.blackberry pie for one.

My sister, Ronda, sent me an email the other day with a bunch of links. When I clicked on each of the links, I was taken to various sites that have been making mini pies! Well, that got me hankering for pie and decided to make some that night for dessert.

The instructions on one of the sites required 4oz Ball canning jars but I don't have any so I used my ramekins instead. Nothing like having your very own pie to put a smile on my face.

Before I get ahead of myself, I'll share the link. Not Martha

I made a butter pastry. 2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar mixed together in a bowl. Cut in 1 cup cold butter until the mix is crumbly. Spoon in some ice water until the dough pulls together. Divide into 8 balls. Roll each ball out and carefully line the inside of the ramekin, or ball jar.



Fill the pie up 3/4 of the way with the filling. Since I was in a hurry and didn't have fresh or frozen blackberries on hand, I used a jar of pie filling I had in my cupboard. Blackberry cobbler filling from Cracker Barrel. Mmmmm...

Roll out the other pieces of dough and top each of the ramekins. Trim the edges and then carefully tuck under and crimp. Make sure you put a vent hole in the dough before you put it on the pie because it's difficult to do. You can even use a mini cookie cutter if you want.

Brush the top with eggwash (in a bowl crack 1 egg and add 1 Tbsp water, whisk together) and then sprinkle generously with sugar. Bake at 350* until the tops are nice and golden.

Now if you want to take these out of the molds for serving, wait until they have cooled substantially otherwise the pie will collapse on itself like it did for me. I can be so impatient!

Serve with some vanilla ice cream and garnish with a sprig of mint for final presentation. This recipe will definitely impress your friends and family!

.white chocolate blackberry brownie bites.

Hello Fay. Yes.. *that* Fay. Tropical Storm Fay. She decided to come for a visit and it looks like she has finally calmed down some. It has been raining and blowing like crazy outside. Our house backs up to a wetland and it's normally dry dry dry, but the water has crept up to our grass!

Paige has been out of school the past two days so I've been thinking of things to do with her while she's home. One thing we did was make dessert to go with our dinner. These little yummies were ooooh so good.

My sister, Marcia, used to sell Pampered Chef and one of the recipes she made quite often, are their little tuxedo bites. I kind of got the idea based off of those, but changed the filling from their cream cheese/whipped cream mixture, to a white chocolate macadamia mousse. And instead of the cherry on top, I used a fresh blackberry. Very delicious!

These would be great for a party since their bite-sized. You could probably make these in regular muffin sized pans, but it wouldn't look as pretty, in my opinion. :)



Begin by making one brownie mix as directed on the package.


Pour into a mini muffin pan about half way up. (it is tough getting a picture while you're trying to pour. LOL)

Put in a 350* and bake until the tops are domed and baked all the way through.

Remove from the oven and let sit for 10 minutes.


Using this handy tool from Pampered Chef, press the centers down to make them into little cups.

Let's make the mousse now.

Put 2 eggs and 1/3 cup sugar.

Put the bowl on top of a saucepan that has about 1" of water in the pot. You don't want the bowl sitting in water so you don't need that much.

Whisk vigorously as the water comes to boil. The steam will cook the eggs and we want this nice and fluffy. Keep whisking until a thermometer reads 140*.


Remove the bowl from the double boiler and add a bag of Mauna Loa white chocolate chips w/ chopped macadamia nuts. If you don't want nuts, add 6 oz white chocolate. Mix until the chocolate melts completely.


Stir in 1/2 tsp vanilla.

Put in the fridge and allow to cool completely.


Once the chocolate has cooled, put 1 cup cream in an ice cold mixing bowl.


Whip on high until firm peaks form. My pictures are light or dark! Fay gave me very poor lighting all day. Sorry about that.


Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate/egg mix. Don't overbeat. Put this back in the fridge and let chill for 3 hours.


Carefully pull all the brownie bites out of the muffin pan. Now I remember why I hate this stupid pan. LOL... they stuck SO BAD!


Transfer the mousse into a piping bag and squeeze some into each cup.


Place blackberries (or strawberry, or raspberry, or cherry!) on the center. Chill for about an hour before serving.


Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_100gs4zvftw

.berry cream puff.

I had a luncheon today with some girlfriends. We all had our babies within a month of each other. We all had GIRLS! So we get together every month to hang out and eat and let our babies play together. It's a lot of fun. Today we had lunch at my house. I fixed some grilled chicken, grilled vegetable pasta salad (recipe below), greek salad (recipe to come), and for dessert...... berry cream puffs.



My husband insisted we didn't need a dessert for lunch. Puh-lease. I told him what I was thinking of making and he quickly jumped on board. LOL I guess you can have dessert with lunch!



