Tuesdays with Dorie: Snickery Squares
March 4, 2008 at 8:22 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 34 Comments
Erin of Dinner and Dessert was at the controls for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. She chose Dorie Greenspan’s Snickery Squares from the book Baking: From My Home to Yours. Dorie calls these “classy Snickers.” Shortbread, dulce de leche, candied peanuts and chocolate glaze…okay, there’s no nougat, but we won’t get too technical here! They still sounded candybar-licious to me!
I can’t say that I’ve noticed store-bought dulce de leche at my local grocery store in Sydney, so I made my own from a can of sweetened condensed milk . I threw caution to the wind and did it they way they all say not to…I boiled it in the can for three hours. Luckily there were no horrific explosions, and when I opened up the tin a few days later (I went away for the weekend and stashed it in the fridge), I had a can of beautifully thick caramel goo.
My bars look a little more oozy than they probably should. I just made them this afternoon, and had to shortcut the chilling time before their photo-session, as my daylight was fleeting! These are rich…super-rich. I’d maybe prefer a thinner layer of bittersweet chocolate topping, but besides that, no complaints here!
You can find the recipe for Snickery Squares in Baking: From My Home to Yours or on Dinner and Dessert. And don’t forget to check out the posts from the other Tuesdays with Dorie members!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits
February 26, 2008 at 7:06 am | Posted in biscuits/scones, breakfast things, groups, tuesdays with dorie | 30 Comments
Ashley of eat me, delicious lured us out of the realm of cakes and into the world of breakfast treats by choosing Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits as this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe.
I will fess up and tell you off the bat that I made these twice. The first time around, they were truly delicious, but they didn’t come out the way I thought they were meant to. Dorie described them as ‘high’ and ‘flaky,’ but mine didn’t rise much at all (surprising, given the large amount of leavener in the recipe), and while very tender, I wouldn’t have said they were flaky. Also, my photos of that batch were so blah-looking, I didn’t want to put them up. I still don’t like this photo either. What can I say…I am a perfectionist who never attains perfection. How frustrating to be me!!
The second time around, I followed a good suggestion made by Lemon Tartlet Leigh to grate my butter into the dry ingredients rather than try to cut in larger pieces. Then you can just toss the grated bits to coat and don’t run the risk of over-working the dough. I am usually pretty sensitive to over-working, but maybe I did on my first attempt, who knows. I’d say the second batch did rise a bit higher than the first, but I was expecting them to double in height or something, and they certainly didn’t. The only way I can put it is that they seemed more like scones than biscuits. That being said, they made darn fine scones (pecans and brown sugar are a great combo), and I’d certainly make them again, again…if that makes sense.
If you read the recipe in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or here on eat me, delicious, you’ll notice that Dorie calls for cutting the biscuits into two-inch rounds. I cut mine into larger squares, so there was no waste. Also two inches is tiny…I could eat like five of those. And if you’re wondering what that crazy red stuff is on my scones, it’s cranberry honey, which I received in the last go-round of Blogging by Mail.
Did anyone achieve high and mighty pecan sour cream biscuits this week? I dunno. Join me at the Tuesdays with Dorie site to view the blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Almost-Fudge Gâteau
February 19, 2008 at 6:33 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 42 Comments
For this week’s installment of Tuesdays with Dorie, Nikki of Crazy Delicious has chosen Dorie’s Almost-Fudge Gâteau. I love saying the word “gâteau”…sounds so elegant! A dense chocolate cake with bittersweet glaze certainly is elegant, and luckily this one is a snap to make, too. I made a half-recipe to fit my 6-inch springform…that pan is getting a workout lately!
I thought this would make a perfect Valentine’s Day dessert. I actually had to work that night and was unable to make it then, but turns out it was also a perfect Sunday night dessert. (It was even more fudgey on Monday night!) And I still went ahead and decorated it with sugar hearts and pink pearls. It was really great with a little espresso ice cream on the side.
The recipe is, of course, in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but you can also find it on Crazy Delicious. The TWD group is growing by leaps and bounds…check out all of our gâteaux on the Tuesdays with Dorie site.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Brown Sugar-Apple Cheesecake
February 12, 2008 at 8:32 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, cheesecakes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 36 Comments
Brown Sugar-Apple Cheesecake–doesn’t that just sound so good? This Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was hand-picked for us by Jaime of Good Eats n’ Sweet Treats. I like all kinds of cheesecake, but I’d never made one quite like this before. Usually I do the standard graham cracker crust and regular base, with maybe some type of berry coulis swirled in (here’s an example). This one has a gingersnap crust supporting a cheesecake sweetened with brown sugar and cider. And there’s a layer of caramelized apples hiding inside!
