I’m catching up on things that I’ve baked recently as well - a few weeks ago, when I went to Pura Vida to meet up with Marty and Andrea and was inspired by my berry berry shake.  When I got home that afternoon, I had a deadline to meet and Javier’s mom called me up to say that her friend, “The Spaniard” was in town and that he would be joining us for dinner that evening.  She asked me if I could make a dessert.

Of course I could!

So being that it was rather warm outside, I decided to make my favorite little tart.  I happened to miraculously find blackberries and blueberries at the Disco in my neighborhood, so just bought some strawberries to go along with it as well. I picked up my Dorie Greenspan book and peruuused until I found the perfect treat.

So here’s the recipe:

1.5 cups Pastry Cream, cooled
1 - 9″ tart shell fully baked and cooled
2 pints fresh berries
1/3 c raspberry jelly mixed with a tsp of water for glazing

Please email me privately if you need to know how to make the cream or tart shell.

Smooth the pastry cream by giving it a couple of strong turns with a whisk.  Spoon enough of the pastry cream into the tart crust to come almost to the rum, then even the surface with a rubber spatula. Carefully lay the berries on the cream, arranging them in any pattern that pleases you.  If you are using strawberries, either halve them from top to bottom or slice them, depending on the size of the berries and your whim.

Bring the jelly and water to a boil in a microwave oven or on the stovetop.  Working with a pastry brush or pastry feather, dab eat berry with a spot of jelly. Or if you’d like, you can glaze the entire surface of the tart, including the bit of pastry cream that peeks through the berries.

Et voila! yummy in your tummy!

I’m having a great time today catching up on all of the writing that I wasn’t able to accomplish this past week.  If you’re wondering why there have been no posts this week, it’s because I was super busy with work.  Trying to make sense of php, flash, databases, and a HUGE problem with the wireless on my own computer (grr) made my week pretty long - and my eyes very tired.

I had a lot of inspiration, but very little energy to write at all.  So it’s a rainy and cold weekend, I just had 7.5 hours of sleep and I want to scream to the world everything that I’ve been thinking aout this week.  First of all, I’ve been making a pretty big effort to make at least one bread product per week.  Last week it was probably the most successful bread recipe that I’ve encountered so far - the King Arthur’s recipe (below). It came out perfect.

Secondly, one of the blogs that I subscribe to was talking about making the most perfect cinnamon rolls, and being that this blogger does some exquisite looking pastries, I thought that perhaps they knew what they were doing - so I followed the site to this recipe, and to be honest, it wasn’t really all that.  Ok, the rolls were probably the most beautiful rolls that I’ve ever made, but they were just too sugary for my liking. It was just so much brown sugar that there was a caramel at the bottom of the pan.

Confession time:  Not everything that I bake turns out perfect, but I try to make the best of it.  Last year for Christmas, I decided to make a brioche and fill it with brie and dried fruits.  The brioche came out beautiful, but baking the brie inside the bread gave this terrible flavor of foot fungus that made this a small disaster.  Luckily I made a tiramisu as well.  Anyway, I had some leftover brioche dough and the next morning, rolled out the dough, sprinkled it with cinnamon, a touch of nutmeg and little pinches of cold butter all along the rolled out rectangle.  I rolled, cut and put onto a cookie sheet for a half an hour and must confess, those were probably the most perfect tasting cinnamon rolls that I’ve ever made in my entire life.  And it didn’t take nearly as long as the recipe above.  Google brioche recipe.  Find the most simple one you can.  Improv the rolls, I’m sure they’ll come out great!

I have a lot of people asking me about breads recently - perhaps its because I’ve been doing a lot of baking recently. In May, Violet and Duro, an American couple living here (and dancing tango night and day) in Buenos Aires introduced me to a great No Knead Recipe. They happened to make a great instructional video on easy bake bread (see below) and talk extensively about doughs on their website here.

It’s great because it has no sugar, no milk - and best of all, very little effort at all to make a great tasting bread that comes out like a focaccia.

Another friend will be opening up a Bed and Breakfast in the coming weeks and is looking to provide her clients with homemade breads during breakfast. Now, she probably has to make at least one white bread and one wheat bread and doesn’t want to use milk in the breads. For this instance, I would definitely recommend the following:

100& Whole Wheat Bread
White Bread

I just made some whole wheat bread on Saturday - and accompanied it with the following lentil recipe. It was a great hit.

1 cup lentils
1 bay leaf
3 tbsp olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 finely chopped garlic clove
1 finely chopped chili pepper (optional, to taste)
1 can peeled tomatoes
1 large chopped fresh tomatoe
salt & pepper to taste

Wash lentils in sieve under running water. Cook them with the bay leaf for approximately 15 minutes in boiling salted water and one tbsp olive oil. Drain them in a colander. Meanwhile, saute the onion in a large pan for 3-4 minutes until onion begins to turn soft and golden. Add garlic and chili pepper and saute 1-2 minutes. Finally, add salt, pepper, drained lentils, the can of tomatoes and fresh tomato. Stir frequently to aid can tomatoes in their break down. Simmer for approximately 10 minutes and serve hot.

These weeks have been so busy! The weather is totally erratic - one minute cool, the next rainy, the next sunny and warm.. and then cool again - it’s the perfect weather for catching a cold! That’s exactly what I did and then it’s been like a non-stop marathon trying to fit in my social and blogging life into my tough work schedule!  BUT… I did manage to bake a little during the evenings.  It’s probably one of those activities that keeps me sane.

Last week, I made two loaves of honey whole wheat bread.  They were awesome.  I found the recipe here.  Sorry that I forgot to take pictures, the bread got eaten WAY WAY too fast!  Then on Monday, I tried a different and more disasterous recipe.  It was kind of similar, but without the milk.  The bread tasted good, but I don’t know if the yeast was fresh (it did seem not soooo frizzy when I was letting it sit).  Anyway, it was edible and tastes really good with peanut butter and jelly.  It just didn’t rise like I thought it would or wanted it to.

Then yesterday, right before we went out to a birthday party, I found a recipe for Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins on cooks.com.  Here’s the very simple recipe!  And here’s how they turned out!