Today's dessert : Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie

I first made a Strawberry and Rhubarb Pie around 3 or so years ago.  I hadn't heard of the combination prior to this and it was due to the glowing recommendations of my friends from across the pond (USA & Canada, that is) that I tried it out.

Well, since then it has become a yearly favourite.  When Ruby is at her peak (and you never know, we may even get two of them this year as RubyTwo is almost as big as her Mum now) we find a punnet of the last few English strawberries and get to it.

Hubby found one such punnet in the supermarket the other day (on special offer, so even better!) and I set to with pastry and egg wash, this morning.

The flavour from Ruby's rhubarb and gorgeous English strawberries is quite sublime, however there has been a leetle problem in the past, in that the fruit generated far too much juice.  This time, I combined a couple of spoonfuls of cornflour with the fruit and hey presto - problem solved.

I am pretty confident that this year's pie is by far the best I've ever made.  The recipe is available from http://jennyeatwellsrhubarbginger.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/strawberry-rhubarb-pie-why-havent-i.html and I have updated it to include a couple of new processes that ensure a crisp bottom layer of pastry.

Ruby in her second year - she's 6ft tall now!

If you have rhubarb growing - or know someone who does, do make this pie.  It really is something very special.
 

Strawberry & Raspberry Amaretto Gateau for the Jubilee Weekend

For ages, the Jubilee weekend was just something crepuscular and ephemeral that was likely to happen around us, but not really involve us, here at Eatwell Towers.  Right up until little more than a week beforehand, when I found myself being sucked in to the holiday vibe that was playing around the whole event.

It's not that I'm anti-royal (having worked for Historic Royal Palaces Agency for nearly ten years, that's highly unlikely), or have any antipathy towards the Jubilee in a Morrisey kind of way, it's just that it felt rather as though it was all happening in London and so didn't really affect us here in Dorset.

Sponge cakes look promising!

As the weekend got closer, I began to twig on to the fact that there was going to be quite a lot (for "quite a lot", read "huge amounts") of coverage on the t.v. which would probably be worth watching simply from a historical "I saw that" point of view.

I had, of course, known about the activity surrounding the Jubilee that the blogging world was devoting to the cause - but that wasn't anything new.  After all, there only has to be a "Green Pea Day" and out come all the blogs detailing green pea recipes, (mine amongst them, very often!) so it was only to be expected that there would be heaps of baking blogs going bonkers with cupcakes in the shape of corgis, crowns and all things royal.

Yes, very promising. Fingers crossed they cut okay!

My inner resistance towards being a sheep (apologies to everyone who feels they may fall into the sheepy category) was what was stopping me from scheduling in a big old Jubilee High Tea, with Charles & Camilla's favourite scones, Kate & Wills' favourite chocolate biscuit cake et al - and blogging about it.  So because of this inner battle of mine, this is why I wound up making an almost last minute whizz bang spiffingly enormous creamy and alcoholic gateau.  Yes, you'll find me at the back of the flock following on apologetically.

Well, in my own defence, it just didn't seem right to be a) on a Sunday, b) in June, c) in the televisual presence of royalty and d) following on from Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, to have anything else except an enormous confection of cake, summer berries and a dash of alcohol.

Royals to one side for a moment, I was jolly glad I did - as the Gateau was absolutely To.Die.For.

I had said in my meal planning post for that week, that I was musing upon making a fruit sponge of some sort, so the thought was in my head even then.  However, it grew from a simple summer fruit sponge as time went along.  It's probably just as well the Jubilee happened when it did, before I'd had a chance to consider coating the lot in chocolate or something equally damaging to our waistlines.  I think it probably did enough damage as it was!

After adding the syrup - just look at the lovely texture!

The sponge was a simple "bung it all in together, whisk it up, put it in sandwich tins, bake it" sponge cake.  However, it was when hubby mentioned a gateau and I hit upon the idea of cutting each cake into two layers, that the rot set in.

