Pastry | The Mindfulness Kitchen

Banana Maple Pain au Raisin

By Emma Hawkins | June 10, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

I’d say that generally bananas are my fruit of choice. They’re easy to eat, with none of the effort that comes with peeling an orange, and they taste really good. There is always that problem though when you buy a bunch of them. To begin with they’re all rock solid, green, and basically inedible. Then they all hit perfect ripeness at the same time and you feel compelled to eat them all before they go bad. Inevitably though at least one will go brown, then black and just slowly worse as you pass it everyday thinking ‘I really should eat that’, but at the same time ‘I really don’t want to eat that’. This is exactly the process that happened in the lead up to these beauties. I had a couple of dying bananas next to the fruit bowl, but I really didn’t want to eat them, so I started brainstorming anything that I could put them in so they didn’t go to waste.

My first choice for old bananas would normally be a banana chocolate cake. However I made one of those for my blog already, and as I’m watching my weight I’ve decided to only bake things that appear on the blog, so another chocolate banana cake, whilst delicious, wasn’t the answer. Then, I’m not sure how, the idea of banana in crème patisserie, all rolled up into a Danish popped into my mind and these were born! It’s best to make these with really ripe, almost gone bananas as they have a really intense flavour. I found that this means you don’t have to use so much banana to get the flavour coming through in the crème pat, and therefore you don’t mess around with the consistency too much! I’ve used home-made pastry here as I love making it. I will warn you though that it does take a little time and tlc, so if you’re in a hurry you can use ready rolled croissant or puff pastry instead.

Recipe

Makes 12

Time: 2 hours plus lots of chilling, resting, and baking time

Ingredients

For the dough

500g Strong white bread flour
10g Salt
80g Caster sugar
10g Instant yeast
300ml Cool water
300g Unsalted block butter
1 Egg, beaten

For the crème patisserie

200ml Whole milk
1 tbsp Vanilla bean paste
45g Caster sugar
3 Egg yolks
10g Plain flour
10g Cornflour
1 tsp Cinnamon
2 Very ripe bananas
100g Raisins

For the topping

3 tbsp Maple syrup
100g Icing sugar

Method

First make the dough. Put the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water into a big bowl and use a large spatula to mix it into a dough.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Then tip it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with clingfilm, and leave to chill in the fridge for an hour.
Meanwhile, take the block butter and place it between two sheets of cling film. Using a rolling pin beat the butter out into a rectangle about 40 x 19 cm. Cover it in clingfilm and put back into the fridge to chill until needed.
Lightly flour your surface and take the dough out of the fridge. Roll it out into a 60 x 20 cm rectangle, about the thickness of a pound coin. The dough will spring back and resist being shaped, but just persist and you will get there.
Put the butter sheet onto the dough so that it covers two thirds, leaving the top third exposed.
Fold the exposed dough onto the first third of the butter, and then fold the bottom third, covered in butter, up onto the dough you’ve just folded down. You should now have layers of dough, butter, dough, butter, dough. Loosely clingfilm the dough and put back into the fridge for an hour.
Take the dough out of the fridge and put onto a floured surface with the short end facing you. Roll it out to a rectangle 60 x 20cm. Fold the top third down and then fold the bottom third up on top, as you did before. Turn the square block 90˚ and repeat the rolling and folding. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill the pastry in the fridge for 1 hour.
Repeat step 7 two more times, leaving the dough to chill for an hour in between turns. After the last rolling and folding wrap the dough very loosely (wrapping tightly will stop the dough from rising) and leave in the fridge overnight (or for at least 8 hours).
Meanwhile make the crème pat filling. Put the milk and vanilla into a pan and put over a medium heat. Bring the mixture to a simmer.
In another bowl put the sugar, egg yolks, flour, cornflour, and cinnamon and whisk them all together to make a smooth paste. Pour the warm milk over the egg mix, whisking constantly. Once all combined pour the mixture back into the pan and heat whilst whisking until the mixture starts to thicken.
Take the bananas and mash them with a fork to make a smooth puree. Stir this puree into the crème pat and then leave it to cool completely
Once the dough has rested and you’re ready to start shaping. Line 3 baking trays with baking paper.
Lightly flour a surface and roll out the dough to 50 x 30cm, trimming the edges so you have a neat rectangle. Spread the crème pat over the dough and then sprinkle over the raisins.
Roll the dough up from the long edge like a swiss roll. Then leave the roll to chill in the freezer for 30 minutes – this will make it a lot easier to cut later.
When ready slice the roll into 12 slices, about 2-3cm thick and lay them flat on the baking trays. Leave for a final time to rise for an hour.
Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Brush the pain au raisin with the beaten egg to glaze and then bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and risen.
Take the pastries out of the oven and brush with half the maple syrup whilst they’re still warm. Then leave them to cool.
Mix the icing sugar and the rest of the syrup in a bowl and drizzle it over the cooled pastries, then serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

