Cream Puffs - Grandma Ross

I don't remember much about Grandma Ross' cream puffs, mainly what I remember is her serving desserts that were sandwiched together with whipped cream.  Mostly meringues with whipped cream but Mom says she also made cream puffs and I found her recipe for them.  I've made choux pastry before and, despite common opinion, it's such a doddle that I didn't know why Mom never picked up the recipe, especially if she was trying to impress company because choux pastry always looks impressive.  Cream puffs are especially impressive because they're nice and big.

A recent conversation with Mom revealed that she was just stymied by the recipe instructions her mother left and for some reason they were always slimy inside even though she thought they were fully cooked.  Well, I can understand her difficulties, especially in the pre-internet world, these are the instructions from Grandma's recipe, "When water & butter are boiling add flour & salt.  Remove from heat.  Add eggs & beat one in at a time." - that was it, nothing else, so no wonder, huh?  If it wasn't for the internet I wouldn't know what to do with the recipe either, so thank-you technology.

 

Cream Puffs

Pre-heat the oven to 400^F (205^C)
Heat in a pot until boiling:
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter

While waiting for the water to boil, sift together:
1/2 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
The moment the water and butter are boiling, turn the heat off, move your pot to a cool burner.  Dump all the flour into the water in one go and start stirring furiously.  I use an electric hand mixer but don't if your pot has a non-stick coating, mine are stainless so I'm good.

Once the dough comes away from the side start adding one at a time
2 eggs
It'll look like scary scrambled eggs for a while but keep mixing until the dough is smooth, shiny, and drops off the beaters (or spoon) easily.

Grease your baking sheet then splash some cold water on them and give them a shake so that you only have small drops of water clinging to the sheet.  This is a trick I found on the internet, because it's the steam that causes the choux pastry to puff up, if you have slightly damp baking sheets it creates extra steam for extra puff.  I'm not sure if dampening the tray makes much difference, I've always had my choux pastry puff up big and I only found the water trick recently, you still have to grease the sheet though, even if it's non-stick.

Spoon big tablespoon sized dollops of the dough onto the sheets leaving enough space for the cream puffs to expand to double their size without touching each other.

Bake  for 40 mins.

When you take them out of the oven, scoop them up off the baking tray immediately and punch a small hole in the bottom then put them on a wire rack to cool.  The internal structure of the choux pastry will remind you of strands of cobwebs like you see as special effects in old haunted house movies.  If you don't make a hole the steam has no where to escape, it'll stay inside, condense, and turn the cobweb strands slimy.  You could possibly try rescue your cream puffs by scraping the insides out with a spoon after you cut them open but you won't have any body left to it and the steam might also have gotten into the shell of the cream puff and there's no rescue for that.  Punch a hole in it, I used the handle of a spoon.

Once they're cooled, they'll keep for a few days if you don't fill them, but where's the fun in that?  Cream puffs can be cut open and filled with whipped cream or creme patisserie.  If you make profiteroles, the cream puff's miniature-cousin, they should be filled by piping the filling in through the hole you made to vent the steam.  To make the dessert extra indulgent you can also top them with sauce or chocolate shavings.

 

Master Pastry Lesson - Gram LuVerne

I've re-written this blog post so many times and I still don't know I've got it right, it was just so fantastic to be in the kitchen with my Gram one more time.  It was, by far, the best day I had on my trip to Canada.  We spent the morning making pastry, a lesson I've been pushing for from her because Gram LuVerne is the Pastry Master.  It's been years since Gram made pastry but she still remembered a lot of tricks and I'm the new keeper of her secrets.  I almost don't know where to start with all the tips she gave me.

We made two types of pastry, an egg rich one and a plain one with just water.  And we used the pastry to make two pies, apple and rhubarb. 

