Adventures with the Ice Cream Maker: Pear Caramel Ice Cream

I know I should be posting something more Thanksgiving-like, such as pumpkin pie (but we all know I hate pumpkin) or something to do with turkey.  However, once thing I have noticed over the last few years of living in California is that Thanksgiving can kind of sneak up on you, since the weather doesn't really change.  That is why I think it is ok to post this ice cream --  it has lots of good fall flavors, but it is appropriate for a place where it is going to be 70 degrees on Thanksgiving day.

This is Pear Caramel Ice Cream from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop.  Once again, David knocks it out of the park with this flavor combination.  You might think it would be too sweet, but the caramel cooks long enough to get a strong, complex and not to sweet flavor.  When you eat this ice cream, you can really taste both the pear and the caramel and they hit you at slightly different times, making the flavor of this ice cream really interesting and the color of the ice cream a gorgeous pale color.  This would be a fine thing to eat on Thanksgiving weekend (although not after turkey if you are kosher -- maybe a midnight snack?).  Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

Here is the recipe:

Pear-Caramel Ice Cream

• 3 medium-sized ripe pears, peeled and cored
• 3/4 c. + 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1/8 teaspooon coarse salt
• a few drops of fresh lemon juice

1. Dice the pears into 1/4-inch pieces.
2. Spread the sugar in a large, heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat, carefully watching and stirring occasionally with a heatproof spatula until melted. 
3. When the sugar is a deep amber, stir in the pears. The caramel will seize, that's ok. Continue cooking and stirring occasionally (again with a heat-proof spatula – caramel will burn heck out of you) for ten minutes. The sugar will have dissolved.
4. Remove from the ehhat and stir in 1/2 cup of the cream, then mix in the rest of the cream, salt, and lemon juice.
5. Cool to room temp, puree until smooth, press through a strainer.
6. Chill according to your ice-cream maker manufacturer's instructions. 

Fallen Souffle for Fall

I don't know if anyone here uses a blog reader (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) to bookmark stuff they want to make. Maybe some of the Baking Sisters' recipes are even on your blog reader, in which case, we're flattered. Anyway, I have no such thing, but I have a rather long-running blog reader in my head. Because it's in my head, a recipe has to really be something special in order to get on this most exclusive of lists. I saw this recipe from Tartelette when she first posted it - in December 2009 - and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. This is partly thanks to the gorgeous photographs (all the photography on that site is gorgeous), but also because I thought it sounded like such a delicious, elegant recipe. Yet for some reason, I never found the time to make it. Then, one Tuesday evening, my mom came home from the CSA (something that white people do) with a bag full of tiny pears, and I vowed that I would finally take the time to make this recipe.

Honestly, I don't know why I didn't make it before - it really doesn't take much time at all, since you can poach the pears and make the batter basically simultaneously. It was very tasty, although different than I expected. The texture was much more substantial and cake-like than past souffles I've made, but I don't think I overcooked it. Also, as you can see from contrasting my photos with Tartelette's, the pears didn't collapse into the cake but rather baked inside it. Whatever, it didn't matter, it still tasted delicious. And seriously, if you didn't already, go to the original recipe page and look at the photos, they are stunning. No wonder I remembered this recipe for almost two years.

Poached Pear And Almond Fallen Souffle Cakes
From Tartelette

Makes 6

Note: you can core the pears from the bottom to about 1 inch from the top with an apple corer but these are so tiny that I just removed the stem button at the bottom. Everything else in the core baked to very soft texture and the seeds were easy to remove while eating (kind of like tails on baked shrimp).

For the poached pears:
6 mini d'Anjou pears, peeled (or other small pears like Forelles or Seckel)
1/2 cup (100gr) sugar
2-3 cloves
2-3 cardamom pods
1 stick cinnamon
5-6 allspice berries
1-2 star anise
1/2 lemon
4 cups (1 liter) water

For the cakes:
3 tablespoons (40gr) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (100gr) sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup (190ml) heavy cream
1 cup ground almonds (blanched or skin on - your preference)
1/4 cup (40gr) sorghum flour (or use 1/4 cup all purpose flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Prepare the pears:
Place the pears, spices, lemon and water in tall saucepan and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Lower the heat and let them simmerfor 15-20 minutes or until the pears are just soft (poke with a toothpick to check).
Remove from the water using a slotted spoon and allow to cool on paper towel or baking rack.

