This will hurt your sweet tooth! [Gluten free]

Hi everone!

This week we're diving into a English dessert I've been hearing talked about a lot. Banoffee pie. The name clearly sums up the main parts of this pie: banana and toffee. Once again the crust of this pie is gluten free but don't let it bother since it's actually better tasting than a normal crust. I was pretty excited for this and when I got to taste it, it was brilliant! Although I must warn you, this pie is pretty sweet so it'll definitely remove that aching from your sweet tooth!

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Moi kaikki!

Tällä viikolla sukelletaan ihanaan englantilaiseen jälkiruokaan, josta olen kuullut puhuttavan paljon. Banoffee piirakka. Nimi kiteyttää selväsi piirakan kaksi tärkeintä elementtiä: banaanin sekä toffeen. Jälleen kerran piirakan pohja on gluteiiniton, mutta älä anna sen häiritä, koska maku on älyttömän paljon parempi kuin normaaleissa pohjissa. Olin innoissani kuin aloitin leipomaan ja vihdoin kun pääsin maistamaan, se oli taivaalista! Täytyy kuitenkin pieni varoituksen sana antaa, koska piirakka on aika makeaa, se vie 100% varmuudella makeahampaan kolotuksen alta aika yksikön!

Crust// Pohja:

2dl (7 fl oz) Gluten free flours// Gluteiinitonta jauhoseosta

3 1/4dl (11 fl oz) Almond flours// Mantelijauhoa

1dl (3,5 fl oz) Powdered sugar// Tomusokeria

115g (4 oz) Butter// Voita

2 Egg yolks// Munankeltuaista

Filling// Täyte:

1 can (400 g/14 oz) Condensed milk// Maitotiivistettä

70g (2 1/4oz) Brown sugar// Fariinisokeria

2-3 Bananas// Banaania

1,5dl (5 fl oz) Whipping cream// Kuohukermaa

2 tbsp Powdered sugar// Tomusokeria

We're going to begin by shifting the flours and sugar into a bowl. Then continue by mixing the coolish butter into the flours by hand until it looks something like the dough in the picture underneath. After mixing well, we dunk the remaining 2 egg yolks and mix them into it by hand.

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Aloitetaan piirakkapohjasta ja siivilöidään jauhot ja sokeri kulhoon. Tämän jälkeen hiero viileä voi käsin jauhojen sekaan, kunnes taikina näyttää kutakuinkin samalta kuin alla olevassa kuvassa. Vaivataan sekaan vielä viimeiseksi 2 munankeltuaista.

Cover up the bowl and let the dough to cool down in a fridge for an hour. After the hour of cooling down, butter up a 23cm (9 inch) pie dish and spread the dough into it. Poke it thoroughly with a fork and stick it back into the fridge for 30mins.

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Peitä kulho kelmulla ja anna taikinan levätä jääkapissa noin tunnin ajan. Jäähtymisen jälkeen voitele 23cm piirasvuoka ja painele taikina vuokaan. Pistele pohja kauttaaltaan haarukalla ja anna levätä taas jääkaapissa 30min ajan.  

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350F), cover up the crust with a greaseproof paper and put some uncooked peas or rice on top of the paper. Bake it for 10-15mins and you should be good.

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Lämmitä uuni 180°C, peitä pohja leivinpaperilla ja laita painoksi kypsentämättömiä herneitä tai riisiä. Paista pohjaa 10-15min ja sen piäisi olla valmis täytettäväksi. 

The we move on to the filling. We start from the toffee by heating up the brown sugar and condensed milk on the stove. Boil it for about 20 mins but be careful since I almost burnt mine because keeping the stove on too hot! After 20 mins it should be a lot thicker and have a nice caramel color in it. Let it cool down a bit before pouring it into the pie.

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Sitten siirrytään täytteen pariin. Aloitetaan lämmittämällä fariinisokeria ja maitotiivistettä hellalla toffeeta varten. Keitä seosta noin 20 min ajan, mutta varo koska poltin omani melkein pohjaan liian kuuman hellan takia! 20 minuutin jälkeen toffeen pitäisi olla paljon paksumpaa ja väri muuttunut kauniin karamelliseksi. Anna toffeen jäähtyä vähän ennen sen kaatamista piirakkaan.

This part here should be easy. Basically just layer up each of the filling starting from the toffee. Pour it in first and then spread the sliced bananas evenly on top of it. Whip the cream with that little bit of powdered sugar and create a pretty whipped cream cover on the pie. Feel free to use imagination on this one! :)

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Tämän osan pitäsikin olla helppo. Yksinkertaisesti kasataan piirakka kerroksittain aloittamalla toffeesta. Kaada se ensimmäiseksi pohjalle ja lisää siivutetut banaanit päälle. Vatkaa vielä kerma ja tomusokeri ja luo kaunis peitto banaanien päälle. Mielikuvitus on aina sallittua koristelu vaiheessa! :)

Sour yet satisfying

Hello my loyal readers!

