Chocolate Walnut Marmalade Tart

Guys, tomorrow is Pi Day. Not just any Pi Day, but the Most Exciting Pi Day Ever: 3.14.15. If you eat this pie at 9:26:54 in the evening (or hey, the morning - pie for breakfast!), you are an absolute nerd and I love you for eternity.

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If you don't make this in honor of Pi Day, you should make it because it's amazing. As I hinted in an Instagram post a couple weeks back, I think this is the best tart I've ever made. The picture at the top of the post is a glamour shot of the single sliver that remained we gorged ourselves on it all weekend.

"But it's a tart, not a pie!" True, true. The first time, I made it in a tart pan, and it was glorious. But I knew I wanted to post it for Pi Day, so to please all you literalists, I made it in a pie dish this time around. The filling didn't cook as evenly (you can see that in the photo below), but it's still a winner.

Chocolate, ground walnuts, thick dark honey, and lots of marmalade - this tart is no shrinking violet. But as good as the flavor is, it's texture that really distinguishes it: like custard, maybe slightly more set, it's smooth and silky, and has just enough chew that I guarantee, you won't be able to stop at one piece. Sorry, not sorry.

Chocolate Walnut Marmalade Tart
Adapted from Nigel Slater’s Ripe

I made this in tart pans and pie pans. I like the version in a tart pan better, but both work.

Crust:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
9 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
1 egg

Filling:

10.5 tablespoons (150 grams) unsalted butter
5 ounces (140 grams) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2/3 cup (215 grams) orange marmalade
1/4 cup (85 grams) honey, preferably dark
1/4 cup (60 grams) sugar
1/4 cup (80 ml) heavy cream
1 cup (100 grams) walnuts, ground
1 egg

Make the crust: In the bowl of a food processor, pulse flour, powdered sugar, and butter until the butter is in pea-sized pieces. Add egg, and pulse several times, until the mixture starts to form small clumps, then larger clumps, and the flour disappears. Dump the mixture onto a piece of plastic wrap, bring together into a single mass, wrap up the dough, and shape into a disk. Refrigerate 1 hour.

Make the filling: Melt butter and chocolate together in the microwave or over medium-low heat, stirring at regular intervals, until completely smooth. Add marmalade, honey, sugar, and cream; stir to combine. Add egg and mix until fully incorporated. Add walnuts and mix until evenly distributed.

Shape crust: Roll the dough out into a 12-inch circle. Fold dough gently in quarters without creasing and transfer to a 9-inch tart pan. Unfold the quartered dough, setting it gently into the pan, and press gently into the bottom and sides of the pan, trying to keep things as even as possible.  

Blind-bake crust: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line the crust with a layer of tin foil, and fill with pie weights or uncooked beans (I have a set I keep specifically for this purpose, since you can’t cook the beans after using them as pie weights.) Bake for 20 minutes. Carefully remove foil and weights/ beans, set on a rack or tray, and let cool completely before filling.

Fill and bake crust: Fill crust with enough filling so to leave about a 1/2-inch worth of empty space in the tart shell. (If you have both extra tart dough and extra filling, you can bake off a few tartlettes.) Bake for 30-35 minutes, rotating half way through baking if your oven heats unevenly. The tart is done when it is only slightly wobbly right in the center of the tart; lots of ripply wobbles probably mean it needs more time.

Serve: Let the tart cool completely (about 1 hour) before serving. Serve with spoonfuls of whipped cream or creme fraiche.

Extra keeps for about a week tightly wrapped, but c’mon – you won’t have extra.

Thanksgiving.

In a cliche to end all cliches, thanksgiving came early for us this year.

Our little Adi was born Saturday before the holiday. She came into the world with a super-alert gaze, a chill, lovely disposition, and a full head of hair. Needless to say, we're over the moon.

We've spent the past few weeks offline, adjusting to the rhythms of parenthood. I keep thinking back to the Friday night dinner we hosted back in early November, where I made Peking duck, and that last apple pie I made the week before I went into labor. Both feel like they happened eons ago. Now there's a tiny human in our house, and we're responsible for her. It's all quite surreal.

To our great fortune, my brother- and sister-in-law also ensured that we had Thanksgiving of the more traditional variety. There was turkey, stuffing, kale, green beans, brussels sprouts, sweet potato casserole, gravygravygravy, cranberry sauce, and more pies and cakes than I had time to inventory. Loving, eager hands held and passed Adi all night; she cooperated perfectly. And when we had to leave rather abruptly, our wonderful family sent us home with a huge bag of leftovers to sustain us through the weekend. I even managed to secure a piece of gingerbread chocolate cake for the road.

