TWD Rewind: Perfection Pound Cake
June 4, 2008 at 6:57 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 22 Comments
Sydney is one grey and wet city right now. We’re in the midst of what’s supposed to be a week of non-stop rain, so to pass the time indoors, I decided to play TWD catch-up with Dorie’s Perfection Pound Cake. To give my pound cake an extra element of sunshine, I chopped up a little candied lemon and orange zest that I had leftover from my meyer lemon bombe plate garnish and threw that into the mix.
What did I think? Well, to tell you the truth, I thought the cake was just a tad dry (and after reading other blog posts about this same cake, I found that it was not an uncommon reaction). But I took a little of the simple syrup I’d been storing the candied zest in, brushed the cut sides of the cake with it, and then it was perfection! With some whipped cream and a quick sauce from frozen raspberries, it definitely chased the clouds away.
TWD leader Laurie picked this recipe (back when there were only four members and she could actually get a couple choices of her own!), and you can find it on her site or in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
Tuesdays with Dorie: French Chocolate Brownies
June 3, 2008 at 6:04 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 67 Comments
Next in the queue for Tuesdays with Dorie is the recipe for French Chocolate Brownies, courtesy of Di from Di’s Kitchen Notebook. I first heard of this recipe about a year ago when it was included in a New York Times article about brownies…I saved it and (even though it doesn’t call for nuts) have been wanting to make it ever since. Seems Dorie originally intended these to be a fondant-style cake when she served them at a dinner party for French friends, but they just assumed that their American hostess had made them brownies. Dorie, not missing a beat, went right along with it, and everyone loved them!
Some TWDers noted long baking times and a dry crust as drawbacks of this recipe. Mine came out with quite a nice thin crust layer, and it wasn’t overly crackly either. I made a half recipe in a loaf pan…I took them out at the 45 minute mark, although I admit that I accidentally baked them at 325°F. Oops–I’m not always paying complete attention, but luckily no brownies were hurt due to negligence! Not quite a fudgy brownie, and not quite a cakey one either, these had an almost silky texture that I liked a lot when eaten at room temperature (not so appealing cold, though).
Something really funny that I’ve learned from TWD is that there are a lot of raisin-haters out there. I thought maybe I was the only one, so I feel better knowing I’m actually in good company. This brownie recipe called for rum-flamed raisins to be mixed into the batter, which sounded less than thrilling. I’m all for a good flambé, though, so I decided to ignite some chopped dates instead. The dates worked really well…just kind of melding into the overall sweetness of the brownies, rather than being too conspicuous.
To go alongside these faux French pastries, I made Dorie’s recipe for Faux Crème Fraîche, near the back of the book. It’s just a little vanilla whipped cream with some sour cream folded in, but somehow it made the whole thing très chic.
Open up Di’s Kitchen Notebook or Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan to find the recipe. (Dorie has also written about it on Serious Eats.) Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Daring Bakers in May: Opéra Cake
May 28, 2008 at 5:16 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, layer cakes, sweet things | 81 Comments
This May, the Daring Bakers’ challenge had a quartet of hostesses– a four-part harmony, featuring founders Ivonne and Lis and newer members Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea of Whiskful. In voices heard across the world, they sang out this month’s challenge: an opéra cake.
A traditional opéra cake is a thing of delicious beauty, carefully orchestrated with alternating layers of sponge cake, coffee buttercream and ganache, topped off with a dark chocolate glaze. As part of the challenge this month, our hostesses tasked us with rewriting the opéra for spring– the same basic components, but lightened up in flavor and color. For me, part of this challenge lay in that we are fast approaching winter here in Australia. While you can see from the flowers I pinched from a neighbor’s lawn, that I am by no means in a bare, frozen tundra, a lot of the things I may have chosen to flavor this cake are kinda off limits right now.
I’m no stranger to making opéra cake. At the first restaurant I worked for, we used little tiny pieces of the traditional version as a petit four. At least every other day for a few months, I’d make and assemble an opéra (and the scraps are dangerous– I would devour them as I portioned the cake into pieces!). Despite this, I did hem and haw my way through the month, wondering what to do flavor-wise. This past week, though, it was time to get down to business. Looking through my pantry, I realized I could easily make something that would pair perfectly with the Middle Eastern dinner I mentioned I would be making. My opéra would be composed of almond joconde moistened with lemon syrup, pistachio buttercream, lemon-rosewater mousse and white chocolate glaze.
I will make the same confession that I do with every DB challenge– I drastically scaled back the recipe. I made just one pan of joconde (the recipe halves perfectly), and only used half of that to assemble the cake. The rest I froze to use for other things, like the base for a meyer lemon bombe. My one-quarter sized opéra was small, but big enough to give the two of us dessert for three nights, and that’s about my maximum tolerance for any one particular thing.
