Ahhhhh...the Galette

I saved the best of the meal for last. I am just so pleased at how this dessert turned out and I most definitely will be making it again. A galette is supposedly a rustic, country pie, but it can be lovely just the same, don't you think?

I got the recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Peaches and raspberries were on sale last week, so trying to decide what fruit to use was easy. Before I joined Tuesday's with Dorie, I had read the group's results with this recipe and had seen that combo somewhere but for the life of me couldn't remember. Thanks to a comment in the first post I made on this meal, I now have the answer! Thanks N.O.E. of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs for the inspiration!

My usual pie dough recipe is Martha Stewart's pâte brisée. I love the all butter crust because, besides being delicious, it's both flaky and super tender. Some say that butter doesn't make for a flaky crust, but mine always came out pretty well. The only problem I've ever found with it is that it's a little more difficult to work with than those using shortening - tends to break after rolled and it must be re-chilled after placing it in the pan because the butter melts really fast and, if not really cold, it'll slide down the sides of your pie pan. Of course, the fat of choice that most professionals agree makes for the best all around crust is lard. I personally haven't tried it yet, I guess because I can't get around the whole cow fat thing, but isn't butter essentially the same thing? I will try it one day...one day. Anyway, for this galette, I used Dorie's pie dough recipe in the book. I have to admit, I really liked this crust - it was the best of both worlds (using mostly butter and a little shortening) and therefore was very easy to work with and tasted fabulous.

A few notes:

• As I've said before, my pie crust rolling skills leave something to be desired so I made one and a half recipes and had plenty. In fact, I increased the diameter of the finished galette from 9 inches to 10 and I think it makes for a really nice presentation being a bit bigger.


• The recipe calls for 8 peaches, but I could only get 5 in mine (and that's using the bigger diameter!) and they fit perfectly. Then I just sprinkled about a half cup of raspberries around. Pretty, huh?

• I forgot to buy graham cracker crumbs, so they were omitted from the recipe. These are used to soak up some of the juices from the cooked fruit and my omission became obvious about halfway through cooking - my beautiful galette was swimming in peach juice. I ended up carefully holding the tray and parchment over the sink (said a quick prayer) and tilted it slightly to let some of the liquid drain off. It turned out okay, but I don't recommend skipping this step.


• Also forgot to buy raspberry jam (which, I think, would have made this great dessert sublime, but oh well!) so I used apricot which was just fine and worked well with the peaches.


• I could only fit about half of the custard mix on top of the fruit and even some of that spilled over onto the parchment. Speaking of which - I highly recommend using that under the galette. With all the juices that came off and the custard issue, this probably saved it from destruction as I would have totally mangled it trying to pry it off a Pam-coated tray. I figured at the very least, I could cut around the darn thing and plop it on a serving plate, parchment paper and all, and peel the paper off each slice.


• Serve with vanilla ice cream. Swoon-worthy I'm tellin' ya!

I can't end this post without giving credit to my darling littlest sous chef (who is 13 months old), whose help I found indispensable, who was a constant grounding presence throughout the whole process, and who quite literally held me up by the apron strings...

What you obviously can't hear is the screaming that was going on when I snapped this. Oh, my little baby love...someday, I know I'll look back on these days and smile and wish I could turn back the clock....but not this day.

Long story short, make this - you will not regret it! You can find the recipe here.