That, right up there, pretty well sums up the state of things.
Also, that frowzy-whatever-flower, just below. Also, Friday's sausage smoothie.
No photo of that last one. You don't need one, don't want one. Definitely don't want to taste one. Sausage and smoothie don't belong in the same sentence, much less the same blender. But when it's Friday, and day ten of summer break, and you're firing on every cylinder and haven't sat since school ended and are filling each day to the brim and beyond, and somehow, it's still not quite noon? Well. Take note: splotchy, peeled, frozen bananas look reeeaaaalllly similar to uncooked, individually wrapped Italian sausages.
But trust me. That's where the similarity ends.
Sausage smoothies aside, we are deep down the rabbit hole of summer. I probably should've prefaced that last post with, "Out of Office: See you in September!" My email inbox is a a mile deep. My June 5 to do list, still entirely intact. I've been meaning to trim two sets of toenails for a week now. But first, today's seven loads of laundry. There are at least two more to do. Rather, there were. Make that three. That last count came in before bedtime.
Related: Every summer, I expect laundry levels to go down. I mean: logic! Short pants, short shirts, short skirts, no socks, so... Nope. The volumes always increase, come June. By, like, 40%. Total mystery.
Well, unless you consider the paint-spattered shirts.
The post-swimming changes.
The gardening grubbies.
The grass-stained knees.
The popsicle-patterned shirts.
The strawberry-splattered everything.
Really, on second thought, our laundry is likely the closest thing I have to a record of our days. Crazy, full, messy, colorful, sometimes magical, often daunting, and constantly, giddily overflowing.
These are those times I'm so glad for the images, for the way they bring back summer days, swallowed whole. Because left with only letters, my recollections would look rather more like:
wakeup/coffee/breakfast/chitchatnonstop/ *gasp* /plandayonpaperto4timescapacity/ (ummm...) clothes/chores/floponfloorreadbooks/ !!snacks!! /playCamelUp/swiiimmmm/shower(everyone!)/ *inhale* /math/minecraft/pullweeds/harvestpeas/ !!moresnacks!! /attempttwotinytodos/ {insert coffee} wait,what,lunch?/ohright,THAT/so... makelunch/inhale/cleanupmeal#5/ *breathe* /groceries/library/readmorebooks/watchyoutubevideos/ *breatheagain* /write/paint/paint/paint/ *ack!5:38?dinner!* /makesomething/anything/eat/clean/ <AGAIN> /walk/fleethunder/arrivehomeafternine/ {insert coffee} /teeth/stories/nighttimesnuggles/and... just like that, it's 10:42 p.m.
U G L Y. Except, it's anything but. Chock-a-block. Rich. A bit dizzying, yes. Maybe more than a bit. (See: sausage smoothie, above.) But mostly, summer's like sparrows, like oceans, like that crazy, soft, salty Australian black licorice, a thing not easily bound by words.
So let's talk instead of something that is: this glorious golden pud, above. Oh, people. Jackpot food, this.
This began as the filling for our National Doughnut Day doughnuts (because of course we went with the bismarcks.) The doughnuts were, everyone agreed, all-around wonderful, and I'm tagging them again here for my own easy reference. (And yours!) However, what struck me, what stole my heart, was the gorgeous, exquisite cream at their core.
No doubt, this was partly because most commercial bismarcks (my only prior baseline) are filled with something like Cool Whip, cut with equal parts Crisco and Barbasol. Or so it seems. This is an easy bar to surpass.
But mostly, I adored their insides because the cream was, hands-down, the very best part. This, against a backdrop of golden, crisp-tender pillows of freshly fried dough, thickly capped with buttered bittersweet. This is a very high bar to approach, let alone surpass. The cream so did. Handily.
What it is is, well, dang. Words again. The Old Hen, from whom this recipe hails, calls it "BAVARIAN CREAM FILLING", then, parenthetically, "(the easy puddingy version)". I spent (too) much time trying to understand what separates Bavarian cream from pastry cream and pastry cream from pudding and concluded: pffft. Doesn't matter. Technically, this tilts a touch more toward pastry cream, what with its four glorious egg yolks. But all of the above are merely variations on the theme of milk and cream, eggs and cornstarch, sugar and salt, heated and stirred and suddenly transformed in ten minutes, flat. This alone is reason to cheer.
Like so many keepers—these snickerdoodles, that soda bread—what sets this apart are the little particulars. The just-right proportions of cornstarch to liquid, the good hit of salt, the spot-on sweet, those yellow yolks! There are great debates among pudding people as to how much cornstarch and whether eggs and if so how many and again, pfft. Semantics aside, what I know is that this exact egg/starch mix yields the most billowing, blowsy, ideal-in-my-mouth definition of vanilla pudding I've yet come across. There are not enough eggs to ask for attention, only enough to enrich and thicken and somehow color the whole gold.
