What an amazing album! I have to admit I have never listened to Modest Mouse very much in the past but nowadays I've been listening to them non-stop! I really enjoy the bassist in the group I think his pretty awesome and his bass lines show much musical finesse. The songwriting is spectacular as well. Though to me they are a very angry and pessimistic band despite their very optimistic single. Good News For People Who Love Bad News is also a great album from this band as it also includes the legendary Dirty Dozen Brass Band but I am slowly growing more and more onto this album.
Baking-Strip Tartlets with Fresh Fruit(Raspberries, Blue Berries, Peaches)
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| Delicious? or DELICIOUS! |
The idea behind this pastry is to bake your puff pastry in long big strips and then scoop out the puff pastry middle so you have a little boat shaped puff pastry. Then fill it with Vanilla Pastry Cream and top it off with some fresh fruit!
well first thing is first. You gotta have the puff pastry. Puff Pastry is really annoying to make so I decided to buy my puff pastry from Wegmans. I was checking out the different Puff Pastry brands and it seems to me that the Wegmans brand is best because they don't use anything other than flour, butter, etc. whereas the pepperidge farm has lots of ingredients in it that i can't pronounce and I don't like that. You can make your own (I've done that if you want the recipe then its in older posts)
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| mmmmm...ruler |
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| Driving through the eggwash! |
After we thawed out our puff pastry we laid it out and cut it in three even strips lengthwise. Then one of those three strips is to be cut into four smaller even strips. These small strips are then lined on the edges of the other two larger puff pastry strips as shown in the picture!
Brush it with some egg wash (a mixture that is half egg half whole milk). Then its just baking the puff pastry at 375 until it is golden brown (approx 20 minutes). The baking time and oven temperature might depend on what puff pastry you buy or what recipe your using.
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| Puffed Puff pastry |
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| Scooped Puff Pastry |
While the Puff pastry is baking its time to prepare the vanilla pastry cream! This is definitely the hardest part of the recipe (which isn't very hard at all).
You will need:
16 fl. oz of milk
3.5 oz of sugar
a pinch of salt
1.25 oz of cornstarch
6 oz of eggs
1/2 tbsp of vanilla extract
1 oz of butter
1.combine 14 fl oz of milk and 2 oz of sugar and salt in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over med. heat
2. While that saucepan is heating up combine cornstarch with remaining milk and whisk until dissolved and then whisk in remaining sugar and eggs.
3. Then temper the egg mixture by adding about 1/3 of the simmering milk into the bowel while whisking constantly and then returning the mixture to the hot milk in teh saucepan. This is to prevent the eggs from cooking! That would be awful!
4.Continue to whisk very very vigorously until the pastry cream leaves a trail behind the whisk.
5. Remove from heat whisk in vanilla extract and butter and then cool in an ice bath.
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| THE TEMPER |
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| vigorous whisking! |
After the Pastry Cream is done and cooling in the ice bath your puff pastry sheets should be out and cooled. Now just scoop out the middle of strips so that it looks like a little boat of puff pastry. Then spoon or pipe your pastry cream evenly in the little puff pastry boats in even amounts and then top it off with whatever fruits you like! We used peaches blueberries and raspberries but I am sure almost any other fruits would be fine.
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| Undesirable slacking! Get back to peeling peaches! |
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| Fruits |
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| Strip Tarlets! |
