At School

I'm at school again. Busy, busy and seriously busy. I will try and post - I am taking picts of what I'm working on there it's just a matter of posting them!

Caramelized Fennel Tart

Ok, not the prettiest tart, and admittedly not the best I've had either. I do however, give this guy some points for using fennel. How many people really use fennel? How many people realize that the taste dramatically changes when it's cooked for a long period of time and is allowed to slowly caramelize? Let me tell ya, it changes. It becomes a really mellow flavor, very subtle. This one has been slowly cooked on a stove top for around an hour with olive oil, an onion and a few bulbs of fennel.

I remember when I had to travel into uni on the train. Fennel would grow wild next the railroad tracks. I always wondered if anyone actually picked it. At that time, I had no idea what I would use it for, nowadays I have a few ideas.

Oh! I was wondering if anyone else has noticed how much fruit surrounds them? I noticed plums in a local public park, no one picked them but the birds. I also saw a giant apple tree in an apartment complex, a fig tree on capitol hill (they are looking mighty ripe right now), there are blackberries a few hundred meters up my street... we need some sort of program that allows people to pick some of the bounty (of course I already obliged this with the blackberries a few weeks ago...)

Plum Danish

Although Tricia did bring plums over they were prune plums, and I happened to see some beautiful duarte plums at the market that very same week. These were a deep red plum, very fragrant. Little did I know that they had a beautifully sweet, ruby red flesh on the inside.

This is a simple Danish dough, cut into flower shapes. The filling consists of almond cream and the fresh pulp of the plums - no sugar added.

Danish's are such a simple pastry, and I think that as the base is simple the fillings should be simple. I like the taste of butter - and I like the taste of butter in these guys.

Simple Plum Tart

Yes, some more plums. Once again from the lovely Tricia.

I've taken to making tart dough like there's no tomorrow and just keeping it in the freezer until I have a filling to put in it. Once again this tart relies on the fruit to do it's best in flavoring the tart. It's a simple pate sucre, I put panko on the base to soak up the juice left by the plums, and then layered the plums.

No this wasn't as easy as I'm making it sounds...I had to do it twice. On the way to the oven I managed to hit the oven door and the pieces managed to stay within the tart, but completly lop sides. It looked rather good actually.. I figured it would be kinda weird to eat a tart that had nothing on one side and everything on the other. So I rearranged them again.

I sprinkled the top with cinnamon, sugar and cardamon, baked it. Glazed it with some apricot glaze and that was it.

It was a tart sweet tart. I should have precooked the base longer than the 10 min I did as it was a smidge unstable. But otherwise it was pretty alright.

Plum Scrolls

wow, its been a while!

A friend bough a ton of plums the other week - I mean seriously a lot. They were Italian prune plums. And so she made her way out to my place and we thought we'd see how much we could use.

These babies were inspired by a german plum cake. This usually means a very simple cake made with yeast dough, rolled out to fit a baking sheet and then plums layered on top.

We used the same yeast dough, rolled it out into a rectangle, slathered it with melted butter, sprinkled on some sugar and cinnamon, scattered some plum chunks. They were finished with a simple vanilla icing.

So very good, and very seasonal!