Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets
October 8, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, tarts
This recipe for Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets is one I’d had my eye on for years. It sounded a little wacky to me– a sweet tart crust filled with cream cheese and cubes of cinnamon toast. Wacky but good, so I’m glad its TWD time has finally come.
It’s another one of those component recipes, made from several (easy) parts. The tartlets use Dorie’s Sweet Tart Dough, which we’ve employed so often that half the time I can find a chunk of it hiding in the freezer. The garnish (both inside and outside) is butter-crisped bread cubes tossed in a cocoa-cinnamon-sugar mix. A bit of the toast goes on the bottom the pre-baked tartlet shells and a bit is reserved to top them at the end. The filling is a fluffy cream cheese whipped cream set with a little gelatin. Gelatin is not my favorite ingredient, and if I can leave it out or think of an easy swap, then I do. Commercial cream cheese has a lot of gums and stabilizers that help to thicken up heavy cream without added assistance, so I just decided to skip the gelatin. I only made two tartlets and we were going to eat them the night I made them anyway so I knew the filling wouldn’t have time to break down or weep.
When It came time to garnish my tartlets, I remembered that I happen to be in possession of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch single serve cereal cup that my husband bizarrely brought me home as a “gift.” (Despite the fact that I’ve never eaten or requested the stuff…am I ungrateful?) It’s been in my cupboard for a couple of months and I thought to use some of the cereal as a topper instead of more bread crumbs. Then I tried to get a little too cute and sprinkled on a bunch of chocolate jimmies and pearls. I knew I’d gone overboard, but there was no turning back. I liked the creamy-crunchy combo, and I’m a sucker for little tartlets…these got thumbs up from both of us.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Parmesan Galettes
October 1, 2019 at 8:27 am | Posted in DC, groups, savory things, snacks, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, cheese, cookies, savory
Not that there’s anything wrong with Cheez-Its (no, nothing at all, really), but if you’re looking for a cheese cracker that’s a bit more elevated, maybe you should really be looking for a cheese cookie. Parmesan Galettes could be a better answer for your next wine and cheese party.
The dough is just butter, four, salt and parm, and it comes together in a snap in the food processor. Rather than hand-grate the cheese, I broke it down to bits in the Cuisinart before I made the dough–double duty! The dough is slice-and-bake and, although it can be baked freeform, baking it in a muffin tin will make perfect rounds. I sometimes find slice-and-bake cookies to be a bit annoying, tbh. I can almost never slice a cold log of dough nicely…I don’t cut it evenly, it always gets flat on one side and the first and last pieces are always wonky. It was easy enough with this dough to just roll it into a log, cut it while soft and press the pieces into the muffin tin. I flattened the tops down with a little juice glass and put the whole tin into the freezer for an hour before baking. I sprinkled on a bit of extra parmesan when I popped them into the oven.
Without an egg to bind the dough, these are very delicate cookies (although I had no problem getting them out of the tin unbroken). They are salty and cheesy and almost melt away when you bite into them. Delicious with a glass of crisp white wine.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
September 27, 2019 at 10:13 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, cookies & bars, everyday dorie, groups, sweet things | 8 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, everyday dorie
Sometimes I feel like my kitchen is just a cookie factory, but I really do love making them and they’re certainly easy to share. I know I’ll have no problem finding takers for these Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, Dorie’s latest take on the CCC (I guess this one is the CCCC). Dorie’s tricky tweak for these is to add a small amount of oats to the dough…not enough to turn them into an oatmeal cookie, but enough to make them a bit chewy. Also there is so much chocolate, and that makes them nice and gooey, too!
