about
about me.
i'm kelly.
26 year old stressbaker.
about-to-graduate grad school.
new england transplant.
eating through philly & the burbs.
baking my way into the hearts of friends.
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Sunday, June 5, 2011 @ 9:39 PM
when life gives you lemons, make mascarpone berry tarts
No, seriously. Make them. You won't be sorry.
Saturday started off with such promise. I woke up early, cleaned my kitchen, put out the recycling, played with Mars and came up with a game plan for the day all before 10am. I left my little apartment feeling like I could conquer the world [or at least cross off everything on my to-do list]. I drove over to the farmer's market, parked my car in the lot behind it and set off in search of organic veggies and a stickybun. I chatted with the growers about asparagus and bought some local honey to help with my allergies. I came back with a bag full of rhubarb and a birch beer and returned to my car to find that someone had hit my parked car...twice. [As if one side wasn't enough, they had to hit the other. eesh.]
I have to give myself credit. I'm an anxious, hyper person by nature, but I managed to stay pretty calm at first. My car was only scratched and the damage appeared to be minimal and superficial. It wasn't until I was swarmed by a group of men who kept heckling me and talking down to me that I started to get upset. I called the police to file a report, but they were taking quite a long time to arrive at the scene. Time passed and the group wouldn't leave me [or my car] alone. Eventually, I decided that it wasn't worth dealing with a giant hassle for a few scratches if it meant having to tolerate being harassed while I waited. I called to ask that the call for police be cancelled. As I got in my car to leave, just as one of the men thought it would be oh-so-charming to ask me out to lunch. Really, sir? Really?
When I got home, I felt like my whole day had been ruined. I had intended on making homemade falafel and grilling eggplant, but I had lost my appetite. My mother called and I recounted the whole ordeal to her and she was worried about me, but her questions and suggestions only stressed me out even more. I just wanted to take a nap and forget my afternoon. I forget exactly what happened, but at some point I bucked up, stopped being upset and decided to bake my feelings into something delicious. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been trying to use up what I already have in my apartment. To give you an idea of how much I bake [and how many baking ideas I have that never come to fruition], I had pre-baked mini tart shells in my freezer, several lemons, a container of mascarpone cheese [the last time I counted I had ten kinds of cheese in my refrigerator. I may need an intervention.], and bags upon bags of berries in my freezer. Life had given me lemons, but I mellowed them out with creamy mascarpone and made them beautiful with some berries. It was a sweet ending to a sour situation.
These little tartlets can be as homemade or as store-bought as you'd like. I made my pastry crust from scratch, but you can certainly use a pre-made crust. If the thought of making lemon curd from scratch makes you weary, use store-bought. And, if you've got raspberry bushes in your yard like I do at home, use those. If not, grab some at the farmer's market or the grocery store. Though my berries were frozen, I had bought them at the farmer's market and frozen them myself. I find that the frozen berries in the freezer section are always broken and never look pretty on desserts like this.
Lemon Mascarpone Berry Tartlets
Ingredients
1-9" pie crust [store bought or homemade]
1-8 oz container of mascarpone cheese, at room temperature**
8 oz lemon curd [store bought or homemade]**
raspberries, blackberries or strawberries to garnish
optional: seedless jam [raspberry or strawberry] to glaze
**Note: You can make more or less of the filling, but be sure to keep an equal ratio of curd to mascarpone. If you have extra filling, it would be great in fluted glasses with berries on top or in a trifle with angel food cake or lady fingers. The possibilities are endless!
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to temperature given by manufacturer's instructions or according to the pie crust recipe. [My recipe called for 375 F]
2. Roll out pie crust. Using tartlet pans as cutters, cut circles out of the pie crust.
3. Take each circle and roll it with a rolling pin to stretch it out a bit. The goal is to get it to cover the inside of the tartlet pan and have enough dough to go up the sides as well.
4. Place each circle into a tartlet pan, pressing against the walls of pan and trimming any excess.
5. Mark the bottom of each tartlet shell with a fork to prevent the shell from puffing up during baking. Blind bake [aka line each shell with parchment paper and fill with dried beans or pie beads] for 10 minutes. Take out paper and beads and bake for another 5 minutes. Let cool.
6. In a bowl, cream mascarpone and lemon curd together until smooth. It's important that the mascarpone be at room temperature, else it has a tendency to be lumpy and uncooperative when combined with the lemon curd.
