Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Parfait-Layered Vacherin
July 23, 2024 at 10:16 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, ice creams & frozen, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
If you open your freezer looking for a treat that’s sweet and creamy, but also light and airy, this Parfait-Layered Vacherin might be exactly what you hope to find. It’s something like an ice cream cake, with whipped cream parfait instead of ice cream and crunchy meringue bits instead of cake. It’s cold, but it never freezes too hard, and a drizzle of caramel sauce over the top really does take it over the top.
First thing to do for this is to buy or make a batch of meringues and then break them up into bits, big and small. The parfait is made from whipped egg yolks, whipped cream and whipped whites, gently folded together to make a feather-light mix. Layer the meringue bits and the parfait mix in a springform and freeze for several hours. Dorie finishes her vacherin with a drizzle of caramel sauce and a sprinkle of toasted almonds. I had some passion fruit caramel leftover from another dessert and I repurposed it here to save myself a step. The caramel had a bit of a tart edge to it from the passion fruit juice, and I think it balanced out the sweet meringue bits nicely. My almonds didn’t make it to the photoshoot because I annoyingly forgot them in the kitchen, but a few strawberries managed to come along for the ride. What a delight this is…pretty easy to make, kinda fancy, very nice to slice and definitely great to eat. I can imagine taking the parfait mix in various flavor directions, too.
You can watch Dorie make this dessert here. 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: Lemony Yogurt Muffins with Blueberries
July 23, 2024 at 9:50 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, groups, muffins/quick breads, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, muffins
How do people get up early enough to make muffins for breakfast? I am not a weekend early bird. Unless brekkie is at 10:00, I don’t think I have it in me to crank out freshly-baked muffins. These Lemony Yogurt Muffins started off as evening dessert…but leftovers made it to the breakfast table the next morning.
Even if I don’t function well enough to bake after I’ve stumbled out of bed, these did come together really easily. I admit I didn’t have the key ingredient– I was out of yogurt! I subbed plain kefir, which I worried would make the batter too thin, but I don’t think it did any harm at all. Dorie says the blueberries are an optional add to the lemon-scented batter, which I had to go for. It’s a lot of blueberries– like a truckload– and I can’t even imagine what these muffins would be like without them. These are really moist and delicious and bursting with berries (the berry bulk also yielded extra muffins). I actually made this recipe a couple of years ago and thought they got a bit too crusty on top, so for this round I reduced the baking temperature to 375°. I glazed the hot muffins with marmalade, as Dorie suggested. The chunky peel bits on the muffin tops aren’t my favorite look, but the sweet-tart marmalade on top sure did taste good, and I think it helped keep the muffins really soft overnight.
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 and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Jelly Roll Cake
June 25, 2024 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
This month we have a Jelly Roll Cake to celebrate two TWD June birthdays– Margaret’s and Kim’s. Jelly rolls are also called “Swiss rolls” or “roulades” and can have a variety of fillings rolled up in sheet of flexible sponge cake. Dorie, indeed, gives several variations to consider (hello ice cream roll-up!), but I went with the jam and whipped cream-filled classic. I had my fun playing around with flavor options. I had an unopened jar of yuzu marmalade in the cupboard, which became my jam component. The pulp of a fresh passionfruit went into the whipped cream. All rolled up in a lemon-scented sponge, I was very excited to see the cut slices reveal a tidy spiral of passionfruit-flecked cream. I have lots more ideas for filling and flavor combos, and since this was relatively easy (and extremely tasty), I might just have to have my own “playing around” session with the old-fashioned jelly roll.
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: Strawberry-Rhubarb Squares
June 11, 2024 at 9:41 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 11 CommentsTags: baking, cake
It’s fun to visit my Saturday farmers’ market this time of year. After a gloomy few months of root veggies and winter squash, finally there is green stuff…and even some red stuff, too! These Strawberry-Rhubarb Squares have a soft honey-kissed buttermilk cake base, topped with a layer of early summer “red stuff” that turns jammy when baked. It’s delightfully simple and not too sweet– a perfect breakfast cake, snack cake or dessert cake. I made a half recipe in a loaf pan, so rather than using my stand mixer, I just put the batter together by hand. This was my first summery bake of the season, and it was a good one.