The cookies use a combo of regular granulated and light brown sugars. I don’t have any light brown in the cupboard right now, but I do have plenty of dark muscovado, so I swapped that in, and it definitely made my dough darker in color. I had these in the fridge for a few days before I baked them off, so they stayed chubby and didn’t spread out too much. There are a few in the freezer, too, waiting for the next time a chocolate chip cookie craving strikes. Likely this weekend. Hahaha.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here), and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Caramel-Topped Rice Pudding Cake
September 24, 2019 at 8:25 pm | Posted in BCM, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, cake, rice pudding
I talked to my mom on the phone the other day and she asked if I’d baked anything good lately. I told her I’d just made a Caramel-Topped Rice Pudding Cake that’s made like flan or crème caramel, except with rice pudding instead of eggy custard. My mom, who studied and lived in Paris for a few years before I came along, said, “Oh, that’s very French!” Dorie says this is a dessert so common and loved in France, that supermarkets sell it as a box mix. From scratch, it’s a fun project that isn’t too hard. The caramel is a simple water and sugar one. The rice pudding takes a while to cook, but I didn’t have any boil-overs or scorched rice, so things went pretty smoothly. An egg tempered into the pudding at the end keeps it together when it’s turned out after baking.
I made half the recipe and decided to bake personal-sized puddings in ramekins. I got four ramekins out of the half batch, and they only took about 30 minutes to bake in the covered water bath. We ate them at room temperature and I thought they were just delicious. Next time (and I’m not sure why I didn’t think to do it this time), I’ll add some booze-soaked raisins into the mix.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Tomato and Peach Panzanella
September 13, 2019 at 10:58 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, salads, savory things, veggies | 4 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, salad, savory
The days are getting shorter and cooler, but it’s still peak tomato season. This Tomato and Peach Panzanella is the perfect way to keep summer around just a wee bit longer. Use whatever bread you want, use peaches or other stone fruit or even melon, choose your favorite herb, make it as salty or as acidic as you like…it’s a use-what-you-like and taste-as-you-go type of thing.
There is a bit of oven time involved with this salad because you need to make croutons. But chunky homemade croutons are so worth it for any salad, and here they’ll soak up all the beautiful juice from the tomatoes and peaches without decomposing into mush. I used what I guess I’d call “French bread” rolls from the restaurant where I work. We always have a bag of day old rolls left over from the previous night’s dinner service and no one minds if I take a few home. I make croutons with them on the regular, in fact. At the greenmarket, I always get a mix of tomatoes– a variety of sizes, from medium to tiny, and all the colors I can find. I like nectarines more than I do peaches, but the peaches have been exceptional this year, I must say, and I used them here.
This was delicious, and I liked the sweetness from the peaches. I had a big batch of croutons, so I made it a couple of times. A little feta was a good add the second time around. I didn’t have any salad left over either time, but I have in the past made too much panzanella…I’ve found that next-day panzanella, when the croutons are a bit too soggy and the tomatoes have spent the night in the fridge, makes fabulous gazpacho whizzed up in the blender. Pro-tip for ya.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here), and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Fall-Market Galette
September 10, 2019 at 12:47 pm | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, fruit, galette
I do normally try to make a couple of fruit pies every summer, but this year I just didn’t. Ah well…some of the best fruits for baking are found here in September anyway, so I think this Fall-Market Galette makes up for my earlier laziness. Dorie calls this a “purple galette” as it’s filled with all the beautiful purple tinged fruits of fall– plums, grapes and figs. I went to my neighborhood’s Saturday greenmarket for my fruit and found the plums and grapes but I’ve never seen figs there. I swapped them out for blackberries and a (non-purple, I know) peach. I used the walnuts as well.
I love the ease of a galette and I don’t mind one bit when the juice from my mountain of fruit runs in rivulets along the pleats. This was delicious with vanilla ice cream.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Sweet or Savory Cream Cheese-Honey Nut Wafers
September 3, 2019 at 8:07 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Sweet or Savory Cream Cheese-Honey Nut Wafers are little rounds of flaky, puffy cream cheese pastry topped with either jam or blue cheese, depending on what you’re after, and a walnut and honey mix to cap it all off. I like a cookie that gives me options, even if I predictably go the sweet route. Hahaha. Here I topped my crust rounds with a spoonful of white fig jam (that I bought in the goofy treats aisle of Marshalls, FYI). I thought that these were like tiny pies in cookie form until I read Diane’s post saying they were open-faced rugelach, and that is 100% spot-on!
