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My sister turned twenty-one last week, on the first day of October, to be exact. It made me feel happy, but amazed at how quickly we grew up. My mom saved raspberries from her garden for weeks to make something special just for the party. Unfortunately, my mom spent her weekend sick, curled up on her couch drinking tea and eating decongestant. So she felt behind on things for the week and brought the raspberries and three sheets of puff pastry to my house. Lucky me.

I though very long and hard about what exactly to make, hoping to bless my sister and enjoy my time with such beautiful fruit. I got inspiration for the pastry shells from a favorite dessert blog, and pulled the rest together from my most used cookbook. And I got excited. 

 

 I counted out 130 beauties for the tops and used the rest to make raspberry sauce (from the cookbook). But I changed things up a bit—recipes at the end. And then I made the cream cheese filling from the fruit tartlets recipe in the book, but of course I changed things up a bit. I also ended up adding a bit of sugar to the sauce, knowing the pastry had no sweetness and knowing I was keeping the cheese filling mildly sweet. The filling and sauce were great.

As an ode to my grandmother, whose last day on earth was two years to the day of my making these, I wielded the decorating sets she left me to pipe the filling on top of the thick raspberry sauce in the pastries. I topped them with the reserved raspberries and got really excited.

After the whole raspberries came one last star of cream in the center, and then I melted some dark chocolate and used my whisk to send it in lovely ribbons across the tops. I tasted these each part individually throughout this epicurean adventure; I was loving my time in my kitchen—baby crying off and on—nothing could phase me.

 I was expecting my dessert to be the highlight of the evening but my sister-in-law showed up with peach pie and a pear pie, which was a surprise and something of a let-down. Partly because I was surprised and had worked so hard and partly because her pies are simply amazing. Everyone had a difficult time deciding on one dessert, so most of us ate a bit of each and took a pastry home.

But there is a happy ending: I made a fire for my babies the next morning and left the room for a moment. I came back in to find that my daughter had found the few we brought back home. She took one for herself and gave one to her brother and they were happily ate them as breakfast in front of the fire. I felt content after seeing my little ones enjoy them on a sleepy Saturday morning. I think my sister enjoyed them also and I know my grandmother would have eaten one with pleasure and perhaps a hint of pride.

 

For the shells:

one box of Pillsbury puff pastry

egg wash (one egg beaten lightly in a bowl)

1. Thaw the pastry according to the package directions.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough a bit; just to make it lay flat and square it up.

3. With biscuit cutters or round cookie cutters, cut one sheet of solid circles and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Using a fork, lightly prick the edges of the pastry circles, being careful not to go all the way through the dough. Brush the pricked parts with egg wash.

4. Cut the same amount of circles out of the second sheet and then using a smaller cutter, cut the center out of each one. Place one pastry ring on each circle and press down lightly. Brush the top ring with egg wash. 

5. Bake for 15-20 minutes until nicely browned. Remove from sheet immediately and cool on wire racks. 

 

Raspberry Sauce:

4-5 cups of fresh raspberries

water

2 T. cornstarch

super-fine sugar to taste

1. Place just enough water in a saucepan to almost cover the bottom of it. Add raspberries. Set burner to medium and let the berries begin to boil down. Stir occasionally with a wire whisk, smooshing the berries slightly each time. Let the berries cook for 20-30 minutes.

2. When the berries have all burst and everything is looking rather saucy, turn the burner down and remove from the heat. Place a fine-mesh sieve over a medium sized bowl and pour the sauce through the sieve. Use a spoon to force as much juice as possible through the sieve into the bowl. 

3. Pour the strained juice back into the sauce pan. Add two or three heaping tablespoons of the flesh and seeds for texture in the sauce. Then add the cornstarch and whisk on medium heat until smooth. Continue whisking on medium heat until the sauce comes to a boil. You can turn the burner up bit by bit if you don’t want to stand there forever.

4. Once the sauce has begun to boil and starts to thicken, remove it from heat and stir well. Pour the thickened sauce back into the bowl to cool.

5. Add the sugar a tablespoon at a time until it takes the ting out of the tartness of the berries. You will need more or less depending on the original sweetness of the berries.

 

Cream Cheese Filling:

1 8oz. package of full-fat cream cheese

1/2 C. ricotta cheese

1-2 T. cream, heavy or whipping

2-3 T. sugar, depending on taste

1. Let the cream cheese come to room temperature, about 45-60 minutes.

2. Add cream cheese to a bowl and mash with a fork until it is very smooth. Add ricotta, sugar and cream and blend with a fork until very smooth, 3-5 minutes. This goes much faster with a hand mixer.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.