Gram's Pastry Recipe

A
Mix together
5 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

Cut in with a pastry cutter
2 cups shortening

B (rich version)
2 Tbsp White Vinegar
2 Eggs
2 Tbsp Ice Water (or more)

B (water version)
1/4 cup water - to start, then keep adding by the spoonful until the pastry comes together

Add B to A, and combine with a fork, add extra water if necessary.

This is enough to make two 10 inch 2 crust pies with some pastry leftover to make tart shells.

But just writing out Gram's recipe isn't really enough, it's all her tips on handling and working it that makes a master, because pastry is a bit of an estimated art, not the science of most baking.  So here come the tips:

On a recipe this size there's a 1 cup leeway on the amount of flour, the actual amount of flour is 5 to 6 cups.

Use very soft shortening.

At all times, keep the texture of the pastry soft, it's hard to explain this one, it's more to do with the brevity of movements that I noticed Gram using when working the dough rather than the softness or gentleness of her movements.  One hard sweep of the rolling pin to flatten the dough is better than three delicate rolls because there's less handling in one sweep, I hope that makes sense.  Gram didn't have any qualms about being rough with it when she got the speed going.

Cut the shortening into the flour until it is all mixed in but the flour is still mobile, it should only just clump together but if you run a rubber spatula through it it should still look a bit dry and any clumps should break up easily.

When rolling out, use lots of flour, she said it need to ride on a layer of flour.  If it sticks to the board, take a floured knife and un-stick it then scoop flour onto the knife and slide it under the pastry, work your way around the dough wherever needed.

If you get cracks when rolling, don't just press the edges back together, seal it up with a bit of water and dust over the repair with flour.

If the pastry is too dry, instead of making a ball to start rolling, tease it out into a flat circle first.

When making a pie, Gram likes to build up the edge of the crust really thick so it will catch the drips if the pie bubbles up and leaks, if the edge is too thin you run the risk of the juices seeping back under the bottom crust into the pan, and I have to say good luck getting your slice of pie out then.  See how thick she's built up the edge here.

If you plan on making a lot of pies over a short period of time, Gram used to make up a large pail of her pastry recipe to the completion of part A on the recipe, then keep the pail in the garage where it would stay cool.  She could then take a scoop out of the pail and add whichever variation of part B she wanted to mix up the pastry.  She said having it part mixed allowed the pastry to rest before mixing it up fully, so you don't have to rest it later and can use it right away.

Gram also showed me how to make tart shells on the outside of a muffin tin instead of the inside, there's less shrinkage that way.

After the pastry lesson, my sisters came in and we had a cup of tea and a visit, they joked that I had syphoned off all of Gram's pastry making knowledge. I have to say I learnt a lot from her instruction, one pastry was a complete dog and pony show of a disaster where she showed me all sorts of tips to save it and the other was probably the most successful pastry making experience of my life.  Gram served us some of her lemon curd tarts, she's been buying tart shells for a few years now because she doesn't need to have a full recipe of pastry taking up space in her freezer for the few bits that she makes and I think that's fair for anyone living on their own.  However her signature marshmallow meringue, well there are some short cuts you can only earn the rights to after decades of doing it the long way.

Since being back in London I've been watching the Great British Bake Off and have taken an interest in different types of pastry, some should crumble, some flake, and others need to rise in layers, but all pastry should always be crisp and dry and rich.  I have had a few goes at making some of them, I did another run at Gram Ross' sausage roll pastry, which I used to make an onion tart tatin and a small wellington.

I have worked out my issues with sweet short crust pastry (sometimes called pate sucree) which was the killer on last year's thanksgiving pumpkin pie, take a look at my awesome lemon strawberry tarts.  And while this really is bragging, check out how evenly beige the bottoms are.

(I really should remember to turn on the lights when taking photos, those tarts look really brown but I assure you they weren't.)

Today I even braved the challenge of puff pastry rolling and re-rolling six turns to layer the butter and pastry dough and made myself a spinach pie for dinner, check out those layers in the top crust!

