Sunday, October 30, 2011

Apple Frangipane Tart

Haven't been baking for some time and realized that almond powder was about to expire. Hence I surf the web and come across the recipe for Apple Frangipane Tart.

Do note that the recipe is taken from Joy of Baking's Apple Frangipane Tart and I have decided to incorporate the Almond Short Dough (taken from Tartlette’s Strawberry Lime Tartelettes) to compare the two types of pastry shells.

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For short notes and photos on the almond short dough, please refer to our previous post.

- Short notes on Pate Brisee -
According to Joy of Baking, this is a French short crust pastry made from a mixture of flour, sugar, salt, unsalted butter, and ice water and the video posted by Stephanie is extremely useful. Through the video, I confidently used the food processor to make the dough and everything goes well.

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Being an amateur baker, as what Stephanie has mentioned, it is not easy to roll the dough into a nice big round and after making it thin, it was quite a challenge to line it on the tart rings so from the picture, you can see there are many fingerprints and patches of dough.

Recipe (For six 8-cm tarts)
Pie Crust: (half of Joy of Baking's original recipe)
Ingredients needed:
87.5 gm plain flour
7 gm granulated white sugar
56.5 gm salted butter
15 ml ice water

Steps
1. Cut the butter into cubes and chill it in the freezer
2. Place flour and sugar into the food processor. Pulse to combine
3. Add butter into the food processor. Pulse (in quick and multiple times) to combine until coarse meal is obtained
4. Add ice water to the coarse meal. Pulse to achieve crumbs that holds together when pinched
5. Transfer the mixture to a plastic wrap, gather it into a tight ball and refrigerate for an hour or until firm
6. Roll the pastry and cut out six 3-inch rounds to form the base of the tart crust
7. Press in some dough at the side of the tart rings, patting the dough with fingertips
8. Put the lined tart rings into the refrigerator to relax the gluten

P.S. As mentioned, I didn't manage to get a nice big round as what the video has shown and I would prefer to make it into small tarts to reduce the baking time.

***

Frangipane (Almond Cream): (this amount is sufficient to make twelve 8-cm tarts as two type of dough were used in this attempt)
40 gm salted butter
12 gm plain flour
50 gm granulated white sugar
50 gm almond powder
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

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Steps
1. Combine flour, almond powder, sugar in a mixing bowl
2. Rub in butter
3. Mix in egg and vanilla extract to get a paste

***

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1. Slice the apples and add some lemon juice to prevent oxidation of apples
2. Mix the sliced apples with cinnamon
3. Remove chilled pastry (in tart rings) from the refrigerator and spread the frangipane onto the crust
4. Arrange sliced apples and sprinkle some icing sugar before baking
5. Bake it for 20 minutes at 190°C

Note: The recipe for the almond short dough can be found here. As mentioned, the tart shells were blind baked for 10 minutes at 175°C. After assembling the tart with frangipane and sliced apples, the tarts were baked for 20 minutes at 175°C.

- Ending Note –
Both type of tart pastry taste just as good with apples but for a lighter taste, I would prefer the pie crust over the almond short dough. The effect of the buttery crust makes it akin to eating a shortbread that is lightly sweetened by the frangipane and tangy apples (due to the use of Grammy Smith Green Apples and the addition of lemon juice). For sweeter tooth, the almond short dough is still an all time favorite and naturally with more sugar and almond powder, this has a richer taste.
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Ben and Jerry's Chunk Fest 2011

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The much anticipated Ben and Jerry’s ChunkFest 2011 is back again for another year of ice-cream domination. ChunkFest was held this year on October 15th 2011, from 2pm till 10pm at the Promontory @ Marina Bay. Fairness is the theme for this year. Helping to spread the fairness message this year are the Fair booths, and singing about it are local bands who will battle it out fairly for a chance to perform at Sundae on the Common in the UK in 2012!

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Anyway since this is a dessert blog, we should focus on the 11 flavors which are specially flown in from the USA and not available yet in Singapore. If you cannot make out from the photo above. The 11 flavors are

(1)Spice chocolate - Chocolate Ice Cream with a Hint of Moroccan-Style Spice and Loaded with Almonds
(2)Late Night Snack - Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with a Salty Caramel Swirl & Fudge covered Potato Chip Clusters
(3)Froyo Choc Fudge Brownie - Chocolatae Low Fat Frozen Yogurt with Fudge Brownies
(4)Coffee - Coffee Ice Cream
(5)Froyo Half Baked - Chocolate & Vanilla Low Fat Frozen Yogurts with Fudgey Brownies & Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
(6)Butter Pecan - Rich Buttery Ice Cream with Coconut & Roasted Pecans
(7)Bonnaroo Buzz - Coffee & Malt Ice Creams with Toffee Chunks & Whiskey Caramel Swirl
(8)Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl - Chocolate Ice Cream with Thick Peanut Buttery Swirl
(9)Coconut Seven Layer Bar - Cococnut Ice cream with Coconut & Fudge Flakes, Walnuts and Swirls of Graham Cracker & Butterscotch
(10)Americone Dream - Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Covered Waffle Cone Pieces & a Caramel Swirl
(11)Vanilla Frozen Yogurt - Creamy Low Fat Frozen Yogurt

