Bungalow Barbara

I'm knitting on Ravelry

2011-05-30T21:55:00.000-05:00

I've gone into a knitting phase again. And I've joined Ravelry (it's THE Website for knitters!) I'm BungalowBarbara over there, too.

Right now I'm working on a knit-along for a ruffled Moebius scarf called "Lattuga." Mine is blue and has beads, but it is not yet finished. Here's what it looks like:

I think it's going to be really pretty! You can learn more about the pattern at the designer's blog, or at the Ravelry page for this design.

All is well here. Hope to have some garden and cat pictures to post soon.

Cat Gallery

2010-11-14T18:52:00.001-06:00

It's time for a update on the kittens.

But first, our oldest cat Bella. She hasn't even had her picture on the blog yet! It's way past time.

She's very large, very fluffy, and very sweet.

You can see why our neighbor Dave calls her "Camouflage Kitty."

OK, kittens, now it's your turn.

When you last saw them, they were just a few months old.

Now they're about 9 months old. Amazing how fast kitties grow!

Amelia is lively and up for anything (especially trouble).

Shadow is more of a mellow fellow.

He blends in well with the autumn leaves.

And here's our "middle cat" Annie.

Her nose was seriously out of joint when the kittens arrived. She wouldn't even stay in the house with them.

But lately they've been getting along better.

Something smells interesting down that storm drain...

Still, ya gotta keep an eye out for those little beasties...

They just love to get into a tussle.

HCB: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

2010-11-09T20:17:00.001-06:00

Though I'm no longer a member of the Heavenly Cake Bakers group, I still bake along from time to time. This week's choice was the Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake, from pages 58-60 of "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

It looks like a plain Bundt cake on the outside.....

...but inside you find a layer of almond cream (it's that darker, moister-looking area at the top) with tender thin slices of pear.

The cake is Rose's favorite yellow sour-cream butter cake, almost exactly as on her blog (see this link), except it uses 1 whole egg and 2 egg yolks instead of 4 egg yolks. I didn't have quite enough sour cream (Jim used it in his traditional Sunday waffle), so I made up the remainder with a mixture of yogurt and heavy cream. It seemed to work just fine.

All was going well until I turned on the oven light at 40 minutes into baking to see how it was doing. Without realizing it, when I turned off the light, I also turned off the oven! At 60 minutes it should have been done, but wasn't even close. That's when I realized my mistake. By that time the oven had cooled down to about 275 degrees. Oh rats! I turned the oven back on to 350 F and gave it another 10 minutes, and it was done. The top was too dark, but heck, that ends up on the bottom anyway when you serve the cake. And the cake part was just a touch overbaked and dry -- but by the next day, the moisture from the pears had taken care of that problem as well. You gotta love a cake that forgives your mistakes!

"This is a 'tea cake,'" said Jim. I agree -- it's the sort of simple and delicious cake that cries out to be part of your "afternoon tea." If you don't have afternoon tea (we usually don't), then it's wonderful any time at all.

TWD: Tarte Fine

2010-09-28T23:39:00.001-05:00

Hello, blog! I'm back with a Tarte Fine for Tuesdays with Dorie. Thanks to Leslie of Lethally Delicious for choosing this recipe. You can find it on page 190 of "Baking: From My Home to Yours," by Dorie Greenspan.

Start with a frozen, left-over 8-inch square of Quickest Puff Pastry (from Nick Malgieri -- scroll to bottom of this link to find it).

Thaw it, sprinkle with a little sugar (I used a mix of white and brown sugar, plus a touch of cinnamon & allspice). Arrange thinly sliced apples (homegrown!) over the top, brush with a little melted butter, sprinkle with sugar again. Bake at 400 until nice and brown. Brush with a bit of apple juice concentrate (no apricot jam or apple jelly in the house). Sprinkle with a touch more sugar. Let cool briefly.

Cut into 4 pieces. Serve a piece each to husband and self. Both say "Yum!" Look at each other -- and serve up a second piece each. Well, that went away fast!

I'm back -- with kittens!

2010-05-05T18:16:00.000-05:00

Hello blogging world! I haven't been keeping up with this blog for a couple of months. Everything is fine here - I just lost interest in blogging for a while. But I have been baking, and even taking pictures once in a while, so you'll see some catch-up posts coming soon.

Right now I want to introduce you to the two newest members of our household -- our two new kittens!

They are brother and sister. The calico girl is Amelia...

...and the boy is Shadow. He is a most unusual color, like an orange tabby dusted all over with gray.

They love to play together...

and sleep together.

HCB: Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake

2010-03-01T23:30:00.003-06:00

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group was the Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

Lovely! This one is a keeper. Light for a bundt-style cake, fluffy, with lots of lemon and the crunch of poppy seeds. I thought it was a bit crumbly and could have used more syrup, but I might have overbaked mine just a little bit. Notes for next time -- watch it like a hawk towards the end of baking. Oh, and maybe use a bit less sugar in the syrup. But those are just minor tweaks. This is a great cake!

The recipe (sorry, we don't post the recipes for this group) makes enough for a 10-cup Bundt pan. I made half the recipe, which was just right for a 4.5 cup Kugelhopf pan plus two cupcakes.

I used a mixture of half bleached cake flour and half bleached all-purpose flour, and frozen lemon peel from my stash. The batter came out very thick, smooth, and fluffy, almost like frosting -- which I've found to be typical for Rose's recipes. It rose beautifully and for a few moments I thought it might overflow the pan. Fortunately it didn't, and settled a bit after cooling.

I'm always nervous about unmolding cakes, but this one came out of the Kugelhopf pan looking great. The cupcakes, though, stuck to the wrappers something fierce. Next time I'll have to grease the wrappers.

The cake is finished with a lemon syrup while it's still hot. Once again I went to my stash, this time the one of frozen lemon juice cubes. But when I tasted the syrup, I began to wonder if perhaps I'd put some lime juice cubes in with the lemon juice. OK -- I stirred in a bit of my frozen lemon zest and let it steep. Ah, now it had a nice lemon-lime flavor, sort of like 7-Up or Sprite, only a zillion times better.

Part of my freezer stash - lemon zest and lemon juice cubes

Now, Rose says this cake is best made a day ahead. I'm sure she's right, but I have to tell you that the cupcakes were absolutely fabulous still hot, only 10 minutes out of the oven and oozing with warm syrup. Very crumbly, but fabulous. They made me think about making this in small ramekins and serving them syruped and hot, still in the ramekins. I'm sure it would be great.

messy but delicious, still hot

This recipe appears to be based on the "Sour Cream Butter Cake" recipe from Rose's earlier book "The Cake Bible," which was also published on her blog as "Rose's Favorite Yellow Layer Cake." The new HCB recipe is based on the original recipe times 1.25. Lemon zest and poppy seeds are added for flavor, but there are some other changes as well. The new recipe uses a mixture of eggs and egg yolk instead of all yolks, and the total amount of egg is a bit more. It has a bit less butter and more baking powder.

INGREDIENTS	TCB * 1.25	RHC
total eggs	93 grams	118 grams
whole eggs	0	100 grams
egg yolks	93 grams	18 grams
sour cream	200 grams	200 grams
pure vanilla extract	1.875 teaspoon	1.75 teaspoon
sifted cake flour	250 grams	250 grams
sugar	250 grams	250 grams
baking powder	0.625 teaspoon	1.5 teaspoon
baking soda	0.625 teaspoon	0.5 teaspoon
salt	0.3125 teaspoon	0.5 teaspoon
unsalted butter (must be softened)	213 grams	200 grams

I miss the Understanding sections from The Cake Bible where Rose explains these recipe tweaks. My best guess about them is this: butter increases tenderness and makes the cake heavier. Egg yolks are more tenderizing than whites. So the "less butter" and "more egg white" changes both tend to decrease tenderness and strengthen the cake structure. To offset this, the baking powder has to be increased so the cake stays level.

TWD: Honey-Wheat Cookies

2010-02-25T17:15:00.001-06:00

This week's recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie was Honey-Wheat Cookies, chosen by Michelle of Flourchild. You can find the recipe on her blog or on page 81 of Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours."

These remind me that the word "cookie" comes from a Dutch word for "little cakes." They are soft, puffy, and very cake-like when they come out of oven. After a day or two, they are still soft but more chewy, and the honey flavor comes to the fore. At first bite they are home-style, unassuming cookies -- very nice, but nothing to scream and moan about. Watch out, though, because they sneak up on you. Next thing you know you are coming back for another one...and then another...

Here are my unbaked cookies, about to be frozen and then stored in freezer bags. It's a great way to have cookies on hand when you want them! You can bake them right out of the freezer.

I didn't make any changes to this recipe at all -- unusual for me. Since we usually have only raw wheat germ (stored in the refrigerator so it doesn't get rancid), I toasted the wheat germ lightly in a pan before using it. That was a good idea and next time I might toast it even a bit more. Also I might reduce the sugar slightly and experiment with different flavors of honey.

I do like cookies with more "crunch," though, which led to the following idea for an adaptation -- honey-almond. Substitute the wheat germ in the dough with toasted almond meal or finely ground almonds. Roll the cookies in chopped toasted almonds, or for a deluxe version, chopped honey-glazed Marcona almonds. Maybe flavor with a combination of orange and lemon zest, or some Fiori di Sicilia flavoring. What do you think?

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Double Chocolate Valentine mini cakes

2010-02-18T22:57:00.001-06:00

Here's the latest cake for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group. It's the Double Chocolate Valentine cake, as published in Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." In fact, it's the cake on the back cover of the book. It made a previous appearance as the Double Chocolate Sweetheart cake in "Rose's Celebrations," where it was on the front cover. And it's appeared in a video that is posted on Rose's site.

This recipe is based on the All-American Chocolate Torte from Rose's "The Cake Bible." After baking, the cake is then soaked in chocolate ganache. Ooh, yes! All you have to do is say "ganache" and I start salivating. Funny, a few years ago I didn't even know what it was. (Just a fancy French word for melted chocolate mixed with heavy cream. It's the stuff inside of chocolate truffles. 'Nuff said.)

I decide to make a half recipe of both the cake and ganache. (Portion control.) And to skip the fresh raspberries on top. Growing our own raspberries has spoiled us for out-of-season fruit.

I made mini cakes in my Nordic Ware heart pan. As you can see, I overfilled them a bit. I had just enough batter left over for one cupcake. Next time I should portion out two or three cupcakes first, and then use the rest of the batter for the heart pan. Oh well, live and learn.

Time to poke holes in the cakes. Wait a minute -- where are all the bamboo skewers? Oh, that's right, they're in the "gardening supplies" box (sticks for plant labels, if you're wondering). OK, I'll use the stem of my cooking thermometer instead. That made nice big holes -- next time I won't even look for the skewers.

There's a downside to having the mini cakes extend above the top of the pan -- the ganache ran all over the place when I brushed it on. What's more, I used up almost all of the ganache just for one side of the cakes -- even after scraping off and re-using the part that ended up on the pan. So, I just whipped up another half-recipe of the ganache and used it on the other side. What could be wrong with more ganache?

Since I didn't have the 60-62% bittersweet called for in the ganache, I made a substitution. Here's how to do that. Calculate (ounces of chocolate in recipe) * (percentage of chocolate in recipe) / (percentage of chocolate you're using). For a half-recipe, that was 1.5 ounces * 60% / 70 % = about 1.3 ounces. Then you make up the remaining 0.2 ounce with sugar. (Dissolve the sugar in the cream.) It worked fine.

Getting the cakes out of the pan was tricky. The ganache made them stick. I think I need a blow dryer (not that either of us would ever use it on our hair.) Several of them fell apart. Some could be patched back together -- ganache also makes a good cake glue -- but some were beyond repair. Oh well, consider it the cook's bonus. And the cook's husband's bonus too.

Despite the difficulties, these were wonderful. The cake was very light, fluffy, and tender. It might have been a little dry without the ganache -- but with it, ooh la la! Chocolate heaven!

Waiting for them to chill and set was the worst part. Not all of them made it to that stage. By the way, once chilled, a quick 10 seconds in the microwave warms up the cakes and does wonders for the flavor.

I'm not sure this is the ideal recipe to use for mini-cakes that have to be unmolded. The cake recipe is so tender that it tends to fall apart easily. Probably better to use paper cupcake liners and leave the cakes in them, like Vicki did. But aren't the little hearts just adorable?

TWD: Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

2010-02-16T16:24:00.003-06:00

For the February 3rd "Tuesdays with Dorie," the recipe was "Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia," chosen by Tanya of Chocolatechic.

Fudgey, gooey brownies -- who can resist? After reading the comments on the Problems and Questions, I decided to bake these in a 9x13 pan rather than a 9x9 pan. I'm glad I did. Even in the larger pan, they took about 30 minutes to bake, and were quite fudgey.

Also thanks to Nancy who reminded us all about the "divot test" from King Arthur Flour's Web site. Definitely the best way to test brownies for done-ness!

I lined my pan with a "sling" of non-stick aluminum foil, which made it a snap to take them out.

The picture above is of the very last ones. Many of them went into a bake sale at work. The ones left at home disappeared fast!

It's interesting to compare this recipe to Nick Malgieri's "Supernatural Brownies," which are also favorites of mine. Both recipes use the same amount of eggs, flour, butter, and sugar, although Dorie uses all white sugar and Nick uses a mixture of white and brown (nice idea). The amounts of salt and vanilla are slightly different. For chocolate, Dorie uses 4 oz. unsweetened and 2 oz. bittersweet, while Nick uses 8 oz. bittersweet. How to compare? Well, let's assume we're using 60% bittersweet -- then Dorie's chocolate is pretty much equivalent to 5.2 oz. unsweetened plus 0.8 oz. sugar, while Nick's is 4.8 oz. unsweetened plus 3.2 oz. sugar. On the other hand, if we went for a 70% bittersweet chocolate, Dorie's is 5.4 oz. unsweetened plus 0.6 oz. sugar, and Nick's is 5.6 oz. unsweetened plus 2.4 oz. sugar. Either way, Nick's recipe is sweeter. The chocolate amounts are close -- the exact comparison would depend on the chocolate you use.

So, what did we think of Dorie's brownies? They were not too sweet, quite chocolate-y and almost too gooey. My notes for next time say to decrease the butter by 2-4 tablespoons and increase the flour by 2 tablespoons. I may try using a bit of brown sugar. I'm not sure the whole business of whipping up the eggs and sugar really makes a difference. It would be interesting to make two half-batches and compare. Definitely, for a whole batch, bake in the larger 9x13 pan!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: True Orange Genoise (tangelo version)

2010-02-15T13:00:00.001-06:00

Ta-da! Here's a True Tangelo Genoise, the Heavenly Cake Bakers' assignment for February 8, 2010. Well, we were supposed to make a True Orange Genoise with Seville oranges, but I couldn't find any. So I went with some lovely organic Minneola tangelos instead.

This is a half-size recipe (6 inches). Since I'm terrible at decorating cakes to look smooth and regular, I was happy that this one called for random drizzles. Random I can do. Looks good, doesn't it?

