This is without a doubt one of the easiest and most warming autumn desserts I have ever made. I did it in my lunch break yesterday and it is simple sweet perfection. All you will need is a roll of puff pastry, some white and dark cooking chocolate and some bananas and one egg for browning.
When it’s a Sunday in Berlin… and you have completely forgotten that supermarkets don’t open, the first thing you want to do is scream expletives. However, believe it or not, this approach doesn’t actually help. So instead I scrambled around the kitchen finding anything useful (and luckily some chicken I had bought on friday… sneaky!). With the right ingredients to make shortcrust pastry, some chicken, pesto, garlic, onions and parmesen I decided to make some open pasties.
The photo above is the uncooked version… it was just my favourite photo which is why I used it first! below, you can see the baked version. I added some balsamic vinegar to give it that tang!
The other day I was browsing a lovely blog called Citrus and Candy and noticed her warm chocolate and banana tart. I adapted the recipe and changed it a bit – mainly because I didn’t have a lot of the ingredients! I bought this really cool rectangular tart tray, and I have had it for months and never used it. It is another tray from Cynthia Barcomis awesome collection.
The pastry is slightly different to the normal shortcrust sweet pasty I use. This time I use icing sugar (powdered sugar) instead of caster sugar and it really gives a MUCH lighter consistency, which I prefer in a dessert. As it is a bit less elastic, I would definitely recommend leaving it in the fridge for at least an hour. Otherwise it will get too hot and will just break when you try and place it in the tray.
I am finding taking photos after work more and MORE challenging, because the light is fading quicker. I hope this hasn’t effected the photos!
Last night I made chicken stew with dumplings… the english kind stuffed with thyme and mustard. Not the kind with potatoes in… I think my body would have died of carb overload if I had eaten potato too. As always, the stew began as a healthy affair. Lots of onions and garlic, broccoli, spring onions, stock and very little oil. But then came the dumplings… and the CREAM. I find when I have put too much vinegar or salt into a dish, a bit of cream and water helps a lot. But it doesn’t help one in being healthy… which was my failed goal last night. But oh well.. I will have a salad for lunch and get the hell over it. It was delicious.. and I think dumplings should be made more. I like to think of them as England’s answer to soul food.
Anyway, moving swiftly on to the topic at hand – these are my latest recipe – I didn’t really know if they were pies or not.. so I would like to call them flats. Or pie flats if we must. I made some shortcrust pastry and added ground almond, then stewed some apples and strawberry with a dash of sugar. And taddda! I like the rustic look as you all know by now – making things look perfect doesn’t make them appetizing for me. I like a bit of a rough finish!
Sugar Thumb 