Baked Brie with Strawberry Compote

I had never had brie until....today. And it was really great! I've wanted to use puff pastry for a while, and this is really a great way to get started with it.

Strawberry Compote

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 lemon, juiced
3 tablespoons water
1 cup strawberries, sliced and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

1. Over medium heat, combine sugar, lemon juice and water in a large frying pan and let the sugar begin to dissolve.
2. Add the vanilla and strawberries and let everything cook together for about 10 minutes, stirring often so that the liquid doesn't burn.
3. Pull out about 1/8 cup of the liquid from the strawberry mixture and add the cornstarch. Mix it well so it isn't clumpy. Feel free to add more strawberry liquid to this to help dissolve the cornstarch.
4. Mix the cornstarch mixture back into the strawberry pan and keep stirring. Turn the heat up just enough for the mixture to bubble a bit and cook for about 3 minutes. Then turn the heat off, keep stirring but let it cool.

Baked Brie

1/2 frozen puff pastry sheet
flour for dusting
1 wedge of baby brie
slivered almonds

1. Thaw the puff pastry according to the box directions. Mine was folded in 3 parts and I basically cut one third of it off. Preheat oven to 400 and lightly grease a small baking dish.
2. Cut the wedge of brie in half, horizontally, as if you were slicing a bagel into halves...but with a wedge shape....make sense?
3. Layer the almonds onto the bottom piece of brie and then add the top piece back so you have like a brie and almond sandwich.
4. Place the brie on the puff pastry and fold the edges up around the cheese in a kind of pretty-ish way so that the cheese is covered.
5. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes or until the pastry is a pretty brown color.

Top with the strawberry compote and enjoy! The Brie is kind of buttery and the pastry makes a flaky crusty awesomeness. The strawberries add just the right amount of sweetness and the cheese is melty and perfect. I'm now a fan of brie forever!


Btw...I had my ratatouille leftovers and put it with a little bit of the really easy chicken bouillon rice that I love so much. IT was totally delectable. The flavor of the ratatouille was still really good and the rice was just salty enough to add to the sweetness of the veggies. AWESOME!


Happy cooking, once again, y'all!

Amy