Thursday, October 23, 2008

Not Sweet. Sweet!

These are cute. Probably cuter in real life than in this dumb photo.
We call them muffin galettes, and they are made with purchased puff pastry and a medley of backyard fruits.
Some of the backyard fruit didn't come from my own backyard, but I am lucky to be friends with Mr. and Mrs. Married... With Dinner, who have a Santa Rosa plum tree that went plentiful on them this summer.
The Marrieds made up a batch of plum conserve with citrus and walnuts. Oh gosh. Yahoo.
Mr. and Mrs. Crumb have a plum tree of our own (green gage), and we allowed it to develop prunes. The sun and wind, they are great collaborators. We didn't have much say in it.
And, we have that damn pear tree, which was supposed to be all finished by the end of August. But by October we still had four deteriorating specimens in the fridge, all ready to give their lives to this easy, nice dessert.
See, I don't really even like dessert.
And that's how we constructed these muffin galettes: With the addition of no sugar, no cream, no vanilla. I allowed a bit of melted butter to brush the tops of the pastry. And I crumbled in a trace, a mere smidge, of dried lavender buds. It failed to achieve the flavor of soapiness, which was our goal. Soap failure accomplished, yeah. Instead, it just tasted like... cinnamon? But barely.
I would do this again. I might not call it dessert.
In fact, I ate a couple of them for lunch yesterday.

20 comments:

Heather Jefferies said...

Nom. Looks like dinner to me. I'm thinking maybe some slightly par cooked butternut squash chunks, apples and raisins. Yep. And some sage and salt. OK, here I go...

cookiecrumb said...

Alecto: Oh, yes. Sage and salt. I forgot to mention I sprinkled salt in, a bit.
I love your concoction.
I'm ready to make my own pastry now from local whole-wheat flour. Dinner!
(Did you read at El's blog that I didn't know when we're supposed to plant winter squash? Jeesh. Next year.)

Anonymous said...

Oh my! How cute! [And of course I always have to ask myself why it is I don't just go ahead and make something small and cute then I remember the near-death experience I had making little appetizers with a friend once...for 500 people...and it all makes sense. Maybe I am pavlovian-ly anti-cute in my own kitchen? hmm I sure don't mind eating them elsewhere...]

I love your winter squash story.

kudzu said...

Biggles will no doubt suggest that you add some crumbled bacon to the next batch of little galettini!!

cookiecrumb said...

El: I think I'm all butch and stuff, but I love cute food. I cook macaroni and cheese in individual ramekins. Yeeks.
But 500 people; I'd be blowing darts and lobbing lava rocks. (Hey, that makes me manly AND islandy.)

cookiecrumb said...

Kudzu: You KNOW it would work!
(Thanks for my latest Italian vocab word.)

kudzu said...

Heh. I made that one up. Decided to check my dizionario and found that it might mean crackers -- or (ahem)cocky young men (root: cockerel). So we both learned something.

Anita (Married... with dinner) said...

We have a lot of that conserve... I will definitely make some galettes with it!

Nikki @ NikSnacks said...

Hey, I have candy for dinner all of the time! (Shh...don't tell anyone. I want everyone to think that I cook every night; or at least a few days a week)

cookiecrumb said...

Kudzu: OK, well. Those are good to eat, eh. (What?)
Hee.

Anita: This is amazingly easy. I hope you experiment. Thanks so much for both jars of crazy plumminess.
I didn't even mention how good your plum conserve was in the "liquid cake."

Nikki: I often have cheaters' burritos for dinner. Tonight, maybe. :)

michael, claudia and sierra said...

2 for lunch?
perfect...

Zoomie said...

Great idea! I might steal this idea for a lunch I'm giving on Sunday, but sub in apples for the plums and maybe some butternut squash. You always give me good ideas.

The Spiteful Chef said...

Why are you trying to make soap taste? Is that a joke? An esoteric culinary quest? A function of my head cold confusing me?

Era said...

Yum. I love finding new things to bake in a muffin tin.

cookiecrumb said...

ceFret: I know! It wasn't desserty at all, but it felt like having two candy bars for lunch. I can claim I got my five servings of fruit, eh?

Zoomie: Oh, come on! You KNOW I stole this idea from you! The only thing different is that I used muffin pans (which was actually Cranky's idea, because I was going to make mine look exactly like your fruit "pie.")

Spiteful: No, that was a function of bad sentence writing. Our goal was to FAIL to achieve soapiness, and we accomplished it. Darn, bad sentence again. We dodged the soapy bullet on purpose, kapische?

Era: Muffin tins (and wee, tiny casseroles) are so much fun.

Dagny said...

I like any food that is small.

cookiecrumb said...

Dagny: Cocktail food!!

Brittany said...

These are just too dainty and adorable for words.
I could probably eat a pile of them.

Anonymous said...

Ooh, I love little apps in mini muffin tins!! I made a bazillion of them with figs from my parent's trees, thyme and Brie. They keep so well in the freezer and you can just pop a few out when unexpected guests arrive or you have no effort left for dinner!

cookiecrumb said...

Britanny: Don't you love being ENTICED to eat? Very come-hither.

Tina: OK. I HAVE to get a mini-muffin tin now. These were just the usual king-sized. But leetle is pleeeezing!
Ohgod, figs, brie and thyme. That's FOOD. Major merci.