Junglefrog Cooking » pie

Lemon Meringue pie

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:00:22 +0000

Lemon meringue pie

Last week I was out for dinner with my friend Hermin and we got to eat at a restaurant called “Entrecote et les dames”. Now the funny thing is that this is a restaurant were you can only get two dishes. I guess it will come as no surprise that one of those dishes is entrecote. The other being fish; if you really cannot eat meat. The concept is fairly simple; you choose fish or meat and that’s it. Starter was a salad. Again delicious in it’s total simplicity (saladleaves with dressing and walnuts. Delicious!) and then you get served the entrecote. Initially we were a little shocked at the small piece of meat on our plate, but as it turns out they do that on purpose to prevent the meat going cold. The serve it in parts. Once you finish part 1, you get part 2. And since they have all the time to perfect their meat… it was absolutely delicious. As were the fries that went along with it.

Now we also had a quick peak at the dessert card and both felt like having a dessert. Hermin picked the chocolate mousse and on recommendation of the waitress I picked the lemon meringue pie… And o my god, that was soooo incredibly good that we were both tempted to have a second serving (my friend had some of my pie wishing she had taken the same) We didn’t go for the second serving since we had had enough to eat already and also discarded the idea to take one home in a doggy bag… Instead I promised her I would try and recreate the dish to the best of my ability.

I also had some ready made dough in my fridge which I needed to use so this weekend was the perfect time to try and make the lemon meringue. Our friends in Belgium had been kind enough to get us three packages of ready made, rolled out dough of the kind that we cannot get here (or I haven’t been able to find it) and while my search was mostly for puff pastry in a larger piece she got me two other kinds as well. Crumble dough was the one I picked for the meringue.

Since I didn’t have to worry about making the dough I could concentrate my efforts on finding a good recipe for the filling. Obviously there are many lemon fillings to be found, but I wanted the one closest to our dessert at the restaurant. Basically the filling was very strong in lemon flavor so a lemon curd type of filling would do the trick. To counterbalance the sour taste of the curd it was topped with a meringue and then quickly baked in the oven to get a brown color on the meringue.

LEMON MERINGUE PIE (for one large pie or several smaller ones)

Lemon filling

6 eggs
100 gr butter
Juice of 4 lemons
Zest of 2 lemons
170 gr sugar

Meringue

4 eggwhites
110 gr fine sugar

Since I already had the dough I didn’t make that but you can use any recipe of your own that would be for a sweet pie. Heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Butter the form well and dust with icing sugar. Tap on the form to remove any excess sugar. Put the dough into your form, add a piece of baking paper and some form of weights. I always use dried beans for baking blind, but rice or something else would work too. Bake for about 10 minutes, check how it is doing and continue baking if necessary. Mine took about 20 minutes (but then my oven has been known to need longer then most) at which point I removed the baking paper and beans and continued to bake for another 5-8 minutes or until golden brown.

For the lemon filling

Mix the eggs, butter, sugar, lemonjuice and zest in a heatproof bowl. Place the bowl above a pan with softly boiling water, making sure the bowl does not touch the water (au bain marie). Keep stirring while the mixture heats up (roughly 10 minutes) It needs to become thick and creamy. Ad the filling to the bottom and put in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Meringue

Beat the eggwhite in a clean and fatfree bowl till it forms soft peaks. Add the sugar spoon for spoon. The eggwhites are ready when all the sugar is dissolved and you have a shiny mass of eggwhite. Spoon the eggwhite on top of your lemon filling and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until you have brown peaks. Remove and cool before eating.

Patisserie lesson 3

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:33:48 +0000

Tropical fruit mousse pie

You had to wait for a while but here… finally… can you see the result of our combined efforts in producing the delicious passionfruitmousse (which turned out to be tropical mixture fruit instead but that’s a minor detail) pie… Last sunday we had our third lesson with Carle and as it turned out the fruits of our labours were plentiful indeed. I think we supplied half the neighbourhood with cake.. (Which is not entirely true, but one cake went to Tom’s parents, one cake went to my parents and one cake was brought over to Tom’s work. And then we kept the macarons ourselves ofcourse… Yes, we made macarons!! But that is for an entirely different post… Soon to come! (keeping up the suspense!)

So what did we make? We started of by finished the above masterpiece that is a combination of the joconde and tulip batter we made in lesson one, the mousse we made in lesson two and the topping that we made this lesson. I didn’t want to cut this specimen as it would be going to my folks, but still I can assure you that it was DELICIOUS!!

