Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Strawberry Pie

  
Strawberry Pie
I am truly surprised !!!!  Baking after all is not all that difficult. I completely enjoyed every step that went to baking this Pie. The secret of good cooking or baking lies in the "prepartion", get the Prep right, if you have all the ingredietns assembled before the process of actually cooking, it gets easy, after that it is all about putting the ingredients together.


Here's the receipe :

Ingredients :

(For the Crust)
180 gms Plain Flour
100 gms Cooking Butter ( cold or frozen)
2 tbsp Icing Sugar
1 egg yolk
Cold Water

(For the Custard)
350 ml Milk
60gms Castor Sugar
1 Vanilla Pod
2 Egg yolks
1 tbsp Flour
2 tbsp Cornflour
( Best substitute for Flour and cornflour will be 2 tbsp of Vanilla Flavoured Custard, thats what I did for this receipe, it tastes much better )
150 ml Fresh whipped Cream

(For the Garnish)
Sliced or halfed Strawberries
1 tbsp Strawberry Jam ( melted )

Method :

Mix together the butter and flour, start working these two together with the help of your finger tips so that the butter and flour are well blended, this process takes a good 10 minutes. Once you see the whole mixture is grainy and coarse in texture, add the egg yolk and work the dough by adding just a little bit of cold water to make a dough. Make sure the dough isn't too patchy and dont work too agressively with it either. Once done, wrap in a cling film and set in the refridegerator to cool for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile you can make the custard. Pour the milk in a heavy bottom pan, slit the vanilla pod and scrap the vanilla pulp carefully ( this is my most favorite part....ahhhh pure vanilla !!!! ) add the vanilla to the milk. Beat 2 egg yolks and add it to the boiling milk while whisking it continuosly. Dilute the flour and cornflour in 2 tbsp of milk or water and add to the boiling milk ( in this case I added Vanilla custard powder ). Keep stirring until thick and done.

Now strain this mixture and let it cool. Once cool, add the whipped cream and the filling is ready.

Grease the pie mould and keep ready. I have used a Silicon/Rubber Baking mould which I greased with butter. Silicon moulds are really good, but you may use a normal quiche or pie tray to do the same. On a flat surface roll out the dough (round)  to 8.5 diameter . Make sure you place a cling film underneath before you start to roll out so that it is easy to lift the pastry. Once you have evenly rolled out the pastry lift the cling flim and flap the pastry on the mould, cut off the extra sides and press softly to make sure the pastry is touching the base of the tray. Prick the bottom of the pastry with fork randomly. Place a butter paper and fill the mould with any gram or pulse to add weight to the pastry while blind baking the pastry.

Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees. Place the mould in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the pulses and now bake open for another 5 minutes. Remove the pastry and let it cool on wire rack.

Fill the crust with the vanilla custard and place in refrigerator to set and cool. After an hour garnish it it with strawberries and lastly glace the dish with melted strawberry jam.



 

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