Tuesdays with Dorie DAC: Baked-in-a-Skillet Gingerbread
December 16, 2025 at 4:16 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, DAC, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cake
Gingerbread is one of my most favorite holiday treats. It can come in many forms, not just cookie versus cake, and I’m here for all of them. On the cake side, I’m used to gingerbread being dark and moody, heavy on the molasses, and sometimes even boosted with coffee. This Baked-in-a-Skillet Gingerbread is less molasses-forward and more spice-forward, zippy with bits of candied ginger.
The batter contains a surprise ingredient that threw me for a loop, especially since I didn’t bother to read the recipe until I was just about to make it! Apple butter isn’t a pantry staple for me, and I didn’t really want to go and get it just for this, nor did I feel like making it. I was contemplating substituting it with banana-data puree, but then as I was rummaging through my cabinet looking for last year’s jar of molasses, I found something else I bought last year– a seasonal pumpkin spice spread from Bonne Maman that I had big plans to use, and then, of course, never did. Problem sorted– I used that. (Now I have 3/4 of an open jar left to contend with, however.)
Sometimes I think the “skillet-baked” sweets thing is mostly a gimmick, but here I think baking it this way gives a nice crust to the gingerbread. This is a dense cake, not dry, but certainly not damp, and it lasts for days. It reminds me of some Scandinavian-style gingerbreads I’ve had, and it’s only as I type this that I wonder if that’s why Dorie suggests topping it with Swedish pearl sugar…
If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. 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: Pistachio-Matcha Financiers
December 9, 2025 at 8:48 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, cookies & bars, general pastry, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
To me, financiers represent a “quiet luxury” of the pastry world. Classic, timeless, but understated, you have to be in the know to recognize just how rich and indulgent they are. These Pistachio-Matcha Financiers are spendy treats to be sure, made with lots of butter and pistachios, but compared to so many of the pastries going viral today, they are not in-your-face flashy.
Dorie parks this recipe in the cookie chapter, but financiers, like madeleines, are soft and cake-like. While they are traditionally made in rectangular bar molds, these are baked in a mini muffin tin. I have a mini muffin pan that makes 24 baby cakes. This recipe yields 28, which would require me to cool, wash, dry and re-butter and flour my tin to get the few extra. Guess what I’m not doing. That…I’m not doing that. I’m doing math instead. I went with 2/3 the recipe, which just used a full stick of butter and made 18 or so. (To be fair, I could have made the full recipe and easily baked off the extra blob of batter in one of my little individual pie tins to make a tiny cake, but the smaller amount of financiers was plenty.)
I always associate financiers with browned butter, although Dorie only states to bring it to a boil here. I did decide to take my butter to a light, early-stage browning. Dressed up in white chocolate glaze and freeze dried raspberry crumbles, the finished financiers are perfect festive treats to serve to a discerning crowd.
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 DAC: Fall Harvest Cake
November 18, 2025 at 9:55 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, DAC, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, cake
The most fun thing about making this Fall Harvest Cake is that you get to choose what you “harvest” to put in it. Pick some fresh fruit, pick some dried fruit, pick a nut, pick a glaze– it’s like the ultimate “playing around” cake, and I think you’d have to try hard to choose a combo that didn’t work well.
The base for this bounty of fruit and nuts is a sturdy but moist olive oil cake. It’s easily whisked together by hand, and I made it even easier by making it a one bowl affair. A couple of days before I baked this cake, I happened to have devoted a few hours to poaching several quince. Rather than apple or pear, I used slices of sweet, deeply rosy quince that I cut into chunks. For my other add-ins I used seedless red grapes, candied orange peel, dried cranberries and the last dregs from bag of sliced almonds. Quince has a lot of natural pectin, and its poaching liquid basically gels into a glaze when it cools, so I just used that to add some shine and extra fall fruitiness to the top of my baked cake.
Wow, was this good. I don’t do too much baking with grapes, but Dorie’s right that they are a surprise treat here. This cake stayed soft and delicious for four days on my counter (my kitchen has basically zero climate control and is as cold as a root cellar in the fall and winter, else I may have chosen to refrigerate it if keeping it that long).
If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. 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 DAC: Cocoa-Swirled Pumpkin Bundt
October 21, 2025 at 12:01 am | Posted in bundt cakes, cakes & tortes, DAC, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, cake
Dorie must have sensed that we’ve almost polished off the cake section of BWD, because she’s come out with a whole new book of simple cakes with interesting flavors to keep us TWDers busy for another few years. Dorie’s Anytime Cakes is out today, and we are celebrating with a festive bundt! This Cocoa-Swirled Pumpkin Bundt is our first recipe from the new book, and also the first real fall vibes recipe I’ve made this year.
