Art of the Tart

Because a deeply decadent dark chocolate tart will feature in Holiday Desserts 2009, with a baked Valrhona Manjari 64% custard filling that can only be described as baveuse, I wanted to include within the bonus section of the recipe pack a few of my other favourite chocolate tarts.

The crunchy shortbread pastry used for all the tart shells here is an unconventional recipe based on melted butter. It is extremely easy to handle, can either be rolled with a pin or pressed into the tart pan, is used for one grand tart case or a flurry of tartlet cases, and can boast of a buttery deliciousness all unto itself really.

Raspberry & White Chocolate Tart

Tart fresh raspberries and a hidden layer of raspberry preserves offer the perfect fruity contrast to the plush white chocolate ganache (using Valrhona Ivoire 35% White Chocolate). The gleaming rows of bright red berries resplendent against ivory creaminess make this tart a particularly festive and beautiful one to have on the holiday dessert table.

Salted Caramel & Dark Chocolate Tart

Butter-rich caramel with the full-flavoured, minerally tang of artisanal sea salt is blanketed by dark chocolate ganache (using Valrhona Manjari 64% Dark Chocolate) - for salted caramel lovers, this is sheer bliss in a tart shell!

Malted Milk Chocolate Tart

If you love chocolate malteds, if they evoke the fondest of carefree childhood memories, then this is the chocolate tart with your name on it. The addition of malted milk splendidly enhances the toasty, butterscotchy savours of the Valrhona Jivara Lactée 40% Milk Chocolate used in the ganache.

Holiday Desserts 2009, a demo class at Shermay's Cooking School, will be held on 7 November (Saturday), 8 November(Sunday), 21 November (Saturday) and 22 November(Sunday). For all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg.

Pumpkin Seed Toffee

Dearest Sticky Chewy Salty Sweet, you had me at Hello.

Celestial caramelly goodness? Check.

Very buttery awesomeness? Check.

Sly salty savour? Check.

Fabulous crunch of toasted nuts. Can't stop at one. Worth contributing to my enthodondist's kid's ivy league college fund for. Check, check, check.

Nut toffee/brittle type candy, in the immortal words of the inimitable Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

For sure, Pumpkin Seed Toffee, you were originally created as the perfect finishing touch for the already-dishy Pumpkin Cheesecake seen here.

But the peerlessly perfect likes of you, how dare I mere mortal pretend to comprehend the true breadth and depth of your myriad special talents?

As much as I adore shards of you atop said cheesecake, a literal and metaphorical crowning glory, all jade green teardrop gorgeousness embedded in amber, I truly fail to see how any other mere mortal, unless he/she be of an unspeakable churlishness, could possibly fail to be thrilled to be in receipt of you and you alone, unadorned and unadorning, as homemade holiday gift.

More-ish quotient aside, there's that aforementioned stunning jade green-plus-amber comeliness and many fetching talents, chief amongst which I must profess a particular fondness for coarsely crushing and sprinkling fairy dust-like over all manner of ice creams, mousses, parfaits, custards and even just plain ripe fruit plus clouds of whipped cream for elegant textural contrast. Or boring old me, simply eating as candy.

Anyways, any which way, you rock.

P.S: Pumpkin Seed Toffee is part of the bonus section of the recipe pack for Holiday Desserts 2009, a demo class at Shermay's Cooking School held on 7 November (Saturday), 8 November(Sunday), 21 November (Saturday) and 22 November(Sunday). For all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg.

P.P.S: Last 2 sessions for Holiday Cookies 2009 are round the corner on 24 October (Saturday) and 25 October (Sunday) .

P.P.P.S: After my third glass - on this particular balmy evening, it's an Antinori Tignanello 2005, a yummy supertuscan soon to be washing down bistecca alla fiorentina...can't wait, haven't had a real hunk of memorable real beef recently! - I really do start to channel my inner thwarted Eng Lit major, so please do excuse me...

Holiday Desserts 2009 - Classes

As I won't be teaching in December, the four November sessions of Holiday Desserts 2009, a demo class, are my final ones for this year at Shermay's Cooking School. The dates are 7 November 2009 (Saturday), 8 November 2009 (Sunday), 21 November 2009 (Saturday) and 22 November 2009 (Sunday) - the November schedule has all the necessary details. For all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg

Between the Holiday Cookie Class and this, I sincerely hope there're ideas aplenty to inspire a happy bout of holiday entertaining and/or a hamperful of homebaked gifts and treats!

