apricot galette with brown sugar cinnamon pastry.

Hello, world.

Remember me? I used to write inane, cheerful and cake-centric food blog posts. It made me rather happy, and the people were lovely, and my friends got to eat lots of sugar, and really everyone was a winner. Apart from my mother, who funded my flour rations. But it was kind of for the greater good, and ultimately, she got a cake like this for her birthday, so who was complaining?

But then the metaphorical winter came. And, er, also the literal winter. And also I went to uni and couldn't really afford that much butter - or, I could afford that much butter, but I couldn't afford all the fresh vegetables and salad to balance it out and prevent, you know, heart disease.

But recently, the sun has come back, and I came home; the summer produce has invoked the drive to put fruit in pastry (I can't look at a piece of fruit without wanting to put it in a tart case! I keep snatching nectarines out of my sister's hand and shouting things like, 'PIE!', overzealously. I'm not even very good with pastry); I began to get sickeningly enthusiastic over cooking for my family again; and I developed this strange tic where I compulsively add lemon zest or juice to just about everything.

I thought about going to some sort of support group over the lemon thing, but when I sounded this out to a couple of people I was forced to conclude that no such group exists.

So I came back to blogging. Please be gentle.

This galette is the perfect example of my newfound pastry-urges (and hello, it contains the phrase brown sugar cinnamon pastry in its name. Surely you understand). This is a terrible thing to admit, but I don't think I'd eaten a fresh apricot before this - dried apricots, apricot yoghurt, apricot squash; but never the real shebang - but even with my lack of experience, I could tell the ones we had were perfect. I didn't even know when apricots were in season - for the record: right now.

Appearance-wise, this tart was a little less than perfect (one reason I like these freeform galettes; you can say you were going for 'rustic'), but I suspect this is due to my resolutely slicing the apricots rather than just halving them (there wasn't really enough room, but I loved the tumbled effect), not to mention that I just couldn't resist that pastry - brown. sugar. cinnamon. - and there was probably supposed to be a good deal more of it than I, um, ended up with. All the same, the galette I ended up with was not a 'serves 8-10' affair; I'd say closer to six, if you don't want to roll your pastry out uncomfortably thin (and it's better if you don't).

Apricot Galette with Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pastry

The beauty of this is how incredibly simple it all is; the pastry is made in minutes in the food processor and the fruit is just tossed with brown sugar (and - I couldn't help it - lemon zest, because no one's ever told me that lemon *doesn't* go with apricot...). This means you could use just about any fruit - this is crying out to be made with plums, in that late Summer-early Autumn period around August and September. Do it for me.

Adapted from BBC Good Food magazine.
Serves 6-8.

pastry:
150g plain flour
50g wholemeal flour
2tsp cinnamon
140g cold butter, cut into small chunks
85g light muscavado sugar
optional zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 egg, separated

filling:
700g apricots, halved and stoned (I sliced mine)
1 tbsp demerara sugar

1. Oven to 200C. Put the flour & cinnamon in a food processor and add the butter, processing to make fine crumbs. Reserve 2tbsp of the muscavado sugar, then add the remainder and the lemon zest, and briefly mix. Add the egg yolk and 1 tbsp water, then pulse to make a firm dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and briefly knead. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.

2. Toss apricots in the reserved muscavado sugar. Roll out pastry on a sheet of baking parchment to a roughly 30cm round. Slide pastry & paper onto a large baking sheet. Cover with apricot halves/slices, cut sides up, and fold the edges of the pastry over the fruit, leaving the centre uncovered.

3. Lightly beat egg white and brush over the pastry. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake for 30-35 mins until the pastry is crisp and the apricots tender. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Hiatus Notice (& Truffles)

Um, so you might have noticed my unexplained absence from HLS this past couple of weeks. But fear not, because I'm back now to make up for all that, except for in that way where I'm actually... not.

Basically, I've been meaning to post for pretty much ever now, and somehow it just hasn't happened. I've had the pictures ready. It would've taken five minutes to find the recipe and type it out. But actually sitting down at the computer and writing has not been something I've had a lot of time for recently - admittedly, I've been at home, and doing ridiculous hours at work over Christmas, and trying to catch up with my friends, and trying to fit two essays in. But even more than that, I think, I kind of lost the motivation. I felt like I should blog, rather than that I really wanted to. Which I've never felt until now. It might just be the chronic-overfeeding from Christmas, but I'm just not as interested as I was.

So. Here is where I announce an indefinite hiatus. You remember the one I thought I'd need to take when I left home and went to uni? The one I'm totally overdue on? Yeah, that one.

Don't take 'indefinite' to mean 'long', either. It just means... indefinite. Give me time to get my mojo back; chances are I won't last til February.

On a happier note (for me. Some people are probably quite glad I'm taking a break from blogging XD), truffles!


The base recipe for these is one of my Gran's (long-term readers will have come across her recipes before), which we make every Christmas in our house with little variation. This year, I'm very excitable (oh, wait. Not just this year) and I'd seen a blog post with various themed truffles, so I decided to pillage their ideas and then lose the link and be unable to credit them properly. I'm great at making decisions like this, but rarely in advance.


The varieties are: Gingerbread (above), Hot Chocolate (with sprinkles), and Christmas Pudding (this was originally going to be mince pie, as they have fruit mincemeat in, but then I wanted to decorate them more so they sort of morphed).



Basic Truffles
From my Gran's recipe
Makes not a lot; we usually do double quantities. In this case I made single quantities three times so I could flavour them differently.

85g (3oz) plain chocolate
1 egg yolk
15g (1/2 oz) butter
15g (1/2 oz) icing sugar
1 tsp whipped cream - I'm always a bit dubious over this instruction since the cream melts anyway. I think my Gran may have meant 'whipping cream' or the squirty uht stuff you get in a can. I always religiously whip my cream, but you don't have to feel obliged to my Gran's instructions and can do whatever, heh.
2 tsp dark rum
45g (1 1/2 oz) ground almonds


1. Melt chocolate in a bowl over a pan of water (I always do it on low in the microwave). Add egg yolk, sugar, butter, cream, rum and almonds. Remove from heat and beat with mixer until thick and pasty (you should be able to handle it without it being hideously messy. Just a little bit messy is fine).

2. Roll into balls and decorate, then place in truffle cases. Keep in a cool, airtight container.




For Gingerbread Truffles

Add ground ginger and ground cinnamon to taste, so that the flavour is clear but not overpowering. I then rolled the truffles in cocoa powder and a little ground ginger. I really want to try these using gingerbread cake crumbs in place of ground almonds but didn't get the chance; I think it would work, so give it a go.

For Hot Chocolate Truffles

I replaced the rum with the same amount of brandy (you could also use brandy cream if you had that), added a dash of cinnamon, and coated the truffles in chocolate vermicelli (chocolate sprinkles). These were closest to the base recipe, I think.

For Christmas Pudding Truffles

I added a couple of tsp of fruit mincemeat to the truffle base, meaning I had to double the quantity of almonds to keep the truffles at the right consistency for rolling. I can't remember the exact quantities I used, so add the extra ground almonds in bits until you get to the right texture. I mixed my leftover cocoa powder and vermicelli together to roll these in, then decorated with melted white chocolate and teeny tiny fondant holly sprigs. I was least confident in these ones, but they ended up being far and away my favourites ^__^.


I'll be back soon, various loves of my life. Don't miss me too much. x