French Pastry Making Tips

!±8± French Pastry Making Tips

French pastry is so delicious, it is rather like shortbread, light, crisp and buttery. It turns a simple fruit tart into a dessert from heaven! Making French pasty is just a technique that you will acquire with a little patience and once you have the hang of it you will be making the most delicious tarts and quiches you have ever tasted.

The French use a special low gluten flour but you can produce a good pastry using all purpose flour if you cannot buy French flour. You can buy French flour in good specialty stores or today of course you can buy it online - such are the wonders of the internet, everything at your convenience!

The French also use unsalted butter and this gives a crisp texture but again, you can use three parts butter to one part vegetable fat, which produces a light crisp pastry to be proud of. However, a combination of butter and a good vegetable fat is a wonderful mix and gives the results you want.

You can either make your pastry by hand or in a food processor. However, it is really a good idea to make it by hand to begin with so as to learn the skill of making a good pastry - to get the feel of the pastry in your hands and to learn the basics first.

You must work quickly and not handle the dough for long. I cannot stress this too much - this is the secret of making a good French pastry! This is to prevent it from getting warm as you do not want the butter to soften. So work with light fingers and very quickly. Add the water and blend quickly until you have the mix into a ball of dough. The secret here is this - too much water will make the pasty hard! Be careful and only use as little as possible!

Place the pastry dough on the floured board and using the heel of the hand, press the pastry down and away from you. Gather the pastry back into a ball with a scraper and place into a waxed bag or polythene bag which has been lightly dusted with flour. Place the dough in the refrigerator for about 2 hours.

When rolling out your pastry do this quickly so that the fat does not soften. It is very difficult to handle when this happens. However, when this does happen just press it to fit into the tin and even though it may not look good, it will still taste wonderful. Just do not worry as you learn the technique!

French Pastry Making Tips

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Making Homemade Mascarpone Cheese

!±8± Making Homemade Mascarpone Cheese

Making homemade mascarpone cheese requires only two, count them, two ingredients!

I'm on a roll here folks. Once I figured out that making ricotta cheese was easy, I set about looking for answers to my other "cheesemaking" questions...and here's another seriously easy cheese for you to make.

Ingredients:

· 2 cups heavy whipping cream

· 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Start with 2 cups of heavy whipping cream in the top of a double boiler. If you don't have a double boiler, use a pan of water on the stove and a stainless steel bowl that will fit into the pan and touch the water. Bring the water in the pan to a boil.

Place the bowl of heavy whipping cream over the boiling water.

Whisk gently until your cream reaches 120 degrees (Fahrenheit). You don't want to do this fast, it should take 15 - 20 minutes.

Whisk in 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice (don't use the stuff in a bottle, please...) Continue to gently whisk over the heat until the cream reaches 180F. Everything will thicken and coat a spoon. Cook for an additional 5 minutes, then remove the bowl from the pan and place it on a cooling rack for 20 minutes. You'll see more thickening as it is cooling in the refrigerator overnight.

Mascarpone does not make large curd like cottage cheese or ricotta cheese.

Once it has cooled, pour the mixture through a strainer lined with 4 - 6 layers of cheesecloth. You can use a coffee filter if you like. Because you will be straining overnight in a refrigerator, your strainer needs to fit inside a bowl, and the entire contraption has to find room in your fridge! Cover it with plastic wrap. I place it directly on top of the "cheese" so minimize any oxidation. Once the cheese has drained to your satisfaction, store it for up to 4 - 5 days.

Easy Recipes:

Crostini - Mix half a cup of mascarpone cheese, half a cup of parmesan cheese, add a pinch of Marjoram, salt, and pepper, spread over sliced Italian bread, broil until golden, and you have yummy crostini! Perfect for serving with soup or just a glass of wine.

Strawberry Tart - Bake a sheet of puff pastry. Cover with slightly sweetened mascarpone cheese (do this to your taste), top with strawberries that have been mixed with a little bit of sugar. Do this in a bowl ahead of time so the strawberries begin to juice a little bit. Spread the strawberries over the mascarpone cheese. Drizzle about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar over the top. Be prepared to swoon!

OR!

You can immediately make tiramisu. That's what I'm going to do.

Making Homemade Mascarpone Cheese

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