I was quite pleased to remember that on a trip to IKEA a couple months ago I’d bought a package of Swedish gingersnaps, and they were still unopened in my cupboard. Also, as we roll into fall here in the southern hemisphere, we are now getting “new season” apples at the market…much better than ones that have been sitting around for nine months. So all systems were go for making this cheesecake! I do often have a hard time judging when a cheesecake is ready to come out of the oven (quiche and brownies also torture me this way). Mine didn’t crack on the sides as per the instructions, but it seemed fully set, so I crossed my fingers and took it out. I was worried about overbaking it, too, since I’d halved the recipe and made a six-inch cake.
Seems like it came out just fine. I had some apple jelly in the fridge, so once it was cool, I glazed the top of my cake for a little shine. I love how high up the sides the crust came. The spices (cinnamon and ginger in the base) were just right, and the cheesecake was really creamy.
This recipe is from the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and you can find it here on Good Eats n’ Sweet Treats. It’s really good, so thanks Jamie for choosing it! Also check out the blogroll on the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see all of our cream cheese creations this week.
TWD Rewind: Orange Berry Muffins
February 9, 2008 at 11:05 am | Posted in breakfast things, muffins/quick breads, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 12 Comments
When I put up my first Tuesdays with Dorie post earlier in the week, I mentioned that I’d like to make the recipes the group tried out before I joined. This morning I decided to start with the simplest one, the first in the book: Orange Berry Muffins.
I may be a little groggy at 8:00 on a Saturday morning, but I had no trouble putting these together. A few ingredients, mixed by hand…twenty-five minutes later, breakfast is ready. The best part is they’re loaded with berries!
This recipe was Michelle’s choice and she has it posted on her blog, Sugar and Spice. It is from the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Black-and-White-Chocolate Cake
February 5, 2008 at 6:32 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 42 Comments
Like probably a lot of you, I have a bookshelf dedicated to my cookbooks. I read them, I admire them, I love and cherish them…but apart from a couple of standards, I don’t really use them that often. Over the holidays, I finally got Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. I felt like the last person on Earth to get it…I wondered if anyone noticed the big “L” stamped on my forehead for the past year! From what I’ve heard, it’s a fabulous book, so I would also be a total loser if I didn’t put it to use. But I need a little peer pressure sometimes, so help cattle prod me, I just joined a really great group called Tuesdays with Dorie! The brainchild of Laurie from quirky cupcake, TWD makes one recipe a week out of Baking from My Home to Yours. It’ll take awhile, but we hope to get through the whole thing! This means that at some point I will also need to get around to baking the first five recipes that I missed out on. I’m hoping none of this is too ambitious on my part…
For my first TWD, the group is making Dorie’s Black-and-White-Chocolate Cake, a recipe chosen by April of Abbey Sweets. It’s a vanilla buttermilk cake, layered with dark chocolate pastry cream and white chocolate whipped cream. Then the whole thing gets frosted with more white chocolate whipped cream. I love me some cake, so I was pretty psyched to get this one going.
OK, if you have the book and look on page 260, you’ll probably notice that my cake doesn’t look a whole lot like Dorie’s from the outside. In fact, it looks like crap. I had some big-time filling and frosting issues…it was highly upsetting, and I almost didn’t want to post a photo. I found the white chocolate whipped cream too soft to spread on the side of the cake (I couldn’t whip it anymore, because it was beginning to look separated, and I actually had to make it twice because the first time it really did curdle and wouldn’t come back together no matter how I tried to save it). It just slid right off and mucked up the cake plate…in hindsight, I should have realized that would happen and just iced the top, leaving the side exposed for an old-fashioned look. Since the dark chocolate pastry cream was oozing out between the layers anyway, I put some that I had leftover into the freezer for half and hour and tried to use it to frost the side instead. Because of it’s consistency, I couldn’t get a nice frost with that either (that’s why no one frosts with pastry cream!), but had to settle for more of a thin smear…grrrrr. I had made some tempered chocolate curls before beginning this whole process, so I hoped they would distract the eye from my frosting failures.