Here's a glimpse of the inside (sorry about the smears of chocolate on the cake). Two layers of French sponge cake (genoise) with a thick layer of tangy tangelo curd inside. It was Rose's books that convinced me to try citrus curds, and I've been hooked ever since. You can find the recipe on her blog. I started with 12 tablespoons of tangelo juice and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, and reduced it down to 6 1/2 tablespoons, somewhat like the directions for juice oranges at the bottom of the recipe. I used tangelo zest and the amount of sugar she specifies for juice oranges. And I made a whole recipe, even though my small cake would only use half of it. Leftover curd is never a problem -- it's great on toast, and it freezes well too.

The genoise layers look nice, don't they? Well...that's the part I was able to save. I've only made genoise twice and it's been a failure both times. Sigh. Here's the whole sad story.

I decided to make two half-size (6-inch) genoise so I could use freeze the other layer and use it later. After consulting Rose's information plus Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise," (which has 8 pages of information on making genoise) I carefully weighed out my eggs (yolks and whites separately, since many eggs seem to have puny little yolks these days). I whisked and heated them with the sugar (Shirley says to heat them to 86-90 F, and no hotter than 110 F.). Then I beat them with my hand-held power mixer -- Shirley says the optimum beating temperature is 75-80 F. Mine got cool after a while, so I re-warmed them briefly over the pan of hot water as needed. She says you should not beat too long on high speed or the foam will fall when cooked, so I beat for 2 minutes on high and then 10 minutes on medium as she recommended. The egg foam looked lovely, smooth, thick and glossy. Then I folded in my cake flour / cornstarch mixture. It went in nicely and the eggs did not deflate. Everything was looking great!

Then I took some of the egg mixture and mixed it in with the melted browned butter / vanilla mixture. (Rose says to remove this egg mixture before folding in the flour, but Shirley says to do it after. I guess it must work either way.) I think this is where the problem began -- I didn't mix the butter in completely. So when I folded this butter mixture back into the egg/flour mixture, the whole thing deflated badly, even though I used my very best folding technique that had worked so well with the flour.

Well, onwards...I divided the batter up between the two prepared 6-inch pans. As I smoothed the top, a lot of large bubbles formed and popped. But, the batter did fill the pans about half-way. Into the oven to see what happened...

They certainly did not turn out 2 inches high. More like 1 1/4 inches. But the worst surprise was when I turned them over and took off the parchment liners. At the bottom, there was a heavy, dense layer that almost reminded me of the rind on a cheese.

See it in that picture above? Yuck! I tried a tiny bite of the "rind," and it was tough and awful. So, I just cut it all off. My theory is that the butter came out of emulsion, dropped to the bottom of the cake, and formed a thick gooey layer that then baked hard.

At this point I was left with two somewhat denser genoise layers about 1 inch tall. OK, let's just make the cake with those! I figured I had about 3/4 of the genoise left, so I made up 3/4 of the syrup recipe (sugar, tangelo juice, Grand Marnier) and used it to soak the cake. I layered with the tangelo curd, made up all of the ganache glaze recipe (because extra ganache is never bad, especially when it has Grand Marnier in it too), and went ahead with the recipe. The decorations are home-made candied tangelo peel.

By the way, I didn't have the 60% percent chocolate called for in the ganache, so for 4 ounces of 60-62% chocolate, I substituted 3.5 ounces of 70% plus 0.5 ounces of sugar.

Despite the genoise disaster, this was very tasty. As someone else said, this is a "grown-up" cake, with the bitter/sour notes of the chocolate and orange. And it's very elegant. It was a lot of work, though. All those different components, and then putting them together, and waiting for it to mature...

I'm still determined to master genoise! I think I may try Shirley's recipe -- it is very similar to Rose's except that Shirley adds extra egg yolks. Egg yolks contain natural emulsifiers -- maybe that would help the butter to mix in better. Just you wait, genoise, I'll get you yet!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes

2010-02-15T00:26:00.000-06:00

Hello, folks, may I present an Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cake? It was the Heavenly Cake Bakers assignment for February 1, 2010.

Pineapple ring, cherry, caramel, all on top of a tender yellow cake. The cake recipe is actually a variation of Rose's Favorite Yellow Cake recipe, although it uses muscovado sugar, yogurt, and whole eggs.

I had hoped to use fresh pineapple for this cake, but all the cute little Costa Rican pineapples in the co-op looked seriously under-ripe. My husband spent 4 years in Hawaii as a child and would never dream of letting me buy such dismal pineapples! So, we turned to canned. For cherries, I pulled out a few frozen sweet cherries, sprinkled them lightly with sugar, and let them thaw. And since I wasn't sure where to get real muscovado sugar, I went for turbinado instead, ground up in my food processor so it wasn't so coarse.

Making the caramel to put in the pans wasn't hard, but judging when it was done WAS hard. The sugar syrup is so dark already, it's hard to judge when it changes color. Good thing I have a thermometer. The canned pineapple rings obligingly fit just exactly right inside of my new jumbo muffin tins. Since some other folks had said their caramel was very thick and stuck to the pans, I added about a half-tablespoon of pineapple juice to the caramel after it reached 300 degrees, to thin it out. It seemed to work -- no sticking. Just watch out for all the steaming and bubbling!

I didn't bother glazing them with jam, just brushed some of the pineapple caramel sauce on top. Once again, it was hard to judge the done-ness of the caramel, and I think I undercooked it just a bit. It didn't taste very, well, caramel-y. The pineapple juice gave it a nice flavor, though.

These were very tasty, but they were not good keepers. The next day, the caramel sauce sank into the pineapple, and the cake got kind of soggy. They're a bit more work than a single large pineapple upside down cake, but not that much -- they'd be great for a dinner party.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake

2010-02-11T23:51:00.001-06:00

Still catching up -- here's the "Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake" for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group. We normally don't post the recipes for this group, but you can find this one on the National Public Radio Web site. However, the NPR recipe doesn't give the weights for the ingredients (one of my favorite part of Rose's recipes) and it doesn't give the recipe for the frosting. For those, you'll have to consult pages 158-162 of Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

YUM!

This is a very light angel food cake made with Wondra flour (or you can use cake flour) and finely grated unsweetened chocolate. Then you slather it with whipped cream mixed with grated bittersweet chocolate. Then you are supposed to "pelt" it with mini chocolate chips or little chocolate morsels. As I didn't have any of those, I topped it with shaved bittersweet chocolate instead.

The whipped cream frosting is supposed to have almonds in it, but I left those out. I also stabilized it using 1/2 teaspoon of gelatin per cup of cream. And I must have really slathered it on, because I ending up needing to make 1 1/2 times the recipe.

I'm not a big fan of angel food cakes. Too sweet, too bland. But I loved this one. The chocolate adds flavor and cuts the sweetness. Most of the other folks who tasted it agreed. (Jim said it was just so-so -- but then he is even less of an angel food cake fan than I am.)

This isn't the first time I have baked this cake. I made it back in June of 2009, even before Rose's book came out. I didn't know that this particular cake would be in the book, but Rose had reveals there would be some sort of angel cake using Wondra flour. So I decided to use Wondra flour in her "Freckled Angel" cake from her book "Rose's Celebrations." Lo and behold -- this cake got a new frosting and a new name in the new book!

I did have the same problem both times I made this cake -- the top never rose really high, and it never cracked. Also, the cake pulled away from the sides of the pan a lot. At least it did not fall out of the pan when I turned it upside down to cool!

The other problem was that both times, after I removed the cake from the pan, it was really, really moist. In fact, the second cake was positively WET in the area that had been at the bottom of the pan while baking. I had to let it sit out for hours so the moisture could evaporate. The cake crumb itself was not "mushy" or underdone, though. It seemed "set" and springy. It was more as if excess water had oozed out of the cake as the crumb set, and been trapped. Very strange. But once the cake had dried out on the counter, it was fine.

Here are my pictures of that first baking:

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Torta de las Tres Leches

2010-02-11T23:39:00.001-06:00

Yet another catch-up post, this one for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group. The assignment for January 18, 2010 was the "Torta de las Tres Leches" from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

I'm sorry folks, there are no pictures for this post. My cake wasn't as nicely decorated as some of the others, but I wish I'd gotten a close-up -- the cake crumb was lovely and light and spongy, just like it was supposed to be. Sponge cake success! Yes!

Rose's version starts with sponge cake made with whole eggs. I'm getting pretty good at whipping up whole eggs with sugar, even with my hand-held mixer. It took longer (about 10 minutes) but eventually they reached the right stage -- very pale, very thick, looking much like soft whipped cream or softly beaten egg whites. I managed to fold in the flour without deflating them too much.

I made a half-recipe in a 6-inch round springform pan that is about 2 3/4 inches tall. There was a lot of batter, so I put a tall collar of parchment paper around the pan. As it turned out, I didn't need that -- the cake rose just to the top of the pan, but not over. It was slightly domed in the center, as Rose said it was supposed to be.

After cooling and removing the crust, the cake is then soaked with the "three milks" mixture. For this recipe, we had to simmer a mixture of skim milk and whole milk until it was reduced to half its volume. That was a pain. It almost boiled over once, but I caught it in time. Fiddling with the heat, stirring (not all the time, I just couldn't stand doing that) -- I don't think I'll bother with that again. I ended up with a lot of "skin" on top of the milk, and it had to be strained before using. Next time? Canned evaporated milk all the way, baby!

OK, in go sweetened condensed milk and heavy cream. I added Mexican vanilla extract, too, because some folks had said theirs seemed a bit bland without it. It was a good idea -- I loved the flavor.

After soaking the cake for a day in the fridge, I mixed up some caramel whipped cream to spoon over each slice. (For the whipped cream, I melted a couple of home-made honey caramels in some heavy cream, chilled it, then whipped it .) Yum! Or at least I thought so. I love, love, love Indian-style "milk sweets" (kheer, gulab jamun) so I loved this dessert as well. Jim said it was good, but he didn't love it. Ah well, difference is the spice of life.

TWD: Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

2010-02-06T16:20:00.002-06:00

My last catch-up post with Tuesdays with Dorie -- I've been baking along more or less on time, but haven't gotten around to posting until now. For the week of February 2, 2009, Kristin of I'm Right About Everything chose the "Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes" from pages 188-189 of Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours."

Aren't they cute? I made 12 of them, but between Jim & myself, we scarfed up 4 of them before I could even get around to putting on the glaze. Yes, they were good.

The batter is made with milk chocolate -- not my favorite of chocolates, so I tried to go for the darker varieties. I used 3.5 oz of Green & Black's (34% cocoa mass), 3.0 oz of Scharffen Berger (41%), and for the last 0.5 oz I threw in some semisweet Callebaut (53%). That ends up being about 38% cocoa mass.

How could I resist using my new Bundt Cupcake pan? It has 12 cups and each one holds about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of liquid for a total capacity of about 3 to 4 cups. The batter filled the pan almost to the top, and rose a bit above the pan when done -- but that was OK.

I need to work on my streusel-filling techniques, though. I put way too much batter in before putting in the cocoa-sugar-walnut streusel, and after that, spreading the rest of the batter on top of the streusel was hard. Plus, there were a lot of "gaps" on the outside of the mini-cakes. Next time I use this pan, I'll put a little bit of batter in the pan and spread it around with a small spatula or the back of a spoon, squishing it up against the sides to eliminate any gaps. Then I'll finish filling the pan.

Still, a good thick drizzle of glaze covered the flaws well. Since many folks had reported having trouble with the glaze recipe as given, I went with a plain ganache glaze instead -- 2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate and 2 ounces of cream.

While we both agreed we wouldn't mind a bit more chocolate flavor in the cakes, they were still delightful. Making 12 tiny cakes might sound like good portion control -- but we found we couldn't eat just one! Two apiece was just right.

TWD: Cocoa-Nana Bread

2010-02-06T15:20:00.001-06:00

OK, more catch-up for Tuesdays with Dorie. Our recipe for January 26, 2010 was "Cocoa-Nana Bread," chosen by Steph of Obsessed with Baking.

As a number of folks pointed out in the "P&Q" (Problems and Questions) for this recipe, this is really a loaf cake, made with cocoa powder and mashed bananas. Ah, a chance to use up some of the really-ripe bananas stored in my freezer! (And by the way, I like chocolate and bananas together. Think of banana splits!)

This is one of the recipes where I wish Dorie's publisher had agreed to include weights of ingredients in her book. For fluffy ingredients, like flour or cocoa powder, one cup can end up weighing quite differently depending on how you measure it -- sifted, gently spooned, or scoop-and-sweep. Dorie says in the back of her book that she measures cocoa by scoop-and-sweep -- that gave me 3.5 ounces of cocoa. (I used half Dutch-processed and half natural). I also replaced 1/3 of the flour with white whole wheat flour. I reduced the white sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup, because many (not all) of Dorie's recipes are just a bit too sweet for my taste. And my two bananas gave me just a bit more than 1 cup of banana puree.

The cocoa flavor comes out stronger than the banana in this loaf cake. It seems just a bit on the dry side, despite all the bananas. Did I use too much cocoa? or overbake?

I think it's good, but my husband thinks it's fabulous! In fact he said "You have to slice and freeze some of this, or I will make a pig of myself." We have a winner, folks!

TWD: Tarte Tatin for TWD's 2nd anniversary

2010-01-31T22:19:00.000-06:00

More Tuesdays with Dorie catch-up. For the second anniversary of this wonderful blogging group, our founder Laurie let us vote for the recipe -- and then we got to bake one of the two top recipes. I went for the Tarte Tatin -- a French "upside-down tart" made with puff pastry (or other pastry) and apples. You can find the recipe here.

This isn't supposed to keep well, so making a smaller recipe sounded like a good idea. I found an oven-proof saucepan about 7 inches wide, cut up 5 apples (half the recipe would be 4 apples, but mine were small plus I figured I could just snack on any left-overs.) Started caramelizing the sugar/butter/apple mix -- got bored, walked away just a little too long -- returned to burnt caramel. Darn! I know better than that! Caramelizing always seems to take forever and then it goes really really quickly at the end.

Sigh. I tossed most of it -- there were a few unburnt apple pieces on top that could be saved. Putting some water in the pan and boiling it helped to loosen up the blackened remains of the caramel. OK, start over with a clean pan and more sugar, butter, apples -- fortunately I had plenty. This time I watched like a hawk and all was well.

I still had two 8-inch squares of left-over puff pastry in the deep freeze, from the Parisian Apple Tartlets back in June. I trimmed one to roughly round, put it on top and popped the whole thing in the oven. Easy peasy.

Turning it over onto the serving plate was messy. I had set the pan on a silicone mat to catch drips, and I also flipped the tart over the mat. Very good idea, as there was caramel spillage. Hey, apparently even the pros have this problem -- check out the picture in that article I linked to. See? I see caramel dripping down!

The apples did not stick to the pan and the result was delicious! Thanks to Dorie Greenspan, Laurie, and all the TWD gang for such good recipes and good times!

TWD 2-in-1: Pecan Pie and Café Volcano Cookies

2010-01-31T16:16:00.000-06:00

Wow, has it really been more than a month since I last posted? Yikes!

I've been baking, just not posting. So, let's get caught up with my Tuesdays with Dorie baking. Here's what I did in December -- Dorie's Café Volcano Cookies and My Favorite Pecan Pie.