Only really, the color's the least of it. The texture's the thing, the star attraction, dreamy, unctuous, unbeatable. It's stupendously creamy and yet not at all slick; melting, though somehow still modest. Not too thick, not too thin; neither stiff nor runny; an easy, repeatable pitch-perfect suspension. Goldilocks would totally dig it. Drag a spoon through, and you'll make a wake; it swoops and slumps as a good pud should. But come back in five, and the whole will have re-assembled itself, as if the custard zamboni's been by.
You will swoon.
All the more if your taste buds get involved. Gently sweet, admirably salted, restrained and rich somehow simultaneously. Twinkling with true vanilla appeal, thanks to the final, off-the-heat add, and if you're me, those subtle, strategic scrapings of nutmeg, which seal the deal. Not enough nutmeg to announce itself, only enough to amplify and augment, just as vanilla so often underscores chocolate. Swoon2. The end result is warm and round and gentle and glow-y and very dairy. But classy dairy, distinctive dairy, dairy done superbly right. Like milk, gone off to finishing school. It made me re-think what milk might be capable of, in the right company, under the correct conditions. Magic. Glory. Stuff like that.
So the pastry cream/pudding's pretty good.
Good enough that we made a second batch to eat, straight-up, by the bowl. Gone by day's end. Good enough that we then made a third batch, to fill a tart shell and top with strawberries. As a rule, I'm far more likely to go floppy-eared galette than fluted French tart, what with its fuss and frill. And even galettes only happen in alternating years. If I'm feeling ambitious
But this easy elixir somehow made it seem easy, off-handed, almost non-chalant. We knew from our recent, excessive abundant experience that the pastry/cream pudding was an eyes-closed affair. We had strawberries from a recent U-pick expedition, and had already eaten them every which way. (By the fistful. Cocoa-nibbed berry bowls. Stuffed into crêpes. Chocolate-dipped. Freezer-jammed. Fruit salads galore. Repeat.) Also, we'd been playing around with Four and Twenty Blackbirds' Pie Crust, which proved as easy as it was revelatory. This is how T A R T becomes F A T E.
A word about pie: even if I make pie rarely, I approach it happily, heedlessly, recklessly. I have no fear when it comes to pie dough, which I credit to equal parts ignorance and insouciance. I make big, ugly, quite passable pies, savory, and sweet, half a dozen each year. They are good, fine, generally better than anything storebought, and certainly not prize-worthy. They will do. They will also, forevermore, be better, finer, thanks to the two sisters at Four and Twenty Blackbirds.
Emily and Melissa's crust includes a genius Tablespoon of sugar and a still-more genius splash of cider vinegar. The sugar adds a winning whiff of sweet, which I found ridiculously charming. It also balances out the vinegar, which yields a crust of unsurpassed (at least in my kitchen) tender and flake. A crust, I must hasten to add, that withstood the most serious abuses. We made our second (or was it third?) batch on a mid-nineties day in a too-warm kitchen with six hot hands, botched the transfer, and patchworked the sad remnants into something approaching a semi-solid mass in the pan. Nice.
The result? Platonic pie crust. Flaking here, melting there, buttery-shattery everywhichwhere.
So, two gems, to do with what you will. Bind up your blushing berry of the moment under the invincible, all-butter crust, below. You won't be sorry. Your pie will soar. Despite your best efforts to bungle the job. Or whip up a quick batch of stellar vanilla pudding, and eat it warm, and eat it cold, and sigh with the madcap pleasure of summer. Or go for broke! Simple, sublime, juicy-chinned, celebratory both. Line a tart shell, layer with golden cream, pile it high with whatever fruit's beaming, and call it a day, and dinner, besides, because who needs dessert and supper, both?
Though if you go the tart route, promise me one thing? When you tuck half the dough in the deep freeze, for later? Label it. Do! Please? Or you may wind up with pie crust pasta sauce at some future, unfortunate date.
Vanilla Pudding/Pastry Cream/A Lovely Golden Elixir
adapted from theoldhen.com
Feel free to tweak the dairy to suit your fridge. Mine reflects what I stock, non-fat milk (which, bizarrely, my children prefer to whole) and heavy cream, which we always have on hand. I imagine 2 cups of whole milk and 1/2 cup heavy cream would also do nicely. I did try a batch with 2 cups non-fat and 1/2 heavy cream: patently thin and not nearly as nice. Experiment, but not at the risk of parsimony.
Also, I am eager to try this with brown sugar, to yield butterscotch pudding. If you get there before I do, report back!
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 cups nonfat milk
4 egg yolks
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 Tbs. salted butter, cold
1/2 tsp. nutmeg, freshly grated (optional)
In a medium saucepan, off the heat, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch and salt. Very slowly, very gradually (a few Tablespoons at a time), whisk in the milk, taking care to whisk continuously, and dissolve cornstarch, before next addition. Once you have added 1/2 cup of milk, add remaining milk and cream, whisking as you pour, until you have a homogenous mix. Add egg yolks, whisk well to combine thoroughly, and place pot on stove.
