Ecclefechan Tart

During one of my recipe hunts on the internet, I came across this recipe for Ecclefechan Tart. I hadn't heard of this tart before, but I was very much intrigued by the recipe, and thought it sounded delicious. 

For the pastry:

• 250g plain flour
• 125g unsalted butter
• Pinch of salt
• 50ml whisky

For the filling:

• 150g unsalted butter
• 150g light brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 150ml double cream
• 1 tablespoon black treacle
• 300g mixed dried fruit
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped stem ginger
• 1 lemon
• 1 orange

I was particularly interested in the concept of the whisky pastry. Being a lover of whisky, I just coudn't wait to give this a go. I even sacrificed some whisky from my own collection:

Mmmm, Jura Superstition. Yum!

I preheated the oven to 180°C before making a start on the tart. The pastry was quite a tricky one in the end. I rubbed the flour and the butter together as usual, to create a breadcrumb-like mixture. Now, usually when I make shortcrust pastry, I use beaten egg to bind the ingredients together. However, there was no egg in this recipe, but 50ml whisky instead, which seemed to make the pastry a little difficult to handle at times - it had a nasty habit of falling apart, but I eventually got it to work well enough. I must admit, there was some patching required, but it all came together, just about.

Pressing it into the tart tin, the base was then pricked with a fork, before being covered with baking paper and filled with baking beans. It was then baked for 10 minutes in the oven, after which the baking beans were removed and the pastry baked for another 5 minutes.

Whisky pastry - what a great idea.

Once the pastry had baked, the base was drizzled with delicious treacle.

It started off smartly before descending into a mess.

Then it was on to making the filling.  First the butter and light brown sugar were creamed together.

So much sugar and buttery goodness.

Then the eggs were mixed in, before the double cream was aslo added and mixed in.

Doesn't look too inviting yet.

Next I filled the pastry case with mixed dried fruit (and glace cherries), and then grated lemon and orange zest on top.

Looking good.

The cream mixture was then poured on top (carefully). I found that the quantities described in the recipe produced more of the cream mixture than was actually needed, so there was about a third of it left over in the bowl after I'd added it to the fruit.

Ready for the oven.

The tart was then baked for 40 minutes (the recipe calls for 30 minutes, but I found that it needed an extras 10 minutes before it was fully-baked). It came out of the oven looking rather nice.

Mmm, looking very nice indeed, and it smelt amazing.

I moved it to a cooling rack and then let it cool for half an hour before cutting out the first slice (my mum had demanded to try it).

Cooling and still smelling amazing.

Once a slice had been cut out for my mother, I took it into work with me, where is was pronounced as a success. The combination of the fruit, citrus zest and cream was beautiful, and the whisky pastry was lovely. As there was no egg in the pastry, it had a very different texture to that of normal shortcrust pastry; instead it was more of a biscuity texture, that was actaully very pleasant. Another success at work, it was left on a counter in the work kitchen for people to help themselves, and I found that it had gone completely after just fifteen minutes.

Yum!

Beckie.

Chocolate Fondant Cupcakes

A couple of months ago I was invited to a leaving party for a member of staff from the York Plasma Institute.  I knew that I had to bring something delicious with me, so yet again there was another attempt at a Hummingbird Bakery recipe from the Cake Days book.

This time I thought I'd try individual cupcakes, and luckily for me I had all the ingredients in for the Chocolate Fondant Cupcakes.

Lovely, chocolatey ingredients.

For what can seem like a daunting recipe, this was actually relatively simple.  The trickiest bit for me was not the bake itself (although I did yet again overfill a couple of the cake cases a little, which meant one or two cupcakes overflowed during the baking process; these ones I just ate there and then), but the fear over cutting out the sections of cake to fill with the fondant.

Ready for the fondant filling.

However, this seemed to go off without a hitch, and I was then onto making the fondant whilst the cakes cooled further.  This wonderful combination of double cream and chocolate tasted absolutely divine, and you have no idea how happy I was when there was some fondant left over after filling all the cakes.  I grabbed a spoon and happily dug in.

 

Mmmmmm, fondant.

Once the fondant was in the little scooped-out holes, it was time to replace the cake that had been cut out.  This was like fitting the cupcakes with little cakey hats.

