Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Tiramisu Tart
August 13, 2019 at 8:19 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 10 CommentsTags: baking, chocolate, tarts
I do love a good tiramisu, so there was no doubt I would be game for a Tiramisu Tart. This has all the required elements of a classic tiramisu– a layer of ladyfingers soaked in strong coffee and plenty of delicious mascarpone cream– housed in a sweet pastry shell.
I decided to scale the recipe back and make a few small tartlets instead of a large tart. There are only two of us here, and even though I think regular tiramisu gets better and better as it sits, I was a little worried that I’d have a soggy crust long before we could finish up a full-size tart. I put a thin layer of melted dark chocolate on the bottom of each shell for some extra insurance that they’d stay crisp for a couple of days. Also for some extra chocolate…who am I kidding?!? I bought a domestic mascarpone instead of my favorite Italian one, which I have to walk to another neighborhood to find, and it was a little loose when I mixed the filling up. I was glad that I chose to make tartlets, as the individual shells kept the soft filling contained and I didn’t have do deal with messy slices. At work I have access to lots of different kinds of cake scraps, one of them being housemade ladyfinger cake. I absconded the other day with a little scrap packet to put to use here and saved myself a bit of work.
I’d be equally happy with a “regular” tiramisu, but the tart shell is a fun twist. It does give a nice crispy element, it’s really pretty and I did love it. A pick-me-up that you can actually pick up…I mean, what’s not to love?
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Melody Cookies
August 6, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Does anyone remember Nabisco Melody Cookies? They’re crispy, thin, sugarcoated cocoa wafer cookies that the company stopped making 40-some years ago. I don’t remember them, but I hear the ’70s are back and I’m down with a bit of retro baking to see what I missed. This is the kind of cookie I like a lot…I made a third of the recipe and I thought about sharing them with my buddies at the gym, but then I decided I didn’t really make that many and wanted to save them for my morning coffees during the week. Next time, I’ll make more and share the melody love. The cookies are made from an easy roll-out dough that seemed to hold shape nicely. I sprinkled them with a hefty amount of turbinado to give them some ’70s glam sparkle.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Mascarpone Mousse
July 23, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: mousse
Mascarpone Mousse sounds like it would be rich, but it is surprisingly light and airy. It’s a nice chilled, no-bake dessert for the oppressively hot summer days we’ve been having. I think it would go well with just about any summer fruit, too…here I topped it with some of the Roasted Rhubarb with Bitters I made for our last posting.
To make the mousse, mascarpone and honey-sweetened cream are mixed together. Then a simple meringue is folded through the mix to give it its delicate texture. There is a little gelatin as well to help it set up. That’s not my favorite ingredient, but I did use it here. The recipe says it makes four servings, but I got six that I thought were quite reasonably sized.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Fudgy Mocha Bars
July 16, 2019 at 11:51 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, brownies, cookies
Chocolate, coffee and walnuts…these Fudgy Mocha Bars have all three in each bite, so it was pretty much guaranteed I’d like them. They also have the crackly crust and gooey insides that any good brownie should. Perfect with ice cream or an extra shot coffee, these little pick-me-ups were a hit with everyone who tried them.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and please join us anytime!
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Roasted Rhubarb with Bitters
July 9, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, jams & preserves, other sweet, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: fruit
This is actually the third year in a row that I’ve made this Roasted Rhubarb with Bitters recipe. If you love rhubarb like I love rhubarb, then you’ll appreciate having it in the fridge to top yogurt, ice cream, plain cake, etc. And it’s hot pink– the best food color. Prettiness counts cuz we eat with our eyes first. Taste counts, too, of course, and this has that balance I like with rhubarb…sweet enough to enjoy it, but not enough to kill its natural tartness. A few dashes of bitters from the bar cart give it a barley there something else that has me plotting to use the syrup to make a beautiful pink cocktail when I’m done with the fruit (or err…vegetable).
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Bread and Chocolate Coffee Can Brioche Ice Cream Sandwiches
June 25, 2019 at 9:43 am | Posted in BCM, groups, ice creams & frozen, sweet things, sweet yeast breads, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: bread, chocolate, ice cream
It’s gotten hot and muggy here these last couple of weeks, and the only kind of sandwich I really care about right now is the kind with ice cream in the middle. These Bread and Chocolate Coffee Can Brioche Ice Cream Sandwiches tick all the boxes for what I want for lunch. Haha.
Maybe it was out of a sense of shame for having missed last week’s TWD posting, but I decided to go all out and make all the components for this treat myself. I did bake the brioche in a can, which came out great. I made chocolate ice cream (I actually used the Philly-style recipe Dorie has in Dorie’s Cookies because I didn’t feel like adding to my egg white collection), which is super rich and dense. I then froze what I needed for these inside tart ring molds to get perfectly circular ice cream pucks that matched up with the round bread slices. And I already had some homemade salted caramel sauce in the fridge. You can totally use all store-bought stuff for this, though, and whatever flavor of ice cream or type or sauce you’d like (I’m thinking coffee ice cream and butterscotch sauce would also be pretty darn good…).
