Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel Crunch Bars
February 24, 2009 at 2:51 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 60 Comments
We have another yummy cookie for TWD this week. Whitney of What’s Left on the Table? had me putting caramel crunch bars on my table, and trust me, nothing’s left!
This cookie does have a lot of crunch. It’s a brown sugar shortbread, flavored with a little cinnamon and espresso powder and a lot of chopped chocolate. On top there’s melted dark chocolate and a generous sprinkle of toffee bits. I have never bought Heath Toffee Bits before, and was completely amused by the package. Not only does it say “Bits o’ Brickle,” which is enormously funny to me, but it also says “finest quality English toffee” in one spot and then “artificially flavored” in another. Hmmm…
In the book, Dorie suggests using these for ice cream sandwiches. I had a little homemade fresh mint ice cream, so I decided to give it a try. I topped the bars that I was using for the sandwiches with cocoa nibs instead of toffee (these I scattered sparingly, because they are kinda bitter). Tasty? Yes, but also a little hard to eat. I thought the bars were a little too crunchy for ice cream sandwiches. They were difficult to bite into frozen…I think I prefer a softer, more yielding cookie for that purpose. The caramel crunch bars are sweet enough and rich enough on their own, that I preferred them just as they were. Well, with a cup of herbal tea, that is.
For the recipe, read What’s Left on the Table? or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
The Cake Slice: Southern Coconut Cake
February 20, 2009 at 2:39 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, the cake slice | 45 Comments
I am a coconut cake fanatic. I love it in all its forms…filled with pastry cream or lemon curd, iced with cream cheese frosting or buttercream. Any which way you slice it, I’ll take a piece! Coconut cupcakes are scrummy too…I made some here awhile back. So, naturally I was excited when Southern Coconut Cake won The Cake Slice group vote this month (although I know it only came from behind to beat out a chocolate-peanut butter cake because of the current salmonella scare, but so what).
There are no yolks in this cake, so the crumb is snow-white fluff. I really like that the recipe incorporates coconut milk into the batter. I punched up the coconut flavor a bit more by using a combination of vanilla and coconut extracts (rather than straight vanilla), and by folding a handful of finely grated unsweetened coconut (the desiccated stuff from the health food store) into the batter at the end. I made half a recipe, but rather than baking it in three 6-inch pans, like I usually do, I spread the batter into a quarter sheet pan (measuring something like 9″ x 13″). I then cut it into three strips, which I stacked into a rectangular cake… for some reason, I was obsessed with having a slice that looked like Pepperidge Farm.
The finished cake is not frosted with a traditional cream cheese frosting, but with a super light cream cheese buttercream, made with an Italian meringue. Wow, is it good…and it’s something that I never would have thought to do. The book that this recipe comes from, Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes, has so many cool ideas– I’m really glad to have it. I made a two-thirds recipe of buttercream, so I could have leftovers to frost my Valentine’s cupcakes.
Not only does this cake taste great, but it’s also soooo pretty. I want it for my wedding cake. Oh, darn…I’m already married! But there’s actually something else I can celebrate with a yummy coconut cake– a whisk and a spoon turns two today! I can hardly believe it (especially when I go back and look at those early posts–ha!), and if it weren’t for all of you who read and leave such encouraging comments, I may not have kept at it for so long. Thank you for making blogging so wonderfully fun and fulfilling!!
Here’s a printable link to the recipe. Better yet, get your hands on a copy of Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes by Alicia Huntsman and Peter Wynne. Cruise through the list of The Cake Slice Bakers to check out all of our coconut cakes this month.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Devil’s Food White-Out Cake
February 17, 2009 at 2:19 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, cupcakes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 49 Comments
Oh, I bet a lot of TWDers have been waiting a long time for this one, and we have Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater to thank for finally choosing it! Actually, I feel a twinge of guilt posting this picture. It’s almost as if, by turning Dorie’s cover cake into cupcakes, I haven’t quite done her recipe justice. Please forgive me…it’s just that I’ve been doing a lot of layer cakes with The Cake Slice group lately.
Geez Louise, I love devil’s food cake. I mean, really…it’s so chocolaty, and that moist but dense thing it has going on…it’s just the best type of chocolate cake (by the way, I like it chilled). This particular devil’s food recipe is extra-special because it has little chopped chocolate bits throughout. I made a half recipe and got ten cupcakes. I actually only turned six of them into White-Outs. The others went, unfrosted but nicely wrapped, into the freezer, and later (along with some leftover cream cheese frosting you’ll read about in a few days) became Valentine’s cupcakes.
The White-Out Cake is Dorie’s spin on the classic Brooklyn blackout cake, but here the filling/frosting is homemade marshmallow Fluff. Yay, Fluff! I even cut a hole out of the center of each cupcake and filled it with extra marshmallow meringue. You know where I was going with that, right? I reserved the little plugs of cake for my crumbs. One note about the frosting: I reduced the cream of tartar in the recipe. A friend had made this cake about a month ago, and told me she thought the frosting had a slightly metallic taste…the large amount of CoT was the only culprit I could think of.
