Orange Almond Pithivier

Pithivier is a round enclosed pie comprising of two pieces of circular-shaped puff pastry with filling stuffed in between.
If you are planning on making this, my advice is that it's more convenient to use store-bought puff pastry. Home-made puff pastry requires a cool environment(air-conditioned kitchen) to facilitate easy rolling out of the dough with butter in between the layers.
I had a really tough time rolling the dough as I had to choose a hot sunny day to do it! A battle between melting butter ooozing out of the dough and throwing it back into the fridge numerous time and sustaining aching arms and shoulders told me that it would be the last time I would ever make my own puff pastry!


Ingredients:

500g puff pastry (I used home-made)

Filling:

100g butter
80g caster sugar

Zest from 2 medium-sized oranges
1 tablespoon orange juice
150g ground almonds

2 eggs
50g plain flour

1 egg for glazing

1. Beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

2. Add zest, juice and ground almond. Mix well.

3. Add in lightly beaten eggs and finally flour.

4. Roll out half of pastry on lightly-floured table to ½ cm thick and use a plate of 20-cm in diameter to cut out a disc. Do the same for the other half of the pastry.

5. Place one pastry disc on a baking tray(save the hassle of moving the completed pie to a tray) and spread the filling, leaving a border of 2 cm from the edge.

6. Egg wash the edge and carefully place the other piece of pastry over it and press the edges together and use a fork to seal all round.

7. Egg wash the top of pastry and with the tip of a knife, mark curved lines from the centre to the edge to make a pattern.

8. Bake in preheated oven 180deg C for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Dust with icing sugar.

Another Baked Curry Puff

Rainy days are good days for baking. The kitchen won't be as warm as on a sunny day. What better time to bake and bake I surely did!

My grandsons love to eat curry puffs and they would always persuade their Grandpa to buy some for them. He would buy epok epok which is the fried version. Commercially produced curry puffs tend to be a tad spicy for the boys and they would gulp water in between bites.

I am not fond of the deep-fried ones because they are doubly oil-laden, - oil or fat in the pastry plus oil soaked up during frying! Hence I made some baked ones. The curry filling is the potato and chicken type and less spicy for my grandsons.

Ingredients:

230g plain flour, sifted
120g butter, cubed (should be firm to touch)
About 7 tablespoons iced water or more (depends on dough texture)
1 egg yolk mixed with 1 and a half teaspoon water for glazing

1. Place flour in a food processor. Add in butter cubes. Pulse twice and check for breadcrumb-like texture. If not, pulse one more time.

2. Add 5 tablespoons of iced water and pulse once. If dough doesn't come together, add 2 more tablespoons of iced water and pulse once. Pinch dough and if it sticks, it is ready.

3. Gather dough and just stick all loose parts to form a ball. Do not overmix or knead. Wrap dough in cling warp and refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes.

4. Roll out dough on lightly floured table top into a rectangle and do a letter fold. Roll out into a rectangle again and do another letter fold. Do this for the third time and wrap with cling wrap and refrigerate for about 15 minutes

5.  Roll dough to preferred thickness and cut circles to size. Place filling in the centre and fold, pinch edges.

6. Glaze and baked in preheated oven 180deg C for 25 minutes.

Alternatively, roll dough into a rectangle and then roll up like a swiss roll. Cut the roll into 24 equal parts or more depending on preferred size of curry puffs. Flatten cut dough with the swirls facing upwards and roll out into a circle, place filling, fold, pinch and bake.

 How pale we are!

Ahhh... tanning!

Gorgeous tan!

Custard Cream Puffs

I made these for one of the Ladies' meetings some time ago.

I am simply in a state of inertia where blogging is concerned.

K-drama is partly to be blamed - I'm practically hooked!

I used to bake a few hundred puffs daily, usually with durian filling. I recall how I had to wake up at four in the morning just to fill up the puffs so that my hubby could deliver them to the various shops by 7a.m and how I had to rush to work after that. Those were my hectic days - that was the kind of life I had led for over 20 years! Festive seasons were the worst time where a couple of hours' sleep was a luxury! Whenever I reminisce my baking journey, the thought of it just seem to drain my energy away.

