Insomniac Puff Pastry Dough

I do believe I am in danger of becoming my mother. It's not the worst thing. She's pretty awesome, actually. But she's got some crazy habits and sometimes socially unacceptable behavior.

What leads me to draw this conclusion? A lot of things, really. The first of which is that it's muy tarde around these parts and I'm wide awake. That's very late, for all of you non spanish speaking folk. Lately I've been falling asleep at a somewhat normal hour, and then getting up, wide awake, a few hours later. It's really annoying when I have something to do the next day early, but for the most part I don't mind it, because I get all kinds of stuff done! Like the puff pastry dough I just finished rolling out...

Mom sleeps opposite than the rest of us, has for quite some time now. She goes to bed around 4 in the afternoon, with no apologies, and wakes up around midnight. From here, she switches on the TV to her favorite channel, TVLAND, juices some carrots, has a conversation or two with her cat Kiki, and gets to work. Mom makes jewelry and sells it at a few different farmer's markets. It's a decent living, she gets to express herself through her artwork, and it keeps her busy. And boy! does she need to be busy...maybe that's where I get it from.

I've got 3 sisters, 2 of whom also belong to my mother, the other is my stepsister, but we all grew up together, so as far as I'm concerned, she's my sis too. Mom calls me her "starving artist", which is hilarious considering my art form is food. Gretel and Andrea, my sisters, and her other daughters, are financially very stable and have what one might consider a "real job". They're both pretty amazing and have at one time also been starving artists, but I'm pretty sure they're both finished starving now.

Another clue that I'm becoming my mother came to me about a year ago in the form of eyeliner. I was getting ready for work and couldn't find my eyeliner sharpener. Already late, (unlike Mom, who is always startlingly early) I had no time to mess around with my usual attempt at whittling away at the eyeliner with a pairing knife. Mom was at my house and naturally always keeps eyeliner handy in her suitcase of a purse. So I asked if I could use some of hers.

Mom: "I have black, and I have Paris Blue. Ooooh, try the Paris Blue, honey. It'll be great with those earrings."
Me: "No, mom, it's cool. I'll just stick with the black."
Mom: "NO! Try the blue, you'll love it." She said this with a stomp of the foot. She's a stubborn woman, and there is no arguing with her.

No time to argue, I gave in very quickly. The woman was right...what can I say. Not only did I like it, but I got a tremendous amount of compliments that day. The next day I went out and bought my very own Paris Blue, and now pull it out when I'm feeling a little down on myself. There's nothing like a tealish-blue swipe of eyeliner around the lash line to make a girl feel pretty. Go on, try it, no one's looking.

Mom always told me as a kid not to eat pickles before bed, because they'll give you bad dreams. This is advice I have trouble following. Perhaps it's my rebellious nature, or just my fondness for a salty, crunchy snack before hitting the sack, but I can often be found standing over the sink, pickle juice dripping down my chin, in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. If I run out of pickles, I'll drink the juice. It can't be good for you, but I love it. She's right, the dreams are pretty weird, but that's another story.

Lucky me, I'm getting tired now. Gonna try round 2 of sleeping for the eve, now that it's 4 A.M., but first I'll leave you with a recipe for insomniac Puff Pastry Dough. This recipe was adapted from The Culinary Institute of America's Baking and Pastry book. It's a straightforward recipe that I have adjusted ever so slightly to make the best puff I've ever worked with. Warning: Don't do this if your house is hot...it will melt!!!

Puff Pastry Dough
makes 4 # 6 oz.

Dough

14 oz. Bread flour
3 oz. Cake flour
6 oz. Butter, soft
9 fl. oz. Water
1 1/2 tsp Salt

Roll In

1 # 2 oz. Butter, pliable
2 oz. Bread flour

For dough:

In a mixer with a dough hook on low speed: sift together the flours, blend in the butter until pea sized nuggets form. Combine water and salt, add all at once to the dough and continue to mix until smooth, about 3 minutes. Shape into a rough rectangle, transfer to a sheet pan lined with parchment, wrap and allow to rest under refrigeration for about 30 minutes or until cold.

To prepare the roll- in: Blend the butter and the flour on low speed with paddle attachment until smooth, about 2 minutes. Roll into a rectangle between parchment and chill until firm, but still pliable. Do not allow butter to get cold.

