Apricot and Hazelnut Upside-down Biscuit Pie




for the 6 ramekins:

60 g unsalted butter
50 g brown sugar

Beat the soft butter and sugar with a wooden spoon until creamy paste. Cover the bottoms and walls of the ramekins. Leave aside.

for the vanilla sauce:

250 ml heavy cream
3 yolks
3 Tbsp powder sugar
5 ml vanilla extract

Heat the cream in a heavy bottom pan until just before the boiling point. Beat the eggs and the sugar. Add the cream to the egg mixture, stirring constantly. Add the vanilla extract. Return back to the pan over a medium heat and stir until slightly thickens. Cover and set to cool.  

for the biscuits:

75 g unsalted butter
50 g sugar
115 g flour
75 g blanched hazelnuts, crashed

Beat the butter and sugar with the wooden spoon.Add the flour and form a ball. Divide in 6 equal pieces (aprox. 53 g each). Shape each into a ball and flatten with your palms to form a nice thick disc.



for the tailoring:

apricot halves compote
5 Tbsp apricot jelly

Tailoring:

Assemble the apricot halves on the bottom of the buttered ramekins. Cover each one with the dough disc, pressing gently. Bake at 200C for 15 min. Leave to cool in the ramekins.

Serving:



If the vanilla sauce thickened too much, thin it with a bit of cream or heat it slightly. If the jelly thickened, heat gently and place it in a parchment paper cone.


Use a warm large plate. Pour some of the vanilla sauce, forming very thin layer. Loosen the cooled biscuit with a knife, moving gently around the walls of the ramekin. In a small plate, turn the pie over, than transfer it in the centre of the serving plate. With the jelly, pipe decoration as desired. Do not leave the jelly in the parchment paper cone for a long time. Work fast, before the jelly hardens again. On my decoration, for some of the finishing elements, the jelly hardened and the lines were not as delicate as I wanted them to be. If you have much decoration left to finish, you would need to rewarm the jelly again and continue your work, achieving the desired result.


This desert is an extremely successful combination of fruit and nuts, and nobody minded my crooked lines.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lebkuchen Houses

Image
Traditions are sculpted by the memories of the people. For some traditions is particularly easy to cross time and geographical borders, because of the taste. The well known gingerbread houses today are the young ancestors of the lebkuchen houses, born in Germany two hundred years ago, when Brothers Grimm wrote "Hansel and Gretel". German bakers were inspired by the descriptive story and freed their imagination into baking differently shaped and coloured small and big delicious houses.  Decorated with candies, small cookies, chocolate pieces and lots of icing, the houses are extremely appealing not only because of their whimsical appearance, but because of the heavenly aroma of the spices as well. Make this in advance and you will have Christmas feeling all season long.  I chose to bake lebkuchen houses because of the variety of spices used in the recipe . My houses are gently decorated with white royal icing and I did not use any candies. I like this way of decor
Read more

Rustico Buttergipfel

Image
55 g unsalted butter I 225 g unsalted butter II 30 g flour 15 g cold water 7 g dry yeast 20 ml lukewarm water 160 ml col water 14 g malt syrup , or 30 g dark honey 12 g salt 1 large egg 380 g flour My Grandma used to "toast" the butter for almost every pastry - either at the time of preparing or just before serving. It gave just a small "intonation" of difference to the colour but such a complete finish to the taste. At the time I did not care what and why she did that - to me it was just an extra unnecessary work. Later on at the university I realized how the separation works and what a difference it makes to the taste. French call it beurre noisette and use it mostly for pastry and savoury hot sauces, Indians call it ghee and cook mainly with it, in Germany and in the German part of Switzerland, chefs use this "toasty" butter for the buttergipfels .  The process is a simple separation into butterfat and milk solids, called clarificat
Read more

Old-fashioned Lebkuchen Stars and Hearts

Image
This is the classic recipe for Christmas Cookies from old Germany, or Switzerland (if you'd prefer). A recipe, I was hoping to find for a long time. Thanks to Sara Kelly Iaia and her fine memories, collected in the book "Festive Baking", I am happy to bake the first cookies for this Christmas. The honey and the quantity of the fragrant spices make these cookies unique. I would advise not to skip any of the spices or to change their quantity. I am pretty conservative when it comes to perfumed spices. I think the simpler ingredients make one dish tastier. But here, the spices are in perfect unison.   for the cookies: 490 g all purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp baking powder 1 Tbsp cinnamon 1 tsp cardamom 1/2 tsp ground cloves 1/2 tsp powdered anise 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg 1/2 tsp ginger 225 g honey 160 g light brown sugar 134 g unsalted butter 1 large egg 1. Sift the flour in a bowl. 2. In another bowl, sift all
Read more