All joking aside, I think I really have syphoned off Gram's pastry knowledge, and it's a good thing it went somewhere because she said these were the last pies she was ever going to make.

Gram only helped me with the pastry, I had to take the pies back to Mom's to bake them, but we sent in a slice of each with Dad the next day for her to inspect.  We had a debate over whether Gram would just take a taste and let Dad eat the lion's share of the slices but he came home a bit depressed that they hadn't been offered to him at all.  Gram is very health conscious with her diet, which is probably due part credit for her living into her 90s.  She told me the first thing she did was flip them over and check that they baked all the way through on the bottom, which they did, Gram's clearly a tougher critic than the GBBO judges.  She also confessed that she intended to let Dad eat her slices but that they were too good to share and she ate them herself, and when it's the last pies you ever make too right you're gonna eat them.

Sausage Rolls - Grandma Ross

There's a lot of baking (and cooking for that matter) that my Grandma Ross did that my Mom never kept up with.  My Dad had objections to leaving the oven on overnight to make meringues, most of the rest I suspect was either more fiddly than she cared to deal with or that she just considered too unhealthy, "We don't need it," was her most common response - funny how we "don't need" a cream puff or yorkshire pudding but a double batch of chocolate chip cookies in the house wasn't subject to the same criteria.  Her refusal to carry on a lot of Grandma's recipes didn't stop her from waxing on about her mom's culinary repartee, the little quirks that made her versions different from others and how beautifully her results turned out.  If you listen to my Mom, her mom made the clearest broths, the whitest and dryest meringues, and the palest and most finely textured shortbread.
 
But Grandma, being Scottish, also did savoury baking which was not all that common in northern British Columbia, or at least not that I knew.  One of the recipes that I used to bug my Mom to make, that we "didn't need" was Grandma's sausage rolls, growing up I wasn't the biggest pastry fan (probably why it's such a nemesis now, curse you karma) but I did like sausage rolls, they were fantastic.  I think to my young palate the rich animal fat in a lard based pastry made sense taste-wise when paired with meat rather than with fruit.  I only distinctly remember my Mom making sausage rolls once in my life, and I'm going to accuse Mom of doing it this one time to use up some of Grandma's leftover pastry from the freezer, only because I remember asking what something was and being told it was sausage roll pastry and my Mom is waste adverse so she wouldn't have thrown it out.  But other than that it was Grandma's wrinkled fingers that I remember rolling the pastry around the sausages and making slash marks in the top to let the steam out.
 
Grandma's recipe makes a lot of pastry for a lot of sausage rolls, I used less than a quarter of the dough and it covered 4 large sausages.  I'm also realising that this whole not giving full information might be a trait of people from a generation that knew how to cook and bake very well.  Gram didn't list sausages in the ingredients nor did she mention how many sausage rolls this makes.  I know she used to use very thin sausages but I only had fat ones, if you use thin sausages you will get a higher pastry to sausage ratio which is quite decadent.

Sausage Rolls

Get your favourite pork sausages out of the package and if necessary cut into individual sausages.  Poke a few holes in each sausage casing so that the fat can drain out as they cook.  Put them in a pot of water and boil for about 20 minutes.  When they are cooked, drain then peel the casing off the sausage, discard the casing and set the sausage aside to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 450^F (218^C)

Sift together in a roomy bowl
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt

Cut in
1/2 pound lard
I cut it really chunky because I wanted really flaky pastry, it still pulled all the flour together, it's a lot of fat.

Add and mix in
1 tbsp grated onion
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (Mom remembers Grandma used to use paprika when she didn't want it quite so spicy)

In a measuring cup mix together
1/2 cup cold water
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vinegar

Pour about 2/3 of the liquid into the flour and fat and mix with a fork, if you need more liquid you can add it but I didn't and actually needed to add a bit more flour (about 1/4 cup).

Roll the pastry out in strips and wrap around your pre-cooked sausages, trim away the excess if there is any and seal the long edge with some beaten egg, leave the ends open.  Feel for the gap between each sausage and cut between them to separate.

