Tuesdays with Dorie: Lemon-Clove Cup Custard
March 10, 2009 at 2:58 am | Posted in groups, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 47 Comments
Bridget, from the gorgeous blog The Way the Cookie Crumbles, chose Dorie’s Lemon Cup Custard for TWD this week. I opted to go for the lemon-clove “Playing Around” suggestion in the book, and since it is a cup custard, I naturally baked mine in a cup.
I actually don’t have too much to say on this one, but there was a lot of talk (mostly not-so-positive) on the comment board. For group members who didn’t like the recipe, the main problem was the “egginess” of the custard. I happen to love eggy custards. In fact, I chose Dorie’s flan when my turn to pick came around last March (I was worried that if I didn’t, no one would!). These little cups are prepared similarly to flan custard, and their texture and eggy taste did remind me of flan. But without the caramel sauce, they were rather unremarkable. This recipe was not bad by any means, just a bit boring.
If you’d like to check it out for yourself, read The Way the Cookie Crumbles or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan for the recipe. Don’t forget to scroll through the TWD Blogroll.
Applesauce Snack Cake
March 6, 2009 at 6:05 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, simple cakes, sweet things | 27 Comments
No one is jonseing for spring more than I am. I was plucked from the Sydney winter and plopped right into the New York winter, so I am completely sick of the cold at this point. Spring may be just around the corner, but we had a mountain of snow dumped on us earlier in the week, so I’m still eating like I’m prepping for hibernation. Until I see the first rhubarb at the greenmarket, apples and warm spices are what I’m wanting.
I saw the America’s Test Kitchen crew make Applesauce Snack Cake on TV awhile back, and have been thinking about it ever since. No time like the present whip one up, I’d say. Their recipe contains a fair bit of butter, so it’s certainly not one of those low-cal applesauce cakes, but it’s moist and nicely spiced…perfect for snacking or, in my case, for desserting. A little sugar and spice mixture sprinkled over the top before baking makes every thing truly nice (“nice” taking the form of a crispy, crackly, sweet crust). I made half a recipe, which is the right amount for two people, and it fit nicely into a loaf pan.
Applesauce Snack Cake– makes one 8-inch square cake
adapted from Cooks Illustrated (September 2006)
3/4 cup dried apples (2 ounces), cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 cup apple cider
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (7 1/2 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2/3 cup sugar (4 3/4 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup unsweetened applesauce , room temperature
1 large egg , room temperature, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon table salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), melted and cooled slightly
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 325 degrees. Cut 16-inch length parchment paper or aluminum foil and fold lengthwise to 7-inch width. Spray 8-inch square baking dish with nonstick cooking spray and fit parchment into dish, pushing it into corners and up sides; allow excess to overhang edges of dish.
-Bring dried apples and cider to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat; cook until liquid evaporates and mixture appears dry, about 15 minutes. Cool to room temperature.
-Whisk flour and baking soda in medium bowl to combine; set aside. In second medium bowl, whisk sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Measure 2 tablespoons sugar-spice mixture into small bowl and set aside for topping.
-In food processor, process cooled dried-apple mixture and applesauce until smooth, 20 to 30 seconds, scraping sides of bowl as needed; set aside. Whisk egg and salt in large bowl to combine. Add sugar-spice mixture and whisk continuously until well combined and light colored, about 20 seconds. Add butter in three additions, whisking after each. Add applesauce mixture and vanilla and whisk to combine. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients; using rubber spatula, fold gently until just combined and evenly moistened.
-Turn batter into prepared pan, smoothing top with rubber spatula. Sprinkle reserved 2 tablespoons sugar-spice mixture evenly over batter. Bake until wooden skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes.
-Cool on wire rack to room temperature, about 2 hours. Run knife along cake edges without parchment to release. Remove cake from pan by lifting parchment overhang and transfer to cutting board. Cut cake and serve.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Armagnac Cake
March 3, 2009 at 2:44 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 58 Comments
I’ve been waiting for more than a year for someone to choose Dorie’s Chocolate Armagnac Cake for TWD! Not just hoping it would be chosen for the sake of trying it…it was actually the very first recipe I made from BFMHTY, when I was still living in Sydney and I hadn’t yet joined TWD. A couple of weeks later, I signed on to the group and have been waiting patiently, holding on to the picture, ever since. Finally LyB of And then I do the dishes came through and picked it for this week’s recipe!
