Bacon toffee chocolate chunk cookies
October 18, 2011 § 2 Comments
My life through pictures. Because I’m so tired it’s too difficult to put together a coherent sentence on paper. Well that’s not exactly true because I’m doing it right this moment, but you get what I mean. Midterm week is coming up. Very quickly.
Fortunately, these cookies don’t need much explanation. Bacon crumbles. Sticky salted caramel. Dark chocolate chunks. Made by pounding the chocolate bars on the counter, much to the annoyance of surrounding studying students (hey! I can even form alliterations while zoned-out!). Cookie dough. Chewy, flat, with crunchy bites of crackly bacon toffee. And I just knew you were wondering what to do with all of the leftover caramelized bacon from last week.
If you want to make these, I suggest first making the bacon toffee described in the post below, crumbling (or hacking) it into your favorite chocolate chip cookie dough, and then sitting in front of the oven while the toffee melts into huge, nearly transparent, puddles inside your cookies.
Caramelized bacon apple muffins
October 10, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’ve never had a Canadian Thanksgiving. The first time I really thought of it was when I started getting emails about the Canadian Club’s Thanksgiving dinner for students in the dining halls here at Princeton. Still, in the rush of schoolwork and daily activities, I never actually made it up-campus to one of those dinners. Now I suppose there are many members of my family for whom Thanksgiving in October is a normalcy, but my Thanksgivings have always been in November, albeit very untraditional food-wise. Still there is something very appealing about getting to have two.
Unfortunately, there is no time today to make pumpkin pie, so I’m just going to have to snatch a slice from the dinner on the way to the gym (to be eaten afterwards, I promise). Fortunately, there are still a variety of treats in our room from the latest baking adventures: Caramelized bacon apple muffins (coined breakfast-in-a-bite) and caramel bacon chocolate chunk cookies. It wasn’t hard to get the boys on board with the idea of bacon in everything and while we originally got a couple of odd faces at brunch when we launched the idea, everyone was sold by the next day at dinner. The muffins weren’t even out of the oven when all the fingers and knives in the room started going for the block of bacon caramel left over.
One of things I like most about Thanksgiving is the work that goes in beforehand, the splitting up of the menu amongst people, the chaos of the kitchen with everyone attempting to do their own thing at once, and then it all, finally, coming together in the end in a complete meal. When I first started baking in the dorm kitchen in my sophomore year, people would come for the eating part. Sometimes they would help with the dishes, and occasionally they would watch. Now, we’re staying in on Saturday nights (it’s tough getting old), have the keys to an always-locked kitchen, and while the number of kitchen appliances and utensils hasn’t changed a bit (think almost zero), baking is quickly becoming a group activity. Which makes me very happy.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Caramelized bacon apple muffins
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen‘s blueberry muffins
For the bacon caramel:
1 c. sugar
6 T. salted butter
6 slices bacon
For the muffins:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 medium sized chopped apples (skin on)
To make the caramel:
In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and butter. Crumble the bacon into small pieces and add to the pan. Heat over medium heat until the mixture turns deep, amber brown. Let it simmer just beyond what you feel comfortable with. Remove pan from heat and set aside. The caramel will start to harden while you make the muffin batter; it will likely be very sticky when you start to use it, and if it gets too hard, a sharp knife will do the trick. You will have quite a bit of caramel left over after adding it to the muffins — perfect for making cookies!
To make the muffins:
Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt to the bowl, folding the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. It’s important to not over mix, mix just until the flour disappears. Fold in apples and small pieces of the bacon caramel. Spoon the batter into greased muffin pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a knife stuck in the center of a muffin comes out clean.
This recipe makes 8-10 standard-size muffins.