So good…it was so good. Make it yourself and see– the recipe, of course, is in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but she also has it here on NPR’s site. Don’t forget to read Stephanie’s post and check out the TWD Blogroll to see what everyone else came up with!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Floating Islands
February 10, 2009 at 2:39 am | Posted in groups, other sweet, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 41 Comments
Shari, a loyal TWDer who does cool things with classic dishes on Whisk: a food blog, chose Floating Islands (île flottante), a traditional French dessert, for this week’s recipe. I actually would have called this “snow eggs” (oeufs à la neige), but now I realize I don’t know what the difference is, if there really is one (and Googling it didn’t help, as I found different info on each link…too much information sometimes just confuses me).
This dessert makes me smile; it looks kind of goofy, don’t you think? The basic idea is this: a milk-poached meringue sits in a pool of crème anglaise custard. It’s light from the meringue and, at the same time, rich from the custard…and because it’s served chilled, it’s really quite refreshing.
Rather than quenelling smooth, egg-shaped meringues, I tried to make cute, spiky little islands. Unfortunately, my cute spikes flattened as I turned the meringues during the poaching process, and I ended up with deformed blobs. Whatever…looks aren’t everything. I made my meringues first, and so that I wouldn’t waste the poaching milk, I strained and remeasured it and used it as the basis for the custard sauce.
Traditionally, a drizzle of caramel finishes off floating islands, but because caramel doesn’t keep, and I had to take the blog pictures several hours before I’d be eating the dessert, I chose to skip that bit. I didn’t want my islands to look barren though, so in an effort to spruce them up another way, I decided to infuse my anglaise with orange zest and garnish with a few fresh berries. And since this is an old-school dessert, I went with some old-school baby mint sprigs, just for good measure.
For the recipe, read Whisk: a food blog or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies
February 3, 2009 at 2:50 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 54 Comments
I know these cookies. Not that I’d ever made them myself before Jessica of cookbookhabit chose them for this week’s TWD, but a few summers ago, I spent a couple of days in Paris visiting a friend. It was August and several of the shops I hoped to visit were closed for their own vacations. That was a bummer, but I was happy to find that Pierre Hermé on rue Bonatparte was open. I pretty much scarfed down the entire macaroon display, and then moved on to the shelves, where I picked up a little baggie of chocolate sablés for the plane trip home. I hadn’t a clue that these cookies were super-famous, but I knew after tasting them that they should be! Honestly, I couldn’t believe how good they were– crumbly and chocolaty…but it’s the hit of salt that really made me say, “Oh la vache!”
I used Sel de Guérande in these cookies, but if you don’t have fleur de sel, don’t worry. I maybe wouldn’t recommend regular table salt (which is too harshly salty– if that makes sense–for my tastes, even for everyday cooking), but a “softer” salt, like Kosher or sea salt, will work just fine. The recipe has a bit of chopped dark chocolate folded in at the end…you can be experimental with this bit, if you want. I used a combo of chopped bittersweet chocolate and cocoa nibs, so that there would be a little gooey melted chocolate and a little bitter crunch in each bite.
Can world peace really be achieved through a cookie? Oh, if only it were that simple…but if the new Administration wants to give it a go, I’ll happy accept the position of Secretary of Snacks! To feel like you’ve gone to Paris without leaving home, read cookbookhabit or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan for the recipe (she also has it here on The Splendid Table’s website). Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
TWD Rewind: Quintuple Chocolate Brownies
January 29, 2009 at 4:13 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, events, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 40 Comments
Quintuple–that’s five! I’m sure you know that and I’m not trying to insult your intelligence, but I myself am still a bit shocked that five types of chocolate can fit into a single brownie. Somehow, in one little square, there is room for cocoa powder and unsweetened, bittersweet, milk and white chocolates.
Talk about a fudgy brownie…I think this one may actually be fudge! If that white chocolate glaze looks I laid it on a little thick, well umm, that’s because I did. I thought the original amount seemed a little thin so I added a bit more white chocolate and a bit more cream, and suddenly I had a thick slick of icing!
These brownies are so dangerously good, that I’d feel guilty (in many ways) keeping them to myself. Jenny from All Things Edible has a beautiful new home, and I’m going to bring them to her housewarming party!
This was Brown Eyed Baker Michelle’s TWD pick shortly before I joined the group, about a year ago. For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (she also has it here on NPR’s website) or read Michelle’s post.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread
January 27, 2009 at 1:46 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 57 Comments
I’ve had my eye on this recipe for quite awhile, and I was pretty happy when Heather of Sherry Trifle picked it for this week’s TWD. My mum made gingerbread cookies with us every year at Christmastime, but gingerbread in cake form is one of those “newer discoveries” that I wish I hadn’t missed out on for so long.
