Easter Brunch-Cooking with my Sis

So I tried to cook my piecrusts today after a big failure last night. This is the first time I used rice as pie weights and I didn’t really like it. The rice stuck to the crust. I needed two crusts-one for the Quiche Lorraine and one for the Fruit Tart. The two I made last night were terrible. I think that I didn’t blend the butter well enough. Instead of the regular pie dish I used last night, I bought a quiche tin and a tart tin from Williams Sonoma today. (I’ve reached my limit for my weekly spending money allowance!)

I baked a tart and a quiche crust again today. This time I use garbanzo beans instead of rice. Worked much better. I felt these crusts were more successful. When looking at the pictures now, I can see I needed to press the pastry into the ridges in the side of the tart pan

We also made the Fruit Tart. My sister brought over the Pastry Cream she made last night.

We paddled it in the mixer and poured it into the tart crust.

Here is the finished Fruit Tart. It is beautiful!!

Oh yeah-we also made stuffed mushrooms.

I don’t have a food processor and my sister forgot to bring hers. When my husband heard, he offered to go to Walmart and buy a cheap blender/processor combo with HIS weekly spending money. Isn’t he a sweetheart?!

Here is what all the ingredients for the strawberry vinaigrette looked like inside the food processor.

Well I finished up with the orange glaze and ham after she left and I still need to do the canapes with the Gravelax. Tomorrow we will pop the mushrooms in the oven, finish up with the home fries, put together the salad and reheat the ham and the quiche.

We don’t even know for sure who will show up for brunch tomorrow, but it really doesn’t matter. We had a really fun. Thanks to Cafe Med and their cooking class, not only did we get to try out several new recipes and techniques, we got to spend some quality time together in the kitchen doing something together that we both love-cooking! And for such a joyous occasion!