Prepare the cakes:
Preheat the oven to 350F and position a rack in the middle.
Slightly butter or spray 6 ramekins and place them on a baking sheet. Set aside.
In the bowl if an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffly (about 3 minutes). Add the eggs, one a time and beat well in between each addition. Reduce the speed to low and add the vanilla, heavy cream, almonds, flour and baking powder and beat until incorporated. Fill each ramekins about 1/3 full with the batter and place a poached pear in the center.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Happy National Bundt Day x2!

Double post day!  It is Martha Stewart Cupcake posting day for November and National Bundt Day!  The cupcake post will be up soon.

Mary, the woman behind The Food Librarian, one of the blogs I read regularly, is celebrating National Bundt Day by making 30 Bundts in 30 Days. Today is National Bundt Day and I want to help her celebrate! Mary has an exceptional dedication to the bundt. This is actually the second time she has made 30 bundts in 30 days and hers are always so beautiful. Her photography is wonderful too. We have never met, but she seems like such a sweet, kind person from the way she writes. You should check out her blog.

Instead of 30 bundts, I made 2. One is actually one that I got from Mary's blog -- The Blueberry Lemon Bundt. This cake was amazing. Other than adding a glaze of powdered sugar and lemon juice, I left it as written and it got rave reviews. I made it for my first education committee meeting this year and I think it helped the meeting run really smoothly. I always know I can turn to Mary, the queen of bundts, when I need something fantastic. The recipe can be found here.

The other bundt I made is from the always fabulous Dorie Greenspan. So glad that two fabulous women could provide me with recipes for two fantastic bundts. This cake doesn't look like much, but it is delicious! It is the Brown Sugar Bundt Cake from Baking from My Home to Yours. Inside the cake there are pears and raisins (which I skipped). I used farmer's market pears and their flavor really complimented the brown sugar and gave something special to the cake. Dorie says this cake is best the day after it is made, so I made it on Thursday night for Shabbat dinner on Friday. I also made it parve, and it was still delicious which, in my mind, is the sign of a great cake. You can find the recipe here.

Happy National Bundt Day and Congratulations to Mary!

And The Missing Ingredient Is...

As avid readers of the blog will know, in December we made a fabulous Dorie Greenspan French pear tart with almond cream. It was so good that we quickly dubbed it one of the best things we've ever made, and I stand by that assessment. What could be better than pears and almonds? How about pears, almonds...and chocolate?

I found a UK measurements-friendly recipe at a blog called Tasty Diaries, and though the author calls it a fondant it bears no relation to that nasty crap people use to decorate wedding cakes. The chocolate feels like it's melting in your mouth and the flavors blend beautifully with each other. I had to crush the almonds by hand and they weren't very well ground but I actually liked it that way, since it made the texture more interesting. Just a warning: do NOT overbake this. It says in the recipe that the crust will be ultra-thin - it MEANS ultra-thin, in fact, hardly there at all! I ended up leaving it in too long and it got a little burnt on the bottom and around the edges. This was problematic, though not as problematic as when my friend Pam accidentally knocked it off the table and it landed face-down on the floor. Luckily, we're not that discriminating, and she, our friend Nikhita and I picked it up quickly and ate the entire thing in half an hour. Yummmm.

Oh and P.S. The best thing about this cake? It has no flour so it's kosher for Passover, and it doesn't even taste like it's kosher for Passover!

To-die-for 15 min chocolate, almond and pear fondant

Ingredients:

200 g 70% cocoa good quality dark chocolate

150 g lightly salted butter

4 eggs (4 whites, 1 yolk)

80 g ground almonds

100 g sugar

3 ripe pears

This recipe works perfectly with my square 25 x 25 cm loose base non-stick cake pan. If you don’t have a loose base dish, use a silicone one instead for easier demoulding, or cover the bottom of your dish with a piece of greaseproof paper cut to size. Blogger's note: I used a round tin, worked very well.

