Nectarine Pie

My 16-year-old sister visited last week and wanted to learn to bake something new. I had taught her to make red velvet cupcakes last January, which she then made and sold with resounding success at her Quiz Bowl bake sale (though my sister, Mikaela, who is partial to cream cheese frosting, may have purchased most of them.)

This time, wanting to broaden her range, we settled on pie. And, wanting to do something a little different, we chose a Nectarine Pie. The result was mixed. Though the crust and the crumb topping were excellent, the filling wasn’t quite sweet enough. If I were to make this again, I would definitely add more sugar – and possibly macerate the nectarines before putting them in the pie plate.

The original recipe came from All Recipes – here is my modified version.

Ingredients

Filling:
2/3 cup white sugar
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup heavy whipping cream
¼ tsp vanilla
4 large nectarines

Crust:
7 tbsp butter
1 ½ tbsp cold water
1 ¼ c flour

Crumb Topping:
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup flour
¼ cup butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Prepare pie crust. Melt butter in small saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat and stir in cold water and flour. Mix just, until blended. Form the dough into a ball. Place the ball between two sheets of waxed paper, lightly floured. Roll out to 1/8 inch and line a 10-inch pie plate. Trim overhang.
3. Combine sugar, flour cinnamon, heavy cream and vanilla extract. Set aside.
4. Slice nectarines (you can remove the skin if you feel so inclined – I didn’t). Place in pie shell. Pour cream mixture around the nectarines.
5. Prepare crumb topping. Cut the butter into the brown sugar and flour until butter is in pea-sized chunks. Sprinkle over top of pie.
6. Bake at 400 for 45 minutes. (Put a baking sheet under pie plate to catch any drippings – I didn’t do this and ended up with a disconnected smoke detector and a very smoky apartment).

White Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

I am doing a 12-week fitness challenge at my gym which is really affecting my relationship with baked goods. So I got it into my head to try to make a low-calorie version of the white chocolate raspberry cupcakes I love so well.

I bought a beautiful brick of Callebaut white chocolate at Whole Foods and decided to make a simple ganache glaze to keep the calories lower than a full frosting.

I used fresh red raspberries and this recipe I found online.

Cupcakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk
1/3 cup fresh raspberries, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin cups with paper liners.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture and milk alternately in 3 batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and beating just until incorporated. Fold in the raspberries.
Divide the batter among lined muffin cups. Bake until pale golden and a wooden pick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Turn cupcakes out onto a rack to cool completely.

Ganache
3/4 cup chopped white chocolate
1/4 cup heavy cream
Bring cream to a simmer in a small heavy saucepan. Pour cream evenly over chocolate. Let stand for one minute to soften, then stir until smooth. If frosting is too loose to spread, let it sit at room temperature for 10 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, ganache will continue to thicken as it stands.

They were sad! This recipe should have made 11 cupcakes instead of 12 and even so they would have been sad little itty bitty cupcakes with barely any raspberry flavor at all. The white chocolate ganache completely overpowered the cakes.

The only good thing I have to say about them is that they were about 250 calories each. Booooo!

Plum Puffs and Raspberry Cordial

If you're a male, you're forgiven for not understanding this reference. The rest of you have no excuse.

A friend and I have started an Anne of Green Gables book club for the summer and for our first meeting I decided to make Marilla's plum puffs (which "won't minister to a mind diseased") and the infamous raspberry cordial. There is actually a cute little paperback out of print cookbook extant which targets the same juvenile demographic as the books. I shelled out for a used copy on Amazon, but ended up making a muffin variety instead of the jam filled cream puff from the cookbook since it better fitted my notion of what Marilla would have baked.

Plum Pulp
2 lbs plums, washed

Wash plums and place in a large pot. Add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup water to pot--just enough to make some steam. Cover and heat over very low heat until the fruit is soft and falling apart. Remove pits. Press plums and juices through a potato ricer to mash. Most of the skins will automatically be removed. Two pounds of plums should yield about 3 cups pulp, which may be used for this recipe, frozen in containers or freezer bags, or made into jam. Look for European plums, not Asian plums as they are not as good for cooking.

Plum Puffs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup light cream
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon (or to taste)

Preheat oven to 375°F Grease a 12-cup muffin pan.
Mix together flour, baking powder, salt, 1/2 cup sugar, and 3/4 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon allspice. Add 1 cup plum pulp, cream, egg, and 1/4 cup melted butter and stir until combined (should still be lumpy, not smooth).

Spoon batter into muffin cups to about 2/3 full. Bake about 20 minutes or until centers are set. (Mine took 14 minutes to bake.) Remove puffs from pan immediately.
While puffs are baking, combine cinnamon and sugar. As soon as the puffs are removed from the pan, brush tops with melted butter, then dip into cinnamon-sugar mixture.

These were a big hit. The plum pulp was gorgeous and fragrant and the batter was a beautiful burgundy. I wish they had a stronger plum flavor and will probably use more pulp and less cream and butter next time, or even put in some unmashed plum chunks.

Sweet Revenge

Heather recently suggested that I try out a New York bakery featured on Martha Stewart called Sweet Revenge. When my good friend (and fellow baked good connoisseur) Sariah came to town, it seemed like a great time to do it. After carefully tasting six different cupcakes, one word sums up my feelings.

Eh.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. Their cake had a tight crumb, giving it a pleasant, sink your teeth into it feeling when you took a bite. And both their dark and milk chocolate ganache frostings were the kind of thing you could eat by the pint while standing in front of your fridge in the middle of the night. Their buttercream, however, was way too sweet. Their vanilla/vanilla (or “Pure”) was overcooked, resulting in a tough, crunchy exterior. Their dark chocolate cake was so dry it crumbled to pieces when we tried to cut it for our taste test. And what they did to Red Velvet (making it pink and adding raspberries) was practically blaspheme. Even cream cheese frosting couldn’t save it, and let’s be honest, cream cheese frosting can save a lot of things.

The final judgment, however, came the next morning, when I got up hungry and freshly on a diet and wasn’t even tempted by the leftover vanilla cupcake sitting on the counter. In fact, it continued to sit there all day.

Not a good sign.

Sariah brought some cupcakes back to Heather in DC – I can’t wait to hear what she thinks of them.