The "Café Volcano Cookies" were chosen for the TWD recipe of December 15, 2009, by MacDuff of Lonely Sidecar. They were a great way to use up some of the egg whites left over from the Sablés of the week before.

These were crunchy little things! I've heard this style of cookie called a "rocher" in French -- which translates as "rock" or "boulder." Well, they weren't that hard, but I can see where the name comes from. And in Italy there's a similar cookie called "Brutti ma Buoni" ("ugly but good") -- also apt.

I added a little cocoa powder, but next time I'd leave that out. I think they'd be better just espresso-flavored. I liked them a lot. Jim didn't like them at all. Oh well.

On to the next recipe -- Dorie's "My Favorite Pecan Pie" was chosen for December 22, 2009, by Beth of Someone's in the Kitchen with Brina. This was a hit with both of us! The addition of espresso powder and chopped chocolate cuts the usual sweetness of pecan pie and makes it really good. I made a half-recipe in a half-size pie pan.

Next time, though, I think I'd cut the espresso and chocolate in half and add a few more pecans. We both thought it would have been better that way, at least for our tastes. But it was still really, really good.

OK, on to catch-up for January! See you soon!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: English Gingerbread Cake

2009-12-28T20:15:00.001-06:00

Hello folks, I'm finally getting around to posting about the Heavenly Cake Bakers' choice for last week -- English Gingerbread Cake.

For this group, we don't post the recipes, but you can find it in "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

The recipe calls for Lyle's Golden Syrup or light corn syrup. Lots of it (1 1/4 cups). I had both in the cupboard, but even after scraping out both containers, I wasn't quite up to the full measure. So I added about 3 tablespoons of molasses, and used white sugar instead of brown sugar. I also had a feeling that this cake would not be gingery enough for me (only 1 teaspoon of ground ginger), so I added about 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger and 1.5 ounces (1/3 cup) minced candied ginger.

The cake batter seemed very bubbly when I put it into the pan. It rose a lot, then fell in the middle. I think it was overleavened. I'm quite sure I measured the leavening correctly -- and I didn't mix them up either -- so I wonder if perhaps the culprit was the extra molasses. It might have added extra acidity and caused more of a reaction with the baking soda. Just a thought.

Because of the fallen center, I decided to turn the cake upside down for serving. Here it is, brushed with the lemon syrup.

And the verdict? Wonderful texture, except in the very center -- light yet moist. Great flavor, but even with the extra ginger, it wasn't quite gingery enough. The lemon syrup added a wonderful note.

Next time? Oh yes, there will be a next time. I think I will use a few tablespoons of molasses again -- I liked the flavor. But I will reduce the baking soda a bit. And definitely add more ginger -- about 1 1/2 teaspoons dried, 1/2 to 1 teaspoon fresh, and 2 ounces candied. No subtle gingerbread in this house!

This was wonderful just plain. But I've been wanting to try a cream-cheese sauce ever since I read this passage in Robin McKinley's "Sunshine" --

"I'd made my special cream-cheese sauce to go with the triple-ginger gingerbread. I'd long felt that gingerbread, while excellent in itself, was still essentially an excuse to eat the sauce, so I'd always made twice as much per portion as the original recipe called for. Then it turned out that some of our customers were even more crazed than I was, so I started making three times as much, and we served it in little sauceboats. You got purists occasionally that didn't want any sauce, but the slack was taken up somehow."

Doesn't that sound good? Anybody have a good recipe for cream-cheese sauce?

About the book "Sunshine" -- if you like vampire stories with scary, sexy vampires, lots of dark humor and irony, and a heroine who seems to be called to deal with the vampires but really just wants to get on with her everyday life (being a baker) -- then you'll like this book. And if you like to bake, you'll covet her recipes. I keep wondering -- what are Lemon Lust, Butter Bombs, Bitter Chocolate Death, or Hell's Angelfood?

Oh hey, Robin McKinley has a recipe section on her blog -- I'll have to go over and take a look!

Heavenly Cake Baker: Classic Carrot Cake (late)

2009-12-20T15:34:00.000-06:00

Hello, Heavenly Cake Bakers! At last I am getting around to telling you about my experience with making the Classic Carrot Cake from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

Sorry, no pictures. I mislaid my camera for a few days, See, we were having our old (late 1920's) windows rehabbed. Just the inside windows -- the storm windows stayed in place, thank goodness! But it still involved a lot of moving things around, which is how the camera came to be buried under/behind other stuff for a while. (It has since reappeared, but not in time to take pictures of the cake.)

I made the full recipe for the cake and baked it in a 9x13 inch cake pan. That worked well. The cake domed slightly in the middle, so I was glad I did not reduce the leavening.

This recipe is exactly what it says, "classic." Not too heavy, not too light, rich but not oily, very well-balanced in flavor and texture. It met with universal approval. The only thing I'd change next time is to remember to reduce the cinnamon when using the very, very spicy Vietnamese cinnamon. I like spicy cinnamon, but this was just a bit too much.

And ah, the Dreamy, Creamy White Chocolate (and cream cheese) Frosting! I'd made the original white chocolate and cream cheese frosting from "The Cake Bible" once before, and felt it was just too "white-chocolate" tasting. As I've said before and no doubt will say again, I don't like the taste of white chocolate. So, this time I decided to do a sort of "half-and-half" version. Rose does give a "no white chocolate" variation at the bottom of the recipe (p. 124). I combined the recipes -- for the full amount of cream cheese, butter, and sour cream, I used 2.0 ounces of confectioners' sugar, 1/8 teaspoon of vanilla, and 4.5 ounces of Green and Black white chocolate.

The recipe in the Cake Bible calls for mixing the frosting in a bowl -- I love the new Heavenly Cakes method of mixing in a food processor! And the result really is "Dreamy and Creamy" as Rose calls it -- even with only half the white chocolate. The word that kept coming to my mind was "suave." We're talking suave like Cary Grant in an old movie, people! Wow!

By the way, whatever happened to suave leading men? Nowadays it's only villains who are suave (in a creepy or deceptive sort of way). Well, maybe James Bond is still suave -- I haven't seen any of the recent movies so I don't know for sure. I miss it. Let's bring back suave!

Back to the cake -- this version kept the white chocolate taste enough in the background that I liked it. And let's face it, there is nothing like cocoa butter for that fabulous mouth feel -- the way it melts just at body temperature -- o0h...

Some of this went to work, some got eaten at home, and the window rehabbing guy also got some. (I think he enjoyed this job.)

If you live in the Madison, Wisconsin, area and have old windows that you want to repair rather than replace, I highly recommend you look up Larry of Sashman Service in the business pages. Tell him Barbara and Jim in Mazomanie sent you. He'll do a great job and he's a nice guy, too. No, he's not super cheap, but nobody who does a really good job is super cheap. It's still a lot less expensive than having new inner windows put in -- and much more authentic, too.

And if you're looking for a really, really good classic carrot cake, you need look no farther than this recipe. Take a look at this book, folks, you won't regret it!

TWD Follow-Up: Sablé Science Experiments

2009-12-09T23:01:00.000-06:00

This week's TWD recipe inspired me to try some variations.

Since I studied science in college, and have a number of scientists and engineers in my ancestry, I decided to do some science experiments with these sablés. What would happen if I varied just one ingredient? Such as the type of flour, or sugar, or egg?

First experiment: type of flour. What happens if you use flour with a different protein content? I made one half-batch with unbleached all-purpose flour and one with unbleached pastry flour, measuring the flour by weight. Both were lemon-flavored and shaped into logs.

The ones with the yellow dot on top were the pastry flour ones. (The dot was made with egg, water and food coloring beaten together).

Results: unfortunately I underbaked the all-purpose flour batch a bit. This made comparing the two more difficult. Drat. Next time, I must remember to bake some of each batch at once. Because of the underbaking, the all-purpose flour ones were a bit doughy in the center. But by tasting just around the edges, I could make a pretty good comparison. The pastry flour ones were just a tiny bit more tender, the all-purpose flour ones were just a tad more chewy. But the difference was very slight and both were good. I also noticed that the pastry flour ones spread a bit more. This might be because lower-protein flour absorbs a bit less water, making the dough slightly more moist.

Second experiment: type of egg. I made two half-batches, one using an egg yolk (19 grams), one using one-half a whole egg (25 grams). Both were lime-flavored and used my standard "pastry and tender cookie" mixture of half all-purpose flour and half pastry flour. (I used the zest of one small lime for each half-batch.)

Results: The ones with the green dot were the whole-egg batch. There was a definite visual difference here -- the whole-egg ones were a stickier dough, spread more, and had a more open texture. The little rectangles were actually the same size and shape before baking. Part of this difference might have been because of the extra 6 grams of liquid egg; some was probably due to the difference in fat and emulsifier content. (Egg yolks have more fat and more natural emulsifiers.) Taste tests showed the whole-egg cookies were more crisp and light, while the egg-yolk ones were more smooth, rich and suave, but still "sandy". The taste difference was small but the texture difference was quite noticeable.

Third experiment: type of sugar. I made one half-batch with the mixture of granulated sugar and confectioners' sugar that Dorie recommends, and another using an equal weight of all superfine sugar. These were unflavored. Both batches were made with blended all-purpose/pastry flour, and with 20 grams of whole egg.

Results: Well, I forgot to label the rolls! I guess I was running out of energy at that point. So I don't know if the green cookies or the red cookies have the original sugar mixture. Sigh. Reducing the whole egg to 20 grams did solve the problem of the really sticky dough, but both batches still spread more and had a more crisp, open texture than the egg yolk ones. But the good news was, I couldn't tell any difference between the red and green ones. The textures were the same.

Overall Conclusions:

1) Unbleached all-purpose flour vs. unbleached pastry-flour -- the difference is barely noticeable.

2) Egg yolks vs. whole eggs -- the difference is noticeable. Just egg yolks give a cookie that spreads less with a more firm, even, but still "sandy" texture. The egg whites in the whole egg make for a crisper, more open-textured dough that spreads more. These things are always a matter of taste, and I liked them both. I have a feeling the egg yolk ones are more authentic, but personally I liked the crisp texture of the whole-egg ones. Just be sure to use the same amount of egg by weight or volume - about 38-40 grams for a whole recipe.

3) I couldn't tell the difference between the mixed-sugar batch and the superfine sugar batch. So, take your pick. It's easy to make your own superfine sugar by grinding regular sugar in a food processor. It would be interesting to compare a batch with all granulated sugar and all confectioners' sugar -- I'm sure that would make a difference.

And hey, what about comparing different regular butter to cultured butter to high-fat Euro-style butter? These cookies are so simple that they really reveal the differences in ingredients.

Other thoughts -- I would like these a just bit less sweet. I'm going to reduce the total amount of sugar down to about half the weight of the butter -- say, 100-110 grams for a whole batch. That's just a matter of my personal preference. I've made shortbread this way and the sweetness level was just right for my taste.

Also, the lemon and lime flavors were pretty subtle. I might increase the amount of zest next time -- I like my citrus cookies zingy!

TWD: Sablés

2009-12-08T00:51:00.006-06:00

This week's recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie is for the French shortbread-style cookies known as Sablés, chosen by -- me! (For the recipe, scroll down to the bottom of this post.)

When I joined TWD in June of 2008, I wasn't really concerned about when I would get to choose a recipe. I figured I'd just try these blogging and bake-along activities for a while and see if I liked them. And the rest is history...

Thank you to our founder Laurie and all the TWD bakers for such a great time! I hope you enjoyed these cookies and look forward to seeing all your variations. I made three batches -- plain sablés rolled in colored sugar, lemon sablés, and lime sablés shaped as rectangles. (I used whole beaten egg rather than egg yolk to brush the outsides of the sugared ones. I have too many left-over egg whites already!)

Why do some of them have yellow or green dots on top, you may ask? Good question! Come back Tuesday evening for my post on the results of the Sablé Scientific Experiments. (Sorry, it took until Wednesday but the results are up now.)

Meanwhile, here are three hints for shaping cookie dough logs. This first one is from one of Nick Malgieri's cookbooks -- put the dough on wax paper, wrap the paper around and leave a "tail" (see picture), and use something thin and firm to push/pull the roll into shape. (I used a thin plastic cutting mat.) Push your mat (or whatever) into the fold of the wax paper and gently pull the bottom layer of wax paper towards you. Don't be too vigorous or you'll tear the wax paper (parchment is stronger, but more expensive).

Tightening the roll

Second, here's a nice way to make sure your logs don't flatten out when you chill them -- cut open the cardboard tube from the center of a paper towel roll, and use it to hold the wrapped dough until it is firm.

And when you slice the rolls, rotate them a bit after every one or two cuts. It keeps them from flattening too much on one side.

Edited to add: thanks to the folks who noticed that these last two hints are also in Dorie's book, on page 137.

For the rectangular lime sablés, I used Dorie's trick from the Pecan Shortbreads on page 127, and put the dough into two small plastic bags to chill. I ended up with two rectangles, each about 6 inches by 6 1/2 inches. Then I used a ruler and a long knife to cut them into smaller rectangles.

Sablé shaping tools

How do they taste? Well, they've only been out of the oven an hour or so. They're good now, but I know from previous experience that Dorie is right -- they are much better the next day. It's so hard to wait...

Recipe

from "Baking: From My Home to Yours," pages 131-133
by Dorie Greenspan
(Note: weights added by Bungalow Barbara)

Sablés, rich, tender shortbread cookies, are as popular in France as chocolate chip cookies are in America. And for several good reasons: the pure flavor of butter, the cookie's key player; a paradoxical but paradisical texture -- the cookie is both crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth tender; and it has an anytime rightness that makes it as perfect with a tall glass of milk, a bowl of ice cream or a basket of berries as it is on a petits fours tray in France's grandest restaurants. I learned to make sablés in Paris working with some of the city's best pâtissiers, and this master recipe is based on what they taught me -- the Playing Around variations are my American riffs on their standard.

The dough for sablés is shaped into logs and then sprinkled with sugar before it is sliced and baked. During the year, I coat the logs with sparkly white decorating sugar. When the holidays come around, I double the recipe and go mad with color, sprinkling some of the logs with brilliant red sugar, some with green and some with a rainbow mix. Trimmed in color and packed in festive tins, these make terrific Christmas cookies.

If you're new to sablés, take a look at the pointers (below) before you set to work.

2 sticks (1 cup / 8 ounces / 227 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar (3.5 oz. / 100 gm.)
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted (1.0 oz. / 28 gm.)
1/2 teaspoon salt, preferably fine sea salt
2 large egg yolks (7 teaspoons / 35 ml. / 1.3 oz. / 37 gm.), at room temperature, plus 1 large egg yolk, for brushing the logs
2 cups all-purpose flour (9.6 oz. / 272 gm.)
Decorating (coarse) sugar

Makes about 50 cookies

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed until smooth and very creamy. Add the sugars and salt and beat until well blended, about 1 minute. The mixture should be smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in 2 of the egg yolks, again beating until the mixture is homogeneous.

Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and the counter from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. Take a peek -- if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple more times; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. (If most of the flour is incorporated but you've still got some in the bottom of the bowl, use a rubber spatula to work the rest of the flour into the dough.) The dough will not clean the sides of the bowl, nor will it come together in a ball -- and it shouldn't. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you're aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy (rather than smooth) dough. Pinch it, and it will feel a little like Play-Doh.