Thank goodness that the inside of my cake looks more or less normal. Oh, by the way, I halved the recipe in the book so I’d just have a six-inch cake. I have have to say, the dark chocolate cream was damn good…a perfect chocolate pastry cream. The cake itself was a little dense, I thought, but this could very well be due to differences in flour (I have had a couple of baked goods come out funky using my US books and Aussie flour).
Because of the problems I had, I’m really interested to see how my fellow TWD members did with this recipe. I’m going over to the Tuesdays with Dorie blog that Laurie set up to see the list of TWD bakers and visit their sites. So should you! And if you want to try your hand at the cake, take a look here on Abbey Sweets for the recipe.
Daring Bakers in January: Lemon Meringue Pie
January 28, 2008 at 2:52 pm | Posted in daring bakers, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things | 79 Comments
This sounds bizarre, even to me, but I don’t think I’ve ever had lemon meringue pie (a.k.a. LMP) before. I can’t imagine how this is possible, but I also can’t recall ever having a piece. This month’s Daring Bakers challenge, chosen and hosted by Jen The Canadian Baker, was my chance to fill this gross void in my culinary experience.
Apparently LMP doesn’t keep well. The meringue can breakdown and weep (how sad!), and the crust can sog out if it’s not eaten within a few hours of being made. I decided that for just three of us, dividing the recipe in half might make more sense. I have some rarely-used mini pie tins that I put to work to get three baby pies.
The pastry dough came together easily in the food processor, but was a little more wet than the sweet dough I usually make. It rolled out fine though…I chilled it for several hours in the tins before baking, and it held its shape nicely in the oven. I was even able to pop them out of the tins successfully! The filling was super easy to make…much less work than a regular lemon curd, thanks to cornstarch. And I was really happy with the cloud-like fluffy whiteness of the meringue. In the oven, the peaks took on a gorgeous pale brown.
I must say, I thought my little guys came out really cute, what with their mounds of fluff heaped on top! But what did I think of my first taste of LMP? I liked it, but I could really take it or leave it. The lemon filling has a bit too much of that cornstarchy giggle. I think I prefer a traditional French lemon curd tart.
Want a few hundred more opinions of LMP? Then head on over to the Daring Bakers Blogroll. And if you want the recipe, it’s here on Jen’s site.
Daring Bakers in December: Yule Log
December 22, 2007 at 9:25 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, sweet things | 54 Comments
‘Tis the season…to eat cake shaped like tree branches! I love holiday baking (wish I’d gotten to do more of it this year) and I absolutely love yule log, or Bûche de Noël. If you were wondering what the Daring Bakers would be up to for the holidays, this is it! Or hosts, the co-founders of the group, Ivonne and Lisa chose a yule log, a symbol of light and warmth for this month’s challenge.
A Bûche de Noël is usually a genoise sponge cake rolled up with a filling, cut to resemble a log and frosted with buttercream. Then it gets all kinds of slightly wacky decorations. Mushrooms are a traditional yule log decoration. Don’t worry–I’m taking about sweet sugar mushrooms! We were able to chose to make our ‘shrooms from either meringue or marzipan. Not being a huge marzipan fan, I went the meringue route. I dusted them with cocoa and a little gold luster dust. My log came from a magical, sparkley forest!
I have made a couple of yule logs in the past, so I knew the general drill. The genoise sponge we used was slightly different from ones I’ve made in the past. This one had no butter and used cornstarch…more like a ladyfinger recipe I’ve used many times. I decided to keep my sponge plain in flavor, but I was worried it would dry out in the fridge, so I soaked it with a rum simple syrup before rolling it. We had to use coffee buttercream to frost the cake (which was fine by me), and it was made Swiss-meringue style.
I didn’t have any real problems making the yule log. The most difficult part was deciding on a filling, as we could chose whatever we wanted to roll our cakes up with. I decided to do a chocolate mousse filling. It set up nicely and went well with the coffee and rum flavors in the other components. Decorating the cake was a lot of fun, and we certainly had no difficulty eating it up!
I am flying to the States today for the holidays. I’m very excited about the trip, but it means I may not be able to comment on as many of my fellow DBer’s posts as I would like. I apologize for that, but do check out the Daring Bakers’ blogroll and see all the beautiful Bûche that were made! Ivonne has the recipe on her site. Happy holidays!
Daring Bakers in November: Tender Potato Bread
November 26, 2007 at 12:00 pm | Posted in daring bakers, events, savory things, yeast breads | 60 Comments
Ahhh…finally, today is the day when I can reveal my experience with the latest Daring Bakers challenge– it is something I really look forward to every month. This go-around Tanna from My Kitchen in Half Cups had us roll up our sleeves and bake bread! She chose a recipe for tender potato bread from Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour & Tradition Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. This is a book I have on my own shelf, so I was extra-excited to give the bread recipe a try.