I had a punnet of strawberries and a punnet of raspberries that we'd picked up as having been marked down in price, so I had the fruit there - and I'd bought a carton of double cream just because I anticipated requiring it for the fruit.

Raspberry layer in place

Now fruit and cream would be good - very good - in between each layer, but I wanted to make this gateau more gateau-like - sumptuous, delicious and naughty.  Hubby reminded me that we had a bottle of Amaretto liqueur in the cupboard and so the idea of the Amaretto syrup was born.  It was a simple matter to melt some sugar in water and add 50ml or so of Amaretto to it - then let it cool as the cakes cooled.  Once everything was cool, I brushed the syrup onto each layer of cake and let it soak in.

After that, it was just slather on the cream, add the sliced fruits and layer it up.  Do a simple little decoration on top, add a little icing sugar and ta daaa!  The Jubilee Gateau was born.

Hand me a fork and make it snappy!

Even though I knew the gateau was four layers tall, when hubby brought the slices through for dessert it still surprised me how enormous the whole thing was.  In truth, however, it was no more than a Victoria Sponge cake with extra cream and fruit instead of jam (and a hit of Amaretto, of course).  So simple to produce - but so very effective and so very, very tasty.

STRAWBERRY & RASPBERRY AMARETTO GATEAU   (makes 6-10 slices)

Ingredients :

200g caster sugar
200g softened butter
4 beaten eggs
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 drops vanilla essence
85g caster sugar (for the syrup)
2 tbsp cold water
50ml Amaretto liqueur
300ml double cream
2 tbsp icing sugar
strawberries & raspberries to fill.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 190degC/375degF/Gas5.  Prepare two sandwich tins by lining with a circle of baking parchment.  I included the sides of my tins in the lining, but only because they're particularly old tins - nice shiny new ones won't need this.

2.  In a large bowl (I used our Kenwood Chef) place the 200g of caster sugar, the softened butter, the eggs, the flour, baking powder and vanilla essence.  Starting slowly (so as to keep the flour in the bowl), begin to whisk the ingredients together - or beat them together, if you're particularly sprightly and are doing it by hand.  Continue to mix until you have a soft, smooth texture whereupon you can divide the mixture equally between the two tins and smooth off the top surface.

3.  Put the two tins together on the one shelf if possible, and bake for some 20 minutes or until risen, golden and the cake springs back when lightly depressed in the centre.

4.  Remove the cakes from the tins and place onto a cooling rack until perfectly cool.

5.  In the meantime, you can get on and make the Amaretto syrup.  So take a small saucepan and place the 85g of caster sugar, the water and liqueur into it.  Mix them together and heat gently until the sugar has all dissolved.  Leave to cool.

6.  To assemble the gateau, take each cake and very carefully with a sharp bread knife cut through to create two layers from each cake.  Lay each layer out separately.

7.  Taking the syrup, brush onto each cake layer, distributing the syrup equally amongst the layers until it has all gone.

8.  Whip the cream with the icing sugar until it reaches soft peaks - be careful not to take it beyond this stage.

9.  Here on in, it is a simple matter of coating each layer with cream and adding sliced strawberries and the raspberries - remembering to save a few for decoration.  I would recommend that you place the first layer onto the presentation cake plate and build the cake from there, adding cream and fruit, then a layer of cake, then cream and fruit until you reach the last layer.

10.  Simply arrange the saved fruit attractively, sprinkle over a little icing sugar snow - and serve.

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Strawberry & Rhubarb Tipsy Jelly

The weather, having taken a turn for the summery, was responsible for turning my thoughts away from things like Rhubarb Cobbler towards cooler, more refreshing desserts.

Now I’ve not had a great deal of success in the last few years where jelly is concerned – especially jellies made with sheet gelatine.  So when I began to consider rhubarb jelly, you can understand why I opted for a good old block of strawberry jelly – which is what gave me the idea of involving strawberries.

I’m not sure what gave me the idea of using up some of the dessert wine we had left over, other than an innate desire to use up leftovers.

