Tuesdays with Dorie: Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet
July 26, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in groups, ice creams & frozen, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 32 CommentsTags: dessert, sorbet
Yes–my week to pick again for TWD!! I am crazy-excited! My first turn came way back in March of ’08, when I chose Caramel-Topped Flan. I think a lot of folks skipped that week. Turns out flan is a love-it-or-hate-it thing (I’m a lover, btw). We’ve made sooo many good things in the three+ years since then, and I’ve only missed out on a handful of them. There are still a lot of good things left, which made my choice this month a hard one, but I hoped Dorie’s Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet would be a hit with most everyone (sorry, Kayte!!).
This sorbet really is creamy and intensely chocolaty. It’s also super-melty. Like, don’t blink or you’ll have a chocolate puddle where your sorbet once stood. Of course, that can more than possibly be chalked up to triple-digit temps in NYC and no A/C in my house! No matter…eaten with a spoon or just slurped up out of a bowl, it’s delicious. And so freakin’ easy. I have a plan to work around the meltiness with the rest of my batch, and it looks something like this…
As always, hugs and kisses to Dorie, Laurie, Jules and the TWD gang for making every Tuesday fun and tasty. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll this week!
Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet– makes about 1 1/2 pints
recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours
Steph’s Note: I added a pinch of salt to the mix. Milk with any fat content will work.
1 cup milk
1 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
-Stir all the ingredients together in a 3- to 4-quart heavy-bottomed saucepan. Put the pan over medium heat and bring the ingredients to a boil, stirring frequently.
-Lower the temperature and boil for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally and keeping a close eye on the pan- as the ingredients bubble and roll, the potential for boil over is high.
-Pour mixture into a heatproof bowl and refrigerate until chilled before churning the sorbet.
-Scrape the chilled sorbet mixture into the bowl of an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Pack the sorbet into a container and freeze for at least 2 hours, until it is firm enough to scoop.
Serving: Unlike ice cream, with could be served as soft custard straight from the churn, this sorbet needs time in the freezer to firm.
Storing: Packed tightly in a covered container, the sorbet will keep in the freezer for up to two weeks.
Playing Around: 1 teaspoon of peppermint extract added to the cooled base will give you chocolate-peppermint sorbet. You can even add crushed candy canes a couple of minutes before churning is complete.
Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream
July 1, 2011 at 8:25 pm | Posted in ice creams & frozen, sweet things | 1 CommentTags: dessert, ice cream
A hot, sunny summer holiday weekend is all the reason I need to indulge in a few of my favorite treats. To celebrate Canada Day here in Brooklyn, R and I had smoked meats and Labatt Blue for lunch today at Mile End. For the Fourth of July, we’ll eat chicken slathered in my favorite homemade BBQ sauce and Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream for dessert.
I’ve made this ice cream several times before, and I gave it a quick nod a while back when I made an equally tasty Blueberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream. Tangy sour cream really makes the sweetness of summer berries pop. The little splash of almond extract in this version is a subtle but nice touch. And…it’s pink…super-pretty pink! While, of course, you can stash ice cream in the freezer for several days, I do think this one is best eaten within several hours of making it, while it’s soft and the dairy has the freshest taste. (The base is uncooked, and the ice cream will get quite hard as it continues to freeze.) So get a quart of berries while they’re still in season, invite a few friends to come around and enjoy!
Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream– makes about a quart
adapted from Sunset Magazine (May 2001)
2 1/2 cups strawberries, rinsed
1 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups half-and-half or light cream
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
-Hull strawberries and place in a 3- to 4-quart pan. Coarsely mash with a potato masher. Add 1/2 cup sugar and pinch of salt and stir occasionally over medium-high heat until mixture begins to bubble, three to five minutes.
-Add remaining 1/2 cup sugar and nest pan in a bowl of ice water and stir often until cold, about ten minutes. Remove pan from ice water. You can store this in the fridge (covered) for a day or so before continuing on, if you wish.
-Add sour cream, half-and-half, vanilla, and almond extract to berries; stir until blended (mixture will be streaked). At this point, you can store the base in the refrigerator for several hours before churning.
-Pour into an ice cream maker (1 1/2-qt. or larger capacity). Freeze according to manufacturer’s directions until mixture is softly frozen, dasher is hard to turn, or machine stops.
-Spoon out and serve softly frozen or, to scoop, freeze airtight about four hours; store airtight in the freezer up to one week.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookies
June 28, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 12 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Hooray, Spike, for finally giving these Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookies their fifteen minutes of fame. This is one of the first recipes in the book that really piqued my interest, mostly because I couldn’t imagine what the heck a “cake cookie” could be. But then, after making approximately a hundred zillion whoopie pies at the bakery in Red Hook where I used to work, it dawned on me that these might something similar. Although Dorie says they are thin and plain, somehow mine came out chubby and rounded– like little cakes in cookie-mound form. These are nice and moist, and to boost the chocolaty-ness, I used my darkest cocoa, replaced the cinnamon and nutmeg in the recipe with a bit of instant espresso powder and left out the currants entirely. While they are pretty good on their own (just grab a glass of milk or iced coffee and have at ’em), I think they’d be great filled with buttercream. Since it’s so schwetty out here, I decided to make them into ice cream sandwiches instead, using a bit of the caramel gelato I help to make at the shop where I now work.
