Honey Plum Tarts with Rough Puff Pastry

I made puff pastry for the first time, EVER! Before you get impressed and think that I’m an amazing baker, I will admit that I made a rough puff pastry. It’s different from a true puff pastry, but honestly, the result is phenomenal. I was skeptical at first, but the resulting puff pastry was flaky, light as air, and simply perfect for this tart!!

It’s November. I finally started to look at photos from our trip to China and Japan… back in July. How did this happen?! Actually, I do know the answer to that: wedding season. Since we returned to Boston from our trip, it’s been nonstop weddings, engagements, consultations, photo editing, and album design. What a great season it’s been – and it’s not over yet! We have our last wedding of the season this weekend, and I know it’s going to be a great wedding. Looking forward to it, and I know I’ll be wearing a beanie, finger-less gloves, and 10 layers of sweaters.

Lavender Honey Peach Buttermilk Pie

What a mouthful. Lavender honey peach buttermilk pie. What can I say? I love putting together different flavors, and honey and lavender are just subtle enough to be placed with peach. This custard pie is sweet, refreshing, and permeated with the peach flavor, and adapted from Joy’s Apricot Buttermilk Pie. Topped with a greek yogurt cream and honeycomb, I can almost say it’s healthy. Well, not really, but the point is, it’s not exactly the most unhealthy dessert right? I used lavender as a secondary taste, and it worked out really well in this pie. Lavender can often be an overpowering flavor, so I ground it up with sugar – think of it as using a lavender scented sugar, if you will. The point is, it’s August. Peaches are ripe. Go pick some peaches. And make this pie.

I started out with lavender and sugar. There are two ways to do this. You can first grind up the lavender, then rub it with sugar, or you can put the sugar with lavender buds in a spice grinder and process it that way. The sugar becomes quite fine (almost like powdered sugar), which is nice side effect.

This recipe is inspired by Joy The Baker’s apricot buttermilk pie. I did not have dried apricots on hand, but I did have some plump, ripe yellow peaches. So I fiddled with this, changed some of that, and here is a peach buttermilk pie. This pie not only tastes good, but it also looks so darn pretty! I’m all for the lattice pie and all the interesting things you can do with a double crust (like this), but a clean custard pie… In the way a freshly made bed just invites you to lay on it, a clean custard pie just calls for me to dive in with a fork. A custard pie invites vignettes of lazy summer days, pristine white walls, a clear blue sky, and a fancy tea party. But that’s just me.

Honey Matcha (green tea) Ice Cream

After the wedding, Alex and I embarked on a two week trip to China and Japan. I don’t think I’ll talk much about China, as that was mostly a visit to see relatives rather than sightseeing. We traveled all around the JiangSu region, starting in Shanghai then going on to Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, and Nanjing. We did a lot of large banquets with family, so on our spare time we stuffed ourselves with pork buns, shaomai, and xiaolongbao :). And milk tea.

Japan served as our mini-moon. We decided not to go on our real honeymoon until next spring, and we’re going to New Zealand!! For now, after traipsing around China, we flew to Japan to truly vacation.

In Japan, we met up with my best friend R, and she opened our worlds to the wonderful foods of Japan. One of my favorites was matcha ice cream, made with real matcha, the powdered green tea of Japan. Let’s back track and I’ll explain why this is important. I’ve been looking for and trying matcha ice cream in the US, but there’s always been something wrong. Honestly, the green tea ice cream I’ve had in the States taste like vanilla ice cream with just a touch of green tea for color. I did not taste matcha green tea at all. When R brought us to a cute ice cream shop, I immediately knew which flavor I was going to get (I also chose peach and red bean. Incidentally, I also tasted pumpkin and tomato flavored ice cream. They were truly delicious, so watch out for a recipe once I hash that out!) The matcha ice cream in Japan is divine!! It’s a deep green and is a tad bittersweet, if you can imagine that. I could taste the matcha from the start, and there was no overpowering sweetness to mask the flavor of the tea.

I had received an ice cream maker as a gift, and I had to try and recreate matcha green tea. I’m very happy with the results. I love how the honey compliments the bittersweet matcha without overpowering its taste. Use quality matcha and don’t be shy in heaping that in! I’m already excited to re-make this!!!!