This bundt is a moist, spiced pumpkin cake with a sweet cocoa swirl running through the middle like a little smile. I made the Glossy Chocolate Glaze to drizzle over the top, but then accidentally let it rest in the bowl until it cooled more to a spreadable consistency than a pouring one. Still tasty, no worries. It’s a perfect cake to keep on the counter for a few days, helping yourself to a slice here and there. Dorie intends all the recipes in the book to be “kitchen cakes”…easy to make, good to eat, comforting to have around…just like this one. Maybe I need to get a cake dome?
If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. 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: Devil’s Food Party Cake
September 23, 2025 at 4:18 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cake
Sure, this Devil’s Food Party Cake would be great for a birthday, but if it’s just a regular Tuesday, the cake is the party. I love a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting…on my dessert top five, for sure. Both the cake and the frosting here are made with cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate, which Dorie says makes everything profoundly chocolatey. That’s all I need to know to start snipping up a stack of parchment rounds.
I cut the 8-inch cake recipe in half to make a 6-incher, my regular move when I’m just slicing for the two of us. I divided the batter between three pans instead of two, for slightly thinner layers without having to split them in half (which stresses me out, tbh). Because even a small cake lasts several days for us, I brushed the layers with coffee liqueur as I stacked them with the tasty American-style cocoa buttercream. This bit of brushed on liquid helps keep cake from drying out as it sits.
Some TWDers said their cakes came out dense and fudgy. I wouldn’t say that about mine, as it was soft, but it did have what I’d call a tight texture that made barely any crumbs when cut. Maybe slicing the layers in half wouldn’t’t have been too painful after all. I decorated my cake with some giant malt balls I had in the cupboard. This was a just the thing to make the week feel like a celebration!
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: Lemon (or Yuzu) Meringue Layer Cake
May 27, 2025 at 8:08 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
Another month, another layer cake. This time it’s a Lemon Meringue Layer Cake to celebrate Mardi’s birthday month! I actually used yuzu instead of lemon, because I have a stash of frozen yuzu juice at the moment…I rarely see it sold here, and I kind of go nuts whenever I do.
I cut the 8-inch cake recipe in half to make a 6-incher, my regular move when I’m just slicing for the two of us. This cake has two layers of soft lemon cake, a lemon soaking syrup, a lemon cream filling and lemon meringue frosting. I just straight up replaced the lemon in all the components with yuzu…well, apart from the soaking syrup, which I skipped making. I have a sweet yuzu liqueur that I found at the wine shop some time ago, and I used that in its place. (I am, btw, a huge proponent of brushing cake layers with sugar syrup or booze to keep them moist. I do this even if a recipe does not specify to, especially since just a 6-inch cake will last us three or four nights.)
I know there’s another recipe Dorie also calls “lemon cream” that she learned from Pierre Hermé. It’s a lemon curd that’s set with like two sticks of butter blended in at the end. That was what I excepted we’d be making for this cake, and I was kind of surprised that this lemon cream is more like a lemon pudding: milk-based and thickened with cornstarch. Not to worry- all that butter that’s absent from the lemon cream finds its way into the frosting instead! The meringue component of this cake is not a marshmallow fluff, but a Swiss meringue buttercream– the most luxuriously buttery-smooth cake coating in all of frosting-land (in my opinion, at least).
My taste tester said this was like wedding cake. It’s been a minute since I’ve made one of those, but I see what he meant. This comes together as a very grown up and elegant cake. I like the touch of adding a thin layer of extra lemon cream over top of the frosting. Now go and wish Mardi a happy birthday!
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: A Big Banana Cake
April 8, 2025 at 8:05 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 14 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
I just had a big birthday, one that ends in a zero and makes me think about what I’m doing (or not doing) with my life. That has been a bit hard to swallow, but what does go down easy is A Big Banana Cake. How’s that for a segue?
I did, in fact, make this as my at-home birthday cake, but I turned the really big 9-inch original cake into a 6-incher, which is still plenty big for the two of us. I used 1/3 of all ingredients to avoid it being too tall. The batter is flavored with bananas (obvi), vanilla and allspice. I don’t have any allspice on hand, so I subbed a pinch of this and a pinch of that, which in the end basically mimicked pumpkin pie spice. Another twiddle I made with the batter was to add just a bit of baking powder along with the soda. The amount of leavening seemed a little skimpy to me given the amount of flour, some of which is even whole wheat.