Roll dough into a large rectangle. Place the butter block on one side of the dough and fold the other half of the dough over the top. Lock in the butter by pressing down the edges of the dough firmly. Turn dough 90 degrees. Roll into large rectangle. Make a book fold or 4 fold by bringing each of the edges into the middle and then folding the dough one more time on top on top of itself, turn 90 degrees, rest in fridge 30 minutes. Make a total of four 4 folds, turning 90 degrees and resting between each roll. Rest 30 minutes before using.

To use:
Roll out dough to about 1/4" thickness. From here it can be frozen, wrapped tightly or used in a variety of sweet and savory preparations. Bake at 375, time varies, depending on use.

Recipe for a Bitter Waitress

Clearly, waiting tables for a prolonged period of time has left me a little jaded.

I think that waiting tables should be a required class in high school. In order to eat in a restaurant, everyone would have to carry a card that stated that they passed the class with flying colors. They'd have to deal with all kinds of ridiculous things...like the customer running you back and forth evertime you come to the table, rather than just asking for everything they needed all at once. There would be the kind of people who can't make decisions for themselves and need a little hand holding in order to place their order. People would let their children use the restaurant classroom as a playground and you might trip over them as you came around a corner. It would be really fun for everyone.

For me, waiting tables is the closest you can get to working for yourself, without actually having to run your own business. It allows me to do all of the things I love, and make a decent living while working less than full time. I work at a great place, with a killer staff and some of the best managers and one of the most generous owners that I've experienced in my long restaurant career. I really couldn't ask for more. It's the customers , the general public I guess you could say, that sometimes need a talking to.

I 'm not the most bubbly waitress you've ever had, but I'm surely efficient. I get the job done and the customers leave happy, a little drunk, and ultimatley satisfied. I may not be super engaging, but really when I have 8 other tables that need their order taken and waters refilled, I don't have time to talk about your great aunt Millie's trip to the Greek Islands. Seriously folks, I can't make this stuff up.

People are incredibly particular when it comes to ordering in a restaurant. It's almost like they loose all of their common sense. They ask stupid questions...yes, I said it, stupid questions...there is such a thing. Take the following for example:

Customer: "I'll have the blah blah blah...is that going to fill me up?"
What I want to say, but have to bite my tongue everytime, " I don't know...how much have you eaten today? Are you a binge eater? When was the last time you used the restroom?"

Or this scenario:
Customer: "I had a glass of wine here a few weeks ago...it was red..."
Me: "Okay, here are all of our red wines by the glass, is there anything else you remember about the wine?"
Customer: " Well...it was red..."
What I really want to say, " What do you want me to do with that? I left my crystal ball at home today and can't read your mind without it."

Or how about the people that avoid eye contact at all costs? Surely if they look their server in the eye they might turn to stone, for a server is, after all, a second class citizen, right? Another favorite are the people who, upon sitting, state that they are in a hurry, proceed to take their sweet time with the menu and then 2 minutes after they finally place an order want to know where ther food is. Seriously people? It's being cooked. It's in a pan or in the oven. Calm down.

But my all time favorite, my friends is the following: Someone doesn't like anything they see on the menu, so they decide to create their own dish using different sauces and ingredients from other items on the menu. When it comes to the table, they hate it and want to send it back. Really? The problem is, we pretty much have to take it back, because, unfortunatley, the customer is always right.

I know, I sound bitter, and I am a little. But I too am guilty of being the annoying customer. Take my coffee order for example...grande dark roast with 5-7 ice cubes on top, after the coffee is poured. Oh you have crushed ice? I'l l just take the ice on the side then please, thankyouverymuch.

Santa Rosa Plum Coffee cake...and a glass of rose to boot

I recently aquired a set of wine glasses. A set being two, both of which are mildly chipped, therefore deemed unusable by the restaurant I work at, resulting in my new set of wine glasses. Prior to my receipt of these glasses I enjoyed wine out of whatever was available; usually a coffee cup, sometimes a mason jar. I still enjoyed it. I'm not too picky when it comes to that kind of thing. But, you know, I gotta say...there's something about having a cold, crisp glass of wine out of an actual wine glass that really makes me feel classy. This doesn't happen often, so I've got to take it where I can get it.