Friends, I have so many recipes to share with you. If you'll be patient, I'll try to work through them over the next few weeks. The days (and nights!) are rather unpredictable, but they're growing less so. And to my great surprise, my desire to cook hasn't really faded since I gave birth. Time is in shorter supply and comes in small spurts, but I've managed to squeeze in a bit of cooking and baking between feeds and burps and whatnot. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, happiest of holidays to all of you. Enjoy this lovely time of family and friends. See you back here in a bit with a recipe or two. xo.

Cherry Chocolate Almond Hamentaschen

A bit later than I'd hoped to share this recipe, but I'm thinking you may have many, if not most, of the ingredients in this recipe on hand. Cream cheese. Chocolate chips. Almonds. Maybe some dried cherries, from that last batch of granola. Yeah? If so, a batch of my new favorite hamentaschen is within reach.

This started when I went to make Deb's homemade poppy seed filling. My standard regimen is to make one batch of poppy, one of nutella. This year, the nutella was replaced by Nocciolata, which has less junk and a cleaner, more hazelnuty flavor than nutella. (Full disclosure: the Nociolata folks sent me a sample to try.) But for my third batch, I really wanted something fruity, and for once, I didn't want to use jam.

I thought back to last year's chocolate raspberry hamentaschen, which I absolutely adored. I wanted something similar. But I also kept coming back to this idea of a hamentaschen flavored like rugelach: some nuts, some dried fruit, some chocolate, all folded up into a pastry - the two aren't all that different.

The minute rugelach popped into my mind, I was off to the races. Dried cherries, plenty of chocolate, some ground almonds for texture, a bit of orange zest, and then some brandy, because Purim. Don't forget a cream cheese dough, essential to that rugelach flavor. The result was perfection.

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Can I tell you a couple other things I so love about this recipe? The dough comes together super easily, and you don't even need a food processor. I didn't use one. It rolls out perfectly with just a light sprinkling of flour, and guys, the sides STAY UP. No flat pancake hamentaschen this year. This dough is perfect.

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I'm crowning these my new favorite, just in time for the holiday.

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One year ago: Chocolate Raspberry Hamentaschen asdf Two years ago: Moroccan Chicken with Apricots Three years ago: The original Hamentaschen recipe and the World's Best Almond CakeFour years ago: Gnocchi with Butternut Squash and Shiitake Mushrooms  asldkfh Five years ago: Hummus and Muhammara and Labneh, oh my! Six years ago: Vintage Breakfast Biscuits

Chocolate Cherry Almond Hamentaschen Inspired by a couple favorite rugelach recipes Makes about 50

For the dough: 4 oz. unsalted butter, softened 4 oz. cream cheese 1 cup powdered sugar zest of 1 lemon 2 egg yolks 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the filling: 1 cup dried cherries, chopped 1/3 cup brandy (can substitute orange juice, milk, or even water with a squeeze of lemon) 3/4 cup chocolate chips juice and zest of 1 orange 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons almond meal pinch of salt

Make the dough: In a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, cream butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and lemon zest until smooth and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and stir vigorously to incorporate. Honest, you don't need a food processor - I used a fork.

Add flour and salt, and stir or pulse until dough starts to come together. Dump dough onto clean work surface and fold it over itself a few times until there are no dry pieces left. Gather dough into two disks, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. (Dough will keep tightly wrapped in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.)

Make the filling: In a small pot combine chopped cherries, brandy, chocolate chips, and orange juice and zest. Heat on medium for 5-7 minutes, stirring regularly, until chocolate has melted and everything becomes a mostly-smooth mass. Add almond meal and salt; stir to combine. Refrigerate until room temperature or colder.

Make the hamentaschen: Preheat oven to 350° and line two baking sheets with parchment or silpat.

Remove one disk from the refrigerator. Lightly dust a clean work surface with flour, and roll out the dough to slightly thicker than 1/8-inch thick. Use a 2.5-inch cutter to cut disks of dough, and immediately plop the disks onto one of the lined baking sheets. When the work surface is floured, the disks will pop right out when you pull up the cutter. If not, don’t worry – just use a bench scraper or metal spatula to lift the disks and put them onto the baking sheet. Don’t worry about spacing the disks evenly; these hamentaschen don’t need much breathing room, and folded hamentaschen take up much less space than the disks.

