Vanilla Custard Fruit Pie
This recipe involves a few steps and may seem like a lot of work, but trust me it’s quite the opposite: minimal baking and easy to put together. What’s more, my version is relatively healthy! 🙂 I initially made this fruit pie with a cream cheese filling following the recipe from a friend in Atlanta (now is Dallas) and it was mighty delicious. However, with the recipe below I have replaced the filling with vanilla custard to make it a lighter dessert for a dinner party that may already be laden with cheese. I have also included a recipe for the sugar cookie base which uses half the sugar than that found in ready-made cookie dough mixture that you can buy at the grocery store (only available in US, not in UK). For the fruit topping, you can combine any fruits that you like. I have chosen berries for my recipe below, but you can use pineapple bits, kiwis, grapes, etc.
Every time I have made it for others, it has gone down a treat! Why don’t you “bake” to impress! 🙂
Serves 8 /Total Time 45 minutes
Sugar Cookie Dough Ingredients:
170g /1-1/3 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
115g /1/2 cup butter, softened
100g/1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- In a small bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Set these dry ingredients aside.
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually blend in the dry ingredients.
- Preheat oven to 375F/190C. Line a 12 inch/30 cm pizza baking tray with parchment paper. Roll the dough onto the parchment paper. You can use your fingertips to push it out evenly to the edges.
- Bake 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden. Let it stand on on baking tray for about two minutes before removing to cool on wire racks.
Vanilla Custard Ingredients:
250 ml milk
100 ml fresh cream (I used 25% fat fresh cream)
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cornflour or cornstarch
1/2 of vanilla pod or 1 tsp vanilla extract/essence
- In a saucepan, put the milk and cream together and add the vanilla seeds/extract/essence. Take 1/4 cup of this mixture in a small bowl and mix in the sugar and cornflour to make a smooth paste and keep aside.
- Heat the milk mixture over a medium flame. When it comes to a boil, lower the flame and stir in the cornflour/milk mixture. Stir constantly until thick and creamy, making sure that nothing catches at the bottom of the pan. Take off heat and set aside to cool.
Orange glaze ingredients:
1 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tbsp lemon juice
pinch of salt
- In a saucepan, combine all ingredients, heat over medium flame, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, and cook for 1 or 2 minutes, until thickened. Remove from heat. Allow to cool, but not set.
Topping Ingredients:
2 cups strawberries, sliced in halves
1 cup blackberries, sliced in halves
1 cup raspberries, sliced in halves
1/2 cup blueberries
or
Any combination of your favourite fruits
- Once the fruit is cut up, set aside.
Assembly:
- Slide the cooled baked cookie dough base on to a serving dish of the same size if you wish. Otherwise, just remove the parchment paper from the baking tray.
- Spread the cooled custard over the sugar cookie base leaving 2 cm of edge of base uncovered.
- Arrange chosen fruit in a circle around the outside edge. Continue with fruit of your choice, working towards the middle.
- Now spoon over the cooled orange glaze over the fruits.
- Chill for at least 1 hour, then cut into wedges and serve.
Taste of London!
Taste London 2011 at Regents Park
This past Friday my husband and I went to the Taste of London food festival. We contemplated whether to attend given the usual British summer rain. That said, we made an executive decision to get the tickets, come rain or shine. Rain it was! For those that are unfamiliar with the festival, it is a half day affair nearby to us in beautiful Regents Park. It gives the opportunity to taste various sample dishes from some of the best (Michelin starred) restaurants in London.
Although this was my first Taste of London experience, but not my first food festival in London, I had some expectations. Overall, I enjoyed it and can definitely see the attraction for meat eaters: as expected, it was not very vegetarian friendly for the actual food tasting experience. However, outside of the paid-for tasting, we did manage to get stuffed with endless samples of cheeses, breads, biscuits, spreads, oils, sauces, desserts, and drinks. The food experience would have been much better had it not rained and the need for my winter coat and poncho! Thankfully, the rain halted for a good while and were able to get through all stalls.
Garlic spread tasting….
Breads made from spelt flour…
Zacher Torte – they tried to recreate the famous one from Vienna! Wonderful memories…
I would say the highlight of the festival was meeting and seeing all the famous chefs that I have seen on TV and have often tried to cook their recipes. We saw Michel Roux Jr, Marcus Wareing, Atul Kochhar, Eric Lanlard, Gennaro Contaldo and probably trod on the toes of other renowned chefs that I did not recognise.
The person I was most excited to see and have a chance to chat with was Eric Lanlard, a Master Pâtissier. Watch his show “Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard” on Channel 4. At the festival, we chanced upon his only appearance over the weekend: he was doing a demonstration of an Upside-down Berry Sponge. It was great to see him at work first-hand and pick up some baking tips. At the end of his demo, my husband pushed me behind the kitchen stage to meet him. When we spoke, I shared my baking experiences with his recipes and how I would like to be part of this show one day! 🙂 He is looking for Bake Clubs for the next series so do get in touch if you would like to join me in setting one up in the London area.
Eric making the Upside-down Berry Sponge
The finished Upside-down Berry Sponge..yum! We wanted to see if we could taste it, but only realised after we left the demonstration!
My moment of fame!
I have made some of his fabulous desserts for family and friends and each time have had such great success. I have found that his recipes always demand a lot of eggs but they do always deliver in taste and texture so why question a Master Pâtissier. So far I have made a Genoise Sponge and Lemon Meringue cupcakes.
I made these cupcakes for a family picnic and were a huge this. You can find this recipe here.
I made this for a special family gathering, a six layer Genoise Sponge, great summer cake. I definitely need to improve on my decorating skills, but the taste was there! 🙂 You can find the recipe here.
Another great chef that we met was Atul Kocchar, a famous Indian Chef that runs Benares. Thankfully in this Michelin-starred sample menu, they had a vegetarian option! The paneer roll was tasty and it was gone in seconds (partly due to the size):
We ended our tour of the Taste for London by taking an interactive survey from British Airways. This group was conducting a study on how our sense of smell is affected at high altitudes. Apparently, our sense of smell is cut down by 30% and that’s was causes us to think that food served on airplanes is bland, when in reality it’s not. They were proving this by engaging us on various smell test. For those that did not see it on Channel4, British Airways have worked with Heston Blumenthal to increase the taste perception on planes by spraying chemicals during meal times. (In my experience, Air India do the opposite by spraying air neutralisers to counteract the tons of pickles that are in people’s hand luggage!)
Summary
As a passionate foodie, since moving to England I have been fortunate enough to go to the many food markets that pop up in London from time to time as well as a couple of the large food shows. Quite often each time you end up coming across the same stalls selling high quality, local and tasty (but somewhat overpriced) products that are actually available in my local Waitrose.
Taste of London is a fantastic concept for those that want to sample a variety of dishes from over 20 Michelin-starred restaurants for the price of a sit-down meal at just one of those restaurants. I would definitely recommend it for meat or fish eaters but unlike other shows, you do really miss out being a vegetarian.
VegDelights 