Lemon Meringue Pie Thursday, Oct 29 2009 

citrus and fruit and pie and tart dayah 10:50 am

Pies and tarts, what’s the difference?

This site tried to explain the difference, but I still don’t get it. I figured when it’s something fruity, it’s tarts. But then there are such things as blueberry tarts and blueberry pies, which are 2 different things, and it’s back to square one.

But those bite sized things are fruit tarts aren’t they?

Whatevs. My head hurts trying to figure them out.

OOH! I finally got my blowtorch! BLOW-freaking-TORCH! BLOW TORCH!! BLOW TORCH! I spent a good 15 minutes trying to pump butane into the torch, and then realised nothing was going in because when I turned the switch, there wasn’t any hissing sound.

Damn that butane can. And it was brand new! So I used my other butane can, and YAY! It filled, for like 1 minute, before the can started leaking, and started freezing and frosting the whole blowtorch. You know, because of the latent heat of vapourisation and whatnot. Then I tried the other can again, and finally it worked! Weird, but whatever.

Hissing sound — checked

Click and behold! BLUE FLAMES!

WOHOO! It worked!! So obviously we got really excited to torch our individual lemon meringue tarts (pies??) after lunch.

Crust recipe here and lemon meringue recipe here.

The filled pie shells:

The meringue layer, pre-baked and pre-torched

I decided to bake the pie, because of the amount of uncooked egg whites used. Just didn’t want to risk anybody getting salmonella from eating the lemon meringue pie. So I baked the pie and about 3 tarts for about 40 mins on low heat, while the rest were baked for about 10 mins on low heat just to kill any bacteria, before we fired the torch.

Torched!

I think the burnt edges make the tarts pretty! And they smell like roasted marshmallows!

So whatever happened to the baked pie?? The lemon curd oozed out!

Which was probably my fault, because I made the crust too thin, and it broke under pressure! AND I didn’t chill the filling long enough.

So I was trying to salvage it, by attempting to put it back to the pie pan.

BAD IDEA!

The crust was too thin, and too fragile, so the pie broke into 2, and I got a sticky gooey mess of runny lemon curd. OMFG! It was so disheartening!!

And I forced it back into the pan anyway! Hahah.. Terrible person I am! Half of the pie doesn’t have a crust!

Sya, Hafie and Salmah thought I should never be a surgeon after seeing how I tried to stuff the crust back into the pan. Messily, I might add.

Oh well. There’s always a next time!

And! Baking didn’t give the burnt edges effect, so I torched them anyway to look prettier!

Even the texture’s different. Baking gave a crispier meringue layer while torching made it gooey, soft, airy marshmallowy. Then the paranoid in me decided to bake the torched ones anyway! For about 20 minutes! Die, bacteria, die! Thankfully, the merigue still remained gooey!

 

Apple crumble pie, revisited Monday, Sep 7 2009 

fruit and pie dayah 1:54 pm

Yet another successful attempt at apple crumble! This time with a crust. I love this recipe!! It’s totally fool proof!

I found pretty good crust recipe:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup oil
3 tbsp milk

Directions:

1. Mix flour and salt
2. Blend oil and milk
3. Add oil/milk mixture to flour/salt mixture, stir with a fork.
4. You can either press the dough to a 9 inch pie mould, for lazy people like me, or you can shape it up into a ball, and then roll out a thin layer, and then assemble onto the pie mould/tin.
5. Line the top of the crust with baking paper, adding uncooked rice/beans to weigh paper down. Bake for 10 mins in 170 C.
6. Assemble pie filling and crumble as per usual, and bake as per crumble recipe.
7. Serve pie with vanilla ice cream!

 

Mango cupcakes Monday, Sep 7 2009 

cheese and cupcakes and fruit and vanilla and vegan dayah 1:43 pm

Okay I lied. It’s not really mango cupcakes. It’s actually just the vanilla vegan cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and mango cubes. But it’s really too long to put that as the title! Recipe here.

Just a word of caution: Fruit acid causes the cream cheese to become runny and therefore causes the cupcake to get soggy. Something about breaking down some chemical bonding somewhere in the cheese. I don’t know! I can’t remember my Food Chemistry. Whatever. They taste really good anyhow!

 

Apple Crumble Sunday, Feb 22 2009 

fruit and pie dayah 8:06 am

I was really itching to bake something that is not called cupcake, cake, muffin, or has any chocolate in the ingredients. Then my sister suggested APPLE CRUMBLE. So here goes!

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Crustless Cranberry Pie Saturday, Jan 3 2009 

cranberry and fruit and pie and tart dayah 2:10 pm

Thanks to Ned the Pie Maker from Pushing Daisies, I’ve been dreaming of baking a pie, just like those from the Pie Hole. Oh gosh. Have you guys seen the pies? They look absolutely gorgeous.

I want a Ned too. He’s so adorably awkward! But that would I would have to be murdered and he would have to bring me back from the dead, and that we would never be able to touch each other. Not even accidentally. Which is quite sad.

And don’t you think the Pie Hole has a really whimsical outlook? Come on. A pie crust as the roof? Totally mag!

So I told myself that someday I’ll be able to bake something like those from the Pie Hole, and I can’t think of a better way to kick start the new year with a new year resolution.

I shall bake new things, other than cupcakes.

Cupcakes get boring after a while. NOT! Okay I get bored of baking cupcakes. But I’ve digressed enough.

I found a whole packet of frozen cranberries in the freezer, and decided to be Rachel Ray (no Martha Stewart, just because RR wears better clothes, and Nigella Lawson is wayy too gorgeous for me to even reach there :) ) and googled for cranberry pie recipes. And found this!

I decided to try it since there were 92423087 raves about this and the pictures looked delicious enough to be licked off the screen. Haha.

So.. presenting my version of the pie:

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Triple pudding Saturday, Dec 27 2008 

custard and fruit dayah 3:17 pm

Talk about dessertini right? Dessert in a martini glass!

Anyway this is called triple pudding because the bottom most layer is made of sponge/pound cake. The next layer is a fruity one, and the top most layer is custard.

Salmah gave the whole bunch of TJ girls the recipe to this wholesome goodness a few years ago during Hari Raya, but I think most of us threw it away misplaced it (including me). I’m just wondering how she got the custard layer to be pale yellow, almost creamish, instead of my bright canary yellow one. Oh well. At least it tastes good!

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Fruit tarts with custard filling Tuesday, Apr 22 2008 

custard and fruit and tart dayah 3:08 am

Recycled photo:

There’s the fruit tarts on the left and lemon meringue tarts on the right, in case you didn’t know. I don’t have to repeat myself by saying that tarts rock, BUT, what I just found out was that tarts are higher in calories, as compared to angel food cake. DUH! I’ll try to bake one of those, one fine day. Who cares about calories when these treats are right in front of you??!!

One thing I forgot to do was glaze the fruits, because after I left them in the refrigerator overnight, they became dehydrated and kind of slightly dried up. Uugh. Nevermind. There’s always a next time!

Recipe follows:

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