This is how you want your dough to look. (This is a half-batch.)

Scrape the dough out onto a smooth work surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each piece into a smooth log about 9 inches long: it's easiest to work on a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to help form the log. Wrap the logs well and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours, preferably longer. (The dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.)

GETTING READY TO BAKE: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Remove a log of dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it and place it on a piece of parchment or wax paper. Whisk the remaining egg yolk until it is smooth, and brush some of the yolk all over the sides of the dough -- this is the glue -- then sprinkle the entire surface of the log with decorating sugar.

Trim the ends of the roll if they're ragged, and slice the log into 1/3-inch-thick cookies. (You can make these as thick as 1/2 inch or as thin as -- but no thinner than -- 1/4 inch.) Place the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving an inch of space between them.

Bake one sheet at a time for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the midway point. When properly baked, the cookies will be light brown on the bottom, lightly golden around the edges and pale on top; they may feel tender when you touch the top gently, and that's fine. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest a minute or two before carefully lifting them onto a rack with a wide metal spatula to cool to room temperature.
(Note from Barbara: mine only took about 14-15 minutes to bake. I did slice them fairly thin.)

Repeat with the remaining log of dough, making sure the baking sheets are cool before you bake the second batch.

SERVING: Serve these with anything from lemonade to espresso.

STORING: The cookies will keep in a tin at room temperature for about 5 days. If you do not sprinkle the sablés with sugar, they can be wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 2 months. Because the sugar will melt in the freezer, the decorated cookies are not suitable for freezing.

Playing Around

LEMON SABLÉS: Working in a small bowl, using your fingers, rub the grated zest of 1 to 1 1/2 lemons (depending on your taste) into the granulated sugar until the sugar is moist and very aromatic, then add this and the confectioners' sugar to the beaten butter. (Sablés can also be made with orange or lime zest; vary the amount of zest as you please.)

PECAN SABLÉS: Reduce the amount of flour to 1 1/2 cups, and add 1/2 cup very finely ground pecans to the mixture after you have added the sugars. (In place of pecans, you can use ground almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts.) If you'd like, instead of sprinkling the dough logs with sugar, sprinkle them with very finely chopped pecans or a mixture of pecans and sugar.

SPICE SABLÉS: Whisk 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg into the flour.

PARMESAN SABLÉS: For savory sablés that are ideal with aperitifs, omit both the granulated and confectioners' sugar and add 3/4 cup (2 1/4 ounces) very finely grated Parmesan to the beaten butter. These are fine plain, but the logs can also be brushed with beaten egg yolk and sprinkled with finely chopped almonds. If you love salt, press a few grains of fleur de sel gently into the top of each sablé before slipping the baking sheet into the oven.

Tips for Shortbreads and Sablés, from p. 124 of "Baking: From My Home to Yours"

What you call the fabulously buttery, slightly gritty, tender, sandy-textured cookies that are so right with tea or coffee may depend on where you live. In France, the cookies are known as sablés, galettes or palets; in Scotland, they're shortbread; and here, at home, they are shortbread, sand tarts or simply butter cookies.

At their most elemental and traditional, shortbreads and their kin are made of butter, sugar -- either granulated or confectioners', or a combination of the two -- and flour. And, although some recipes have an egg or two, or maybe just yolks, it's not the eggs that define the cookies, it's the other ingredients and, most important, how you handle them.

Here's all you need to know to get perfectly crumbly shortbread or sablés every time.

Use fresh butter that is soft, but not at all greasy -- if your butter is sitting in an oily puddle, it's gone too soft and your sablés won't have their characteristic sandiness.
Don't beat the butter (or the butter, sugar and eggs) so enthusiastically that the mixture is light and fluffy. You don't want to beat air into this dough, because it would cause the cookies to puff as they bake in the oven and sink as they cool on the counter.
Be soft and gentle when you blend in the flour. This is the make-or-break step in the process. With the word "sandy" singing in your head, add the flour all at once and mix it only until it disappears into the dough. To guard against overmixing, you can mix in the last of the flour by hand.
Shape the dough as the recipe directs and then make sure to give it a good, long chill; it will improve the flavor of the cookies and help them keep their shape under the oven's heat. Try to refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, but know that longer is better.
Cool the cookies completely before you serve them. As seductive as the smell of warm butter, sugar and flour is, the cookies taste better when they reach room temperature.

You can also find the recipe at this link on the NPR web site (scroll down a bit). And for tips on cookie-baking in general, see this link. Edited to add: thanks for the folks who spotted the recipe at this link as well -- and see the article, too!

TWD: Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake

2009-11-27T16:33:00.001-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

One of the choices for November's "Tuesdays with Dorie" was the Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake, chosen for November 3 by Katya of Second Dinner. It's a fancy cake, with layers of cake made with chestnut spread, moistened with a brandy syrup, filled with caramel-milk chocolate ganache and chopped chestnuts, frosted with more ganache. And as if that's not enough, then you glaze it with a darker ganache and top it with gilded chestnuts. Yikes! You can find the recipe on Katya's blog or on Epicurious.

This is a half-recipe, made in a 6-inch square pan. Looks fabulous, doesn't it? I really liked how it tasted, too. It was a great Thanksgiving dessert.

I'm going to blather on at great length about this cake, so here's a quick summary:

1) This was the first time I cooked with chestnuts -- or ate them. I think they're kind of bland and boring now that I've tried them. But it was worth a try! (Oh, and I didn't gild them.)

2) Despite my opinion of chestnuts, I loved the cake!

3) Instead of Dorie's glaze, I used the Chocolate Lacquer Glaze from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." Shiny!

One reason I wanted to make this cake was the sheer challenge of the recipe. Another was that it gave me an excuse to try chestnuts. I've never had them. After tasting both canned chestnuts and fresh, home-roasted chestnuts, I'm sorry to say that my opinion is "meh." They're not like other nuts -- more starchy, softer, less "nutty," with a mild, earthy taste that I don't dislike, but don't go crazy for either.

And as my husband pointed out, "They look weird. Like little brains." Oh, thanks for that image, love!

On one of my shopping trips to "the big city" (Madison, WI), I looked around for chestnuts. No fresh chestnuts at that time (they've arrived now, though). No sweetened chestnut spread (and I visited quite a few stores). I did find canned chestnuts at Whole Foods and sprang for a 10-ounce jar.

Having tasted them and found them bland, I decided to see if I could dress them up with a caramel glaze.

It looked like it was going to work, but a problem soon developed. Despite draining and drying the canned chestnuts, they still were so moist that the caramel wouldn't stick. And after a overnight stay in the refrigerator, the hard caramel glaze had turned into runny (but delicious) caramel syrup.

Since I couldn't find the chestnut spread, I made my own. Note to self: if I do this again, do NOT put the chestnuts into caramel syrup first. It made for a sticky mess that refused to turn into a paste, even after trips through my mini-food processor and blender. Eventually I had to push it through a sieve. It did taste lovely, though, after the addition of vanilla extract and enough water to make it spread-able. So far this is my favorite way to eat chestnuts. It's lovely on toast made from Jim's home-made bread!

Here's the cake - the chestnut spread gives it a nice color.

Sorry, no pictures of making the caramel-milk chocolate ganache filling. I'm not usually a fan of milk chocolate, but this ganache was luscious.

Here are the chopped chestnuts for the filling. They'd been soaking in the caramel syrup for a couple of weeks. I also mixed some of the caramel syrup with brandy and used that to syrup the cake.

Here's the cake after filling and frosting with the ganache. Then it went into the refrigerator overnight.

At this point I departed from Dorie's recipe and made the super-shiny Chocolate Lacquer Glaze from Rose Levy Beranbaum's new book, "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." It's easy to make, but alas, it thickened up quickly when I poured it on the cold cake. The recipe called for bringing it to 85 degrees before pouring, and I did, but for a really cold cake like this one, I think you need a higher temperature. Still, it looks pretty good. If you want to see what it should look like, check out this post by Rachel of the Heavenly Cake Bakers. Now, that's shiny!

Unfortunately, my whole chestnuts had been sitting in the refrigerator for two weeks, and I'd made the mistake of not storing them in the caramel syrup. They turned into a science experiment. Oops! By that time, fresh chestnuts were coming into the stores -- so I bought a few and roasted them in the microwave. Those are the ones on top of the cake. Sorry, fresh-roasted chestnuts still are "meh" as far as I am concerned. But it was fun to try it out!

After all these lukewarm statements about chestnuts, you'll probably be surprised to hear that I really liked the cake. The flavors were all subtle and blended well together, and it was so elegant! I do wonder how it would turn out with hazelnuts...bet I'd like it even better.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Catalan Salt Pinch Cake

2009-11-25T01:28:00.001-06:00

This week's cake for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was the Catalan Salt Pinch Cake. Despite the name, there's no salt at all in the recipe. But the "pinch" part is because the traditional way to eat it is to pinch off pieces with your hands.

How could I resist? I love eating with my hands -- to the despair of my parents and now my husband.

I did make a few changes to the recipe -- I used Trader Joe's almond meal, so I didn't have to grind up the almonds. I just spread the almond meal out on a baking sheet and toasted it in the oven until it smelled nice and "toasted almond-y" -- about 7 to 10 minutes. I used 6 tablespoons of Turbinado sugar, after grinding it in my food processor and sifting it to remove any larger crystals that were still left. For the rest of the sugar, I used regular white sugar, also ground fine in the food processor. And I added about 1/4 teaspoon of salt, because how could I make a cake called a "salt" cake without salt? (OK, OK, Rose says it's the name of a bakery and a village. But I still wanted the salt.)

This is a simple sponge cake using a mixture of ground almonds and flour, and a mixture of whole eggs and egg whites. You beat the egg whites to soft peak stage first, then add in a whole lot of sugar and beat again. I had a moment of panic at this point, because the egg whites became very liquid and runny. It was plain they were never going to get back to "soft peak" stage, let alone to "firm peak" stage. But wait! Rose doesn't say they should! You just have to beat until they are "very thick." OK, I can do that. They looked like marshmallow fluff sauce. Then stir in the almond meal and remaining sugar.

Now we beat in the whole eggs (and salt, in my case). Easy? Not easy if you only have a hand-held electric mixer...you have to beat the eggs in very slowly, taking 20 to 25 minutes. Even with switching hands, I was getting tired of holding that mixer! The scene from "Like Water for Chocolate" came to mind, the one where she is beating the batter for her sister's wedding cake and weeping into the batter. My love life is in much better shape than hers, but I was feeling a bit like weeping too.

Really, what did people do before electric mixers? Maybe they only made egg foam cakes for very special occasions -- or if they had servants to beat the egg foam for them.

I think I must be developing some "cake intuition" -- after about 25 minutes of beating, I could see a change in the egg foam and it seemed "done." It was light and foamy, and had thickened enough to show the marks of the beaters.

OK, fold in the lemon zest and flour. Pinch out any lumps of flour. (Did I mention I love using my hands?) At this point I remembered (too late) that Shirley Corriher has some useful tips on folding flour into sponge cakes in her new book "Bakewise." One of them is to reserve some of the sugar and mix it with the flour. Oh well, maybe next time.

Into the pan and into the oven. After 20-some minutes, my "cake intuition" told me the cake was not quite done -- and so did the toothpick test. Bake a little longer, ah, now it looked and felt done. It had puffed up nicely and hadn't started to fall -- but it did fall in the center once it came out of the oven.

We had great fun pinching off pieces and eating them! Other than that, though, Jim was just lukewarm about this cake. He is just not a fan of sponge cakes. I liked it better -- I am a fan. I love the open, springy texture and airy lightness of sponge cakes. Still, I thought this one was a touch too sweet and had a faint "eggy" taste that I didn't like. The lemon flavor was barely there, the toasted almond flavor and the raw sugar flavor were present but not strong. I'd like this better with more flavor, at least when eaten by itself. I'm thinking a touch of almond extract, and maybe some orange zest and cinnamon. And I'd also like to test it with a fruit topping. Sponge cakes are so great at soaking up those fruit juices...

But truthfully, I'm not sure I'll make this exact recipe again. If I'm going to spend a long time beating an egg foam, I think I'd prefer an almond génoise -- because I get to add lovely browned butter! Can I still eat it with my hands? Please?

TWD: All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake

2009-11-24T01:27:00.002-06:00

One of our options for "Tuesdays with Dorie" this month was the All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake, chosen by Britin of The Nitty Britty. It's a pumpkin-spice cake with add-ins of chopped apples, cranberries, and pecans. Perfect for the fall season!

Doesn't it look delicious? Well, it was! You can find the recipe here or here or here.

The recipe says you can add a maple-flavored frosting, but that seemed like overkill. A light dusting of powdered sugar was just right.

I saved a couple of slices for my husband -- and took the rest into work in my "new" antique cake carrier. (An early birthday present from aforesaid sweet husband -- purchased on eBay.) Shiny!

We'd all had a rough week at work and this hit the spot!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Woody's Lemon Luxury Cake -- well, almost

2009-11-16T12:50:00.000-06:00

The Heavenly Cake Bakers' project for this week is Woody's Lemon Luxury Cake -- a lemon-flavored yellow butter cake (with white chocolate in the batter), layered with lemon curd, and frosted with a white chocolate-vanilla-lemon buttercream.

Mine is actually a Lemon "Whisper of Luxury" White Cake. Let me explain.

The full recipe calls for 13 egg yolks, 4 whole eggs, 17.8 ounces of butter and 16.6 ounces of white chocolate. Whew! Even with Green & Black's white chocolate on sale at the co-op, the monetary and calorific cost of the cake was scaring me. And then there was the thought of all those left-over egg whites. Do you know how many containers of egg whites are already in my freezer? (Good, then you can tell me, because I've lost track...too many, is all.)

But my taste buds wanted this cake. I love lemon! OK, I'll make a half recipe of the cake and bake it in 6-inch round pans instead of 9-inch round pans. And I'll make 3/4 of the recipe for the frosting, because I'll probably need more than half. (At some point I'd like to make a post explaining the math for this. But maybe not now.)

And, to help with the egg white problem, I'll make it a white cake instead of a yellow cake. Hey, if you turn to page 48 of Rose's earlier book, "The Cake Bible," you'll find the basis for this cake recipe -- the Golden Luxury Cake. It's virtually identical to this recipe - except the Lemon Luxury has very slightly less baking powder, adds a teaspoon of lemon zest, and is baked in deeper pans. And if you flip ahead a page in the Cake Bible, you'll find the White Velvet Whisper Cake. Guess what? It's identical to the Golden Luxury Cake, except it uses 4 1/2 egg whites instead of 6 egg yolks. Aha! A way to use some of those extra egg whites from the lemon curd!

After some time with a pencil and calculator, the first step was the lemon curd -- 3/4 of the recipe. Some of it goes into the frosting and the rest is used for filling and decorating. You might think measuring 3/4 of 7 egg yolks would be hard, but I just used my scale. Weighing is the way to go!

