Friday Food: Raspberry Almond Crumble Galettes

It has been some time. I have been quite poorly this year and right now I am still trying to stave off another cold. And hoping it won't turn into a sinus infection, though I have a prescription for antibiotics in my bag.

I baked these raspberry almond crumble galettes with raspberry fool on the 3rd of March, and I cannot tell a lie, I accidentally deleted a folder from my camera so I had to do the pastry and crumble again this afternoon.

The recipe is from the Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine, and I can highly recommend it. It looks posh and luxe and complicated, but it's actually really easy to make. You can make the pastry part up to a week early and then just crisp the pastry in the oven before serving if it is a little limp.

I had no proper basil or mint, so I cheated twice: I used the tiny tiny basil leaves at the top of one sad stalk, and I cut little leaves from parsley, just for the photos!! I used half cream, half creme fraiche and whipped them together for the raspberry fool. You could also use mascarpone, or just all cream. There were no pink peppercorns to be found in all of the city and so I just ignored that part of the recipe. You could use any berry in the fool, whatever is in season.

For the first galettes I used Careme butter puff pastry, and for the second Pampas butter puff. MrsDrWho said she really couldn't discern any difference in taste. I could see that the Careme pastry had a much higher puff, and more layers. It is twice as expensive, but for a special occasion, I would use the Careme.

 

Raspberry Almond Crumble Galette    serves 6

• 375g butter puff pastry
• 1/2 egg lightly beaten
• 40g plain flour
• 40g caster sugar
• 30g butter
• pinch of salt
• 40g flaked almonds

 

To embellish

• icing sugar for dusting
• basil leaves
• extra whole raspberries

 

For the peppercorn topping

• 1/2 tspn crushed pink peppercorns
• 20g caster sugar
• pinch of salt

 

For the raspberry fool:

• 125g raspberries
• juice 1/2 lemon
• 40g pure icing sugar: 2 lots of 20g
• 400g creme fraiche
• seeds from 1 vanilla pod, or 1 tspn vanilla extract

 

Preheat the oven to 200*C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Cut six 10cm rounds from pastry and place on the tray, dock with a fork and brush with egg. I am using the Pampas pastry in this photo, the Careme is rectangular.

To make the crumble, put the flour, caster sugar and salt into a small bowl and rub in the butter to form coarse crumbs. Stir in the almonds and divide equally between the pastry rounds.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, turning the tray half way through, until golden brown and risen. Cool on a wire rack and dust with the extra icing sugar.

Begin the fool by crushing the raspberries in a bowl with the lemon juice and HALF the icing sugar. Set aside.

Whisk the creme fraiche, vanilla and remaining icing sugar to soft peaks and then ripple in the raspberry mixture.

Mix the peppercorns, salt and caster sugar in a bowl.

To serve, top a galette with raspberry fool, scatter with extra raspberries and pink peppercorn mixture and add a basil leaf or two.

(The Careme pastry, on the left, has risen higher then the Pampas pastry, on the right)

Take This Job and Bucket.

Thank you for all the lovely birthday wishes for Hedy Lamarr. Hedy has been a rascal while we were out. She has been somewhere grubby, I don't know where.

And she has chewed the new buckets. They only cost a dollar each, but these are buckets three and four. One and two went into the bin last week.  The buckets fill up with rain water, and those marks in the aqua bucket are where Hedy likes to pop a front paw in, and try to empty the bucket.

Lorelai Gilmore would never chew a bucket, look at how good she is, and how lovely!!! Autumn is four days old and already the mornings are crisper and the nights are closing in. Gilly runs to greet Rafa and then runs back to tell me she has greeted him. So much running for an older dog.

Oh and back to Hedy's birthday, we assigned comments ordinal numbers as per the post and then employed a random number chooser, and the bag and chocolate treat goes to: Deb!! I know Deb in real life and so this will perhaps give us a much needed excuse to catch up for coffee, tea and cake!!

We had two medical emergencies this week. On Wednesday Gilly was bitten on the leg by a wasp floating in the paddle pool. We rang the vet and they saw us within twenty minutes. Here are The Labradors waiting for Dr Michelle to bring back Gilly's antihistamine injection. Because she takes Imuran to suppress her immune system we have to be very careful of her treatment.

Is Dr Michelle coming back?? Gilly and Hedy think they hear her......

Yes, she's here and she has liver treats!!!