Dorie has you assemble the ice cream sandwiches first and then drizzle warm caramel sauce over the tops. That then becomes more of a knife and fork dessert situation, which to me is less fun than a hand-held ICS situation. So I slathered my brioche slices with the caramel before sandwiching it with the ice cream pucks. There’s a bit of drippage, but getting messy is what it’s all about. Did I mention these are crazy good??
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Pistachio and Raspberry Financiers
June 11, 2019 at 3:56 pm | Posted in BCM, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cake
These Pistachio and Raspberry Financiers will make you feel rich even if your savings account balance states otherwise. Nutty and brown buttery, they are decadent and just a little bit will do (although I could probably be quite greedy with them). Dorie makes financiers in mini muffin tins, but I happen to have a silicone bar mold, so to mimic the traditional shape, I used it here. I had the space so I popped three raspberries on top instead of just one– oh, the luxury! I like the way the zing from the berries contrasts with the richness of the cakes.
By the way, did you know I spent six years working as an investment banker before I quit and went to culinary school? It’s why I moved to New York after college. Unfortunately, we were more likely to be found eating cookies from the trading floor vending machine than these beauties.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Blondies
June 4, 2019 at 6:32 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
School’s out, summer’s here, and I could use a snack. Blondies are often thought of as brownies’ sister sweets, or brownies for people who don’t like chocolate (aka people I don’t trust). I’ve had blondies that I are all goo inside, with no chocolate to be found (maybe butterscotch chips or something like that instead) and with a crackly crust similar to brownies, but I think these ones are more along the lines of traditional chocolate chip cookies. You can, in fact, be pretty experimental with your blondie mix-ins…mine had a combo of dark and white chocolates, toasted pecans and unsweetened coconut. Dorie gives several options for baking these off, including using a baking pan for the standard bars, but suggests baking them in a mini muffin tin in the main recipe for crisp edges. I wanted something a little bigger, because I knew if I baked them in a mini muffin tin, I’d just eat five anyway. I went for the ring mold option and baked them up in my smaller sized bottomless tart rings. I also scooped out a few dough balls to bake off freeform as “blondie drop” cookies later. They wait for me in the freezer. I did like the way the ringed blondies had a nice circle of caramelization around the outside from contact with the metal. I put a scoop of ice cream on top.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Crackle-Top Cream Puffs
May 28, 2019 at 7:41 am | Posted in BCM, general pastry, groups, other sweet, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, choux
I love making all things choux— It’s one of the most fun doughs to make, IMO, and yields some of the most tasty pastries! While I’ve made pâte à choux treats here many times, this was my first attempt at making Crackle-Topped Cream Puffs. A standard cream puff gets topped with a small, thin disk of cookie dough that fuses to the top and gets beautifully cracked as the choux beneath it rises and expands. Dorie said we could either use a “craquelin” made from a simple brown sugar cookie dough or we could use her Sweet Tart Dough made with nuts. I happened to have some STD (hahaha) made with almond meal in the freezer, so I just went with that. I will say that, while I did have a crispy-crackly top, I didn’t get the color contrast that I would have with the brown sugar dough version, so mine look less striking than I would have hoped. Next time I will try the other way.
You can fill these babies however you’d like– with pastry cream, whipped cream, mousse, curd, or with ice cream, like I did. I even had a hidden layer of cookie butter at the bottom, as I’m still trying to use up a jar I made for other things. The first local strawberries were at the market this past weekend, so I snagged some of those to along with, too. Kind of like strawberry shortcake cream puffs, they were delicious and perfect for Memorial Day dessert.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Old Bay Pretzel-and-Cheese Cookies
May 21, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, savory
I grew up in Northern Virginia and when I was a kid, my dad and a friend from Maryland co-owned a boat together on the Chesapeake Bay. My mother would wrinkle her nose at this, but Old Bay is a flavor of my childhood, I guess, and one I still like lot today. Now I mostly sprinkle it on corn or oven fries, but here it’s used in savory Old Bay Pretzel-and-Cheese Cookies. With chunks of pretzel rods and bits of cheddar cheese, too, they’re just the thing to have with a beer or a Bloody Mary, or even a bowl of tomato soup.
The dough is like a shortbread and is made in the food processor. I actually had a hard time getting mine to come together, even before adding the pretzel bits, and wound up adding a blob of sour cream for a bit of extra moisture to make it less crumbly. It’s slice-and-bake, so I managed to finagle the dough into a rough log, but then it crumbled again when i sliced it. I wound up having to hand-form my cookie crumbles into little nuggets on the sheet tray. When baked, I’m happy to report that they finally held together! They’re salty and savory and crunchy, and if I find myself going boating again anytime soon, they’ll find their way into my snack bag.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here). Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
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