7. Add lemon curd mixture to pie shells, filling each almost to the top of the pie shell.
8. Arrange berries on top of mascarpone.
9. If you choose to glaze your tarts, thin out berry jam of your choice with water until it becomes liquidy, but still slightly viscous. The goal is to have it stay on the berries and make them shine. If you add too much water, it will run off the berries and make your tarts soggy.
10. Grab a fork and enjoy!
Labels: blackberries, lemon, mascarpone, raspberries, tarts
4 Comments:
And why exactly were these strange men harassing you? I'm sorry your day started off yucky, but at least you got some delicious noms to make up for it. I'll have to try these out on one of my cheat days... I'm currently eating a slice of mango key lime cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory... so. good.
By 
LF, at
June 5, 2011 at 10:57 PM
So sorry you had such a bad day... However something good sure did come of it - these are beautiful! Great photos!!
By 
Souffle Bombay (Colleen), at
June 6, 2011 at 6:54 AM
They were harassing me because they were friends of the guy that hit me, so they tried to make it seem like I was overreacting. I'm just glad it's over and that I at least got to eat a most delicious dessert [and that my lightbox took such great photos at 11:30 pm! go little lightbox, go!]
By kelly, at
June 6, 2011 at 7:01 PM
wow, I can only imagine how good they taste, but I can totally appreciate those pictures, they are fabulous! Sorry you had to deal with a crappy situation to get you to such a tasty situation!
By Beth @ Kitchen Minions, at
June 8, 2011 at 8:27 PM
Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 4:58 PM
pump up the jam
Lately, my radar has been jam-packed with jam. Yesterday, I was catching up on my tweets and I came across this article. Then my friend Maddie and I went strolling through the Rittenhouse Square Barnes and Noble looking at books on preserves, pickling, jams and canning. And of course, if you've been following my blog, you'll see that I had four pounds of ripe, delicious, juicy blackberries just begging to be made into jam. Have no fear, my friends. My mother and I did just that.
My mom and I have been making jam since I was in high school. It started one summer when my dad brought home a huge bucket of wild elderberries. When my teenage self first saw the small suckers, I was unconvinced that they could make anything worth eating. They were too tiny to get a real taste for their flavor, but my mom had confidence in them. We spent all afternoon plucking them off their stems and though it was time consuming, the end result was definitely worth all of our hard work.
Though we've dabbled in chokecherries and made elderberry jam year after year, we've never actually made jam with any common berry.... that is, until I brought some home this week. Here's our adventure in pictures.
Our beautiful berries (most packages of pectin
will tell you the proper ratio of berries to sugar to jam yield. In our case, we were looking for 5 cups of juice).
Place in a large pot.
Smash.
(look at that beautiful purple juice)
Meanwhile, clean mason/Bell jars
with hot soapy water and turn upside down on a paper towel to dry.
Fit a food mill
on top of another clean pot.
Add canning lids
to boiling hot water to sterilize them.
Cook until berries come to a roiling boil.
Once the blackberry mixture has come to a rolling boil, ladle into the food mill.
Turn handle of food mill to strain seeds/skins/stems/pits from berries. Continue until all the berries have been processed, the handle becomes harder to turn and you're left with a thick, seedy pulp.
You should be left with a thick juice (don't sweat it if there are a few seeds in the juice). At this point you can add a tiny bit of butter to discourage the juice from foaming. We did and it helped significantly.
Next, measure the juice (we needed 5 cups)
Slowly stir in pectin, being careful to watch for clumps (in our case, we used one package of pectin).
Allow mixture to come to a rolling boil.
Next, stir in sugar (our ratio called for 7 cups).
Cook until the mixture comes to a rolling boil. Continue to cook for one minute, then turn off heat and begin to ladle mixture into jars. It helps to use a canning kit
so you don't burn your fingers.
Almost finished! Place the lids on the jars and screw the tops on tightly. From this point, you can either boil your jars in hot water using a waterbath method or you can flip the jars upside down for 5 minutes and then turn them over (We did the latter. As the jars seal, they make a popping noise as a vacuum is created. Once the jars are cool, if you press down on the lid, the lid should not make any popping noise).
Unfortunately, I forgot to take a jar back to PA with me, so I'll have to wait two weeks before I can have some on toast. One final note--I like to have a soundtrack to my culinary adventures. For jam making? Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam."