Making the ‘mirror’ on top of the cake is not very difficult. As for the flavor that you use; we used the same fruit as the mousse but you could use a different flavor, as long as it complements the mousse and is not too different either in color or taste.

This what you need for three cakes:

80 gr fruit puree

80 gr water

80 gr sugar

2,5 leaves of gelatine, soaked in water for 5 minutes prior to dissolving

Heat half of the water with the sugar and dissolve the soaked gelatine in this mixture. Add this to the fruitmixture. Stir softly making sure not to form airbubbles. Add the remainder of the water and make sure it is at least as cool as roomtemperature or a little colder. As long as the gelatine is not setting yet.

Using a spoon you can then pour it over the cakes. The cooled cakes will have a bit of a dent in the middle so more of the jelly will go in there, but just keep going until you have a smooth and even surface. Put this in the refrigerator until firm.

We started with coffee and a piece of the lemonpie that we made the week before too. And that too was so delicious and the sourness in the lemon made it quite fresh as well. I am definitely going to making that one again too!

Coffee with lemon pie

We made chocolate sorbet icecream (sooo good!) and we practiced a lot with how to apply icing in different shapes and forms. I did not take too many photos of that as I was sort of covered in sugar and buttercream by that time and didn’t really want to put that all over my camera, so I just have this one shot of Tom’s practice plate..

Tom practicing icing techniques

Next week will be all about sugar, chocolate and marzipan….

Plum & almond crumble slice

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:42 +0000

Plum and almond crumble

Finally…a day for doing “nothing” which for me tends to translate in being able to bake and cook. I still had some plums that I urgently needed to use before they would go bad, so I searched the internet for a recipe using plums. Obviously this particular recipe can be used with whatever fruit you desire and since it is extremely tasty I would recommend you do just that!

I had never before made a crumble so I figured that would be a good thing to try. Since we started with our patisserie course I am also finding that I am all of a sudden very much into baking. I’ve always loved baking even though it can be a bit more restricting then cooking. (in terms of exact quantities and such) Which reminds me that when we had the class with Carle last Friday; we talked about the need to measure exact when making a batter or dough. And then – as it turns out – what happens in a lot of cases, is that you actually leave lots in the bowl when scraping it out. So that defeats the whole purpose of being so precise to measure – for instance – 116 gr of egg whites. You then beat the egg whites and when scraping you forgot to add the 5 grams that stick to the side of the bowl. Sort of silly when you think about it, so I made myself the promise that I will scrape better…

This particular recipe uses quite a large amount of ground almonds, which worked fine for me as I still had some leftover in the bag. Not enough for this recipe, so I ground a few more almonds myself. Which I have to remind myself now to buy extra ground almonds next time I get to Amsterdam!

Layer one is baked, layer two is ready to be popped in the oven

Making this crumble is certainly not difficult but it is a bit timeconsuming as you need to bake it in three separate layers. First you bake the bottom, then you add the softer layer with the plums and then you finish by adding the crumbles and almonds. So it does take a while for it all to be finished but it is definitely worth it!

Loads of cinnamon in this lovely crumble

PLUM AND ALMOND CRUMBLE (original recipe from GoodFood website)

250g pack butter (this must be very cold)
225g caster sugar
300g ground almonds
140g plain flour , plus 25g/1oz
2 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
approx 6 plums , stoned and cut into sixths
50g flaked almonds

Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Butter and line a 20 x 30cm baking tin with baking paper. Put the butter, sugar and ground almonds into a food processor, then pulse until the mixture resembles very rough breadcrumbs. Spoon out half the mix into a bowl and set aside.
Add 140g flour into the mix in the processor and whizz until it just forms a dough. Tip into the tin and press down with the back of a spoon. Bake for 15-20 mins until golden. Leave to cool for 10 mins.
To make the filling, put the remaining butter and the sugar and almond mix back into the processor, saving a few tbsp for the topping. Add the eggs, the 25g flour, cinnamon and baking powder and whizz to a soft batter. Spread over the base.
Top with the plum pieces and a little extra caster sugar and cinnamon. Bake for 20 mins, then sprinkle with the remaining crumble mix and flaked almonds. Cook for another 20 mins or until golden. Leave to cool in the tin before slicing.

Tartelette with peas, ham and cheese

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:54:09 +0000

Hmmm, maybe my plan on eating healthy is not exactly eating anything with puff pastry now is it? Lovely buttery and slightly unhealthy puff pastry… O well, on the plus side; I ate only one of these little darlings! Yesterday I finally received my brand new Macbook pro so I love new toys and I have been playing around with it, transferring files from one computer to the other etc. It’s always amazing to me how fast time flies when you’re behind the computer!! Ooo and in addition to the new laptop I also bought a Apple Cinema LED display 24″. Can I just say…. wow… what a difference!! Now my ‘old’ display is really quite old, so colors were not that vibrant anymore and it really was in need of replacement. And I totally love it. And how big is 24″ compaired to the ‘old’ 19″… VERY big!!

