Sweet Biscuits

This is not a biscuit. But it goes well with biscuits.

Short & sweet says it all!

Sweet Fruit Biscuits:

2 cups Flour

4 tsp Baking Powder

3/4 tsp Fine Salt

1/3 cup Sugar + extra for tops

6oz Sweet Butter(cold & cut into bits)

1 cup Cream+ extra for top

1/2 cup Fruit

• Preheat oven to 350 F.
• Mix together dries (and dried fruit if using).
• Cut in butter.
• Add cream, do not over mix.
• Add fruit, if dried, mix with dries, if fresh or frozen, toss it in last.
• Pat into square on a floured worktable, about 1/2 inch high.
• Cut into squares - you can freeze some on a sheet pan at this point (once frozen you can toss them into a zip bag and back in the freezer).
• To bake, brush with cream, sprinkle with sugar (fun sugar if you have) and bake until golden.

copyright, Modern Tea. Chef credit to Gabriell Rickard.

old cookbooks

The book automatically opens to page 261. Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts, 1974, purchased brand new, way back then. It went on a journey from my parents' kitchen in San Francisco to New Orleans, where it helped me make desserts for 300 people every week at a church across the street from where we lived on St. Charles near (believe it or not) Desire Street. It was 1983 and I didn't quite know that I was magically pregnant with my daughter.

Now, 26 years later we pull this book out for baking with almost 50 inner city teens who have nothing better to do in the Fillmore district. We are working up to selling them at the Farmer's Market this Saturday. They are actually spongecakes, not the true, brown butter madeleines made famous by Proust, but they are easy, you get to make that very fun fluffy egg spongy batter, and people still like them. We'll let the students choose which madeleine recipe will be the one we use.

It is amazing how life carries with it a chorus, repeating, echoing, reassuring in its familiarity. It can be that parachute pack as I jump out into a new adventure everyday.

Apricot Cros-tada!

Before we left for vacation, Greg & I pulled out Julia Child's cookbook, Baking with Julia, eager to bake with the season's first apricots. This is a great baking book, everything I've tried is friendly, accessible, creative and tasty.

Our experiment this time took her raspberry-fig crostata recipe into more of a south sea island experience, substituting unrefined coconut oil for the butter in the flavorful sesame-almond crust and filling it with a combination of apricots & apricot jam. You'll see my lattice is a "sun-ray" lattice - I chose to use a 12 inch tart pan (because I had so much fruit) and didn't want to weave an entire lattice over it. More fruit per bite, too.

Apricots so far have not been very flavorful due to the timing of our rains this year, but the small Blenheim's I've tasted this week have been delicious! It reminded me of this earlier attempt.

Here is the crust recipe...

Sesame Almond Dough

(enough for a 9 inch lattice topped tart)

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup blanched almonds or almond meal, lightly toasted & cooled

1/2 cup sesame seeds, lightly toasted & cooled

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups all purpose flour (whole wheat is ok too)

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp grated lemon zest

8 ounces cold unrefined coconut oil

Optional:

1 egg & 1 teaspoon water for egg wash

sugar(fancy sugar) for sprinkling on the crust before baking

a) whisk eggs & vanilla extract together and set aside

b)process almonds, sesamed seeds & a few Tablespoons sugar until all is fine, but not oily or pasty.

c)turn the almond mixture into the bowl of a mixer and add the remaining sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt & zest. Mix on low to combine ingredients.

d)keeping mixer on low, add the coconut oil and mix until it resembles fine crumbs, but it is ok if there are still bits of coconut oil peeking out. Add the egg mixture and mix only until dough is uniformly moist and forms curds about 15 seconds.

e) turn mixture out onto a smooth work surface, knead lightly to bring it all together and wrap and refrigerate while you assemble the filling (can stay in the fridge up to 2 days ahead).

Filling wise, I used 2/3 apricots and 1/3 apricot jam - you will want the consitency to be thick. Even though the crust is pretty sturdy, no need for things to juice out. You can also add a tablespoon or two of flour for other juicier fruit (like berries). Make sure you like the flavor and add lemon juice, cinnamon or nutmeg as enhancements.

Back to the crust, time to roll things out.

The crust here is more cookie-like than pie, but that means you can

forgive yourself when rolling it out and press it into the pan.

See? Don't worry, it will be aok.

Just roll it out as best you can and press it into the corners. For the sun ray top, reroll your dough onto wax paper, slice it into strips and pop it into the fridge for a bit if it is too soft to handle.

Or you can roll out the dough and use various cookie cutters for decorative shapes on top.

Now it is just a matter of filling the tart, topping it with your crust decorations. You can refrigerate here for another 1/2 hour if the dough seems very soft (it will bake better) but we just brushed ours with the egg wash, sprinkled it with sugar and put it into a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.

Next time, I'm going to see if I can make fig or jam bars (not rolled newtons) using this crust.