Fig Rolls

Yep, once again I've been watching the Great British Bake-Off and once again I felt compelled to try out some of the recipes, starting with a favourite of Lundulph's - fig rolls. He does ask me to buy these for him every now and then. I'm not too fussed about them, they are a bit too dry for me and the texture of the biscuit reminds me of a very dry type of Bulgarian biscuit that ladies of my gran's generation usually make and which I find quite nasty.

But home-made fig rolls, where you know what's inside is something completely different. And as per usual, I try to follow the original recipe as closely as possible, in particular since this one was from Paul Hollywood and previously his recipes have been good. As it turned out, this one was too, but the proportions were not quite right, however that is not a bad thing. The original recipe is here.

Ingredients

Biscuit dough 175 g plain flour
1 pinch of salt
%frac14; tsp baking powder
50 g unsalted butter at room temperature
40 g light muscovado sugar
1 large egg
½ tsp vanilla extract

Filling
200 g soft, dried figs
25 g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 ball of stem ginger in syrup - about 2 cm diameter

Method

1. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder and make sure they are well mixed.
2. Beat together the butter and the muscovado sugar until pale and creamy.
3. Add the egg and the vanilla extract and and whisk until well combined.
4. Add the flour mixture in 3 batches, incorporating each fully before adding the next.
5. Wrap the dough well and place in the fridge to chill, while you make the filling.
6. Chop the figs and place into a small saucepan and add the muscovado sugar and enough water to just cover the fruit.
7. Bring to the boil on medium heat, then reduce the heat to a fast simmer and let cook for 5 - 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. The figs should go even softer and the whole mixture should thicken.
8. Transfer the mixture to a food processor and blitz to form a paste. Add the ginger and cinnamon and pulse a couple of times to get it mixed in, but not too finely chopped. Spread the filling onto a plate, cover with cling film and chill to firm up for 10 minutes.
9. Pre-heat the oven to 180 °C fan. Prepare a couple of baking sheets with baking paper.
10. Cut out a sheet of baking paper and dust with flour. Roll out the dough into a rectangle no more than 4 mm thick on the baking sheet. Cut along the long side of the rectangle into 10 cm wide strips.
11. Flour your hands and form some of the filling to a sausage, about 2 cm diameter, and lay along the middle of a dough strip, then carefully use the baking paper underneath to fold the dough around the filling. Use a little water to wet the edges and make them stick together, they don't need to overlap too much.
12. Repeat with the remaining strips, re-do any trimmed off edges to use up the dough.
13. Cut each strip into equal pieces of around 4 cm length, then carefully place onto the baking sheets, no need to leave too much room, they don't puff up much.
14. Using a fork, press down each roll to get the decorative lines on top and bake for 12 - 15 minutes, until they start going golden brown.
15. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to let them cool down.

These are definitely really tasty and not remotely related to the shop-bought stuff and well worth doing. However, the original instructions don't tell you how thick to roll the dough and I only rolled it to the 25 x 20 cm as it said and it was way too thick. Also the amount of filling was almost twice what I could fit into the dough, I weighed it and it was 322 g, but I had to scoop out 141 g in order to get the dough around the filling. I've tried to make adjustments in the above instructions. But any left-over filling can be used as spread on toast as an alternative to jam or frozen for the next fig roll batch. I'd also say the filling probably works nicely as praline filling as well.

Pear Galette for Lundulph's Birthday

It's the time of the year, when Lundulph's parents' pear tree is crammed with fruit and I'm racking my brain about what to do with them. Last year, I did work through a lot of my recipes and found one for a pear galette, which seemed rather nice and I decided to try it out this year. A quick google indicated that a galette is a rustic, free-form pie or tart.

This recipe turned out to be very nice indeed and is really not difficult at all, even if it may seem so, so definitely a repeat, the original can be found here in Swedish. Another huge benefit is that this can be prepared in advance up to the point of baking, so it's very suitable for dinner parties, when all you need to do is bake it while the guests are eating.

Ingredients

Pâte Sucrée - sweet pastry
100 g cold, unsalted butter
3 ¼ dl plain flour
¼ tsp baking powder
1 ¼ dl granulated sugar
1 large egg

Almond paste
250 g marzipan
50 g unslated butter
1 large egg
½ dl plain flour
2 tbsp dark rum

Filling
4 - 5 crispy pears
50 g cold unsalted butter
3 tbsp dark muscovado sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
50 g blanched almond flakes

icing sugar for dusting before serving

Method

1. Pinch together the butter, flour, baking powder and sugar. Add the egg and work it in just so everything combines well. Flatten the dough, cover in double clingfilm and let rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
2. Grate the marzipan coarsely and melt the butter in a saucepan.
3. Stir together the marzipan, butter, egg, flour and rum until the paste is smooth.
4. Wash, peel and trim the pears, then cut into slices length-wise into equal thickness.
5. Mix together the muscovado sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.
6. Pre-heat the oven to 175° C fan.
7. Roll out the dough onto a piece of lightly floured baking paper to about 3 - 4 mm thickness.
8. Spread the almond paste over the pastry, but leave a clean edge of about 2 cm all around.
   
9. Lay out the pears over the almond paste,
   
   then sprinkle with with the sugar/cinnamon mixture.
   
   Take care not to go over the edge of the almond paste.
   
10. Using a cheese slicer or a potato peeler, cut out wide and thin butter pieces, then lay them over the pears, so that they are all covered.
    
11. Carefully fold up the clean eges of the pie dough, then bake for 50 minutes until everything has gone golden brown.
    

And here is the lovely result, I recommend it's served warm together with vanilla ice cream.

It was very well received when Lundulph came home together with his parents and we enjoyed a quiet celebration of his birthday. This galette did not last long, large as it was.