Dried fruits can not just be eaten as a snack or as an additive to fruit salad. Of these, wonderful pastries are possible. We offer some amazing cake recipes with prunes and walnuts. Tips for preparing and choosing the main ingredient will help you easily overcome all the possible difficulties of this process.
Prune Tips
It is no longer a secret that dried fruits in a supermarket are rarely harmless, since in most cases they must be processed with chemicals for long-term storage. A few tips on choosing the right prune for a delicious home-made pastry will help identify a less harmful product. What you should pay attention to when choosing prunes:
- The more the product glistens, the more it was treated with glycerin to give a “marketable” look, possibly sulfur dioxide. It is better to choose opaque, nondescript and more wrinkled-looking dried fruits.
- If you can try prunes before you buy, you should pay attention to the aftertaste: some manufacturers of these dried fruits dry them with gas and gas burners in tunnel ovens, which are often heated with cheap diesel fuel. Therefore, prunes get an unpleasant aftertaste of gasoline, kerosene and other types of fuel.
- Prunes with a coffee hue should not be bought: the plums from which it is made were scalded with boiling water, which means that there are too few useful substances left in it.
An excellent quality control of the product can be arranged at home: soak prunes for several hours in ordinary water. If in places it starts to turn white, it means that the product is of high quality, and processed with chemistry will not change at all.
Prune pie "Back to childhood"
In the 90s of the last century, a dessert made of prunes stuffed with nuts and covered with whipped cream was very popular. It was prepared for every holiday, anniversary and just for a meeting of friends, so everyone who is now over 35 remembers the taste of the dish. The recipe for a pie with prunes and walnuts, which is very similar to this cooking algorithm, will appeal to those who were fans of a sweet miracle from the past .
Cooking dough
There are only three necessary products for preparing the basis for an open pie: one hundred grams of butter, two hundred grams of flour and 120 ml of ice water.
The dough for a sweet cake is prepared on the basis of the shortbread principle: first you need to grate the cold butter, then mix with flour until fine flour crumbs are formed, then add water to give the mass a viscosity to form a dense coma. In no case should you knead it for a long time, because it will have an extremely negative effect on the taste during baking: it will become dense, there will not be the friability and airiness inherent in sand baking.
Stuffing: a taste of childhood
To prepare the filling of prunes with walnuts for a pie, you need to take:
- 250 grams of pitted prunes and soak it in a glass of tightly brewed tea for two to four hours. Then lay in a colander and lightly dry with a paper towel.
- One hundred grams of walnuts, crushed into small pieces, mix with one spoon of sour cream to give the mass a viscosity.
- Stuff the resulting prune mass.
Next, prepare a fill that will fill the open pie with prunes and walnuts. To do this, combine 350 grams of sour cream (fat content of at least 3.2%) with 80 grams of sugar, 1 tbsp. l with a hill of flour and vanilla on the tip of the knife, lightly beat the mass with a blender to make it homogeneous.
How to bake a cake?
Roll out the finished dough according to the diameter of the form (considering the sides). If the proportions are taken, as in the recipe above, then usually this amount of dough is enough for a mold with a diameter of 23 cm. Prick the dough with a fork in several places and place in the cold for half an hour. Then pour the sealant on top (legumes are the easiest way) and send the base for the pie with prunes and walnuts to the oven. Set the temperature to 180 degrees, bake for 15 minutes. Then remove, remove the beans and continue baking for about ten minutes (during this time, you can prepare the filling). When the tart for the pie is ready, you need to place the prepared stuffed prunes on it at a small distance from each other and pour with sour cream filling. Return the prune and walnut pie to the oven and bake it for thirty minutes.
It is worth noting that the pouring will completely harden only after the cake has completely cooled, so in no case should it be cut hot - you need to wait at least five hours for the mass to gain strength.
A quick recipe for the lazy
For some of us, the lengthy cooking process is similar to hard labor; those who prefer instant recipes. Prune pie can also be prepared in this way, in other words, on the principle of "and so it will do." Surprisingly, lazy pies always turn out to be tasty and soft, and if you combine the toppings and spices correctly, you can cook a surprisingly delicious dessert relatively quickly.
The list of necessary products for such a cake is as follows:
- 200 grams of sugar and flour;
- 150 grams of walnuts;
- 450 grams pitted prunes;
- 5 eggs;
- 220 grams of butter;
- 1 tsp soda or baking powder for dough and as much ground cinnamon;
- 50 grams of dark chocolate.