Once the three cake layers are baked and cooled, they are filled and frosted with flavored cream cheese frosting. Dorie adds cookie butter to the frosting, which does sound really yummy, but I didn’t want to buy a jar of it only to use a couple of tablespoons. I considered some alternative options I already have like peanut butter and dulce de leche, then settled on Nutella, an open jar of which I’ve had on the counter forever. I didn’t successfully finish off the jar, but the combo of the Nutella frosting and the banana cake is delish. I brushed my cake layers with rum (not only because I firmly believe that rum improves just about every dessert , but it also helps keep a cake that will last a few days a bit more moist) and frosted away. I could spend all day trying to perfectly frost a cake, and dirty just about every sized offset spatula I own in the process, but I’ve wisened up in my advanced age…a swoopy homemade look is really quite charming.
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: Marbled Cheesecake
March 25, 2025 at 3:23 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, cheesecakes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
There are a couple of easy, basic things that, even after 20+ years of professional pastry experience, I am still not good at. I think I will never be able to make even, attractive slice-and-bake cookies. And I really have just about given up on marbling, as I’m sure you can see from the weak squiggles on top of my Marbled Cheesecake. Well, I guess it’s not all about looks and, especially if you’re baking at home, tastiness is most important. With pockets of chocolate in a vanilla cheesecake and a graham cracker crust flavored with espresso and cinnamon, tastiness here is a sure bet.
I downsized this baby to a 6-inch cheesecake (which still provided four nights of dessert for the two of us) using 1/3 of the batter recipe, but because I am a huge crumb crust fan, I went a bit heavier on that part and used 40% of the graham crust. I baked the cheesecake in the oven for the full 90 minutes because it was still so loose when I gave it a quick shimmy earlier. I’d probably rethink that next time with a 6-incher and turn the oven off after an hour and fifteen. Since it’s left in there to cool down along with the oven, I the think carry-over from that rest would have finished the job.
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: Yuzu Ginger Cake
December 24, 2024 at 9:16 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
I had every intention of baking this cake by the book as an Orange Spice Cake with my bag of Christmas clementines and a ground mulling spice mix I concocted…but the other day I saw that my grocery store had fresh yuzu, which they never have, so I impulse-bought a couple. Then I remembered I had a jar of yuzu marmalade (another impulse buy) in the fridge with just a few spoonfuls left, and my own playing around version– Yuzu Ginger Cake– was born.
This has a familiar feel to some other Dorie cakes we’ve made. She calls these types of cakes “visiting cakes” since they are easy to bake, are sturdy enough to travel well and keep for several days. With heavy cream and butter in the batter, a compact crumb and nice outer crust, this one seemed like a citrus pound cake. I made just a half recipe of the batter, which only took about 40 minutes to bake, although I think I should I picked a slightly smaller pan than I did to get a taller loaf. It smelled great with the yuzu zest and juice and fresh grated ginger that I used. I noticed that a couple of folks who made it for December’s first TWD posting found their cakes to be a tad dry, so as soon as mine came out of the oven, and before glazing with marmalade, I poked holes all over it and drizzled it with a yuzu liqueur I keep on my bar cart. Can you tell it’s a favorite flavor? Not the holiday-scented cake I’d originally imagined it would be, but a fun bake and a delicious treat.
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: Morning Bundt Cake
October 22, 2024 at 7:26 pm | Posted in breakfast things, bundt cakes, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
Any fan of “breakfast cake” should love this Morning Bundt Cake. Great with your first cup of coffee, but not a typical coffee cake, the batter is a mix of all your breakfast staples…except for bacon, I guess…you’ll have to serve that on the side. It has oranges (zest, juice and chopped segments), yogurt, muesli, nuts and dried fruit. I didn’t buy muesli to make this, but instead used some rolled oats, sunflower seeds and a bit of extra dried fruit and nuts. I chose toasted pecans, by the way, and prunes, since they seemed like a good choice for getting the morning going. I subbed about 1/3 of the AP flour with einkorn flour and combined my “muesli” with the yogurt a few hours ahead of time to soften it before mixing the batter (I had to adjust the mixing order slightly because of this, but it was a tip I got from IG bake-alonger Stef).
This is so good. It’s moist and quite hearty, with all those breakfast ingredients blended together. A citrus glaze that’s brushed on while the cake’s still hot is a nice final touch that makes the crust as special as what’s inside.
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!
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