Prunes and Walnuts Pie: Ingredients, Recipe, Cooking and Decorating Tips

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Dried fruits aren't just for snacking or adding to fruit salad. They can make wonderful pastries. We offer some amazing recipes for pie with prunes and walnuts. Tips for preparing and choosing the main ingredient will help you easily overcome all the possible difficulties of this process.

Tips for choosing prunes

It has long been no secret that dried fruits in the supermarket are rarely harmless, as in most cases they must be treated with chemicals for long-term storage. A few tips on how to choose the right prunes for delicious homemade cakes will help determine a less harmful product. What to look for when choosing prunes:

1. The more shiny the product, the more it was treated with glycerin to give it a "marketable" look, possibly sulfur dioxide. It is better to choose matte, nondescript and more wrinkled-looking dried fruits.
2. If you can try prunesbefore buying, you should pay attention to the taste: some manufacturers of these dried fruits dry them with gas and gasoline burners, in tunnel ovens, which are often heated with cheap diesel fuel. Therefore, prunes acquire an unpleasant aftertaste of gasoline, kerosene and other types of fuel.
3. Prunes that have a coffee tint are not worth buying: the plums from which they are made were scalded with boiling water, which means that there are too few useful substances left in it.

An excellent product quality test can be arranged at home: soak prunes for several hours in ordinary water. If in some places it starts to turn white, it means that the product is of high quality, and the chemically treated product will not change at all.

Prune Pie "Back to Childhood"

In the 90s of the last century, a dessert of prunes stuffed with nuts and topped with whipped cream was very popular. It was prepared for every holiday, anniversary and just to meet friends, so everyone who is now over 35 remembers the taste of the dish. The recipe for prunes and walnuts pie, which is very similar to this cooking algorithm, will appeal to those who were fans of the sweet miracle from the past.

Preparing dough

There are only three necessary products for preparing the base for an open pie: one hundred grams of butter, two hundred grams of flour and 120 ml of ice water.

Dough for a sweet pie is prepared according to the shortbread principle: first, cold butter must be grated, then mixed with flour untilthe formation of fine flour crumbs, then add water to give the mass a viscosity to form a dense clod of dough. In no case should you knead it for a long time, because this will have an extremely negative effect on the taste during baking: it will become dense, there will not be that friability and airiness inherent in shortbread baking.

Filling: taste of childhood

To prepare the prunes with walnuts filling for the pie, you need to take:

• 250 grams of pitted prunes and soak them in a glass of strong brewed tea for two to four hours. Then drain in a colander and pat dry with a paper towel.
• One hundred grams of walnuts, chopped into small pieces, mixed with one spoon of sour cream to give the mass a viscosity.
• Stuff prunes with the resulting mass.

Next, you should prepare the filling, which will fill the open pie with prunes and walnuts. To do this, combine 350 grams of sour cream (fat content of at least 3.2%) with 80 grams of sugar, 1 tbsp. l. with a heap of flour and vanilla on the tip of a knife, lightly beat the mixture with a blender to make it smooth.

How to bake a cake?

Roll out the finished dough along the diameter of the mold (including the sides). If the proportions are taken as in the recipe above, then usually this amount of dough is enough for a mold with a diameter of 23 cm. Prick the dough with a fork in several places and place in the cold for half an hour. Next, pour a sealant on top (legumes are the easiest) andsend the base for the pie with prunes and walnuts to the oven. Set the temperature to 180 degrees, bake for 15 minutes. Then take out, remove the beans and continue baking for about ten more minutes (during this time you can prepare the filling). When the tart for the pie is ready, you need to place the prepared stuffed prunes on it at a short distance from each other and pour over the sour cream filling. Return the prunes and walnut tart to the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

It is worth noting that the filling will completely harden only after the cake has completely cooled, so in no case should it be cut hot - you need to wait at least five hours for the mass to get stronger.

Quick recipe for the lazy

For some of us, a long cooking process is like hard labor, such people prefer instant recipes. Plum pie can also be prepared in this way, in other words, according to the principle "it will do." Surprisingly, lazy pies always turn out tasty and soft, and if you combine fillers and spices correctly, you can cook a surprisingly tasty dessert relatively quickly.

The list of necessary products for such a pie is as follows:

• 200 grams of sugar and flour each;
• 150 grams of walnuts;
• 450 grams of pitted prunes;
• 5 eggs;
• 220 grams of butter;
• 1 tsp soda or baking powder for dough and the same amount of ground cinnamon;
• 50grams of dark chocolate.

