Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Kamish
April 3, 2018 at 9:19 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, biscotti, cookies
I had never heard of Kamish before making this recipe. Turns out, it is mandelbrot, a twice-baked almond cookie, and is made just like biscotti. This recipe is full of almonds, and also some cinnamon and coconut. After the first bake, when the dough log is sliced, the individual cookies are even sprinkled with coconut-cinnamon sugar for extra pizzaz before going in for the second time. I let my kamish dry out further overnight in a turned off oven, a suggestion in the recipe’s intro for even crunchier cookies. Of course these are great dipped in coffee. Also, of course, I’ve already eaten up the end bits and all the crumbles.
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: Pailles
March 27, 2018 at 4:43 pm | Posted in BCM, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 7 Comments
If you’ve ever had a palmier, this is a similar concept…Pailles are like two palmiers sandwiched with jam. Similar to palmiers, you maneuver a sheet of puff pastry through a series of sugaring, folding and cutting to wind up with a pastry that’s a squiggle of a zillion sweet layers. I like things like this to be well-caramelized– no pale spots! I filled my bronzed pailles with huckleberry jam, finally finishing off a jar that I feel I’ve had forever. Sweet satisfaction all around.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. It’s also here, but I have to say, I found the picture of the process included in the book’s recipe to be very helpful. I have a short attention span for long instructions. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Sunny-Side-Up Meringues
March 20, 2018 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, meringue
I don’t make a lot of meringue cookies, but I do enjoy them. So sweet and crisp, I like the way they basically evaporate in my mouth. These Sunny-Side-Up Meringues playfully resemble eggs, with a nice spoonful of bright yellow curd (made of yolks) sitting in the center of each white vanilla-flavored meringue (made of whites). The recipe calls for homemade lemon curd, but I cheated a bit and brought home some passionfruit curd from work. The tartness of the curd balances nicely with the sweetness of the meringue. The meringues are easy to make, but do require a lot of time in the oven to dry out completely. I let mine sit overnight in a turned off oven for maximum crispness.
Although I got the started recipe yield, I feel like I made my meringues a little too big. Or too round. Or maybe I made the curd crater too big. They look like strange eggs, whatever it is. But they are yummy, and I’m thinking of turning a couple of unfilled cookies into pavlovas, another meringue treat I’m a big fan of.
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: Apple Weekend Cake
March 13, 2018 at 9:49 pm | Posted in BCM, breakfast things, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cake
I like the concept of a “weekend cake.” It’s good to have a simple, sturdy cake that lasts for several days and travels well. Something reliable and something that everyone will like. This Apple Weekend Cake fits the bill nicely. It’s good for dessert, afternoon tea or for breakfast, so it’s multipurpose as well! Though it’s meant to be a loaf, I baked my batter off in a muffin tin. I swapped out a third of the plain flour for rye flour and kept my apple pieces chunky for some texture. I like that in addition to cinnamon and vanilla, there’s some rum in the batter. Apples and rum are BFFs in baked goods. The apple keeps this cake very moist. It hadn’t dried out at all three days later…in fact, I think it tasted better over time. I drizzled my cakelettes with a bit of reduced apple cider that I boiled down a couple of weeks ago.
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 DC: Hamantaschen
March 6, 2018 at 12:33 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
It’s Hamantaschen time! Or at least it was last week, for Purim, when these triangular filled cookies could be found all over New York City bakeries and gourmet shops. Actually, I think most bagel shops here sell them year-round in the pastry case next to the Italian rainbow cookies and the black & whites. At the bagel shop, they know no season. I have made hamantaschen many times before at home, but have always used a butter-based recipe that’s very similar, actually, to the cookie-like sweet tart dough that we use often with TWD projects. This recipe uses oil instead and makes a very soft dough that’s kind of fiddly and needs a lot of chilling before you can work with it, and then even some more chilling while you are working with it. Mine stayed together pretty well, but I don’t mind if hamantaschen open up or leak a little. That just means there’s lots of filling and will probably be delicious. Soon out of the oven, these are like little jam tarts with a crisp shell. Let them sit awhile and they become soft, like the ones you get at the shops. Dorie’s recipe calls for making your own jam filling from dried fruits, but I cheated and took out apricot and huckleberry jams from the fridge. The apricot are my favorite.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. It’s also here. 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: Chocolate Crème Caramel
February 27, 2018 at 12:45 am | Posted in BCM, groups, puddings, custards, mousses, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: caramel, chocoate, custard
Whether it’s called crème caramel or flan, I am a huge fan. I don’t get people who think it’s too eggy, but I’ll just eat their portion as well, so it’s all good. Actually this Chocolate Crème Caramel doesn’t strike me as eggy at all, since it gets an extra boost of flavor and richness from a good amount of chopped chocolate. You get a smooth chocolate custard with a fabulous liquid caramel sauce. It’s an elegant classic– so easy to make, and doesn’t use any cream! It just may create some new flan fans.
