Blogging Around

This time I won't even bore you with excuses for my absence. Suffice it to say that I'm still going at it in the kitchen and here's what I've been up to lately:

As I mentioned back in December, I had a visit from a good friend in Munich. What I didn't tell you was that she brought me a new cookbook by a fellow foodblogger from Munich. Which again brought me to check out her starting point on the internet: delicious days. Although not exactly stuffed with posts it is very VERY interesting to look at the recipes she does have. Not to mention her photos! The above photo is my version of what you can see here under the heading "How to turn rhubarb pink". It's a little puff pastry tart filled with home made vanilla custard and a slightly tangy compôte of rhubarbs and raspberries. They turned out really great and my initial fear of the store bought puff pastry turning yeasty-bitter and way too thick was put to rest. And even the next day they were very delicious indeed.
Follow the link to find the original recipe. Below are my comments and learnings from her recipe. Do yourself a favour and try it out - you won't regret it! My only let down was the fact that it ended up looking like a very familiar piece of Danish: The "Spandauer" (enjoy the mug-shot) which is a sort of round puff pastry thingy with twisted edges, filled with a stiff custard or marmelade and topped with icing sugar. That sort of made me a little less excited about the new discovery. A bit like the time I made some Spanish tomato marmelade and somebody asked if it was ketchup. Dammit!

First of all, there's waaay too much custard and compôte to fill 10-12 puff pastry cups. I used the store bought kind where you get six little "plates" of dough, of which I used three to make 12 small tarts. Granted, that's 50 grams less dough than the recipe says, but I still have enough filling left over to make another 12 tarts. So either make half the amount of filling or double the amount of puff pastry.