Fruitcake Recipe: Dessert Week

I hadn’t made a dessert several weeks ago and I thought of an option that, apart from being fruity, would be attractive especially for the little ones. I like desserts that have various textures, where we combine the sensation of something crunchy like a spongy, broken dough, puff pastry or choux; something creamy like a pastry, foams, meringue or whipped cream; and always the fruity touch of the infinity of options that we have.

A dessert can always have some aromatic element such as spices, the most used are vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, sweet pepper; A little bit of cocoa nibs looks good and always remember that a dessert should not be extremely sweet, if it has fruit, just accentuating its flavor a little with some sugar is enough, but this should not prevail over the product.

Fruit pie

Ingredients for the dough:

• 400 grams (1 cup and a half) of flour without baking powder
• 200 milliliters (1 cup) warm water
• 40 g (2 tablespoons) oil
• 15 grams (half a tablespoon) of fresh yeast
• 10 grams (1 teaspoon) of salt

Elaboration:

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, add to the flour that we have previously sifted to avoid lumps, knead together with the salt and oil until obtaining a homogeneous dough.
2. Let it rest until it doubles in size, taking care to cover the dough to avoid crusting or drying out.
3. Bake in a preheated oven at 220 degrees for 10 minutes to pre-bake the dough.

Ingredients for the pastry cream:

• 250 milliliters (1 cup) of milk
• 2 egg yolks
• 125 grams (½ cup) of sugar
• 50 grams (2 well-heaped tablespoons) cornstarch (cornstarch)
• Zest of 2 lemons

Elaboration:

1. Mix half the sugar with the milk and bring to medium heat until completely dissolved.
2. Mix the other half of the sugar with the egg yolks, cornstarch and lemon zest. To this preparation we add half of the hot milk, this with the aim of equalizing temperatures and avoiding lumps and that the yolks cook immediately if we put them directly on the fire.
3. Once this procedure is completed, return the preparation to the heat and, stirring, always bring to a boil, reserve well covered with plastic wrap until cool.

Ingredients for the coverage:

• 2 green apples or pears
• 15 ripe figs
• 2 lemons
• ½ cup of walnuts
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• ground cinnamon to taste

Elaboration:

1. Cut the apple into quarters and remove the seeds, then cut them into thin slices and reserve in water with lemon to prevent them from turning yellow (oxidation).
2. Cut the ripe figs into quarters.

Assembly and baking:

1. With the precooked and cold dough, we spread the pastry cream all over the surface, put the fig quarters on top and add the walnuts. Cover with the apple slices and sprinkle with sugar and ground cinnamon.
2. We take to the oven until we observe that the apple is golden.
3. Remove from the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes.