Mini Quiche Lorraines

Every potluck or brunch I go to there's mini quiches that are store bought. I wanted to make homemade ones for my Spring Tea. I make a regular sized quiche lorraine a lot - I even have the recipe in my cookbook, but I've never made mini quiches. One of the tea books I'd gotten from the library had mini quiches for their teas. I think I googled mini quiches too and was able to read about and see some differing processes for making them. Here's my process -

Quiche Dough

6 Tb unsalted butter
4 1/2 oz cream cheese
2 C flour
pinch of salt
Mix the dough together and divide into 4 dozen balls (about 1") and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

I flattened each ball with the back of a glass and with a small roller, rolled them thinner. The outer edges of the circle can be split apart for easing them into the small muffin pans. Press them down into the mini tart holes. I cut off any excess at the top. I pricked the bottom of each tart, and put several pie weight stones in each. While working on another pan, I chilled each in the freezer (or refrigerate for a longer time). Prebake the quiche shells in a 375 degree oven about 5 minutes, cool and gently remove stones. Return to the pans and fill with quiche filling and bake again.

QUICHE LORRAINE FILLING

precook about 4-6 pieces of bacon and finely crumble
finely grate some cheese - I used colby jack
Sprinkle about 1/2-1 tsp each of bacon and cheese into each mini quiche shell
Beat together
4 large eggs
1 C cream
1/2 tsp each salt & pepper

Ladle this mixture over bacon and cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-35 minutes, or till set.

Raspberry Tart

I'd mentioned in another post that we had company last week - investor/geology men. I wanted a dessert one night, without much work. When I make pies, I roll my crusts out very thin and always have extra crust. If I don't make little cinnamon tarts with the leftover, I put it in a ziplock in the freezer. Well, I remembered I had lots of little bags in the big ziplock of leftover crusts. I pulled out two of them to thaw. That evening I rolled them out to fit in a tart pan. I didn't have a recipe or want to spend time looking for a recipe, so here's what I did ...

RASPBERRY TART

- unbaked crust put in tart pan (click side bar "pies" label to see my crust recipe - it's whole wheat or whole grain something, considering the leftover varieties there could be).
- dumped frozen raspberries till it looked just right - still gaps of crust showing through - not too much and not too little.
- sprinkled several Tablespoons of sucanat (dehydrated sugar cane) - here again, went by looks
- poured over some cream.
Baked at 375 degrees till it looked done - pretty set (set up more as it cooled) and crust browned.

Found out raspberries were the guest's favorite fruit. So the next morning when I made sourdough pancakes I heated some frozen raspberries for a pancake topping with my homemade yogurt and maple syrup.

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Having company this past week, I made a family favorite. It's in my cookbook. When I make something new, I often pull out several cookbooks to compare recipes, then pick and choose. This requires "knowing your ingredients" - which is a chapter in the Joy of Cooking cookbook.

RHUBARB CUSTARD PIE
First, I freeze the 1/2" cut-up rhubarb from our garden in a heaping quart measuring bowl, so it's about 5 cups of rhubarb.

PIE CRUST

(for 2+ crusts)
2 C flour
3/4 C butter
pinch of salt
about 1/4 C water (depends on flour moisture)

I use my ground white whole wheat or pastry wheat I've always got in the freezer in Ziplock bags. Since I had kamut in there too, this pie is half wheat and half kamut. I always use butter, unsalted if I have it. I've used lard or the newer organic shortening which is palm oil. I never use shortening. It's vegetable oil heated so hot it's next step would be plastic. Our body does not know how to break this fat down - it's what's now called trans-fat. And labels that have partially hydrogenated anything I never get. It's the word "partial" that's killing people. It races around our body looking for a home and latches onto cells, hurting them, and today we have way more cancer, diabetes, and heart disease than ever.

Cut the flour, salt, and butter together till fine crumble. Mix in water till mixture forms a ball. It shouldn't be sticky. I use a food processor all the time now for the preliminary processing of the dough, unless I'm making a larger amount, then I use the whips in my regular Bosch bowl, putting the cut-up butter in first. But I always finish up both processes by hand with a pastry blender. Mixing the final bits of water in is when we often over-process pie dough, which makes it tough. Then I flatten the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate it while putting together the filling. Keeping the dough chilled is another key to a flaky crust.

Filling -
the 5 cups cut up fresh or frozen rhubarb put in pie first.
Mix together -
3 eggs
2 Tb whole wheat flour
2 Tb tapioca
1/3 C honey
1 C sugar (we've been practically eliminating sugar, so I'm going to cut this back next time cuz it's too sweet for us now)
1/2-1 tsp orange peel
pinch of salt

Pour the filling over the rhubarb and cover with a top crust and make steam vents. I usually sprinkle it with a touch of cinnamon. Bake for 10 minutes at 400, then lower to 350 and continue baking another 45-60 minutes. We like pie crust well-browned and giving the bottom crust a chance to thoroughly cook too.

When I put on the top crust I knife off the excess dough before crimping the edges.

I roll out this excess dough for little cinnamon tarts. Sometimes I'll put pats of butter then sprinkle on lots of cinnamon. The very little bit of sugar added on these is Sucanat. It can't really be called a sugar, cuz by its very nature, sugar is processed. Sucanat is plain dehydrated sugar cane.