Yuan's stomach could only manage 4 scoops and his choices in order of preferance are (1) Bonnaroo Buzz, (2) Butter Pecan, (3) Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl and (4) Late Night Snack. Bonnaroo Buzz is one of rare Ben and Jerry's flavors with liquor. Whiskey and Caramel is really unique. On the other hand, the Late Night Snack is a little extreme. Potato Chip with Ice Cream tasted odd. What surprised me was that chocolate and peanut butter complemented pretty well and would be better than their other peanut butter flavors.

Anyway for those who missed out on Chunk Fest 2011, do look out for it next year. Also as the year comes to an end, I will be doing a review on all the Ben and Jerry's which I tried this year. Do look out for it.
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Friday, October 14, 2011

Scoop Cake By Tampopo Deli

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Though we previously reviewed the scoop cake from Tampopo Deli, we really felt that we needed to review this again as I was rather amused by the presentation. When I received this as a my birthday cake, I really cracked my brain to ask which bakery serve their cake in an aluminum tray. Hence I was surprised to hear that it was the Scoop Cake. Without doubts, it has one of the best cream. The cream has a scent similar to those found in Meiji milk. I later compared with their cream puff and it turned out that the one in their cream puff has vanilla beans. To quote Fen. Having eaten a couple of cream cakes back to back, I think this is really one of the cakes which deserved special mention for its consistency over the years.

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I posted this photo as I found it ironic that I literally scooped the cake out with a spatula. Anyway a medium sized scoop cake like this costed $44.80. Quite ideal for around 10 pax.

Tampopo Deli
177 River Valley Road #B1-16
Liang Court Shopping Centre
Singapore 179030
Tel: 6338-7386
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Saturday, October 1, 2011

1 Caramel at 1 Rochester

We were invited to tasting at 1 caramel along with some of the fellow bloggers. The location of 1-caramel replaces the former pastry bar at 1 Rochester. The layout is nothing near the former, you will catch a full view of the kitchen before reaching the seating area. Hence if you see the kitchen, don't be alarmed, you are in the right place.


The concept of 1-caramel is different from our last visit. Their cakes are served in petite form and there are more cupcakes in the display. Further, 1-caramel also introduced their brunch menu.


Not to be missed in any brunch menu is the Traditional Eggs Benedict. Poached eggs on toasted English muffin with hollandaise sauce and smoked salmon. 1-caramel's version of the Eggs Benedict is blend but when paired with ebiko and smoked salmon, the effect is quite good.


If you are sharing you can consider The Posh Platter. Smoked salmon tart with creme fraiche and ocean trout caviar, asparagus wrapped in basil and prosciutto, truffled brie and cherry tomatoes on a toasted brioche. An ideal platter for sharing and light snack for the sunday brunch or afternoon tea.


The Miso soufflé with yuzu ice cream is still very consistent and has the unique salty sweet taste in the soufflé. Also available is the Hazelnut soufflé with chocolate Ice-cream and Passion fruit soufflé.


If you cannot make up your mind on which sweet to have, you can consider the 1-Caramel Assiette. The platter contain Petite-sized desserts. Our platter contains the following:
(1)Tropical vodka trifle. Pineapple gazpacho jelly, pineapple sponge cubes with crystallized baked almonds topped with coconut sorbet.
(2)Earl Grey creme brûlée. Infusion of earl grey tea leaves in a traditional French baked custard dessert served with grissini cheese straws dusted with tea and icing powder.
(3)1-Caramel Baked Alaska. Combination of homemade chunky strawberry and vanilla Madagascar ice-cream coated with rhum Italian meringue on top of a nutty chocolate brownie.
(4)Raspberry lychee rose pannacotta, lychee-lemon compote. A combination of 2 exquisite puree scented with the essence of rose in a classic Italian cold pudding served with chunky lychee and lemon compote.
(5)Death by chocolate: Valrhona Sofiato molten cake with dark chocolate sorbet.

Special mention must be made for the Raspberry Lychee rose pannacotta which is pretty similar to the Lychee rose which is our favourite at 1-caramel.


Special thanks to Denyse and Chiew Yen for the invite and hospitality.

1-caramel
1 Rochester Park, Level 2
Singapore 139212
Tel:67741302
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