A day of baking

Sunday I attempted yet another one of Martha Stewarts creations. If you couldn't tell I love her projects. In her last issue of Martha Stewart Living she had a recipe for "pear rasberry heart pies." They are a cute and very tasty mixture between a pie and a sugar cookie with a pear rasberry filling.

It was an extremely easy recipe to follow. Its important that the dough is rolled out to 1/8th of an inch, other wise they will be to thick and the dough will be a stonger flavor then the filling. The filling was awesome, the recipe said to cut the pears to a 1/4 inch dice, next time I attempt this I will put the pears throught the food processor so the filling mixture will be more like an applesausce then small chunks of pear. These cookies were absolutely delightful.

On monday, in baking class, we had a practical on bread, thank God for once our bread came out amazingly. I never though getting bread to rise was such a difficult thing to do, but if you dont get the ingredients exactly right, your bread wont rise. The dough was extremely difficut to roll out and shape though, so thy aren't perfect, but the chef said they had a great crust and great flavor.

I also learned how to make two different types of pie crust. In fact they were the exact same ingredients, just different methods. For both crusts all the dry ingredients are sifted together then butter is hand mixed in. For a flaky crust you add the water when the dough has a flaky texture to it, but for a mealy crust the water is added when the dough resembles corn meal. It is important that the water be ice cold so it keeps the butter from melting.

The mealy pie crust was used for lemon meringue pie. The pie is basically lemon pudding with marshmellow topping. The meringue was very tasty but also very tempermental. It is important to make sure the egg whites are completely whipped and have formed soft peaks before the sugar is added, then its just piped on top of the lemon custard and flamed. I got to use a blow tortch, it was awesome!

This is before the blow torch

and after

The flaky pie crust was used to make pecan pie. Not much to say about the pecan pie, mix the ingredients together then pour in the crust and bake. It wasn't set before we left class so we didn't get to taste it. Not that I was that bothered by that, I'm not really a fan of pecans.

Later this week I will be making food from Louisianna, appropriate since the Saints just won the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras coming next weekend. Also I will be attempthing sugar cookies on a stick for Valentines Day. Stay tuned