Ricotta-topped Skillet Bread
October 6, 2011 § Leave a comment
This morning, I didn’t hit the snooze button. The air was still frosty when I stepped out the door and when I stopped at the light, running down to the lake, I noticed that I could see my breath. There were just a couple of people out on the path this morning—a few middle-aged women, one of the cross country boys, an elderly man sitting on the side of the canal, bike parked. He was fishing in the green canal behind the lake and passing him the first time, I briefly wondered what exactly he was hoping to catch in the mucky water. When I passed him for a second time on my return, he was pulling a tiny fish from the water and dropping it in a plastic bucket. Call me overly sensitive maybe, but it was a sad moment, though he was perfectly cheerful as he waved hello. The fish was so minuscule that it couldn’t possibly have more than a bite of meat on its skeleton and the hooking and dumping of it in the bucket seemed so needless, so arbitrary, and I couldn’t help but think about how awful it would be to start one’s day by purposely killing something.
That said, I kept running. It was a beautiful, chilly morning — the sun was out, crisp leaves crunched underfoot and to top it all off, the Canucks’ season opener is tonight. I was planning on getting into the kitchen sometime this weekend, but events seem to be getting in the way. Things are starting to catch up to me, both running and school-wise. My first 20 miler of this training round is this weekend (P.S. if you have any Philadelphia eating recommendations, please shoot them my way!) and I need to finally make my way through the Faulkner novel that will make up most of my junior paper. In my room, I’ve flipped the 2012 calendar I recently bought to October 2012 and started using it anyway, just to keep myself organized. Sure, the dates are two days off, but it was a necessary move.
If I could be in the kitchen right now, I would be making something like this cornbread. I started with this recipe, but quickly flew in all different directions. I used half quinoa flour and half white flour instead of whole wheat flour. Sweetened ricotta from the local Italian grocery replaced the pour-over cream. A couple of handfuls of flax seeds added a whole lot of chew. I omitted the cooked quinoa. I halved the sugar, but if I were to make it again, I would add it all back. I ate it from the skillet, with a healthy drizzle of wildflower honey.
Spiced Nut Snack Mix
October 3, 2011 § 1 Comment
Below my feet, the yellowed leaves crunch, and the air is crisp, fresh, reminding me of that scent one gets standing on top of a tall mountain. The heavy last summer heat has slowly melded into fall. I was writing a short story the other day for my fiction writing course this term, the first work of fiction I have started in a very long time, when I realized just how much timing and setting changes a series of events. I was piecing together a character out of bits and pieces of interactions I had had with various people in the past year; it felt more natural to pull from memory. There was something terrifying about the thought of people reading my fictional story, even though I lay a lot of things out to complete strangers on this blog weekly. There is still a knot in my stomach when I think about going over the story in workshop tomorrow afternoon, in a room high up on the 6th floor with glass walls, allowing you to look out over the entire campus when you’re supposed to be paying attention in class. The mind wanders — perhaps that is expected in a creative writing class.
We’ve been talking a lot about loneliness in class, how it is easier to feel sympathy for a schoolteacher in Russia, taking a trip through the mud in a cart and longing for her superior to notice her, than it is to feel sympathy for the 30something divorcee who muddles about at home, unknowingly in love with her best friend who is busy chasing after young actresses. We’ve also been talking a lot about vapidity, superficiality and, on the flip side of things, interiority. It kind of makes me wonder if people are as generally unhappy as they are made out to be in novels. And then I think about the very little things that make me happy and I think that it cannot be possible that everyone is drying up out of loneliness inside, maybe just the writers of the world.
Note: As it turns out, I needn’t have worried so much about the story. We made black tea and the professor brought in a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts from the train station. And then we sat around and talked writing styles and the necessity of placing yourself firmly in time, all the while looking out of the window, feeling on top of the world.
Spiced Nut Snack Mix
Adapted from David Lebovitz
This recipe is infinitely adaptable. I tried this version with pistachios and broken pieces of waffle cone, but you can literally throw almost anything in the bowl and it will come out delicious. I served the mix as a topping for homemade chocolate and hazelnut ice cream.
2 cups mixed raw nuts (I used a combination of cashews, almonds and pistachios)
1 tablespoon (15 g) butter, salted or unsalted, browned
3 tablespoons (45 g) dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon chili powder
1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon fleur de sel
2 cups (100 g) small pretzel twists (for a saltier mix) or butter cookies, broken into small pieces (for a richer mix)
Spread out the nuts on a baking sheet and roast for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F, flipping once. In a mixing bowl, stir together the browned, melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, chili pepper and maple syrup. Once the nuts are toasted, add them to the liquid sugar mixture and stir until they are completely coated. Stir in the salt. Then mix in the cookie pieces or pretzels. Spread the nut mixture back on the baking sheet and roast for 12-18 minutes, flipping or shaking every couple of minutes to ensure even toasting and that the sugar is not clumping. Remove the tray from the oven and let cool completely.
