Cherry Pithiviers

I've wanted to make this recipe since I saw Rick Stein make it on his French Odyssey TV series, and that was back in 2005. It wasn't until I was planning my Easter cooking, and around the same time noticed large jars of reasonably priced Morello cherries in Aldi, that a plan fell into place. Rick's recipe uses fresh cherries, but they aren't in season yet and I couldn't see any reason why preserved cherries wouldn't work.

This is more of an assembly job than an exercise in cookery skills - ready made puff pastry, a jar of cherries, a simple frangipane paste - but there are still obstacles to perfection. I fell at the last hurdle, and made a mess of the traditional pithiviers markings on top of the pie, but overall I was really pleased with how the dessert turned out.

I used ready-rolled sheets of all-butter puff pastry, which was all that was available when I was shopping. This made assembly even easier - one sheet was rolled slightly thinner so that I could cut a 29cm disc, and the second sheet was just the right size to cut out a 25cm disc for the base.

While the pastry discs chilled for 20 minutes, I made a frangipane paste from 125g softened butter, 125g caster sugar,  1 medium egg and 1 medium egg yolk, 125g ground almonds, 15g plain flour and 2 tablespoons kirsch. Into this I mixed 225g very well-drained Morello cherries, without stones.

The pastry base was placed on a baking sheet covered with baking parchment, and the cherry frangipane mixture was heaped on and spread out to leave a 2.5 cm border of pastry. This border was brushed with an egg wash made from an egg yolk and a teaspoon of water, then the top layer of pastry was carefully placed on top. At this point it's necessary to exclude as much air as possible, seal the two layers of pastry together then crimp around the edges of the pie - a little tricky, and the top pastry may need trimming if it has stretched during handling. Once this assembly was complete, the pie was chilled again for 20 minutes.

After chilling, the pie was brushed with egg wash and the traditional arcing cuts were put on top. It's important to egg wash first, then mark with the tip of a sharp knife. If you cut first, the egg wash will seal up the cuts and they won't open during baking to give the markings you need. It's also important just to mark the surface of the pastry and not cut right through. (I just couldn't get the cuts right - after the second cut I could see I was already going wrong, so I just did the best I could, filling any large gaps with odd short cuts. Rick Stein says in his book that he couldn't do it correctly either!)

Finally, cut a small hole in the centre of the pie and place in a 220C oven for 15-20 minutes, until the pastry has risen and turned golden. After this time reduce the temperature to 180C and cook for another 40 minutes, covering loosely with foil if it's getting too dark. (The published recipe is a bit unclear at this point - it says bake for 40 minutes, but doesn't say whether this is a total of 40 minutes from the start of baking, or whether it's 40 minutes after the initial 20. I checked a few blog recipes and they all gave an extra 40 minutes (a total of about an hour) so I did that too.) You can test the frangipane with a probe, if you like and if it's dry, remove the pie from the oven sooner, but I didn't find the probe test very helpful.

Traditionally, pithiviers are sprinkled lightly with icing sugar (you only need a teaspoonful), then returned to a 220C oven for a few minutes to caramelise the sugar and give a glazed look. I had something else in the oven and couldn't turn up the heat, so flashed the sugared pithiviers under a hot grill to glaze it.

This is best eaten warm or at room temperature, on the day it's made. I kept mine for three days, and although it still tasted good, the pastry didn't stay as crisp as when freshly baked. This was a really delicious version of the traditional pithiviers, which only uses frangipane paste. Cherries pair really well with almonds, and the soft frangipane and crisp pastry gave a good combination of textures. It was really odd to see the pastry puff up so much around the edge of the pie, so that the domed raw pie came out of the oven as a flat disc. I was happy using preserved cherries - I wonder now how much liquid would have come out of raw cherries, and if that would have made the frangipane too sloppy?

Cherry Cheesecake Swirl Brownies

This was a recipe which didn't quite work, but which was so tasty that it will be worked on to achieve an improvement. The only problem was the brownie batter - I chose one of my favourite low saturated fat recipes which was too thin to support the weight of the cream cheese mixture and the blobs of morello cherry jam.

I've previously had success with making cheesecake swirl brownies using a brownie batter made with mayonnaise, but I didn't have enough mayonnaise in stock to use it this time. All I wanted to do was repeat this recipe adding some teaspoons of cherry jam swirled into the brownie mix with the cheesecake, but you can see from the second picture that although the cheesecake swirls weren't too bad, most of the jam sunk straight to the bottom of the tin, and sat in separate blobs after the brownies were cooked.

