a whisk and a spoon

Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Cornmeal and Berry Cakes

If you can handle turning on the oven in the middle of summer, it’s nice to bake with berries. These little golden Cornmeal and Berry Cakes, made with olive oil, are a lovely addition to my standard repertoire. And they’re easy to make, too. The recipe calls for raspberries, but blueberries would be great and blackberries may be even better. I actually used red currants, since I had a pint that I didn’t really have any other plans for. They give a tart little pop to the cakes, so I definitely wanted to add a little powdered sugar and lemon juice glaze to their tops. These can be made as mini loaves or cupcakes…I used a friand tin bought when we lived in Sydney because I like the oval shape.

These don’t make me think of cornbread or corn muffins…they are really cakes. I think actually they’ll make good breakfast treats with coffee, and that’s how we’ll have the ones I’ve wrapped for the freezer.

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: Matcha Financiers and Tiger Cakes

Green cakes!  Icky or intriguing?  They may be the color of Frankenstein, but don’t worry.  It’s nothing weird…Japanese matcha tea powder gives these financiers a greenish tinge.  I’m used to the slightly grassy taste of matcha tea and I’ve made cake and frostings with it before.  I think it’s a nice flavor addition to a traditional almond financier.  Thinking back to those Tiger Cakes I liked so much a few months ago, I followed Dorie’s Bonne Idee suggestion and turned about half of my batter into matcha tigers with a generous sprinkling of some Dutch dark chocolate vermicelli.  These are really good just warm, I think, and I like the way the edge bits get a little crispy.

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: Odile’s Fresh Orange Cake

Odile’s Fresh Orange Cake is the second bright and easy citrus cake we’ve made recently…the Fluted Carrot-Tangerine Cake was a hit in my house back in January.  This cake is a super-cinch to make and the batter is flavored with orange zest and juice.  I made half a recipe in a 6-inch pan.  After it’s baked, it’s doused in a simple syrup of OJ and sugar.  You can use as much of the syrup as you want….go for broke if you like a wetter texture.

You can take that one step further and poach cross-cut orange slices in the syrup.  Then you can decorate the top of the cake with a mosaic of beautiful orange pinwheels.  I would have done that, but knew I’d be putting half the cake into the freezer, so I just tossed some segments in the syrup and decorated each slice with a few of them instead.  The slices I froze were later spooned over with some candied kumquat slices–so tasty!!

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: Fluted Carrot-Tangerine Cake

If I think of carrot cake, of course what comes to mind is a layer cake with swirls of cream cheese frosting.  Plenty of cream cheese frosting…you know, something like Dorie’s amazeballs Bill’s Big Carrot Cake.  Seems that’s not the only carrot cake game in town, though.  This Fluted Carrot-Tangerine Cake is another, more subtle take on the most delicious way to get your beta-carotene.  Instead of being spicy and earthy and tall, this one is bright and zippy and slim.  Ginger, carrot and tangerine (or tangelo in my case) make it the color of sunshine.  Okay, so there isn’t any cream cheese frosting, but a quick powdered sugar and juice glaze gives it a nice sweet crust on top.  The flavor of the glazed cake reminds me of Fruity Pebbles, but I mean that in a good way!!

This cake does not need to be fluted…I made it in my quiche pan (the removable bottom was no problem), but it can certainly be baked in a regular cake pan.  The cute ruffles do give it a bit of pizazz, though, since it’s only a single layer.

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: Tiger Cakes

I first had a Tiger Cake a couple of years ago at a beautiful bakery in Montreal, but I had no idea what it was called.  I don’t think there was a sign and I just pointed to it and I took it to-go.  When I ate it I thought it was so delicious– moist and chewy with ganache in the center– that I kicked myself for not having gotten its name.  I could tell that it had almond flour in it and its texture seemed like a financier, so I immediately Googled around in English and French (it’s limited, but thanks to my fluent mother, I can speak some– especially food words!).  I found exactly what I was looking for on several French sites, les tigrés au chocolat.  Although I once posted about a tiger cake, it was a very different animal, and I never did make les tigrés at home.  I didn’t forget about them, though, and was delighted to see a recipe for Tiger Cakes in Baking Chez Moi.  I have nominated the recipe several for TWD times now, and I am really glad that its time has come!

This batter is a lot like a financier, or maybe more like a friand, with melted butter and egg whites.  It stirs together in just a few seconds.  Dorie’s recipe has finely chopped chocolate mixed into the batter to give the tiger cakes their stripes, but a bunch of those French recipes I saw called for chocolate vermicelli instead.  Makes sense to me…jimmies do look like stripes.  I have a box of nice Dutch dark chocolate ones, so I went ahead and used them (and also saved the trouble of chopping up chocolate into tiny flecks).  I just eyeballed the amount.  Some folks had trouble getting their baked tigers out of the tin, and recommended greasing well.  My mini muffin mold is non-stick and has only been used a couple of times so it’s still pretty slick.  I used a bit of spray for added insurance and I didn’t have any sticking issues.  The ganache on top isn’t strictly necessary, but it sure is good.

These were great…just what I remember from Montreal.  Cute, too.  I will definitely repeat this one.

For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!