I made half a recipe of both the dough and the honey nut topping. I haven’t baked off all of my cookies yet, but I can tell I’m going to have topping left over. I probably could have gotten away with just a third of that for my half batch of dough. It won’t go to waste though– I’ll do a couple of baked peaches or plums and sprinkle it over top for an easy dessert. Dorie says these are best the day the are baked, but NYC saw a couple of nice (not humid) days over LDW, and they seemed just fine to me the following day, too. I do still have half of my dough rounds in the freezer to bake for later, so I may try the savory version or switch up the jam on those.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Cat’s Tongues
August 27, 2019 at 9:06 am | Posted in BCM, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 10 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Cat’s Tongues, or langues de chat, are a French classic. Thin, crispy, buttery yummies– I don’t think I’ve made them since I was in cooking school. Luckily, they aren’t hard to mix up and pipe out, and the oven more or less takes care of the shape. These baked up perfectly…nice elongated ovals, pale in the middle with a ring of crispy brown around the edges. I did actually pipe them out a little too big. They could have been a bit daintier in size and I would have gotten a few more out of the batch. The ones that came out the smallest, I paired up and sandwiched together with some ganache, as per Dorie’s excellent suggestion to “Milano” them. I’ll leave the larger ones as singles, spread their undersides with tempered chocolate tomorrow at work and give them to the guys at the gym in the afternoon. A plan for everything. Hahaha.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Vanilla Polka Dots
August 20, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Aren’t these Vanilla Polka Dots so cute? Can you even tell they are cute on this ugly tray? Actually this is my very favorite sheet tray; I do not mean to talk badly about it and think it is beautiful in its own way.
Back to the cookies…these are made from Dorie’s Do-Almost-Anything Vanilla Cookie Dough. We’ve done a couple of things with it before, but this is the first time we’ve used it for scooped cookies rather than rolled ones. I added a little extra vanilla (in the form of paste) to my dough. The cookie scoops are rolled in a good amount of Swedish pearl sugar before baking. Swedish pearl sugar can be hard to find. I bought a box at IKEA several years ago and thankfully it doesn’t go bad. Hahaha. The sugar polka dots give a sweet crunchy coating to the cookies, but their insides stay soft. I shared these with the dudes at the gym, and we all liked them.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Tiramisu Tart
August 13, 2019 at 8:19 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 10 CommentsTags: baking, chocolate, tarts
I do love a good tiramisu, so there was no doubt I would be game for a Tiramisu Tart. This has all the required elements of a classic tiramisu– a layer of ladyfingers soaked in strong coffee and plenty of delicious mascarpone cream– housed in a sweet pastry shell.
I decided to scale the recipe back and make a few small tartlets instead of a large tart. There are only two of us here, and even though I think regular tiramisu gets better and better as it sits, I was a little worried that I’d have a soggy crust long before we could finish up a full-size tart. I put a thin layer of melted dark chocolate on the bottom of each shell for some extra insurance that they’d stay crisp for a couple of days. Also for some extra chocolate…who am I kidding?!? I bought a domestic mascarpone instead of my favorite Italian one, which I have to walk to another neighborhood to find, and it was a little loose when I mixed the filling up. I was glad that I chose to make tartlets, as the individual shells kept the soft filling contained and I didn’t have do deal with messy slices. At work I have access to lots of different kinds of cake scraps, one of them being housemade ladyfinger cake. I absconded the other day with a little scrap packet to put to use here and saved myself a bit of work.
I’d be equally happy with a “regular” tiramisu, but the tart shell is a fun twist. It does give a nice crispy element, it’s really pretty and I did love it. A pick-me-up that you can actually pick up…I mean, what’s not to love?
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
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