Cinnamon Roll Apple Pie

By Emma Hawkins | March 4, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

My bakes never last very long in my house. Leave something on the kitchen table and it seems to disappear within a day or two, and this cinnamon roll apple pie is no exception! This style of pie crust is becoming a bit of a food trend, flooding every kind of social media. My sister knows I’m a big fan of cinnamon rolls and apple pie so I first saw the idea when my she tagged me in a post on it, and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to make my own!

Instead of making (or buying) a dough for the crust – as you would if you were making cinnamon rolls – I’m using a shop-bought shortcrust here for two reasons, 1) it’s more sturdy and therefore a better container for the apple filling, and 2) it’s a lot quicker and easier to work with, and will therefore help you get a tight roll which should make the pie more aesthetically appealing. This also means that it’s not too tricky or time consuming to make, so if you want to make something that looks cool but doesn’t require too much culinary nous this is a good one to try.

I was experimenting on this one a bit which is why it doesn’t look very neat, but I’ve now worked out how to make it look better. Originally I tried to roll the little rolls together into one sheet (as above) but this didn’t work as the individual rolls didn’t fuse together. Therefore I’d recommend doing what I ended up doing next – roll each little roll out to the thickness you want it to be (about 1/2 the thickness of a pound coin) and then line the tin with these flat discs, overlapping and pressing adjacent rolls together so they fuse when cooking and so there’s no gaps. That said though, even if it doesn’t look completely neat it’s guaranteed to taste good so don’t worry!

Recipe

Serves 8

Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

For the crust

2 tbsp Ground cinnamon
80g Light brown sugar
2 packs of ready rolled shortcrust pastry (I used Jus-Rol)
60g Butter
Flour for dusting
1 Egg, beaten

For the filling

6 Medium sized Bramley apples
140g Caster sugar
½ tsp Ground cinnamon
3 tbsp Flour

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C.
Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a bowl and set to one side. Lay out the pastry on your surface. Spread over the butter and then sprinkle over the cinnamon sugar mix so that it covers the whole sheet of pastry in an even layer.
Roll the pastry up from the short end, like a swiss roll, to make a tightly rolled log. Wrap the roll in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile begin to prep the filling. Peel, core and slice the apples and then wrap them in layers of kitchen roll and set to one side, (this will help to take some of the moisture out of the fruit so you don’t end up with soggy bottom pastry).
Put the sugar, cinnamon and flour for the filling into a bowl, mix and set aside for later.
Take the pastry out of the fridge and put it onto a chopping board. Take a sharp knife and slice the roll into discs about the thickness of a pound coin.
Lightly flour a surface. Then take one of the discs and use a rolling pin to flatten it into a thinner disc, about half the thickness it was before. Repeat with 2/3 of the discs.
Take these discs and line the tin with them, starting from the centre of the base and working up the sides of the tin until you have a little overhang. Press the discs together so that they fuse and there’s no gaps.
Put the apples into the bowl of sugar, cinnamon and flour. Mix everything together and then tip this into the pie case.
Cover your work surface with a sheet of clingfilm and arrange the rest of the pastry rolls on it in a round shape, making sure they’re close together. Cover these with another layer of clingfilm (this will make it easier to work with them) and then roll over them with a rolling pin to merge them into a single sheet. You want this sheet to be about 1 cm wider than the pie tin do that it comes into contact with the overhanging pastry.
Brush the edge of the pie with a little water. Then take off one of the layers of clingfilm and flip the pastry sheet onto the top of the pie. Then take the other sheet of clingfilm off the pastry sheet.
Take a knife and use it at a 45˚ angle to cut off the extra pastry around the edge. Then crimp the edge of the pie to seal everything by pinching the pastry between your thumb and first finger on one hand and your first finger on the other.
Brush the top of the pie with the beaten egg to glaze and then bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and crisp.
Leave to cool slightly before serving with cream, custard or ice cream!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

