Cremeschnitte- A recipe deconstructed

I am a lover of Pinterest and this recipe was one that caught my eye. I first made it about 4 years ago and to say it went over well would be an understatement.

Is it sort of a pain in the ass to make? Yes.

Is it worth every pain?  Also yes.

This is the one dessert I make that makes people loose their shiznits. Yes, all their shiznits.

A photo posted by Jen TheNextMartha (@thenextmartha) on

I have no idea if the original recipe is an authentic German dessert but I have a friend who’s husband is German and he seemed to think it was. Having been a pretty decent baker in my full gluten days, I read the recipe and realized that it left out some information and I have modified it a bit over the years.

I highly recommend you read the recipe more than 1x before you make it.

The filling can be made a day before but I like to make the puff pastry and assemble it the day of.

Ingredients:

Puff Pastry– I use store bought sheets but knock yourselves out making it from scratch if you want. I won’t be posting about that here.

Filling: 

Heavy Whipping Cream: 14 oz

2.5 cups milk (I use 2%)

2/3 cup sugar

2  3.4 oz boxes of vanilla instant pudding

1 envelope of gelatin

2 lg eggs

1 Tbs pure vanilla

1 Tbs Rum (I use Capt Morgan)

9.5 oz room temperature butter (Room temperature IS IMPORTANT)

Making the Filling:

Place 1 cup of milk and both box pudding mixes into a mixing bowl. Use a stand mixer, hand mixer or whisk to mix items until blended well. Add eggs one at a time until it’s well blended. Let this sit in bowl while you do next step.

Put 1½ cup milk with 5 oz sugar in a sauce pan and bring to a boil.

Once milk and sugar mixture are boiling,  scoop a small amount of the pudding mixture and place in the boiling milk, stirring constantly with a whisk. Continue doing this until pudding mixture is combined with boiling milk mixture. Once combined I add 1 packet of gelatin by sprinkling it lightly over mixture and using a whisk to mix in. If you put too much at a time, you will get lumps. Just lightly dust it with gelatin and whisk in.

Add vanilla and rum, whisk in.

Once pudding thickens, take it off the heat and pour it through a fine strainer over a 9×13 dish or I have also poured it into a jelly roll pan. You want to cool this mixture down completely. Cover it with plastic wrap so it doesn’t form a “skin” on top. Put this into the fridge and stir the mixture every 15 minutes or until fully cooled.

Make sure you replace the plastic wrap each time you stir to prevent a top skin from forming.

You want this mixture completely cooled or it will melt the butter in your next step and that is NOT what you want.

In a mixing bowl, whisk butter until it gets fluffy. Fold it into cooled pudding mixture.

For this step I have the pudding mixture in a mixing bowl with the flat beater blade. While mixer is set on LOW I add butter a little at a time until JUST blended. I keep adding butter until it’s all mixed in. Do not over mix. Do not use a hand blender with “whisk” attachments. Hand fold in butter if needed.

Take heavy whipping cream and whip until there are strong peaks. I add a few tablespoons of powdered sugar to it. FOLD whipped cream into pudding/butter mixture.

Fold, fold, fold, fold until well blended.

Puff Pastry:

I cut my puff pastry into the size squares I want before I bake it. I find cutting it after smooshes it too much.  Follow package instructions for baking.

Take puff pastry square and cut in half width wise. Place bottom piece on plate. Fill with filling, top with the top puff pastry piece. Dust whole thing with powdered sugar.

SERVE and ENJOY.

cremeschnitte

While I can’t eat it with puff pastry anymore, I do enjoy eating it with these Schar cookies. You can also make it into a trifle with them.

Pumpkin Chip Cookies

pumpkin chip cookie

 

It’s been 3 long gluten free months.

It’s been ok.

Actually, I’m lying.

It’s been really hard and now that the holidays are upon us, I’m stressing out about the whole thing.

I’ve started to take my standard recipes and convert them to gluten free.   I don’t mean the kind of gluten free where it’s like “Oh, these are good but I can tell they’re gluten free.”

No.

I want them to just be GOOD.

