Rosy Mini Apple Tarts with Creamy Vanilla Custard

Very Strawberry Custard Tart

Ingredients:
Makes 2 7-inch tarts

Pie crust:

• 100 grams flour
• 2 grams salt
• 70 grams butter
• 35 - 40 ml cold water

Custard:

• 24 grams flour
• 60 grams sugar
• 3 egg yolk
• 300 ml milk
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla stick

(*This should make about 250 gram custard. Add the following into the 250 gram custard.)

• 80 ml whipped cream + 2 tbs powder sugar
• 3.5 grams gelatin, dissolved in 24.5 ml water (for soft custard, add a little more than half)

Strawberries:

• About 2- 3 regular packages of strawberries for 2 tarts

Nappage (cake glaze):

• 15 ml water
• 8 grams sugar
• 1 grams gelatin + 7 ml water

Preparation: Wash strawberries well and cut each half. Let them dry on a paper towel.

How to make pie crust:

1. Combine flour, salt, butter in a food processor. 
2. When the mixture is mixed like coarse meal, with small size pieces of butter, add water gradually.
3. Stop adding water when the dough holds together. (adding too much water makes the crust tough.)
4. Take dough out of the machine and cover it with plastic wrap.
5. Refrigerate about 30 minutes to 1 hour or longer.
6. Take it out from the refrigerator and roll out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface to about 10 inch circle.
7. Place the dough onto a 7-inch pie pan and trim the dough to within a half inch of the edge of the pie dish.
8. Pre-bake the dough with pie weight at 370 °F for 10 minutes and bake without pie weights at 355°F for another 7-10 minutes. (line the pie crust with parchment paper and fill it with pie weights till about 2/3 height of the pie pan)

How to make custard:

1. Put flour, sugar and egg yolk in a bowl and add a little bit of milk (about 2 tbs from 300 milk) into the bowl and mix all together.
2. Heat the rest of the milk and bring to a boil.
3. Add the milk SLOWLY into the egg mixture in a bowl and mix it all together.
4. Return to the pot or a put it into a double boiler, stir gently and slowly with a spatula until it thickens, over a low heat for a regular pot/a medium high for a double boiler (I use a double boiler, which makes it a lot easier to make smooth custard).
5. Transfer the custard into a bowl and cool it by putting the bowl of custard in a ice water in a separate bowl. 
6. Cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap. When it's ready and cool, the plastic wrap will come off clean.

Finishing:

1. Pour the cooled custard into the baked, cooled pie crust and let it stay for for about 3-5 minutes (in fridge if the custard isn't still too soft).
2. Make nappage (see below) and let it cool a little bit and decorate the pie with strawberries.
3. Brush the strawberries with nappage and enjoy!

How to make nappage (make this right when decorating the pie with strawberries):

1. Dissolve gelatin in water.
2. Microwave water and sugar for about 15- 20 seconds and add the gelatin, stirring until dissolved.
3. Let nappage cool down a little bit. When nappage is just warm not hot or cold is the best time to brush the fruit with it (if it's hot, it won't stay on fruit but if it's cold, it'll get too hard to brush). If nappage gets cold and hard, microwave it again to the right temperature.

Kiwifruit and Green Tea Smoothie

 

Ingredients:

2 kiwifruit

1 banana

About 1/4 cup yogurt (about 60 ml)

About 1/4 cup milk

About 70 ml green tea, cold

5 small ice cubes

1 - 2 tbs honey to your preference

Strawberry Shortcake

Sponge cake (7 inch cake pan):
3 eggs
90 grams sugar
75 grams flour
30 grams butter
2 tbs vanilla extract

Mont Blanc Cake (Chestnut, Cream & Custard)

For Vanilla Cake:
4 egg white and yolk
A pinch of salt
80 grams sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
60 grams flour
65 ml heavy cream

For Chestnut Cream:
250 grams chestnuts, cooked (boiled and peeled)
190 ml milk (add more if needed)
3 tbs sugar
1 tbs honey
1 tsp rum
1/2 - 1 tsp vanilla extract

For Custard:
1 egg yolk
8 grams flour
20 grams sugar
100 ml milk
some vanilla extract

Whipped Cream:
150 ml heavy cream
1.5 tbs powder sugar
1 tsp vanilla extrac

How to make vanilla cake:

1. Preheat the oven 355 and place cupcake liners in a 12-cupcake pan.
2. Separate eggs into bowls and chill egg white in a freezer and leave egg yolk out in a small bowl.
3. Prepare flour, sugar and heavy cream in small separate bowls.
4. Take out egg white from the freezer and add a pinch of salt and beat it to make stiff melange, while adding sugar three separate times.
5. Combine egg yolk one by one and then vanilla extract.
6. Microwave heavy cream in a separate bowl for about 25-30 seconds (until it gets warm but not hot).
7. Add in flour and the warm heavy cream alternatively (heavy cream needs to be warm; otherwise, the oil in the cream will break the air bubble in the batter and the cake won't rise).
8. Pour batter into the cupcake pan.
9. Bake at 355°F for about 12 - 14 minutes.

How to make chestnut cream:

1. Cut chestnut into small pieces and put them into a small pot.
2. Add in milk and simmer chestnut in it for about 5 minuets until it softens.
3. Remove from heat, use immersion blender (or a regular blender) to make chestnut puree. 
4. Transfer the chestnut puree into a bowl and mash it through a strainer (If the chestnut is too hard to go through the strainer, you can loosen it up by adding a little bit of milk). At this point, it should be very smooth, creamy chestnut puree like paste.
5. Add the rest of the ingredients to flavor the chestnut paste.

Gâteau au Chocolat

Gyu-don

For about 4 servings

Ingredients:
1 pound shredded beef
1 large onions
1/3 cup chopped green onions

Sauce:
300 ml dashi (water and dashi powder)
3.5 tbs soy sauce
3.5 tbs sake (ryori-syu, sold by H-mart)
3.5 tbs sugar

1. Slice onions and green onions.
2. Simmer the sauce in a pot and cook beef in it quickly.
3. Remove beef on the side.
4. Put about 2 scoops of sauce in a sauce pan and cook onions in it until they soften.
5. Add beef for one person and simmer with onions for about 3 minutes.
6. Sprinkle green onions and enjoy!