Vegan Woodland Pie

By Emma Hawkins | December 17, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

A couple of years ago I was a vegetarian, and although I liked it most of the time, when it came to Christmas, with all the turkey and trimmings on the table, I started to miss meat. Whilst at the time I had a great vegetarian substitute, it didn’t quite match up, and I just wanted something as good as the meat I couldn’t eat. I’m no longer a veggie, but when I was I developed this pie recipe which is so insanely good you don’t even realise it’s vegan, let alone vegetarian.

Full of beans and veg, this is surprisingly healthy for a pie – especially if you eat it without the crust. It’s stuffed with cranberries and chestnuts, so it’s prefect for a veggie main course at Christmas – you could even make individual pies instead of one large one, so you can cook up the exact number you need. The filling is also so good I’d recommend using it as stuffing, or as an accompaniment to your Christmas meat. Just make it up as instructed, but rather than putting it into a pie crust, roll it into balls and bake in the oven for 5-10 minutes to firm up and heat through.

You also don’t have to decorate it how I have. In all honesty I wasn’t going to decorate it at all apart from crimping the edge, but I was experimenting with a new pastry for this one and it dried out quicker than expected and cracked when I put the top on. As I wanted it to look nice for the blog I used the leftover pastry to make roses to cover up the cracks, and then I wanted to make enough to make a ring so that it looked uniform. But if you do want to jazz it up a bit you can use the rest of the pastry to make roses or leaves for the top.

Recipe

Serves 6

Time 1 hour (plus cooking time)

Ingredients

For the filling

1 tbsp Sunflower oil
1 White onion, finely chopped
1 Red onion, finely chopped
2 Medium leeks, finely chopped
2 Cloves garlic, crushed
225g Chestnut mushrooms, sliced
25g Dried cranberries
340g Tin of butter beans, roughly chopped
225g Ready-to-eat chestnuts, roughly chopped
50g Hazelnuts, chopped
5 Sprigs fresh thyme, chopped finely
Salt and pepper to taste
3 tbsp Cranberry Sauce

For the pastry

280ml Water
115g Vegetable suet
500g Plain flour
1 tsp Salt to season
20ml Soya milk to glaze

Method

Put the oil into a large sauce pan over a medium-high heat. Add the onions, leeks, and garlic and gently fry for 5 minutes until soft and starting to caramelise.
Add the mushrooms, cranberries, beans, chestnuts and hazelnuts and cook on a medium heat until soft and dry – this will take about 10 minutes.
Add the thyme to the mix, season with salt and pepper and then set to one side whilst you make the pastry.
Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Take a deep loose-bottomed 23cm pie tin and grease with butter (you can also use individual moulds if you want to make individual pies).
Put the water in a medium saucepan and bring to the boil over a medium-high heat.
Once boiling add the suet and stir to melt and combine.
Put the flour and salt into a bowl and pour over the melted water-suet mix. Using a round bladed knife mix everything into a dough and then turn out onto a work surface and knead for 3 minutes until smooth.
Take ¼ of the pastry and set aside for now. Roll out the other ¾ of the pastry into a large circle, about the thickness of a pound coin. Unlike shortcrust you want this pastry relatively thick to that it doesn’t break.
Gently fold the circle of pastry in half and in half again so you have a quarter of a circle in front of you. Put the point of the quarter into the centre of the lined tin and then unfold the circle and push the dough into the corners and up the sides of the mould. You want a little bit of overhang.
Spoon 1 ½ tbsp of the cranberry sauce into the base of the pie. Spoon ½ of the filling on top, then spoon the rest of the cranberry sauce over the filling. Top with the rest of the filling. Don’t worry if the mixture goes over the top of the tin, as this will make a nice dome when covered in pastry.
Roll out the other ¼ of pastry into a circle of the same thickness as before. Put the circle on top of the pie and trim the excess by slicing with a knife at a 45˚ angle to the tin.
Using your thumbs and index finger crimp around the edge of the pie to seal everything together. Take the milk and brush lightly over the top of the pie to glaze.
Put the pie in the oven for 45-55 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Take out of the oven and serve immediately with gravy and vegetables.