Preheat the oven to 175 degree C

Cut the chocolate and butter into chunks and melt together in the microwave in a medium size mixing bowl. With my 850kW microwave, it takes 90 sec. Start with a 1 min session, mix well, and do another 30s. After that stir any unmelted chocolate chunks into the melted mixture, using the residual heat to finish the job. If you don’t have a microwave, place the chocolate and butter into a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water and stir regularly. Take out of the heat as soon as the ingredients have melted.

In a second bowl, lightly beat the egg whites and sugar with a fork until the mixture looks homogenous, for about 20 sec. Do not use an electric mixer for this, you don’t want the whites to bubble more than with a quick beating. This cake is not supposed to rise or be fluffy.

Add the almonds to the chocolate mixture and stir well. Dip your finger into the mixture, it should be just warm, i.e. you should not have any sensation of heat. If you do, wait a bit before adding the egg yolk otherwise it may curd. Add the egg yolk and stir energetically.

Pour the egg white mixture into the chocolate one and stir until reaching a homogenous batter.

Butter your cake dish and pour the batter into it.

Peel, quarter and core the pears, and cut into segments about 3 mm thick. Press the segments into the batter following a pretty pattern (concentric circles for a round mould, or neat, parallel lines for a square one) and leaving the tops of the segments visible. Make sure you place them very close to each other - leaving about 1 cm between each slice. You may not use up all the pears, I tend to fill my dish with 2 1/2 pears.

Bake for 35 minutes. Don’t worry if the cake feels a bit soft and creamy under its ultra thin crust, it will set when cooling down. Wait until the cake is nearly cold for demoulding it unless you have a loose base dish.

Eat the fondant warm or cold. The slices will be easier to cut once it is cold, but I usually can’t wait, even if it is much messier!

What Happens When You Listen to Dorie...

So, by now you know of how much we love Dorie.  That's no secret to anyone on this blog.  And one thing that we have learned is that Dorie is generally right on in the little hints and tips that she gives about her recipes.  And, since we know that, this tart should have been the first thing we made.  She says that this is her husband's all time favorite recipe, and that means something.  And we can see why.  This tart was delicious.  Even in the face of stiff competition from smores, the chocolate caramel crunch tart and other assorted goodies, this tart was the hands down favorite of the evening, and surprisingly easy to make.

First, we poached the pears.  Poaching pears sounds fancy, but it is really easy.  Take some water, lemon juice and sugar and put them in a pot with three peeled pears and bring to a boil.  Let them simmer until they are soft (but not mushy) and then, viola -- poached pears!  Dorie also says that you can use canned pears, but the poached pears bring the tart to a whole different level.  Also, the poaching liquid is so good, I actually drank it from a glass.

The rest of the tart is really easy to make.  Our almond cream was kind of grainy, but once it was baked, you could not tell at all.  The combination of the almonds, pear and the sweet dough is perfect.  Normally, I would not pick fruit over chocolate, but even with chocolate on the table, I wanted to go back for more of this tart.

Here is the recipe, which you can find on Dorie's blog:

FRENCH PEAR TART

Adapted from BAKING FROM MY HOME TO YOURS (but taken from my manuscript, so the wording may be a little different from the way it appears in the book)

Makes 6 servings

For the pears:

6 canned pear halves OR 3 medium pears, firm but ripe

1 lemon

4 cups water, optional

1 1/4 cups sugar, optional

For the almond cream:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

2/3 cup sugar

3/4 cup ground blanched almonds

2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1 large egg

2 teaspoons dark rum or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 partially-baked 9-inch tart shell, made with Sweet Tart Dough (see below), at room temperature

Confectioners' sugar for dusting, or apple jelly for glazing

Getting ready:  If you are using canned pears, you have nothing to do now.  If you are using fresh pears but do not wish to poach them, you have nothing to do now.  If you are using fresh pears and want to poach them, peel them and leave them whole.  Bring the 4 cups water, the 1 1/4 cups sugar and the juice of the lemon to a boil in a saucepan just large enough to hold the pears.  Add the pears to the boiling syrup, lower the heat so the syrup simmers and gently poach the pears until they are tender when pierced with a knife, about 15 minutes.  Cool the pears to room temperature in the syrup. 