Cake hats!

After putting the 'cake hats' on, it was time to smother the tops of the cupcakes with yet more fondant, which made them look absolutely mouth-watering.  The beautiful, shiny tops were very enticing indeed.

 

Finished!

Just a few hours later, it was time to take the cupcakes to the party.  They were all set out on a table, and soon enough several physicists (including one slightly shifty Professor) were circling around.  The cupcakes disappeared fairly quickly, which was very gratifying for me, and I did get many compliments on them, even from the shifty Professor.  The main point made was that they were very rich and choclately, but without being overly sweet, which meant that they were pretty much the perfect chocolate cupcake recipe.

I would definitely recommend making these, as it really is yet another lovely recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery. 

Beckie.

Chocolate-Glazed Chocolate Tart

Apologies again for yet another delay in my posting.  I have just gone through the rather arduous process of moving house, so things were a little hectic recently.  Still, I haven't forgotten about my love of baking, and I have a particularly lovely and delicious recipe to discuss here.

I actually came across this recipe on BuzzFeed when I read the article "71 Reasons Candy Hearts Are Stupid".  Several of the delicious-looking desserts called out to me, and I finally picked this chocolate tart to have a go at making.

Now the recipe calls for the use of something called 'graham crackers' for the tart base.  I believe that these are an American biscuit, so as they are not readily available in the UK I substituted them with good old Bourbon biscuits.  This had worked nicely in the American pies I'd previously made, so I thought they'd be just the thing.

As ever, I had a great deal of fun bashing the biscuits into tiny pieces:

So many crushed biscuits!

After these were combined with the sugar and the butter, they were then pressed into the tart tin, and then baked in the oven.  I'd never baked this type of tart base before (previously I'd left it to set in the fridge), so I was interested to see how it would turn out.  My main worry was it collapsing in the oven, or when it was taken out of the tin.  However, aside from a little bit of the butter seeping out of the base and the tin, it turned out quite nicely:

Baked biscuit base.

So then came time to make the filling.  A two-stage process, I was concerned about getting the texture of the truffle-like filling right.  Luckily, the process of the truffle filling was not too dissimilar to the custard tart filling I've made before, although obviously this one had the addition of some rather lovely chocolate.  This was then very carefully baked in the oven until it was just set:

Truffle-y goodness.

The only (very small) issue I came across here was the emergence of a few bubbles on the top of the filling.  I simply popped them, and hoped that they would be adequately covered by the chocolate glaze that I would make next.

So after a suitable cooling period, it was then onto making the chocolate glaze to go on top of the filling.  I'd had a go at making a chocolate ganache before, and it had not worked out well at all, but I was determined to have another go.  Obviously the recipe calls for the use of corn syrup, which is again not widely available here in the UK.  Therefore I used golden syrup instead.  This seemed to work incredibly well, and did not affect the flavour of the glaze at all.  The glaze appeared to have the perfect texture once everything had been stirred together, so I bit the bullet and poured it on top of the tart filling.

A rather nice chocolate glaze on top.

Well, it looked rather good to me, and it also covered up the air bubble holes very nice and quite evenly as well.  Yes, there were a couple of wobbles in it, but as a whole I was quite pleased with the results.  I then left the glaze for about an hour to set (sat on the counter top, not in the fridge, which is very important to know).  Once everything had set, the final result was rather pleasing.

The finished tart!

Not only did the tart come out of the tin nicely (the tart crust held perfectly), but it also cut beautifully as well.  The tart held it's structure perfectly, and looked incredible when slices were cut out.

Yum!

This proved to be one of my most popular recipes yet.  The tart filling was not too sweet, and had a rich, luxurious flavour that was an absolute delight to eat.  One thing I will mention, the glaze soon loses its glossiness if the tart is put in the fridge, so be prepared for this is you have to store it in the fridge for some reason.  If this is the case, I have found that the gloss can be brought back if you very carefully heat the glaze by using a hairdryer on a low setting (yet another trick seen on The Great British Bake Off).

I can definitely recommend this recipe - it is a fantastic tart, and well worth making, particularly for a special occasion (although I'll make it anytime).

Beckie.