It's these little things that I've come to appreciate as of late. So far, it's been a very lazy July for me. Aside from baking and showing up at work, I haven't been doing much else. I do laundry and it sits in the basket, clean and unfolded, until I've worn it all and it's dirty laundry again. My couch that pulls out into a queen size bed, has also become a desk and a dining room table. These are some of the perks of living alone.I know, I'm not painting such a pretty picture of the simple life, but really it's great. One of the best parts about living alone is that it's completley acceptable for all parties involved to have coffee cake and a glass of rose for dinner any night of the week. This particular combination is most enjoyable if and when the coffee cake is laden with Santa Rosa Plums from your Grandpa's tree. I'm just sayin'...

If you are not lucky enough to have a grandfather that grows these juicy, purple -skinned, red- fleshed plums, you can still make this gorgeous layered coffee cake with any stone fruit variety. The original inspiration for this recipe came from a recipe for Blackberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake I found a few years ago. I have baked this cake in so many different forms, tweaking it ever so slightly here and there along the way and the following is what I've come up with. The cake layer of this is an adaptation of a recipe for "Elvis' Favorite Pound Cake" from epicurious.com. I figured, if it was good enough for the king, it was good enough for me.

Santa Rosa Plum and Cream Cheese Coffee Cake with Oatmeal Struesel

makes 2 9"x5" loaf pans

For the plums:

oven 350

10 Santa Rosa Plums, cut in 1/2, pits removed

1/4 cup sugar

Sprinkle sugar into the bottom of a pyrex dish. Lay plums cut side down in a single layer. Roast until soft, about 20 minutes. Allow to cool completley before using. This step can be done in advance.

Cake:

2/3 cup butter, room temperaure

2 cups SIFTED cake flour (measure after sifting)

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups sugar

5 eggs, at room temperature

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp almond extract

2/3 cup sour cream

Sift the flour a total of three times, add salt. Beat butter and sugar about 5 minutes Add eggs 1 at a time, add vanilla and almond extracts. Reduce speed to low and add 1/2 of the flour, then all of the sour cream, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the rest of the flour and increase speed to medium. Continue to beat for a full 5 minutes.

Divide into 2 buttered and floured pans. Top each cake with 1/2 of the cream cheese filling*. Sprinkle with spiced sugar*, top with cooled plums and 1/2 recipe of oat cardamom struesel.When you bake these, the struesel will sink down into the middle and the cake with bake up around it.

*recipes below

Bake at 350 for 1 hour and 10 minutes, turning half way through. Cake tester should come out clean. Cool in pan, and then on a wire rack until completley cool. Will freeze for up to a month wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.

Cream Cheese Filling

8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1/tsp vanilla

1 TBSP flour

pinch of salt

Cream together all ingredients until smooth.

Spice Sugar Mix

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cardamom

1 tsp orange zest

pinch salt

pinch nutmeg

Lemon Berry Trifle

It’s finally that time in the middle of summer when everything and anything you could possibly want is available at the farmer’s market and even the grocery stores. It was a friend’s birthday, and I had a gorgeous array of berries from the farmers market and also the last of the Meyer lemon juice I had frozen from my grandpa’s tree earlier this spring so I threw together one of my favorite summertime desserts…Lemon Berry Trifle.

I’ll admit it…sometimes I’m just to lazy to build a perfectly layered and smoothly frosted cake. Not just that, but I’ve never really been that good at getting the frosting super smooth. It’s a talent that I admire, really. I’ve always said “I’m a baker, not a cake decorator.” My friend Barry and I used to laugh every time we saw a want- ad for a cake decorator, because although we both have a bunch of experience in baking and pastries, neither of us could frost a cake with the finesse of someone whom would refer to themselves as a cake decorator. Which is why I love trifles…


A trifle is basically a deconstructed layer cake at it’s finest. With their layers of airy sponge cake, tart custard, sweet cream and fresh fruit, they are the cake decorating challenged’s best friend. They look beautiful in a trifle dish, a glass bowl, or even individually in wide-mouth mason jars.

