Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Parisian Custard Tart
March 26, 2024 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWD, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, pie
I don’t know about you, but recipes that call for making pastry cream can make me grumble a bit. Often that pastry cream is just one of several components you need to pull together for what you’re making, but for this Parisian Custard Tart, it’s the only thing you really have to prepare. You can choose to make your own crust, but you can also choose to use store bought puff pastry, which I assure you works wonderfully well. This is a simple dessert, just custard and crust, and it’s an everyday, snacky treat in Paris. To me, even though it’s simple, it still feels fancy. The custard is luxurious mix flavored with brown sugar, vanilla and rum that’s baked till it’s a charred, dark brown on top. I was a bit skeptical that the puff pastry was going to cook through, especially on the bottom, but it did, indeed, bake up super-crisp. My custard puffed when it baked and then fell when it cooled, and I was left with kind of a wonky baked custard ledge around the tart. If it happens again, I’ll probably trim it off for the sake of looks, but other than that, no complaints about this tasty one.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Breakfast-in-Rome Lemon Cake
March 12, 2024 at 5:04 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 12 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
Somehow neither The White Lotus nor seemingly the entire world’s fabulously dreamy Instagram summer vacay pics have spurred me to book a flight to Italy yet, but this Breakfast-in-Rome Lemon Cake may do the trick. I can imagine being pretty happy for a few days to wake up to a double espresso and a slice of the breakfast/snack tube cake known as chiambella. Until I get my passport renewed, luckily Dorie has provided us with her Italian vacation version to bake at home. She makes a lemony separated egg sponge that results in a tall, light, bouncy cake. Berries are optional, but since I had some frozen blackberries in my mess of a freezer, I rummaged around and found them. If I’m going all the way to Italy, I’m not just going to Rome…I’m also going to the Almalfi Coast, so I drizzled the top of my cake with a little limoncello while it was still warm and at its most absorbant for another hit of lemon.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Potato Flake Biscuits
March 12, 2024 at 1:47 am | Posted in biscuits/scones, breakfast things, BWD, groups, other savory, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, biscuits
You’d think that with Cook the Book Fridays being behind us, I’d not have so much trouble spitting out just bi-weekly blog posts, but here I am, two weeks late with these Potato Flake Biscuits. At least I did bake them on time for last month’s posting, I promise! I don’t make biscuits or scones very often. It’s not that I don’t like them, I just never crave them like I do cake or ice cream, and I have to be a bit choosey where I spend my pastry calories. I made a half recipe of these biscuits for a more controlled amount (just four squares) for the two of us, allowing me to fairly quickly resume my standard diet of cupcakes.
These savory biscuits came together easily. They are flavored with sautéed onion (I used scallion for extra green bits), some herbs and some Parm. Instant mashed potato flakes are their secret ingredient, which I think gives them a lightness. Really, they had great texture and flavor. I have two of them unbaked in the freezer, and I think I’ll do like Mardi and bake them off to go with chili before the weather warms up.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds
February 13, 2024 at 9:30 pm | Posted in BWD, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 10 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
I am not loyal to one chocolate chip cookie recipe– I want to play the field and try them all. These Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds are the latest to have caught my eye. At first glance, these seem pretty similar to the Mokonuts ones we made a couple years ago, but these swap the dried fruit for a strong hit of spices (coffee, cinnamon and cardamom) and use a mix of seeds (sunflower, flax, poppy and sesame for me). Dorie says you can put either milk or dark chocolate in these, so I naturally had to go with a combo. I’ve taken to usually creaming any spices in a recipe into the butter and sugar, rather than just stirring them into the flour. A lot like rubbing citrus zest into sugar, I feel like that bashing and smearing in the mixing bowl really makes spices pop, too. Creaming in the espresso powder at this early stage also helped to make my cookies look extra-dark. Before baking, I basically rolled the dough balls in more of the birdseedy mix (plus flaky salt) for good coverage, including on the bottoms. These cookies have so much complex flavor and a great texture with chewy middles and a crisp, toasted seed coating. Even if it is onto the next CCC, I’ll circle back to this one for sure.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Spinach-Mozzarella Pie with Parm Crumble
January 23, 2024 at 5:31 pm | Posted in BWD, groups, other savory, pies & tarts, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, savory, tarts
If you’re wondering how to get cheese and custard and green stuff and pastry all in one dish, the answer is a Spinach-Mozzarella Pie with Parm Crumble! What we have here is basically a spinach quiche dotted with cubes of mozzarella and topped off with a Parmesan-loaded crumble. It’s salty and cheesy and textured and great warm or room temp for any meal of the day.
Last year, I tested the recipes for an upcoming savory baking cookbook and I’ve had an empty par-baked pie shell sitting in the freezer ever since. I almost never bake a full-sized pie for the two of us, but I’ve been itching to reclaim that freezer space (and that pie plate), so when this recipe was nominated, I decided to use the crust here. It’s different than Dorie’s flaky crust, in that it’s a press-in situation with a shortcrust texture, and it’s also in a standard-sized plate instead of a deep dish, but it worked out well in this pie by slightly scaling back the custard amount. Another thing I had in the freezer from those testing days was an almost-full bag of frozen spinach, so I pulled that out, too. Rather than wilting down and squeezing fresh spinach, I thawed the frozen stuff and squeezed the heck out of it before adding it to my sautéed aromatics. Technically, my spinach-to-custard ratio was a bit higher than Dorie’s because I wanted to use up all the spinach that was in the bag. My filling was more like creamy greens and lacked a separate quiche-like layer, but more green stuff is always fine with me. Also, I like a bit of heat, so I added some pepper flake to the filling.
