D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food From Scratch (7 page)

Add the rum and cook for another 10 minutes. Add the lime zest and turn off the heat. Let cool, remove the cinnamon stick, transfer to a jar, and refrigerate. The butter will keep for up to 2 weeks.

Tart apples and sweet Persimmon-Spice Butter make a very nice pairing when tucked into a flaky crust. Choose apples with a nice balance of sweet and tart that hold their shape when baked. I usually ask the vendor I’m buying from which ones he or she prefers for baking and then I taste them to see if the flavor seems right. This is the kind of uncomplicated dessert anyone can make. If you’re intimidated by piecrust, don’t worry. The cornmeal makes a sturdy, easy-to-handle dough. The true secret to flaky, tender crust is to keep the ingredients as cold as possible, work quickly, and don’t overmix the dough. Stop when the liquid and the dry ingredients just barely come together
.

TIME REQUIRED:
20 minuted active; 2½ hours passive (excluding persimmon butter preparation)

YIELD:
makes one 12-inch galette

3 tablespoons
Yogurt

cup cold water

1 cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup cornmeal

1 teaspoon sugar, plus about

1 tablespoon for sprinkling on top

½ teaspoon salt

7 tablespoons chilled butter (or a mixture of butter and lard divided fairly evenly), cut into small pieces, plus additional butter (melted) for brushing on top

About ¾ cup Persimmon-Spice Butter

3 large or 4 medium apples, peeled or unpeeled, sliced thinly

In a small cup, stir together the yogurt and the cold water and place it in the freezer while you mix the other ingredients.

In a large mixing bowl, with a whisk, combine the flour, cornmeal, the 1 teaspoon sugar, and the salt. Add the chilled butter and work it in quickly with a pastry blender, leaving some pieces of fat the size of small peas.

Sprinkle the yogurt mixture over the flour mixture gradually, mixing it in with a fork. Be careful not to overmix. The dough should be crumbly, but stick together when pinched. You may not use all of the yogurt mixture.

Gather the dough into a ball, wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

On a lightly floured board, with a rolling pin, roll out the dough to a ¼-inch thickness. Fold the dough carefully into quarters, pick it up gently and transfer to a baking sheet. Unfold the dough so it sits centered on the baking sheet.

Using a rubber spatula, gently spread the persimmon butter thinly and evenly over the dough, leaving a 1½- to 2-inch border along the edges.

Lay the apple slices on top of the persimmon butter, working in a spiral from the inside out, covering the persimmon butter, but leaving the same 1½- to 2-inch border. Fold the edges of the dough inward to encase the fruit, and sprinkle the entire galette with the 1 tablespoon sugar.

Bake on the center rack of the oven until the crust is brown and flaky and the apples soft and fragrant, 20 to 25 minutes. Halfway through, rotate the pan and brush the apples and the crust with the melted butter. Give the galette a final brush of butter when you remove it from the oven.

Let cool slightly before cutting. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store any leftovers at room temperature, covered, for no more than 24 hours.

It’s easy to make your own nut butters in an ordinary food processor, and they provide several advantages over store-bought nut butters. You control the smoothness to your liking; you can choose to make raw or roasted butters; and you’ll never again worry about sodium, trans fats, sugar, or other additives. I’ve found homemade nut butters to be half the price (or less) of commercial ones. Since no stabilizers or preservatives are used in homemade nut butters, I like to make small batches of just a cup or two. Keep your homemade nut butters in the refrigerator, as they are highly perishable. If you like your butters ultrasmooth, you need not add any oil to them at all, just salt to taste. Continuous grinding will bring out the oils in the nuts, making the butters perfectly spreadable at room temperature. If you like them chunky, stop while the butter still has texture and add one to two tablespoons of vegetable oil (peanut oil works nicely) to make the butter spreadable.

Great on toast or a crisp fall apple, this butter also makes wonderful cookies. Try
Almond Butter Sandwich Cookies with Spiced Pear Filling
. You could also toast the nuts in a 350-degree-F oven for 10 minutes if you prefer a roasted almond butter. Let cool before grinding
.

