Vanillicious.com – Easy Desserts

Poppy Seed Tart

Sadly, I grew up in a country with no real poppy seed tradition, and the only traditional poppy seed pastry contained a relatively disgusting poppy seed mix. Also, as a kid, the sight of that dark and unfamiliar filling inside my favourite shortbread-like filled cookie didn’t really help. So I gave poppy seeds up for almost 30 years! How sad! Luckily, my mom’s cheese cakes and vanilla roulades made up for it and I didn’t feel deprived, haha.

I re-discovered the poppy seeds and the great flavour, scent and crunchy texture they add to pastries and desserts, when I first visited Hungary, and ever since I’m trying to get more and more of it every time I visit. I’m Looking forward to the next visit, so I can try some more local poppy seed delicacies. In the meantime, I’m trying every recipe I find in order to make up for the lost years. Click here to read up this recipe!

Apple Blackberry Tart

A great tart that can contain any seasonal fruit of your choice. I present a recipe combining apple and blackberries, but there are other interesting combinations that go very well together, such as nectarines and raspberries, pears and blackberries, pears and plums, apples and plums and more. Click here to read up this recipe!

Bake the perfect Shortcrust Pastry

The following recipe for a sweet shortcrust pastry can be the base for every pie, tart or tartlets you are about to bake from now on!

There are two reasons I publish this recipe: my new rolling pin and tartlet tins. Yes, I haven’t had a rolling pin before and I found these great loose bottom tartlet tins. So why not using them as often as possible?

You can use this recipe for savoury pies (quiches) as well. Just replace the sugar with a pinch of salt, you can use a salted butter if you like (but don’t have to) and omit the lemon zest.

But before you go on and try it yourselves, here are some shortcrust pastry tips:

• Keep the ingredients cold. Moreover, using a cold bowl can be considered as a bonus.
• Shortcrust pastry can be made either by hand, or using a food processor.
• Another important tip is to work the dough quickly and not to overwork it. Otherwise, its texture won’t be as crumbly as expected of a shortcrust pastry. This is why the processor method is preferred. Though it is possible to prepare the dough by hand. That’s what I did before I had a food processor, and I can’t recall any complains! Oh, and try to keep your hands cold before preparing it.
• The shortcrust pastry should be chilled for at least 30 minutes before rolling it out. It will also help the dough shrink less when baked. Ideally you should chill the shortcrust pastry after rolling as well.
• Preferably, you should roll your pastry on a cool surface (a marble surface is just perfect), lightly dusted with flour. When baking a sweet shortcrust pastry, I sometime dust with a little bit of icing sugar.
• Blind Baking: sometime we’d want to bake the shortcrust pastry without the filling. This is called Blind Baking. When baking blind, we need to put some weight over the pastry base, so it won’t puff or rise. This is where the baking beans come for our rescue. You should roll out the pastry and line it on your tin(s). Line it with baking paper and fill it with baking beans. Baking beans can be either ceramic or dried ones. I usually use red kidney beans as they seem to be the haviest available, relatively cheap and are re-useable.
• When should we blind bake? When the shortcrust pastry is to be filled with cold or unbaked filling. Such fillings are crème pâtissière, jam, cheese filling etc. My White Chocolate and Mascarpone tarts is a good example. Some recipes will ask us to blind bake the pastry for 5-10 minutes, and then add the filling and bake for further 10-20 minutes. It usually depends on the baked filling, and it is done when the pastry requires more baking time than the filling itself.

Click here to read up this recipe!

Lime Pie

How to describe this pie in one word: Sensational!

A simple American dessert, requires very few ingredients and little effort. Also known as Key Lime Pie, when using limes from the Florida keys. As of 2006, it is the Florida state pie.

The filling should be slightly yellowish, since the lime juice is more yellow rather than green, but also due to the egg yolks. Mine is slightly more greenish, due to the added lime zest, and it can be noticed. If you happen to find a greenish lime pie but no visible zest, it most probably contains food colouring. I would keep my distance from such pie.

An interesting fact: early lime pies weren’t baked at all, due to a chemical reaction between the condensed milk and the lime juice when combined, which causes the filling mixture to thicken without baking. These days, however, the consumption of raw eggs is not recommended. Therefore, the pie is being baked for a short time, just enough to cook them, but it also thickens the filling more than the chemical reaction alone.

Click here to read up this recipe!

White Chocolate and Mascarpone tartlets

This dessert is very easy to prepare, the outcome looks impressivly sophisticated and tastes wonderful!

There are two phases when preparing the White Chocolate and Mascarpone tarts: 1. preparing the pastry cases 2. preparing the filling

The cases will be baked without the filling and this is called Blind Baking. When baking blind, we need to put some weight over the pastry base, so it won’t puff or rise. This is where the baking beans come for our rescue. You should line the pastry base with baking paper and fill it with baking beans. Baking beans can be either ceramic or dried ones. I usually use red kidney beans as they seem to be the haviest available, relatively cheap and are re-useable.

Click here to read up this recipe!