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

Mince Pie Croissants

By Emma Hawkins | December 10, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

There’s nothing more quintessentially Christmas than mince pies, and for me there’s nothing better on Christmas morning than a warm croissant which has just come out of the oven. I’ve never seen mincemeat in croissants before, but as chocolate, almonds and nutella make the grade I couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work – and it does – really well. The light, buttery, flakyness of the pastry really works with the rich filling, and unlike normal mince pies there isn’t so much mincemeat that it becomes sickly and overpowering. However, I know mincemeat’s like marmite – ya love it or hate it. If you’re a hater you obviously don’t have to put it in, you could either leave them plain or you could fill them great alternatives like chocolate.

As I’m a baking junkie and I love hands-on baking I’ve made my own pastry for these. This does take a long time and is a bit of a pain to do as you have to leave it a really long time between turns. You also have to make the pastry a day before you’re going to use it as it’s a yeasted dough which needs to rise. So whilst it’s really satisfying and fun to make your own dough, if you don’t have the patience or the time, as most of us don’t at Christmas, you can use ready made croissant dough or puff pastry instead. To be honest, in my opinion the best bit is the shaping, and so even using shop bought pastry can be fun and create better croissants than shop ones. In this case just skip to step 9 in the recipe and go on from there.

Recipe

Makes 12

Time: 1 ½ hours for the dough (+ chilling) and 45 minutes for the shaping and decorating

Ingredients

For the dough

500g Strong white bread flour
10g Salt
80g Caster sugar
10g Instant yeast
2 tsp Mixed spice
300ml Cool water
300g Unsalted block butter

To finish

About 200g Mincemeat (or alternative like chocolate)
1 Medium egg
100g Icing sugar

Method

Put the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water into a big bowl and use a large spatula to mix into a dough.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Tip into a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave to chill in the fridge for an hour.
Meanwhile, take the chilled block butter and place it between two sheets of cling film. Using a rolling pin beat the butter out into a rectangle about 40 x 19 cm. Cover in clingfilm and put back into the fridge to chill until needed.
Lightly flour you surface and take the dough out of the fridge. Roll it out into a 60 x 20 cm rectangle, about the thickness of a pound coin. The dough will spring back and resist being shaped, but just persist and you will get there.
Put the butter sheet onto the dough so that it covers two thirds, leaving the top third exposed.
Fold the exposed dough onto the first third of the butter, and then fold the bottom third, covered in butter, up onto the dough you’ve just folded down. You should now have layers of dough, butter, dough, butter, dough. Loosely clingfilm the dough and put back into the fridge for an hour.
Take the dough out of the fridge and put onto a floured surface with the short end facing you. Roll out to a rectangle 60 x 20cm. Fold the top third down and then fold the bottom third up on top, as you did before. Turn the square block 90˚ and repeat the rolling and folding. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill the pastry in the fridge for 1 hour.
Repeat step 7 two more times, leaving the dough to chill for an hour in between turns. After the last rolling and folding wrap the dough very loosely (wrapping tightly will stop the dough from rising) and leave in the fridge overnight (or for at least 8 hours).
Once the dough has rested and you’re ready to start shaping line 3 baking trays with baking paper.
Lightly flour a surface and roll out the dough into a 50 x 30cm, trimming the edges so you have a neat rectangle.
Cut the rectangle in half so you have two 25 x 30cm rectangles. Then cut triangles along the length of the strip, each with a 12cm base and 25cm from middle of the base to tip. This should give you 12 triangles in total.
Take one of the triangles and pull the two points making up the base to stretch the dough. Then stretch the dough lengthways so it’s as long and wide as possible.
Spoon about 2 tsp of mincemeat into the wide base of the dough. Then roll the croissants up from the base to the tip. To stop the dough from unravelling in the oven press the end into the croissant to stick it together. Then put the croissant onto the lined baking tray, curling the ends in slightly to get the classic shape. Repeat with the rest of the triangles.
Lightly cover the croissants in cling film again and leave for another 2 hours to rise and double in size.
Heat the oven to 180˚C. Beat the egg with a fork and then lightly brush the croissants to glaze. Put in the oven for 15-20 minutes until risen and golden brown. Take out the oven and leave to cool on a cooling rack.
Whilst cooling make the icing. Put the icing sugar into a bowl and add just enough water to make an icing which is just pourable – be careful not to make it too loose. Pour this into a piping bag with a small round nozzle.
Once cool drizzle the croissants with the icing and serve!

