Greenstein's Bakery - BB - Blackberry Blueberry Pie

ב''ה

Blackberries and blueberries together is really an unexpectedly neo-classic flavor. Really delicious and unique!

Mis en place. Wait! Not so fast. There is a bit of backstory. 

The lovely pie plate and server were Channakah gifts from my lovely wife. (Maybe I can convince her to guest-blog again. Hint, hint.)

I'm not sure if I'm more pleased with those items or this giant container of Muscovado she got me.

Being a kosher kitchen, we had to 'tovel' the new items in a (rain-water) mikvah.

In fact, any thing new we buy gets put away (and sometimes forgotten) until we 'tovel' it. 

Needless to say, these gifts spurred me to get our act together.

Lulu was with me to learn the trade.

Some of the other 'lost' items. Feels like we went shopping and bought these again, now that we can finally use them!

Coarse-meal? Um, maybe.

The 'bag-method'. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing here as this is about the second real 'pie' I have attempted.

Rolling it.

These exact amounts of dough in the recipe did not leave a lot of room for error...

…and of error, there was a good amount.

I should have titled this post -'A patchwork-pie'.

The blueberries were frozen but I could only find fresh blackberries. Lets just say it was an expensive pie.

Here you can see how the top pie crust rolled out. Again, I sort of wished there was just a bit 'more' dough so that you could have a bit more f'ray around the edges' with out affecting the inner circle.

Toaster shot.

I mixed up some more sugar-cornstarch etc and made some pie-lets with the left over blueberries.

Definitely 'flakey'. The crust was 'flaking' as I took of the  tinfoil rim-sheild. It really is a delicious crust.

The Blueberry pie-lets were good too.

What a great flavor.

Greenstein's Bakery - BB - Chocolate Cuddle Cake

 ב''ה

This fantastic chocolate cake rivals my cousin Leahs', even with the whipped-cream mishap.

Mis en place:

The 'Ez-man' was with me for moral support.

First make the ganache on top a hot toaster.

Added some Sabra liquor for flavor.

The cake batter.

I doubled the recipe as I do not have a dairy spring-form. I do have dairy cake pans, however. The thing about having a kosher-kitchen is that you have to have two sets of everything, one for meat and one for dairy (and sometimes one for parve.) Each new kitchen item must be placed by the proverbial 'sorting hat' into its 'meat' or 'dairy' home.

I made this on a fast day (10th of Tevet), so no tasting and I had Yirmia on my mind...

 'וּבַבּוֹר אֵין-מַיִם כִּי אִם-טִיט, וַיִּטְבַּע יִרְמְיָהוּ בַּטִּיט...'

'In the pit there was no water, only mud, and Yermiyahu sunk into the mud.'
Jer 38:6

Mix, mix.

Haven't beaten egg-whites in while. :)

Thoughts swirl in a malaise of meaning...

The pans were pretty full.

Toaster shot. The bottom rack bakes slower than the top so I have to move it for a few minutes after the top cake is done.

Or, in this case, you put them back in to finish baking after you clean up the cake explosion. :)

The bottom cake did not have enough room to rise.

This cake was not so easy to cut into perfect rounds.

So... it ended up looking a bit 'heimish'.

Making the lovely chocolate caramel. This cake seems to have a lot of steps. I read ahead and tried to pre-empt the needed ingredients for the next stage. The chocolate for the caramel was supposed to cool down so I did it early in the game. 

First mistake: I poured the caramel in the whipped-cream while it was still hot. Oops! No biggie. I stuck it in the fridge and re-whipped after cooled.

Now it looked good. Second, and more serious mistake: Put in the Kolatin (kosher gelatin) while it was too hot. I knew it had to still be warm but I guess for this recipe it needs to be warm enough to not congeal and cool enough to not ruin the cold whipped-cream.

Oy vey! It went to this...

…then this:

I stopped and looked online for a solution. It seems that I might be able to melt it down on a double-boiler, cool and re-whip. It almost worked too. I forgot to whip it by hand and went just a bit too far. 

No salvaging it now. It still tasted fantastic, still the star of the show, but the 'whipped' consistency was ruined.

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