#geeky baking

[madegeeky]

@docholligay!!! Look!!! No scrambled eggs!!! Just banana bread pudding (which smells amazing).

[mymainisacook]

Request: FFXIV Blood Currant Tarts

I waffled for waaaaaay too long on @salroase2 ‘s request, because I didn’t want to settle for a rolandberry cream cheese spread but fresh red currant berries are REALLY hard to come across. But then I looked closer at the recipe and realized the gelatin was likely to create jam or jelly from the currants and I felt stupid - mostly because currant jelly is so much easier to find. Once that was resolved I was able to get my hands on some and OFF WE WENT.

These particular tarts are something I like to call pull-apart tarts. Essentially, you bake the circles of puff pastry in the oven, allowing them to puff up tall. Then, you split the puffed bread into segments, resulting in a bunch of bite-size puff tarts. 

Let’s go!

~Ingredients~

2 sheets Puff Pastry

1 jar Red Currant jam or jelly (~12 oz.)

1 Egg, beaten

(Optional) Powdered Sugar or Whipped Cream, for topping

Prep Time: <10 min. | Total Bake Time: ~ 30 min.

Makes: ~24

~Instructions~

Step 1.) Preheat the oven to 400°F. Beat the egg in a bowl and set aside. 

Step 2.) Use a circular cookie cutter to cut the puff pastry into circles (I used a cookie cutter approx. 2.5-3″ in diameter.) Score the sides of the circles with a fork for maximum puffiness, if desired. Brush the tops of the circles with beaten egg and bake for about 15 - 20 min. or until the tops are a light to medium brown.

Step 3.) Allow the circles to cool for a couple of minutes, then comes the fun part! Each of the circles should have puffed up considerably, and should have some clear segmentation in the puffs. Target these segments and pull them apart horizontally so you have a bunch of thinner disks (I think the most segments I got out of a single circle was 4 segments). Don’t try to pull apart the puffs if they don’t look like they’ll give, I destroyed a few that way (they were delicious by themselves). When you’re done, you should have an ample number of puff disks like pictured below. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for any remaining batches of puff pastry.

Step 4.) Once the puff pastry has cooled a bit more, fill in the circles with spoonfuls of red currant jelly/jam. Don’t be surprised if you use up the entire jar. Top with powdered sugar or whipped cream if desired, and enjoy!

~Results~

Sweet, simple, delicious, and containing a very satisfying crunch! The roommates where chomping at the bit for me to photograph them so they could devour them all!

In Game Recipe

[rosannapansino]

New video! Made Nintendo Switch Controller Cookies with my friend MatPat! 

[madegeeky]

COOOOOOOOOOKIES

[mymainisacook]

LOTRO: Cherry Tart

Aaaand here it is, the infamously late blog post. I didn’t manage to rescue my old pictures, but I was able to grab the ingredients yesterday and whip up a new batch (nobody was disappointed by this, let’s be honest) and got shiny new pictures taken, so here we go! Delicious and simple cherry tarts that your entire fellowship will enjoy!

~Ingredients~

~3 cups fresh Cherries, pitted and sliced in halves (I grabbed one of those bags of cherries at the grocery store and used almost half of them)

1/2 cup Sugar

1 Egg

1 box (2 sheets) of Puff Pastry

Prep Time: 20 - 30 min. | Total Bake Time: 15 min. per batch

Serves: Up to 18 tarts

~Instructions~

Step 1.) Prep the cherries: Rinse off the cherries and remove the stems. Take a knife and cut in a circle directly around the middle of the cherry (essentially cutting the cherry in half). Twist and pull apart the cherry and dig the pit out with your finger or with a knife. Rinse and repeat until you have about 3 cups of cherries. 

Step 2.) Set the oven to 400°F. Beat the egg in a small bowl and set aside. 

Step 3.) Your puff pastry may come in a tri-folded sheet or already in separate squares. If in the sheet, cut the pastry where the natural folds have been made, and then cut each strip into thirds. Once you have the squares made, use a knife to score a smaller square on the pastry square, about 1/4-1/8 of an inch from the edge (this will help the pastry dough puff up more around the edges) Brush this outer margin with the egg and place on a lightly greased baking sheet.

Step 4.) Mix the sugar in with the cherries, and spoon this mixture within the scored lines of the pastry squares (the sugar and juices will inevitably run over the lines, but this is fine). Bake each batch for 15 min., and allow to cool a few minutes before eating. Enjoy!

~Results~

Light, sweet, with a flaky crust. They are addicting to eat and I had to send away the second batch to my SO’s workplace so I didn’t eat them all. I miss them already. 

In Game Recipe

[rosannapansino]

New video! Made a dairy free blueberry pie with an octopus design on the top today on @NerdyNummies! I call it 'Octo-Pie' 

[mymainisacook]

Request: Fable Epiphanic Blueberry Pie

Staring transfixed into the indigo glow, you gain a deeper understanding of the universe.

An anonymous reader requested that I make something from Fable and after reading through all the hilarious flavor text, the thought of finding the abyss in the depths of a blueberry pie is what captured my fancy the most! So go find yourself the freshest, bluest blueberries you can muster and let’s get to baking!

