Bake-a-Long Week 5: Pastry Week

The Bake-a-Long continues with Pastry Week! 

See, I'm slowly catching up with my writing! Last week, the bakers were tasked with an individual picnic pies Signature challenge, a Dauphinoise Pithivier Technical challenge, and a sweet pie Showstopper consisting of three pies with at least two different fillings. With it being the run up to Halloween, I was desperate to give pumpkin pie a go, which meant I simply had to choose the Showstopper! I've already decided I want to give the Dauphinoise Pithivier a go some other time as well though. Of course, this meant I had to decide on another flavour for the second variety of the two pies. 

I came across the recipe for an Apple, Pecan, and Miso Tart in the Bake For All Seasons book, and instantly knew this was the one to pair with the Pumpkin Pie. Let's break it down! 

Preparing the two smaller Apple, Pecan and Miso Tarts was my first priority, as there were a few components to make, a couple of which are rather fiddly. Firstly, the pecan pastry, made by combining flour and butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, before pecans that have been blitzed in the food processor, caster sugar, and egg yolk are mixed in. The dough is then put through the usual process of chilling, rolling out, and blind baking, whilst also cracking on with the fillings. 

The first of the components for the filling to prepare was the apples, made simply by combining chopped up apples, butter, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar in a pan, and cooking until the apples are soften but still holding their shape. I went a little far as the apples were beginning to break down, almost on the way to forming apple butter, which would make things a little harder when it came to filling the pastry cases later, but this is hardly the end of the world. 

One of the tarts, after it had begun 
to melt...

Next up, I needed to prepare a pecan crunch and caramelised pecans, the crunch to use as filling and decoration, and the caramelised pecans to use solely as decoration. For the pecan crunch, roasted pecans are blitzed with vanilla paste and a little salt until coarsely ground, whilst for the caramelised pecans, whole pecans are dipped into caramel, and put to one side to allow them to set. These components don't take long, there are just a lot of them! 

Before filling the case, the final element to prepare is the miso caramel. I'd never tasted anything like the miso caramel until I made this tart, but when I say it was incredible I really mean it! And it's a relatively easy thing to produce. A caramel sauce is made in the usual way by heating together sugar and water, with the addition of liquid glucose, until the caramel turns a deep amber in colour. Butter and double cream are then added to create the caramel sauce, before the miso paste is added to complete the caramel. 

To fill the pastry cases, the pecan crunch is split between the cases to form the first layer, followed by the apples. Finally, the miso caramel is poured into the case. Ideally, the caramel would seep down between the apples to encompass them, but with the apples being a little softer they weren't many gas between them, so the caramel sat on top. But no matter!

After baking the two tarts in the oven, it was time to decorate! By combining double cream, cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla paste, a perfect cream cheese topping to compliment these tarts comes together. After piping the cream cheese on top of the cooled tarts, and decorating with the caramelised pecans, reserved cubes of apple, and reserved pecan crunch. 

And with that, two out of three pies were complete! But I made a proper rookie error, whilst making the Pumpkin Pie... I left the two tarts out in the frankly very hot kitchen, and the topping began to melt before I'd taken any photos of the tarts... typical! The moment I noticed I got them into the fridge, but the damage was done. 

With the Apple, Pecan and Miso Tarts prepared, the Pumpkin Pie comes next. The pastry followed the exact same method as the pecan pastry, but with no nuts, and again is chilled, rolled out, and blind baked. So far, so good. 

The filling was much more simple than the smaller two tarts. To prepare the filling, pumpkin puree, maple syrup , caster sugar, eggs, evaporated milk, mixed spice, and ground cinnamon are whisked together until smooth. The mixture is then poured into the blind baked pastry case and baked until set.

 

I'd decided I wanted to give latticing a go, but it turns out this is quite hard with a liquid filling! After placing the strips of pastry on the filling, the strips quickly began to sink... I therefore had to wait until the filling was partially baked to get the lattice on, the result being that the lattice and pastry shapes were different shades to the pastry case, it was obvious that they'd been added on after. But again, it's all about the firsts during this bake-a-long, and both the miso caramel and the attempt at latticing are my new things for this week. 

Whilst getting photos of those beigey coloured bakes was difficult, the feedback I've had from them is insane. Everybody who tried them was blown away by the flavour, especially with the Apple, Pecan, and Miso Tarts. The only thing I didn't really get round to was decorating the board. It really wasn't big enough to do an autumn themed display, however the flavours and colour all compliment each other enough to give away the central autumnal theme. 

Up next, it's Botanicals Week, and I've got something very special lined up for that! 

Gibby x