Roll the pastry so that the seam is on the bottom, brush the top of the pastry with some beaten egg and transfer to a baking tray.  Cut some slits in the top of the pastry.

Bake for about 12 - 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Butter Tarts - Mom

I felt a bit bad teasing my Dad last week, I have Mom’s recipe book with the butter tarts recipe in it. Which means that she can’t make them because she doesn’t have the recipe anymore. So I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone, have another try at making pastry and get the butter tarts up on the blog so at least Mom has access to the recipe should she decide to take pity on Dad and make him some.  I secretly think he would be happy enough with the lead up to Christmas if it was all about butter tarts, no tree, no decorations, no presents and definitely no snow, just a pile of butter tarts.

I explain butter tarts to my British friends as ‘what you should be eating at Christmas instead of mince pies.’ I hate mince pies, they’re a very evil thing to offer someone who is expecting a sweet treat, and when I offer butter tarts I get a lot of agreement on my stance. It is a personal mission to convert Britain to butter tarts instead of mince pies, that and pronouncing tomato as toe-may-toe, not toh-maa-toh, but the butter tarts are more important and I think I'm losing the toh-maa-toh war.

As for my latest pastry attempt, after intensive consultation with the pastry master (thanks Gram!) and some video searching online for technique, my results have improved greatly. I used Gram’s proportions of 3 cups of flour to 1 cup of fat, cut it in coarsely rather than fine, and add the liquid in 1 spoonful at a time. The pastry was very dry and very stiff, I probably could have used a bit more fat to make it softer, but it was flakier, I think, due to the coarser cutting and fully cooked on the bottom and best of all, didn’t shrink! The tart cases went into the oven the same height as the tin and came out the same height too, I couldn’t believe it! I might start working up the courage to make a pie with a pastry lid, I'll share my pastry recipe when I can get that to work.

Butter Tarts

Pre-heat an oven to 450^F (232^C)

Roll our and line a 12 hole muffin tin with short crust pastry

Mix together either with a hand mixer or a whisk:

1 egg

1/3 cup butter - room temperature soft

1 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

Stir in

1/2 cup raisins

Fill the pastry 2/3 full make sure you try to get some raisins in each one!

Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350^F (117^C) and bake for another 10 - 15 minutes

Christmas Pastry Perfection.

***Update:  My Mom made some butter tarts for my Dad and sent me a few pictures.

Compare her tarts below to mine above.  Mom got a better baked sugar crust on the top of hers.

Here's my happy pappy with his butter tarts!

Pumpkin Pie - Mom

This October, I missed Thanksgiving because I was on holiday.  I missed it last year due to excessive bad health.  Missing it once I could deal with, missing it two years in a row was unacceptable, so I rallied my fellow Canadian ex-pat friends and told them they were coming to my belated thanksgiving lunch.  Being Canadian I have to explain Thanksgiving to my British co-workers and in the process I get to tell them about Pumpkin Pie.  In my industry, people change companies a lot, so I have to explain it at least every other year, the reaction is always the same, deep suspicion about why you would put pumpkin in a pie, interrogation about the flavouring (is it sweet or savoury), and when I bring in my leftover pie to share round an almost universal chorus of how do you make that, I need the recipe.

So here it is, this is my Mom's pumpkin pie and I've given an increased quantity for the spices because she always adds extra and so do I.  If you can't find a tin of pumpkin puree (or don't want to go to a specialty food store and spend in the region of £6.00 on it), you can buy a pumpkin, the kind for a jack-o-lantern, scoop the seeds out and bake it until soft, then puree the flesh in a blender, it speaks of dedication to your pie, and you'll have more pumpkin than you need so you can also make soup.

This pie is what makes the house smell of Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Pie

Pre-heat the oven to 450^F (232^C) and put the oven shelf at the lowest position.