It was my brother who requested this cake. I was looking for something to make for dessert while he was staying in Sydney with us, and asked him to choose a recipe from the book. I think he did it on picture alone, because he sure was surprised to see me chopping up prunes! That’s right, prunes. Armagnac-flamed prunes are part of what gives this cake it’s little something-something, and a great texture. I actually didn’t use Armagnac here but used Jameson instead, which thanks to my father (yeah, please don’t ask), I had already had on-hand.
This is another dense, chocoholic type of cake. (There have been a lot of those lately, right?) Really good, as far as I can remember, and a bit of glaze puts it over the top. If you are baking for someone who’s anti-prune, sub another dried fruit, like raisins, or just keep it hush-hush…they’ll probably never pin it down.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (read Dorie’s funny story about the cake, too). It will also be on And then I do the dishes. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
Daring Bakers in February: Flourless Chocolate Cake & Fresh Mint Ice Cream
February 28, 2009 at 2:02 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, ice creams & frozen, sweet things | 40 Comments
I skipped out on last month’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge, so I wasn’t about to miss this one– especially since our hosts Wendy at wmpesblog and Dharm at Dad – Baker and Chef chose something exceptionally decadent. Actually, they chose two exceptionally decadent things: a flourless chocolate cake (called “Chocolate Valentino”) and homemade ice cream.
It may surprise you that a cake worthy of a restaurant plate has just three ingredients: chocolate, butter and eggs. Since chocolate is the star of the show here, use the best stuff you can. The recipe calls for semisweet chocolate, but I only had bittersweet so I threw a couple tablespoons of sugar into the meringue component. This sweetened it up a bit and also made the meringue more stable. I should also note that making the cake is just as easy as remembering the three ingredients! Melt the butter and chocolate together, add in the yolks, whip the whites to a meringue, fold them in, and bake. Keep a close eye on the cake in the oven, as mine baked quickly…but then again, I did just make a half recipe. This cake is so dense and chocolatey– it’s a really special dessert, but not at all hard to make.
To tell the truth, I think a rich cake like this pairs better with a light whipped cream than it does with an equally rich ice cream. But ice cream was part of the challenge, and it is really one of my favorite things to make. We were given the option of making either a traditional custard-based ice cream or an eggless Philadelphia-style one. I happened to have several yolks leftover from the coconut cake I had made a few days before, so that meant a French-style ice cream for me. I also had some fresh mint in the fridge…since I love the combination of chocolate and mint, I thought that would be a good way to go.
I have made a lot of ice cream at home (incidentally, I use the KitchenAid ice cream attachment and have had good results with it), and something I’ve learned is that if you start with a good vanilla ice cream recipe as your base, you can easily modify it for other flavors. For my mint ice cream, I used the custard-based classic vanilla recipe provided by Dharm, and rather than steeping the milk with a vanilla bean, I steeped it with a couple handfuls of fresh mint leaves. I also increased the sugar by two tablespoons, but this was just a matter of personal taste. Getting the mint flavor right can be a little tricky. The more mint you use, and the longer you infuse it, the more herbal the ice cream will be. That may sound obvious, but I’ve made several batches in the past that have tasted almost grassy. I was going for a subtler flavor here so I was careful when adding the mint, and made sure to taste the milk after it had steeped.
Check out the DB blogroll! And visit Wendy or Dharm for the recipes for both the Chocolate Valentino cake and the ice creams.
The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel Crunch Bars
February 24, 2009 at 2:51 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 60 Comments
We have another yummy cookie for TWD this week. Whitney of What’s Left on the Table? had me putting caramel crunch bars on my table, and trust me, nothing’s left!