Today (finally!!) is the time for some sour action. I spotted this amazing recipe from a bit older Finnish cooking book and thought I''d give it a try. I remember having this big bush of goose berries in our back yard for many years ago. The berries were tasty but unfortunately I wasn't a fan of any kind of sour berries back then. Therefore when I saw this recipe I was surprised. I have never seen any recipe using these berries. So let's get started!

For the crust you need:

150g (5 oz) Flours

100g (3,5 oz) Butter

50g (1,8 oz) Sugar

1 Egg yolk

1/2 the insides of an vanilla pod (I left it out since I didn't have one)

The filling:

700g (24,7 oz) Goose berries

1,25dl (1/2 cup) Water

200g (7 oz) Sugar

60g (2 oz) Potato Flours

40g (1,4 oz) Peeled and grated almonds (I was confused by this so I just used almond groats)

On top:

3 Egg whites

150g (5 oz) Sugar

+ 26cm (~10 inch) cake tin

First I did some serious cleaning up for those berries before the baking began. I can assure that it took me longer then awhile to do that! :D Then I mixed up the ingredients for the pie, wrapped the dough into foil and put it in the fridge to settle for 30 mins. After cooling down and letting the butter to harden it is noticeably easier to work with. So therefore I rolled the dough into a little bit bigger circle than the cake tin and put it in there. Before the filling, the crust had to be precooked in the oven (200°C, 400F) for 10 mins. Naturally cover the crust with greaseproof paper and put some dried peas on top of it to hold it down.

Next up there was the filling. By following the pictures you can see what I did. So first off, I boiled up the water and the sugar. The added the berries into it and let it boil in the medium heat for 15 mins. After boiling them, get the berry liquid and heat it up again. At this point, dissolve the potato flours into the tiny amount of cold water and then add it to the boiling juice. When the liquid starts to precipitate add the berries and almonds. I have to admit that it was pretty scary. I remember what happened with that corn starch so there was reason to panic! Hahah.

Anyways, everything turned out better and I was ready to spread the filling on the crust.

When the filling has cooled down enough it is time to create the beautiful mask for the lady! Froth the egg whites and add the sugar little by little to it. I followed the books picture, which came out perfectly the same, but you can always be creative when decorating cakes!

Bake the cake in 190°C (375F) for 20 mins until the meringue gets some color.

This is actually as easy as it looks, and I was very happy about the outcome! The meringue was a bit undercooked despite the color but it didn't ruin the taste. Even the almond bits were a nice plus since there was something to actually chew on. For this one I'd give 8/10 since I'm still not a big fan of sour food. :P

Thank you for your time and hopefully we'll see again soon chicsters!

Didn't expect this..

Well hello there chicsters!

It has been a week since we cooked together and for this time I wanted to have something more challenging. Perhaps it was too challenging when looking back for that. :D Chocolate Meringue Pie. Oh how delicious you looked in the picture. I have to admit that when I saw the 'corn starch' in the recipe, I had some second thoughts. I've always been pretty bad at using that in cooking. Whenever I even try to make some kind of sauce, I always end up to have very watery sauce. The picture above gives a great illusion of a perfect pie but of course it's far away from that!

So back to the Sunday's disaster. If you have seen the video, you can see how everything's going great in the beginning. I had high expectations and I was so keen to taste it later. Suddenly I find myself from adding crazy amounts of corn starch into the filling but nothing changes. It was so frustating! I felt like "here we go again" -.- When I filled up the cake tin I tried to stay positive and think: "well after it's been in the oven, it's gonna be great!" Well longer I had it in there the meringue got darker and darker but the filling was being the same ol' liquid self. After 18 mins I had to take it out before it was going to burn. The result was a mess as you can see..

Eventhought the sight was horrible, the pie was gone in 2 hours! The taste was absolutely amazing so therefore I promised to remake that someday soon. Hopefully with better success. :)

Then to the other news from P-chic's life. Today I launched the Chictastic Baking facebook page. I wanted to make it easier for you, my chicster, to follow my actions and latest videos. Feel free to give feedback and development ideas on there!

I also got this great sushi book yesterday. At first I borrowed it from library. I really wanted to buy that but since it was a lot of money (in my scale) I decided to let it be. Fortunately I found the exact same book from another store and it was on great sale! Oh, that was a happy day. :) 

Therefore I wish you have chictastic time until we meet again and hopefully there's going to be a sushi episode soon! :3

Check this out!

Chocolate Meringue Pie