Anyway, I will not bore you any longer with tales of my new computer stuff, so instead I would like to share my lunch of today. After being behind the computer yesterday for most of the day I was really in need of a lovely little indulgence for lunch. Tonight is already our very last cooking lesson… so sad… The last lesson is about venison and other game, so I am little scared of what we are going to find when we enter the kookstudio. I hope that it’s not an entire deer!! There are limits to what I can take!

Anyway, for lunch I made little savoury tartelettes using storebought puff pastry. I love those little things as it is so easy and you can basically throw in whatever you want and still have a lovely little pie. In these I used (frozen) peas, ham, egg, cherry tomatoes and some leftover cheeses I had such as gorgonzola and brie. In terms of looks; the brie looked better, but in terms of taste the gorgonzola had a little more punch, so if you can’t decide and pretty looks are not important, go for the gorgonzola!

Oooo and I got to share something as well; Tom had a cooking workshop with some colleagues from work yesterday and he ate something (I can’t even remember what it was that he ate) containing gorgonzola and he actually liked it!!! Maybe I should not cheer too soon as I know that gorgonzola can loose quite some flavor when warm, but maybe there is still hope for my cheese-hating husband… (in case you didn’t know; Tom and I are not married, but we have been living together for 18 years so instead of calling him boyfriend all the time, I like to just call him my husband to make life a little simpler.. Boyfriend somehow always feel like someone you’ve only recently met… That’s probably silly but now you know!)

Ok, so what is in these little darlings:

Qty’s for 4 people

Puff pastry sheets, defrosted

150 gr of frozen peas

100 gr of hamslices

100 gr of cherry tomatoes

2 eggs

gorgonzola or another cheese to your liking

Preheat the oven to 200C. Use little tartelette forms with bottoms that can be taken out as those are easiest to use. Whisk the two eggs together in a bowl and add the peas and ham to it. Stir until well combined. Season with salt and pepper. Line each pie form with a puff pastry sheet and press into the form. Once done, dock the bottom by pricking it with a fork.

Distribute the egg mixture into the four forms and put the cherry tomatoes on top (cut in half). Add little blobs of cheese in and around the tomatoes and put in the preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes or until golden.

Enjoy!

Cooking class; lesson 3 patisserie

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:54:06 +0000

Last night we had a lesson in patisserie from Carle Douglas from Douglas Delights. We had a patisserie lesson before from Rob in the first course, but there is a big difference… Rob is passionate about cooking and everything else except patisserie I would say, while Carle is a master in making desserts and beautiful cakes (and YES, he makes macarons!!! Finally found them in Amsterdam!) and it is a huge difference being taught by someone who loves doing something… lol.. No offense Rob!

Making of the bottom

The weather outside was absolutely terrible and while the rain was pouring down we all set out to make a Gateau St. Honore, which – when I saw what we were gonna make – was quite a daunting prospect but with the help of Carle we all made a beautiful creation!

We started out by making dough for the bottom of the pie and I have no idea how that is called in English but in Dutch it is called “Harde Wenerdeeg” I will try and find the correct names later on. While that was being chilled we made Choux pastry for making profiteroles, then on to making Creme au beurre mousseline, creme chiboust and Italian meringue… Yes, you read that right; five recipes to make the one pie!! But how gorgeous does this look! I am not sure we would have been able to successfully complete this without the assistance of Carle, but I have learned soooo many things this time! Remember the Daring Bakers where we had to make our own marshmallows? Well, I finally know how to make them plus I also know now what ‘soft ball stage’ is when talking about cooking sugar/making caramel. It makes a huge difference when you have someone showing you how to do that as compaired to just trying it out for yourself. Caramel does not work that way!

For those that want to give this a try, here are all the recipes! The importance here is also the sequence in which you make the recipes below. I will first list all recipes and then at the end explain how you have to make them all and in which sequence…! So make sure to read it all thoroughly before proceeding!

