Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: French Riviera Lemon Tart
April 12, 2022 at 7:31 am | Posted in BWD, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 9 CommentsTags: baking, tart
Ah the French Riviera…can’t say that I’ve been, but I imagine it to be a place of casual elegance, oversized sunglasses, floppy hats and endless sunshine. It’s no wonder Dorie calls this fabulously sunny beauty her French Riviera Lemon Tart, and it does come to us by way of her friend in Nice. It’s a dessert that’s put together so quickly that she calls it a “magic trick.” You can make it and not even break a sweat…save that for the beach, and then cool off with a glass of rosé (with ice, if you like).
I don’t know if Meyer lemons are a thing in the French Riviera, but they were a thing in my fridge. I bought a couple of them over a month ago…they seemed “too good to use” for my normal lemon needs, and just sat there neglected. (Why do I do that?) I decided that this was their time to shine– their invitation to Cannes! Many lemon tarts are popped in the oven to set the filling, but not this one. Here, with the help of a tiny bit of cornstarch, a quick curd enriched with butter and olive oil goes into a fully baked press-in shell (I chose to strain mine first to make it completely smooth), and is then simply refrigerated until set. It’s cool, creamy, delicate and light, but still slices nicely. This tart is effortlessly chic, and if you’re not trying to play it low-key, leave it as-is, but if George Clooney is stopping by and you are looking for something more high-glamour, add freshly whipped cream and raspberries.
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 BCM: Caramelized Cinnamon-Milk Chocolate Tart
September 8, 2020 at 12:04 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, chocolate, tarts
This Caramelized Cinnamon-Milk Chocolate Tart was a yummy treat. The ganache filling (made with milk chocolate and cinnamon-infused caramel…I used ground cinny instead of a stick) reminded me of a candy bar, so that made we want to top it with salty peanuts. I’ll make this one again when I have some extra sweet tart dough around. 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: Tropical Tartlets
July 28, 2020 at 3:33 pm | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, fruit, tarts
It feels like it has been, and is going to continue to be, in the muggy 90s here forever, so it’s the right climate for Tropical Tartlets. A puréed mango filling with coconut, lime and rum means one of these is basically a mango daiquiri in a tart shell, and that’s delicious. These tarts also reminded me that I don’t eat nearly enough mangoes.
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: Crème Brûlée Tart
June 23, 2020 at 10:33 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, tarts
A Crème Brûlée Tart is just what it sounds like— crème brûlée baked in a tart shell rather than a ramekin. I had a few mini tart cases already lined in the freezer and I whipped them out to make these. Now my freezer stash of sweet tart dough is gone, which feels good, but I’ll have to make it all from scratch the next time we have a tart on deck. I don’t know why but that makes me feel tired. Haha.
These tarts are meant to have some berries hiding under the custard, but my shells were so teeny-weeny there was only room for one thing inside, and I figured it should be the crème brûlée. I served the berries on the side instead. I used granulated sugar, not brown, for torching to get the crispiest sugar shell. We liked these a lot and I’m glad they were nominated during peak strawberry season here in New York.
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: Martine’s Lemon and Apple Tart
April 28, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, tarts
Someone last round described Martine’s Lemon and Apple Tart as being like a lemon bar that happens to have a bit of grated apple in. I can’t find who said it, but she was spot-on, I’m terms of both preparation and taste. It’s a little strange-looking, I will admit, but the filling is sweet-tart and delicious.
I decided to make just two individual tarts, rather than a big one, so I had to take the ingredient list and kind of wing it a bit with the amounts I’d need to fill them. I felt like this fit with the spirit of the recipe though, since Dorie’s friend Martine, who came up with it, sounds like she can cook on the fly. In the time it took my lemon-apple filling to set, my baby sweet tart dough shells did get a little browned, but I guess that’s just the “French bake” Dorie describes elsewhere in the book.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Boozy Jumbled-Fruit Croustade
April 24, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things | 12 CommentsTags: baking, everyday dorie
Ever since I made hot cross buns for Easter, basically all of my thoughts not somehow related to the current pandemic have been about how insanely delicious booze-soaked dried fruit is. Small pleasures help get through tough times, I guess. With lots of dried fruit and ready-made phyllo, the Boozy Jumbled-Fruit Croustade from Everyday Dorie may be a good dessert to save for the middle of winter, but it’s also a good choice when you are cooking from your pantry (and jonesing for booze-soaked dried fruit). I have small amounts of lots of different fruits in my cupboard, all of them need a home and any of them would be just dandy steeped in bourbon, but here I went with dried cherries, raisins and figs combined with candied orange peel and fresh apple and clementine bits.
