Cooking the Chronicle – Dec 27

This week’s recipe (“Brie en croute,” Dec 27) might have been my biggest fail thus far, although how much of a fail is it really when all of your ingredients are delicious. I have made my own version or baked brie and baked gouda in the past, but something about the combination of the cheese and jam that I selected for this recipe didn’t work out.

It was a quick and simple recipe, with a little extra flair in the woven pastry top. If you didn’t want to mess with cutting and basket weaving puff pastry, you could easily skip that step and just wrap the dough around the cheese and jam.

I opted to replace the fig jam with an alternative because I was going to serve this to some family members who didn’t like fig. I had a jar of Tuscanini apricot preserves lying around and thought that would be a nice accompaniment to brie. My daughter was in charge of spreading the jam on the cheese, and she did it totally unassisted! It’s very rewarding and cool to see her cooking skills, confidence and coordination grow. Less food ends up on our floor and more ends up in our bellies.

Back to the jam. In the final product, I was disappointed to see the preserves almost disappeared. The jam was already a soft, looser consistency before the oven, and it basically turned into liquid when baked. I was missing the obvious layer of jam I was hoping to see when I cut into the pastry. Maybe the fig jam wouldn’t have dissolved so much? Or maybe I should have let it really cool down before serving.

Something about our brie choice felt off too. Despite leaving the rind on, the cheese burst when cooking and also leaked through the pastry. It was generally a soupy, cheese, somewhat oily end result. Totally delicious, but not quite a visual showstopper. I was very grateful I followed the instruction about placing the brie en croute on parchment paper because it kept everything somewhat held together and definitely helped make clean up easier.

My guests, thanks goodness, were my family, and we ended up scooping the soft cheese and jam with crackers, while tearing at the puff pastry.

If I was to do this again, I would try different brands of brie and jam. Or try it with camembert or gouda. But generally, you can’t go wrong with combining delicious ingredients, even if the end result isn’t what you imagined.