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: Double-Decker Salted Caramel Cake
April 23, 2024 at 8:47 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
This month we have a Double-Decker Salted Caramel Cake to celebrate all the April TWD babies: Diane, Kayte and yours truly. My birthday was at the start of the month, but I actually didn’t bake this till this past Sunday, which was Kayte’s big day, so I blew out a candle made a wish for her. This cake was one of her picks, and it’s two layers of soft brown sugar cake, filled and frosted with a sticky caramel icing.
Any good caramel cake should start with a good homemade caramel sauce. There are two tricks to avoid a tooth-ache here…the first is to be brave and take your caramel syrup to a pretty dark place (but don’t go over the edge and burn it, because that is really no bueno), and the second is to season the finished sauce well with salt. The frosting is just a mix of this caramel sauce and powdered sugar with a little heavy cream added, and is a soft consistency that’s more like a thick glaze than a swoopy, swirly frosting. I thought it seemed like not enough when I made it, but scraping my mixing bowl well, I was able to fill and frost the cake, and I think a thin layer is actually all you really need with this one.
For the cake component, I did a bit of fiddling because I wanted to make a smaller 6-inch version, as is my usual MO for the two of us. Looking at the ingredient list and thinking about how best to tackle scaling things back, I first decided that I wanted to use a single full egg and just forget the extra whites. Then I deduced that amount of egg by weight would roughly correspond to 5 tablespoons of butter, and from there I used my calculator to help me do the math to scale down the rest of the ingredients proportionally (about 42% of the original amounts). And then I decided that, while I do have a deep removable-bottom 6-inch pan I could have used here to keep in line with the recipe, I preferred to split the cake batter into two regular cake pans. I don’t really like dividing cakes with a knife– I never get the layers perfectly even or perfectly level and there are always too many crumbs. Also something about having to bake a soft and fluffy cake like this one for 40+ minutes doesn’t sit right with me, and I figured two thinner layers would be out of the oven in way less time. And then, because I am a lazy auto-pilot baker who doesn’t read through a recipe first, I didn’t realize I was supposed to swirl caramel sauce into the cake batter before the pans went into the oven. So I didn’t do that bit. I was kind of mad at myself, but my layers baked beautifully in about 25 minutes, and instead of a caramel swirl inside the batter, I just gave each layer a thin caramel sauce schmear before frosting.
Well that was a pretty long post to come to a short and sweet summary– this cake is delicious! The cake itself is super soft and really flavorful (and it’s awesome drizzled with a little bourbon, in case you were wondering) and the frosting is just the right amount to not to make your fillings zing. I decorated my cake on top with some mixed crunchy pearls and on the sides with some chocolate flakes that I’ve had for like a million years and can now finally say I used up. A successful and satisfying birthday bake!
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: Parisian Custard Tart
March 26, 2024 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWD, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, pie
I don’t know about you, but recipes that call for making pastry cream can make me grumble a bit. Often that pastry cream is just one of several components you need to pull together for what you’re making, but for this Parisian Custard Tart, it’s the only thing you really have to prepare. You can choose to make your own crust, but you can also choose to use store bought puff pastry, which I assure you works wonderfully well. This is a simple dessert, just custard and crust, and it’s an everyday, snacky treat in Paris. To me, even though it’s simple, it still feels fancy. The custard is luxurious mix flavored with brown sugar, vanilla and rum that’s baked till it’s a charred, dark brown on top. I was a bit skeptical that the puff pastry was going to cook through, especially on the bottom, but it did, indeed, bake up super-crisp. My custard puffed when it baked and then fell when it cooled, and I was left with kind of a wonky baked custard ledge around the tart. If it happens again, I’ll probably trim it off for the sake of looks, but other than that, no complaints about this tasty one.
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: Breakfast-in-Rome Lemon Cake
March 12, 2024 at 5:04 pm | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 12 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
Somehow neither The White Lotus nor seemingly the entire world’s fabulously dreamy Instagram summer vacay pics have spurred me to book a flight to Italy yet, but this Breakfast-in-Rome Lemon Cake may do the trick. I can imagine being pretty happy for a few days to wake up to a double espresso and a slice of the breakfast/snack tube cake known as chiambella. Until I get my passport renewed, luckily Dorie has provided us with her Italian vacation version to bake at home. She makes a lemony separated egg sponge that results in a tall, light, bouncy cake. Berries are optional, but since I had some frozen blackberries in my mess of a freezer, I rummaged around and found them. If I’m going all the way to Italy, I’m not just going to Rome…I’m also going to the Almalfi Coast, so I drizzled the top of my cake with a little limoncello while it was still warm and at its most absorbant for another hit of lemon.