There were quite a few wasps, not a nest, but enough to be a worry. My neighbour helped me to hang some wasp traps. Hang them Very High. But not high enough. Somehow Hedy jumped up and ate the wasp trap contents. It was a hard decision to make: should Gilly run the risk of being bitten again, or should we use a wasp trap? There was less than 1/2 a teaspoon of the wasp powder in the trap. We rang the vet and they rang poison hotlines and thankfully, a dog Hedy's size would not be affected. But they both had to skip dinner, as the vet said not to induce vomiting. The lovely chemist at the corner says she knows of a very stinky, but safe, wasp trap filler, and so I shall be able to use that. I feel terrible, but I truly had no idea Hedy could jump higher than I could reach. I baked the vet a very large Banoffee sheet cake as a thank you, for they didn't charge me at all for their advice.

I know it is difficult to believe, but I am about to sew a dress. The Kimmy Dress was one of this month's Seamwork patterns. I really like it, and I am going to make the hack with a flared skirt, a longer flared skirt. MrsDrWho's mum brought this material back from Singapore. It is less than a metre wide, so I have bought some plain green to be a border at the hem. The fabric itself has borders, and I want to try use them as well. I'll also have to add a dart, as I need an FBA. And I know I am behind the times, but I finally realised The Officeworks is able to print out patterns in PDF in A0. Thanks to Beth who talked me through the email process. No more taping 32 pages together, I am happy to pay $8-50 for two sheets.

Lorelai Gilmore and Hedy Lamarr are very accommodating and stopped half way down the steps so I could take a photo for The Blog. On the right is a tortoise... I want to say bird bath, but it is really a kind of teeny tiny pond that Hedy likes to drink from. The gardener comes tomorrow, so there will be some at long last weeding and trimming. The grape vine is taking over the entrance.

I have three new balls of sock wool, so I am eager to finish the socks I am working on. I just have the foot and then the toe.

I also have a new-to-me phone, an iPhone 4. WeeJock and Bessie's family had a passing down of phones and I was lucky enough to be on the end of the line.

My older phone costs just $9 and really just did texting. My new phone might be eight years old, but it is so exciting to be able to text my mum and not say: "I am knitting rocks today", or "Fear Mum". I can iMessage and I can add photos to The Instagram. I am so very grateful!!

MrsDrWho and I watched the last episode of Star Trek Discovery this afternoon. I loved the entire series. There were parts that shocked us with their unexpectedness, and the plot was riveting. The characters were both familiar and new and I especially liked that it was a darker version, more like DS9 than TNG. The cliffhanger ending has us eagerly awaiting the next season. And the theme music, very good music and the music over the last credits was perfect.

The weather has been cooler and I have been feeling much better, though I see it will be 28*C at the end of the week. Bah humbug.

 

Friday Food: Choc Chip Hazelnut Biscuits

Miss NewHouse at The Wool Shop can't have gluten and so a few weeks ago I found this recipe by Donna Hay: Choc Chip Hazelnut Cookies, well I say biscuits. They are gluten free. Then I was poorly, and then I baked a Banoffe Sheet Cake and Lamington Jam Drops, but today was the day for these biscuits.

As is my wont, I substituted almond meal for the hazelnut, and coconut flour for the cornflour. Coconut flour is more absorbent, so I added extra melted butter and then a tad more coconut flour until the dough felt "right". I added the whole packet of dark choc chips.

I baked them for an extra 5 minutes. They didn't spread at all. The first batches stayed as a rounded dome, so I squashed the last tray flatter. Honestly, I think semi-flat would be best. I made 17 x 40ml biscuits. Please feel free to follow the recipe!!!

Mis NewHouse thoroughly recommends the biscuits, she ate one, and then had another. I am very pleased that she is able to enjoy this recipe.

 

 

Choc Chip Hazelnut Biscuits      makes 12-17

• 175g hazelnut meal
• 40g cornflour
• 110g caster sugar
• 60g brown sugar
• 1 tspn baking powder
• 100g butter, melted and cooled
• 1 egg
• 1 tspn vanilla extract
• 150-200g dark choc chips, or chopped chocolate

 

Preheat the oven to 160*c and line two trays with baking paper.

Put the hazelnut meal, sugars, cornflour, and baking powder into a large bowl and mix well to combine.

Make a well in the centre and add the butter, egg and vanilla extract. Mix well and then stir through the chocolate.

Measure out 2 tablespoons, (2x 20ml) for each biscuit. Squeeze together slightly and roll into a ball. Place on the tray and flatten slightly leaving an 8cm gap between biscuits.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, I swapped and turned the trays half way though. Cool an the tray for 5 minutes and then remove to a wire rack.

I could not ask Miss NewHouse to eat another biscuit, just for my blog: Or could I?