Tuesdays with Dorie: Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake
April 29, 2008 at 4:18 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 45 Comments
This cake reminds me of the kind of thing my Italian nonna would make, if I had an Italian nonna. No wonder my husband, who is half Italian, scarfed this up! Caitlin of Engineer Baker chose this, Dorie’s Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake, as our TWD recipe of the week.
Polenta in this case is just another name for yellow cornmeal, so the cake had sort of a sweet cornbread feel to it, but combined with ricotta and honey, it was quite moist. And you can’t tell from the outside, but hidden in the cake are…dried figs! Normally, I am not a fan of dried figs (a lasting side effect of my childhood aversion to Newtons), but they work really well here. Their little seeds give a pleasant crunch to the cake. I did use a couple less than the recipe called for, though, and I chopped them into quarters so I could more evenly scatter them throughout the batter.
I wanted to follow Dorie’s suggestion to put a few thyme leaves into the batter, but then of course I forgot! So I made thyme whipped cream instead, by rubbing thyme leaves into the sugar that sweetened it. Please, no judgements about the massive amount of cream in that photo–I know I went a little overboard!
This was a lovely cake…simple and homey and good for breakfast (maybe without the mountain of whipped cream). I made a half batch, which fit perfectly into my 7 1/2-inch tart pan. Early reports from some other TWDers were that the cake was a bit too sweet. I went a little skimpy on the measurements for both the sugar and honey, and it came out just right. The only thing that left me scratching my head was the extra little hunk of butter that gets dotted on top of the cake before it goes into the oven. It didn’t seen to do much but make some pale colored spots on top…I think I’ll leave it out if I make the cake again.
You can find this recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and on Caitlin’s site. Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
Daring Bakers in April: Cheesecake Pops
April 27, 2008 at 2:10 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, cheesecakes, daring bakers, groups, sweet things | 51 Comments
I must admit that I almost skipped making these cheesecake pops, this month’s Daring Bakers challenge. Even though I went out and searched around for lollipop sticks at the beginning of the month, I hadn’t really been in a cheesecake mood. Then I realized that the photo opportunities here were too good to be missed! The recipe, from the book Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor, was chosen by co-hostesses Deborah from Taste and Tell and Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms.
I found a recipe calling for five bars of cream cheese to be a bit much to swallow (literally). I scaled the recipe way back to just one bar and baked it in a small loaf pan. I put the batter together my favorite way– in the food processor. As long as all the ingredients are room temperature, you will never get a lump. It baked up nicely, but even the tiny amount that I made took about 20 minutes longer than the suggested time.
After a night in the fridge, I used an ice cream scoop to form the set cheesecake into rough balls, and put them into the freezer for half an hour before reshaping them a bit. They still came out looking a bit…ummm….individual. Not that that’s a bad thing! The sticks are really wooden craft sticks (I had no luck finding the paper ones here), and I loved their fun colors. The packet said non-toxic, so let’s just hope that’s right!
I’m not embarrassed to say that hundreds and thousands are my favorite cake decoration! Just looking at them makes me smile!
I decided to roll a couple in some almond cookie crumbs mixed with a little cinnamon to get kind a cheesecake crust thing going on. In the center of these ones, I managed to hide a blob of strawberry jam. Sneaky!
The cuteness factor is unbelievable, and they taste pretty good too! Just what I needed put myself into a cheesecake mood! Thanks Deborah and Elle! You can find the recipe for the pops on Deborah’s site. I’ve looked at a bunch of posts, and the DBers did a beautiful job this month, so please check out the DB blogroll!
Speakeasy Cake
April 26, 2008 at 3:20 pm | Posted in book review, cakes & tortes, sweet things | 14 Comments
Here’s the third recipe I made from Melissa Murphy’s cookbook The Sweet Melissa Baking Book (well actually the fourth–the ice cream in the photos is her brown sugar vanilla ice cream, and it is divine). It’s a dense, moist chocolate cake that she calls the “Speakeasy” because of a whopping 2/3 cup of brandy in the batter!
It’s a cousin of Dorie’s Almost-Fudge Gâteau, but not quite as dark and fudgy. If you prefer semi-sweet chocolate to bittersweet (and like a little booze with your chocolate), then you will like this one.
Speakeasy– makes one 8-inch cake
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the cake:
6 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
10 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup brandy
4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
For the chocolate glaze:
6 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
½ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
Before you start:
Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter an 8 x 2-inch round cake pan. Line the bottom with an 8-inch round of parchment paper.