The calorie content of such a pie is 357 calories per 100 gram slice, despite the beneficial properties, so you should not abuse such pastries.

Cooking

The process of kneading dough for a pie is not particularly difficult. First you need to grind the melted butter with sugar to a light fluffy consistency. Then add one egg at a time, while adding one or two tablespoons of flour with each of them and mix thoroughly. At the end, add the rest of the flour, mixed with cocoa powder, soda and cinnamon, using a blender, turn the mass into a smooth dough, resembling thick, for pancakes. Then add prunes, cut into halves, chopped nuts and chocolate, grated on a coarse grater. Gently mix the dough with a spoon and put it into a silicone mold, lightly oiled. If there is no such form in everyday life, then it is advisable to line the usual baking dish with foil, since often the dough sticks to the bottom and it is problematic to remove it without damaging the integrity of the product. It is for this reason that all instant pie recipes recommend using only silicone when working with the dough.

Place the mold in the oven, preheated to 180 -190 degrees and bake for an hour or more, checking with a wooden toothpick.

How to decorate a simple cake beautifully: ideas

Sometimes the soul wants a holiday, so a person tries to surround himself with beautiful things, to create and create beauty. Decorating ready-made meals is also in this circle, but not everyone can generate ideas with ease, especially for simple things like prunes and walnuts pie. The design of such pastries should not be too loaded with creams or delicious accessories, but you can take a few cute ideas in your piggy bank:

• Given that the cake is dark in color, you can decorate it with powdered sugar on top using curly stencils. It's fast, beautiful and unusual. You just need to cut out the necessary pattern from paper, place it on the cake and sprinkle liberally the areas free from the stencil with powdered sugar, and then carefully remove the paper.



• For chocolate gourmets, it is recommended to pour chocolate icing over the top of the cake, and place golden or silver beads from sugar dough on top of it - the picture will look like a night sky.
• It is very convenient to use white and dark chocolate tendrils when decorating ready-made pastries, from which you can depict a flower in the center of the finished product.

Dried Fruit Pie: He althy Cooking Recipe

For many people, food is no longer just a means to satisfy hunger. They are more concerned about how well it can nourish their body without undue stress on the organs and the digestive system. At the same time, the calorie content of dishes is not in last place in priority. Even in a he althy kitchen there is a recipe for a “correct” pie with prunes and walnuts, which will surprise you with an unusually refined taste. For cooking, you need to take:

• 2 eggs;
• 150 grams of heavy cream;
• 100 grams of prunes;
• 50 grams dried apricots;
• 80 grams of vegetable oil;
• 1 tbsp oatmeal;
• 150ml orange juice;
• 230 -250 grams of wheat flour;
• 2 tbsp. l. honey;
• 1 teaspoon baking soda.

Step cooking

Initially, dried fruits should be washed in warm water, removing dust and sand, dried with a paper towel and cut into large strips. In a large bowl, combine flour and oatmeal. Beat eggs, honey and a pinch of s alt until light air mass and add cream in small portions, constantly whisking with a whisk at low speed. Next, add orange juice, oil and soda to the mass, mix thoroughly and pour the resulting mixture into the flour mixture. Knead the dough for a sweet pie, actively using a spoon, adding dried fruits prepared earlier at the end. Transfer the dough to a form lined with parchment (be sure to grease it with oil), level the top.

Recommended cake height - no more than 3 - 4 cm: then it will bake quickly and well. This option is very convenient in filing. It is worth baking the product in the oven at a temperature of 180 degrees for 40 - 50 minutes, not forgetting to check the readiness. Cool on wire rack, garnish with fruit jelly slices or almond flakes, if desired.

For coffee aroma

Experimental confectioners advise those who love coffee flavor in baking to use the same instead of orange juicethe amount of strongly brewed coffee in the proportion indicated in the recipe. This will make it possible to turn a simple homemade dessert into a chic coffee cake with walnuts and prunes, which will be a worthy decoration for a tea party. It is recommended to use not ordinary instant coffee, but real brewed coffee, which has a pronounced aroma.

Any of the above desserts will appeal to those who really like prunes, because it gives the pastries a peculiar flavor, as well as a specific color to the dough. For this reason, some people (those who do not like prunes) are advised to choose a different recipe for homemade baking, so as not to be disappointed later, seduced by the rave reviews of dried fruit lovers.