On the menu:

Panforte di Siena

If unstinting in one's use of only the very choicest of ingredients, this traditional Italian Christmas confection can be as sublime to savour as it is to behold, a bejewelled medieval mosaic of a sweetmeat gleaming with the vivid emerald of pistachios, the mystical amethyst depths of sun-ripened mission figs, the perspicuous citrine of candied orange zest...

A little taste of this, alongside a glass of good sticky - I am partial to vin santo here - and perhaps a chunk of well-aged parmesan, is my idea of the perfect note on which to conclude a special meal of the festive variety, a feast so to speak. I absolutely adore panforte, and while many recipes and variations abound, this particular page from my files is one that I've tinkered with and tweaked and tricked out over quite a few Christmases past, adjusting the type and ratio of dried fruit and nuts used, as well as the style and level of spicing, until a balance was struck which I found pleasing.

I could honestly go on all day about this, it's one of my favourite things, so before I get carried away, suffice to say the recipe is chock-full of dried fruit (figs, dates and raisins), nuts (pistachios, hazelnuts and almonds) and candied citrus peel, and fragrant with honey, cocoa (using Valrhona cocoa) and spices.

Pumpkin Cheesecake with A Gingered Pecan Crust

A lush, creamy and cinnamon-scented pumpkin cheesecake sits atop a crisp ginger biscuit crust flavoured with pecans and crystallized ginger. This luxurious dessert appeals equally to lovers of pumpkin pie or cheesecake. I've provided 2 sets of instructions; for baking the recipe as a whole large cheesecake, and for baking individual cheesecake cups.

Applesauce Cake with Tea-Plumped Golden Raisins and Walnuts

Moist, tender, subtly spiced and festive, this is a wonderful, much lighter alternative to fruitcake, in case you're baking for folks who either aren't fond of fruitcake period or have simply had one too many a fruitcake slice over the course of the season.

The batter can also be baked as Applesauce Cupcakes instead of loaves; I'll provide the additional how-to instructions in the recipe pack.

The Ultimate Dark Chocolate Tart

And last but not least - for those of us all too gleefull to live on chocolate alone if only conventional nutritional wisdom didn't demand the inclusion of other food groups - no holiday dessert lineup could possibly be considered complete without a show stealing dark horse! A decadent chocolate tart is the answer, with a filling based on Valrhona Manjari 64% dark chocolate in a crunchy, buttery shortbread tart shell. It's a baked filling with an interior as smooth as silk - all tremulous and aquiver when served warm, rich and dense and voluptuous if served cold.

I'll put up more details on the Bonus Section with Extra Recipes, Ideas & Serving Suggestions soon in a separate post. This includes:

Pumpkin Seed Toffee Buttery caramel candy shards studded with pumpkin seeds – the ideal finishing touch for Pumpkin Cheesecake or simply to enjoy alone as candy

Spiced Rum & Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Crème Anglaise Luxurious custard perfumed with dark rum, Christmas spices, and vanilla bean – a lovely accompaniment for Pumpkin Cheesecake or Applesauce Cake

Salted Caramel & Dark Chocolate Tart Rich, buttery caramel spiked with artisanal sea salt layered with dark chocolate ganache (using Valrhona Manjari 64% Dark Chocolate)

Raspberry &White Chocolate Tart White chocolate ganache (using Valrhona Ivoire 35% White Chocolate) layered with raspberry preserves and fresh raspberries

Malted Milk Chocolate Tart Malted milk chocolate ganache (using Valrhona Jivara Lactée 40% Milk Chocolate) in a shortbread tart shell

Sticky Pockets & Jammy Bars

How time whizzes by! Holiday Cookies 2009 is just round the corner - 4 sessions only, on 10 October, 11 October, 24 October and 25 October 2009 ; for all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg - and I am very much looking forward to the preparations for it.

Much as I love them, who needs a Diptyque scented candle? If the holiday class preparatory periods seasons past are anything to go by, the toasty scent of Christmas spices, rounded out by a touch of sugar plums and a topnote of chocolate, will permeate my kitchen (and rest of the apartment really) in the coming months. Luckily, it is a sugar-and-spice scent I adore, and associate with all things nice, so I really couldn't be more thrilled! It is a joyous and uplifting scent, and I daresay one of the biggest reasons why so many of us who love baking in general, love holiday baking in particular!