Croissants aux amandes
September 27, 2011 § 5 Comments
The funny thing about having a blog is that sometimes I get confused and start thinking of it like a diary. I start writing and quickly realize that the blank word document I’m filling up with words is completely unpublishable. And then I have to start all over from scratch. It’s unfortunately like admitting that my life isn’t as fancy and perfect like the pictures ready to be uploaded.
Awhile ago, we had a perfect Saturday morning in San Francisco — the sun was out for once, and on the drive home, we stopped at a café — a little hole in the wall, with brilliant sunflowers atop each industrial table — in the area for a cappuccino and pastry. I thought of it when my mother said the family was going to the connected restaurant that night for dinner. I thought of it during a particularly hard week at school, which, thankfully (big decisions made, tears shed and cakes baked) is finally over. I thought of sitting in the café as I readjusted my morning routine in my dorm room, which I am ashamed to say generally consists of energy bars and instant oatmeal.
There are days here when I can’t believe how much I missed these friends while I was away; and then there are days when being back here feels like being locked in a little box with no air to breathe (the humidity maybe doesn’t help that matter). Sorry I think I reverted into diary mode, but the truth is, something like the picture below would never have happened here, simply because the idea of doing approximately 1,000 turns and folds of the dough is unfeasible given the lack of time and equipment on hand. It’s frustrating, and oh I could go on and on about it, but I’ll stop — there’s an almond croissant waiting for you, soft, crusty, with marzipan spilling out from the edges and almond flakes falling off the sides.
I made these for the September Daring Bakers‘ Challenge, which was “Fresh, FLuffy, French Croissants.” To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the dough, I found it rather salty when not accompanied by a sweet filling, much more like a very buttery roll than a flakey pastry. The recipe we used was from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two by Julia Child and Simone Beck, and it took about 20 hours from start to finish, including an overnight rise in the fridge. I definitely think croissants are something to be attempted at least once in a lifetime, but I can’t say a repeat is in my future anytime soon. Not when there’s a bakery around the corner.
*The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!*
Ushering in Fall
September 26, 2011 § 2 Comments
It’s hard to believe it’s fall when the air still hangs damp and heavy, broken up by droplets of rain that seem to cling to the skin, alongside clammy, greasy sweat. I just so love East Coast humidity. But one of these cloudy days found us piling into the bright-red bug convertible and driving the fifteen minutes to Tehrune Orchards. It was Apple Day at the orchard apparently, though I did my research and the real Apple Day, in celebration of local distinctiveness and finding common ground, is actually on October 21st. Lies.
Nevertheless, we enjoyed picking Empire and Red Delicious apples, riding the wagon, cruising through the corn maze and celebrating when we reached the exit, and picking wildflowers. We ate fluffy cider donuts, coated in cinnamon sugar, from a paper bag, and peered at the cases of ginger and oatmeal cookies and racks of apple cider in the general farm store. We forgot for a few hours that we were grown-up college students and rode the parked tractor, poked our heads through the farm animal scene cut-outs and practiced our milking skills on the wooden cow. Then we piled back in the cars and drove back to campus, back to our readings, problem sets and the daily grind.
About a week later, the apples cored and cut, coated in brown sugar and vanilla bean, were piled into little baking dishes and topped with a generous heaping mound of crumbly oats and browned butter.
Crisps were one of the very first things I made in the kitchen, if you exclude the concoctions of shaved chocolate and milk I used to love when I was four-years-old. Every so often, I would pull my only cookbook of my very own, Fanny at Chez Panisse, from the shelf and make a fruit crisp, sometimes doubling the topping to make sure there was enough. Sometimes enough wasn’t enough and I remained unsatisfied with a 2:1 topping to fruit ratio. Nowadays, I go by look and feel for the topping. I use my hands and throw ingredients around, a method that tends to work out well in the dorm kitchens, which are just barely stocked enough to be functional.