We were allowed to use any buttercream recipe we liked…I used a whole-egg buttercream that I’ve made before, so as not to be suck with any bothersome extra whites or yolks. To turn it into a pistachio buttercream, I first eyeballed an amount of pistachios and blanched them so I could slip off their brown skins and expose their bright green insides. Then I roasted them in the oven just enough to dry them out, but not to color them, before grinding them in my mini food processor with a little bit of almond meal and drizzle of plain simple syrup. This formed a rough, homemade paste that incorporated easily into the buttercream and gave it pretty green flecks throughout.
I flavored the simple syrup used to moisten the cake layers with a few drops of lemon extract. I also used the lemon extract and rosewater to flavor the white chocolate mousse, which was the cake’s top layer, just beneath the glaze. I did this to taste–enough to make the flavor pronounced, without tasting like I swallowed a jar of perfume. (A chef that I used to work for once said that rosewater reminded him of “grandma’s panty drawer”–what?? And how the hell did he know what that smells like anyway??)
I must say that I was really pleased with how this cake came out. The joconde baked up to be my idea of the perfect height. Too thin and the joconde can be rubbery…too thick and you wind up with an opéra that’s crazy tall. I am quite particular and like all of the layers to be the same height, without feeling like there is too much of one component, and I was able to achieve that here. And the flavors were delicate, but wonderful. I was a little worried that the whole thing would be a bit too girlie for R’s tastes, but he loved it!
I tried sooo hard to get a photo of the whole cake, but it just wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t squeeze the whole thing into the frame without going on a weird angle that made it looked lopsided. That was a bummer, especially since I had bought a new platter to display it on. But it sliced really nicely, so at least I was able to get some good shots of individual pieces.
Last, but certainly not least, the Daring Bakers have dedicated this month’s challenge to Barbara of winosandfoodies.com. Even if you don’t know Barbara, it’s evident through her words that she lives everyday to the fullest and she lives strong. I think we can all sing to that.
If you haven’t had your fill of opera-related metaphors after that post, check out the DB blogroll! And visit Ivonne’s post for the recipe (which was adapted from two sources, Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets and Tish Boyle’s and Timothy Moriarty’s Chocolate Passion).
Tuesdays with Dorie: Pecan Honey Sticky Buns
May 27, 2008 at 4:47 am | Posted in breakfast things, groups, sweet things, sweet yeast breads, tuesdays with dorie | 52 Comments
Oh yeah–pecans and brioche laquered in brown sugar and honey goo. Does it get any better than that? I think not.
Madam Chow of Madam Chow’s Kitchen chose Dorie’s Pecan Honey Sticky Buns for this week’s TWD, but I actually made these awhile ago (luckily I had the forethought to take a few pictures). These sticky buns share the same brioche base as the Brioche Raisin Snails the group made back in March. I had a little extra dough from those snails and I turned it into these sticky buns the following week.
I only made two buns, but they were probably double the size of Dorie’s. I don’t always think that bigger is better, but with sticky buns, I sure do! Since I was so drastically scaling down the recipe, I just eyeballed the ingredients for both the filling and the glaze. I added some chopped toasted pecans to the cinnamony-sweet swirl inside the buns as well.
With a big cup of black coffee, these are a delicious (if not quite nutritious) breakfast! You can find the recipe here on Madam Chow’s Kitchen or in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Traditional Madeleines
May 20, 2008 at 3:37 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, cookies & bars, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 55 Comments
I’d been crossing my fingers that Tara of Smells Like Home would choose a cookie for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. Then Tara picked Dorie’s Traditional Madeleines–score! I know that a madeleine is really cake in cookie’s clothing, but after all the hard-core desserting I’ve been doing (and still have left to do this month), I was happy to have something that’s just a sweet bite.
I have fond voluntary (as opposed to Proustian-ha!) memories of these little scalloped-shaped cuties. Actually my memories are quite recent, as we made madeleines as part of the petits fours plate at the restaurant I last worked for. That recipe uses browned butter and almond flour, and we made a variety of flavors, from lavender to lemon-thyme, depending on what we felt like or what we had available.
Dorie’s recipe is flavored with lemon zest, and even though she doesn’t instruct you to brown the melted butter, I went ahead and did it anyway. Browned butter just has such a beautiful flavor, I used my non-stick mini madeleine pan (which is the only one I have, and trust me, you still need to grease it well) to bake them off, and made half of Dorie’s recipe. Rather than sprinkling them with powdered sugar before serving, I tossed the still-warm madeleines in some finely ground vanilla sugar.
I will say that these make very good little lemony tea cakes. They are soft and light and tasty (do bake them right when you are ready to eat them though, as they stale quickly). But I have one gripe. If we are talking about “tradition” here, then madeleines are supposed to have a bump on their backsides. We learned in culinary school that the bump is desirable, and our instructor said that madeleines are often presented with their bums in the air (rather than scalloped side up) to show them off. Dorie calls for chilling the batter for at least three hours to help form this bump. The same day I made the batter, I baked up half of it after letting it chill for several hours. No bump. The next day, I baked up the remaining batter (it had now been chilling overnight). Two madeleines had the bump…the rest didn’t. Ah well…after conferring with other TWDers, this seemed to happen to most everyone. And as Ulrike pointed out, even the Traditional Madeleines pictured in Dorie’s book don’t have bumps!
