Week 5 - Tarts: Tarte Au Citron

The Tarte Au Citron is the technical challenge set for the Tarts and Sweet Pastry chapter in the "How to Bake" book. I have to be able to make a sweet pastry case that is the correct thickness and looks neat. My lemon filling must not taste too sweet or too tart and has to have a good consistency. Let's hope that I pass this technical challenge.

The Pastry Case

I made the citron tarte on Tuesday as I needed to use the double cream for the lemon filling before it went out of date. I made my pastry case under the watchful eye of my son, Thomas, which meant trying to read the recipe whilst keeping him entertained. The "How to Bake" book says to make the pastry using a food-processor but I don't own one so I had to make the pastry by hand.

I put the flour, butter and icing sugar into a bowl and mixed the ingredients until they looked like breadcrumbs. Then I was meant to add the egg yolk and water to the mixture, however at this point my son got rather bored of watching me cook and began to have a bit of a mini melt down. This caused me to rush mixing the pastry and in my haste I managed to completely forget to add the egg yolk to the breadcrumbs. I only realised this mistake later on after I had baked the pastry case by which time it was too late!!!

Once my pastry had been mixed and shaped into a ball the recipe told me to give my pastry plenty of time in the fridge to firm up and relax before rolling it out. By now my son had started screaming at a rather alarming pitch to get my attention so I had to abandon my dough ball on the kitchen surface and go and calm him down. My poor dough ball did not get chilled in the fridge at all and by the time I returned to the kitchen feeling rather frazzled, I decided just to get on with it and roll it out.

As I don't own a fluted loose-based tart tin, I decided to use my quick release 23cm cake tin. Once I rolled out my pastry I gently lifted it into my cake tin. I was rather concerned that I did not have enough pastry as it did not overhang over the sides of the tin. In fact my pastry only made it half-way up the sides of the cake tin.

The pastry in the cake tin

The pastry case has to be baked blind before the filling is added as this prevents a soggy bottom. Reading through the recipe it suddenly dawned on me that I needed some baking beans to fill my pastry case with and I did not have any. It was too late to put Thomas in the pushchair and go up to the shops to get some so I had to do some improvising. I used the base of my sprung sandwich tin as its quite heavy and this did the job really well. After lining the pastry with foil, I placed the sandwich tin base on top of my pastry base and baked it for 15 minutes in the oven.

The improvised "baking beans"

After removing the foil and sandwich tin base and I returned the cake tin to the oven and cooked the pastry for a further 10 minutes.

My baked pastry case

The filling

The filling was very easy to make as I just had to whisk together the eggs, double cream, caster sugar, zest and juice of the 4 lemons. When I started to break my eggs into the mixing bowl it was then that I realised that I should have added an egg yolk to my pastry mixture. I did consider making the pastry again but decided that it would take too much time and by now I just wanted to finish making the tarte. If the pastry did not taste very good then least I will remember for next time.
Once all the filling ingredients had been whisked together I then put the mixture into a jug. I poured the filling into my baked pastry case and put it into the oven at Gas Mark 3.

The pastry case with the uncooked filling

The recipe says to bake the tarte for 30-35 minutes but my citron tarte took 50 minutes to cook. I think the temperature of my oven is not very accurate as I had to turn it up to Gas Mark 4 to speed up the cooking process. Once the centre of the tarte was set I took it out of the oven and left it to cool.

The finished tarte au citron

The verdict

After the disaster of leaving out the egg yolk and not having all of the correct equipment I did not have high hopes for my tarte au citron. However it turned out really well and tasted stunning. The pastry was fine without the egg yolk and the lemon filling made my taste buds tingle with every mouthful.
I think I will make next week's recipe when Thomas is asleep to ensure that I don't leave any of the ingredients out!!!

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Almond Croissants

Week 4 - Pies: Beef and Red Wine Pie with Shortcrust Pastry

There are two parts to making this weeks challenge of the beef and red wine pie. The first is to create a good shortcrust pastry that is crisp and has a base that is not soggy. The second is to make a filling  that is tasty and neither too dry or wet. This is my first attempt at a savoury pie so fingers crossed that it will be a success!!

The Pie Filling

I made the pie filling the night before I wanted to bake my pie so that the flavours had time to mature. The recipe is for 6 people but there is no way my husband and I will get through a pie that big so I split the recipe down to suit 2 people. I first browned 250g of stewing steak that had been coated in flour. Then after removing the beef I added the onion and garlic to the pot to cook for 12 minutes. The red wine had to be reduced down so I gently simmered it in another pot. Once the onions and garlic were cooked I added the beef stock, red wine, beef, thyme, salt and pepper. The recipe then said to simmer the mixture gently for an hour.