Dough for the bottom (Harde Wenerdeeg)

100 gr. fine sugar

150 gr butter

35 gr egg

2,5 gr salt

grated lemon zest (one small tsp)

300 gr all purpose flour

Mix sugar, butter, egg, salt and lemonzest in a large bowl. Add flour and quickly mix to a dough. Make this into a ball and flatten it out so it chills faster. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Choux pastry

250 gr. water/milk (50/50)

112 gr butter

4 gr sugar

4 gr salt

150 gr flour

5 eggs

Bring water/milk mixture, butter, sugar and salt to a boil. Take of the heat and add all the flour in one go and stir, back on the heat until the dough forms a ball that doesn’t stick to the wall of the pan. Make sure you do not have the dough on to short or it will be tasting too much of flour. You can smell when it’s ready! Take of the heat and add the eggs while stirring and keep stirring until completely incorporated.Put the warm mixture into a piping bag.

Creme au beurre mousseline

250 gr milk

125 gr sugar

2 eggyolks

15 gr custardpowder

15 gr flour

75 gr butter

75 gr butter (yes, that is twice!)

Mix flour, custard and 2 tbsp of the sugar. Mix this with a little bit of the milk into a smooth fluid. Add the egg yolks to this and incorporate well.

Bring the rest of the milk to a boil together with the rest of the sugar. While stirring add the egg-mixture to the boiling milk. For about a minute keep boiling until it becomes a thick custard. Once the custard starts to make ‘plopping’ sounds you know it is done.

Add 75 gr of butter to the hot custard. Cover with a piece of clingfilm (the clingfilm should cover directly the custard, so let it touch the surface!) and leave to cool completely. Once cool add the other 75 gr of butter little by little while mixing with a handmixer or foodprocessor until you have a smooth and airy cream.

Assembling

Creme Chiboust

120 gr milk

25 gr sugar

10 gr custard

2 egg-yolks

1/2 leave of gelatine

15 gr of Grand Marnier or Rum ( we actually put Amaretto in it and that works lovely!!)

140 to 160 gr of Italian Meringue (recipe below)

Using the same procedure as for the “Creme au beurre mousseline” cook from the milk, sugar, custard and eggyolks a thick cream. Add the (soaked) gelatine and the alcohol of your choice. Incorporate completely before adding the Italian Meringue and carefully fold that into the hot cream. Use the cream while still hot in assembling the Gateau!

Italian Meringue

4 eggwhites (120 gr)

180 gr sugar

20 gr glucosesyrup (if you do not have glucosesyrup you can use ‘basterdsuiker’ which has already a coating of glucose around it so it has the same effect. I am not sure of the right translation but I am thinking caster sugar)

Bring the sugar with 60 gr of water to a boil and if you have glucose add it. Without stirring cook until it reaches 120 C or softball stage. While the sugar is boiling mix the eggwhites (preferably in a standmixer) to a foam. While continuing to whip the eggwhites add the hot sugarsyrup and keep mixing until it is completely cooled of. Make sure not to pour the sugar on the beaters but along the edge of the bowl!

And now for the fun part of assembling the Gateau St. Honore!! The qty’s we made were enough for making two small ones of 18 cm in diameter. The only thing that needs to be doubled is the qty of the Creme Chiboust of you want to make filling sufficient for two.

GATEAU ST. HONORE

250 gr of dough for the bottom

Choux pastry of 250 gr water/milk

Mousselinecream of 1/8 milk

Chiboustcreme of 120 gr milk

150 gr sugar

30 gr glucose

Roll the dough out so you can cut out a circle of about 22,5 cm. Around the edge of the circle make a ring of the choux pastry, making sure to stay inside the circle and not outside. On the same baking tray or a separate one depending on your space add about 20 small profiteroles of approx. 3 cm.

Put everything together in an oven at 180 C for about 20 minutes untill golden and done. Leave to cool.

Fill the profiteroles with the Creme au beurre de mousseline. (Filling you can do by making a small hole in the bottom of the profiteroles or by pushing the piping bag through if that works)

Make golden brown caramel with the sugar, 50 gr of water and the glucose and use that to dip the filled profiteroles into. Make sure not to touch the caramel as it is very very hot!! Leave on a baking tray to cool of a bit and then with the rest of the caramel stick the profiteroles on the ring of choux pastry you made.

Once the chiboustcream is done fill the middle of the gateau with that and leave to cool and stiffen in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

As you can probably guess by the number of recipes needed to make this, you need quite a lot of time to do it all. In total our workshop took about 4 hours but a little less will work as well if you’re an experienced baker! (which I am not…) I just had a bit of this for lunch ( ) and it was incredible! The crust was nice and crunchy while the amaretto that we added to the creme chiboust gave it a wonderful flavor. It’s not something I would make easily again as it involves a lot of work, but it’s a lovely cake!! And great practice in all sorts of techniques too!

Junglefrog Cooking » pie

Lemon Meringue pie

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