I had two sheets of phyllo kicking around my freezer for a few months. To say that they were tattered would be an understatement. They were borderline shredded, almost unusable, and certainly not enough in either quantity or quality to make the big croustade in the book. But…if i took the recipe and minified it, along the lines of the Petite Apple Croustades I made made with TWD, I thought I could save that phyllo from the bin. I was able to make two baby croustades for dessert by cutting the tatters into strips that I overlapped in a muffin tin. I piled the the jumbled bourbon-fruit into each one and and carefully brought the overhanging phyllo up to cover. It was quite a sloppy affair, with buttered phyllo bits flying everywhere, but they came out of the oven bronzed and ruffled, and looking way nicer than they did when they went in. A magical transformation: crispy, boozy, sweet and incredibly tasty.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see what everyone else made this week.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Chocolate-Pecan Pie Cookie Bars
November 5, 2019 at 8:36 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, pie
Dare I say that I like these Chocolate-Pecan Pie Cookie Bars even more than I like pecan pie? These have heaps of pecan and chocolate pieces, with just enough goo to hold them together. And the base is Dorie’s Sweet Tart Dough, which is so easy to work with. I didn’t even need to roll it out or to chill it before baking it here…I whizzed the dough up in the food processor, pressed it into the pan, weighed it down and it was ready to blind bake right away. The cookie bars are easier and faster to make than pie, and they cool faster, too. (That means you can be eating them faster!)
I made a half recipe in a loaf pan, but if you have a big crowd to serve, go for the full 9-inch square because they’ll be gone fast. If you need to make them in advance, they seem to keep just fine for a few days in the fridge.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and please join us if you haven’t already.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Petite Apple Croustades
October 22, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, fruit, galette
Wow– I am just going to brag and say that my Petite Apple Croustades came out so beautifully! I was totally not expecting that. Working with phyllo dough (the “crust” for these) always makes me a bit crazed because I refuse to cover it or handle it gently. I go fast and messy…so I usually expect the results to look messy, too. Instead of raggedy wads, I opened the oven to find perfectly bronzed and frilly apple-phyllo bundles looking out at me. Why, hello there!
Each croustade is made from six strips of buttered and sugared phyllo arranged in a muffin tin. I can see the assembly work being a bit tedious, but I only made two of them, so it wasn’t a big deal. And the mess I made was fairly small, haha. Add in a filling of caramelized cooked apples (I soaked raisins in Grand Marnier and put them in, too), twist up the overlapping phyllo strips around it and you’re good to bake. I had a little filling left over that, along with some caramel ice cream, I spooned on the side. A perfect fall dessert.
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: Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets
October 8, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, tarts
This recipe for Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets is one I’d had my eye on for years. It sounded a little wacky to me– a sweet tart crust filled with cream cheese and cubes of cinnamon toast. Wacky but good, so I’m glad its TWD time has finally come.
It’s another one of those component recipes, made from several (easy) parts. The tartlets use Dorie’s Sweet Tart Dough, which we’ve employed so often that half the time I can find a chunk of it hiding in the freezer. The garnish (both inside and outside) is butter-crisped bread cubes tossed in a cocoa-cinnamon-sugar mix. A bit of the toast goes on the bottom the pre-baked tartlet shells and a bit is reserved to top them at the end. The filling is a fluffy cream cheese whipped cream set with a little gelatin. Gelatin is not my favorite ingredient, and if I can leave it out or think of an easy swap, then I do. Commercial cream cheese has a lot of gums and stabilizers that help to thicken up heavy cream without added assistance, so I just decided to skip the gelatin. I only made two tartlets and we were going to eat them the night I made them anyway so I knew the filling wouldn’t have time to break down or weep.
When It came time to garnish my tartlets, I remembered that I happen to be in possession of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch single serve cereal cup that my husband bizarrely brought me home as a “gift.” (Despite the fact that I’ve never eaten or requested the stuff…am I ungrateful?) It’s been in my cupboard for a couple of months and I thought to use some of the cereal as a topper instead of more bread crumbs. Then I tried to get a little too cute and sprinkled on a bunch of chocolate jimmies and pearls. I knew I’d gone overboard, but there was no turning back. I liked the creamy-crunchy combo, and I’m a sucker for little tartlets…these got thumbs up from both of us.
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: Fall-Market Galette
September 10, 2019 at 12:47 pm | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, fruit, galette
I do normally try to make a couple of fruit pies every summer, but this year I just didn’t. Ah well…some of the best fruits for baking are found here in September anyway, so I think this Fall-Market Galette makes up for my earlier laziness. Dorie calls this a “purple galette” as it’s filled with all the beautiful purple tinged fruits of fall– plums, grapes and figs. I went to my neighborhood’s Saturday greenmarket for my fruit and found the plums and grapes but I’ve never seen figs there. I swapped them out for blackberries and a (non-purple, I know) peach. I used the walnuts as well.
I love the ease of a galette and I don’t mind one bit when the juice from my mountain of fruit runs in rivulets along the pleats. This was delicious with vanilla ice cream.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
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