Tompoezen

Ingredients:

• 1 packet of puff pastry
• 1 scant tsp of agar
• 1/2 tsp arrowroot
• 1 tablespoon of water
• 1/2 c cashews, soaked overnight
• 1 c water
• 1/16th tsp curcuma
• 1/8th tsp salt
• vanilla to taste
• 1/4th to 1/2 c of fruit sugar (sucrose), to taste, start with 1/4th and work up
• 1/2 c forsting sugar, and maybe some more
• raspberry strawberry-diksap (diksap is concentrated fruit-juice without any addes sugar).

First: cut the pastry dough into the desired size and bake. With a fork, make some tiny holes in the little squares, so as not to let them puff too much. Follow the directions on the package, you want them golden brown and crispy. Let cool while you continue with the rest of the recipe.

Now: let's make the filling. Blend the cashews with the cup of water, maybe even for a couple of minutes, to get everything perfectly smooth. Mix the agar witg the arrowroot and the tablespoon of water and whisk thourrougly with the tiny little whisk or a fork, make sure it's smooth. Then heat the cashew-milk-thing, whilst adding the salt, curcuma, vanilla en sugar. Once it's hot, add the agar-arrowroot-mixture. Keep whisking and stirring to make sure the bottom doesn't congeal and the mix thickens nicely. Heat it through some more, then let it cool to almost room temperature. While the mixture is cooling down a bit, you'll make the glaze.

Start with the powdered sugar in a bowl. Add 2 teaspoons of syrup, add more water if needed. Be sure to mix thoroughly first before adding anymore water, mix yourself silly, preferably with a fork. If you want it even pinker, add some drops of beet juice or powder. Frost half of the pastry-squares, making sure the surface is smooth. Now you can put everything together.

Start with an unfrosted square and a knife. Add a thick layer of your pastry cream, it should be stiff enough to follow the square shape of your pastry with relative ease (and some practice with a frosting spatula). Top that with an already frosted square. Chill in the fridge for a while to set the filling further, or even overnight if you want to recreate a nostalgic soggy HEMA-experience.

Coming to you from 2017: The filling can be used wherever pastry cream is called for and six years later we still use it as such. There's an in-house discussion if this one is better than a more recent attempt based on Van Leeuwen's custard. I'd say the new one is better, but the other family members prefer this version.

I have learnt how to make puff pastry from scratch since 2011, and it's not half as difficult, involved or time-consuming as people would have you believe. I use the extra hard butter from The Homemade Vegan Pantry and an old puff pastry recipe my dad had lying around. Mine worked perfectly the first time around. It was still decent the second time when I didn't bash the butter as well as I should have. Any basic puff pastry recipe should work, just sub the butter for Miyoko's recipe and be sure to bash it out properly so you don't end up with chunks. I'm still working on leavened croissants and danishes, but that's a story for another day.

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