Mexican Chocolate Pot de Crème
September 20, 2011 § Leave a comment
The first time I put chili powder in a baked good, the face my little brother made told it all. Not like that in itself is all that unusual; generally, anything that isn’t vanilla, lemon or cinnamon flavored meets with that reaction from him. It can make baking at home rather boring, with a couple of people on diets and the only person who eats unashamedly being such a picky eater. But anyway, they were chili chocolate chip cookies — the slice and bake kind — and they were a bit of a let down. Too much cinnamon, not spicy enough, and a little hard, in the stale kind of way. Not a disaster, in fact my mom ate them straight from the freezer for about a month afterwards, but not capable of convincing the brother to give new flavors another chance. Thankfully, I had a chance to try again with a new dessert, and best of all, a new audience, which was a bit more receptive to adventurous sweets.
We occasionally throw dinner parties, and, when not in the middle of summer, they don’t always involve the picnic table, the backyard and barbequed fish — though this being California, they still, quite often, do anyway. For this one for instance, I made a trio of desserts: goat cheese custards with red wine reduction, tiny, spicy ginger drop cookies, and these little pots of Mexican chocolate custard. The grainy texture of Mexican chocolate and the heat that arrives after the initial smooth sweetness come through in the finished custard, giving the dessert more of a bite than your standard pot de crème.
It was one of those dinners — as it had to be with three desserts — that seemed to last forever in good company and I sent our guests home with huge bags of ginger drops at the end of the night. A couple of weeks later I got a package in the mail, with a book about the independence struggle in Algeria which we had discussed at dinner. I like surprises. And I love getting mail. Maybe that explains why I had ten billion pen pals as a young girl. And why my dorm room is decorated with postcards.
Mexican Chocolate Pot de Crème
Adapted from The Perfect Pantry
I submitted this post to the Sugar High Friday dessert blogging event, which bakes under a different theme every month. September’s theme was “Sweet Heat” and you can find the roundup of desserts here at the end of the month.
Ingredients:
2 cups whipping cream, chilled
6 oz. Mexican chocolate (2 disks minus one small wedge), finely chopped
5 large egg yolks, at room temperature
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
In a saucepan over low heat, heat the whipping cream to the simmer. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the chopped chocolate until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla extract and salt. Then whisk in the chocolate and milk mixture. Pour the finished mixture through a strainer into a large clean bowl.
Place 6-8 small ramekins in a deep baking dish, such as a brownie pan. Distribute the mixture evenly among the ramekins. Pour hot water into the roasting pan until it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Cover the pan with aluminum foil, and bake for 25 minutes or until the custard is just set around the edges.
Remove the pan from oven and remove the custards from the water. Let them cool and then cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight.
Fig Buckwheat Scones
September 16, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’ve packed all my clothes and books into seven moving boxes and brought them down to the UPS. I’ve stashed together energy bars and dried fruit to get me through the semester, and handpicked the cookbook collection that will make the trip across the country. I’ve thrown together a bag to get me through the week at school before my boxes arrive and printed out 150 pictures for my dorm room wall. Junior year here I come.
This is a quick post because I am in the midst of running around campus, filling out forms to switch majors and going to new departmental luncheons. In between going to class and catching up with people I haven’t seen in over a year, I am dashing down to the boathouse for practice and trying to organize a trip to the apple orchards this weekend.
But since I know the seasons are changing and this is soon to be irrelevant, I figured it’s now or never. We haven’t gotten into the kitchens since arriving on campus, but these scones were one of the last things I made in my home kitchen. We brought home three cartons of purple figs for this torta, which really didn’t need too many of them. I simmered them down into a fig butter with some sugar and a split vanilla bean, and spread it between cakey layers of buttery scone, made with earthy buckwheat flour. The scones are soft enough to fall apart in your hands, but hold up well in swirl form. Be careful to not over mix the dough, it’s okay if it looks a bit inconsistent, with flecks of flour and butter, even as you’re throwing into on the floured-countertop and rolling it out.
