Monday, March 16, 2015

The Nutella star!

Sooooooooo this wonderful looking Nutella star pie had been making the rounds on social media a month or so ago. Well Friday I was at the store and I thought "Maybe I could try this!" I mean I can't bake and I have really never done anything with dough but how hard could it be? Pizza dough . . . and Nutella what could go wrong.

I started by spreading some flour on the counter and cutting my dough into four even sized pieces. Now I'm not sure what I did wrong but spreading the dough out into a thin circle was no where near as easy as it looked in the video. I mean part of the problem may have been my use of a can of cranberry sauce as a rolling pin but you got to make do, right?



It did take a while but eventually I got it rolled out and flattened enough to cut a circle and add a layer of Nutella.

Now in order to make the Nutella softer and easy to spread the video suggested putting it in a bowl of hot water. I also placed it in a plastic bag to keep the jar nice and dry.


Then I rolled out the other pieces and layered each one with Nutella until I got to the last layer.


Then I really got into it and forgot to take pictures for the next few steps, but it was going so well why would I break up my rhythm. From the picture above I put a glass at the center and cut it into quarters. Then I cut each of the quarters into halves, and then halved those so that I ended up with 16 pieces that were kind of even sized.

Next I picked up each little piece and twisted it once. You are supposed to twist it twice but my battle with the dough did not go as well as I thought and it wasn't as wide as the original pictures so I couldn't twist it around twice. But that's ok, next time will be better. Also I remembered to take a picture after I twisted each piece once.


I was really happy at this point because despite me realizing it was too short to twist twice once I stepped back and looked at it clearly was coming along nicely. The next step was to take each pair and fold the ends together giving the star eight points.


You can see the imprint from the glass that I put in the center. I think in retrospect I should have pushed down with the bottom of the glass to make a deeper indent because then at the end I could have put Nutella in the center for dipping the extra pieces of dough that I cut off when I made the circle layers.

Now in the instructions it said to brush on egg white and then bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. So I tried to separate the egg white from the yolk but I just ended up breaking the yolk and ruining it. So I used my lifeline and called my sister, since she actually knows how to bake, to ask her if I could use butter instead because I thought the point of it was just to give a golden color once baked. She told me no and that what I could do was just scramble the egg and use the whole egg. So that is what I did. And here is the finished product!!

Nutella Star Pie
So I baked it for longer than 15 minutes because it wasn't getting golden but maybe that was because I used the whole egg and not just egg white, I don't really know. Like I said before I think pressing down with the cup to make a bowl at the center might be a cool idea. Also my Mom and I were talking about making little Nutella pockets like small calzone or ravioli shaped pizza dough with Nutella filling. This would make it easier for serving in a large group cause you could just grab one (or five). Also warming it up and serving it with a little vanilla ice cream sounds totally perfect. Either way this will be made again and again and again because it is delicious. And really simple! Plus despite messing up a couple of times it still came out looking good and tasting great. So baking adventure one was a success.

Here is the video that was my inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxaDxiqTiT0