Brie en croute with porcini and thyme

This is lasciviously heavy. But it's easy to prepare and satisfies the most insatiable fat-tooth. If you like sweet stuff, you can replace the porcini/thyme with honey and toasted almonds or dried cherries or et cetera.


Ingredients

• 1 wheel of brie
• 1 sheet of puffed pastry (thawed)
• some porcini (reconstituted if dried; cleaned and chopped if fresh)
• fresh thyme, 1 tsp or to taste
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
  
• one egg, beaten
  

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Wash and stem the thyme and saute it in olive oil with the porcini for a couple of minutes.

Half the brie along the flat side to produce two slabs. Set one slab creamy-side up in the center of the puffed pastry. Place the mushrooms on the brie and close the other slab on top. Fold the puffed pastry around the wheel as decoratively as you can manage. Make sure you don't tear the pastry; otherwise brie will ooze uglily out.

Brushed the outside of the brie-filled pastry wheel with the beaten egg. Transfer the wheel to a cookie sheet or casserole dish or whatever and bake it for 20 minutes at 400ºF. Then turn down the oven to 300ºF and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Serve hot.

I'm not sure how many people this serves. If you try to split the entire wheel between two people, make sure to sleep with the windows open.

procrastinator cookies

a quick cookie which makes for excellent paper-writing breaks. it's glutenfree, too.

chocolate peanut butter cookies
(courtesy of Epicurious)

1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 cup light brown sugar (or normal, or mixture of normal and brown...no need for fanciness: these are peanut butter cookies after all)
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips

mix the first five ingredients together in a bowl. add chocolate chips. form cookies using a tablespoon and your hands and drop them on a baking sheet.

bake at 350 F until puffed up and golden. about 10 minutes. don't overbake, an overbaked cookie is a sad cookie. enjoy!

Molten Milk Chocolate and Sticky Apricot Tart

I have a bit of an aversion to pastry. I don't much like regular shortcrust, so I rarely bother to make it at home. But I got some adorable tartelette tins for Christmas, so I decided to have another try.

I'm glad I did. Such a lip-smacking combination. Crisp, biscuity, chocolatey pastry; sticky, brandied apricots; and molten milk chocolate. I took the pastry recipe from the well-known food blog, chocolateandzucchini.com, and was very happy with the results. The rest is my own invention.


Ingredients
for the pastry:
1 1/4 cup plain flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
6 tbsp butter
3/8th cup sugar
splash milk

for the apricots:
6 oz dried apricots (not too dry, mind. Some squishiness is good here.)
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 orange, zested and squeezed
3 fluid oz brandy

for the molten chocolate:
6oz high quality milk chocolate (I used valrhona)
2 tbsp vegetable shortening

Other equipment: 6 tartelette tins with removable bottoms

Method
Preheat oven to 430F.

For the pastry:
In a food processor, combine the flour, cocoa powder and sugar.
Add the butter, cut up in small pieces.
Pulse until the mixture resembles coarse sand.
Add a small splash of milk and mix again; it should still look quite sandy.
Divide the dough among the tartelette tins, and press firmly into the base and sides. It may help to dust your hands with cocoa powder in order to handle the dough without it sticking.
Prick the base of the tart shells with a fork (this prevents them from puffing up too much in the oven).
Place the tins on a cookie sheet (for ease of handling), and put them into the oven. They should take about 15 minutes to cook, but keep an eye on them.

Meanwhile...

For the apricots:
First, make some flavoured sugar. Split the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds.
Combine the vanilla seeds, orange zest and sugar. Mix well.
(You'll only need half of it, but making a smaller batch doesn't work well given the ingredients. And it lasts forever in the pantry.)
Now, place the apricots, half the sugar, the orange juice and the brandy in a medium saucepan over highish heat.
Boil for about 10 minutes (keeping a close eye on it, and adding more liquid if necessary), until the cooking liquid is sticky and reduced.
It's probably a good idea to taste one of the apricots to make sure the flavours are to your liking (the sweetness of dried apricots varies considerably). You can adjust it by adding more sugar or more orange juice (for greater acidity), if necessary.

For the molten chocolate:
microwave the chocolate and shortening together until melted. Mix well.

To assemble:
Remove the tart shells from the tins, by placing the tartelette tin over a can, and slipping the ring down it. The bottom of the tartelette tin should be fairly easy to remove after this.
Take a slightly cooled tart shell. Fill with several brandied apricots, and then drizzle the molten chocolate over the top and around the sides, until the tart shell is full. Let it firm up slightly, and then serve it with a flourish.

Tips:
- One of my tart shells leaked, and the molten chocolate ran out the bottom. I salvaged it by filling it with chocolate-covered cocoa nibs, which I had on hand. I liked this variation, although it didn't look quite as nice.
- To reheat the tarts (if you want to make them ahead of time), pop them in the microwave for about 30 seconds. This will leave the center firm, but the edges molten. Yummy!
- Try other (fresh or dry) fruits in place of the apricots. Pears (fresh or dried), prunes and cherries (fresh, dried or bottled) all have a wonderful affinity with chocolate, and would respond well to the same treatment given to the apricots here.