Hence, the Strawberry & Rhubarb Tipsy Jelly was born – and boy, was it good.

I took three good sized sticks of rhubarb and cut them into small chunks, which I put into a pan with 100ml of water and a couple of tablespoonfuls of caster sugar.  I stewed the rhubarb until it was just softened, but still holding its shape.

I then broke up the jelly into the bottom of a measuring jug and poured the rhubarb through a sieve onto the jelly.  The solids, I put into a bowl for use later.

I then made up the liquid to 300ml by adding the dessert wine, then poured it back into the pan to warm through and properly melt the jelly.  I suspect some of the alcohol evaporated during this procedure too – which was good, as it was going to feed some children!

Once the jelly cubes had dissolved, I returned the mixture back to the measuring jug and added the reserved rhubarb solids, then made up the quantity to 600ml with cold water.

I then quickly quartered some strawberries into the jelly mould and added the rhubarb jelly liquid.  Once it had cooled a little, it went into the fridge to set.

I can’t recommend this recipe enough, for a hot day that needs a light and refreshing dessert.  Just perfect!

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Rhubarb & Strawberry Pie - revisited

One of our favourite fruits, is rhubarb.  I don't think it would take Einstein to work that out - especially if you could see our garden right now.

Ruby (the rhubarb plant) has been divided and so we now have Ruby 2 in an adjacent planter - and Ruby 3 (who fell off when the division was happening) is in a pot, close by to her Mum so that she can gain support from the proximity.  Yes, we're daft - you mean you hadn't realised that before now?

Ruby 2 had a bit of a shaky start, but is now looking promising and is gaining in stature daily.  I'm sure it won't be long before she's as full of vim and vigour as her Mum is.  By which time, we'll be incapable of seeing the rest of the garden, past them.

All of which means, of course, that you'll be seeing plenty of rhubarb recipes turning up!

At the end of last rhubarb season, I was convinced to make a Rhubarb & Strawberry Pie by my friends in the USA, who all declared I hadn't tasted pie until I'd tasted one of those.  Of course, they were right - and the Rhubarb & Strawberry Pie has been on the list to make just as soon as Ruby was back in full production.

In the interests of being able to find a Jack Russell whenever one ventures out of bed and into the garden, we took our first crop from Ruby and - of course - made the pie.

Well, let's just say it has not lost any of its allure in the meantime.

Simply crammed with fruit

The smell of the raw rhubarb - just minutes after being cropped - and the cut strawberries was enough to get the saliva glands jumping.  However, once the pie saw some heat in the oven, the aromas were just out of this world.

Taking my own advice, I piled the pie dish as high as I could get it with fruit.  This made for a gloriously craggy and eccentric looking pie - but one which spoke of sheer indulgence where the degree of fruit inside was concerned.  This was no ordinary pie (lowercase).  This was a PIE! 

Eating this pie is just sheer pleasure.  All else is forgotten - including the power of speech - whilst the flavours dance across your tongue and the sweet/tart thing goes on all over your taste buds.  You can't eat a piece of this pie quickly - it demands cogitative consumption in order to fully appreciate the intensity of flavour, the deliciousness of the juice and the juxtaposition of the soft fruit -v- the crumbly pastry.

Oh, my goodness.  Come on people, put a rhubarb & strawberry pie on your "to do" list for dessert, now!

Link to original recipe is here.
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Lemon shortcake & Strawberry Stacks - or "how to impress your 12 yr old son"

To give credit where credit is undoubtedly due, I found this undeniably gorgeous recipe on the Sweet Hart's Cakes & Bakes blog.  It caught my eye as strawberries unfailingly do and looked simple enough that even a dunderhead like me could achieve it.

Having made the lovely Almond & Elderflower Cookies last week with resounding success, I was filled with confidence as to the biscuit making and the rest just appeared to be a matter of assemblage as opposed to cooking.