For more information on jam making and canning, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation's website.
Labels: blackberries, cooking with my mom, CT food, food mill, home canning, jam making
0 Comments:
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 @ 6:21 PM
Berry Picking
Yesterday, I went berry picking at Belltown Hill Orchards with my two friends Emily and Emily. We were lured there with the hopes of picking plump berries like those that we picked last year. This time around, however, such blue juicy gems were far more scarce as it was the end of the season. Though the blueberries were only average size, we managed to make the most of our afternoon. We had a great time catching up, shouting from one bush to another, poking our heads around trees to hear the next bit of conversation. We also gave a fellow picker tips on places to visit in Ireland after he heard us discussing our adventures there. A few hours later, I wound up with three pounds of blueberries (their fate is still unknown).
While weighing our berries and ringing us out, the saleswoman mentioned that we should stop at the farmstand because they were having a sale on peaches. After discussing the delicious merits of peach crisp, cobbler and jam (not to mention the pricetag--$3 for a whole bucket of peaches!), we made the farmstand our next stop.
While paying for my peaches, I was chatting with the cashier who told me that it was blackberry picking season. Let me tell you a little something about myself. I'm not a fruit fan. I'll eat a banana every now and again, but I love berries. Most specifically, I love blackberries and raspberries. Blueberries are good in pie and the occasional muffin or scone, but they have limited function in my my diet. The more tart members of the berry clan own real estate in my palate. Fold raspberries into any batter and it's instantly better in my book. So, naturally you can imagine how excited I was to hear that I could soon have pounds (yes, pounds) of these raven-colored beauties in my possession.
I walked out toward the bushes, expecting to find three rows of small plants with a few berries ripe enough to pick on each bush--boy was I wrong!
The plants were nearly twice my height and had an array of the most beautiful shades of magenta, purple and ebony berries. I was in heaven.
The ripe berries were easy to spot. They looked like little clusters of glossy obsidian grapes, bursting with juice. When I reached to grab them, they came off their stems so willingly that it was almost as if they were exhausted from hanging so much weight from their stems. Many of them were so ripe that even a gentle touch sent sweet burgundy juice running down my fingertips. Four pounds of blackberries later, my fingernails were stained magenta. It was the mark of a fantastic day.
Belltown Hill Orchards
483 Matson Hill Road
S. Glastonbury, CT 06073
860-633-2789
Labels: berry picking, blackberries, blueberries, CT food, orchards, peaches
1 Comments:
yes yes, a million times YES
By , at
August 4, 2010 at 7:16 PM
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 @ 7:12 PM
I'm back!
If you missed the memo, I was in Ireland for the last six weeks. I will certainly miss Galway and all its charm, but I couldn't wait to get back and get cooking. I was staying in a homestay and didn't have access to a stove, microwave or even a fridge, so I had to eat out for all my meals except breakfast. It was torture to walk through the Galway Market every weekend and not be able to experiment with the vibrantly colored fruits and vegetables. So, after 17 hours of travel and a delicious slumber, I woke up and headed to the Bryn Mawr Farmers Market.
There were a few more stalls since the last time I visited. I stopped for a sticky bun at the Herbal Springs Farmstead stand and picked up some peaches too.
The peaches joined some blackberries from another stand and they found their way into my very first cobbler (I thought I was making a crisp until my hands were covered in flour and I realized I had to add milk and roll out a dough. whoops). It could have used some more sugar, as I underestimated the tartness of blackberries. It could have also benefitted from some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream (everything's better ala mode). Overall, though, it came out pretty good for a first attempt.
(I served it while it was still hot so the steam prevented a pretty picture. Apologies!)
While at the market, I also had a chat with Mitch from the Green Zebra Farm. I couldn't resist taking pictures of his spread--the colors were just too beautiful--so I asked if I could snap a few photos and we struck up a conversation. We talked tomatoes (he has several different varieties of brilliantly colored organic heirlooms) and I walked away with two different shades of red and a yellow tomato.
The tomatoes found their way into the chicken kabobs I made later.
as well as the tomato onion summer salad I whipped up the next day...
Labels: blackberries, cobbler, farmers market, peaches, salad, tomatoes
1 Comments:
kel.......just genius as always. those photos are aaaamazing...and i want those kabobs like nownow
By , at
July 28, 2010 at 11:31 AM