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Pear and Persimmon Galette

Pear and Persimmon Galette

Happy Friday everybody! Today I’m bringing you another recipe for something I baked a while ago but hadn’t shared the recipe for yet. I don’t know why this one has been locked away in the figurative vault for so long, it’s really, really yummy – other recipes just took precedence I guess, that tends to happen with the holidays! 

Pear and Persimmon Galette

 

Galettes are like a pie or tart without the need for a dish, you form them by hand. Which works out well for me because I don’t currently own a pie dish, plus I absolutely love the rustic look, don’t you? This galette has beautiful flaky pastry wrapped around pears and persimmons in an almond filling, it’s a beautiful combination. I came across some persimmons at the market stalls in my town and picked up a few to bake with. Persimmon are a really yummy, sweet fruit, very similar to Sharon fruit, but you need to make sure they’re properly ripe before you eat them or they’re very astringent. A persimmon is ripe enough to use when you can really indent it when pressed, it should feel almost like pudding underneath the skin – anything less than that and it’ll feel like you ate a box of chalk! Mine took over a week until they were ripe enough, but it was worth the wait – especially combined with the pear and almond, so yummy!

Pear and Persimmon Galette

The beauty of a galette too is you can make them pretty much any shape you like, I made mine rectangular because all of my baking sheets are rectangular and none are big enough to make any other shape! Go nuts with yours though, you could even make it into a little heart shape for the upcoming valentines day! Aww! That might take a little artistic expertise, but I believe in you – besides that rough homemade look is always good! You can also use any kind of pear you like, I used Bosc because that’s what’s readily available here but feel free to use your favourite kind. Bosc are good to bake with though as they hold their shape pretty well – I didn’t utilise that feature by making a pretty pattern, but its definitely an option with these pears. Oh, and the type of persimmon I used is called a Kaki which is the type that looks like a big, orangey tomato.

Pear and Persimmon Galette

 You can serve this up with a little cream, maybe a la mode or even just by itself it’s gonna be great! I served mine with a little cream and some of my spiced caramel which was a really yummy addition! Whatever you serve it with though, everybody is gonna love that buttery, flakey pastry and the sweet, fruity filling – it was certainly a hit at my house!

I have a few more recipes left to share in my fault, but I should have a brand spanking new one for you next week! I baked for the first time since before Christmas today and *fingers crossed* if turns out well I’ll get that recipe up for you soon, I’m very excited about it so I hope it came out!

Pear and Persimmon Galette

 

I’m bringing this yummy little free-formed tart along to Fiesta Friday to share with the masses! FF is a great party held by Angie every week, you should definitely stop by, it’s a lot of fun! Our hosts this week are the ever fabulous Jhuls and JuJu

Do come hang out with me on Social Media, I’m always pretty active on Instagram, – I also have Twitter and Facebook. I’d love to see you guys on there! 

Pear & Persimmon Galette
A free formed tart with flaky pastry filled with pears, persimmons and almond
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For the pastry
  1. 320g plain flour (all purpose flour)
  2. 1 tsp salt
  3. 90g unsalted butter, cold and cubed
  4. 155g 100% vegetable shortening (e.g crisco or trex), cold
  5. 120ml ice water
  6. 1 egg and 1 tbsp milk for egg wash.
For the filling
  1. 2 persimmon
  2. 3 pears
  3. 1 tbsp cornflour
  4. 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  5. 5 tbsp almond flour
  6. 2 tbsp brown sugar
  7. 25g unsalted butter, chopped into small cubes
Instructions
  1. To make the pastry, mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the cold butter and shortening ad cut it into the flour using a pastry cutter or two forks, until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs (some pieces may be larger, that's okay).
  2. Pour 120ml cold water into a cup or jug and add a few pieces of ice, swirl and leave to sit for a moment. Add 1 tbsp of the water to the dough at time, mixing in completely after each addition. You don't need to add all the water, just add it until the dough begins to clump together.
  3. Turn the dough out on to floured work surface and roughly roll out so it all comes together, the dough shouldn't be too sticky and should come together easily.
  4. Form into a ball and flatten it into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour (up to 5 days).
  5. Meanwhile, slice up and core the persimmon and pears, you can leave the skin on for both (you can peel the pears first if you'd prefer) and place in a large bowl. Add the cornflour, the cinnamon and 3 tbsp of the almond flour and mix to combine. Set aside.
  6. Preheat oven to 190C/375F and line a large baking tray with parchment paper.
  7. Take the pastry dough out of the fridge and roll into a large rectangle, with the approximate dimensions as your baking tray but bigger.
  8. Sprinkle the brown sugar and remaining almond flour over the pastry.
  9. Arrange the persimmons and pears over the pastry, leaving a 2 inch border around the edge.
  10. Sprinkle the butter cubes over the top.
  11. Fold the edges of the pastry over on top of the fruit, then brush with egg wash.
  12. Bake for 30 minutes, until pastry is a deep golden brown and the filling is bubbling
  13. Serve warm
Notes
  1. Can be made a day in advance, you can reheat it under the grill/broiler for 10 or so minutes - keeping a close eye to watch it doesn't burn.
A Tipsy Giraffe https://www.atipsygiraffe.com/
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Chocolate and Raspberry Truffle Pie

Chocolate and Raspberry Truffle Pie

This rich, delicious chocolate and raspberry truffle pie recipe is perfect for the weather right now, because you don’t have to turn on an oven! Plus it’s a great dessert to take along to a BBQ or block party, it’s so rich and indulgent, a small slice will go a long way! With that in mind, I will be bringing this beauty along to Fiesta Friday this week!

