Vacation Upstate...banana brownies, asian puff pastry

I am currently on vacation at Hyde Park for a week since my b/f is currently going to CIA and he already started school while I still have several weeks left. He goes to school at 12:30 pm and comes home at 9 pm. So you can only imagine with can a girl be doing in his apartment all day. Well truthfully, I've been doing nothing...maybe some food blog reading and some baking. The apartment is pretty bad. The shower leaks so you hear water running all the time and the toilet flushes automatically and the oven dial does not have the temperature on it and sometimes the oven doesn't even heat up! With some experimentation, I figured out the oven temperature with a handy dandy oven thermometer. Alright on word with the food blogging.

Very Banana-ie Brownie with Options

Very Banana-ie brownie. More Banana-ie than chocolaty but I've made some adjustment to make it more chocolately. However the picture is of the very banana-ie brownie. Modified the recipe on Vegweb Chocolate Banana Brownie to suit the ingredients that we had.

Recipe Yields 36 1.5" x 1.5" pieces 70 Cal/ Bite size Piece
180g 1 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour
76g 2 2/3 oz Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips or Blocks, Melted
347g 2 1/2 Large Banana, Riped and Mashed
300g 1 1/2 Cup Sugar
1/4 Tsp Salt
15mL 1 Tbsp Vanilla extract

• In a large bowl cream the sugar, mashed banana and melted chocolate together.
• Combine the vanilla extract.
• In a smaller bowl combine the dry ingredients together.
• Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet and combine.
• Pour it into a 9" x 9" pan and bake it in the oven for 400 F for 25-30 minutes.

Option : To make it more chocolaty use 142g 5 oz Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips or Blocks instead of the 76g 2 2/3 oz and used 319g 2 1/3 Large Banana instead of the 347g 2 1/2.

Apple Raisin Chinese Puff Pastry

They are similar to the European puff pastry but not exactly. Instead of butter, lard and oil is mainly used for the fat. I got the recipe of the puff pastry from Cafe of the East. Normally when you go out to eat dimsum, they are filled with the mung bean, red bean paste, taro paste or lotus paste. Apparently being upstate, I don't have the luxury of being a walking distance from my local Asian market so I'll make a apple raisin filled ball.

I modify the puff pastry from Cafe of the East to fit the ingredients I had available.

Recipe Yields 20 Puff Pastry Ball 162 Cal/Pastry Puff Ball

Chinese Puff Pastry 122 cal/ Puff Pastry Dough
Wet Dough
200g 1 2/3 Cup All Purpose Flour
70g 1/3 Cup Shortening*
20g Sugar, Confectioner
+ - 100mL Water

Oil Dough
120g 1 Cup All Purpose Flour
60g 1/4 Cup + 2 Tsp Shortening*

* If you don't want to use the hydrogentated crap you can use expeller pressed oil like Earth Balance shortening and Spectrum shortening.

Filling
742g 3 1/2 Large Apples (I used gala)
85g 3 oz Raisins
177 3/4 Cup Cranberry Juice
1 Tbsp of Sugar, Granulated

To make the pastry dough

• First you need to make the wet dough by combining the sugar and the flour.
• Then cut in the shortening into the dough until all the crumbs are uniform in size.
• Slowly add the water as you mix the dough with your hand until it is smooth like the consistency of bread dough. Then let it rest for 30 minutes.
• Then make the oil dough by cutting in the shortening into the flour and knead it until it has the consistency of the wet dough. Add more shortening if you have to. Then let it rest for 30 minutes.

To make the filling

• Peel and core all the apples and dice them into about 1 cm cubes.
• While you are cubing the apples pour cranberry juice in a medium size pot and put in your raisins and let it simmer on medium heat.
• Then add in your apples and sugar and combine.
• Continue to simmer it until all juice reduces to nothing. Stir occasionally to make sure that the apples or raisin do not stick to your pot.

To assemble the apple raisin pastry

• please click on the picture to enlarge and see the visual aid.

• 1. Put the oil dough on a flatten wet dough.
  2. Wrap the oil dough with the wet dough and pinch the ends together
  3. Roll out the dough vertically.
  4. Roll the long dough downward into a long cylinder, resembling a cigar.
  5. Turn the horizontal cigar 90 degrees so that it is vertical.
  6. Roll out the cigar dough vertically.
  7. Roll the vertical dough downward into a cylinder again.
  8. Sit the cylinder upwards on your palm.
  9. Pinch up the ends so that it forms a ball.
  10. Situate the botto of the ball on your palm, so that the swirly pinched
  up ends are facing you and flatten the dough with your fingers. Make sure
  the edges are thinner than the middle and do not pull on the dough to
  flatten as it will pull apart the coil lamination you have just rolled out.
  11. Put the filling into the middle of the circular dough and pinch up the ends and round it into a ball.
• The dough doesn't spread so you can put it close together on a cookie sheet and bake it for 400 F for about 30 minutes.