Roll out short crust pastry and line two 7 - 8 inch pie plates, make a crimp with your fingers or press with a fork round the edge to make it pretty.  Use pastry that is made with vegetable shortening (or even lard if you can) do not use all butter pastry, because of the high oven temperature, all butter pastry is likely to burn.  Do not dock the pastry, leave it unblemished because you are not blind baking it first.

Mix the ingredients with an electric mixer in order, beating well between every ingredient
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 3/4 cup pumpkin puree (that's a whole small can if you bought it)
Spices:  2 tsp dried ginger
            2 tsp cinnamon
            1/2 tsp cloves
1 can evaporated milk (that's a 410g can)

Pour the filling into the unbaked pie shells and put in the oven to bake for 15 minutes at 450^F, then turn the oven down to 350^F (177^C) and bake for another 30 - 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.  If you have to put the two pie pans into the oven on a diagonal, about 10 minutes after turning down the temperature, swap the pies so the back one comes forward and the front one goes back, it'll help even out the cooking.

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of my pies before my thanksgiving lunch, I only thought of taking a photo after I had taken it to work and put it by the tea kettle for people to help themselves, it was gone by the time I remembered, sorry.  So here's a picture of the lovely flowers I was given for making thanksgiving lunch, aren't they pretty.

Lemon Curd for Lemon Tarts - Gram LuVerne

My Gram LuVerne is the pastry master.  Not only does she make incredibly tender and flaky pastry but she also makes pie fillings to die for.  When my Dad feels like he hasn't had a dessert lately he starts asking for a pie, given what his mom produced I'm not surprised that this is his number one choice is pie.  Gram has modernized her lemon curd recipe and makes it in the microwave, but you could use a double boiler if you wanted to go old school.

I have plans to visit Gram and get a pastry making class from her because my pastry skills are akward and inept at best.  I won't be giving a pastry recipe here because I need some better instruction myself on how to make pastry before I start advising others, use your favourite short crust pastry or buy some ready made pastry or buy pre-baked pie/tart shells.

Line your tart cases with pastry and prick it all over with a fork to make lots and lots of holes, according to my Mom if you put enough holes in it you don't have to blind bake.  Bake it in a pre-heated oven at 400^F (205^C) for 8 - 10 minutes, until the edges are golden.  I want to take a minute to show off my tart cases, I bought them in an antique shop and they make impressively tall and very pretty tarts, although it is a labour of love to fold the pastry into all the little fluted edges.

Lemon Curd

In a microwave safe bowl (an ideal container is a very large pyrex measuring cup) whisk together
3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
3 Eggs
until fluffy, use an electric hand mixer, it will save your arm from falling off

Then mix in
1 tbsp grated Lemon Rind (zest)
1/2 cup Fresh Lemon Juice (2 - 4 lemons depending on their size)
2 tbsp soft butter
Microwave on high for 2 - 3 minutes depending on the wattage of your microwave (mine is wimpy).

Take it out and whisk it until smooth again.

Microwave on high again for 2 - 4 minutes or longer until it boils.

Whisk again until smooth, a really good whisking this time, then let it cool and thicken a bit in the bowl.

Once cool, pour it into your pie/tart shell(s), this will fill 9 of my very tall tarts, probably 12 regular tarts or a small pie.

If you want to make it a meringue pie, whisk together 2 - 3 egg whites, with 2 - 3 tbsp sugar and 1/4 tsp cream of tartar until it resembles fluffy clouds, dollop it onto your pie and brown the top in a very hot oven.  Gram's lazy meringue topping is to cover the tops with marshmallows and toast them in the oven - sorry Gram, giving away all your secrets!

It is a lusciously perfect balance between zingy sour and super sweet, you don't have to go looking for the flavour like with most lemon meringue pies. Don't limit it to just pie filling either, it can also be used as a decadent spread on bread or scones or be used to sandwich a layer cake together, and it will keep in a jar in the fridge for a week.

Yumm, just yumm!