TIME REQUIRED:
about 15 minutes active

YIELD:
1 cup

2 cups (about 10 ounces) unsalted, raw whole almonds

1 to 2 teaspoons vegetable oil (optional)

Salt (optional)

Put the almonds in the bowl of a food processor and process until the butter is the desired consistency, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl, 5 to 8 minutes. Add the oil (if needed) and season with salt (if necessary). Watch the butter closely. Over time, it will progress from chunks of chopped almonds to small, dry pieces of almond to a cohesive ball of creamy, spreadable softness. Transfer to a jar and seal. The butter will keep, refrigerated, for up to 8 weeks.

Here you have almonds and pears, a classic dessert flavor combination repurposed into a cookie. Fragrant mashed pears are gently infused with sweet spices and sandwiched between thin, nutty, crispy-chewy cookies to make this common dessert combo into something both homey and elegant. On its own, this pear filling makes a wonderful companion to ice cream or a filling for the
Fresh Cheese Crêpes
. I like to bake these in the fall when pears are at their best. Off-season, you can experiment with other fillings (jam, chocolate, or applesauce) or simply make almond butter drop cookies—like peanut butter cookies, only more interesting. The dough is a little crumbly and a bit difficult to roll out, but if you work with your fingertips to keep it together as you roll, it won’t be too laborious. You’ll need a spatula to transfer the cut cookies from the rolling board to the cookie sheet
.

TIME REQUIRED:
about 1½ hours active; about 1½ hours passive (excluding butters preparation)

YIELD:
24 sandwich cookies

COOKIES

cup unsalted
Cultured Butter
) or store-bought unsalted butter, softened

cup
Raw Almond Butter

½ cup granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

½ cup lightly packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tablespoon unsulfured molasses

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ teaspoon baking powder

SPICED PEAR FILLING (MAKES ABOUT 1 CUP)

3 d’Anjou or Bartlett pears, peeled, quartered, cored, and sliced thinly

cup granulated sugar

One 2-inch cinnamon stick

4 whole cloves

4 whole green cardamom pods

1 star anise pod

½ vanilla bean, split down the side

To make the cookies: In a large bowl, using a handheld mixer, beat together the cultured butter and almond butter until well combined and creamy. Add the ½ cup granulated sugar and the brown sugar and continue to mix until fluffy. Add the egg, molasses, and vanilla and beat just until combined.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir to blend. If the dough seems crumbly, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of water a little at a time to bring it together. Form the dough into two equal-sized disks; wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or overnight.

To make the filling: In a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat, combine the pears, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, star anise, vanilla bean, and 2 tablespoons water. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture begins to brown and turns syrupy, about 1 hour. Remove from the heat, remove the spices, and mash the pears with a potato masher until they resemble chunky applesauce. Return the pan to the stove and continue to cook over medium-low heat until the mixture is soft and fairly smooth, with a thick texture, another 20 to 30 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

If you’ve refrigerated the dough for several hours or overnight, remove from the refrigerator 15 minutes prior to rolling. Leaving one portion of the dough refrigerated, roll out the other portion on a lightly floured board to ¼ inch thick. You may need to stop and gently push the edges of the dough toward the center with your fingertips. You will find the dough somewhat crumbly, rather than sticky. Using a 2-inch round biscuit or cookie cutter, cut out the cookies. Using a spatula, transfer them to an ungreased baking sheet as you work. Gather up the scraps and reroll. The third round of scraps will probably need to be refrigerated before rerolling. Repeat with the other portion of dough, baking the cookies in batches. Sprinkle half the cookies with a bit of granulated sugar just before baking. The sugared cookies will be the tops of the sandwiches. Bake the cookies until brown and fragrant, rotating the pans halfway through, 6 to 7 minutes. Let cool completely on the sheet, then transfer to a platter.