Hot water crust pie

Pie, I think there is a version in almost every culture. Short crust, puff or none at all the crust vary and some are easier then others. I have always used store bought *ashamed* and sometimes, for sweet pies I made short crust. I was about to pop some puff pastry out the fridge for a chicken pie when my sister gave me a "look". See the whole family is on a health drive and well, puff pastry if full of that heavenly evil "butter". 

We both concluded that if I made my own pastry, even if it had butter in it, it would have a lot less than the store bought puff pastry. 

I remembered seeing, on one of those in between sections on Food Network, something about "Hot water crust pasty" and googled around till I found a recipe I was happy to work from and then promptly changed it completely. Those that bake will know, changing a recipe before even trying it is like playing with fire but I figured what the hell. I had a really tasty filling and back-up puff pastry in the fridge. 

Hot water crust pastry (makes 2 pies)

What you need:225g Whole brown bread flour
225g Whole rye flour
2 tsp salt (the stone ground flours need a little more salt then regular flour I find)
200g butter
225ml chicken stock (My filling was made with shredded chicken which I boiled so I used the stock from that)

What to do:In a mixing bowl whisk the flours and salt together (whisking adds air that you would normally get from sifting, but since I used whole flours sifting wasn't an option). Make a well in the centre. Melt the butter in the stock. Pour into the well and mix immediatly until combined. Knead the dough a little. 

From this point use however you want. The hot water crust pastry is worked with warm, unlike shortcrust that must be chilled. 

Note: Any fat can be used where the butter is used so you can replace it with margarine to create an equally great vegan crust.

Baked Doughnut Peaches

I kept seeing tweets about doughnut peaches and my curiosity was piqued. I had never seen or heard of such things and so the minute I was at Woolworths and saw them I popped them in my trolly, not knowing what their destinies were but knowing that somehow there would be an oven, my mouth and my tummy involved. 

Friday night rolled around since I planned a lightish dinner (red thai curry with brown and wild rice) so I decided dessert was in order. Poaching the peaches sounded like a great idea but I decided a little googling for more options couldn't hurt. So off I went and found this recipe. Brilliant! That was what I would do. I knew we had Lemon Verbena in the garden (Interesting Fact: called Melissa in hebrew) and so all I needed was the cookies.

We only had plain butter cookies in the cupboard and no almond essence, so I crumbled them up, put in some vanilla essence and some Cap'ian Morgan and left them to dry as the peaches soaked in the syrup. 

The peaches baked beautifully and when you broke through the crumbed surface you found what can only be described as peachy custard, soft, creamy and just sweet enough to satisfy the sweet tooth without making holes in it

What you need:

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

4 whole lemon verbena leaves or grated zest of 2 lemons

6 doughnut peaches

About ½ cup flour

1 large egg

1 packet Leibniz Butter Biscuits, crushed
½ tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp rum
Vanilla bean ice cream for serving

What to do:

Place the sugar, water, and lemon verbena leaves or lemon zest in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. When the sugar has dissolved, remove the mixture from the hat. Cool the syrup completely.

Skin the peaches. To loosen their skins and make peeling easier, Plunge the peaches into a pot of boiling water for 30 seconds and then into a bowl of ice water. Peel the skin. Carefully run a small paring knife around the stones, then poke the stones out, leaving a hole in the center.

Pour the syrup into a glass or ceramic dish (large pie plate will do) and place the peeled peaches in the cooled verbena syrup to macerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 4 hours, turning them occasionally. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

Place the flour in a small bowl. In another small bowl, whisk the egg to break it up. In a shallow dish, combine the biscuits with the vanilla and rum. Arrange the bowls of flour and egg and the dish of crumbs side by side. Remove a peach from the syrup and let it drain slightly, then dip it in the flour to lightly coat. Shake off the excess, then dip it in the egg to coat. Shake off any excess, then roll in the crumbs. Press the crumbs to pack them. Place the crumb-covered peach on the prepared baking sheet. Continue the dipping and crumb-coating process with the remaining peaches. Pack any leftover crumbs into the stone holes, dividing the crumbs between the peaches. The crumb-coated peaches can be refrigerated for up to 4 hours before baking.

When ready to bake, center an oven rack and preheat the oven to 180°C. Bake the peaches for 15 minutes. Rotate the pan from front to back and continue to bake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until golden on the outside and the peaches are tender when pierced with a tester. Remove from the oven and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Meringues - Angel food

For my birthday TheHusband told me to pick a spot for breakfast, he wasn't sure he would be able to join us for lunch so we wanted to spend some time together. I chose to go to MissK. The food was really good but what really got my attention and stuck in my mind were their giant meringues. Brittle and crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, I loved every sweet bite.

A few moths later my father decided to try a gellato recipe that uses a bazillion egg yolks, well 8 of them and I decided that it was the perfect opportunity for me to make meringues. So I popped on to google to find the perfect meringue recipe, I found one and my apologies to the blogger who's page I found it on but I seem to have lost the link.

The idea is simple:

Sift your egg whites through a fine sieve

Weigh them

Coat the mixing bowl with lemon (cut the lemon in half and rub it on the bowl)

Pop in the egg whites and start whisking

weigh out twice as much castor sugar

when the egg whites reach the foamy stage slowly start adding the sugar and whisk till stiff.

Take a large spoon and spoon big blobs of meringue onto a baking sheet (or pipe them on prettily if you must)

Then pop into the oven on 110°C with the oven door open for about 1 hour, then drop to 90°C till dried out. (these temperatures my vary depending on your oven)

For a little variation mix some strawberry essense into the egg white mixture and make strawberry meringues