Enough of rambling!

Now to post the recipe for the choux pastry.

Choux Pastry:

240 ml water

120g butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 tablespoon caster sugar

160g plain flour, sifted

4 large eggs

Method:

1. Place water, butter, salt and sugar in a pot and bring it to a boil.

2. Lower heat and pour in flour and immediately stir with a wooden spoon to mix into a soft dough. Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl.

3. Add in eggs, one at a time and use an electric mixer to beat in the eggs.

4. Fill up an icing bag with a round nozzle attached. Pipe out circular mounds on a greased tray.

5. Bake in preheated oven at 170 deg C for 15 minutes. ( Puffs must be sufficiently baked so that they will not shrink and flatten after when cooled.)

6. Once cooled, slit side of puff and spoon custard into it or fill icing bag with nozzle and pipe out any filling.

Gleaming, waiting to be baked!

See how they have puffed up!

Chicken Pie & I AM BACK!!!

I have been MIA for about seven weeks. I had been down with a very bad flu when I returned from Cambodia which took me about two weeks to recover.

Though I have been cooking and baking, I am just too lazy to post about it. My daughter even commented on the absence of my postings. Apart from that, I have been busy six days a week. My nights are devoted to watching Korean dramas by the episodes. You know how it is like when the episode ends with suspense and it makes you want to continue watching. Ahem! Precisely that's what I have been doing - watching 3 to 4 episodes in a row. You can imagine the time I go to bed, it would be the next day!!! Bad! Bad! Bad! Now I have developed 'panda eyes'!! LoL!

Enough of my ramblings!

I baked these for a ladies' meet last Saturday. It's not the usual shape for a chicken pie. It was a short cut and I don't waste any pastry if I had cut them round. It doesn't matter what shape a pie takes as long as it tastes good.

Puff Pastry

150g plain flour

40g butter

1 egg yolk

30 ml water

a pinch of salt

60g pastry margarine, shredded

1 egg yolk, for glazing the top

1 egg white, for sealing the edges

1. Mix flour and butter with finger tips till it resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Mix egg yolk, salt and water together and pour into flour and mix to form a dough.

3. Roll out dough on floured board or pastry mat into a rectangle shape.

4. Place pastry margarine evenly on two-thirds of dough and fold the one-third dough without the margarine over and then the other with the margarine over.

5. Fold into two and roll into a rectangle and repeat the three folds two times.

6. Then roll out dough to desired thickness and cut into small rectangles or use a round cutter.

7. Egg-wash the pastry with egg white, put filling and fold over and seal the edges. (Egg white acts as glue to seal the edges.) Crimp edge with a fork.

8. Glaze top of pies, prick a couple of holes and bake in preheated oven 170 deg C for 25 to 30 minutes.

A Wokful of Chicken and Mixed Veggies

Fresh from the oven!

Now for a cuppa tea!

Baked Curry Puffs

Another attempt to make curry puffs!

This time I decided to try Zurin's recipe.

There was no sign of the spirals again, this time probably due to the egg-glaze. But the pastry is great and it tasted good.

I won't post the recipe and the method as it can be obtained from Zurin's blog: Cherry on a Cake.

The filling is the usual curry potato but I added some minced beef as requested by my hubby.

Epok Epok

Not giving up after that boo-boo I made in the spiral curry puffs, I decided to make epok epok instead. This is a fool-proof curry puff and took me half the time to do.

What I used:(This recipe makes about 10 to 12 epok epok.)

Dry curry potato or sardines as filling

200g plain flour
70g butter, cubed
1/2 egg white
1/2 teaspoon salt
70 ml water

What I did:

1. Rub in butter in flour till it resembles bread crumbs.

2. Dissolve salt in egg white and water.

3. Make a well in the centre of flour mixture and pour in water and mix into a dough.

4. Pinch out the amount of dough and flatten it with your palm.(You can roll it out)

5. Put in a teaspoon of filling and wrap it up. Press the sides and pinch to seal the puff.

6. Heat enough oil in the pan and deep fry till golden brown.


Now it's time for a break and to read the papers. Ahh.........