This trifle has can be made ahead in stages. The cake is a basic chiffon cake, and freezes very well. I like to make a double batch of this recipe and keep the unused portion in the freezer because it’s so versatile and defrosts so quickly. It’s great as the base for an ice cream cake for this reason. Also, the recipe you see below is for a lemon cream versus the more commonly used lemon curd. I prefer creams to curds for a few reasons: 1) Because they use whole eggs as opposed to just egg yolks, you don’t get that metallic flavor that sometimes comes from mixing citrus with yolks. 2) There is a higher ratio of butter. ‘Nuff said. 3) They are incredibly easy too make. Another tip: If you mix the berries with the sugar about an hour before you need them, they will release enough juices so that you don’t even need to make a separate fruit puree to moisten the cake layers.


The trifle can be served immediately or refrigerated for up to 24 hours without becoming soggy.

Lemon Berry Trifle serves 10

For the cake: oven 350
adapted from Bo Friberg

Sift together and set aside:
1 1/2c + 2 TBSP cake flour
1c. minus 1TBSP sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Mix in large bowl and set aside:
4 ½ yolks
3 TBSP lemon juice
1/4 c + 1 TBSP water
1TBSP lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla extract

Make a well in the middle of the sifted dry mix and whisk yolk mixture in until completely smooth.

In the bowl of a stand mixer:
7 egg whites at room temp
1/3 cup minus 2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Whip whites until frothy, add cream of tartar and then add sugar in a slow stream. Whip until they hold firm and shiny peaks. Beginning with about half of the whites, fold into yolk mixture using a rubber spatula. Gently fold the rest of the whites into the lightened yolk mixture until just combined.

Pour batter onto an 11x17 parchment paper lined baking sheet sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake 45 minutes. Cool in pan.

Lemon Cream:
Adapted from the Tartine Cookbook

1 ½ cups sugar
9 oz lemon juice (1 cup + 2 TBSP)
6 whole eggs
zest of 4 lemons
1 # cold butter
pinch salt

In a large bowl, mix sugar, lemon juice, zest and eggs. Cook over a double boiler until thick, whisking frequently.( Be careful not to whisk to much, or incorporate any air because this will later make a runny cream.) Strain through a fine mesh sieve into a blender. Cut cold butter into 1 inch cubes. With the blender on low, add butter 1 cube at a time until all is incorporated and cream is emulsified. Transfer to a bowl for chilling. Press plastic wrap directly onto the top to avoid developing a skin and cool over an ice bath, and then in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours before using.

Whipped Cream:

1 ½ cups heavy cream, preferably Manufacturing Cream if you can find it (available at Smart and Final)
¼ cup sugar
½ vanilla bean scraped or 2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
Whip together until medium peaks. Set aside in refrigerator.

4 cups mixed berries, hulled and washed ( I use raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries)
juice of one lemon
¾ cup sugar
pinch salt

Mix together and set aside for at least 1 hour before using, allowing juices to render.

To assemble:
Cut cake into 1 inch cubes. Put a single layer of berries on bottom of bowl or trifle dish. Top with cubed cake. Pour some of the rendered juices onto the cake to moisten. Add another single layer of berries. Top with ½ of the lemon cream and smooth using an offset spatula. Top with ½ of the whipped cream and smooth with offset spatula. Continuing layers until bowl is full, ending with whipped cream, and reserving some berries for garnish. Refrigerate.

Heirloom Tomato Pie

I've been kind of debating what I wanted to call this little number. I think "pot pie" best suits it, because it really is a meal in and of itself, served along side a little green salad.

My friend TJ grew up in New Jersey working at a roadside farmstand. Every summer "Ron the Baker" would come and buy fruit, and later return with all kinds of pies for them to sell. Mostly the pies woulld sell themselves, but the one that people were most skeptical about was his savory tomato pie. But once they bought one, they kept coming back.

Ever since TJ told me about this a few months ago I've been thinking about baking one myself. We've had many speculative conversations about Ron's tomato pie... I wonder what he used to thicken it, flour or cornstarch? Was there cheese in it? Did he roast the tomatoes first? Did he take the seeds out of the tomatoes? What else was in the pie?



