Marcia Hassel's recipes

If you’ve never had a fresh tomato tart, you are missing something. This is a taste experience that amalgamates pizza, quiche and a savory tart — it is utterly fantastic! Creating a quintessential tom ato tart was a feat and like so many classics, I had to do it myself to get it perfect! If you want to speed this up, swap in prepared butter-based puff pastry. Butter Pastry 2 cups all-purpose flour 3/4 cup unsalted butter 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons lemon juice 1/4 cup ice water, or more Tomato Basil Tomato Topping ½ cup chopped fresh basil 1 cup chopped fresh parsley 3 large garlic cloves, peeled 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves Salt, pepper ½ cup extra virgin olive oil 2 ½ pounds medium size tomatoes (use red and yellow mix), sliced ½ pound medium cheddar cheese, grated ¼ pound fontina cheese, grated 4 tablespoons Dijon mustard 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated For the pastry, place the flour in a large mixer bowl. With a pastry blender, or your hands, cut in the...

Nothing beats this easy brioche dough but when you add fresh strawberries and a cream cheese frosting it rises to a 5-star recipe. 5 teaspoons instant yeast 1 1/4 teaspoons salt 3/4 cup sugar 3 eggs 1 cup warm milk 4-5 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup, unsalted butter, softened Strawberry Roll-In 3 cups strawberries, sliced ½ cup sugar Cream Cheese Frosting 1 8 ounce package of cream cheese, softened ¼ cup unsalted butter 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract Pinch salt 2-3 cups confectioner’s sugar Milk, as required Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spray a 9 by 12 inch pan with non-stick cooking spray. In a mixer bowl, whisk together water and yeast and let stand 1 minute. Stir in salt, sugar, eggs, milk, and most of flour, holding back about 2 cups. Mix, then knead, adding in more flour as required to make a soft, elastic dough, 5-8 minutes. Once a soft ball forms and dough seems resilient, continue kneading but add in chunks of the softened butter, until it ...

Welcome to the Free Recipe of the Month! Remember the free-recipe-of-the month is free just for the month that it's featured in!  After that it's retired to the Complete Betterbaking.com Recipe Archives. This month please enjoy these moist and fragrant  Classic French Butter Croissants Who doesn’t love croissants? Flakey, buttery, golden, crescents that are synonymous with French pastry. At hotel school, we were careful to distinguish ‘croissants de boulangere’ and ‘croissants de patissiere” . The difference was: baker’s croissants called for yeast, in addition to milk, water, butter, salt, and flour where as pastry chef croissants were crisper and omitted the yeast, relying instead, only on the lamination of butter and dough, to create flakey strata. Essentially, the water content in the butter turns to steam while encountering the oven heat’s heat, causing mini explosions. These explosions of steam in turn cause the layers of dough, folded with butter, to rise. Baker’...