Tuesdays with Dorie: Peanut Butter Torte
May 6, 2008 at 4:27 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 65 Comments
There are a few recipes in Baking: From My Home to Yours whose pictures and titles are so alluring, I’ve been surprised no one’s chosen them for TWD yet. Well, the time has finally come for one of these, as Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food has picked Dorie’s Peanut Butter Torte as our recipe of the week! Kind of like the Snickery Squares, I think Dorie has played candy bar dress-up here, except this time the candy in question is a Reece’s cup. I don’t mean to sound like a buzzkill, but the ingredient list is a little frightening, I have to tell you…Oreos, peanut butter, cream cheese, heavy cream, chocolate and peanuts. April was my busiest posting month to date, so that means it was also a very busy eating month. If I didn’t want to feel my heart racing (in a bad way) with each bite, I knew I had to tweak this torte a bit.
It was a given that was not going to make a full-sized torte. I rarely make a full-sized anything for the two of us. My six-inch springform would be prefect for a half recipe, and I’d still get six pieces out of it, but even a half batch seemed like so much cream and peanut butter. After some intense volume calculations (not really), I decided that I could still use my six-inch pan and get away with just a quarter recipe of the filling. Sure, it wouldn’t be as high as the one in Dorie’s picture, but I didn’t mind if my torte looked more like a tart.
I am a peanut butter fanatic, and I love the sugary, salty, junky stuff. I am sorry to say though that I don’t think the Aussie peanut butter is very good…it’s pale and doesn’t have peanuty specks in it. That may explain why, according to an informal poll taken by yours truly, it doesn’t seem to be a popular food item here (I was even told by someone that my favorite lunch, PB&J, is gross!). No matter–I’ve been “importing” my own peanut butter since my first trip back to the States. My current PB of choice is reduced fat Jif (smooth, never crunchy) so that’s what I decided to go with in this torte.
Back in the US, I wouldn’t think twice about swapping full fat cream cheese for the light Philly they label “Neufchâtel.” Here, though, the light Philly doesn’t have the same consistency at all…it tastes good, but even straight out of the fridge, it’s incredibly soft. Further inspection of the package says that it’s a blend of cream cheese and cottage cheese, so I guess that’s why. I didn’t think my filling would set up properly if I used it, so I went with the light version of a New Zealand brand called Mainland.
I also decided that rather than using Oreos to make my crust, I’d save a few more fat grams and use some almond cookie crumbs that I had in the freezer already. Adding cocoa powder turned them into chocolate crumbs.
I’m happy to report that my filling set up nicely after several hours in the fridge, and although I can imagine how wonderful the full blown PB torte would be, the skimpy version was still great! I loved the chocolate-peanut crunchy bits throughout the filling. Now you know my tricks, but you can find the original version of this recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and on Elizabeth’s site. Don’t forget to go check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake
April 29, 2008 at 4:18 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 45 Comments
This cake reminds me of the kind of thing my Italian nonna would make, if I had an Italian nonna. No wonder my husband, who is half Italian, scarfed this up! Caitlin of Engineer Baker chose this, Dorie’s Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake, as our TWD recipe of the week.
Polenta in this case is just another name for yellow cornmeal, so the cake had sort of a sweet cornbread feel to it, but combined with ricotta and honey, it was quite moist. And you can’t tell from the outside, but hidden in the cake are…dried figs! Normally, I am not a fan of dried figs (a lasting side effect of my childhood aversion to Newtons), but they work really well here. Their little seeds give a pleasant crunch to the cake. I did use a couple less than the recipe called for, though, and I chopped them into quarters so I could more evenly scatter them throughout the batter.
I wanted to follow Dorie’s suggestion to put a few thyme leaves into the batter, but then of course I forgot! So I made thyme whipped cream instead, by rubbing thyme leaves into the sugar that sweetened it. Please, no judgements about the massive amount of cream in that photo–I know I went a little overboard!