I'd been trying to wait until my own tomatoes were ripe to mess around with my version of Ron the baker's famous tomato pie, but I couldn't wait any longer. Beautiful heirloom tomatoes are everywhere right now (except my garden), and last Sunday at the farmer's market, they were calling my name. I searched the internet for tomato pie recipes, but didn't really care for any of the ones that I saw, so I just went with my gut and made it with what I would want to eat...caramelized onion, roasted garlic, mozzarella cheese, and pesto. I decided to go with bread crumbs as a thickener too, which worked perfectly. The one thing I didn't do that I wish I would have, is blanch and peel the tomatoes first. This isn't a completley neccessary step, but the pie will have a better mouth feel in the end. To save yourself a little time, you can use store bought pesto if you prefer, but my recipe is delicious. Although classically pesto is made with pine nuts, I use almonds, because pine nuts are the one food in life that I hate. I know it's weird, but I do. Also, bake this in the deepest pie dish you have, as this pie has a lot of guts.



Tomato Pot Pie
Makes one deep dish 9" pie
Conventional oven 400, Convection 375
1/2 recipe perfect pie dough

Pesto:
2 cups basil leaves, packed
1/2 cup grated parmesan reggiano
1/2 cup extra vigin olive oil
1/4 cup almonds, toasted
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 1/2 TBSP lemon juice
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp salt, adjust to taste

Put all ingredients except 1/2 of oil and lemon juice in a blender. With the blender running, slowly pour the rest of the olive oil in until pesto is smooth and slightly emulsified. Add lemon juice. The lemon juice will eventually turn the pesto slightly brown, but it's okay because you are going to bake this anyway. Pesto will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator.

For the pie:
2# heirloom tomatoes, blanched and peeled. Half of them with seeds removed.
8 oz. fresh mozzarella, sliced into 1/2" discs
1/4 c + 2 TBSP pesto
1 small onion, caramelized
5 cloves roasted garlic, chopped
1 TBSP banyuls or red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

heavy cream for brushing the top of pie
sea salt for top of pie
grated Parmesan Reggiano for top of pie

Roll out pie dough into 2 discs, about 1/8" thick. Shape 1 disc into a deep dish pie and set aside in the refrigerator. To blanch and peel tomatoes: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Slice a small x into the bottom of each tomato, slicing just through the skin. Submerge tomatoes a few at a time into boiling water and leave for 10 seconds. Immediatley remove and submerge in ice water. With a pairing knife, peel skin off and throw away.
Remove seeds from half of the tomatoes and save for another use. Cut tomatoes into wedges. In a large bowl,toss tomatoes with caramelized onions, garlic, bread crumbs, salt and pepper, and vinegar. Lay the mozzarella in a single layer on the bottom of the pie shell. Top with pesto and spread into an even layer. Top with tomato mixture. Place reserved pie dough on top and pinch edges to seal. Chill. Brush top with cream and sprinkle sea salt over top of pie. With the tip of a pairing knife, slice vents in top of pie. Bake 50 minutes - 1 hour, or until crust is browned and your house smells amazing. Top with grated parmesan while pie is still hot. Serve warm.

So many cookbooks, so little time

I love it when I open a cookbook that I haven't used in a while and the pages are stuck together. Or better yet when I open a cookbook at my Grandma's house and a bunch of note cards scribbled with recipes fall out. These are both signs of a well used cookbook.

My collection of cookbooks started at the tender age of 17, when the first chef I ever worked for, Jim Drew, known to his cooks as just 'Drew', took me out to lunch right before I headed off to Hyde Park, NY for culinary school. Unexpectedly, he gave me a gift; a little chest with a lock and key, a hundred bucks, and a cookbook...Culinaria The United States. To this day it's still the largest one in my collection, and it never fits on a bookshelf without laying down flat. I've used it many times; most memorably to make tamales at Christmas. The pages are splattered with pork fat and chili residue. I want to lick them.

Now, 11 years later, my cookbook collection has grown so large that it needs way more than the one bookshelf that fits in my tiny apartment's kitchen. Some of them are borderline useless, some of them are hand made, some of them were 10 cents on amazon.com, and I just couldn't resist, but most of them have been used and abused. Currently, my cat, Mike, is using Sherry Yard's Desserts By the Yard as a bed.