With the addition of chocolate and icing (yay, icing!), Dorie’s version takes the classic gingerbread cake and shakes it up a bit. I have been a little cacao-deprived as of late, so I really liked the little flecks of chocolate speckled throughout the cake. And the chocolate icing..my gosh, the icing. I used a shot of espresso from the coffee shop to make it, so the coffee kick was quite noticeable, and quite tasty. The chocolate and coffee worked really well with the cake’s spicy ginger trifecta (fresh, ground and candied).
I made two-thirds of a recipe and baked it in an eight-inch sqaure pan. I did this before I even saw Dorie’s note, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that one. Dorie’s serving size suggestion was a bit…ummm…gigantic. I was actually able to get nine pieces (instead of six) out of my smaller cake. This was four nights worth of dessert for us, so we paired it with vanilla ice cream one night, whipped cream the next, and enjoyed it plain-Jane with tea another. Every which way, it was delicious, and stayed nice and moist the whole time.
For the recipe, read Sherry Trifle or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (she also has it here on Serious Eats). Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
The Cake Slice: Banana Cake with Praline Filling and White Chocolate Ganache
January 20, 2009 at 7:30 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, the cake slice | 40 Comments
Ack–I didn’t realize that this post and the TWD one would fall on the same day! So in addition to having to crank out two posts on Monday night, I have also been subsisting on an all-cake diet for the past week!
This Banana Cake with Praline Filling and White Chocolate Ganache happens to be the latest installment of The Cake Slice. I guess the title kinda tells it all, right? You start with a white cake, softly flavored with banana purée. The tall layers are stacked with a white chocolate ganache frosting that has sugared pecans folded through. Then the cake gets frosted with the remainder of the ganache, and decorated with the rest of the pecans. I halved the original recipe to make a six-inch layer cake. Normally, I get six servings from a six-incher, but this cake was so toweringly high that I was able to get eight!
I will admit that I did not make the sugared pecans according to the recipe’s directions, which call for deep frying. I didn’t want to use up half a bottle of oil to fry off a few nuts, so I dry-toasted them in a skillet instead. Then I added a pat of butter, a couple spoonfuls of brown sugar and a sprinkle of salt, and cooked the nuts until the sugar and butter made a glaze. I use this technique to make crunchy candied nuts for snacks and salads all the time, and it works really well.
As someone who is not terribly fond of white chocolate, it surprises me to say that I thought the ganache frosting/filling was the star of the show! The banana cake definitely has the texture of a white cake, rather than something more banana bready, and the flavor is gentle, too. It goes so well with the frosting, which is made by mixing ganache into softly whipped unsweetend cream. The whipped cream really mellows out and tones down the tooth-achy sweetness of the white chocolate, and the resulting frosting is soft, light and decadent. I will definitely be using this recipe again, as it’s super-good and much less rich than a traditional whipped ganache frosting (which I have described here and here).
All-in-all, this was a delicious cake…and one I’m really glad I made! Here’s a printable link to the recipe (better yet, get your hands on a copy of Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes by Alicia Huntsman and Peter Wynne), and cruise through the list of The Cake Slice Bakers to check out all of our banana cakes this month.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Berry Surprise Cake
January 20, 2009 at 1:14 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 32 Comments
Surprise! I love a surprise…the good kind only, of course, and Dorie’s Berry Surprise Cake certainly falls into that category. Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen chose it for TWD this week.
A single layer of genoise sponge is cut in two horizontally, hollowed and filled (bread-bowl style) with a lightly-sweetened cream cheese and fresh berry mixture, then craftily reassembled. Whipped cream frosting hides what’s going on inside (hence the surprise). At Fairway, blackberries were not only the best looking, but also the cheapest, so I went with those and used cassis to flavor my soaking syrup. When berry season rolls around, I’ll be trying out raspberries as well.
From the outside it is pretty unassuming, right? Trust me, it is really delicious…not too sweet, and I love the way genoise kind of takes everything in. We especially liked this cake after a day or two, when it became almost trifle-like.
For the recipe, read Meet Me in the Kitchen or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins
January 13, 2009 at 2:04 am | Posted in breakfast things, groups, muffins/quick breads, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 44 Comments
Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake chose Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins for TWD this week. I love months where we get a savory or breakfast recipe…one less dessert to squeeze in. I made six muffins. We had a couple for breakfast with scrambled eggs, and a couple with a Mexican-ish tortilla casserole I made for dinner. They were the perfect accompaniment for both.
These muffins are wonderfully spiced from the chili powder, and have lots of good add ins, like corn kernels, jalapeños and red pepper. While I know some people can’t stand the stuff, I am a cilantro fiend and always use a heavy hand with it. If you’re a cornbread purist, you may not go for these. I’m not, so I did…I thought they were best warm.
For the recipe, read Rebecca’s post or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
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