Pete Fred

A couple of friends just tried some and liked it a lot. And, to be fair, I was a little more disposed towards it, so I'll probably make it again next time I'm staring at a bottle of maple syrup and wondering what to do.

@ElsieD Nice job. I just rub my moulds inside and out with kitchen paper while they're still hot but handleable. Any bits of crust get scratched off with my thumbnail or a toothpick, but it's minimal. They've never seen water or soap. I only use beeswax now to coat, but I don't remember it being any different when I used 50:50 clarified butter. I can't speak to anything oil-based. The info that came with mine says "To restore the luster of your copper molds, do not hesitate to rub their outer surface with a mixture of flour, egg white and white vinegar." I've never tried it, though.

Maple butter glazed loaf cake by Benjamina Ebuehi (recipe)... Eaten warm, as suggested, it was nicely buttery, but not particularly maple-y. Maybe it'll transform overnight. If not, I can't see there being a revisit..

@TdeV Adapted from a Christophe Felder recipe... Translations for our North American listeners: pâte brisée = pie dough or non-sweetened shortcrust; caster sugar = superfine or regular granulated; cornflour = cornstarch; clingfilm = plastic wrap; oven temperatures are 450°F and 500°F; size-wise, this is for a pie just a touch smaller than 9-inch x 2-inch.

Flan parisien... I go creamy; others prefer firmer. There are no wrong answers when it comes to flan.

NYT Cooking recently featured a cheesy potato gratin... The potatoes weren't particularly large, and the dish was a touch too shallow, so I had leftover cream (halfway up the potatoes, as directed). Next time I'll chuck in some more for extra 'sauce' in the bottom. A meal in itself. That missing wedge is exactly what I ate, and I make no apologies.

Steamed pudding (in the British sense)... Based on this marmalade pudding recipe via Darina Allen, I swapped in Jersey Black Butter (a spiced apple preserve) and Scotch whisky. It was good. The cake was light and moist, without the hassle of whipping up a traditional sponge. I think the one-bowl, breadcrumb thing might become my go-to method for this type of dessert.

Another cookie via bon appétit, this time the Chocolate Chipless Cookie by Shilpa Uskokovic (Tickety-Tok, and possibly paywalled recipe)... Again, a portion of the flour is toasted, but this time in brown butter. For me, this was much more successful because, errrr, butter. I experimented with the thickness and preferred less spread than their version. The chocolate chipless moniker is perhaps a little gimmicky, but as a brown sugar cookie I liked it.

Chocolate Chip Cookies With Olive Oil and Sea Salt by Jesse Szewczyk (Instagram, and possibly paywalled recipe)... They we fine, I guess, but overpromised and underdelivered. I was intrigued by the technique of toasting some of the flour with olive oil, supposedly for a brown butter flavour. It did smell somewhat nutty, but ultimately didn't come through in the finished cookie. Butter is still king. Having said all that, they were better than other vegan chocolate chip cookies I've made, so worth a look if that's your thing.

I had a bunch of egg yolks in search of a purpose so made a big bowl of baked custard from Ottolenghi. Well, it's more burnt custard really, due to the unusual way of making it (here, from last earlier this year). After eating a few spoonfuls I decided such a large quantity was far too dangerous to be within walking distance of, and was wondering what to do with it. A burnt custard tart seemed a reasonable solution... Because I was winging it, there wasn't quite enough of the mix to fill level with the rim for a clean, perfectly flat surface; a good excuse to make even more next time.

I'd never heard of Tate's Bake Shop chocolate chip cookies until Michael Ruhlman mentioned them on his Substack, so I thought I'd try Stella Parks' copy-cat recipe... Mine baked darker than Tate's/Parks', probably because of the dust from using chopped chocolate rather than chips; they also spread more, which might be down to differences in French flour/butter/sugar. I quite liked them: thin, crispy, chocolatey... job done.

It was truly a dark day a couple of years ago when my quince tree succumbed to a strong gust of wind and toppled over. I miss that tree. I was at a friend's the other day and the topic of coings (quinces) came up. She said her deceased neighbour's house was up for sale, and it had a quince tree. The family aren't local so, deciding that nobody would care, we hopped the fence to plunder rescue whatever was there. Sadly, we were mostly too late, with the majority of the fruit too far gone on the ground. But there were a handful where the rot could be cut around and something salvaged. That something turned out to be poached quince... So delicious. I dug out some cake from the freezer and drizzled over a little of the poaching syrup... I really need to replace that tree. In the meantime, here's hoping the house is still for sale this time next year (minus a couple of weeks, of course).

Espresso loaf cake with burnt butter and coffee icing by Diana Henry (recipe)... It was fine, but failed to wow me. I thought the icing was better than the cake, which is the opposite of what @blue_dolphin thought way back on page two (!) of this thread, so don't let me put you off if you like the look of it.

@TdeV The 'recipe', such as it is, was published in the June 2024 issue of Pastry 1 magazine (p118). But all you really need to know is in the two videos I linked to (or here on YouTube). Cut an 18 cm (7-inch) disc of puff pastry. Prick all over with a fork. Peel, core, and halve three or four apples. Slice thinly (1-2 mm). I used a mandolin. Arrange, overlapping, in concentric circles. Brush with (clarified) butter. Sprinkle with sugar (light brown in US). Bake at 180C/350F for around 45 minutes until... it looks nice. Brush lightly with neutral glaze or simple syrup, if you like, for a bit of shine. Tuck in while still warm for peak apple tart.

A friend gave me some of her abundant apples, so I felt a tart coming on... This might have decided for me that a tarte fine aux pommes is the best thing you can do with a handful of apples (sorry, Tarte Tatin). Even with crummy store-bought puff pastry it was epic: a strong apple flavour, the parts where the edges caught the heat, the soft purée where the apples cooked down, the delicate crispness of the pastry. All that was missing was the butteriness of a decent puff. I'll have to revisit this when the weather turns more autumnal and the kitchen cools. (I might have to improve my layering technique to reach the heights of Alex Croquet, though. And with clementine season on the horizon, I'm curious to try his tarte aux clémentines.)