~Ingredients~

2 pieces of pie crust (you can double my cooking staples recipe or use a recipe of your choosing)

4 - 5 cups Fresh Blueberries

3/4 cup Sugar

2 tbsp. Cornstarch

1 heaping tsp. Cinnamon

Juice from half a lemon

A pinch of salt

1 Egg, beaten

(optional) Whipped Cream and/or Ice Cream

Prep time: 10 - 20 min. | Total Bake Time: ~1 hr.

Makes: 1 pie (all for yourself, of course!)

~Instructions~

Step 1.) Preheat your oven to 400°F. Wash and measure out your blueberries into a bowl and stir in the sugar, lemon juice, salt, cinnamon, and cornstarch. Set aside. 

Step 2.) Roll out your pastry dough (if needed) and line your pie dish with one of the pieces of dough. Pour in the blueberry filling.

Step 3.) For the second piece of dough you can either roll it out into a circle (a looser lattice with the blueberries more visible) or into a square/rectangle (a tighter lattice, fewer blueberries visible) and then cut into strips. Line 4 or 5 (or roughly half the total strips you have) strips along one side of the pie dish. Alternate between placing every other strip across the pie and laying one of the other strips down across them. Then fold those back, place the previously folded back strips across the pie and repeat the process. 

Step 4.) Press down on the edges of the crust to make sure the top and bottom pieces are sealed together, then take the beaten egg and brush it on top of the lattice crust.

Step 5.) Bake at 400°F for about 20 min. and then reduce to 350°F and bake for an additional 30 - 40 min. or until the crust is golden and the sugar and blueberries have completely bubbled together. Allow to cool for at least 1 hr. and serve with ice cream or whipped cream! Enjoy!

~Results~

Sweet, delicious, addicting. These are some of the words I would use to describe this pie. If I wasn’t busy stuffing my face with it, that is.

Original Game Recipe

[mymainisacook]

#Nyanuary Chrono Trigger Kitty Sugar Cookies

I don’t do lot of decorative foods on this blog. I’m not particularly skilled in that area and I prefer to recreate meal-based dishes to create a balance between more practical dishes and what I feel to be an overwhelming majority of dessert-type (though admittedly cute!), video game-inspired foods. But sometimes, you gotta break the routine, and if I’m honest I’d do anything for what is probably my most favorite video game ever! 

So for #Nyanuary , I give you Chrono Trigger Kitty Sugar Cookies! Since I am also not well-versed in sugar cookie recipes (I’m more of a chocolate chip person myself), I used a recipe from one of my cookbooks and am happy to report that the cookies shifted very little from their original cutout form. I’ve included a link to the book at the bottom.

Let’s go!

~Ingredients~

2 cups Flour

1 Egg

2/3 cups Unsalted Butter, room temp.

3/4 cups Sugar

1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. Milk

1 tsp. Vanilla

1.5 tsp. Baking Powder

1/4 tsp. Salt

Decoration:

1 Egg Yolk per color

1 tsp. Water per egg yolk

Food Coloring (I used neon food coloring to retain a bright color during cooking)

Clean paint brush (this is the easiest way to apply the egg wash)

Black icing 

Prep (including wait) Time: 3 hr. - overnight  |  Total Cook Time: 7 - 21 min.

Serves: ~15 cookies

~Instructions~

Cookie Cutout

Step 1.) Find an image of the cats that you like and blow it up to an appropriate size (I used ctrl++ to increase the size and traced directly from the screen, the image I used it link at the end of the recipe). Trace the figure onto wax paper and cut it out. Set aside.

Cookies

Step 1.) Cream together the butter, sugar, vanilla, and milk in a bowl until it is completely mixed. Beat i n the egg until it is completely mixed in.

Step 2.) Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl, then slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until completely mixed. Wrap in wax paper or cling wrap and refrigerate for 3 hrs. to overnight.

Step 3.) Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly flour a surface (I put it on top of wax paper to keep the mess to a minimum) and roll out the dough in batches to about 1/8″ thickness.

Step 4.) Flatten the wax paper on top of the dough and use a knife to cut out the shape (keep the knife clean to keep the cutting easier). Place each cookie on a lightly greased cookie sheet about 2″ apart.

Step 5.) Create the egg color wash by combining 1 egg yolk and 1 tsp. of water in a bowl for each color you want. Add 1 - 3 drops of food coloring to each bowl and mix thoroughly. Paint at least 2 layers of color on each cookie surface just before placing in the oven.

Step 6.) Bake each batch of cookies for 7-6 min. and allow to cool on a tray for at least 10 min. before applying the black icing around the outline of the cookie.

Step 7.) Enjoy!

~Results~

Regardless of my feelings on the actual taste of sugar cookies, these were so adorable I stopped at several turns to gush over how cute they were! I am happy I went with the egg color wash as it made a very unique effect on the cookies. The cookies themselves weren’t half bad either. XD

Fandom Foodies

Nyanuary Linkup

Chrono Trigger Kitty Picture

Christmas Cookies Book