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Banoffee Pie

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As you probably know, yesterday was Pi Day. I’ll take any excuse to eat pie and it has no calories if I make it myself, right? I went with Banoffee Pie because it’s so yummy and there’s no need to fuss with any pastry if you don’t want to. Banoffee Pie is an English dessert, it’s made from bananas, toffee and fresh whipped cream. Mine also has an oreo crust and shaved chocolate because I’m a firm believer that chocolate makes almost everything better!

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In case you hadn’t guessed it yet, it gets its name from smooshing banana and toffee together, like a perfect marriage that rivals even your biggest OTP!

I did make this pie on Pi day, but we had a busy day yesterday and after stuffing our face with these amazing black bean flautas (I know this is a baking blog, but you definitely need to try them they’re so good) it was 11:30pm by the time I finished baking the pie, hence why you’re getting this post a day late!

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It’s been a very stressful few days for me. I’m in Atlanta right now and I was supposed to fly home to the UK on Thursday night, but I got to the airport only to be told by the checking in agent that they wouldn’t allow me to fly because my passport had been damaged! And I can tell you this now, it’s a very scary thing to be told you’re being denied permission to fly! It’s going to work out okay, I’m still in the US but I’m taking a trip to the British Embassy on Tuesday to get an emergency travel document so I can fly home without a valid passport on Thursday. It’s going to cost me a small fortune and I’m missing a Fall Out Boy concert, but that’s where pie comes in to make me feel better!

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The caramel toffee in a banoffee pie is traditionally made by boiling cans of condensed milk but I have never made it that way, it’s not that hard to do but I’m too impatient to wait the few hours it takes – plus there’s also a danger the can could explode if you don’t keep it fully submerged and that sounds like something that would happen to me! I made my caramel by cooking butter, brown sugar and condensed milk until a caramel formed. I’ll be honest with you, I did over cook mine a little and so I ended up with a very hard caramel, which isn’t necessarily bad it’s just a bit hard to eat in pie form! You want to remove it from the heat once it turns thick and golden.

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I used an oreo crust, which I just made by crushing whole oreos and mixing them with melted butter (you can crush them in a food processor or, if your food processor is full of spicy avocado dip like ours was, you can get your happy helper to crush them in a bag like I did, thanks Leah!). Then you press it into your pan and allow to cool and harden. You then pour in the caramel and top with a few banana slices (I like some of the banana to get all set in the set caramel yum) and put in the fridge for at least an hour, until completely cooled. Then top with more sliced bananas, whip up some cream and stir in yet more sliced bananas and spoon it over the pie, then just decorate with shaved chocolate

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You can, of course, present this much more neatly. You can pipe on the whipped cream and arrange the bananas on top in pretty patterns instead of stirring them into the cream, but I like it all mixed up in the cream. And honestly, I like the messy rustic look for this pie! You obviously want to keep it chilled, just take it out of the fridge about 15 minutes before you plan to serve it. If you’ve never had banoffee before, trust me you’re gonna love it. There’s something about banana and toffee together that tastes so good, honestly toffee without banana just tastes wrong to me! It’s the perfect end to a very stressful week!

[recipe title=”Banoffee Pie”]

Ingredients

For the base:

  • 300g Oreos, finely crushed
  • 90g melted butter

For the toffee:

  • 100g butter
  • 100g light brown sugar
  • 1 can of sweetened condensed milk (396g can)

For the topping:

  • 3 ripe bananas, sliced
  • 250ml double cream
  • Shaved chocolate

Method

  • Grease a 22cm springform tin and line the bottom with parchment paper.
  • Mix the butter and crushed Oreos and press into the tin to make the crust. Place in the fridge while you make the toffee caramel
  • To make the toffee, melt the butter and sugar in a non stick pan over a low heat, stirring continuously.
  • Once the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved, add the condensed milk and mix well.
  • Bring to a rapid boil, stirring constantly, until you get a thick golden caramel (about 5 mins)
  • Pour onto the Oreo base and press a few banana slices into the toffee, allow to cool, chill for at least an hour
  • Remove the pie from the tin and transfer to your serving plate
  • Place more banana slices over the top, lightly covering it
  • Whip the cream until you have stiff peaks and gently stir in the remaining sliced bananas
  • Spoon the cream over the top and sprinkle shaved chocolate over the top (you can use a grater to do this or, to get curls, run a potato peeler down the edge of a bar of chocolate)
  • Keep chilled and remove from fridge 15 minutes before serving

