Cranberry Galette

*cue the music and thunderous applause* I’m baaaaaaack!

Déjà vu? Yeah, I know. Okay, so this is my second big hiatus from this blog. If you were curious about my excuse, I’d just say I got really busy with finishing college, balancing multiple jobs, and a move. But half the original point of this blog was to create recipes with normal, life-balancing people in mind.

So yes, I guess I lost a little bit of my passion for cooking and recipe-writing for a while there too. But then I realized how much I missed it. And how many frozen Trader Joe’s meals I was eating. So let’s get back to making real food together, shall we?

I’ll start just in time for frantic last minute holiday baking with this cranberry galette. If you don’t know what a galette is, its basically an easier pie for people who suck at making pies. And for those of you who identified with my tale of woe about not having time. Because ain’t nobody got time for lattice crusts.

In all seriousness, galettes are actually pretty cool in their own right. They’re very rustic-looking, don’t require many ingredients, and can easily be adapted. This cranberry version is nice and festive, combining cranberries (obviously) and raspberries with the classic Christmas spices like cinnamon and nutmeg.

To make it,

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You Will Need:

• 1½ cups flour
• 1 stick butter
• 1½ tsp vinegar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup cold water
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbs milk
• 2 ½ cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
• 1/4 cup raspberries
• 3/4 cup sugar, plus 2 Tablespoons
• 3 Tbs cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Okay, okay. I know that looks like a lot of ingredients. But don’t be discouraged; You probably have most of them already.  I’ll break this recipe into crust and filling mostly because if you can make the crust, you can make the filling into pretty much any fruit you want for other seasons or events.

Crust:

Add the flour, salt and vinegar to the bowl of a large food processor, or a large mixing bowl if you don’t have one. Cut the stick of butter into small squares about the size of a marble. Or, like, a cube of cheese, if you need to imagine a different square-shaped thing. Add those pieces to the bowl, making sure they are cold. Add the cold water carefully. I’d advise using about half of it, then evaluating how wet/dry it looks. Pulse the processor several times, just until it looks a bit like wet sand, but still has some clumps in it. If you don’t have the processor you can do this with a pastry cutter or your fingers, it just takes more time. It should look something like this at the end:

 

Dump this mixture out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, then kind of wrap it up in the plastic to squish it into a ball of dough. Let that chill in the fridge for at least 5 minutes. It can hang out in there for a day or two if you need to make it ahead, just make sure it is tightly wrapped.

Filling:

In a medium or large bowl, combine the remaining sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice and vanilla. Mix those together into a sort of paste, then toss in the berries and stir to coat them all evenly.  And that’s it!

Preheat your oven to 400. Now just roll out your dough into a roughly 12 inch circle. It doesn’t need to be perfect, and in fact it looks better if it’s not. Pro tip: it will be easier if you start with a sheet of parchment under the crust at the beginning so that you can move it onto a baking sheet with that later.

Make a simple egg wash by whisking together the egg and milk in a cup. Brush a little onto the center of the rolled out crust. This helps form a berrier so that the berry juice doesn’t make your crust soggy. (Yes I know it’s spelled “barrier,” but I was being clever and hilarious, leave me alone)

Add the filling to the center and spread it out, but leave a couple inches of dough around the sides. Fold that dough over the fruit and add some pleats to keep it secure. Again, we’re going for a rustic, homemade look here. I promise that will actually make it look nicer in the end. Brush more of the egg wash over the rim of the crust, then sprinkle the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar over it.

Transfer the galette to a lined baking sheet, and bake in your 400 degree oven for 35-40 minutes. Don’t panic if you discover after that that the liquid leaked out the side during the baking. It’s easier to fix than it looks, because you can just run a knife between the crust and the scary puddle of potentially burnt liquid, and all will turn out fine. You just have to pleat it a little better next time. Not that I would know or anything. I’m obviously a professional baker who has never had to hide a disaster like that.

But there ya go. Baked cranberries make your house smell like a Christmas candle, and you have a perfectly thin, manageable pie/tart for your holiday. I’d say this galette would feed 6-8 people, or feed you 6-8 times. Enjoy!