Summer Dreams

Strawberries and Cream and Pastry Wrapped Greens

I love eating pastry in the summer. The only time I every really crave an Aussie meat pie is in the summer, preferably when I am covered in chlorine after a swim in a pool. Nostalgia from when I was a kid and my friend and I learned we could get the un-sold pies at the town pool if we waited to be the last ones to leave at the end of the day.

These pastries are a far cry from a meat pie, loaded with green vegetables and feta in the case of the savory greens and cheese pie or topped with whipped custardy cream and strawberries for dessert. A summer pastry can be filling and light at the same time, and very satiating after a day in the sun and perfect to pack for a picnic.

Strawberries and Creme Diplomat

Soft, billowy, custardy cream and shatteringly crisp pastry are a perfect match for strawberries that have been sliced and dressed in a little vanilla sugar and left to release their juices. A kind-of almost mille feuille, the French pastry of a ‘million layers’, except with softer cream and even more of it!

You do not have to use the puff pastry, a lovely crisp shortbread or cats tongue would also be very nice, but if you can, I beg you try try it, there is nothing like cracking a flakey piece of well-browned puff pastry into a pile of soft cream….moments like this is what living is for.

Creme Diplomat is Creme Patissiere, a vanilla custard made with eggs and flour to thicken it, with whipped cream folded through. It’s surprisingly easy and one of the most delicious things in the world- well worth having on hand for any occasion, especially of there is fresh fruit involved. I use creme diplomat to fill creme puffs, usually with a little cooked sweetened fruit swirled through- its like eating clouds! You can vary the amount of cream you add in to affect the density and sweetness, a little powdered sugar though the cream is good to sweeten and stabilize the cream for higher ratios of cream. For extra stability and hold- such as if you were to make an actual mille feuille- gelatin would also be added, but I prefer the texture and softness of this cream without it.

You can prepare all of these elements up to 3 days ahead with the exception of the strawberries which are best prepared the day you are serving, and the whipped cream, which can be whipped and folded though the custard the day of service. This can also easily be scaled up to feed a crowd