Prepare your workstation: bring over your cooled filling and two small spoons, fill a small bowl with water, and get out a pastry brush. Use the pastry brush or your finger to brush a bit of water along the edge of each disk, and then use your thumbs and pointers to fold each disk into a triangle shape (see here for pictures).

Bake cookies for 10-15 minutes, until tops are slightly golden. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes before transferring. Meanwhile, fill your second sheet with cookies. By the time round 2 is ready to bake, round 1 will be cool enough to transfer, and that baking sheet will be free for batch 3.

Hamentaschen will keep in an airtight container for at least a week, probably more. They also freeze very well.

Ruby Campari Fizz

The other night, we met friends for dinner at a restaurant we last visited almost exactly one year ago: Range, in Friendship Heights. We went last February, for my birthday, with a few close friends. The restaurant was brand new and very on its game. We had a fantastic meal and even better drinks - some of the best I've had in the city.

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This time, our meal was less memorable: the servers were green and very conspicuous, awkwardly explaining and pointing (very closely!) to every element on the plate, interrupting our conversation at what seemed like all the worst moments, and insisting on giving us their spiels when we clearly already understood the concept of small plates. (Restaurants: for heaven's sake, stop with your spiels! Let us eat cake!)

But the drinks. The drinks! They were still as wonderful as I remembered from one year ago. I had an old-fashioned glass full of scotch, pumpkin shrub, and bitters with a hint of cayenne. And D, well she had the most intense drink of all: basically a big glass of whiskey, with a hint of maraschino and bitters. But mostly whiskey. The strongest, least smooth Old Fashioned you've ever had. And what was it called? The Mother-in-Law. Of course.

Before we go any further: I love my in-laws. Got that?

But that's a well-named cocktail. It makes you laugh when you drink it. It sticks with you long after it's gone. And if you liked it, you'll know exactly how to order it next time.

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Which is why I felt compelled to rename drink I served for brunch this weekend. The original version is called the 522 North Pinckney, which is one of those names that you only understand if you recognize that it's an address, and then go and know the person whose address it used to be.

Turns out, 522 North Pinckney is the former address of Brian Bartels, who co-owns Fedora, a Greenwich Village Bar, with Gabriel Stulman, who used to run the front of the house at the wonderful Little Owl, in the West Village, and also owns another Village spot called Joseph Leonard, where apparently Brian Bartels mixologizes. (Word? Now it is!) And that's where 522 North Pinckney comes from.

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But I've never been to Joseph Leonard. I've never been to Fedora. I've never met either of these (surely fedora-ed) fellows. And I guess I figure that unless drinks have names so common and ingrained that calling them something else misleads people (i.e. bloody mary; mimosa), a cocktail's name should evoke something you understand. Is Ruby Campari Fizz the most brilliant name ever? Ha. But you hear it, and you know what you're about to get.

Behold, the Ruby Campari Fizz:

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Ruby because your glass is about one-third red grapefruit juice. Campari because it's a prevalent flavor, and the other special liqueur in there - St. Germain - is too unwieldy a name to slap on a cocktail. Fizz is Prosecco or Cava, because you don't need to splurge on Champagne to have a happy new year.

It's a mighty strong way to ring in 2014, whether in the evening, served in flutes, or over New Year's brunch, in a coupe or the like. It's pretty and sparkly and cheery. I hope this coming year is all of those things and more, for all of us.

Happy New Year, friends. Cheers!

Ruby Campari FizzAdapted from the bar Joseph Leonard, via Bon Appetit

Makes 8 servings

3 red grapefruits 1/2 cup St. Germain (elderflower liqueur) 1/4 cup Campari 1 750-ml. bottle Prosecco or Cava (go with something inexpensive)

Set a strainer over a large bowl.

Halve grapefruits. Squeeze 5 grapefruit halves into the bowl. If you want your cocktail pulpy, transfer some of the suspended pulp from the strainer into the bowl. Press on remaining pulp and seeds to release any juice, then discard the pulp and seeds. You should wind up with approximately 2 cups of liquid.

Cut the remaining grapefruit half into two. Then slice one of the grapefruit quarters into thin slices along its cross-section. You'll use these slices to garnish the glasses.

Add St. Germain and Campari to the grapefruit juice. Transfer to a pitcher, and refrigerate until ready to serve (at least 1 hour if possible).

To serve, divide grapefruit mixture equally among 8 glasses. (If serving fewer than 8 people, pour about 1/3 cup of the mixture into each glass.) Top with Prosecco or Cava. Set one cross-section slice of grapefruit on each glass, and serve.

(Keep grapefruit mixture chilled before serving, or make up to one day in advance and chill thoroughly.)