The calorie content of such a pie is 357 calories per gram piece, despite its beneficial properties, so you should not abuse such baking.
Cooking
The process of kneading the dough for the pie is not particularly difficult. To begin with, you should grind the melted butter with sugar to a light lush consistency. Then add one egg each, with each of them add one or two tablespoons of flour and mix thoroughly. At the end, introduce the remaining flour mixed with cocoa powder, soda and cinnamon, using a blender, turn the mass into a smooth dough that resembles thick dough for pancakes. Then add prune, cut into halves, chopped nuts and chocolate, grated on a coarse grater. Gently mix the dough with a spoon and put it in a silicone mold, slightly oiled. If there is no such form in everyday life, then it is advisable to line the usual baking dish with foil, since often the dough sticks to the bottom and remove it without damaging the integrity of the product, it is problematic. For this reason, all recipes for instant pies recommend using only silicone when working with dough.
Place the mold in the oven, heated to 180-190 degrees and bake for an hour or more, checking the readiness with a wooden toothpick.
How to beautifully design a simple pie: ideas
Sometimes the soul wants a holiday, so a person tries to surround himself with beautiful things, to create and create the beautiful. Decorating ready meals is also part of this circle, but not everyone can generate ideas with ease, especially for simple things, such as a pie with prunes and walnuts. Making such a baking should not be overloaded with creams or delicious accessories, but you can take a few nice ideas into your piggy bank:
- Given that the cake is dark in color, it can be decorated with icing sugar on top using curly stencils. It is fast, beautiful and unusual. All that is needed is to cut out the necessary pattern from the paper, place it on the cake and sprinkle generously on the stencil-free areas with icing sugar, and then carefully remove the paper.
- For chocolate gourmets, it is recommended to pour the top of the cake with chocolate icing, and on top of it place golden or silver beads from sugar dough - the picture will look like the night sky.
- It is very convenient to use whiskers made of white and black chocolate when decorating the finished baking, from which you can depict a flower in the center of the finished product.
Dried Fruit Pie: Healthy Cuisine Recipe
For many ordinary people, food is no longer just a means of satisfying hunger. They are more concerned about how well she can nourish their body without undue strain on the organs and digestive system. At the same time, the calorie content of dishes is not in last place in priority. Even in a healthy kitchen there is a recipe for the “right” pie with prunes and walnuts, which will surprise you with an unusually refined taste. For cooking, you need to take:
- 2 eggs;
- 150 grams of thick cream;
- 100 grams of prunes;
- 50 grams of dried apricots;
- 80 grams of vegetable oil;
- 1 tbsp. oatmeal;
- 150 ml of orange juice;
- 230 -250 grams of wheat flour;
- 2 tbsp. l honey;
- 1 teaspoon of soda.
Step cooking
Initially, you should rinse the dried fruits in warm water, removing dust and sand, dry with a paper towel and cut into large strips. Combine flour and oatmeal in a large bowl. Beat eggs, honey and a pinch of salt until light air mass and add cream in small portions, constantly whipping with a whisk at low speeds. Next, add juice from orange, oil and soda to the mass, mix thoroughly and pour it into the flour mixture. Knead the dough for a sweet cake, actively wielding a spoon, adding dried fruit prepared at the end. Transfer the dough into a form lined with parchment (be sure to grease it with oil), align the top.
The recommended cake height is not more than 3-4 cm: then it will be baked quickly and well. This option is very convenient to serve. It is worth baking the product in the oven at a temperature of 180 degrees for 40 - 50 minutes, not forgetting to check the readiness. Cool on a wire rack, if desired, garnish with pieces of fruit jelly or almond petals.
For coffee aroma
Confectioners-experimenters advise those who love coffee aftertaste in baking, to use the same amount of strongly brewed coffee in the proportion indicated in the recipe instead of orange juice. This will make it possible to turn a simple homemade dessert into a chic coffee cake with walnuts and prunes, which will become a worthy decoration of tea drinking. It is recommended to use not ordinary instant, but real brewed coffee, which has a pronounced aroma.
Any of the above desserts will be enjoyed by those who really like prunes, because it gives the bakery a unique flavor and a specific color for the dough. For this reason, some people (those who do not like prunes) are advised to choose a different homemade baking recipe, so as not to be disappointed later, flattered by the enthusiastic reviews of dried fruit lovers.