Every year I make these pumpkin chip cookies.  They’re an October tradition.  Last night I decided to try it gluten free and they turned out so good, I thought I’d share.

You can make them with regular flour exactly as the recipe is.

The recipe makes A LOT of cookies, not that that is a problem around here but just to let you know, they do freeze really well.

Also, they’re sort of a cake like cookie, and not a crunchy kind.  I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Pumpkin Chip Cookies- Gluten Free
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Recipe type: Cookie
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 60 cookies
Ingredients
  • 1-1/2 cups butter, softened
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 can solid-pack pumpkin- 15oz.
  • 1 egg
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 4 cups Gluten free flour mix (I used Pamelas Artisian Blend)
  • 2 cups quick-cooking oats (I used certified gluten free)
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons ground Cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 bag semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
  1. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars.
  2. Beat in the pumpkin, egg and vanilla.
  3. Sift the flour and combine with, oats, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture.
  4. Stir in chocolate chips.
  5. Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto parchment covered baking sheets. Flatten down slightly with spoon
  6. Bake at 350° for 10-14 minutes or until lightly browned.
  7. Remove to wire racks to cool.
Notes
The flour I used already has a binder in it so I didn't have to add xanthan gum. I find it easier this way for now. If you use a gluten free flour that doesn't have it already added, I have no idea how much you might need. I also recommend using a high quality cinnamon, like Penzy's. To make them with regular flour, just use same amount.

Easy Gluten Free Blueberry Tart

Easy Gluten Free Blueberry Tart with Almond Crust.

I’m still getting used to this whole gluten-free lifestyle.  Today I had friends over for lunch and it was truly the first time I was sad I couldn’t eat something.

I served a white wine chicken salad (calm down, Trader Joe’s) on their pretzel croissant rolls.

I took a deep breath of the gluteny goodness as I prepared mine on a less pretzel and even less croissant like bread.

Sigh.

Now that I’ve become one of  “those people” who has dietary restrictions I knew that I needed to start baking gluten-free or risk losing weight.

We can’t have that now.

I came across this recipe on pinterest and decided that it fit the bill.

Almond meal

Except I didn’t have almond flour so I used almond meal

Lemon curd

And I didn’t make lemon curd, I just bought a jar of it.

Hey now, I said this was easy.

Lemon Blueberry Tart Recipe with Almond Crust:

Crust

2.5 cups Almond Meal

5 tablespoons butter

1 egg  (Oops, it says egg white but I used a whole egg)

Now that I’m reading the original recipe I realize I forgot to add the pinch of salt.  Huh.  You should probably do that.

I also did 3 tablespoons of sugar.

I used a pastry cutter to cut chilled butter into the almond meal.  I then added egg and just mixed it all by hand.  I pressed it into my pie tart pan that I first sprayed with cooking spray. The crust was sort of goopy feeling so I stuck the whole thing into the freezer to chill.  I don’t know how long.  I was very distracted.  Maybe 15- 20 minutes?

While it was in the freezer, oven was on 400.  Once it was chilled I put it in oven for 15 minutes.  Honestly, I think it could have used a little longer but I was in the middle of throwing chicken nuggets at my kids for lunch.   The original recipe said not to over cook so I didn’t.  It was perfectly fine and it’s possible I’m thinking CRUST and this was more chewy than crispy.  It was probably perfect.

Curd:

If you want homemade follow original recipe.  I’m sure it is delicious.  Even though I’ve made curd before, I was short on time so JAR CURD IT IS.  You can find this in a grocery store by….I think the Jelly section?

I thought the curd was a little too strong on its own so I added the whole jar of curd to a whole package of cream cheese and blended it using a blender.  I then squeezed some lemon juice (one slice?) and added some zest too.  I did this all to taste.

Put it all together

I took the crust out of the oven, I let it cool and then put it in freezer to cool quicker because I was running out of time.  (I’m very poor at time management)

Once cooled, I used a spatula to spread the filling and then topped with blueberries because the store was out of strawberries.

In the end it turned out delicious.

P.S. But seriously, can you believe I took that picture?   #WorstPhotographerEver