The last time I made lemon curd, it turned out a bit runny, so I cooked this a bit longer. See how it mounds up? Actually, my test for done-ness is to run the spatula across the pan, scraping all the way to the bottom. You should be able to see the bottom of the pan briefly before the curd oozes slowly back, and the marks of the spatula should fade away quite slowly. I've tried going by temperature, but mine never seems to get as hot as it is supposed to.

I love how Rose has you mix the softened butter in with the eggs. Yes, it's a bit more of a pain to wait for it to soften, but the curd just does not lump. You hardly have to strain it - although I did, just in case.

OK, put the curd into the fridge to cool and gather up and measure ingredients for the cake and frosting. Leave in a corner of the kitchen counter overnight. See? I just have to bring out the egg whites and milk from the fridge -- and later, the eggs for the frosting.

All went well with mixing the cake batter until I began to pour the batter into the pans. "Gee, this seems awfully thin," I thought, and then it struck me. The white chocolate! I forgot to add it! There it was, resting on the counter behind me as it cooled. Drat. I should have put it on the same counter. So I scraped the batter back into the mixing bowl, and mixed in the white chocolate. Ah, now it was nice and thick.

No way was I washing out the pans, drying them, cutting new rounds of waxed paper -- nope, I just wiped away the small amount of remaining batter with a damp paper towel and put on some more "pan goop." (Shortening, oil, flour. Thanks to Alton Brown, there is always some of this in my freezer.)

There really didn't seem to be much batter. It only came about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up the sides of the pan. Hmm. I don't understand. I really didn't lose that much batter with the mistake -- I was very thorough about scraping it back out of the pans. Oh well, into the oven.

They rose nicely. But it was interesting how differently the two cakes baked. The one with the red silicone strip baked considerably faster, despite having a little more batter in the pan. It domed more, and the edges got brown. The one with the Wilton fabric strip took 5 minutes longer to bake. It was more even and did not get brown at the edges. And even though I baked it longer, it came out dense and underbaked. (It's the bottom layer in the finished cake.)

Layer 1: Silicone cake strip

Layer 2: Fabric cake strip

My comparison was not quite fair -- I overlapped the Wilton strip on itself, so most of the cake had two layers of cake strip. I don't think this was a good idea -- it gave too much insulation. And of course there is always the possibility that my oven heats differently on one side.

Both cakes shrank and fell a lot after a few minutes out of the oven. And they were hard to get out of the pans -- but I blame that on my mistake. Some batter had gotten under the wax paper liners and they stuck. In fact, the fabric-strip cake cracked in half. Oh well, the frosting will cover it all up.

So, on to the frosting. First, melt white chocolate and butter together. Thank goodness for Kristina's post about this, or I would have panicked! By the time the white chocolate bits were melted, the mixture had separated into a grainy mess with melted butter floating on top. (It was about 110 F or so.)

It looked even worse just after stirring in the eggs, but as it heated up again, it smoothed out beautifully. For this, you really need to go by the thermometer reading to know when it is done -- there was no dramatic change in texture.

OK, into the fridge with an occasional stirring until it gets down to room temperature. Lovely! Now, beat up some softened butter and gradually beat in the white chocolate custard. Then let sit for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

At this point my husband started saying, "So, is it cake yet?" with increasing impatience. He likes simpler desserts that don't keep him waiting as long!

So, while we're waiting for the frosting, let's put together some of the cake layers. The recipe calls for splitting each layer and filling with lemon curd. Splitting my poor little flat cakes looked like it was going to be a royal pain -- and result in even more cracked cake. (I really should have remembered that white chocolate...Sigh.) OK, go to Plan B -- let's leave it at two layers and just put a really thick layer of lemon curd in between. Hey, I like that idea! And my lemon curd is nice and thick, not runny at all. See? (If you look closely, you can see the crack in the layer, too.) Wrap it up and put into the fridge for a while...

The frosting got to rest for about an hour and 15 minutes ("When will it be cake?") before I beat in a bit of the lemon curd. A taste test revealed only a faint taste of lemon. Now, I like my lemon desserts to be lemony. They may not have to shout "LEMON!!" (although I don't mind if they do), but they at least have to state "Lemon!" with a bit of emphasis. So I pulled out the jar of Penzey's lemon extract and the jar of frozen lemon zest/sugar/vodka and started doctoring it up. It took several additions before I was happy with the taste. It was still only saying "lemon," but at least the white chocolate had receeded to the background. That's where I prefer it. I'm not a fan of white chocolate, although it can be nice as a subtle whisper.

The cake got a crumb coat and a brief rest in the refrigerator, then the final coat of frosting. At this point the cake is supposed to chill again, but the cries of "Cake now!" were getting louder, not to mention that it was getting late. If I didn't finish up this cake now, we'd have to wait until tomorrow. "Unacceptable!" was the unanimous decision on that idea.

But, I am a food blogger, after all. Since I didn't have time to make the frosting all smooth and lovely, I settled for some rustic vertical spatula swipes up the sides. And we had to have some swirls of lemon curd on top! That was problematical because the buttercream was room temperature and quite soft and the curd was cold and quite firm. But eventually (fairly quickly, actually) I managed a sort of giant daisy/sunflower effect with a nice blob of lemon curd in the center.

It's cake! And very good cake too.

And what did I learn this time?
1) Lemon curd is sublime. Totally worth those left-over egg whites. Well, I already knew that, but I was reminded again.
2) Don't forget the white chocolate!
3) Don't mix types of cake strips. Who knew?
4) Eggs really are great emulsifiers.
5) A fancy cake project does better when spread out over several days. (I'm sure my husband will be happy to remind me of this. Or to say "is it done yet?" if I forget.)
6) Even a less-than-perfect cake can be delicious!

TWD: Cran-Apple Crisps

2009-11-10T23:52:00.001-06:00

This week I'm actually posting the TWD recipe of this week, Cran-Apple Crisps, chosen by Em of The Repressed Pastry Chef. You can find the recipe on her blog.

Mine are actually cranberry and pear crisps, because the pears really, really needed to be used up NOW. And I did half the batch with coconut in the topping, as Dorie calls for, and half with chopped almonds. (I wasn't sure if we'd like the coconut.)

I made half the recipe, in four creme brulee pans, and used about 2 1/2 pears (after getting rid of the bad spots). Pears are less tart than apples, so I added a bit of lemon juice and cut the sugar down to about 3 1/2 tablespoons (for the half recipe). And I don't like flour as a thickener for pies and crisps, it takes too long to thicken and has too much of a flour-y taste, so I substituted potato starch -- about 1 1/2 teaspoons for a half-recipe with pears. Oh, and I threw in a few more frozen cranberries - about 2 Tablespoons more. The filling was great! I wish there had been a bit more, though. Something to remember for next time, and there will be a next time!

And the topping? It had whole wheat flour, but you really couldn't tell it was there. The version with coconut was a little sweet for my taste, but good. The version with almonds was also good. I think I'll do both next time! But I'll cut the sugar down a little -- unless I use unsweetened coconut.

This is the first use for these creme brulee pans. They'll be seeing more use for these crisps, I think! Who knows, maybe someday I'll even use them for creme brulee...

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Baby Chocolate Oblivions

2009-11-10T15:26:00.002-06:00

This week's project for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was the Baby Chocolate Oblivions from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." These are a flourless chocolate mousse, baked as mini-cakes in a water bath. Wow! Chocolate delight! So smooth, creamy and luscious!

Rose originally published this recipe in "The Cake Bible," pages 84-87, as a single large cake. I took a look at that recipe and found many tempting (and amusingly named) variations -- Chocolate Torture (with a layer of fudge sauce), Chocolate Dependence (with liquor or liqueur), Chocolate Indulgence (with praline paste), Chocolate Flame (with raspberry puree).

So mine are Baby Chocolate Dependences, actually. I made 1/6 of the recipe -- just two servings -- and added a bit of raspberry liqueur (1 teaspoon for my reduced recipe). Unfortunately, while this liqueur tastes great alone, it isn't strongly flavored enough to stand up to all that chocolate. I could barely tell it was there in the cakes. The liqueur flavored whipped cream worked out, though. And my black raspberry puree (from our own berries) added the perfect note.

As I don't have silicone muffin pans or cups and didn't get around to buying any, I went with ceramic ramekins, well buttered. I covered them with a tent of aluminum foil for the second part of the baking. They puffed up quite a bit, like little souffles, and then fell back down again as they cooled. My husband did a most capable job of unmolding them -- running a small spatula around the edge, then dipping each ramekin in hot water and inverting onto the serving plates. There was about a teaspoon's worth of chocolate mousse cake left in the pans, which we scraped out and spread evenly on the top of the cakelets. Hey, the whipped cream hid most of the top anyway!

These are wonderful! My only quarrel with this recipe is that Rose says (in The Cake Bible) that it doesn't freeze well -- the texture changes. I would love to make a bunch of these and freeze the extras. Perfect for a special dessert when we both are hit by a chocolate craving.

I'll have to take a look at some of the other chocolate mousse cake recipes out there. Maybe the addition of a small amount of starch (cornstarch, potato starch) would help stabilize the texture when frozen?

Talking of other recipes, I used Scharffenberger 62% chocolate for this (one of the brands Rose recommends) and was most amused by the recipe that came inside the box -- Chocolate Orbit Cake, adapted from a recipe by David Lebovitz. Guess what, it's a flourless chocolate mousse cake baked in a water bath! The main differences are that it has a lot more sugar and is baked at a lower temperature for a longer time.

Next time, I'm going to try the Chocolate Flame option with a puree of our home-grown black raspberries. And if Santa Claus is good enough to bring some of those lovely fruit essences from La Cuisine, I'll add a drop of raspberry essence. Heavenly!

TWD on Sunday: Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

2009-11-08T20:55:00.001-06:00

This month, we're allowed to bake out of order for "Tuesdays with Dorie." So I chose the Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies, chosen by Pamela of Cookies with Boys for November 17. You will be able to find the recipe over on her blog soon.

Other than using part whole wheat flour, I followed the recipe. Love the addition of ground black pepper! The dough was very sticky. Instead of making 24 cookies, I divided the dough into smaller pieces and made 36 cookies. Good thing I did, as they wouldn't have fit into my cookie jar otherwise! And even though they were smaller, I could only fit 9 per baking sheet. They spread a whole lot.

Here's my first attempt, with 12 per sheet.

Next try, 9 per sheet. Better.

I'm still looking for my ultimate ginger cookie recipe. It should be thicker than this recipe, less sweet, and more gingery. Crunchy on the edges and chewy on the inside.

Until then, these were mighty good!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Pumpkin Cupcakes

2009-11-02T00:05:00.000-06:00

This week the Heavenly Cake Bakers made the Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Buttercream for Halloween. I didn't have (and didn't want to buy) the special pumpkin-shaped Bundt pan, so I did cupcakes instead.

Sorry, not very many pictures this week. I was in a bit of rush. Above you see the last cupcake, photographed on my desk at work. The cupcakes went into the office for our ongoing bake sale and soon disappeared.

For me, this recipe yielded 22 regular-sized cupcakes. I could have filled the liners a bit less full and gotten a full 2 dozen, but I think they look better at this size.

My cupcakes were made with 1/3 whole wheat pastry flour, 1/3 bleached all-purpose flour, and 1/3 bleached cake flour (by weight). Other than that, I followed the recipe. The cupcakes took roughly 20 minutes to bake at 350 degrees -- sorry, didn't time them exactly.

I was very, very happy with this cake recipe! The cupcakes had a wonderful texture and flavor, very balanced between sweet, nutty, spicy, pumpkin-y, with just a bit of crunch from the nuts. It really didn't need frosting. I don't ever need to try another pumpkin cake recipe again! (Although I will be -- the Holiday Bundt Cake for Tuesdays with Dorie is coming up soon.)

In fact, I think this cake would be great as a plain Bundt cake with just an ornamental dusting of confectioner's sugar, or as a couple of plain loaf cakes. For a more casual, heartier cake I'd increase the nuts to 3/4 cup and add some raisins or dried cranberries.

The Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream frosting is quite time-consuming to make. I spread the process out over several days -- made the caramel creme anglaise on one day, refrigerated it, then finished the frosting another day and frosted the cupcakes on yet another day. I had great plans to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes, but ran out of time and settled for a few quick swipes with a spatula.

I made double the recipe of frosting, though, so the leftovers are in the freezer waiting for another batch of cupcakes. I'm thinking orange-flavored white velvet cupcakes, to use up some of the many containers of extra egg whites...

Oh, I did make one change to the recipe. The Mousseline Buttercream I used on last week's cake got very soft sitting out on the bake sale table at the office. I consulted some of the buttercream recipes in Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" and saw that she used 3 parts butter to 1 part vegetable shortening (by weight, not by volume). So I tried doing that, using 12 ounces of butter and 4 ounces of Spectrum Organic shortening. It was still soft, but did hold up a bit better. And it still tasted good!

Oh, I also added about 1/4 cup extra sugar to my double batch of frosting, because I know my co-workers are used to very sweet frosting. It still was no-where near as sweet as the horrible stuff on grocery-store cakes. Personally I preferred it before the extra sugar and before the orange food coloring, and would do that if baking just for the two of us.

TWD: Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte

2009-10-27T19:32:00.000-05:00

This week's project for the Tuesdays with Dorie group was a Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte, chosen by April of Short + Rose. Check out her blog for the recipe, or see another version on Epicurious.

I love chocolate, cherries, and mascarpone, so I was really looking forward to this recipe. But frugality suggested a half-recipe. Some of the folks in the Problems and Questions forum said a 6-inch springform was a little small for a half-recipe, so I went for a 7-inch springform instead. That was perfect.

Here's my favorite brand of dried tart cherries, from Door County, Wisconsin (famous for cherries). And here's a link to their Web site -- they do mail order, folks!

I made half the recipe for the brownie portion, but 2/3 of the recipe for the mascarpone mousse topping, because I had an 8-ounce container of mascarpone and didn't want to have 2 ounces left over. And topped it with home-made cherry jelly, piped in spokes and then swirled around in circles. All seemed well. Doesn't that torte up above look wonderful? It's been chilled overnight.

Here's what happened when I unmolded it, though.

It's a mousse landslide! Looks like a steep hillside after a heavy rain...

I think perhaps it was because I had frozen and thawed the mascarpone. At least, that's my current theory.

But it tasted good anyway. Although we thought the brownie base was a bit too dense and hard when chilled. It would be better at room temperature or even warm, perhaps topped with a scoop of cherry vanilla ice cream.

And the mousse was a little bland. I'd have liked some cherries in there, too. And some unflavored gelatin to thicken it up! I have another 8-ounce container of mascarpone in the freezer. Maybe it will end up in a slightly different Black Forest Torte some day...

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Almond Shamah Chiffon Squares

2009-10-26T22:54:00.000-05:00

Welcome to this week's installment of the Heavenly Cake Bakers! This week's project is the Almond Shamah Chiffon Cake from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" by Rose Levy Beranbaum. What's a "Shamah," you ask? It's the last name of one of Rose's friends, assistants and advisors, David Shamah. He challenged her to develop an almond chiffon cake recipe that could be baked in a flat pan rather than a tube pan.