Whisking steadily, cook over medium heat (I use a simmer burner, turned to full power), until tiny white bubbles form at the edges, steam rises steadily, and mixture begins to slowly burble, around 5 minutes. Continue whisking steadily, another 1-2 minutes, until mixture thickens considerably. A spoon dragged through will leave a notable trail. Presto! Pudding.
Add the vanilla, cold butter, and nutmeg (if using), and whisk, until vanilla is incorporated and butter thoroughly melted, around 30 seconds. If you spy lumps, pour pudding through a fine mesh sieve, into a clean bowl, scraping and noodging with a spatula. I find the cream/milk split + steady mixing eliminated all lumps, but a quick pass through a sieve is painless, and wonderful, and so worthwhile, if you spy scrambled egg bits.
Pudding is delicious eaten immediately, warm, with freshly grated nutmeg, if you're into its warm woodsy goodness. If using pastry cream to fill tarts, doughnuts, or other lovelies, chill first: scrape into a wide shallow bowl; cover with plastic wrap, pressed tight to the top (to prevent a skin forming); and chill 3 hours, or up to 3 days. Before serving, whisk until smooth.
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An Especially Special All-Butter Crust
adapted from The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, by Emily and Melissa Elsen
Yields top + bottom crust for one 9" or 10" pie (or 2 bottom crusts)
Emily and Melissa call for 2 cups of the ice water mixture, doctored with a full 1/4 cup of vinegar. I found I needed only 1/4 cup of liquid, and so was pouring most down the drain. I've reduced the original ice/vinegar mix to one cup, which still provides far more than you'll need. You could probably get away with halving it once again, though the water may not chill as thoroughly.
You can, of course, make this crust by hand. But when the weather hits the mid-90s, I find the food processor my friend. Finally, you can certainly halve what follows, for a tart or single crust pie. But pie dough freezes beautifully, and involves no more work for a full batch. Far better, then, to make the full amount, and tuck half in the freezer for another day. Pie on a whim is a fine thing indeed.
2 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 Tbs. granulated sugar
8 oz. (2 cubes) salted butter, cold
1 cup ice water (see below)
2 Tbs. cider vinegar
Fill a one-cup measure with ice cubes (3-4), then fill remaining space with good water, to reach the 1-cup mark. Add the cider vinegar, stir, and set aside.
In the bowl of a food processor, fitted with the steel blade, add flour, salt and sugar. Blitz briefly to combine. Slice cold butter into 1/2" bits. (I slice each cube lengthwise, into two long planks, then flip them, and slice lengthwise again, for four long, 1/2" "bars". Re-stack into a "cube", then slice cross-wise into 1/2" dice.) Add butter to flour mixture, toss lightly with fingers to coat butter with flour, then pulse briefly, 10-15 times, until mixure looks mostly like sand, with small pebble-sized bumps of butter throughout.
Stir the water-vinegar mixture briefly to re-combine. Holding the water measure in one hand, and using the other to operate the pulse button, drizzle water into the tube, pulsing as you go, adding 2-3 Tbs. of liquid, for starters. Once you're down to a generous 3/4 cup of liquid, stop adding liquid, and pulse a few times, to bring dough together. Once dough begins to clump and gather, with a few stray bits about the edges, it is ready to tip out onto a clean, floured surface. (If it is still mostly bits, add up to another 1-2 Tbs. liquid, pulsing frequently between additions.)
Tip dough onto clean, floured surface, and gather into a mound with your hands. Gather dry bits, drop them on the top, and gently, firmly, quickly, with the heel of your hand, push dough from center of mound, toward the edge, in a downward-outward motion (fraisage). Repeat, a few times, until all dry bits are incorporated into the whole. Divide dough in two, pat into a round disc, 1" high, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least one hour, or up to three days. (Crust can also be well-wrapped and frozen, up to 2 months. An excellent plan for the summer of pies, ahead. Defrost overnight in fridge before using.)
When ready to bake your tart or pie, prepare a clean, floured surface and preheat oven to 425 degrees. Unwrap dough, tip onto floured board, and roll into a wide circle, 12-13" in diameter, depending on size of pie plate, lifting and giving quarter turns as you roll, to prevent sticking. When ready, fold dough in quarters, and lift onto pie plate, placing center of triangle at the pie plate's center. Unfold dough, and proceed with your recipe.
To blind bake your single pie or tart crust, freeze first for an hour (if you have time; no worries if not); line your crust with parchment and beans, rice or pie ceramics (for weight); and bake on the lower middle rack in your preheated 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Carefully remove your pie weights and foil, and return to the oven until the crust is deeply golden, another 4-8 minutes. Remove and cool completely, before filling.