Fig Butter
1 Lb. figs, stems and skins removed
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup port
1/8 cup bottled lemon juice
One vanilla bean
Cut the figs into quarters. Place the cut fruit in a sauce pan over low heat, mashing with a fork if needed. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, and scrape the inside into the pan, before throwing in the entire bean. Cook down for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally with a spatula to prevent the bottom from sticking.
Add sugar, port and lemon juice, zest and vanilla and continue to cook for 15 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and take out the vanilla beans. Spoon the mixture into a bowl and let cool (if you wish to save the fig butter for later use, it keeps about a week in the fridge, or you can can it).
Fig Buckwheat Scones
Adapted from Good to the Grain
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 ounces cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1 recipe fig butter
In a large mixing bowl, combine both flours, sugar, salt and baking powder. Add the butter to the dry mixture and work in with your hands, until the mixture feels like small grains of rice. It is important to do this fairly quickly, in order to keep the butter as cold as possible. Pour in the cream and mix with a spatula until the dough just comes together.
Transfer the dough to a well-floured surface (it will be quite sticky). Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle about 8 inches wide, 16 inches long and ¾ inch thick. Spread the fig butter evenly over the dough rectangle. Roll up the long edge of the dough so that you get a log 16 inches long. Using a sharp knife, cut the long in half. Place the two logs on baking sheets, lined with parchment paper and chill in the refrigerator for half an hour. While the logs are chilling, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
After 30 minutes have passed, remove the logs from the refrigerator, cut each log into six even slices and place each roll flat on the baking sheets, 6 to a sheet. Bake the rolls for 38 to 42 minutes, until the edges begin to brown. Let cool (or don’t) and eat the same day.
Blackberry-Pistachio Macaroon Tart
September 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
Blackberries on the side of the road are a glorious thing. A prickly, sometimes painful, mess, but beautiful nonetheless. Nearing the end of summer, the bushes have been combed over time and time again and usually boast only a couple of edible berries, but I get excited seeing them nonetheless. Blackberries in Italian farmland, blackberries along Route 1 in Mendocino, blackberries in green paper crates at the market, blackberries in my grandparents’ backyard that never quite made it into the night’s crisp, blackberries on the hill where I run above my house. I could eat them until my fingers are stained purple forever.
Luckily this one batch of blackberries turned out to be pretty sour. Plump, deep purple almost black, so juicy that they ruptured in between my forefingers, and pucker worthy. I let them sit on the counter for a couple of days (you know that saying that a little distance makes the heart grow fonder), but in the end, they only started growing a bit of mold and looking pretty sad. So I picked through them and tossed the rest in the freezer, vowing to return to them after Labor Day weekend.
Baked, they meld into tart, jammy pockets beneath chewy flakes of coconut. They soak into a thick shortbread crust, gently teasing out the natural sweetness of the browned-butter. The bars are finished with a colorful flourish of pistachios. And suddenly those blackberries, so wholly disappointing, are once again transformed into showstoppers, just in time for the end of summer.
Blackberry-Pistachio Macaroon Tart
Closely Adapted from Super Natural Everyday by Heidi Swanson
I remember the day I met Heidi. I was sitting at a long table at a book event for Good to the Grain and thought she looked familiar, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it until she introduced herself. It was at the beginning of last summer, right before I started my year off from school, and when I told her my plans and tentative plans, she said “Good for you.” It was also the day I first realized that non-wheat flours didn’t have to just be weird grains that my dad snuck into pancakes when I wasn’t looking.
For the crust:
1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
¾ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
¾ cup light brown sugar or natural cane sugar
½ teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons butter
For the filling:
2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
½ cup light brown sugar or natural cane sugar
4 large egg whites
8 ounces fresh blackberries, halved
1/3 pistachios, crushed (raw or roasted, unsalted)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter your tart pan of choice. The original recipe uses an 8 by 11 inch tart pan but I did just fine with my long, rectangular pan.
Make the crust: Brown the butter on the stovetop. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, coconut, sugar and salt. Stir in the browned butter until the mixture is crumbly but not dry. Press the mixture firmly into the prepared tart pan and bake for 15 minutes, until just golden brown. Let the crust cool while you prepare the macaroon filling.
