Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Gouda Gougères
May 14, 2024 at 3:50 pm | Posted in BWD, groups, other savory, savory things, snacks, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cheese, savory
This month we’re celebrating choux paste with Mardi, our May birthday girl who chose one sweet cream puff and one salty cheese puff for us to make. Someday I hope to apéro with Mardi IRL, so to manifest that, I’m starting with the Gouda Gougères. These are a favorite cocktail snack of Dorie’s (and mine) and we’ve made a few versions of them by now. These ones have gouda cheese and cumin seeds for a fun twist. Actually, mine were manchego because I forgot to get gouda at the store, but no matter, it worked just the same. I made a quarter recipe and used a two-tablespoon scoop to get six nice-sized puffs. I normally bake choux pastry at a higher temperature than this recipe does, so baked my gougères at 400° for the first half of baking (I think they rise better in a hotter oven), and then turned the oven down to 350° for the second half. Warm from the oven, these are crispy-soft, salty, cheesy and just the thing to toast friends with a cold glass of wine.
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: 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: Goat Cheese-Black Pepper Quick Bread
April 9, 2024 at 12:41 am | Posted in breakfast things, BWD, groups, other savory, quick breads, savory things, snacks, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, cheese, savory
We’re in that in-between weather stage, where one day it’s nice enough to sit on the stoop with a glass of chilled wine, and the next day what’s nice is to sit on the couch with a hot bowl of soup. This Goat Cheese Black Pepper Quick Bread is one you can take to either place– a bread for all seasons. This olive oil-based loaf comes together quickly by hand and is flavored with lemon, fresh mint (although I rarely have that in my herb stash, so I used dried parsley and dill instead) and, of course, goat cheese. Just like you can successfully swap out the mint to your herb of choice, I also think hunks feta or even cream cheese would work nicely here if goat cheese isn’t your thing. The bread has great muffin-like texture, with pockets of creamy cheese and a nice bronzed crust. I added a few extra bloops of cheese to decorate the top of the loaf with, along with a bit more cracked black pepper and some flaky salt.
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: 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: Potato Flake Biscuits
March 12, 2024 at 1:47 am | Posted in biscuits/scones, breakfast things, BWD, groups, other savory, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, biscuits
You’d think that with Cook the Book Fridays being behind us, I’d not have so much trouble spitting out just bi-weekly blog posts, but here I am, two weeks late with these Potato Flake Biscuits. At least I did bake them on time for last month’s posting, I promise! I don’t make biscuits or scones very often. It’s not that I don’t like them, I just never crave them like I do cake or ice cream, and I have to be a bit choosey where I spend my pastry calories. I made a half recipe of these biscuits for a more controlled amount (just four squares) for the two of us, allowing me to fairly quickly resume my standard diet of cupcakes.
These savory biscuits came together easily. They are flavored with sautéed onion (I used scallion for extra green bits), some herbs and some Parm. Instant mashed potato flakes are their secret ingredient, which I think gives them a lightness. Really, they had great texture and flavor. I have two of them unbaked in the freezer, and I think I’ll do like Mardi and bake them off to go with chili before the weather warms up.
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: 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!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Free-Style Mushroom, Herb and Ricotta Tart
December 26, 2023 at 4:02 pm | Posted in BWD, groups, other savory, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, savory, tarts
Having “free-style” in the name of this Free-Style Mushroom, Herb and Ricotta Tart, to me, implies a certain ease… something that can just be tossed together on a whim. Turns out “free-style” is more about the amorphous shape of the crust and the casual-looking fashion with which it is topped than it is about throwing together a tart from this or that in like five minutes. The base of this tart, which is called a Raggedy-Edged Almond-Herb Crust is actually a large format cracker that can be whatever shape it rolls out to be. Bake the crust and you can turn off the oven. After it cools, it’s topped with made in advance components: an herby ricotta spread, sautéed mushrooms with more herbs and a poof of seasoned micro greens. The crust has the delicate, buttery crumb of a shortbread, and, although it cut nicely for me with a sharp knife, I had to turn my “slice” into smaller pieces to eat as snacky finger food…it didn’t seem like a fork was right utensil for the job. All of these things were delicious and flavorful, so I enjoyed this, although I’d also be totally happy to free-style the ricotta and mushrooms on just a thick slice of toasted sourdough.
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!
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