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 DC: Bee’s Sneeze Nuggets
February 20, 2018 at 6:49 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
I am a big fan of the at-home apéro hour. I like to have just a splash of wine and a little something to nibble on while I’m preparing the rest of dinner. Makes prep time more fun. Usually I’ll go for boxed crackers with my cheese, but when the TWD pick is a “cocktail cookie,” things get a bit more exciting. These Bee’s Sneeze Nuggets are inspired by the flavors of a cocktail that’s a spin on a traditional bee’s knees. They’re flavored with gin, honey and lots of lemon, and lean savory rather than sweet. After I mixed the cookie dough and patted it out, I wasn’t sure how big to cut the nuggets. I made them really small and I love how they held their shape, rising up instead of spreading out. They look like tiny biscuits–so cute! (I’ve gotta add that I think nuggets this small would be great floating in thicker soups, in place of croutons or oyster crackers…mental note.)
You can dip them in some extra honey on the side, but to help control stickiness, I glazed each nugget with a dab of honey while they were still warm. Then I ate them with olives and cheese. A proper bee’s knees cocktail would probably be an appropriate drink choice, but due to an incident years ago (I will spare you the details), I am not a big gin drinker, so I went with red wine.
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: Cheesecake, Alsace Style
February 13, 2018 at 9:16 am | Posted in BCM, cakes & tortes, cheesecakes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cake, cheesecake
A Cheesecake, Alsace Style is something very different from the thick and hefty cream cheese cheesecake that New York is famous for. This Alsatian cheesecake is made much lighter with fromage blanc (or a Greek yogurt and heavy cream combo if you can’t find it). It’s the type of cheesecake that soufflés up in the oven and then falls as it cools. If a dessert can be beautiful and schlumpy at the same time, this is it. The base is a tall galette dough crust, and the fluffy filling is dotted with rum-soaked raisins. I used to be a raisin-hater but I appreciate them now, especially when they get a rum bath! Other dried fruits could be used, of course. And the cheesecake is nice served with fruit, too. I spooned some candied kumquat slices and syrup over the top to dress up my slices.
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 DC: Sebastian’s Remarkably Wonderful Brownies
February 6, 2018 at 9:11 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, brownies, cookies
We’ve done lots of brownies and brownie-like-things with TWD by this point. But brownie possibilities are apparently limitless, so here are Sebastian’s Remarkably Wonderful Brownies. These are cocoa-only brownies, so no need to dip into your chocolate stash. I used Valrhona cocoa powder, which made them quite dark. They are very flavorful and they are the chewiest brownies I’ve ever made, which I guess is due to the long whipping time for the butter (not melted!), sugar and eggs. I like this chew a lot…it is remarkably wonderful.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here). Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and please join us if you haven’t already!
TWD Rewind: Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies
January 30, 2018 at 8:42 am | Posted in BFMHTY, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 7 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, dessert
So, ten years ago at the start of January, my buddy Laurie started Tuesdays with Dorie to bake her way through the copy of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours that she’d just received for Christmas. What could have been a perfectly fun solo project turned into an even more fun international group bake-along. I have no idea anymore how I first heard about the group (except to say that the food blogging world was much smaller ten years ago), but I jumped on immediately and over the course of several years baked (and took many blurry photos of) every recipe in BFMHTY. Well almost…the very first recipe that Laurie chose to tackle from the book, the Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies, went unmade by me. And since I was so very close to book completion, it had been nagging at me ever since I put BFMHTY back on the shelf and moved on to BWJ, BCM and DC.
It may take enduring ten years of vague, low-level guilt for me to get around to doing something, but here those cookies are. I made a quarter recipe and instead of rolling the dough and cutting it into squares, I patted it out into a six-inch cake pan lined with parchment. Then I cut my round into wedges while it was still hot with a bench scraper. These are nice and sandy, a little nutty and a little caramely. Book done, guilt gone and cookies on the counter. All’s well.
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or find it here.
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