Thanks for reading! Another Christmas treat coming on Wednesday…

Emma x

Pear Tart Tatin

By Emma Hawkins | November 26, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Here’s another french classic – pear tart tatin. Soft, juicy pears, sticky caramel and crisp, caramelised pastry – it’s a classic for a reason. Unlike most tarts, this one’s unusual as it’s baked upside down. The caramel is made in the pan, then the pears go on top, the pastry on top of that, and then it’s all whopped in the oven. Then when it comes out it’s turned over to show the deliciously caramelised pears. As well as giving the pastry a beautiful flavour, this way of cooking it all also helps to keep the pastry crisp, as the juice from the pears doesn’t have the chance to rest on the pastry when it’s in the oven, and make it soggy.

The first time I ever made this I used shop bought puff pastry and roughly chopped apples. These are two great alterations to make if you want to save time or if you’re just starting to learn how to bake. On the other hand, if you haven’t made your own puff pastry before I’d recommend giving it a go. It takes a bit of time, but it’s not so much time that you have to work on it, more just that you have to leave it a lot to chill in between turns. This recipe is for rough-puff which is a slightly easier and quicker variation on full-puff pastry, but it still gives a beautiful light and crispy pastry.

Recipe

Serves 8

Time: 2 hours (plus time for chilling) – much shorter if using shop bought puff pastry

Ingredients

For the rough-puff pastry

225g Plain flour
½ tsp Salt
250g Unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
150ml Cold water

For the Filling

3 tbsp Water
100g Caster sugar
60g Unsalted butter, diced
4 Conference pears, peeled, cored and quartered

Method

Put the flour and salt into a large bowl. Add the cubed butter and stir until each piece is coated in flour, trying not to break the butter up too much.
Pour in the water and then stir with a round-bladed knife to bring the dough together.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and shape into a rough rectangle. Wrap in clingfilm and then chill in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.
Roll the pastry out onto a floured surface into a long rectangle until about 1cm thick. Fold the bottom third up onto the middle third of the pastry. Then fold the top third down onto the other two thirds to make a block one third of the original long rectangle.
Turn the pastry 90˚ so that the folded edge faces you, not the smooth edge. Press the ends down with a rolling pin to seal. Chill in the fridge for another 15 minutes.
Repeat steps 4-5 another 4 times.
Chill the pastry in the fridge for at least an hour, ideally overnight.
When the pastry is ready you can begin to assemble. In a large frying pan (which can go in the oven) put the water and caster sugar. Leave for 5 minutes so that the sugar absorbs the water.
Put over a medium heat and gently bring to the boil. Leave until a golden caramel forms – be careful not to stir during this process and the sugar will crystalize. Add the butter and stir to melt and combine. Leave to cool slightly.
Meanwhile roll out the pastry on a floured surface until about the thickness of a pound coin. Cut out a circle 2cm wider than the diameter of the pan.
Add the peeled and cored pears to the caramel in a spiral, all facing the same way. Then add the pastry on top, pressing the excess around the side of the pears so that the pastry snuggles everything in.
Put into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and crisp.
Once ready take it out of the oven and get ready to turn it out. Take a toasting tin or large bowl and a large plate. Put the plate over the pan so that when turned over the tart will be on the plate. Hold the pan and plate together, and turn 90˚ over the roasting tin to let the juices drain – this will prevent the pastry from going soggy when turned out. Once the juices have stopped dripping, turn over completely, tap a bit to release and then take the pan away.
Serve immediately with double cream or ice cream.

Thanks for reading!

Emma x