To make the cake:
– In a medium bowl set over a pot of simmering, not boiling, water, melt the chocolate with the butter and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the brandy until smooth. Set aside to cool.
-Separate the eggs. Place the yolks in a large mixing bowl, and the whites in an electric mixer bowl.
– Add half of the sugar to the bowl with the yolks and whisk until thick. Add the chocolate mixture to the yolks and whisk to combine. Sift the flour, cinnamon, and salt over the chocolate batter and stir to combine.
-In the bowl of the electric mixer fitted with the whip attachment, make a meringue by whipping the egg whites until foamy. In a slow steady stream, add the remaining sugar. Whip until the whites hold stiff but not dry peaks.
-Briskly stir one-third of the meringue into the chocolate mixture to lighten the batter. Gently fold the remaining two-thirds of the meringue into the batter until no streaks remain.
– Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Spin the pan to level the batter. Bake for 80 to 90 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. (Do not do the skewer test until the cake has been baking for at least 70 minutes or you will deflate the batter!) Remove to a wire rack to cool before glazing. (Steph’s note: I made a half-recipe in a 6-inch cake pan and it took only 40 minutes to bake.)
To make the glaze:
– When the cake is cool enough to glaze, coarsely chop the chocolate and place it in a medium bowl.
-In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the heavy cream until scalding, or until the cream is steaming and tiny bubbles have formed along the edges. Do not boil.
-Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Let stand for 5 minutes, then whisk until smooth. Stir in the corn syrup.
To complete the cake:
-Place the cake upside down on a rack set over the prepared cookie sheet.
-Pour the glaze over the cake, letting the glaze spread itself. You may have to push it over the sides a bit, and use a small metal spatula or butter knife to smooth the sides. Try not to touch the top though, so it will be glossy and unmarred. Let the glaze set at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Once the glaze is set, transfer the cake to a serving plate.
*The cake keeps in a cake saver at room temperature for 2 days. For longer storage, refrigerate for up to 1 week.
Taste&Create VIII: Greek Feta and Tomato Pasta
April 24, 2008 at 1:07 am | Posted in events, pasta, savory things | 8 Comments
For Taste&Create VIII, I was hooked up with Teresa from I’m Running to Eat. Teresa is an avid runner and cooks healthy meals for her family. I had no problem finding something from her blog to highlight here, but I cringe to think of Teresa’s reaction to the billion-calorie sweets I post– sorry Teresa!
From Teresa’s site, I chose Greek feta and tomato pasta, a recipe that she says is a favorite, and although it’s vegetarian, even the carnivores in her family love it. Since I eat a mainly vegetarian diet, but R could live off steak, that sounded perfect for us.
This came together in a snap. It’s one of those dishes where the sauce is basically made in the time it takes the pasta to cook–I love that! Rather than the thin spaghetti the recipe calls for, I used farfalle here. I wanted to take advantage of the last hurrah for fresh tomatoes before the cold sets in in Sydney, and used cherry tomatoes on the vine, cooked just until they burst. And since I had a giant bunch of basil on the counter, I tossed some in at the end. My favorite part of this dish, though, was the feta, which just barely melted from the heat of the pasta, and turned really creamy.
Thanks Teresa for a great dinner (or lunch…I’ve made it three times already, actually), and Nicole from For the Love of Food for hosting T&C!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Bill’s Big Carrot Cake
April 22, 2008 at 5:08 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 47 Comments
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting…I probably don’t need to say much more than that.
But of course I will. Carrot cake is a favorite here, but not made nearly enough, so I was glad when Amanda of slow like honey gave me the excuse I needed to get grating, by choosing Bill’s Big Carrot Cake as this week’s TWD recipe. This one is *big* and loaded with carrots (of course), coconut, walnuts and dried cherries.
As per usual, I set out to do a half recipe of this cake, only to realize that I don’t have three 6-inch cake pans. Crud. I thought about making two larger layers and possibly splitting them into four, or using my 6-inch springform as the third pan, but I decided that this amount would probably fit perfectly into my quarter-sized sheet pan (my favorite and most useful sheet pan). So instead of a round cake, I baked a sheet cake that I cut into three strips (the baking time was reduced, of course). Once layered up with icing, it made a rectangular cake that I could cut into thin slices or chubby squares.
Armed with some tips from a great post by Joy, I made a gorgeous cream cheese frosting. I flavored mine with vanilla bean paste and orange zest, rather than the lemon juice that Dorie uses. This cake is tall, and moist and delicious…a winner of a carrot cake. And since I just did a half recipe, I made the whole thing, cake and frosting, easily by hand.