I made mine into cake squares so they would be easier to sell at our office bake sale. (We're having an ongoing pre-Christmas bake sale to benefit a local charity.) So, I used two 8x8 inch square pans rather than two 9-inch round pans. And I used up the last of a batch of Orange Mousseline Buttercream (also one of Rose's recipes, but from her earlier book The Cake Bible) rather than using the whipped cream frosting. I'd had the frosting in the freezer for longer than I like to admit, and it was high time to use it up.

Here are the finished cakes:

By the way, I'm developing a theory of "simple cake decorating," which is that almost any pattern, repeated, will make your cake look nice. Even if the pattern isn't really all that regular. Sort of like what Elizabeth Zimmermann said about knitting, that a mistake repeated becomes a pattern.

And here's a picture of the crumb -- isn't it nice and light? I am beginning to think that I really prefer sponge cakes. I love that light, springy texture.

I followed the recipe closely. One change -- as I had some almond flour in the freezer, I decided to try toasting the almond flour rather than toasting and grinding up almonds. I just spread the flour in a skillet over medium heat, then turned the heat down and whisked frequently once the flour heated up. It was hard to tell by color when it was done -- it does turn a bit darker, but your nose is the very best guide. I stopped when it smelled nice and toasty, but not burnt. And I measured it by weight not volume.

Speaking of measuring by weight, this recipe calls for 8 egg yolks. Here are my egg yolks:

Notice there are 9 of them? I cracked open an extra egg just in case. And guess what? These weren't enough! I had to use another egg yolk (10 in all) to get up to the proper weight of egg yolks in the recipe! These were the proper size eggs (large), too. Egg yolks really ARE getting smaller these days.

Here's one of my two 8-inch square cakes just out of the oven. They smelled lovely. After cooling, I wrapped and refrigerated them for a couple of days until I was ready to assemble the cake.

Here is one of the cakes after trimming the top and bottom and edges, and syruping. My "cake board" is just a piece of an old cardboard box, covered with aluminum foil.

Lots of cake crumbs! I toasted them a bit, ground them up in the food processor, and put them into the freezer. There's a Nick Malgieri chocolate torte recipe that calls for cake crumbs...I think I have enough now.

On to the frosting. I had about 3 to 3 1/2 cups of frozen orange-flavored buttercream. Above is what it looked like when thawed, but still cold. Looks ghastly and curdled, right?

But, just put the bowl into a pan of warm water to bring it up to the right temperature, and beat it again, and Voila! It's buttercream again. Yes, this is really the same stuff, just a few minutes later.

So, what's the final review? I loved the texture of this cake -- airy, light, springy, yet tender. The almond flavor was subtle, maybe a bit too subtle to stand up to the orange buttercream (which I'd punched up with Grand Marnier and extra orange zest). I suspect the whipped-cream-and-jam frosting would have been better. Still, no complaints! And I think this is my first chiffon cake ever. It was fun!

And the pan was empty when I brought it home from work. Success!

TWD Late: Sweet Potato Biscuits

2009-10-26T22:50:00.000-05:00

Well, folks, I did make the Tuesdays with Dorie selection for October 20th, but I made it a bit late and am posting it even later. Erin of Prudence Pennywise choose Sweet Potato Biscuits from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours." (Love Erin's blog, especially the music! Check out this link for the recipe, or this one from NPR (you'll have to scroll down a bit).

Aren't they pretty? I hate having to re-roll the scraps, so I usually cut my biscuits into squares or triangles. That leaves only a few trimmings from around the edges to make up those last, few, sad and ugly biscuits.

This was not one of the sad biscuits. What a lovely color! Great spread with butter. Neither of us is that crazy about sweet potatoes, but these were delicious! We both agreed we'd like them even better as breakfast scones, with some raisins and nuts inside and a sprinkle of natural sugar crystals on top.

I baked my sweet potatoes (while Jim was baking a casserole dish full of his wonderful jambalaya), then mashed them. The recipe calls for 3/4 to 1 cup of puree, but I only had 1/2 cup and it was really dry. So I added in 1/2 cup of buttermilk and went ahead with the recipe. This was not enough liquid. I ended up with a really dry, crumbly dough:

Here's a hint that applies to both pie pastry and biscuit dough -- regard the amount of liquid in the recipe as merely a guideline. Even if you weigh out all the ingredients with great precision, you'll never need exactly the same amount of liquid twice. Go by the consistency of the dough instead. For pie pastry, it should be soft and hold together, but not be too moist or too sticky. For biscuits, on the other hand, the moister the dough, the lighter and fluffier the biscuits. Or so all the biscuit experts say, and my experience bears them out.

So, I added a few more tablespoons of milk to the dough until it was moist and sticky, then patted it out on a floured counter to a rough rectangle and cut it into triangles. Onto the baking sheet and into the very hot oven (another key feature for light, fluffy biscuits) and in a short time they were done.

These were better after cooling down just a bit. Biscuits really are best fresh, but they re-heat pretty well when wrapped in aluminum foil and put into an oven or toaster oven. The microwave tends to toughen them a bit.

So, try some sweet potato biscuits -- you might find you like them!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Apple Upside-Down Cake

2009-10-20T22:07:00.001-05:00

Hello folks, welcome to the Heavenly Cake Bakers a day late. This week's cake was the Apple Upside-Down Cake. It's the very first cake in Rose Levy Beranbaum's new book, Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

The recipe calls for a pound of apple slices -- two large apples. Rose's apples must be REALLY large because it took a lot more than that for me. Of course, I did have to cut away quite a few bad spots. I don't think I'll buy that particular brand of organic apples again (Honeycrisps). I had to throw in a pear for good measure.

Next step, toss the apple slices with brown sugar and lemon juice, then drain. Add juices to melted butter and more brown sugar (I used ground-up Turbinado sugar) and simmer. Rose said to simmer for 3 minutes, but it took longer for me. And I wish I'd cooked it a little longer for a darker color. Pour caramel into bottom of pan, layer on apples (I got two layers).

Next comes the cake batter. We don't publish the recipes for this group, but this one is basically a 3/4 recipe of "Rose's Favorite Yellow Cake" from her blog. I make two changes -- I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for 1/3 of the cake flour, and I used 1 1/2 whole eggs instead of 3 egg yolks. Also, I beat the batter longer, because I have a hand-held power mixer, not a stand mixer.

The batter was very thick, which is typical of Rose's recipes. I spread it around on top of the apples as best I could. But, it looks like I left some bubbles of air, most likely down where the apples & batter came together. After about 10 minutes in the oven, the cake had developed many huge air bubbles on top, some of which were starting to turn brown! I popped them with a toothpick and kept baking...

The cake was very brown on top after 35 minutes, a thin knife came out clean, and it was even starting to pull away from the sides. So I took it out and inverted it on a plate. Oh ****! It was obviously gooey and underbaked near the apple layer. Thinking fast, I put it (still on the plate) back in the oven for 10 more minutes. (Fortunately the plate was oven-proof.) Hey, that worked!

The caramel top was not as brown as I'd like (and I did use the baking stone), but the cake was still very tasty despite all the problems. Rose's yellow cake is extremely tender and fine-grained, and has a wonderful taste. To my taste it is a bit crumbly in texture, though. I am realizing that I have a preference for cakes with a more springy and slightly more firm texture. Can't wait for next week's chiffon cake!

For this cake? I'd definitely make it again, but next time I'll try moving the rack even closer to the bottom of the oven, turning the oven down a bit (I think it runs hotter when I am baking towards the bottom then when I bake in the middle), and running a knife or thin spatula through the batter to try and get rid of large bubbles. Plus, I'd like a touch of spice -- a bit of lemon zest in the batter, and a dusting of cinnamon, mace, allspice or nutmeg on the apples.

TWD: Allspice Crumb Muffins

2009-10-13T23:48:00.000-05:00

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie features Allspice Crumb Muffins, chosen by Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table.

One word -- YUM!

I made these almost as written. I added some chopped walnuts to the streusel (they were left over and needed to be used up, and we both love nuts in streusel). I replaced one-third of the flour with whole wheat pastry flour, and added the optional lemon zest. And I had leftover streusel. (Guess I'll have to make more muffins!)

Kayte, thanks for a great choice!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Barcelona Brownie Bites

2009-10-12T22:30:00.001-05:00

Yippee! My first post for the new Heavenly Cake Bakers group! (For more information about the group, scroll down to the bottom of this post.)

This week's project was the Barcelona Brownie Bars from pages 367-370 of the brand-new book, Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum. In this group, we won't be publishing the recipes, but this week you're in luck -- Rose posted the recipe on her blog.

So, we make a lovely brownie batter of melted chocolate and butter, sugar, cocoa, eggs, vanilla, cream cheese, flour, salt, and pecans. It can be mixed all by hand, which is what I did. Delicious! I licked the bowl...

The recipe calls for a very cute mini-cake or financier mold. Since I don't have one and my budget isn't up for buying one at the moment, I used my mini-muffin pan instead. The batter filled up my 24-hole pan completely, all the way to the top of each hole, and I was worried it would overflow after baking, but it didn't.

To grease the pan, I used some "cocoa pan goop" -- a mixture of solid vegetable shortening, oil, cocoa, and flour. Excellent when making brownies and chocolate cakes.

After the brownies bake (it only took about 10-12 minutes for these little guys), you "gild the lily" by poking holes in them and pouring in ganache. Gosh, a few years ago I had no idea what ganache was! It's just a fancy word for chocolate and cream, melted together. Simple but divine!

I took Rose's hint and made the ganache ahead of time. It was too solid, so into the microwave it went for about 10 seconds. Then it was a bit too runny. Sigh. The picture in the book shows these lovely, rounded "plugs" of ganache. Mine were more like a dribbly mess. So I just let the brownies cool a bit and frosted the tops with the ganache. Next time I may just forget about the "plugs" and do the frosting. And I may make more. I think that should be one of my mottos -- "Always make extra ganache."

This is an excellent brownie recipe! They are nicely in between the extremes of cakey and fudgey, with a bit of both. The cocoa and chocolate together give lots of flavor, the cream cheese gives richness and moistness, the pecans add crunch, and the ganache glaze is creamy and lush. Jim and I both loved them, and our only complaint (if you can call it that) is that it is impossible to eat just one!

The Heavenly Cake Bakers are a new group formed to bake our way through the new book "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Our hostess is Marie of Heavenly Cake Place.

TWD: I'm back with Pufflets, Espresso Cheesecake Brownies, and Lime-Ginger Tartlets

2009-09-28T01:15:00.008-05:00

Hello everyone! I've missed blogging with you. It's great to be back.

What happened? Well, I blame it on Murphy's Law of Old House Renovation Projects. But I'll leave the details on that to the end of the post. First I want to get caught up on some of the Tuesdays with Dorie recipes that I made, but didn't post on time.

These are the Cottage Cheese Pufflets, chosen by Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes. Aren't they cute?

As many other folks reported in the Problems and Questions for this recipe, the dough was extremely moist and sticky. I ended up adding a lot of extra flour before chilling the dough, and more while rolling it out. (I like to use pastry flour when doing this, as it is less likely to toughen the dough.) This worked fine, and the results were not at all tough or dry. But next time, I will try draining some of the liquid from the cottage cheese before starting.

And the filling? I dove into the fridge and was startled by how many different open jars of jam we had! And only one had turned into a science project. (That one got tossed, of course.) So I made just a few pufflets with each filling. We had Dundee Orange Marmalade and Ginger Preserve, Rose's Key Lime Marmalade, Crofter's Apricot Conserve and Four Fruit Conserve, Smucker's Pineapple Preserve, and home-made greengage plum jam, blueberry conserve, tangelo marmalade and pink grapefruit marmalade.

Some of the pufflets are still in the freezer waiting to be baked up. Of the ones I did bake, the ginger and tangelo were my favorites. The pufflets were just a little underdone in the center despite being nice and brown on the outside. Still, the pastry was nicely flakey and tangy! Next time I will bake them a little longer. And Dorie is right, they don't keep worth a d***n. Eat 'em up fast, folks!

I also made the Espresso Cheesecake Brownies, chosen by Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell. Sorry, I didn't take a picture before taking them into work, where they quickly disappeared! As other folks said in the Problems and Questions, I found the brownie batter rather stiff and the cheesecake batter rather runny. I added two tablespoons of sour cream to the brownie batter and it came out just fine. However, I overbaked them slightly and the cheesecake part developed deep cracks. We're talking Grand Canyon sized cracks here! The sour cream topping covered that up and also added a wonderful flavor note. I was thinking of omitting it and was glad I hadn't. But it was a bit runny for a dessert to bring into work. I think I'd substitute cream cheese for a portion of the sour cream next time.

I'm a fan of just plain brownies -- fudgy, with plenty of chocolate and some nuts and nothing else, please -- but these were good enough to give the plain brownies a run for their money!

And finally, here is the Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie, as chosen by Linda of Tender Crumb.

OK, it's a tart (with an almond pastry crust) and it's topped with whipped cream, not meringue. (Neither of us here at the bungalow like meringue.) I used less butter in the lime-ginger cream -- only one stick. (But it was Euro-style butter with extra butterfat.) I think I added a bit too much grated ginger to my cream -- it came out more like a ginger cream with hints of lime. But it was still fabulous!

I tried a recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible for the crust. It tasted great but came out too firm. You couldn't cut it easily and even biting into it was a bit of a problem. I've had this problem with Dorie's recipe too. Since both of these ladies really know their stuff, I think the problem must be with me. I must be doing something wrong. Hm. More experimentation is called for.

Oh, and by the way, the Lime Cream freezes beautifully. So I have plenty left to fill my tart-crust experiments. I may even try blending some with gelatin-stiffened whipped cream to make a lime-ginger mousse.

So -- what kept me away from the blog? Well, my Mom was coming to visit at the end of September and of course that meant we needed to do a really thorough housecleaning. And clear all the stuff out of the guest bedroom, which I have been using for a "project storage" area for a long time. And finish off the renovation project of repainting the living room.

Oh my, Murphy's Law that "Anything that can go wrong, will" really got us on the last one. Jim started opening up the cracks in the plaster for repair. And the old paint (which had appeared reasonably solidly attached until then) started flaking off...and flaking off...and revealing not one, but two layers of chalky calcimine underneath...

The project got pared down to just the north wall and a portion of the west wall. It still took a long time.

Much, much later, after much scraping, washing, patching, and skim-coating, we finally were able to apply the paint. That went quickly enough...

And now we have put all the bookshelves back against the wall and you can't even see most of the paint! Sigh.

All the books, records, CDs, DVDs and so forth from the living room are still in boxes in the dining room. We haven't actually eaten in the dining room for months. Maybe soon...

Oh, and my Mom's visit was great. We got the guest room, bathrooms and kitchen clean and she had no objection at all to eating out in the sunroom. (In fact, it gave her a better chance to birdwatch.) And we even managed to sit down on our new living room couch and watch a DVD together. (Hiyao Miyazake's "Kiki's Delivery Service." Love his animations.)

Last week's Caramel-Crunched Chocolate Tart is still in progress. I hope to post it soon and then we're on to the Split Level Puddings!

TWD: Applesauce Spice Bars, a little late

2009-08-23T23:36:00.001-05:00

This week's assignment for the "Tuesdays with Dorie" group was to make Applesauce Spice Bars, from pages 117-118 of Baking: From My Home to Yours. I made them a little late and took them in to work on Friday for a co-worker's 65th birthday potluck. This is the only picture I have -- of the few that were left!