For the Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookie recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Spike’s blog. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Date-Nut Loaf
June 21, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in breakfast things, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 18 CommentsTags: baking, cake
I hate to admit it, but I didn’t think this Date-Nut Loaf seemed like much when it came out of the oven. It was kind of pale, and when I sliced into it, I thought it looked a little dry. Boy, I was wrong! This was a great cake with a cup of coffee for breakfast. It’s actually really soft and has a tender crumb. My husband was pumped for this, because he loves dates. They taste like soft brown sugar nuggets in the cake.
I made a half recipe in my little loaf pan, so I shortened the baking time to under an hour (and didn’t bother to foil tent it). Because it sounded like a good candidate for a little whole grain flour swapping, I subbed about a quarter of the AP for whole wheat pastry flour. I haven’t yet tried Dorie’s suggestion of toasting left over slices, but if there’s any remaining tomorrow morning, I might give it a shot.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Popsicles and Sandy Feet, as it was Mary’s pick this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake
June 7, 2011 at 5:06 pm | Posted in breakfast things, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 15 CommentsTags: baking, breakfast, cake
A trip to up Boston for my Wellesley reunion this past weekend meant that I wasn’t able to make this Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake until this morning. Glad I got around to it though, because it is just plain good. It has a hint of cinnamon, a kiss of brown sugar and a big whomp of blueberries. With almost as much fruit as batter, I think it should stay moist for a good long time…although I won’t find out, because we’ll be polishing it off for breakfast tomorrow! (Hey–don’t judge–I only made half a recipe…we can’t eat that much cake in two days!)
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here on Culinate) or read Everyday Insanity, as it was Cindy’s pick this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
P.S.: I forgot to mention that I swapped out some of the AP for spelt flour, one of my favorite flours to use in muffins and fruity cakes like this. Also, I think this cake would be tasty with raspberries, and I may try that out later in the season.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel Pots de Crème
May 31, 2011 at 5:38 am | Posted in groups, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, custard, dessert
Remember those ultra-luxe little custards called “Pots de Crème“? Lucky for my taste buds, we are making them again, but instead of chocolate, this time I have Caramel Pots de Crème. I like to take my caramel fairly dark, so it’s not too sweet and has a just a hint of a bitter edge.
It was only after I baked these that I realized the recipe doesn’t include any salt. I solved that by sprinkling a little of my precious Aussie pink salt over the whipped cream I heaped on top (as though there wasn’t enough cream in the custards!). I fired up the oven to bake these off a few weeks ago, when it was still relatively cool out…but if I were making them in the mid-80s humidity-a-thon we in the middle of now, I think pots de ice cream à la Mike would be the ticket.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Peggy the Baker, as Peggy picked it this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Brown Sugar Bundt Cake
May 10, 2011 at 12:10 am | Posted in bundt cakes, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 19 CommentsTags: baking, cake
Well, I do think we have finally found ourselves at the end of the TWD Bundt cake chapter. A bittersweet day, perhaps…if that may be said concerning something called a Brown Sugar Bundt.
The recipe for this brown sugar and buttermilk cake calls for chunks of apple or pear in the batter (and some prunes, too), but in the interests of being sort of seasonal, I was really hoping to make this with rhubarb. That plan was foiled, though, after trips to two different farmers’ markets and one produce stand turned up zilch. I returned home with a nice, ripe mango in my bag and just used that instead (and nixed those prunes). Despite all the brown sugar in the ingredient list– I used half light, half dark–this cake was not a sugar-bomb at all. The sweetness was understated enough that I think it would have been a fabulous breakfast cake, even though we had it for dessert.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Pantry Revisited, as it was Peggy’s pick this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Matcha Marbled Loaf Cake
May 3, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 12 CommentsTags: baking, cake
Chocolate and vanilla may be the classic marble cake combo, but a flash of springtime color inspiration made me want something different from the usual swirls of black and white for my Basic Marbled Loaf. After wondering what I might have at home that would give me a “natural” green swirl (besides frozen spinach, that is), I remembered my tiny tin of matcha tea powder. I used it to tinge half of my batter green, and added almond extract to the other (plain) half.
I made a half recipe in my little loaf pan, so I was already on the lookout for a shorter baking time than the recipe suggests, but it sounds like even if you bake a full-sizer, you may want to check your cake several minutes early. My marbling efforts looked more like blobs, but I don’t care too much since it tasted good. I had a slice with some tea while watching the Royal Wedding.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read The Bake More, as it was Carol’s pick this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies
April 26, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 15 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
If you are looking for a crunchy, buttery, sweet little cookie to serve with tea, Cornmeal Shortbread may your thing. A pop of citrus zest adds extra flavor (I used orange), and that little bit of grittiness from the cornmeal boosts the crumbly texture typical of shortbread. I’m glad to have a stash of extras in the freezer!
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Une Gamine dans la Cuisine, as it was Valerie’s pick this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: A Tourtely Apple Tart
April 19, 2011 at 12:01 am | Posted in groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 12 CommentsTags: baking, dessert, tarts
Thinner than your typical apple pie, this double-crusted Tourtely Apple Tart has a gently spiced, chunky applesauce sandwiched between layers of sweet tart dough. Since sweet tart dough is a cookie-like crust, the damp filling makes it soften up over time– in a very appealing way. Something about it reminded me of the Cranberry Shortbread Cake we made a while back. I think the way bumpy top crust drapes over the apple chunks is just beautiful. I look forward to making this again in the peak of apple season.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read The Whimsical Cupcake, as it was Jeannette’s pick this week. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
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