You can find this recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and on slow like honey. Thanks Amanda, and of course thanks Bill! Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
Mom’s Banana Apple Bread
April 20, 2008 at 5:35 pm | Posted in book review, breakfast things, cakes & tortes, events, muffins/quick breads, simple cakes, sweet things | 58 Comments
Well, not my mom’s. I’m guessing Melissa Murphy’s mom’s, since it’s in her new cookbook The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. You know, I really don’t like bananas in their raw form (not even in smoothies), but once they are baked into something sweet, it’s a whole ‘nother story. R does like to have bananas in his cereal, but sometimes he buys more than he can eat. When that happens, I wrap them up and stash them in the freezer…after I’ve accumulated a few, it’s time for banana bread, cake or muffins!
What makes this particular banana bread extra-special are the bits of caramelized apple throughout. Most banana bread has a pretty good shelf life and can even get better after a day of so. This one is no exception, as the sweet apples just meld more into the spiced bread.
I was so happy with this, that I’m entering it into Sydneysider Not Quite Nigella’s Banana Bread Bakeoff event. If you have a favorite banana bread recipe, go check out her bakeoff, too.
Mom’s Banana Apple Bread– makes one 1 1/2-quart loaf pan
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the apples:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
For the banana bread:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon kosher salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
¼ cup fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups very ripe mashed bananas (2 to 3)
Before you start:
Position a rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter and flour a 1 1/2-quart loaf pan.
To make the apples:
Preheat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter and brown sugar and heat until bubbling. Add the apples and cinnamon and sauté until golden and tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
To make the banana bread:
-In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt.
-In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
-In a small bowl, combine the orange juice and vanilla.
-Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with the orange juice mixture, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each flour addition. Stir in the mashed bananas until combined. Then stir in the reserved apples.
-Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes before unmolding onto the rack to cool further.
*Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. The banana bread keeps well wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 3 days. For longer storage, freeze well wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil for up to 3 weeks. Defrost (still wrapped) at room temperature.
Snickerdoodles
April 16, 2008 at 4:40 pm | Posted in book review, cookies & bars, sweet things | 17 Comments
I think that snickerdoodles are totally underrated. Sure everyone loves them, but if asked to name a favorite cookie, I bet very few people think of them first. They don’t have chips, or nuts or raisins, but their beauty is in their old-fashioned simplicity…and in their adorable crinkly tops.
When I first thumbed though The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy (see here for my review), her recipe for snickerdoodles was the first that I wanted to try. This is such an easy cookie to make, and you don’t even have to have any fancy ingredients. The effort to reward ratio here is really in the baker’s favor. The recipe makes a lot– three dozen cookies if you use her one ounce size guideline. That’s too many for us to eat at once, but cookie dough freezes beautifully. So in a few days, I can thaw out a bit more dough and bake a few more of these sweet, cinnamony and slightly chewy cookies. Lovely!
The smell of cinnamon and butter baking in the oven is so good– I should manufacture a snickerdoodle-scented room spray.
Snickerdoodles– makes 3 dozen cookies
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the dough:
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher saltFor the cinnamon sugar:
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ cup sugar
-In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until smooth, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggs and mix until combined.
-In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Add to the butter mixture and mix on low speed until combined. The dough will be soft and too sticky to roll. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.
-Position a rack in the top and bottom thirds of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
-For the cinnamon sugar: Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
-Using a 1-ounce cookie scoop, or a tablespoon, shape the dough into balls and then roll them in the cinnamon sugar.
-Place the cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Flatten them slightly with your fingertips so that they stay put. Bake for about 12 to 13 minutes, or until the bottoms are slightly golden in color. These cookies are supposed to be chewy, so do not overbake. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
*Snickerdoodles keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. For longer storage, freeze well wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil for up to 3 weeks. Do not uncover before defrosting.
Book Review: The Sweet Melissa Baking Book
April 16, 2008 at 2:08 pm | Posted in book review | 7 Comments
I had a little treat waiting for me in my mail pile the other day: a copy of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. I’ve never met Melissa herself, but do have a very personal relationship with her shop. Before moving to Sydney last year, I lived in Brooklyn Heights. When I first arrived on the Brooklyn scene in 1996, there wasn’t really anywhere to get a great slice of cake or a beautiful tart (and I was too busy sitting in a cubicle to be making things myself). Then one day a couple years later, as I was running errands in neighboring Cobble Hill, I noticed a little storefront with wedding cakes in the window…it was Sweet Melissa Pâtisserie. Finally–just what the neighborhood needed! It was cute and small, but had places to sit down and have tea and sweets from real cups and plates, and best of all: a display case full of gorgeous treats! Melissa even had her French Culinary Institute diploma framed on the wall. Fast forward a few more years, and I myself was a graduate of FCI’s pastry program. I trailed for a job opening at Sweet Melissa just a couple of weeks after graduation. Well, I didn’t get the job (I had no professional kitchen experience at that point), but I kept up my monthly tradition of going for dessert at Sweet Melissa’s (after dinner at the sushi place next door) right up until I moved to Sydney.