To be honest with you, the only way we could eat the brownies easily was to serve them upside down, and a lot of the jam had to be scraped off the non-stick baking paper and put back into the holes left in the baked brownies.

But they were delicious - the flavour of the rich, sweet cherry jam was stronger than the brownie flavour, but the plainer cheesecake swirls in the brownie helped balance the flavour and sweetness. Definitely a recipe worth working on, particularly as I know exactly what went wrong.

Chocolate, Cherry and Chilli Tart

This well-flavoured dessert, which also fits into my spice theme for this month, is my entry to the October 'We Should Cocoa' challenge. This month the challenge was set by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog, and if you're considering joining in with this monthly cooking with chocolate challenge, the rules can also be found on Chocolate Log Blog. Choclette challenged us to find a way of using chilli in our chocolate cooking this month, and I have to say I've been waiting for this particular ingredient to come up! I have several brownie recipes using chilli, and one gorgeous cake recipe (which Dom of Belleau Kitchen has baked for this challenge!), but I really wanted to use this challenge to find a new recipe.

After I had an unsuccessful attempt at some cookies - both the way the recipe worked and the spice levels were wrong - I went back to the drawing board and thought about what I really would like. I remembered how much I liked the Lindt chocolate bar which contains a chili flavoured cherry filling (the single 'l' is their preferred spelling!), and I also remembered that I sometimes make a  bakewell-style chocolate tart for dessert. I didn't want to use almonds this time, but I liked the idea of a chocolate tart with a layer of cherry jam at the bottom. I decided to add the chili flavouring to the chocolate layer and that I wanted the chocolate filling to be on the cakey-side, rather than a rich custard or ganache. I also wanted to keep CT's dietary restrictions in mind, so wanted a dessert he could eat without too much guilt, which meant that ideally I wanted a baked mousse cake which wasn't too rich, to balance the inevitable high fat levels of the pastry. One day I will try olive oil pastry, but I didn't have the will to experiment with that here!

I eventually found a recipe in one of the Green and Black's recipe books for a Berry Torte, the chocolate part of which looked just right - not too sweet and not a lot of butter (relative to other recipes I found!). After that it was simple to think through the finished tart - a sweet shortcrust deep pie case, a layer of Morello cherry jam and a mousse cake layer, with added chilli flavour, on top.

The execution wasn't perfect, as the chocolate pulled away from the pastry as it cooled, but it was a very good dessert. The sweet cherry filling was very intense but was balanced by the chocolate layer which wan't too sweet and which gave a warm chilli after-taste. I think I would add more cayenne pepper next time to give a slightly stronger flavour, and for a special occasion would use a richer mousse cake recipe, but on this occasion, it filled the criteria I had for this recipe.

For the recipe, you'll need a deep, sweet shortcrust pastry case, about 8 or 9 inches in diameter (20-22cm), baked blind. While the pastry is cooking, slightly warm 250g Morello cherry jam and stir in 2 tablespoons Kirsch or other cherry flavoured liqueur. Spread this over the base of the pastry case when you take it out of the oven. Then make the chocolate mousse cake mixture:

Chocolate mousse cake
25g plain flour
5 teaspoons cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder
75g plain chocolate (minimum 60% cocoa solids)
25g butter
5 teaspoons double cream
4 egg whites
3 egg yolks
3 tablespoons caster sugar

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over hot water, then remove from the heat and add the butter and cream and stir until the butter has melted.

Sift together the flour, cocoa and cayenne powder.

Whisk the egg whites to the stiff peak stage, then add the sugar and beat until thick and glossy.

Beat the egg yolks in a large bowl and add the flour mixture. Fold in as much as possible (I found the mixture too dry to fold it all in), then add the chocolate mixture and mix well.

Add about a quarter of the egg whites to the chocolate mixture and mix in thoroughly, then gently fold in the rest of the whites.

Gently pour the chocolate mixture into the pastry case, trying to fill the edges first and working into the middle - this should prevent the jam being pushed to the edges. Spread evenly then bake at 140C for about 25 minutes or until a test probe comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Serve at room temperature with whipped cream or as you desire

While writing this blog entry, I got very worried about the spelling of chilli. While researching the matter, I came across this article, which in turn links to another interesting point of view on the subject. I think for the time being I'm going to stick to the most accepted British spelling - the double 'll' version!