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: Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds
February 13, 2024 at 9:30 pm | Posted in BWD, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 10 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
I am not loyal to one chocolate chip cookie recipe– I want to play the field and try them all. These Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds are the latest to have caught my eye. At first glance, these seem pretty similar to the Mokonuts ones we made a couple years ago, but these swap the dried fruit for a strong hit of spices (coffee, cinnamon and cardamom) and use a mix of seeds (sunflower, flax, poppy and sesame for me). Dorie says you can put either milk or dark chocolate in these, so I naturally had to go with a combo. I’ve taken to usually creaming any spices in a recipe into the butter and sugar, rather than just stirring them into the flour. A lot like rubbing citrus zest into sugar, I feel like that bashing and smearing in the mixing bowl really makes spices pop, too. Creaming in the espresso powder at this early stage also helped to make my cookies look extra-dark. Before baking, I basically rolled the dough balls in more of the birdseedy mix (plus flaky salt) for good coverage, including on the bottoms. These cookies have so much complex flavor and a great texture with chewy middles and a crisp, toasted seed coating. Even if it is onto the next CCC, I’ll circle back to this one for sure.
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 BWD: Spinach-Mozzarella Pie with Parm Crumble
January 23, 2024 at 5:31 pm | Posted in BWD, groups, other savory, pies & tarts, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, savory, tarts
If you’re wondering how to get cheese and custard and green stuff and pastry all in one dish, the answer is a Spinach-Mozzarella Pie with Parm Crumble! What we have here is basically a spinach quiche dotted with cubes of mozzarella and topped off with a Parmesan-loaded crumble. It’s salty and cheesy and textured and great warm or room temp for any meal of the day.
Last year, I tested the recipes for an upcoming savory baking cookbook and I’ve had an empty par-baked pie shell sitting in the freezer ever since. I almost never bake a full-sized pie for the two of us, but I’ve been itching to reclaim that freezer space (and that pie plate), so when this recipe was nominated, I decided to use the crust here. It’s different than Dorie’s flaky crust, in that it’s a press-in situation with a shortcrust texture, and it’s also in a standard-sized plate instead of a deep dish, but it worked out well in this pie by slightly scaling back the custard amount. Another thing I had in the freezer from those testing days was an almost-full bag of frozen spinach, so I pulled that out, too. Rather than wilting down and squeezing fresh spinach, I thawed the frozen stuff and squeezed the heck out of it before adding it to my sautéed aromatics. Technically, my spinach-to-custard ratio was a bit higher than Dorie’s because I wanted to use up all the spinach that was in the bag. My filling was more like creamy greens and lacked a separate quiche-like layer, but more green stuff is always fine with me. Also, I like a bit of heat, so I added some pepper flake to the filling.
After the spinach mixture and the creamy custard are inside the par-baked shell, on went cubes of mozzarella and lots of parm crumble, and then it was into the oven. I only made 3/4 of the crumble and it still seemed plenty to cover the pie. We’ve had this with a salad the last couple of nights for dinner, and since I made a full-sizer, we can have it for a couple of lunches, too.
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 twice a month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Chunky Citrus Cornmeal Cake
January 9, 2024 at 10:42 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
Dorie’s Chunky Lemon Cornmeal Cake is a sunny loaf, getting color and flavor from cornmeal, lemon zest, chopped up lemon segments and sumac. I happened to notice a few bags of cute, tiny, bright orange calamansi at my neighborhood grocer. I’ve only ever come across calamansi here as frozen juice at some of the Asian grocery stores, so I snapped up a bag. Even though I didn’t have any plans for them, I like to be sure to buy things that I don’t normally see on the shelves so my store knows people are interested.
I sat on the calamansi in the fridge for a few days and then thought I could use them in this cake. Prep was super easy, since you can eat the whole fruit…they have thin, sweet skins with almost no pith and puckery, tart insides. I simply quartered each calamansi, popped out any seeds or membrane I found and used them in the simple one-bowl cake batter just like that. I left out the sumac, but I had about a tablespoon and a half of spiced sugar left from some holiday cookies and I sprinkled that on top of the cake batter before I put it in the oven for a little crust.
This was so tasty with the little pops of calamansi and it stayed fresh for several days. I loved the color and the texture (just a bit gritty from the cornmeal) and was super pleased when I cut into the cake.
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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