Puits d'Amour with pesto and strawberries

When we last checked in, you had your blitz turned and wrapped and ready to be rolled out. Today, I'll show you how to make Puits d'Amour, which can be either savory OR sweet, and are a major crowd pleaser at parties.

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Take your puff pastry and roll it out to about 1/8 inch thick. This is half as thick as it was when you were rolling it during your turns. When you have it rolled out, cut it in half (it's just easier to work with a smaller section, I think- so I cut it in half, wrap one half and keep it cold in the fridge, while I work on the other half). Like. So.

Take circle cutters and cut the dough into circles (my circles were 2 inches in diameter). Take half of the circles and place them on a parchment lined sheet pan, brush with an egg wash. With the other half of the circles, you're going to cut a 1/2 to 1 inch hole in the center, then place these circles on top of the egg washed circles on the sheet pan:

With your fingers, lightly press around the edges of the circles, and then egg wash the tops.

Place the sheet pan in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes (know your oven- they may take a little less time, or a little longer, so peek at them from time to time). When they're done, the puits d'amour should be puffed and lightly golden.

NOW, this is the fun part. You can fill these babies with anything. When we made them in school, my partner and I filled them with brie, caramelized onions, fig jam, and topped them with baked prosciutto and a balsamic reduction.

Today, I'm filling them with pesto, fresh chopped strawberry, and garnishing with basil.

Once your puits d'amour have cooled, poke through the center hole with your finger, so that the shell is ready to be filled:

Spoon in a little pesto:

and fresh chopped strawberry:

And now garnish with fresh basil. I happened to have teeny tiny basil leaves sprouting off the quite leggy basil in my herb garden (seriously, that stuff will take over the WORLD if you let it. Basil and Bamboo: watch those suckers), and I thought the small leaves would look cute, so I picked them and stuck them in with the strawberry:

Aaaaaaand, DONE! Also, I'm happy to tell you that it was delicious- fresh and nutty, light, but VERY flavorful. I'm a pesto fiend (see: all of the basil). Balsamic reduction would have been nice on this. You can also substitute strawberry jam for the fresh strawberries and maybe some chopped toasted pine nuts or walnuts for the top? Play around with it.

PUFF PASTRY, you guys.

Blitz: quick puff pastry.

ALRIGHT. Everyone loves puff pastry, but legend has it that it takes 12 hours to make, barefoot, uphill in the snow both ways, under the light of a full moon on the third Wednesday, and requires a single tear from a young male unicorn in order to properly rise.

Lies. All of them.

Fact: I don't make traditional puff pastry (I almost never remember that thing about the light of the full moon, and then it's ANOTHER WASTED UNICORN TEAR). If I'm making puff pastry, it's a blitz and it takes me maybe an hour to make, start to finish. Probably less. Depends on what else I'm doing.

I know, do you want to take a minute and sit down? It's ok, go ahead. I'll wait.

Ok. First thing I'm going to tell you to do is to get yourself ready. Mis that stuff out you guys, because you need to keep the butter cold, and your water ICE cold, so get your butter chopped then stick it in the fridge while you measure out your flour, salt and water.

these are your blitz players. from left: AP flour, lots of butter, fine crystal salt and ice cold water

Here's where I tell you something that might alarm you: I've taken to measuring ingredients by weight and so I only use a kitchen scale. I don't think in terms of cups, I think in terms of ounces and pounds, BUT you can do one of two things: convert this to cups (there are 8 ounces in 1 cup) OR get yourself a $20 kitchen scale. I'm going to talk your ear off one day about digital kitchen scales. Here's a preview: if you like to cook or bake, a kitchen scale is going to give you a much more consistent product since the size of a "cup" can vary, but 8 ounces of flour will always be 8 ounces of flour. This recipe will be by weight. If you're currently weeping over your keyboard, let me know and I'll convert the recipe. Otherwise, onward my brave little blitz makers!

I'm making half a recipe of blitz for this post, later, I'm going to actually MAKE something with it. So you're going to get a full recipe, start to finish. Ok, you ready? Blitz. Here we go:

17.5 oz flour
14 oz butter, chopped into small pieces
1/2 oz salt
8 oz ice cold water (give or take, you may not need all 8 ounces- you don't want this dough to be too wet)

This first part is incredibly complicated, so pay VERY CLOSE attention: in a mixer with the dough hook attached, dump everything into the bowl.

haha, just kidding, that's as easy as it gets in pastry!

Mix the flour, salt, butter and water on medium until they are just barely combined. The chunks of butter will be about grape size, like so:

DON'T OVER MIX, you want this dough to be a shaggy mess, just barely holding itself together. The rest of the blending you will do as you roll the dough. So, when the butter is about grape sized, and the flour is still pretty loose, go ahead and turn the dough out onto a floured surface.

look at that gorgeous hot mess!

Form a rectangle-ish shaped mound with the dough, and roll it out to a 1/4 in thick rectangle. Like so:

rectangle-ish

Then you're going to do one turn. Fold the bottom third up, then fold the top third down, and turn the dough so that the seam runs along the right side, like a book.

bottom third up

top third down

turn like a book

That is ONE turn. You're going to repeat this process five more times (for 6 turns total)- this is what gives you all of your flaky layers. So here we go, second turn: roll your dough into another long rectangle, about 1/4 in thick, fold the bottom third up, fold the top third down, and turn so that the seam runs along the right side.

it's starting to look more like dough I made on purpose, isn't it?

Do this a third time, and a fourth time, each time making sure that the sides and corners are lining up as straight as possible- these will be your layers- then stop. Wrap it in plastic wrap, put it in the fridge to give the butter a chance to cool again. If at any time you think your butter is getting too melty, stop and stick the dough in the fridge. I stopped after three turns, because my kitchen was warm and the butter seemed too soft (the dough was really sticky).

Take a break, mark how many turns you've completed so that you don't forget, then come back to it in about 20 minutes.

When you pull the dough out of the fridge, complete the remaining turns to get yourself to 6 turns. Then? You're done. You just made puff pastry.

NO UNICORN TEARS REQUIRED.

In the next post, I'll show you what I made with this dough (hint: it involves pesto and strawberries).