Besides being true to the base recipe, we had to knead the bread by hand (I hadn’t done that in forever!) and it had to be savory. But other than that, Tanna really encouraged us to play around with the shape of our bread and the flavorings used. I did cut the recipe in half, which is my usual MO, because R and I can’t (or shouldn’t) eat sooo much bread. I used the maximum amount of mashed potato suggested by Tanna (16 ounces for a full recipe, or 8 ounces for my half recipe), and I can say that kneading the dough was definitely a sticky process. But it wasn’t impossible on a well-floured surface…as the additional flour was worked in, I could feel the dough gaining structure and becoming easier to handle.
I split my dough into one small loaf and one small focaccia. I kneaded some grated aged cheddar and cracked pepper into the loaf portion just before placing in the pan for its second proof. The cheese bread was soft and had great flavor. I still have half the loaf in my freezer, just waiting to be eaten with a bowl of soup. The dough made for a fantastic focaccia as well– I put olive oil, olives, rosemary and Maldon salt on mine. It had a nice, crisp bottom crust from baking it on a ripping-hot pizza stone.
Thanks Tanna for giving us a good break from the sweet stuff. If you are afraid of yeast, don’t be– bread-baking is a truly satisfying experience! You won’t believe how delicious warm homemade bread is! If you want the recipe for the basic potato bread, look here on Tanna’s site.
And before I go, I’d like to wish a very happy birthday to Daring Bakers! This not so-little-anymore group turned one this month. Started by Lis and Ivonne, just two buddies wanting to make their own pretzels, the group is now more than 300 strong! To see how we all interpreted this month’s potato bread challenge, take a look at The Daring Bakers’ Blogroll.
Daring Bakers in October: Bostini Cream Pie
October 29, 2007 at 12:07 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, sweet things | 64 Comments
“Hey– don’t you mean Boston cream pie?” you ask. I know I’m a lousy typist, but I do in fact mean Bostini. It is, of course, a take on the traditional Boston cream pie, created by Donna Scala and Kurtis Baguley of Bistro Don Giovanni and Scala’s Bistro in Northern California– an orange-flavored chiffon cake sitting on a bed of vanilla custard and topped with chocolate glaze. Our Daring Baker hostess this month is Mary from Alpineberry, and since she first tried it about 12 years ago, Bostini cream pie has been one of her restaurant favorites. From what Mary whips up in the kitchen I’d say she has impeccable taste, so I was certainly excited to try this when I saw she had chosen it as the October challenge.
Once I got the ingredients together (a whole farm’s worth of eggs and dairy!), the recipe came together pretty easily. No troubles with the cake (I recommend squeezing the orange juice yourself for best flavor and whipping the egg whites by hand to avoid overbeating), and the custard thickened up quickly thanks to the cornstarch. The glaze couldn’t have been easier– just melted chocolate and butter.
This dessert is assembled in a ramekin or custard cup at the restaurants, but we were allowed to play with presentation, provided we didn’t stray from the ingredient list or basic concepts. I thought about putting it together in a wine glass or bowl, but wanted to put some cute new teacups to use, so I really didn’t play too much. I baked my chiffon cakes in a muffin tin rather than using the same cups I assembled the cake in (as the recipe instructed). I don’t know if my teacups are oven-proof, and didn’t want to chance blowing them up the first time I used them! Also, I liked that the muffin-sized cakes were a bit smaller than the cups, so that all the drippy glaze could run into the custard instead of just down the outside of the cups.
Boston cream pie is R’s number one dessert, and he really liked this version of it. And my brother, who is visiting from Seattle, just loved the custard. I am one of those weirdos who doesn’t like the combination of fruit and chocolate, but the orange flavor was pretty subtle and fresh, so I didn’t mind it here. This dessert is super-rich, so you can get away with a small portion, even though the recipe yields quite a lot. (I actually halved the custard and glaze amounts. I made the full recipe of cake and froze what we didn’t eat right away.) As you can see from the top picture, my oranges were larger than my dessert, and it was plenty!
Thanks to Mary for picking another winning DB challenge! You can check out the recipe over on her site. Don’t forget to look at all the other Bostinis out there by visiting the Daring Bakers’ Blogroll. From some sneak previews I’ve seen, they look pretty good…
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