Many thanks to Karen of Something Sweet by Karen for choosing this recipe! It's a perfect recipe for a potluck. Moist (they won't dry out while sitting out on the potluck table), flavorful, delightful and easy to make!

I made a few changes to the recipe. I used about 1/3 cup of whole wheat pastry flour, and ended up using 1 cup of bleached all-purpose flour. (The batter seemed a little thin and I was afraid the fruit would sink, so I sprinkled in a bit of extra flour when I added the fruit and nuts.) I reduced the sugar in the cake to 3/4 cup -- next time I would reduce it to 2/3 cup.

And for the glaze, I had to improvise a bit because I was out of cream. So, I heated the sugar, butter and corn syrup together, then stirred in about 1/4 to 1/3 cup (2-3 ounces) of cream cheese. A hint -- it's better to soften and whip the cream cheese a bit before adding it. I didn't do this, and I had to beat the **** out of the glaze before it smoothed out. It needed a bit more sugar to balance the tang of the cream cheese, but the final result was very tasty! I may do this again.

The bars were moist and spicy and very tasty. The apple flavor was more in the background, but that was OK. These may be showing up at more potlucks!

TWD Late Report: Classic Banana Bundt Cake

2009-08-20T22:51:00.001-05:00

The "Tuesdays with Dorie" recipe for August 4, 2009, was the Classic Banana Bundt Cake, chosen by Mary of The Food Librarian. For the recipe, visit this page on her blog, or this link on Serious Eats.

Well, I actually made this recipe on time, but it's taken me this long to write up my blog post. July is a busy time! Busy at work (everyone is ordering school uniforms and we sell them), busy in garden. It was a big success!

I've been coveting a full sized Bundt pan for a long time. I could have halved the recipe and made it in my lovely mini-rose pan, but this was the perfect excuse to buy this instead. To make my husband a little happier with the purchase, I also ordered Angel: After the Fall, volume 4. Ah, the wonders of ordering on Amazon! Bundt pans and comic books all in the same box!

I made only a few changes to the recipe. I swapped out 1/3 of the flour for whole wheat pastry flour, used yogurt (because the sour cream had turned into a science experiment), and added some walnut pieces. For some reason it just isn't banana cake to me unless it has nuts, preferably walnuts.

I also inadvertently decreased the baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons. I think that is why my cake had such a rounded top. Did you know that if your cake "domes" it can be a sign of too little leavening? Or too much gluten development? In this case, I'm sure it was the leavening. It always seems counter-intuitive to me. Doesn't it seem like a big rise in the center should come from too MUCH leavening? But no, all the cake experts agree it's the other way around.

Well, despite this minor flaw, the cake was wonderful. I didn't bother with glaze as I'm not a fan. One large slice was set aside for my husband and the rest went in to work. It was much appreciated!

Banana cake success! And a new Bundt pan! What could be better?

TWD: Black Raspberry Blancmanger

2009-07-26T22:32:00.001-05:00

The assignment for this week's "Tuesdays with Dorie" was Raspberry Blancmanger, chosen by Susan of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy. Thanks, Susan! I've read the phrase "quaking like a blancmanger" but never actually made or eaten one. It's very light and delicious! Check out Susan's blog if you want the recipe.

This was half the recipe, made in a 6-inch springform pan. I used purchased almond flour, which gave it a very smooth texture. For the bottom, I tried a variation of Dorie's Chocolate Pastry Crust, with more sugar and less cocoa. But it was a bit tough, I think I overbaked it. Still pretty good. I think a thin layer of sponge cake would be the very best bottom layer for this. The light texture would go better with the light, fluffy blancmanger. Or, crisp almond or chocolate cookies on the side...mmm.

The black raspberries are almost done for this year. We have a whole lot in the freezer and a few left for eating fresh.

See you all next week!

TWD: Brioche Apricot-Raspberry Tart

2009-07-14T22:17:00.003-05:00

This week's project for Tuesdays with Dorie was a Brioche Plum Tart, chosen by Denise of Chez Us. Really it's more like a coffeecake, with a sweet bread dough bottom topped with jam and fruit. Check out Denise's blog for the recipe, or look on pages 54-55 of "Baking: From My Home to Yours."

I changed it up by using apricots, home-made black raspberry jam, and fresh black raspberries from our own garden. Unfortunately it was gone before I got around to taking a picture! So you'll have to visit some of the other TWD bakers to see what it looks like. Meanwhile, I'll tempt you with a closeup of our wild "blackcaps."

As I don't have a stand mixer, I made the brioche by hand. Here are my tips on doing this: mix flour and salt, place in bowl, and make a well in the center. Proof yeast and milk, and then mix with other wet ingredients, including melted butter. Pour into center of flour mixture, then mix with spoon or large spatula until it comes together.

Now for the tricky part -- this dough is way too moist and sticky to knead in the usual way. I started out with stirring, then found that it worked better to plunge my spatula under some of the dough and pull it up out of the bowl, stretching it as I went. Eventually that got tiring, so I oiled my hand very well and started pulling the dough by hand. I'd grab a bit and pull it up, leaving it attached to the rest of the dough so that the gluten got stretched.

Eventually the dough became very "lively" -- it would actively pull back into the bowl after I let go of it, sometimes moving around quite a bit before settling down again! I figured this meant the gluten was properly developed, so I went on with the rest of the recipe as written.

The only mistake I made was not to trust Dorie's baking instructions. After 20 minutes in a hot oven, the brioche dough was so brown around the edges that I got alarmed and turned the oven down. Bad idea. That just meant it took longer to bake, and the brioche dough ended up a bit on the dry side. It was still very yummy!

Next time I might add a little more butter to the dough. And I'd tent the tart with a ring of foil, so the center stays exposed and cooks better while the edge is protected. This would be good with all sorts of fruit!

TWD: Perfect Party Cake, orange version. Happy Birthday USA!

2009-07-05T01:58:00.000-05:00

Happy Fourth of July! Let's celebrate with an orange-flavored version of Dorie Greenspan's "Perfect Party Cake." This was the Tuesdays with Dorie assignment for June 30, chosen by Carol of mix, mix...stir, stir. You can find the recipe on her blog -- as well as lots of interesting recipes and information about spices. Oh, and be sure to read the tips from Dorie (and Nick Malgieri) as well!

My choice of flavor was due to very practical considerations -- I had made a recipe of orange-flavored Italian meringue buttercream many months ago, and it was still sitting in the freezer needing to be used up! (The recipe was from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Sorry, it's not on the Web.) So, I went with orange-flavored cake, orange marmalade, and orange curd for the other cake components. (And home-made candied orange peel for the decorations.)

Cakes are still a "learning experience" for me but this one turned out quite well despite some problems along the way.

Here's the cake batter -- half of Dorie's recipe, in 6-inch pans. It seemed like a thin layer. I used orange zest and orange extract in place of lemon, and increased the amount to 1 1/2 times the original. I also reduced the sugar (by 2 Tablespoons for the half recipe) and added 1 Tablespoon of vegetable oil. Oh, and I weighed my flour, using that one cup of unsifted cake flour is 4.0 ounces.

Things I've learned about cakes along the way: use the right type of flour, and measure it the way the cookbook author does (best of all is if she gives weights--Dorie, please mention that to your publisher!). Have the butter soft, but not melted, and cream it with the sugar for a long time. Don't get impatient at this step! (I have to keep reminding myself of that.) Mix gently once you start adding liquid. And, pay attention to your oven temperature. Mine runs cool, so I always turn it up by 15 degrees. Then things bake just right.

In the picture above, see those foil strips around the cake pans? Those are my home-made "cake strips." They have wet paper towels inside. It slows down the baking of the outside edges of the cake, so it bakes more evenly. You can see them below, behind the cakes, opened up so they can dry out and be re-used.

Here are the cakes on the cooling rack. They rose nicely, but didn't fill the pans all the way. They didn't brown at all, but the edges were pulling away from the pans and the top was springy, so I pulled them out. They were fine, moist and fluffy and just right.

Making the other components and assembling the cake turned out to be more of a job.

Well, the marmalade wasn't that hard. It was just a mixture of store-bought (Dundee's) and home-made. Next time I would either strain out the bits of peel, or puree it finely in the blender or food processor. I thought the bits of peel were a distraction to the suave texture of the cake, filling and frosting. And, I'd use an even thinner layer of marmalade -- the flavor was a bit too strong. Marmalade is very assertive!

The orange curd turned out to be a PITA. Partly that was my own fault. Instead of sticking with the recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum that has worked for me before, I decided to get creative and adapt Cook's Illustrated filling from their Lemon Layer Cake. The recipe intrigued me because it had gelatin added, for extra thickness. I made half the recipe, substituting frozen orange juice concentrate (undiluted) for the lemon juice. The result? Very eggy, barely tasted of orange at all. I added some frozen orange zest, then some fresh orange zest. Still not orangey enough. Some strained marmalade. Still not enough, and now it was getting runny. Finally I added about 1 1/2 tablespoons of Grand Marnier, with more gelatin sprinkled over the top and dissolved. Ah, that did the trick! Let's hear it for Grand Marnier! But, now I had to chill it overnight--and it still was a bit runny. Sigh.

Finally I sliced the cakes and filled them. The orange curd was oozing out all over. More chilling, then gently scraping / smoothing the extra curd on the sides of the cake. Finally I could frost this beast!

It's amazing. Frozen and thawed Italian meringue buttercream looks like a nasty, curdled mess. But get it back to room temperature and beat the heck out of it, and it smooths right out! Put one coat on, chill (and watch the 4th of July fireworks), put the other coat on, decorate, eat!

The cake was delightful. The curd tasted good, but next time I'll start with Rose's recipe and add gelatin. (And maybe Grand Marnier.) The buttercream was not too sweet and tasted nicely of orange, not butter (it also had orange curd and Grand Marnier). But I find the texture of buttercream to be a bit too slippery for my taste.

I like frostings that are very light and fluffy, but not sweet. Whipped cream is ideal, except that it doesn't keep well. Cream cheese frostings are great (as long as they're not too sweet), but a bit heavy. Hmm. Do you suppose it would be possible to make an meringue-and-cream-cheese frosting instead of a buttercream?

Thank you, Carol, for finally giving us the chance to make this cake for Tuesdays with Dorie! Be sure to check out all the other fabulous versions by the other TWD bakers.

TWD - the party will be later

2009-06-30T22:51:00.002-05:00

Hi folks, just a quick note to say that the Perfect Party Cake will be coming along sometime this week -- just not yet! Frosting made & in freezer. Orange curd made & in fridge. Cake, well...not yet.

TWD postscript -- dacquoise becomes sundae

2009-06-26T00:50:00.008-05:00

In my last post I reported that the dacquoise was pretty good, but not our favorite. News flash -- it is great when you turn the components into a sundae!

Haagen-Daz vanilla ice cream, pineapple chunks, white chocolate ganache, caramel sauce, broken-up dacquoise, toasted coconut.

I rather like the dacquoise as little crunchy bits. And the white chocolate is kind of nice as long as it is a subtle whisper in the background...

I guess my heart belongs to down-home desserts. Fancy bowls are optional but fun.

TWD: Coconut - Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

2009-06-23T21:33:00.001-05:00

This week's recipe for "Tuesdays with Dorie" was a Coconut - Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise, chosen by Andrea of Andrea in the Kitchen.

Whenever I'm flipping through Dorie's book, I have to stop a moment by the picture of this dessert. It looks fabulous! Layers of crunchy meringue with ground-up coconut and almonds (that's the "dacquoise part. Where do the French come up with these names?). Creamy filling. Luscious roasted pineapple slices. Crunchy toasted coconut. Ooh-la-la!

Unfortunately, as the time came to make it, I began to worry. The weather was hot and humid and showed every sign of staying that way. (And it has.) Everyone says that meringues don't do well in humid weather. Was it worth turning on the whole-house air conditioner to make these? What was I going to do for "Plan B?" Fortunately, my husband was all for the idea of turning on the air conditioner, so we could stay with "Plan A."

Plan A did involve making only half the recipe. It took about 2/3 of one of those smaller (but delicious!) "Honey Sweet" pineapples to produce 36 slices. (Yes, I like math. 3 layers of pineapple arranged 3 x 8 = 72 pieces for the whole recipe.) This was the first time I'd ever used the broiler in our stove/oven. I'm pleased to report it works well, but it seems to brown a little faster in the middle. Or maybe my slices were uneven. Or both. I sprinkled them with a little rum after broiling.

I'd defrosted some of the frozen egg whites left over from previous baking (another reason I wanted to make the dacquoise). They whipped up beautifully and I was able to fold in the ground-up coconut/almond mixture with no problems. Whew! (The last time I tried to make a meringue-based dessert, the folding-in step was a complete disaster. I ended up with something resembling marshmallow soup. Not a good thing.)

More calculations here -- Dorie's recipe calls for making 3 rectangles of 12 x 9 inches for a total of 216 square inches. For my half-recipe, I made 6 rectangles of 6 x 3 inches. The next part was easy -- bake for 3 hours. A good time to make the other components of the recipe, clean out the fridge a little, read food blogs...interrupted occasionally by my husband saying "Isn't it done yet?"

I'm not a big fan of white chocolate. I was considering leaving it out altogether, but eventually decided to make just a quarter recipe of the ganache, and then add in some drained yogurt. We were low on yogurt, though, so I also mixed in some sour cream. (D**n those fat calories, full speed ahead!)

And a half-recipe of Dorie's Caramel Sauce (page 466) with rum and sea salt added -- just because! Oh, and the toasted coconut for on top -- almost forgot that!

I cut my dacquoise squares in half and arranged them in two layers. Lovely!

Unfortunately, we both thought this was only "pretty good." Here are the details:

Roasted pineapple: fabulous, especially with a little rum!
Dacquoise: very nice texture, crispy/crunchy yet tender. But too sweet and not much taste of coconut/almond.
Ganache: before adding the yogurt/sour cream, it was too sweet and tasted strongly of white chocolate. Adding the sour ingredients helped the flavor considerably, but made it a bit runny. After trying several brands (all "good" ones) and several recipes, I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like white chocolate. Cocoa butter should be eaten combined with cocoa solids the way Mother Nature designed it!
Salted Rum Caramel sauce: nomm nomm nomm! Next time, make a whole recipe--I'm sure we'll find uses for it. On second thought, maybe it would be better for our waistlines if I didn't...

What I learned:

1) Roasted pineapple is fabulous. Caramel sauce is fabulous (wait, I knew that already). A touch of rum is fabulous (oh, I knew that already, too).
2) I can make dacquoise! Meringue success! But alas, I really don't like things that are mostly meringue. Too sweet, don't taste like much of anything else. Well, there are plenty of other egg-white recipes to try -- like next week's cake. In future I'll be looking for recipes that combine egg whites & sugar with lots of other flavorful ingredients.
3) Sorry, I just don't like the taste of white chocolate. This expensive ingredient is wasted on me.
4) I love the combination of flavors / textures in this dessert, but next time I'd use different components to create it. For the "pastry" part -- how about coconut sweet tart pastry, or puff pastry, or even a trifle with rum-soaked cake? and for the creamy part, ice cream, or some combination of yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, whipped cream?

