How about an espresso at my house?
We could sit in the backyard and sip espressos from china cups and eat these mini galettes made from fresh peaches and plums from our plum trees. We could get to know each other and talk about our upcoming weekends.
Throughout this growing season you’ve heard about the peas and the raspberries that were out of control. You have seen radishes and squash, parsley, basil and tomatoes. But until now I’ve saved you from the big, gorgeous plums that are threatening to break branches on our plum trees out back. We have more than we can eat and no visitor to our house leaves without a big bag of them.
Stone fruits such as peaches, plums and nectarines work beautifully in pies, galettes, crisps and crumbles. I am a sucker for mini foods (maybe you’ve noticed?) and these mini galettes seemed like the perfect way to use up some of our fruit.
Stone fruit galettes, recipe modified from these peas are hollow. Recipe makes 16 mini galettes.
Ingredients:
- 1 recipe pate brisee (sweet pastry)
- 3 large peaches or nectarines or 4 large Italian plums
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- Zest of one lemon
- 1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon water
- ½ cup turbinado sugar or large sugar crystals
Directions:
Prepare fruit: If you are using peaches I prefer to peel them first. Nectarines and plums don’t need to be peeled. Slice fruit in ¼-thick slices and place in bowl. Add sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest and stir. Refrigerate fruit for an hour. After an hour, spoon the fruit into a sieve set over a bowl and drain juices.
Meanwhile, prepare pastry: Make the pastry dough according to the directions I wrote for the quiche (see hyperlink above). After dough has chilled, remove one of the two portions from the refrigerator and let it set a few minutes. Roll dough out on floured work surface until it is slightly less than 1/8-inch thick. You want to cut 7 or 8 rounds of pastry in 6-inch diameter circles. After you cut as many as you can, gather scraps and reroll pastry. Cut again. Note: My largest round cutter is only 4 inches in diameter so I actually rolled my dough slightly thicker, cut out the rounds and then re-rolled each circle to the larger size. Refrigerate pastry circles until ready to fill.
Place 1 to 2 tablespoons of fruit in the center of each chilled circle of pastry dough. Gently fold dough up and around fruit, crimping dough together to form a package. It works well to put a little of the egg wash on your fingers as you crimp, so the egg can help “glue” the folds together.
Place pastries on parchment or silpat lined baking sheets. Lightly brush dough with the egg wash and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Refrigerate formed galettes. (All of the galettes from this first batch should easily fit onto one large baking sheet.)
Continue making second batch of galettes as described above.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Bake one batch at a time on middle rack for 25-30 minutes, depending on how big your galettes are, and how thick the dough is, until the fruit is a little bubbly and the crust is a deep golden brown. Let cool completely on a baking rack (if you can wait that long!) and enjoy.