Now, back to the book, which, for obvious reasons, I couldn’t wait to crack into. From time to time (otherwise knowns as always) I still find myself homesick for Brooklyn, so looking through this book was almost comforting for me. Melissa says that her goal is “…to make everyone’s favorite desserts better than they’ve had them before.” Even if your not familiar with her shop, you’ll still be familiar with many of the desserts in her book. There aren’t many photos, but if you’re like me, you’ll recognize many of her recipes as things you grew up with and still crave. And she has plenty of things in the book that are uniquely hers as well. These are things that you will want to make, and even though she takes no shortcuts, her directions are so clearly written that you’d be hard pressed to mess them up!
Melissa’s six chapters cover the gamut of sweets, from ‘Dessert for Breakfast’ to ‘Sunday Supper’s Grand Finale,’ with cookies, layer cakes and fruit desserts along the way. And the final chapter, ‘Favorite Gifts: Truffles, Brittles, and Candies,’ is really special. Who wouldn’t think you were amazing if you made them honey cream caramels?? Melissa also includes ‘pro tips’ that will make home bakers more confident in the kitchen and offers us quick snippets of why these recipes are special to her.
I’ve already made a few things from the book, and all with great results! You’ll get to see those as separate posts as I’m able to write them up…so stay tuned.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Marshmallows
April 15, 2008 at 5:31 am | Posted in groups, other sweet, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 53 Comments
The word of the day is althaiophobia: a fear of marshmallows. And no, I didn’t make that up.
I’m kinda afraid of marshmallows. Not really the marshmallows themselves, but the gelatin inside them. When I saw that Judy of Judy’s Gross Eats had chosen marshmallows as this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, I was a little frightened. I really wanted to participate, but I really didn’t want to use gelatin, and after the agar-agar disaster of ’07, I wasn’t too excited to try that again either. Luckily, this time of year the Kosher section of the supermarket is pretty well-stocked, and I was able to pick up a box of fish gelatin. I’d never used it before, and wasn’t sure how to (the package labeling is in Hebrew, so it didn’t help me out a lot). It’s a little more granular than regular gelatin, but I decided to treat it the same way, since I didn’t have any better ideas.
I went with Dorie’s ‘Playing Around’ instructions for cappuccino marshmallows, and based on some advice from other TWDers, just stirred in the cappuccino mixture at the very end to keep the marshmallows from deflating. I set them in a glass baking dish rather than a baking sheet, which just seemed easier to me, and made them nice and tall. I wasn’t sure if they would set up or not with that gelatin, so as soon as I tipped the mix into the dish, I immediately left the house and went to the movies (if you haven’t seen ‘Lars and the Real Girl,’ you should!). If there’s one bad kitchen habit I have, it’s that I must endlessly poke and inspect things that I should just leave alone.
I was really pleased with how they turned out! They were soft and squishy and high. Now here’s the cake plate shot, à la Dorie.
You can find this recipe on Judy’s Gross Eats— thanks Judy! It’s also in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
TWD Rewind: Gooey Chocolate Cakes
April 11, 2008 at 12:55 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 11 Comments
This cake was not too photogenic, but it sure was delicious. While I was away, the Tuesdays with Dorie gang, led this time by Leigh of Lemon Tartlet, made Dorie Greenspan’s Gooey Chocolate Cakes. I knew I wanted to whip them up myself as soon as I was back home. And poor R hadn’t had a homemade dessert in weeks, so a little chocolate gooeyness seemed like a good place to start.
In her opening description, Dorie notes that these cakes are fairly ubiquitous at this point. In fact, at one restaurant where I used to work, we had a very similar molten cake on our menu for private parties. We’d do up giant batches (sometimes over 100, depending on the size of the party) of individual ones, also using disposable aluminum cups as Dorie suggests. Here, quantities were a bit more manageable…I only made two!
If you’d like to make up these little ultra-chocolatey cakes yourself (and it’s easy, I promise!), the recipe is on Lemon Tartlet and in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
Baked Fresh Weekly
Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
a whisk and a spoon 