At this point, I think it's no secret that I'm kind of a dork. I'm not even ashamed of it anymore. No, now I embrace it. There was a time in my life, not too long ago, when I would stay inside for days on end, leaving only to reluctantly go to work or nourish myself on some level, reading recipe after recipe, and making notes about what I wanted to try. I read Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Cake Bible in a weekend. Then I googled her dissertation, which I had heard was written on sifting flour. A women after my own heart. (The bottom line of her dissertation? Unless your flour is clumpy, or you are using it as a means of mixing dry ingredients, it doesn't really matter if you sift or not, but I do it anyway. This comes from years of working in kitchens where who knows what had been spilled into the flour bin.)

The other day I was at my Grandpa's house and he said "Take a look around. You can have whatever you want in here. Well almost anything...none of your Grandma's AVON prizes."

Naturally, my first thought went to their old church cookbooks. Those things are full of hidden treasures, so I said "Can I have some of your old cookbooks?"

"No!, " he said with a stern chuckle, "Those are too precious." Oh really? Stay tuned...they will be mine.

Nectarine Strawberry Crumb Hand Pies

I love it when I have so much stuff in my fridge, that a dessert just naturally comes together, seeming almost effortless. Yesterday I was lucky enough to find a couple pounds of pie dough, some frangipane, and a freezer bag full of cardamom -oat struesel. I also had a few super ripe nectarines and juicy strawberries from the farmer's market the day before, so these homey and craveable hand pies had almost built themselves before I even entertained the thought of turning on my oven on an already hot day.

My apartment gets so hot when I turn the oven on. The heat makes me do stupid things, like repeatedly stub my pinkie toes. I seriously hate them. They totally get in the way. My feet aren't even big, and I'm constantly stubbing the smallest part of them on anything and everything. Yesterday, it was a grand total of 3 times in the 15ish minutes that it took to throw these things together.

Now, the only reason it took such a short time for me to make these, is because I already had everything. My refrigerator is always full of different kinds of doughs and fillings, quite obviously because this is what I do. But everything that it took to make these can be made ahead, frozen or refrigerated for quite some time, and used in countless different preparations. The struesel recipe can be easily doubled or even tripled and thrown in the freezer to use as a topping for a fruit crisp for when those mythical "unexpected guests" just pop in and expect you to have some fine baked good just lying around.

Nectarine and Strawberry Crumb Hand Pies makes 12

1 recipe Perfect Pie Dough

Cardamom Oat Struesel

3/4 c. + 2 Tbsp instant oats

3/4 c.+ 2 Tbsp a.p. flour

3/4 c packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/8 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp grated orange zest

1/2 c butter, melted

Mix together all ingredients with a fork until they are blended and form small clumps. This can be refrigerated for 4 days or frozen.

Frangipane (almond cream)

1/4 c + 1 Tbsp butter, room temperature

1/2 c +2 Tbsp sugar (use vanilla sugar if you have it)

1 1/4 c toasted sliced almonds, or 4 1/2 oz. toasted almond meal

1 Tbsp. flour

1 egg

1 tsp almond extract

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

If using the sliced almonds, which I prefer, because it makes for a more toothsome almond layer, put the almonds into a Ziploc bag and using a rolling pin, crush the almonds. Leave them as large as you'd like, or crush them small. I go pretty small.

In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Add both extracts and then the nuts or almond meal. Beat until incorporated, add flour. This can be refrigerated for up to a week, or frozen.

For the fruit:

3-4 medium nectarines, sliced

1 # strawberries, rinsed, hulled and quartered

1/2 cup sugar (or vanilla sugar if you have it)

3 Tbsp honey

pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp cinnamon

juice of 1 lemon

2 Tbsp a.p flour

2 tsp cornstarch

Mix all ingredients together and allow to macerate for 10 minutes.

To assemble and bake the Hand Pies:

Conventional oven 400, Convection 375

Divide pie dough into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a 4x4ish square-ish shape. Put 1 tbsp frangipane and 1 large handful of fruit in the center of the dough. To fold up the edges, tuck and turn the dough while enclosing the fruit. Repeat with all 12 hand pies. Set on parchment paper lined baking sheets, allowing 2 inches on all sides of each pastry. Freeze for about 10 minutes. If there is any remaining juices from fruit, slowly pour into the center of each pastry, being careful not to overflow. Using cream or an egg wash made from 1 yolk and 2 Tbsp milk, brush the edges of the pastries and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Top with the struesel topping. Bake for about 30 minutes, turning around half way through. Cool on wire racks before eating.