This was a lovely cake…simple and homey and good for breakfast (maybe without the mountain of whipped cream). I made a half batch, which fit perfectly into my 7 1/2-inch tart pan. Early reports from some other TWDers were that the cake was a bit too sweet. I went a little skimpy on the measurements for both the sugar and honey, and it came out just right. The only thing that left me scratching my head was the extra little hunk of butter that gets dotted on top of the cake before it goes into the oven. It didn’t seen to do much but make some pale colored spots on top…I think I’ll leave it out if I make the cake again.
You can find this recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and on Caitlin’s site. Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
Daring Bakers in April: Cheesecake Pops
April 27, 2008 at 2:10 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, cheesecakes, daring bakers, groups, sweet things | 51 Comments
I must admit that I almost skipped making these cheesecake pops, this month’s Daring Bakers challenge. Even though I went out and searched around for lollipop sticks at the beginning of the month, I hadn’t really been in a cheesecake mood. Then I realized that the photo opportunities here were too good to be missed! The recipe, from the book Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor, was chosen by co-hostesses Deborah from Taste and Tell and Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms.
I found a recipe calling for five bars of cream cheese to be a bit much to swallow (literally). I scaled the recipe way back to just one bar and baked it in a small loaf pan. I put the batter together my favorite way– in the food processor. As long as all the ingredients are room temperature, you will never get a lump. It baked up nicely, but even the tiny amount that I made took about 20 minutes longer than the suggested time.
After a night in the fridge, I used an ice cream scoop to form the set cheesecake into rough balls, and put them into the freezer for half an hour before reshaping them a bit. They still came out looking a bit…ummm….individual. Not that that’s a bad thing! The sticks are really wooden craft sticks (I had no luck finding the paper ones here), and I loved their fun colors. The packet said non-toxic, so let’s just hope that’s right!
I’m not embarrassed to say that hundreds and thousands are my favorite cake decoration! Just looking at them makes me smile!
I decided to roll a couple in some almond cookie crumbs mixed with a little cinnamon to get kind a cheesecake crust thing going on. In the center of these ones, I managed to hide a blob of strawberry jam. Sneaky!
The cuteness factor is unbelievable, and they taste pretty good too! Just what I needed put myself into a cheesecake mood! Thanks Deborah and Elle! You can find the recipe for the pops on Deborah’s site. I’ve looked at a bunch of posts, and the DBers did a beautiful job this month, so please check out the DB blogroll!
Speakeasy Cake
April 26, 2008 at 3:20 pm | Posted in book review, cakes & tortes, sweet things | 14 Comments
Here’s the third recipe I made from Melissa Murphy’s cookbook The Sweet Melissa Baking Book (well actually the fourth–the ice cream in the photos is her brown sugar vanilla ice cream, and it is divine). It’s a dense, moist chocolate cake that she calls the “Speakeasy” because of a whopping 2/3 cup of brandy in the batter!
It’s a cousin of Dorie’s Almost-Fudge Gâteau, but not quite as dark and fudgy. If you prefer semi-sweet chocolate to bittersweet (and like a little booze with your chocolate), then you will like this one.
Speakeasy– makes one 8-inch cake
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the cake:
6 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
10 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup brandy
4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
For the chocolate glaze:
6 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
½ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
Before you start:
Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter an 8 x 2-inch round cake pan. Line the bottom with an 8-inch round of parchment paper.
To make the cake:
– In a medium bowl set over a pot of simmering, not boiling, water, melt the chocolate with the butter and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the brandy until smooth. Set aside to cool.
-Separate the eggs. Place the yolks in a large mixing bowl, and the whites in an electric mixer bowl.
– Add half of the sugar to the bowl with the yolks and whisk until thick. Add the chocolate mixture to the yolks and whisk to combine. Sift the flour, cinnamon, and salt over the chocolate batter and stir to combine.
-In the bowl of the electric mixer fitted with the whip attachment, make a meringue by whipping the egg whites until foamy. In a slow steady stream, add the remaining sugar. Whip until the whites hold stiff but not dry peaks.
-Briskly stir one-third of the meringue into the chocolate mixture to lighten the batter. Gently fold the remaining two-thirds of the meringue into the batter until no streaks remain.
– Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Spin the pan to level the batter. Bake for 80 to 90 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. (Do not do the skewer test until the cake has been baking for at least 70 minutes or you will deflate the batter!) Remove to a wire rack to cool before glazing. (Steph’s note: I made a half-recipe in a 6-inch cake pan and it took only 40 minutes to bake.)
To make the glaze:
– When the cake is cool enough to glaze, coarsely chop the chocolate and place it in a medium bowl.
-In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the heavy cream until scalding, or until the cream is steaming and tiny bubbles have formed along the edges. Do not boil.
-Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Let stand for 5 minutes, then whisk until smooth. Stir in the corn syrup.
To complete the cake:
-Place the cake upside down on a rack set over the prepared cookie sheet.
-Pour the glaze over the cake, letting the glaze spread itself. You may have to push it over the sides a bit, and use a small metal spatula or butter knife to smooth the sides. Try not to touch the top though, so it will be glossy and unmarred. Let the glaze set at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Once the glaze is set, transfer the cake to a serving plate.
*The cake keeps in a cake saver at room temperature for 2 days. For longer storage, refrigerate for up to 1 week.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Bill’s Big Carrot Cake
April 22, 2008 at 5:08 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 47 Comments
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting…I probably don’t need to say much more than that.
But of course I will. Carrot cake is a favorite here, but not made nearly enough, so I was glad when Amanda of slow like honey gave me the excuse I needed to get grating, by choosing Bill’s Big Carrot Cake as this week’s TWD recipe. This one is *big* and loaded with carrots (of course), coconut, walnuts and dried cherries.
As per usual, I set out to do a half recipe of this cake, only to realize that I don’t have three 6-inch cake pans. Crud. I thought about making two larger layers and possibly splitting them into four, or using my 6-inch springform as the third pan, but I decided that this amount would probably fit perfectly into my quarter-sized sheet pan (my favorite and most useful sheet pan). So instead of a round cake, I baked a sheet cake that I cut into three strips (the baking time was reduced, of course). Once layered up with icing, it made a rectangular cake that I could cut into thin slices or chubby squares.
Armed with some tips from a great post by Joy, I made a gorgeous cream cheese frosting. I flavored mine with vanilla bean paste and orange zest, rather than the lemon juice that Dorie uses. This cake is tall, and moist and delicious…a winner of a carrot cake. And since I just did a half recipe, I made the whole thing, cake and frosting, easily by hand.
You can find this recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and on slow like honey. Thanks Amanda, and of course thanks Bill! Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
Mom’s Banana Apple Bread
April 20, 2008 at 5:35 pm | Posted in book review, breakfast things, cakes & tortes, events, muffins/quick breads, simple cakes, sweet things | 58 Comments
Well, not my mom’s. I’m guessing Melissa Murphy’s mom’s, since it’s in her new cookbook The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. You know, I really don’t like bananas in their raw form (not even in smoothies), but once they are baked into something sweet, it’s a whole ‘nother story. R does like to have bananas in his cereal, but sometimes he buys more than he can eat. When that happens, I wrap them up and stash them in the freezer…after I’ve accumulated a few, it’s time for banana bread, cake or muffins!
What makes this particular banana bread extra-special are the bits of caramelized apple throughout. Most banana bread has a pretty good shelf life and can even get better after a day of so. This one is no exception, as the sweet apples just meld more into the spiced bread.
I was so happy with this, that I’m entering it into Sydneysider Not Quite Nigella’s Banana Bread Bakeoff event. If you have a favorite banana bread recipe, go check out her bakeoff, too.
Mom’s Banana Apple Bread– makes one 1 1/2-quart loaf pan
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the apples:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
For the banana bread:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon kosher salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
¼ cup fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups very ripe mashed bananas (2 to 3)
Before you start:
Position a rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter and flour a 1 1/2-quart loaf pan.
To make the apples:
Preheat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter and brown sugar and heat until bubbling. Add the apples and cinnamon and sauté until golden and tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
To make the banana bread:
-In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt.
-In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
-In a small bowl, combine the orange juice and vanilla.
-Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with the orange juice mixture, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each flour addition. Stir in the mashed bananas until combined. Then stir in the reserved apples.
-Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes before unmolding onto the rack to cool further.
*Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. The banana bread keeps well wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 3 days. For longer storage, freeze well wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil for up to 3 weeks. Defrost (still wrapped) at room temperature.
TWD Rewind: Gooey Chocolate Cakes
April 11, 2008 at 12:55 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 11 Comments
This cake was not too photogenic, but it sure was delicious. While I was away, the Tuesdays with Dorie gang, led this time by Leigh of Lemon Tartlet, made Dorie Greenspan’s Gooey Chocolate Cakes. I knew I wanted to whip them up myself as soon as I was back home. And poor R hadn’t had a homemade dessert in weeks, so a little chocolate gooeyness seemed like a good place to start.
In her opening description, Dorie notes that these cakes are fairly ubiquitous at this point. In fact, at one restaurant where I used to work, we had a very similar molten cake on our menu for private parties. We’d do up giant batches (sometimes over 100, depending on the size of the party) of individual ones, also using disposable aluminum cups as Dorie suggests. Here, quantities were a bit more manageable…I only made two!
If you’d like to make up these little ultra-chocolatey cakes yourself (and it’s easy, I promise!), the recipe is on Lemon Tartlet and in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
Daring Bakers in March: Perfect Party Cake
March 30, 2008 at 12:16 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, layer cakes, sweet things | 94 Comments
If you´ve looked at this blog lately, you´ll notice that the sweets in most of my recent posts stem from the same source– Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan is turning into one of my most used cookbooks on the shelf! This recipe also comes from that book, but this time my post is not a result of Tuesdays with Dorie, but of the Daring Bakers. Morven from Food Art and Random Thoughts chose Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake as the March DB challenge.
Morven gave us basically free reign to flavor and fill our cakes however we liked, but I wanted to basically stick with Dorie’s version (which she actually accredits to Nick Malgieri), just to give the recipe a fair shot. I used the cake and buttercream recipes as they were written. Instead of using raspberry jam though, I filled my cake with blueberry preserves.
If I had one “issue” with this cake, it would be that I didn’t have enough buttercream for a good coat of frosting on the outside. I must have gone too crazy between the layers– oops!– and what I wound up with was more like a crumb coat. What to do?? I wasn’t about to make more buttercream, so I decided to toast my coconut flakes. Of course I didn’t get a pristine snow white cake like Dorie’s, but it desperately needed a little camouflage.
I know I must have said this a million times before, but OMG I love cake, and wow, was this good! The buttercream was outstanding, and the cake was really moist (and the jam helps keep it that way). I liked the instructions in the cake recipe to rub together the lemon zest and sugar. This is something we always do with citrus in the restaurant where I work and it really helps bring out the flavor in the zest.
Thanks Morven for this month’s challenge! For the Perfect Party Cake recipe, check out Food Art and Random Thoughts. And for the complete list of DBers, check out our great big blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Russian Grandmothers’ Apple Pie-Cake
March 11, 2008 at 12:02 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, pies & tarts, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 43 Comments
Natalie from Burned Bits chose Russian Grandmothers’ Apple Pie-Cake as our Tuesdays with Dorie recipe of the week. I love apple pie and I love cake, so this one sounded great, even though I didn’t really know what to expect from it. Made from dough like a pie, but bakes up like a cake– huh?? Dorie doesn’t have a photo in her book to help me out (although she does have a nice story about the recipe), so I’d just have to see this paradox for myself.
It wasn’t hard to make– two layers of crust sandwich a cinnamony apple filling. When the “pie” bakes, the crusts poof up, and it really does become cake-like. It’s a really rustic dessert–all lumpy and bumpy and browned on top. And it’s really good…tonight I will be dreaming about eating it for breakfast!
I did make a couple of changes. Dorie uses raisins in her recipe, but I’m not too fond of them so I substituted dried cranberries instead. Also, I wanted to make half a recipe, which is a more manageable amount for us, and my 8-inch square glass pan worked perfectly.
You can find the recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours or on Burned Bits. And check out the posts from the other Tuesdays with Dorie members!
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.
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