If you’d like to try your hand at baking madeleines (and see if you get the coveted golden bump!), you can find the recipe here on Smells Like Home or in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Florida Pie
May 13, 2008 at 4:08 am | Posted in groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 57 Comments
“What the heck is Florida Pie?” you ask. It’s basically a key lime pie with a couple of coconutty embellishments, and it happens to the TWD pick o’ the week from Dianne of Dianne’s Dishes. Dorie’s Florida Pie has the standard crumb crust and lime juice/condensed milk filling, but it also has a layer of coconut cream in between said crust and filling, and coconut folded into the meringue topping. I decided to go for mini pies, and half a recipe of filling gave me three babies. Mini pies do have a higher crust to filling proportion than full size pies, so I probably used about 2/3 recipe of crust.
I didn’t stray too far from Dorie’s instructions this time, but I did make a couple tweaks. I used regular (not key) limes and condensed low fat milk in the filling, which worked nicely. And for the coconut cream layer, I used way less cream than she called for, probably just a few tablespoons, and wound up with something more like a tasty goo. I also toasted my coconuts (both the shredded stuff I used in the goo, and the fine desiccated stuff I folded into the meringue), because I think it really brings out the flavor of packaged coconut, which can be pretty lackluster as-is.
“How did it taste?” you ask. Pretty darn good. Next time, I’ll add a little lime zest to the filling. I really like the combination of coconut and lime, but if you aren’t a coconut fan, just leave out the cream layer and keep your meringue unflavored. You’ll still wind up with a fantastic key lime pie. If you’d like to be transported via baking to Key West, Del Boca Vista, or the Floridian destination of your choice, put on your Lilly Pulitzer and check out the recipe here on Dianne’s Dishes, or in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to go look at the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Peanut Butter Torte
May 6, 2008 at 4:27 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 65 Comments
There are a few recipes in Baking: From My Home to Yours whose pictures and titles are so alluring, I’ve been surprised no one’s chosen them for TWD yet. Well, the time has finally come for one of these, as Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food has picked Dorie’s Peanut Butter Torte as our recipe of the week! Kind of like the Snickery Squares, I think Dorie has played candy bar dress-up here, except this time the candy in question is a Reece’s cup. I don’t mean to sound like a buzzkill, but the ingredient list is a little frightening, I have to tell you…Oreos, peanut butter, cream cheese, heavy cream, chocolate and peanuts. April was my busiest posting month to date, so that means it was also a very busy eating month. If I didn’t want to feel my heart racing (in a bad way) with each bite, I knew I had to tweak this torte a bit.
It was a given that was not going to make a full-sized torte. I rarely make a full-sized anything for the two of us. My six-inch springform would be prefect for a half recipe, and I’d still get six pieces out of it, but even a half batch seemed like so much cream and peanut butter. After some intense volume calculations (not really), I decided that I could still use my six-inch pan and get away with just a quarter recipe of the filling. Sure, it wouldn’t be as high as the one in Dorie’s picture, but I didn’t mind if my torte looked more like a tart.
I am a peanut butter fanatic, and I love the sugary, salty, junky stuff. I am sorry to say though that I don’t think the Aussie peanut butter is very good…it’s pale and doesn’t have peanuty specks in it. That may explain why, according to an informal poll taken by yours truly, it doesn’t seem to be a popular food item here (I was even told by someone that my favorite lunch, PB&J, is gross!). No matter–I’ve been “importing” my own peanut butter since my first trip back to the States. My current PB of choice is reduced fat Jif (smooth, never crunchy) so that’s what I decided to go with in this torte.
Back in the US, I wouldn’t think twice about swapping full fat cream cheese for the light Philly they label “Neufchâtel.” Here, though, the light Philly doesn’t have the same consistency at all…it tastes good, but even straight out of the fridge, it’s incredibly soft. Further inspection of the package says that it’s a blend of cream cheese and cottage cheese, so I guess that’s why. I didn’t think my filling would set up properly if I used it, so I went with the light version of a New Zealand brand called Mainland.
I also decided that rather than using Oreos to make my crust, I’d save a few more fat grams and use some almond cookie crumbs that I had in the freezer already. Adding cocoa powder turned them into chocolate crumbs.
I’m happy to report that my filling set up nicely after several hours in the fridge, and although I can imagine how wonderful the full blown PB torte would be, the skimpy version was still great! I loved the chocolate-peanut crunchy bits throughout the filling. Now you know my tricks, but you can find the original version of this recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and on Elizabeth’s site. Don’t forget to go check out the TWD Blogroll!
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!
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!
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