Anyways, I wanted to put up some pictures of the bonus recipes and ideas included within the recipe pack, in addition to the core demonstrated recipes seen here. They include:

Sticky Date Pockets
A sticky date filling is encased by a friable cinnamon-and-vanilla scented pastry. The look of these (see picture at beginning of post) somewhat reminds of miniature mincemeat pies, and are in fact the ideal treat to proffer in lieu of those should you find yourself serving non-mincemeat eaters!

Zesty Raisin Stuffed Cookies
A raisin and candied lemon peel filling enveloped by lemon scented pastry, and a definite winner with lemon lovers.

Orange Marmalade & Cherry Bars
A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust is topped with a filling of orange marmalade and dried cherries.

Apricot Bars with Orange Blossom Water, Saffron & Pistachios
Flavoured with the merest hint of orange blossom water and saffron, this apricot jam filling is an intriguing one.

Nutella Bars
Once the knack of making the brown sugar oatmeal crust is figured out, what lies within can be any number of things, and an excellent reason to go shop for all manner of luxurious jams and preserves. But frankly, my favourite thing to do is to reach for the Nutella jar! Because one can never have too many thinly veiled excuses to indulge in lashings of the stuff, this is really a number for us Nutella fiends...

Holiday Cookies 2009 - Classes

I'll be teaching Holiday Cookies 2009, a demo class, at Shermay's Cooking School on 10 October 2009 (Saturday), 11 October 2009 (Sunday), 24 October 2009 (Saturday) and 25 October 2009 (Sunday) - the October schedule has all the necessary details. For all inquiries, please call the school at +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg

Practice makes perfect, they say, and this applies as much to baking a cookie as it does to everything else one may wish to develop some semblance of proficiency at, be it playing Mozart's piano Concerto No. 15 in B-flat Major or pulling off some Nitro Circus-esque freestyle motocross double backflip. Hence the commencement of holiday-themed classes early on, because believe you me, the season will be upon us before we know it, and wouldn't it be nice to have squeezed in a couple of trial runs before the home-baked gifting begins? Anyone touched by the OCD all too well knows that one of the greatest ironies (and least-admitted truths) in life is that the appearance of effortlessness, of seemingly artless perfection, takes effort.

Anyways, before I digress too much...if only all manner of effort were as pleasurable to undertake as the effort undertaken to master a cookie recipe, I can only imagine I would be a whole lot better at a whole bunch of other things!

On the menu:

Pecan Snowballs
Also known as Russian Tea Cakes and Mexican Wedding Cookies, these delectable and delicate special occasion cookies, rich with butter and finely ground pecans, are the very definition of melt-in-the-mouth - most people find it virtually impossible to stop at one when it comes to these buttery morsels.

Basler Brunsli

Flourless, nuanced with spice and kissed with a touch of Kirsch, this scrumptious and utterly unique almond-and-chocolate cookie (using Valrhona Equatoriale Noire 55% Dark Chocolate and Valrhona Cocoa) is based on a Swiss Christmas specialty. The easy-to-handle dough, rolled out thickly, can be cut into any shape you fancy - I especially like little trees (see first picture of post) and stars.

Fig Pillows

If you aren't familiar with buccellati or cucidati, the festive cookie that's a Sicilian favourite, think of these as the haut de gamme cousin of the humble Fig Newton. A sumptuous and complex sticky fig filling - accented with spice and redolent of Marsala - is encased by a friable cinnamon-and-vanilla-bean scented dough, this fig bar really belongs in a league of its own.

Raspberry & Cranberry Crumble Bar Cookies

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a filling of raspberry preserves and dried cranberries, this simple and simply delicious number is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

I'll put up another post soon with details on the Bonus Section with Extra Recipes, Ideas & Serving Suggestions. This includes:

Orange Marmalade & Cherry Bars

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a filling of orange marmalade and dried cherries

Apricot Bars with Orange Blossom Water, Saffron & Pistachios

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a filling of apricot jam flavoured with orange blossom water and saffron

Nutella Bars

A crisp brown sugar-and-oatmeal crust topped with a Nutella filling

Sticky Date Pockets

A sticky date filling encased by a friable cinnamon-and-vanilla scented pastry

Zesty Raisin Stuffed Cookies

A raisin and candied lemon peel filling encased by a friable lemon scented pastry