In a mixing bowl, combine the coconut, egg whites and sugar. Distribute the blackberries evenly over the baked crust. Spread the macaroon filling on top of them (the end effect is prettier if you let some of the blackberries peek through). Press down the coconut filling.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the peaks of the macaroon are deep, golden brown. After the tart has cooled, sprinkle pistachios over the top.
Fig Ricotta Torta
September 6, 2011 § 2 Comments
This past weekend, we all piled up in the car and headed north. We drove through the rolling hills in Marin, the peaks covered with the dry, crusty yellow grass that makes up much of the Californian landscape, stopped at the Healdsburg Bakery for buttery soft sticky buns and cappuccinos, pulled over to the side of the road for fresh-picked strawberries, small and deep red. We drove into Ukiah wine country, where, just two months shy of 21 I was relegated to taking pictures of the vineyards while my parents tasted at the bar. We drove through the redwood forests and then were dumped down onto the cliffs in Mendocino where waves broke in a wash of kelp and white water.
It was an impromptu trip of sorts (in fact, we booked the hotel room when we were already a good hour outside of the city), fashioned after a week of failed searching for an available campsite in Big Sur. We didn’t pack any special treats for the car trip and didn’t stop at any renowned restaurants. Instead we sampled beer at the Ukiah Brewing Company, tasting the difference between light and dark brews, beer made with wild flowers and made with hops (which was particularly interesting after the article I wrote about hops). We inspected a forty-year-old woman’s dreadlocks hanging down to her waist from a nearby table at the Mendocino Café, which seemed a bit confused about which ethnic cuisine it was trying to emulate — Thai burritos, nachos piled high with guacamole, Brazilian seafood stew and Indian-style curry. At nightfall, run-down hippies with long hair sat on the sidewalk, nursing beer bottles; they would still be there the next morning, peddling scraps and jewelry. We sat by the fire in our room at the Inn and ate waffles made with kamut and oat flour for breakfast at the Inn’s vegetarian and vegan restaurant. A seal glided up beside my kayak in the glassy water that morning and a walk down the highway to the shore saw swelling waves breaking on black rocks covered in moss and slimy green plants that looked like miniature palm trees. Then, we joined the long line for morning coffee and piled back in the car for the drive home.
As is typical for the end of holiday weekends, the drive back to the city was long, slow, and annoying. Around the start of the Golden Gate Bridge, the cars around us started a game of call and answer with their horns. By the end of the Bridge, we were all ready to get home.
Fig Ricotta Torta
Adapted from the Food Network
This tart is perfect for the end of summer, when you’re still clinging to the last of summer’s fruit but craving a dessert that’s a bit more substantial to embrace the cooler weather.
Pasta Frolla:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup (stick) unsalted butter
1 egg
4 tablespoons milk or water
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups flour
Ricotta Filling:
1 1/2 pounds ricotta
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Extras:
1 egg
2 tablespoons honey (pick something with a fairly mild flavor)
6 medium sized purple figs
Mix together the sugar, butter, egg, milk, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. Fold in the flour, just until a dough begins to take shape, being careful not to over mix. Flatten the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30-60 minutes until firm.
While the dough is chilling, make the ricotta filling. In a large clean bowl, cream the ricotta and the sugar. Mix in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and stir until just combined.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and cut the disk in two (you can reserve the second half of the dough for later use). Roll out one half of the dough into a 10-inch circle. Press the dough circle into a greased tart pan and trim the excess overhang. Fill the tart shell with the ricotta filling until it looks full but not overflowing (you’ll have some filling leftover — you can bake it up like a custard or reserve it for later use).
Peel figs and cut in half. Press each half fig, inside facing up, in a circle pattern, into the ricotta filling. Drizzle a bit of honey on top of each fig. Whisk the remaining egg in a small bowl, and, brush the exposed edges of the tart dough with egg, using a pastry brush.
Bake the torta for 45 minutes or until the filling is set in the middle and golden brown on the edges.
Soufflé Days 