When I went to add the chopped mushrooms I noticed that my pie mixture had stuck to the bottom of the pot. This meant that I had not turned down the gas low enough and it had cooked too quickly. Hoping that I had not ruined the taste of my pie filling I added some water to loosen the contents from the bottom of the pot. This seemed to work and I left it to simmer uncovered for another 40 minutes.
Once my pie filling had finished cooking I added some more thyme, salt and pepper to give it more flavour as it tasted rather bland.
The cooked mixture did not look particularly appetizing and I had my doubts as to whether I was going to pass the part of this weeks challenge in which I have to make a pie filling that is tasty!! I will only know when I eat the cooked pie tomorrow.

The cooked pie filling

The Shortcrust Pastry

I made my pastry Thursday morning during my son's nap time so that it would be ready for when I came to make the pie later on for dinner. The great thing with shortcrust pastry is that once its been made and wrapped in clingfilm, it will keep for up to 3 days in the fridge.
When I have made shortcrust pastry before it has never quite worked and I always ended up with pastry dough that would crack and break into pieces when rolled out. The "How to Bake" book instructs me to do two vital steps which will ensure that I make good pastry. These are:

1. Use icy cold water. The key to a successful pastry is keeping the temperature as cold as possible as then the fat won't begin to melt while you are making the dough. 
2.  Rest the pastry before rolling it out. The gluten in the flour needs time to react with the water in the pastry to make the dough more elastic in texture.   

I rubbed the cubed butter, salt and flour between my fingertips until the mixture looked like breadcrumbs. 

Breadcrumb mixture

Then I added the icy cold water 2 tablespoons at a time to the mixture to bind it together. I only needed to use 4 tablespoons of water to make the dough. The recipe says to rest the dough wrapped in clingfilm for 15-20 minutes in the fridge. However I was going to make my pie several hours later so I left my dough in the fridge until it was needed. It is important if the dough gets left in the fridge for several hours or a couple of days that it is returned to room temperature before trying to roll it out as it become as solid as a lump of concrete. I got my dough out of the fridge 30 minutes before I wanted to use it but this was not long enough so I enlisted the help of my microwave to return to dough to room temperature. I found 20 seconds at full power in the microwave made the dough pliable enough to roll out. 

The dough ready to be rolled out

As I had followed the two important steps of  using icy water and leaving the dough to rest, I had no problems like my pastry cracking or breaking when I rolled it out. I was able to lift the pastry in one big piece onto my pie dish. Success so far! 

The pastry base

Once I had put the cold pie filling into the dish, I then covered it with the pastry lid.

The cold pie filling

I was a bit worried that I had not left enough pastry to make the lid but I rolled it out quite thinly and it just managed to cover the top of the pie dish. To ensure that my pastry base would not become soggy I made a 2cm slit in the middle of the lid to allow the steam to escape.

The glazed pie ready for the oven

The recipe said to cook the pie for about 35 minutes at Gas Mark 5. I wanted to slowly cook my pie whilst I was teaching a piano lesson so I left it in the oven for an hour at Gas Mark 3.  To brown off the pastry I turned up the oven to Gas Mark 6 for 10 minutes until it looked a lovely golden brown colour.

My baked pie

The Verdict

I am very proud to say that I have passed this weeks challenge with flying colours. For the first time my pastry base was not soggy but completely cooked through and the crust was beautifully crisp. The beef and red wine filling was very tasty so I needed not to have worried about it not having much flavour.
I served my pie with mash, green vegetables and gravy. I asked my husband how many marks out of 10 he would give it and he said 11 1/2 so I think this meant he liked it!!!!!!!

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Tarte Au Citron

Week 3 - Bread: White Loaf

I love home made bread but I have always made it using my bread maker. It will be interesting to see if I can get this weeks white bread loaf to rise successfully making it by hand.

The Dough

Making the dough was quite straight forward as I just had to mix the bread flour, salt, yeast and lukewarm water to form a soft dough.
Then I kneaded the bread by hand for 10 minutes. The recipe told me to knead the dough by stretching the ball of dough away from me like an elastic band while holding the other end of the dough down with my hand. Then the dough was gathered back into a ball and the whole stretching movement started again. This style of kneading was not tiring at all and the 10 minutes passed quite quickly. In fact I found kneading the dough to be quite relaxing as it gave me 10 minutes of time where my brain could just drift and think about things.

My kneaded dough ready to go into the airing cupboard

Once the kneading was complete I put my ball of dough into the airing cupboard and left it for an hour. Once the hour was up I checked on my dough and it had risen beautifully to double its original size. I was very excited to see that the dough had actually risen as my previous attempts at making pizza dough had not gone well as it would never rise no matter how long I would leave it!

The risen bread dough

I then split the risen dough ball into two equal portions. The loaves were then left to double in size for another hour at room temperature.