This cookie does have a lot of crunch. It’s a brown sugar shortbread, flavored with a little cinnamon and espresso powder and a lot of chopped chocolate. On top there’s melted dark chocolate and a generous sprinkle of toffee bits. I have never bought Heath Toffee Bits before, and was completely amused by the package. Not only does it say “Bits o’ Brickle,” which is enormously funny to me, but it also says “finest quality English toffee” in one spot and then “artificially flavored” in another. Hmmm…
In the book, Dorie suggests using these for ice cream sandwiches. I had a little homemade fresh mint ice cream, so I decided to give it a try. I topped the bars that I was using for the sandwiches with cocoa nibs instead of toffee (these I scattered sparingly, because they are kinda bitter). Tasty? Yes, but also a little hard to eat. I thought the bars were a little too crunchy for ice cream sandwiches. They were difficult to bite into frozen…I think I prefer a softer, more yielding cookie for that purpose. The caramel crunch bars are sweet enough and rich enough on their own, that I preferred them just as they were. Well, with a cup of herbal tea, that is.
For the recipe, read What’s Left on the Table? or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
The Cake Slice: Southern Coconut Cake
February 20, 2009 at 2:39 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, the cake slice | 45 Comments
I am a coconut cake fanatic. I love it in all its forms…filled with pastry cream or lemon curd, iced with cream cheese frosting or buttercream. Any which way you slice it, I’ll take a piece! Coconut cupcakes are scrummy too…I made some here awhile back. So, naturally I was excited when Southern Coconut Cake won The Cake Slice group vote this month (although I know it only came from behind to beat out a chocolate-peanut butter cake because of the current salmonella scare, but so what).
There are no yolks in this cake, so the crumb is snow-white fluff. I really like that the recipe incorporates coconut milk into the batter. I punched up the coconut flavor a bit more by using a combination of vanilla and coconut extracts (rather than straight vanilla), and by folding a handful of finely grated unsweetened coconut (the desiccated stuff from the health food store) into the batter at the end. I made half a recipe, but rather than baking it in three 6-inch pans, like I usually do, I spread the batter into a quarter sheet pan (measuring something like 9″ x 13″). I then cut it into three strips, which I stacked into a rectangular cake… for some reason, I was obsessed with having a slice that looked like Pepperidge Farm.
The finished cake is not frosted with a traditional cream cheese frosting, but with a super light cream cheese buttercream, made with an Italian meringue. Wow, is it good…and it’s something that I never would have thought to do. The book that this recipe comes from, Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes, has so many cool ideas– I’m really glad to have it. I made a two-thirds recipe of buttercream, so I could have leftovers to frost my Valentine’s cupcakes.
Not only does this cake taste great, but it’s also soooo pretty. I want it for my wedding cake. Oh, darn…I’m already married! But there’s actually something else I can celebrate with a yummy coconut cake– a whisk and a spoon turns two today! I can hardly believe it (especially when I go back and look at those early posts–ha!), and if it weren’t for all of you who read and leave such encouraging comments, I may not have kept at it for so long. Thank you for making blogging so wonderfully fun and fulfilling!!
Here’s a printable link to the recipe. Better yet, get your hands on a copy of Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes by Alicia Huntsman and Peter Wynne. Cruise through the list of The Cake Slice Bakers to check out all of our coconut cakes this month.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Devil’s Food White-Out Cake
February 17, 2009 at 2:19 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, cupcakes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 49 Comments
Oh, I bet a lot of TWDers have been waiting a long time for this one, and we have Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater to thank for finally choosing it! Actually, I feel a twinge of guilt posting this picture. It’s almost as if, by turning Dorie’s cover cake into cupcakes, I haven’t quite done her recipe justice. Please forgive me…it’s just that I’ve been doing a lot of layer cakes with The Cake Slice group lately.
Geez Louise, I love devil’s food cake. I mean, really…it’s so chocolaty, and that moist but dense thing it has going on…it’s just the best type of chocolate cake (by the way, I like it chilled). This particular devil’s food recipe is extra-special because it has little chopped chocolate bits throughout. I made a half recipe and got ten cupcakes. I actually only turned six of them into White-Outs. The others went, unfrosted but nicely wrapped, into the freezer, and later (along with some leftover cream cheese frosting you’ll read about in a few days) became Valentine’s cupcakes.