To make the almond cream:  Put the butter and sugar in the workbowl of a food processor and process until the mixture is smooth and satiny.  Add the ground almonds and continue to process until well blended.  Add the flour and cornstarch, process, and then add the egg.  Process for about 15 seconds more, or until the almond cream is homogeneous.  Add the rum or vanilla and process just to blend.  If you prefer, you can make the cream in a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or in a bowl with a rubber spatula.  In either case, the ingredients are added in the same order.  Scrape the almond cream into a container and either use it immediately or refrigerate it until firm, about 2 hours.

Getting ready to bake:  Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Have a lined baking sheet at the ready.  If you are using fresh (unpoached) pears, peel them now.  If you are using poached or unpoached pears, cut them in half from blossom to stem and core them; rub the unpoached pears with lemon juice.  Whatever pears you have, make sure to pat them dry - really dry - so that their liquid won't keep the almond cream from baking. 

Fill the baked crust with the almond cream, spreading it even with an offset metal icing spatula.  Thinly slice each pear half crosswise, lift each half on a spatula, press down on the pear to fan it slightly and place it, wide-end toward the edge of the crust, over the almond cream.  The halves will form spokes.

Put the crust on the lined baking sheet, slide the sheet into the oven and bake the tart 50 to 60 minutes, or until the almond cream puffs up around the pears and browns.  Transfer the tart to a rack to cool to just warm or to room temperature before unmolding. 

Right before serving, dust the tart with confectioners' sugar.  If you prefer, prepare a glaze by bringing about 1/4 cup apple jelly and1/2 teaspoon water to the boil.  Brush the glaze over the surface of the tart.  

Serving:  This tart goes very well with aromatic tea.

Storing:  If it's convenient for you, you can make the almond cream up to 2 days ahead and keep it closely covered in the refrigerator, or you can wrap it airtight and freeze it for up to 2 months; defrost before using.  You can also poach the pears up to 1 day ahead.  However, once you've baked the tart, you should be prepared to enjoy it that same day.

Playing around:  The almond cream is a great companion for a variety of fruits.  It's as good with summer fruits, like apricots or peaches, as it is with autumn's apples.  

SWEET TART DOUGH (Adapted from BAKING FROM MY HOME TO YOURS, but taken from my manuscript, so the wording may be a little different from the way it appears in the book)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (4 1/2 ounces) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 large egg yolk

To make the dough:  Put the flour, confectioners' sugar and salt in the workbowl of a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine.  Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is cut in coarsely - you'll have pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pea-size pieces and that's just fine.  Stir the egg, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition.  When the egg is in, process in long pulses - about 10 seconds each - until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds.  Just before your reaches this clumpy stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change - heads up.  Turn the dough out onto a work surface.

Very lightly and sparingly - make that very, very lightly and sparingly - knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.

If you want to press the dough into a tart pan, now is the time to do it. 

If you want to chill the dough and roll it out later (doable, but fussier than pressing), gather the dough into a ball (you might have to use a little more pressure than you used to mix in dry bits, because you do want the ball to be just this side of cohesive), flatten it into a disk, wrap it well and chill it for at least 2 hours or for up to 1 day.

To make a press-in crust:  Butter the tart pan and press the dough evenly along the bottom and up the sides of the pan.  Don't be stingy - you want a crust with a little heft because you want to be able to both taste and feel it.  Also, don't be too heavy-handed - you want to press the crust in so that the pieces cling to one another and knit together when baked, but you don't want to press so hard that the crust loses its crumbly shortbreadish texture.  Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking. 

To make a rolled-out crust:  This dough is very soft - a combination of a substantial amount of butter and the use of confectioners' sugar - so I find it is easier to roll it between wax paper or plastic wrap or, easiest of all, in a roll-out-your-dough slipcover.  If you use the slipcover, flour it lightly.  Roll the dough out evenly, turning the dough over frequently and lifting the wax paper or plastic wrap often, so that it doesn't roll into the dough and form creases.  If you've got time, slide the rolled out dough into the fridge to rest and firm for about 20 minutes before fitting the dough into the buttered tart pan.  Trim the excess dough even with the edge of the pan.  Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.

To partially bake the crust:  Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.  Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil tightly against the crust.  Bake the crust 25 minutes, then carefully remove the foil.  If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon.  Bake for another 3 to 5 minutes, then transfer the crust to a cooling rack; keep it in its pan.