After the spinach mixture and the creamy custard are inside the par-baked shell, on went cubes of mozzarella and lots of parm crumble, and then it was into the oven. I only made 3/4 of the crumble and it still seemed plenty to cover the pie. We’ve had this with a salad the last couple of nights for dinner, and since I made a full-sizer, we can have it for a couple of lunches, too.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it twice a month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Chunky Citrus Cornmeal Cake
January 9, 2024 at 10:42 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
Dorie’s Chunky Lemon Cornmeal Cake is a sunny loaf, getting color and flavor from cornmeal, lemon zest, chopped up lemon segments and sumac. I happened to notice a few bags of cute, tiny, bright orange calamansi at my neighborhood grocer. I’ve only ever come across calamansi here as frozen juice at some of the Asian grocery stores, so I snapped up a bag. Even though I didn’t have any plans for them, I like to be sure to buy things that I don’t normally see on the shelves so my store knows people are interested.
I sat on the calamansi in the fridge for a few days and then thought I could use them in this cake. Prep was super easy, since you can eat the whole fruit…they have thin, sweet skins with almost no pith and puckery, tart insides. I simply quartered each calamansi, popped out any seeds or membrane I found and used them in the simple one-bowl cake batter just like that. I left out the sumac, but I had about a tablespoon and a half of spiced sugar left from some holiday cookies and I sprinkled that on top of the cake batter before I put it in the oven for a little crust.
This was so tasty with the little pops of calamansi and it stayed fresh for several days. I loved the color and the texture (just a bit gritty from the cornmeal) and was super pleased when I cut into the cake.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Free-Style Mushroom, Herb and Ricotta Tart
December 26, 2023 at 4:02 pm | Posted in BWD, groups, other savory, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, savory, tarts
Having “free-style” in the name of this Free-Style Mushroom, Herb and Ricotta Tart, to me, implies a certain ease… something that can just be tossed together on a whim. Turns out “free-style” is more about the amorphous shape of the crust and the casual-looking fashion with which it is topped than it is about throwing together a tart from this or that in like five minutes. The base of this tart, which is called a Raggedy-Edged Almond-Herb Crust is actually a large format cracker that can be whatever shape it rolls out to be. Bake the crust and you can turn off the oven. After it cools, it’s topped with made in advance components: an herby ricotta spread, sautéed mushrooms with more herbs and a poof of seasoned micro greens. The crust has the delicate, buttery crumb of a shortbread, and, although it cut nicely for me with a sharp knife, I had to turn my “slice” into smaller pieces to eat as snacky finger food…it didn’t seem like a fork was right utensil for the job. All of these things were delicious and flavorful, so I enjoyed this, although I’d also be totally happy to free-style the ricotta and mushrooms on just a thick slice of toasted sourdough.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it twice a month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Iced, Spiced Hermits
December 12, 2023 at 10:57 pm | Posted in BWD, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, holiday
What’s hiding inside the cookie tin? Hermits! These Iced, Spiced Hermits are old fashioned, chewy molasses-spice cookies with raisins (or another dried fruit), baked as a log and then sliced up. You can actually hide them away because they’re good keepers, but if people know they’re in the tin, they’ll disappear fast. I brought them to my college’s NYC alum holiday party, and there weren’t any left to bring back home. Very satisfying.
I made the hermits a couple of years ago as well (the below photo). Both times I soaked the raisins in a bit of rum for a few hours before making the dough and set aside the strained-off booze to use in the glaze drizzle. Both times I also added festive sprinkles…who knew a hermit could be so charming?
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Mulled-Butter Apple Pie
November 27, 2023 at 5:04 pm | Posted in BWD, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, pie
Swapping out stuffing for bread pudding wasn’t the only renegade move I made this Thanksgiving. I also traded our holiday staple pumpkin pie for Mulled-Butter Apple Pie. What is mulled-butter? It’s browned butter steeped with a cinnamon stick, a cardamom pod, black peppercorn, star anise, ginger and orange zest. This spiced butter coats the heap of apple slices (I used a combo of gold rush and cameo apples) that fill the double-crust pie. Dorie tells us to taste the filling for sweetness before we turn it into the crust, and when I did that, I thought what my apples really needed was not more sugar, but more spice. The mulling spice mix has some similarities with Chinese five-spice, which I have a jar of ground, so I added in a couple shakes of that to my filling.
I baked a half-sized pie in my little (about 6.5″) pie plate and while I was initially kind of sad about not having a slice of pumpkin pie, this came out so nicely, I couldn’t not be happy with it. The crust had great color and the filling held together just right. I decided that pumpkin pie can happen in December and I enjoyed every bite of this one.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Pecan-Cranberry Loaf
November 14, 2023 at 7:16 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, muffins/quick breads, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 7 CommentsTags: baking, cake, loaf
I made this Pecan-Cranberry Loaf two years ago, and really, I think I should have made it again so I could write a more comprehensive post. I remember liking it, that I swapped the coriander with five-spice and that I made a honey-cream cheese schmear to go with. But the whole group really raved about it (and called for more cranberries!), so I think that’s giving me some FOMO this week. Maybe after I buy my Thanksgiving crannies, I’ll have round two with this one.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
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