The cookie dough came together without any difficulty, however I have to say that I much prefer last week's approach to cutting out cookies (roll into a sausage, wrap in cling film, refrigerate and slice rounds from it) than this week's.  This one was the fairly classic way of rolling out the dough and cutting out rounds, then re-rolling to cut out the remainder, until you've no dough left.  I think this way runs the risk of over-handling the dough through repeated rollings, however having said that, my biscuits seemed none the worse for their repeated rollings!  I'll definitely go for the sausage approach in future though, as it is by far and away the easiest - and I'm all for easy!

I had no difficulty making the dough stretch to 9 biscuits and even had a little bit left over!

The biscuits took a cup of tea and a daydream to cook (or 15-20 minutes) and let go of the parchment with no argument.   In fact, they were very well behaved - especially considering how thin I had made them.

Assembly in progress!

I left the assembly of the stacks until after we'd had our main course, just in case the cream decided to make the biscuits soggy.  It was a relatively simple job to build the stacks.  I took Paula's advice in her blog about not piping the cream and have to say that it made the stacks appear to be ready to burst with cream peeping out from in between the strawberries, in luscious promise.

Four halves per layer - and a biccie

After a bit of a debate as to whether to bother with the coulis, I'm so glad I did.  I went with the strawberry coulis, instead of raspberry, as Paula had.  For all that I had made a sugar-free coulis (with half an eye to hubby's diabetes) it provided the delicious moisture that balanced the cream and brought the whole thing together.

Nearly there!

I was really chuffed with how they looked.  In fact, so pleased was I that I demanded to be there when Son & heir had his delivered, just so that I could see his face.  *chuckle*

Doesn't that coulis look mouthwatering?

So there we are - it's strawberry time, so if you don't make these stacks, you're seriously missing out on a fabulous dessert!

The recipe can be had from SweetHart's Cakes and Bakes if you go here and the original recipe is on the BBC's website here.

Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie - why haven't I made this before now?

I'm posting about this marvellous pie now, out of sequence, owing to the clamour that is going on via Twitter, for the recipe.  :)

It really was a fabulous pie - and although I've never been to America, nor had an American pie, it seemed to answer the description (and match the photographs) of a good deep-filled American pie.

I've been asked on Facebook (where I am "Jenny Davies" if anyone wants to find me) what motivated the pie.  It's a good question, because it's not a combination of fruits that we have really considered using, here in the U.K.  All of which gives you a clue about where the inspiration came from.  I had done a blog posting involving rhubarb, which set off a chain of reactions from those friends in the USA, who were all saying "Oh, I love rhubarb, but in a strawberry & rhubarb pie" - so, inevitably, I asked what was so special about this pie.  The answer was "it's not something that's easy to express, but you'll know once you've had one".  So, of course, I promised myself that once strawberries were in season and £1 a punnet (they were £2.50 a punnet at the time), I'd indulge.

All done and ready for baking

That time is now, and the pie has been made.  I can confirm that the sweetness of the strawberries offsets the tartness of the rhubarb and the two flavours go so well together (with the aid of a little lemon zest, lemon juice and cinnamon), that the pie is a "mmmnnnn..." and "ooooh.." and "mmhmmnff...." of pleasure, experience.  The rhubarb stays in it's pieces and doesn't disintegrate to mush and the strawberries are very definitely strawberries, having resisted the urge to disintegrate to their own class of mush, also.  The three tablespoons of sugar was very definitely enough to sweeten the rhubarb and enhance the strawberries.

Just out of the oven - see the juice escaping from the top?

The interesting thing is, that because you don't part-bake the base of the pie (it's an "under and over" type of crust) and you don't cook the fruit prior to adding it to the pie, the bottom crust has a chance to cook whilst the strawberries & rhubarb are still thinking about releasing their juice.  By the time they do release that lovely juice, the bottom crust is cooked.  Magic.  Nobody likes a pie with a soggy bottom.


