Boston Cream Pie

Mr. Chili’s favorite birthday cake is Boston Cream Pie. I believe it’s true that I’ve made him one every May 30th for the last three years in a row. While the recipe for Boston Cream Pie is a little fussy, it still qualifies as stupid-easy, so here we go.

For starters, I’ve yet to find a yellow cake recipe that I like as well as what I can get out of a box. Judge me not, my friends; I have no problem whipping up a scratch chocolate cake, but there’s something about that dense, heady vanilla flavor of a box yellow cake that I haven’t been able to adequately recreate, so Betty Crocker it is. I make two layers according to the package directions, then set them out to cool while I get on with the filling and the glaze.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with custard; I love to eat it, but I hate to make it. Well, let me amend that - I don’t HATE to make it, but it took me a long time to learn the technique of good custard-making (I failed it in home ec. classes in high school and had more than my fair share of split custards in my adulthood, too). I figured it out, though; here’s how you do it:

In a small bowl, beat two egg yolks together and set them aside. Combine 1/3 cup of sugar (I use a little more), 2 tablespoons of cornstarch (I sift the cornstarch through a little mesh strainer first, just to be sure there are no lumps that might give me trouble later in the process) and a pinch of salt in a sauce pan and stir in 1 1/2 cups of milk. Heat these over medium, stirring often, until the mixture comes just to a boil, then temporarily remove the pan from the heat (keep the burner on).

Scoop out a little of the hot mixture and, whisking constantly, drizzle it into the egg yolks. Then, scoop out a little more and repeat this process. When you’ve worked in about 1/3 of the hot stuff into the yolks, scrape them back into the saucepan and cook the whole thing together for about two and a half minutes - it should be thick and bubbly.

Remove the pan from the heat and pour the custard through a strainer into a bowl (you’ll have to coax the stuff through the mesh - it should be pretty thick by now). I stir in a little vanilla or, even better, vanilla paste at this point, then I put a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard and stash the bowl in the fridge to chill while I get on with the glaze.

Boston cream pie is covered with a simple ganache; and when I say “simple,” I mean it. Put one cup of milk or cream in the microwave or, if you don’t have a microwave - don’t snicker; I know a LOT of people who don’t - heat it on the stove just until it’s good and hot but not boiling (three minutes in the zapper works for me, or about five minutes on the stove). In the meantime, chop up about 12 ounces of good chocolate (or, alternately, about a cup and a half of chocolate chips). Pour the milk over the chocolate and let it sit for a moment or two, then start stirring; pretty soon, the whole mixture should be smooth and glossy. Set it aside to cool (sometimes I’ll put this in the fridge, but not often; getting it to room temperature is usually sufficient).

Put one of the cake layers on a plate, dump all of the cooled custard in a pile in the center, then put the other layer on top and gently press until the custard starts to ooze out the sides. Pour the ganache over, stick in some candles, and make a wish!

The only thing you should be aware of is that once this cake is cut, it’s photogenic days are over. The top of the cake WILL slide off the bottom if given a chance (we came downstairs the next morning to find this had happened) and because the custard is made with egg yolks, it’ll go bad pretty quickly if not kept refrigerated. I don’t think this will be a problem, though; it probably won’t last that long, anyway.

YUM!

Kwee-Chee *Edited Again*

Otherwise known as quiche.

The dictionary defines quiche as a pie-like dish consisting of an unsweetened pastry shell filled with a custard and usually containing cheese and other ingredients, as vegetables, seafood, or ham. Pretty much all of my cookbooks say about the same thing.

Since Organic Mama bought WAY more eggs than she needed for the fixings for her daughter’s bat mitzvah, she needs some good, egg-intensive dishes. For her, I’m posting my favorite quiche recipe.

I don’t fuss with crust. I find that I can never get both the quiche and the crust done quite to my liking, so I skip the crust part altogether. I make up for this by serving my quiche with some sort of hearty bread - usually a crusty French bread accompanied by a little too much butter.

If you DO want to have a crusted quiche, make (or buy) enough pie dough for a 9-inch pan. Dock the pastry (poke it full of little holes with a fork), weight it down with pie weights or dried beans, and pre-bake it in a 375° oven for about 30 minutes. Remove the crust and allow it to cool completely, and turn the oven down to 300°.

If you choose NOT to fuss with crust, butter a 9-inch pie plate and set it aside. Beat together 4 eggs with 2 cups of light cream (the dairy you use can be varied to your liking and/or what happens to be in your fridge at the moment). To this, stir in a pinch of salt and a grind or two of pepper and set aside.

In the bottom of your pie plate (or, alternately, in your pre-baked and cooled crust), put whatever extras you’d like to have in your quiche. My personal favorites are stewed tomatoes, onion and bacon (both the onion and the bacon having been cooked together over medium heat until soft and crisp, respectively), then a little too much grated sharp Cheddar cheese. Really, though, the possibilities are just about endless: spinach and goat cheese or feta, asparagus and gruyere, ham and swiss- really, let your imagination go. Here, for example, we have tonight’s offering; turkey ham, diced red onion, and chopped asparagus with Cheddar:

I sometimes use quiche as a “fridge-purge” dish; I’ll root around in my refrigerator and come up with all kinds of interesting combinations. As far as quantities for the extras go, use your best judgment. About a half cup of each (maybe a little heavier on the cheese) for a 9 inch pie pan would probably do it.

On top of your extras, gently pour over the egg and cream, sprinkle over more of your cheese (if you have any left over), and bake in the center of a pre-heated 300° oven and bake 30-45 minutes, or until the quiche is slightly browned and set (if you’re using a crust and it starts to brown too much, as it’s likely to do, make a little ring of tin foil to shield it). How long it takes will depend on how deep the pie plate is and the accuracy of your oven’s thermostat. I do a doneness test by poking the center of the quiche with a knife; if the knife comes out mostly clean, we’re in business.

Let the quiche cool for about 10 minutes - it’ll slice more cooperatively that way - and serve hot or cold. Honestly, I tend to at least double this recipe and make the quiche in a buttered, rectangular glass cake pan - one little pie never seems sufficient, especially since it fridges so well and makes for a fantastic next-day lunch.

Our favorite accompaniment to quiche is a dark green salad tossed with some sort of zingy vinaigrette, but that’s just us.

YUM!

*I changed the cooking directions from the original suggestion.  Cooking a custard too fast will cause it to split - you’ll end up with what amounts to essentially scrambled eggs floating in a puddle of water.  Low and slow is the way to go with custards.  Your patience will be rewarded, Grasshopper…*