Everyday Dorie: Boozy Jumbled-Fruit Croustade

April 24, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things | 12 Comments
Tags: baking, everyday dorie

Ever since I made hot cross buns for Easter, basically all of my thoughts not somehow related to the current pandemic have been about how insanely delicious booze-soaked dried fruit is. Small pleasures help get through tough times, I guess. With lots of dried fruit and ready-made phyllo, the Boozy Jumbled-Fruit Croustade from Everyday Dorie may be a good dessert to save for the middle of winter, but it’s also a good choice when you are cooking from your pantry (and jonesing for booze-soaked dried fruit). I have small amounts of lots of different fruits in my cupboard, all of them need a home and any of them would be just dandy steeped in bourbon, but here I went with dried cherries, raisins and figs combined with candied orange peel and fresh apple and clementine bits.

I had two sheets of phyllo kicking around my freezer for a few months. To say that they were tattered would be an understatement. They were borderline shredded, almost unusable, and certainly not enough in either quantity or quality to make the big croustade in the book. But…if i took the recipe and minified it, along the lines of the Petite Apple Croustades I made made with TWD, I thought I could save that phyllo from the bin. I was able to make two baby croustades for dessert by cutting the tatters into strips that I overlapped in a muffin tin. I piled the the jumbled bourbon-fruit into each one and and carefully brought the overhanging phyllo up to cover. It was quite a sloppy affair, with buttered phyllo bits flying everywhere, but they came out of the oven bronzed and ruffled, and looking way nicer than they did when they went in. A magical transformation: crispy, boozy, sweet and incredibly tasty.

For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see what everyone else made this week.

12 Comments »

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Looks fantastic!

Comment by chefkreso— April 24, 2020 #

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How do you save TWO sheets of phyllo? I’m impressed! I always have a huge stack of it or none! I love the idea of these and yours are so cute!

Comment by Mardi (eat. live. travel. write.)— April 24, 2020 #

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- hahaha. i really should have just used them the last time i made spinach pie and i don’t know why i didn’t just add the two extra sheets. i had then folded in thirds like a business letter and in a large zip-top bag…was trying to always have them in a spot in the freezer where they were flat, but they got kind of trashed in there anyway.
  
  Comment by steph (whisk/spoon)— April 24, 2020 #
  
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It is amazing how we all save ingredients for another use instead of throwing out. I love that you used what you had on hand and minified it. Sounds like a winner with this one.

Comment by Diane Zwang— April 24, 2020 #

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I can never tell by the polished look of this croustade that you are using less-than-perfect phyllo dough. That’s an inspiration!

Comment by Shirley @ EverOpenSauce— April 25, 2020 #

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That looks really good. Can’t wait to try the boozy jumbled fruit.

Comment by Chez Nana— April 25, 2020 #

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You are ingenious. The mini-croustade is gorgeous. (I just pulled out ED and turned to p. 282 to see the maxi-croustade!) Everything about this dessert and its presentation looks fabulous. No kidding.

Comment by Mary Hirsch— April 27, 2020 #

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- Mary—thank you! we are just two people here, so scaling back the recipes usually makes sense for us anyway. xoxo
  
  Comment by steph (whisk/spoon)— April 28, 2020 #
  
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Way to go using up all your leftover ingredients! You always seem to be stocked up 😃.

Comment by isthisakeeper— April 28, 2020 #

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Wow- from that photo it is hard to believe that you had any challenges at all, esp with the phyllo. It looks magazine photo shoot perfect !! And don’t get me started on how delicious it all sounds. Boozy anything gets a gold star in these times… well done !!

Comment by Tricia S— May 1, 2020 #

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- air kisses to you! xoxo
  
  Comment by steph (whisk/spoon)— May 1, 2020 #
  
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I am so glad you picked this one but I still have dried fruit, LOL. I need to make another one.

Comment by Diane Zwang— March 4, 2022 #

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