A quick word about pastry.  Because I don't have a lot of energy in my own personal tank and I was also cooking a shoulder of pork, I opted for shop-bought frozen shortcrust pastry in this instance.  However, there's no reason why you should do this if you don't want to.  By all means make your own shortcrust pastry - you'll need enough to cover the base of the pie dish and provide a top for your pie.

You want a spoon, don't you - go on, admit it.

Oh, and another quick word about quantities.  I had five 9 inch long sticks of rhubarb and a punnet of strawberries - and the lot went in.  I cut the rhubarb into pieces of around a centimeter or half an inch long and the largest of the strawberries I sliced in half.  I piled the fruit into the pie dish until I had a mini-mountain going on - and so long as you've got enough pastry to fit over the top, I see no reason not to.  After all, you won't get a deep-filled pie, unless you heap the goodies in!

11.09.13 : Edited to tell you about some changes I've made to the recipe.

The first is that I have been to part-baking the bottom layer of pastry.  Yes, it takes a little bit longer, but it does ensure that the bottom of your pie stays crisply baked.

I have also, once part-baked, brushed a light coating of egg yolk (the same egg wash as you use for the top) onto the bottom layer of pastry while it is still hot.  This sets and renders the lower pastry juice-proof.

Because of the quantity of juice that this pie delivers, I experimented with various remedies.  The one which worked the best - and which I shall adopt henceforth - is to toss the fruit in a spoonful or two of cornflour.  As the fruit cooks and releases its juice the juice mixes with the cornflour, which when heated then thickens.  This serves to stop your pie from becoming too wet - and ultimately keeps your lovely crisp pastry from becoming all soggy.  It works like a charm and you don't notice the cornflour at all.  Perfect!

These changes have been reflected in the updated recipe below.


STRAWBERRY & RHUBARB PIE : feeds 4-5

Ingredients :

Pack of frozen shortcrust pastry (I used the ready-rolled rounds)
4-5 sticks of rhubarb (or as much as you can cram in), cut into 1cm pieces
a punnet of strawberries, hulled and any big ones sliced in half
3 tbsp granulated sugar
1-2 tbsp cornflour
half a tsp of cinnamon
half a lemon, zested and juiced
1 egg yolk
a tsp of granulated sugar as decoration.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 180deg C (fan). 

2.  Take one of the rounds of ready-made pastry and, if necessary, roll it out to fit the pie dish.  Place it in the dish and leave the excess flopping over the edge which will ensure that the pastry won't shrink back from the edges of the pie dish.

3.  Place a layer of greaseproof paper or baking parchment on top of the pastry and fill with baking beans.  Bake in the centre of the oven for 15 minutes.

4.  While the pastry bakes, place the two fruits, sugar (except the tsp for decoration), cornflour, cinnamon, lemon zest and juice into a bowl and mix to combine.

5.  As soon as you have removed the pastry from the oven, remove the paper and the baking beans and set them aside somewhere safe to cool.  Brush a light coating of the egg yolk onto the pastry while it is still hot.

6.  Pile the fruit into the be-pastried pie dish and arrange into a neat mountain.

7.  Brush egg yolk around the pastry edge.

8.  Take the second round of pastry and roll out (if necessary) to ensure it is big enough to fit over the fruit so that the top and bottom edges meet and cut a small cross into the centre of the round.  Place on top of the pie and very gently make sure the edges meet.

9.  Using a small sharp knife tease out the cross in the centre, to create a hole for steam to escape.  Then press the tip of the knife into the pastry all around the edge, forming a decorative pattern that serves to seal the edges of the pie.

10.  Taking a sharp knife, trim the excess pastry away.

11.  I always place my pie onto a foil covered baking sheet, just in case the juice decides to overflow whilst cooking.  It's easier to throw away some silver foil, than clean your oven!


12.  Brush the top of your pie with the remainder of the egg yolk to glaze and add the teaspoon of sugar, sprinkled over, to make it look yummy.  Bake for around 25 minutes, then turn to ensure an even bake.  Continue baking for another 15 minutes or until the pastry is crisp and evenly golden.

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