Anthony Lombardi

Finally used up the last of my tart dough (which was probably in the freezer for like a year!). The jam is Darbo Rose Apricot (I guess the “Rose” refers to a type of apricot?). It looks like the pastry on top wasn’t baked enough but it actually was. The shell is blind-baked first, which is why it’s far darker. Lisa and I liked it quite a bit. Jam and tart dough… so simple yet so tasty!

For a little fun on Easter, and to use up extra chocolate coating I had in the fridge from Chocolate-Dipped Frozen Bananas, I decided to give some Peeps a chocolate bath.  I skewered the little yellow bunnies with toothpicks and then dunked them in a narrow wine glass in which I put the coating.
Continue reading Chocolate-Dipped Peeps

One of the simplest frozen desserts to make is chocolate-dipped frozen bananas. It’s a great way to use up bananas that are at the peak of ripeness but that you don’t want to eat right away. There are many recipes around for it, but of the ones I tried I wasn’t satisfied for one reason or another, so below is my own variation.

Continue reading Chocolate-Dipped Frozen Bananas

I tried out my new camera on a recent trip to Point Reyes with Lisa. Here’s some nice pics of wildflowers there, with an explanation of each one.

This one above is called Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra formosa). It’s not hard to see why. It’s one of the more unusual wildflowers I’ve seen. They seemed to be in somewhat shady areas.

Continue reading Point Reyes Wildflowers

This shot was taken with my new Canon XSi with the 60 mm macro lens. The shot was taken with aperature priority, f/5, 1/200 second, ISO-200 (Auto). Lisa and I were in Point Reyes National Seashore, walking along the Bear Creek Trail that goes from the Bear Valley Visitor Center to Arch Rock. I spotted this bumble bee buzzing along the flowers and I took several shots. This one is the most impressive.

This was very tasty. It was the first time I used a lattice cutter. You roll it over the dough and it makes offset cuts. After that you just pull the sides and the holes open up. It was a little tricky in that the dough stuck together slightly after rolling. I had to manually open some of those holes. This is puff pastry with pastry cream. Recipes for both of those components is in The Baker’s Dozen Cookbook.

Ingredients:
Pastry cream
Puff pastry (I used a “quick” puff pastry rather than the real one that takes several hours to make.  I’d imagine both real and store-bought should work here but possibly with different baking times)

To make the dessert (makes 8):

1. preheat oven to 375 F
2. roll out the puff pastry to 1/8 inch high, and roughly 12 by 16 inches
3. cut pastry lengthwise into two 6 by 16 inch rectangles
4. cut each rectangle into 2 pieces, one 4 by 16 inches and one 2 by 16 inches
5. run the lattice cutter along both 2 by 16 inch pieces
6. pull on the long side of each of the lattice cut pieces to open up the holes
7. cut each lattice cut piece into 4 and each of the remaining two rectangles into 4 (you should now have 8 bottoms and 8 tops for the pastries)
8. on each bottom spread roughly two tablespoons of pastry cream to within a quarter inch of each edge
9. place the tops on and press the edges into the bottoms (at this point the pastries may be frozen for up to 3 months)
10. bake pastries on an ungreased light-colored aluminum baking sheet for about 20 minutes (add 5 or more minutes if frozen), or until the pastry is browned on the edges and the lattice top is beginning to brown
11. place pastries on a cooling rack for 5 minutes

I few days ago I made some apple turnovers for the first time. They were completely homemade and very delicious. Lisa loved them. My mom actually supplied the apples, and I already had the homemade puff pastry in my freezer. Yum!