I didn't want to do your typical strawberry shortcake, but I did want a fresh, fruity type dessert that screams SPRING! When I was at the store picking up supplies, I saw blueberries and blackberries with the strawberries. Mmmmm.... oh yah.



We made cream puffs daily at the bakery and filled them with pastry cream folded in with whipped cream, and topped the puff off with some ganache. Very popular. Making cream puffs isn't difficult, and they don't take very long to make. You will get a great upper body workout though from working in the flour and the eggs. Let me show you how to make them.



In a pot, put 1 cup water, 1/4 cup butter (cut up), and 1/4 tsp salt. Bring to a boil.

While you're waiting for the water to boil, break open 4 eggs and put in a bowl or measuring cup. You want to have all of your stuff ready to go because it's going to go fast and you won't have time to do all of this.

Butter a cookie sheet (I took that pat of butter off after I took this picture).

You want to butter this because those cream puffs will stick horribly bad if you don't.

When the water comes to a boil and the butter is melted, dump in 1 cup flour. Stir immediately using a wooden spoon. Stir until the flour is cooked and it begins to pull away from the sides of the pan and form a ball. Remove from the heat.

Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring well between each addition. This is what it will look like when all the eggs have been added. The reason why you want to add one at a time is if you dumped all of them in, it would cool your dough down too fast and you will get the wrong consistency and your cream puffs won't "puff" up the right way.

Spoon the dough into a pastry bag and pipe in a circular fashion little "hives". I made these puffs big today. Normally you can get about 8-10 regular sized puffs out of this recipe. You can easily double the recipe to make more.

Bake in a 375* oven for 35 minutes or so. You want them to be nice and golden brown. If you pull them out too soon, they will collapse as they cool. Big concern is you want to make sure the centers get cooked. Pull too soon and it'll be doughy inside. Our motto at the bakery with these were overbaking was better than underbaking.

Allow to cool.



In a bowl, mix together your berries. Like I said earlier, I used blackberries, blueberries, and sliced strawberries. Add a little sugar and some lemon juice. Let the berries macerate for awhile.

To assemble, cut the top off your cream puff. Take some whipped cream (which you can whip up while the puffs are cooling) and put a large dollop on the bottom half. Spoon some berries on top of that, then add another little dollop on top of the berries. Put the top back on.

Using a sieve, put a little powdered sugar in it and then tap lightly on top of the cream puff to dust them.

Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.

[Chef's notes: Cream puffs are great for parties. Make the puffs a lot smaller and fill with chicken salad, or with pastry cream or just whipped cream. You can make them up ahead of time and freeze.]

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_43c9tqv6cp

.grilled cumin salmon with chipotle blackberry sauce.

I'm on my kick again to find a signature dish to prepare for Chef Gordon Ramsey when and if I ever decide to go on Hell's Kitchen. Since I am a native Seattle-ite, I thought I would try creating something that screams "Pacific Northwest" but put my own creative spin on it.

So what could be more Seattle-ish than salmon (KING salmon.. not that Atlantic salmon stuff) and blackberries?

Here are the ingredients you'll need:

• Salmon fillets
• Fresh blackberries
• Chipotle pepper
• Cumin
• Shallot
• Lemon
• Chardonnay
• Cilantro
• Salt and Pepper

Let's make the sauce, shall we?

Begin by mincing finely one shallot. I made a little extra because I made a risotto to go with the salmon.

In a blender, put 2 cups blackberries, 1 cup chardonnay wine, and 1 chipotle pepper.

Puree.

Pour the puree into a sieve and strain. You'll need to move the liquid around with a rubber spatula or something because it's thick. The seeds like to clog up the sieve.

In a saucepan, heat a little olive oil. Saute the shallot for about 30 seconds before pouring in the strained blackberry puree.

Cook over medium heat until the sauce has been reduced and is thick like bbq sauce.

While the sauce is reducing, cut one lemon in half and rub on the salmon. This will give the cumin something to stick to. Rub cumin on top.

Put on the BBQ grill, skin side down. Cook on that side for about 7-8 minutes. Flip and grill the top. Don't do it the other way around because the flames from the grill will burn it to a crisp. The skin helps protect the fish. If the skin is charred, that's okay! You're not going to eat it anyway.

Man my husband does a great job on the grill. Look at these beauties! The salmon will be firm but not hard. If it's spongy, your salmon is going to be raw in the center.

Do a rough chop on the cilantro.

This will be the garnish.

Plate your salmon . Spoon on some of the blackberry sauce. Garnish with fresh blackberries and cilantro.

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_39c5ztz2cc