The two risen loaves after being left for an hour

Once risen the two loaves where ready to go into the oven. I decided to split one of the loaves into 4 rolls as then I would be able to freeze them as my husband and I were not going get through two bread loaves before they went stale.
The "How to Bake" book told me to preheat the oven to Gas Mark 8 for when the bread first goes into the oven. My gas oven is a little temperamental when it comes to temperature so when I put the rolls onto the bottom shelf the baking paper caught alight as the gas flames were so strong. I managed to blow out the flames and thankfully no damage was done to my rolls only alot of charred baking paper!!!
So that I was going to be able to cook my bread without setting any more things on fire I decided to turn my oven down to Gas Mark 6 which made the gas flame much smaller.
After 15 minutes I rotated the baking trays so that both sets of bread browned nicely. It took 30 minutes to cook the bread so that they where a nice golden colour and sounded hollow when tapped on the bottom. When I took the bread out of the oven I felt a real sense of achievement that through my labour, I had managed to produce such good bread without any help from the bread machine.

My bread loaf

My bread rolls

The Verdict

The bread had a lovely thick crust with a light springy centre and it tasted amazing. The "How to Bake" book says that this recipe will make the perfect white loaf and I can certainly agree with that.
This weeks challenge has shown me how easy it is to make bread by hand and I aim to continue making bread by hand instead of just pressing the start button on the bread machine.

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Beef and Red Wine Pie with Shortcrust Pastry

Week 2 - Biscuits: Brandy Snaps

I was looking forward to making this weeks recipe as I like baking new things and this would be my first ever attempt at brandy snaps. In the "How to Bake" book the brandy snaps are set as a technical challenge so hopefully I will pass this test with flying colours. 

The biscuit mixture

Making the brandy snap mixture was so easy compared to last weeks Victoria sponge. First I had to simmer the sugar, butter and syrup till the sugar fully dissolved. Then I added the flour, ground ginger and lemon juice. Once the mixture was made I felt pretty confident that it would not be long until I had finished making all the biscuits. How wrong was I in assuming this!!!

I started the brandy snaps Wednesday evening about 7:40pm and by 9pm I was still going. It took to 9:30pm to finally  finish my 12 brandy snap biscuits. Looking through the "How to Bake" book I noticed that there are no preparation or cooking times at the start of each recipe which means when you begin to make something you have no idea whether it will take 1 hour or 3 hours. 

The reason that it took so long to make the biscuits is that you can only bake 4 biscuits in one go as you have to work fast to roll them into shape before they harden.  

My first batch took 15 minutes to cook and came out of the oven a lovely dark golden colour. 

The first batch just out of the oven

I thought that it would be quite tricky rolling the biscuits into shape around the oiled wooden spoon but I found it very easy to do. 

My rolled brandy snaps

Whilst I had been shaping my first batch of brandy snaps the biscuit mixture had gone completely rock hard. When I came to do the second batch I had to chisel the mixture from the bottom of the bowl so that it ended up looking like breadcrumbs. 

The breadcrumb mixture

To get the mixture to become pliable I put the bowl on top of the warm oven. After about 10 minutes it had softened enough for me to be able to mould the breadcrumbs into round balls ready to bake. 

My second and third batch of biscuits were not so successful as the first batch as they did not retain their rolled shape and collapsed on the wire rack. For the first batch I used about a tablespoon of mixture for each biscuit whereas I was only meant to have used a teaspoons worth. So for the second and third batch I used much less mixture for each biscuit which made them thinner in texture. I think because the biscuits where much thinner this caused them to collapse after being rolled into shape. My husband said that my collapsed brandy snaps looked like "half-squashed slugs".   

The second batch of brandy snaps

 Once all the brandy snaps were baked and had hardened on the wire rack I dipped half of each brandy snap into melted milk chocolate. To sprinkle over the chocolate-coated biscuits I had flaked and chopped almonds. I first tried dipping the chocolate end of the brandy snap into a bowl of chopped almonds but this did not turn out to be very successful. The chocolate just dripped of the biscuit into the bowl which meant that I ended up with hardly any nuts on the brandy snap and a big lump of chocolate coated almonds in the bowl. The key I found was to sprinkle the nuts from the packet over each brandy snap. I also found that chopped almonds worked the best as the flaked almonds were too big to stick well to the brandy snap.

The finished brandy snaps

The verdict

The brandy snaps tasted truly scrumptious and they were a big hit with everyone who tried them. I would definitely like to have another go at making them but I think next time I will double the quantities of the mixture stated in the recipe so that I can make thicker biscuits. This will hopefully ensure that none of the brandy snaps become "half-squashed slugs"!!!

Half-squashed slugs

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

White Bread Loaf