The White-Out Cake is Dorie’s spin on the classic Brooklyn blackout cake, but here the filling/frosting is homemade marshmallow Fluff. Yay, Fluff! I even cut a hole out of the center of each cupcake and filled it with extra marshmallow meringue. You know where I was going with that, right? I reserved the little plugs of cake for my crumbs. One note about the frosting: I reduced the cream of tartar in the recipe. A friend had made this cake about a month ago, and told me she thought the frosting had a slightly metallic taste…the large amount of CoT was the only culprit I could think of.
So good…it was so good. Make it yourself and see– the recipe, of course, is in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but she also has it here on NPR’s site. Don’t forget to read Stephanie’s post and check out the TWD Blogroll to see what everyone else came up with!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
February 14, 2009 at 3:32 am | Posted in cupcakes, sweet things | 20 Comments
Tuesdays with Dorie: Floating Islands
February 10, 2009 at 2:39 am | Posted in groups, other sweet, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 41 Comments
Shari, a loyal TWDer who does cool things with classic dishes on Whisk: a food blog, chose Floating Islands (île flottante), a traditional French dessert, for this week’s recipe. I actually would have called this “snow eggs” (oeufs à la neige), but now I realize I don’t know what the difference is, if there really is one (and Googling it didn’t help, as I found different info on each link…too much information sometimes just confuses me).
This dessert makes me smile; it looks kind of goofy, don’t you think? The basic idea is this: a milk-poached meringue sits in a pool of crème anglaise custard. It’s light from the meringue and, at the same time, rich from the custard…and because it’s served chilled, it’s really quite refreshing.
Rather than quenelling smooth, egg-shaped meringues, I tried to make cute, spiky little islands. Unfortunately, my cute spikes flattened as I turned the meringues during the poaching process, and I ended up with deformed blobs. Whatever…looks aren’t everything. I made my meringues first, and so that I wouldn’t waste the poaching milk, I strained and remeasured it and used it as the basis for the custard sauce.
Traditionally, a drizzle of caramel finishes off floating islands, but because caramel doesn’t keep, and I had to take the blog pictures several hours before I’d be eating the dessert, I chose to skip that bit. I didn’t want my islands to look barren though, so in an effort to spruce them up another way, I decided to infuse my anglaise with orange zest and garnish with a few fresh berries. And since this is an old-school dessert, I went with some old-school baby mint sprigs, just for good measure.
For the recipe, read Whisk: a food blog or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies
February 3, 2009 at 2:50 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 54 Comments
I know these cookies. Not that I’d ever made them myself before Jessica of cookbookhabit chose them for this week’s TWD, but a few summers ago, I spent a couple of days in Paris visiting a friend. It was August and several of the shops I hoped to visit were closed for their own vacations. That was a bummer, but I was happy to find that Pierre Hermé on rue Bonatparte was open. I pretty much scarfed down the entire macaroon display, and then moved on to the shelves, where I picked up a little baggie of chocolate sablés for the plane trip home. I hadn’t a clue that these cookies were super-famous, but I knew after tasting them that they should be! Honestly, I couldn’t believe how good they were– crumbly and chocolaty…but it’s the hit of salt that really made me say, “Oh la vache!”
I used Sel de Guérande in these cookies, but if you don’t have fleur de sel, don’t worry. I maybe wouldn’t recommend regular table salt (which is too harshly salty– if that makes sense–for my tastes, even for everyday cooking), but a “softer” salt, like Kosher or sea salt, will work just fine. The recipe has a bit of chopped dark chocolate folded in at the end…you can be experimental with this bit, if you want. I used a combo of chopped bittersweet chocolate and cocoa nibs, so that there would be a little gooey melted chocolate and a little bitter crunch in each bite.
Can world peace really be achieved through a cookie? Oh, if only it were that simple…but if the new Administration wants to give it a go, I’ll happy accept the position of Secretary of Snacks! To feel like you’ve gone to Paris without leaving home, read cookbookhabit or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan for the recipe (she also has it here on The Splendid Table’s website). Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
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