Potato Curry Puffs

"A poor workman blaming his tools!"
It was on the spur of the moment that I decided to make these. I had in the past few days been browsing some pastry books and came across a spiral curry puff recipe. They are the ones that have shell-like spiral patterns which are sold at some curry puff stalls like A1. I have always been fascinated with the pattern. The instructions were simple to follow but lacked certain details as I discovered later while making it. Mine didn't turn out accordingly. After clearing up, I was feeling so disappointed that I decided to read up to check if I had missed out any important tips. There I came across another recipe that called for a similar pastry and this time on its pages were the step by step instructions and pics. The author of the book could have made references to those pages with pics and the result would probably be better. Hmmm....... :(

I halved the recipe and followed the steps exactly word for word from the book in the dough-making.

Ingredients:
Potato curry filling (Any dry curry with or without meat will do)

Water Dough:(full recipe)
260g flour (Book says flour and I assumed it's plain flour)
50g margarine (I used butter)
20g sugar (I used caster sugar)
140g water

"Mix all the ingredients to form a smooth dough and divide it into 2 equal portions and let it rest for 20 minutes."


Oil Dough:

180g flour ( I used plain flour)
100g shortening (I used crisco)

"Mix all the ingredients to form a smooth paste and divide into 2 equal portions.

The dough with the dent is the oil dough and the other is the water dough.


Method:

1. Wrap the oil dough with water dough. Roll out the dough into rectangular shape.
Make a book fold.(I assumed that it was just a one layer fold like a book but in another recipe the pics showed a three-fold, overlapping just like when you do flaky puffs pastry to get the layers.)

Oil dough in water dough


2. Roll it into thin sheet to 2-mm thickness. Roll it up like Swiss roll.


3. Let it rest for 10 minutes. Then cut it into 8 pieces. Repeat the steps for the second portion.

4. Flatten the dough then roll it into 3-mm thickness. Wrap the filling inside the pastry and pinch together the edge.
Cut dough piece flattened and rolled out. Notice the slight circular lines on the rolled pastry

No sign of the spirals! Sob! :(


5. Fry it in hot oil until golden brown in colour.

Barely in the hot oil for 1 minute and it changed colour. The pastry inside was not cooked yet. That's why the fried ones became very dark.


* Book says the curry puffs can be baked but with no further instructions regarding temperature or duration.

Verdict: A disastrous -looking lot of curry puffs but the pastry is crispy whether fried or baked.
I fried 2 curry puffs but they ended up looking so dark - almost burnt. So I decided to bake the rest. It took 35 to 40 minutes to bake to get the slightly brown colour. I should have egg-glazed them.

What a disaster! No spiral lines!

Picture from the book. See the difference!

Short Crust Pastry

Pastry recipes vary. Making pastry is easy. For the occasional bakers, it is almost foolproof.
Sweet pastry and shortcrust pastry are easy to do. Puff pastry and choux pastry require some careful attention to the tips given.

I have a tub of pineapple jam leftover from cny. Pineapple jam can last for more than six months if it is cooked properly and has the right amount of sugar added (sugar is a form of preservative).

I didn't want to make the usual cny pineapple tarts, so I decided to use one of my many shortcrust pastry recipes to make little tartlets. I was too lazy to decorate it and left them 'bald'.

Recipe for Shortcrust Pastry:

250g plain flour
150g butter, from the fridge
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 egg yolk
About 2 to 3 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

This is what I did:

1. Sift flour. Cube the butter and rub into flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Add sugar and mix well. Then add egg yolk, water and essence and mix to form a dough.
Do not knead.

3. Wrap dough in cling wrap and refrigerate for 1/2 hour.

4. Roll dough between 2 plastic sheets (prevents sticking to rolling pin) to desired thickness.

5. Cut out the shape or size required and press into pastry moulds.

6. Prick a couple of holes on the base before putting in the filling.

7. Bake at pre-heated oven 160 degrees C for about 20 minutes.