Category: Pastry Components

Mincemeat Recipe

This is close to the classic Fannie Farmer recipe from The Boston Cooking School Cookbook. The original has too high a proportion of apples in my opinion, but if you want the original recipe, double the apples. I’ve also changed the processes a little, since the original called for boiling the beef. Ground beef, cooked in a pan and drained, will work just fine for our purposes (and will retain more of the beef’s flavor). This is for a small quantity, but it can be scaled up to your heart’s content!

1 lb. lean ground beef
1/2 lb. suet
1 lb. apples (Macintosh or Granny Smith)
1 quince (omit if you can’t find any, make it up with more apple)
12 ounces sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 pint cider
1 lb. raisins
12 ounces currants
2 ounces candied citron
1 cup brandy
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 nutmeg, grated
1/2 teaspoon pepper
salt to taste

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Making Stabilized Whipped Cream

Sure, there are plenty of purists out there who don’t believe cream should be polluted with stabilizers. I’m with them…some of the time. The rest of the time I’m worried about my whipped cream holding up for long periods, on warm days or in the freezer. Then I’m looking for a little somethin’-somethin’ to help get me by.

That something is gelatin. Just a little will do wonders you whipped cream’s stability, and honestly, it barely impacts the taste or texture. Start by melting a little gelatin. For 2 cups of cream you’ll start with a 1/2 teaspoon of powdered gelatin and a little ice water. Yes, these are my little silicone Trudeau bowls again. I love them, that’s why I plug them. They’re wonderful:

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Making Warqa a.k.a. Brik Pastry

Paper thin Moroccan warqa, used for bastilla and other pastries, is easy once you get the feel of it. The sheets are thinner than phyllo dough, but make a good substitute for those instances when you’re in the mood to impress party guests with an impromptu “You know I make my own pastry, of course!”

Plus it’s fun to do. Provided you have a large, flat pan to paint the batter on, the only thing you need is a broad brush. A new nylon or polyester paint brush from the hardware store will work just fine. Start by assembling your ingredients. Whisking the dry ingredients together…

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A Dab Will Do You

When it comes to making ultra-thin sheets of pastry, you can go one of two ways. You can roll, which is the Western way, or you can “dab”, which is the Eastern/North African way. For long ago it seems, pastry makers in the East (probably China) realized that rather than trying to compress a dough to a paper-thin thickness, you could instead dab a moistened ball of dough onto a hot surface to make a film. Cooked, that film could then be lifted off, lubricated and used to make pastry.

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Prune Filling

Another fantastic kolache filling that works just as well in Danishes. Funny how that works, isn’t it? You need:

2 cups dried prunes
water or prune juice to cover
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
zest of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch ground cloves

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Cottage Cheese/Farmer’s Cheese Filling

Great for kolaches or blintzes, this recipe would certainly have been a farmer’s cheese recipe back in the Old Country. In the States fresh country cheeses like that are harder to come by. Cottage cheese a a reasonable facsimile. Either need to be combined with cream cheese to keep them from weeping. If you’d like a lighter fat version of this, use all cottage cheese/farmer’s cheese and stir in 1/4 cup of tapioca powder.

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Making Fig Jam

Didn’t expect this, did you? Well I happened to receive a quantity of figs yesterday. They were very small and ripe, so action was called for. Fig jam is incredibly easy to make since you don’t have to worry about gelling like you do with most fruit jams. Figs are plenty thick and sugary in their natural state. The only issue you have with figs is — depending on how large they are — softening their thick skins. These were small and ripe so they didn’t need much softening. I had just 1 1/2 pounds.

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Making Chiboust

Call it chi-BOOST, call it she-BOO, it’s a sweet, light and delicate filling either way. Pastry cream lightened with Italian meringue is what it is, and it works well in just about any context where you want a large volume of filling, but don’t want to overwhelm the eater with richness or heaviness. A Paris-Brest is a good example, or a Gâteau St. Honoré. Bear in mind that chiboust — like most meringues — doesn’t like humidity. And while it can be piped, pipe it only through large-bore nozzles, since constriction and pressure causes it to deflate and go runny. Here I have about a cup of the firmer of the two pastry creams that are up on the site.

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