Tag Archives: baking

Persimmon Starfish Pie

Last week, I made a persimmon pie for Kelly’s Friendsgiving dinner. I used a store bought crust because it was getting late, then adapted an apple pie recipe. I, belatedly, realized that using a 9inch store bought pie crust isn’t enough to make a lattice, so I cut some stars out and ended up with a pie that looks a little like starfish climbing over persimmon rocks.

Persimmon Pie
Adapted from this apple pie recipe

2 9in pie crusts, one for the top and one for the bottom
6-8 Fuyu persimmons, peeled and sliced (or however many you need to fill the shell)
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 tbsp flour
1/8 cup water
1/8 cup rum (or sub with water)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2tsp all spice
1/2 tsp ginger

1. Preheat the oven to 425 F
2. Melt the butter in a pan, add flour to form a paste.
3. Add water, rum, sugar & spices, reduce temperature and simmer
4. Fill the bottom crust with persimmon slices, put on the top crust (lattice or what have you)
5. Slowly pour the butter-sugar mixture over it
6. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350 F. Bake another 30-40 minutes, until the crust is golden brown. (I like my persimmons to not be blobs of mush. If you like them mushy, cook a little longer)

Brandy (Rum?) Cream

I made this persimmon pudding and accompanying brandy cream earlier. Persimmon pudding is one of those elusive things I had and loved as a kid, but I don’t remember much about the version from my childhood. This recipe was okay, but the persimmon flavor wasn’t very strong. Next time I’ll try another version, or perhaps, instead of rasins, chopped bits of dried persimmon?

The accompanying brandy cream, however, was great. Except I used rum, due to a lack of brandy. I could see this on any strongly spiced cake or pie.

Rum Cream Sauce:
(adapted from here)

1 egg
1/2 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup confectioners sugar
pinch of salt
2 tsp rum
1 tsp vanilla *do another tsp of rum for stronger rum flavor
1 1/2 cup whipping cream

1. Beat the egg until fluffy, then beat in butter, sugar, salt, rum and vanilla.
2. Whip the whipping cream until stiff peaks form.
3. Fold the egg & butter mixture into the whipping cream.

Oops.

True to form, I’ve stopped updating.

In the last few weeks I’ve gone through:

6lbs of mushrooms courtesy of my brother. They were made into mushroom consomme, mushroom risotto and multiple batches of scrambled eggs.

20lbs of loquats courtesy of some farm up in Brentwood. 20lbs of loquats for $40?! I’m sold. I made jam out of them, but haven’t eaten it. Mostly I’ve just been eating them.

30lbs of cherries, from the farm across the street from the loquat one. I made cherry chocolate biscuits (Boulevard cookbook, delicious.), cherry ice cream (minus the chocolate), cherry brownies (tastes weird) and things like cherry compote. No pies or jams though.

Also delicious, though not in great quantities, were blueberry mochi waffles. Take this batter and put it in a waffle maker. I used heat setting 3 for 4 minutes.

Next up tonight are Oreo-reeces and salted caramel brownies.

I’ll post pictures sometime. Maybe.

Eclairs & Bacon Scones

I don’t have pictures since I lent my camera to a friend of a friend in need of video-recording capabilities…

But last night I made bacon and ham scones (both with swiss cheese) and eclairs. And damn they were delicious. Every single lump of fat and carbs.

For the scones, I followed the Peppered Pear and Goat Cheese Scone recipe from the book Savory Baking. I had to use a little more milk since swiss cheese is less spreadable than goat cheese, but it worked out well. Flakey and full of piggy goodness.

For the eclairs, I followed this recipe for the dough and this one for the pudding and the chocolate. But, a couple notes (mostly to myself, like most of this blog) —
1. Small eclairs are easier to make crispy, but use a proper pastry bag for piping.
2. That pudding recipe results in pudding that still tastes a bit like corn starch, find a new one
3. Straight pudding is too heavy, a mix of half half whipped cream and pudding is delicious
4. The chocolate glaze on that is very chocolatey, maybe a little too dark. Try adding some milk chocolate instead of all semi-sweet.

Clearly, it’s time for eclair science. Hopefully with pictures.

Also, the original recipe for the Peppered Pear and Goat Cheese Scones is pretty good. I mean, it’s so good I made scones twice in two days. And I usually hate scones.

Dinosaur Cookies

Over the last two nights Danielle and I have made some pretty awesome (at least to look at) cookies. Dinosaurs-who-eat-children cookies! It’s actually three dinosaur shaped sugar cookies glued together with icing. The center one has a hole cut in it to hold the contents of the dinosaur’s stomach. In this case, upon CH’s suggestion, sour patch kids — since everyone knows dinosaurs eat children! Roar!

Adapted from this guide.

Make some colored blobs of dough.

Carefully make a block of dough in stripes. Freeze it overnight.

Slice it into sheets. Then bake it.

Quickly, before the cookies cool and they get hard to cut, use a dinosaur cookie cutter on them. Also, a circle to cut out their stomachs. Carefully assemble them with royal icing. Two whole dino cookies + one with a cut out stomach in the middle

Fill their bellies with sourpatch kids.

Let them sit for 30 minutes to dry before standing them up. It might be helpful to flatten them gently since the dinosaurs probably aren’t perfectly flat but be careful not to break them.

Icebox cakes/Lazy people cakes

I made two icebox cakes this weekend — one was a thank you to a friend’s parents for taking care of my dog, the other was for my own (and my roommate’s) piggery.

Layers (alternating) of graham crackers, whipped cream, more graham crackers, chocolate pudding & repeat. Let sit for half a day or so (longer than that, it gets soggy) and eat! The picture above was after it had sat and was ready for eating. Below is a picture right after I assembled it. It then went in the fridge for a few hours.

Notes for next time: More whipped cream! The cake wasn’t bad, but a little dry this time. Also, eat it right away since it’s way better when the graham crackers haven’t completely turned to mush. Yinmeng says it’s similar to a giant s’more.

raccoon*

adventures of a cosmic procyonid