise funds for the mission trip I'm going on next week. My next blog will be on that.