[/recipe]
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Pumpkin Pecan Pie

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Happy Hallowe’en everybody! I won’t lie to you, I’m not Hallowe’en’s biggest fan. But I do love pumpkin and spices and pecans and dressing up (I dressed up as a sickly person in her pjs this year). I have never made pumpkin pie before, I’ve never even eaten pumpkin pie before! But I love everything that goes into it so I figured why not be festive! I decided to add a pecan topping because I think I’ve spent too much time in Atlanta). The pie itself turned out great, I mean I’ve never eaten pumpkin pie so maybe I got it completely wrong, but it was scrummy so either way I’m happy. I’m a great lover of autumn spices, I associate them more with Christmas (see below re: lack of autumn holidays here) but I’m a firm believer that you should bake with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice all year round.

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I think this pumpkin pie post needs a little disclaimer before we continue – this pie doesn’t actually contain any pumpkin. I made this with butternut squash. Hallowe’en isn’t that big of a holiday in the UK and we obviously don’t have thanksgiving, with those being the two big pumpkin holidays we don’t have a plethora of choice when it comes to pumpkins. Just before halloween you can buy pumpkins for carving, but I wouldn’t recommend baking with them. But fun fact: a lot of canned pumpkin is actually butternut squash anyway (they use butternut squash as it’s less stringy, sweeter and a better colour) so I’m not really cheating here! Maybe I should have called it Butternut Squash Pie, but that just doesn’t sound as festive!

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Paul Hollywood would not be impressed with my soggy bottom (I over greased the pan, oops)

I have another small confession, I made two pies. The first pie I used a ready made pie crust because I didn’t want to bother making my own pastry (did I mention I was a sickly pj lady today?) and I don’t actually own a pie dish. However it was much shallower than I anticipated and all the pumpkin filling spilled out and I was left with an accidental (but tasty) pecan pie. My mum enjoyed the accidental pecan pie so it wasn’t a complete loss!

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Who said the pie filling actually has to be in the pie crust anyway???

I couldn’t bear to just leave it at that so I decided to suck it up and make my own pastry (admittedly this decision was after a failed attempt to buy ready made shortcrust at Tesco), after all shortcrust pastry is pretty much the easiest pastry to make. I will include the recipe for that, but don’t feel bad if you use ready made, I would have if I could have. My philosophy is life’s too short to make your own pastry!

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I know you’re jealous of my giraffe print knives

Time to get down to business then!

Ingredients

For the Sweet Shortcrust Pastry: 

  • 225g  plain flour (plus extra for dusting)
  • 110g butter
  • 80g caster sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1/2 – 1  tbsp milk
  • pinch of ground cinnamon (optional – you can substitute with other flavours, but try not to over power with flavour)

For the Pumpkin Filling: 

  • 500g butternut squash, cooked and pureed
  • 1 (397g) tin condensed milk
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 175g dark brown soft sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/3 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the Pecan Topping:

  • 220g golden syrup
  • 115g caster sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 3 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 200g pecan halves

Method

For the pastry:

Line the bottom of an 8inch pie dish (or sandwich cake tin if you’re improvising like me!) with greaseproof paper and very lightly grease sides of dish.

Put the flour and butter into a bowl and rub the butter into flour until you have fine crumb mixture. Stir in the sugar and cinnamon (if using). Mix in the egg and enough milk to form a soft dough. Try not to work the dough too much as you don’t want to melt the butter. Wrap in cling film and place in fridge to chill for at least 15-30 minutes.

Dust work surface with flour and roll out pastry to a 1/2cm thickness. Transfer to pie dish and lightly press into the bottom and into edges. If you tear the pastry, just fix holes with pastry cut offs. Set aside.

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Make shift pie dish

For the pie filling:

Preheat oven to 200C/ 400F/ Gas mark 6.

Line a baking tray with foil and light oil. Halve butternut squash length wise and scoop out the seeds and stringy bits and remove stem. Place squash halves cut side down on baking tray and pour 50ml water into tray. Loosely cover with foil and bake in oven for 50 minutes or until flesh is tender.

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Remove from oven and leave to cool. Scoop flesh from peel and put into food mixer, blend until you have a smooth puree. Measure out 500g and set aside (if you have any remaining squash, reserve excess for another use like yummy mash potato).

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Look at that bright orange, you’d never get that naturally with a pumpkin!

In a large bowl and hand mixer, beat the squash with condensed milk, eggs, sugar, spices and salt. Pour into the unbaked pastry case, leaving a space for the pecan topping.

For the pecan topping:

Combine the golden syrup, sugar, eggs, melted butter and vanilla extract in a bowl and stir in the pecans. Pour on top of pumpkin layer.

Bake in the oven at 200C/400F/Gas 6 for 50 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Leave to cool in dish for 10 minutes and then and turn out onto wire rack, leave to cool completely.

Serve with freshly whipped cream, yum!

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I used a number of recipes from the internet to come up with this recipe. Those that I still have the links for are here and here