I like the whipping method and find it a good way to get that crust because it gives the sugar ample opportunity to dissolve.
You can see it’s a common thread in some recipes I’ve saved in the event I feel like making brownies (increasing the salt of course ), and ties in to what you said in that thread about the number of strokes. I think people take advice not to overmix a bit too far. It takes a surprising amount of beating a mixture to really develop gluten, and that will also depend on amount of flour and fat in the recipe. Plus you want a certain amount of gluten development. In brownies it contributes to texture so you don’t just have something that practically dissolves on your tongue right away.
Incredibly, folks in my CSA regularly trade away their peaches, so I usually come home with a double bag of them (this is mind-blowing to me because local peaches are religion around here, and for good reason. they’re delicious.)
So I made a favorite from last summer: Smitten’s crispy peach cobbler. I split it into two dishes so Mom could take one to her dinner+card party and the other dish could stay here with me
This dish doesn’t stay crispy overnight so you feel justified in stuffing yourself while it’s still warm from the oven!
Thanks to @mig I was left craving for sour cherry slab pie. However I only had one pound of cherries and the supermarket that carries them has no more and who knows when or if they’ll bring them back. So I thought I’d make a mini version. Since I was doing that I thought I’d make my favorite rough puff for sweet items as the dough. Provided it can be done in a nice cool room I maintain that laminating dough is always a relaxing process.
Because this is free-standing as opposed to a slab pie which has sides to support the dough and keep the filling contained, I brought the juice from the cherries to a boil to thicken the cornstarch, which would have run all over the place otherwise.
It’s Dan Lepard’s sweet rough puff pastry from Short and Sweet. The use of an egg yolk and milk plus a little sugar really does make it tastier and also helps it brown better than standard rough puff. It’s still not really sweet with that bit of sugar, so it can be used for savory recipes, but since he has a spelt rough puff for savory items, he refers to this as “sweet”.
I am not finding an online source for this, so I’ll paraphrase it here.
250 g all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt (5 g)
25 g sugar
200 g unsalted butter, cold but pliable and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
125 ml cold milk
Mix the egg yolk and milk in a measuring cup and keep cold.
Mix flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl and rub in about 25 g of the butter until it disappears into the mixture. Add in the rest of the butter and toss with the flour to separate them. Add the milk mixture and toss with a spatula just to bring everything together keeping the butter intact. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Dust your work surface with flour and roll out the dough into an 8x14 inch (20x35 cm) rectangle. Give the dough a letter fold (fold by thirds) to end up with a rectangle of about 8x5 (20x12cm). I brush excess flour off the dough whenever I do the folds. Give the dough a quarter turn then roll out and fold again. Chill 30 minutes. Repeat the folding and chilling process twice more, for a total of 6 folds. Wrap the dough well and refrigerate or freeze for later.
I used about 8 oz of dough and the rest I froze for later. I have 12 oz of dough in the freezer.
Thanks! It ended up being around 11x6, so it will serve four people a generous slice. In reality I’m going to eat this myself, though since my mother doesn’t eat sour cherry anything due to the acid.
Coincidentally, I made the same cherry slab pie as @Shellybean and @mig but with sweet cherries so I used 1/3 cup of sugar. I hate making pie crust in the dead heat of summer, but this was delicious, and a friend who ate some proclaimed it to be the best thing she’s ever eaten!
), and ties in to what you said in that thread about the number of strokes. I think people take advice not to overmix a bit too far. It takes a surprising amount of beating a mixture to really develop gluten, and that will also depend on amount of flour and fat in the recipe. Plus you want a certain amount of gluten development. In brownies it contributes to texture so you don’t just have something that practically dissolves on your tongue right away.