Andrea, thanks for choosing this recipe! I had fun making the components and assembling them. Unfortunately, we weren't completely thrilled with the result. But, I joined this group to challenge myself and learn more about baking, and in that respect, this recipe was a complete success!

TWD: Parisian Mango Tarts, late, and no ice cream

2009-06-18T00:39:00.001-05:00

For June 16, 2009, Jessica of My Baking Heart chose the "Parisian Apple Tarts" for our "Tuesdays with Dorie" assignment. I decided to make them with mangoes instead, as Dorie suggests in the "Playing around" section of the recipe.

I finished these wonderful tartlets just before flying out to Puyallup, Washington, to attend my nephew's high school graduation. So, a late post for last week's recipe and no Honey-Peach Ice Cream for this week.

Some time ago I saw a recipe for a very quick puff pastry made in a food processor. I've been hoping for an excuse to try it, so this recipe fit the bill! It was indeed easy. Prepare dough one evening (very quick), roll and fold, wrap and chill. Cut into pieces and roll out the next evening; chill briefly and trim edges. Third evening, make the tarts!

Mangoes aren't naturally round like apples. In fact they are a really strange shape. So I trimmed my mango halves into nice little half-spheres and chopped up the extra bits fairly fine. I put a small pile of scraps under the quartered half-spheres. They took just about 25 minutes to bake -- maybe a little more. The butter and sugar mostly slid down to the bottom and made a lovely "sauce" around the bottom of the mango pieces.

Wow, this was great! The pastry was wonderfully flaky and buttery, the fruit was sweet / tart. Easy and fabulous!

************

Quickest Puff Pastry, by Nick Malgieri
From his recipe for Sausage Rolls, currently the recipe of the month on his site (but it will probably move after a while). Here's the link: http://www.nickmalgieri.com/recipes.html
This is 2/3 of his recipe.

1/2 cup cold water
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups (9.0 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
1 1/3 cup (10.67 oz) unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1. Combine the water and salt in a measuring cup or small bowl and stir well to dissolve the salt completely. Set aside.
2. Place the flour in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Add a fourth of the butter (1/3 cup) and pulse repeatedly to mix in finely. Add the remaining butter and pulse just until it is distributed in the flour mixture, 2 to 3 times.
3. Add the salted water and pulse 2 to 3 times again. The dough will not form a ball.
4. Invert the dough to a floured work surface and carefully remove the blade. Lightly flour the dough and form it into a rough rectangle.
5. Gently roll the dough, making sure there is always enough flour between the work surface and the dough to prevent it from sticking, until it is a rectangle about 12 x 20 inches.
6. Fold the top long edge over the middle section, and then fold the bottom edge over that to make three equal layers, giving a 4x20 rectangle. Roll the dough up like a jelly roll from one of the short edges. Use the palm of your hand to flatten the rolled dough into a rectangular shape, about 5 x 6 inches, and about 1 inch thick. (Note: at this point, I rolled the dough out a bit more, and gave it another "business letter" fold.)
7. Refrigerate the dough in plastic wrap until it is firm, at least 2 hours.
8. Roll the dough out to a rectangle 12x18 inches.

Storage: You may keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to 2 days before using it. If you are preparing the dough longer in advance, double-wrap and freeze it. Defrost the dough in the refrigerator overnight before using.

Note: I ended up with 686 grams / 24.2 ounces of dough. I divided the dough into three equal pieces. The pieces were long and narrow, so I folded them in half again to form a square. I rolled each one out to slightly more than 8x8 inches, then trimmed to exactly 8x8 inches. Two of the pieces are now in my freezer. The other one was cut into 4 squares, and each square was trimmed to an octagon. The scraps are also in the freezer.

TWD: Cappuccino Cake Squares and a cat adventure

2009-06-07T22:00:00.001-05:00

I had such good intentions for posting "Tuesdays with Dorie" on time this month. And then life came along and slapped us upside the head -- but, read on, the story has a happy ending.

I made Dorie's lovely Cinnamon Squares (Cappuccino variation) for a pot-luck on Monday. Took pictures, figured I'd finish up my post on Tuesday.

Our younger cat Annie didn't come in Monday night. That happens fairly often, so we weren't worried. But then she didn't show up on Tuesday -- not for breakfast, not in the afternoon, not in the evening...

We were worried. Really worried. She never stays away that long. To make a long story short, we spent the next several days talking to all the neighbors, checking all the hidden areas in our yard and neighboring yards, calling local vets & the Humane society, and worrying and grieving. I was too depressed to want to write up my TWD post.

Sunday afternoon we sat down for brunch in the sunroom. I was sipping my coffee and thinking, "Gosh, I'm beginning to accept that Annie is gone." Suddenly my husband Jim exclaimed, "What the f***!?" and there was Annie, calmly walking across the side yard.

It feels like a miracle! She seems to be fine; a little tired, a little jumpy, and her feet are dirty -- but no injuries, not sick or thirsty or starved. And of course, she'll never tell us about her adventure...cats never do. Sigh.

So, with no further ado, here are the Cappuccino Cake Squares.

I reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup, which was just right for our tastes. Wrapped the pan in home-made "cake strips" to help keep the edges from getting too brown. (What are they? Just long strips of aluminum foil, folded over wet paper towels, and clamped with metal clamps from an office supply store. If you use heavy-duty aluminum foil, they will last a long time.)

The cake took about 42 minutes to bake. For the frosting, I used 4 ounces of milk chocolate and 2 ounces of bittersweet, because somehow milk chocolate sounded like a good match to the coffee and cinnamon flavors of the cake. Unfortunately, I forgot that milk chocolate is even more sensitive to heat than dark chocolate, and some of the chocolate around the edges of the bowl ended up "seizing." But I beat in some more butter, which took care of most of the problem, and then strained the frosting through a fine sieve directly onto the top of the cake. That worked.

I was in a hurry, so I had to cut the cake while the cake and frosting were both warm. Messy messy messy but still delicious! The milk chocolate frosting was great. The icing really makes this cake.

It wasn't quite as big a hit at the potluck as the brownies or rhubarb squares -- but what can you expect? Still, it was much appreciated, and nibbling on the leftovers was a bit of consolation during our 5 days of worry.

All's well that ends well...

And before I end this post, thanks to Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures for choosing this recipe. Great choice!

Cornmeal Mango Muffins for Memorial Day

2009-05-26T01:07:00.001-05:00

Sorry, no TWD this week. My husband has been complaining of "too much dessert" (can you believe it?) and what's more, I'm starting to agree with him...

So, how about breakfast? I liked the Fresh Mango Muffins from last week's "Tuesdays with Dorie" so much that I was inspired to create a variation. Behold--Cornmeal Mango Muffins!

Cornmeal Mango Muffins, version 1.0
adapted from Fresh Mango Bread from "Baking: From My Home to Yours," by Dorie Greenspan
makes 24 standard-sized muffins

1 1/2 cups medium-grind yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour (2.4 oz / 68 gm)
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (4.8 oz / 136 gm)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
3/4 cup granulated sugar (150 gm)
grated zest of 1 lime (about 1 teaspoon or 3-4 gm)
3 large eggs, lightly beaten (150 gm)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup vegetable oil (107 gm)
3 1/2 cups diced mango (about 3 medium mangos), about 600 gm, sprinkled with the juice of one lime (about 1 1/2 to 2 Tbs)
1 cup raisins (about 120 gm), soaked in 2 Tbs. rum

Prepare standard muffin pans, enough for 24 muffins, by lightly buttering the muffin cup depressions and then lightly spraying with oil. (This "double-greasing" helps to prevent sticking.)

Set oven rack to middle of oven and preheat to 375 degrees F.

In a large bowl, whisk together cornmeal, flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Rub the lime zest into the sugar with your fingers, then whisk into flour mixture.

In another bowl, mix together eggs, yogurt and oil.

Make a well in the center of the flour mixture, pour in the egg mixture, and mix just until barely incorporated. It will be more like a dough than a batter. Gently stir in diced mango and raisins.

Spoon into muffin tins, filling them about two-thirds to three-quarters full. Place in oven. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes. Rotate pans and turn oven down to 350. Bake about another 10-12 minutes, until brown around edges, golden brown and springy on top, and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool in pans on racks for about 10 minutes. Run a small knife or spatula around the edges of the muffins. Remove from pan to finish cooling on racks.

These were delicious! I love the sweet flavor of cornmeal with tangy sweet fruit. A heavenly combination.

Still, I came up with some ideas about what to do differently next time, namely, increase the batter a bit:

Cornmeal Mango Muffins version 2.0 (warning, not yet tried)

2 cups yellow cornmeal
2/3 cup white whole wheat flour (3.2 oz / 91 gm)
1 1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (6.4 oz / 181 gm)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
3/4 c. granulated sugar (150 gm)
grated zest of 1 lime (about 1 teaspoon or 3-4 gm)
4 large eggs, lightly beaten (200 gm)
3/4 cup vegetable oil (161 gm)
6 Tbs. plain yogurt
4 cups fairly finely diced mango (from 3 large or 4 medium mangoes), about 688 gm, sprinkled with juice of one lime (about 1 1/2 to 2 Tbs.)
1 cup raisins (about 125 gm), soaked in 2 Tbs. rum

Sorry, I don't have weights for the cornmeal and yogurt right now. I'll try to remember to add them later.

TWD: Fresh Mango Muffins

2009-05-21T23:21:00.000-05:00

First, I apologize to all my "Tuesdays with Dorie" friends for all the late posts this month.

For this week, Kelly of Baking with the Boys chose the Fresh Mango Bread from Dorie Greenspan's wonderful book.

Somehow this recipe said "muffins" to me. And it made excellent muffins! I made a few changes -- substituting white whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the flour, reducing the white sugar to 3/4 cup, reducing the ground ginger to 1 teaspoon and the cinnamon to 1/4 teaspoon, adding 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander and a pinch of allspice, and adding the zest of an entire lime. The spice combination was great, just spicy enough but not overwhelming. Oh, I also chopped the golden raisins and soaked them in rum.

Dorie says that this will turn out more like a dough than a batter. Well, mine turned out more like a mess of crumbs than a dough! So I added in most of the juice of the lime, and that was just enough liquid to bring it together into a very thick batter. It was enough to make 23 muffins.

The muffins only took about 20 minutes to bake. They did have a bit of a tendency to stick to the pans, but I managed to get them out with only one serious casualty. (Hey, I needed to taste-test one anyway!)

After they cooled, I put them into a Tupperware container for storage and we had them for breakfast for several days thereafter. The muffins were very light, fluffy, and moist with excellent flavor. I did think they could use a bit more mango and maybe some other add-ins.

For next time, I would use more white whole wheat flour -- maybe 1 1/2 cups. I'd replace 1/4 cup of the oil with yogurt, decrease the white sugar to 1/2 cup, and increase the chopped mango to 2 1/2 or 3 cups. I wouldn't chop the raisins, and I'd add some coarsely chopped nuts.

Thanks to Kelly and Dorie for this recipe -- I'd never have thought of adding fresh mango to a quick bread or muffin, and it's great!

TWD: Tartest Lemon Tart at last

2009-05-18T23:37:00.000-05:00

After a busy week, I'm finally getting around to showing you the Tartest Lemon Tart and Tartlets for "Tuesdays with Dorie." Many thanks to Barb of Babette Feasts for choosing this recipe!

I love lemon. I love lemon tarts -- one of my favorites is a Shaker Lemon Tart, which uses whole lemons thinly sliced. So when I saw the Tartest Lemon Tart (made with whole lemons) in "Baking: From My Home to Yours," I knew I'd have to try it. In fact, I was planning to make it even if it wasn't chosen for Tuesdays with Dorie. There was already a container of pureed Meyer lemons and sugar in the freezer, just waiting for the right moment...

And then, the heart tartlet pan showed up at T. J. Maxx -- half price. Score!

I made one recipe of Dorie's Tart Dough with almonds, divided it into 12 equal pieces, and chilled them. Then I rolled each one out into a sort of triangular shape and fitted it into the heart molds. (I tried patting the first one into the pan with my fingers, but it came out so lumpy and uneven! Rolling makes for a much more even thickness -- for me, at least.) Then I froze the dough overnight.

Into the oven for pre-baking at 375 degrees F. "Oh, these are so small, I bet I don't have to line them with foil or weight them," I thought. Yeah, right, famous last words! Peeking into the oven a few minutes later, I saw the tart shells slithering down the sides into pools of butter at the bottom. Argh! But I thought fast and managed to rescue them. When the dough was just barely beginning to set, I pushed it back up the sides of the pans with the back of a spoon. It was soft enough to squish around a bit, but just firm enough to stay in place. A little shrunken, but not too bad. And the butter pools miraculously got absorbed as they baked. Phew!

Note to self: next time, try preheating the oven to 425 degrees for a blast of heat to set the dough faster. And definitely line and weight the tartlets. That's going to be a pain. Sigh. Maybe the pan wasn't such a bargain after all.

OK, now for the filling. Most Meyer lemons have thin skins, but the ones I bought were unusually thick-skinned, so I had removed the yellow zest and discarded the white pith. I had used two of them (they're small, and besides, I love lemon) and reduced the sugar to 1 cup (they're less sour than regular lemons, and besides, I love lemon). Also added 1/4 teaspoon of salt, partly because I always add a little salt to sweet things, and partly because salt is good for reducing the perception of bitter flavors. And I had to make a quick last-minute substitution when I discovered we only had 1/3 cup of heavy cream left. I added enough sour cream to bring it up to 1/2 cup, and all was well.

I swear to you, I filled those little tarts right up to the very top of the crust! See how much they sank in the middle? But they didn't overflow -- puffed up nicely while baking, but didn't overflow. They only took about 25 minutes to cook.

And for a final problem -- once we tasted them, we agreed the ratio of filling to crust was way off. Way way off. Almost all you could taste was crust. Granted, the crust is utterly delicious, but we wanted to taste more of the filling, which is also utterly delicious.

As I had a lot of filling left over, I made some more tart crust and made this long rectangular tart as well. Next time I'm just going to make a round or rectangular tart. And there will be a next time -- because I love lemon!

My TWD will be late this week...

2009-05-12T23:37:00.002-05:00

Sorry, folks -- my Tartest Lemon Tartlets are still baking and it's almost midnight on Tuesday night...

Head on over to the "Tuesdays with Dorie" site to find out what our other members have done with this recipe!

TWD: Tiramisu Cake, finally!

2009-05-07T00:35:00.001-05:00

This week's recipe for "Tuesdays with Dorie" was the "Tiramisu Cake," chosen by Megan of "My Baking Adventures." Please check out her blog for the recipe.

This was a half-recipe of cake batter, baked in two 6-inch round pans, and a full recipe of the frosting/filling. (That's the best part of tiramisu!)

The cake batter was very thick, and rose nicely. I may have underbaked it a little -- the edges were only just beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan, and there was no browning at all. But it tested done with a toothpick, and came out nice and moist.

Cutting the tops to level them revealed an unpleasant surprise -- a number of holes, including one massive gap! What happened, I wonder? I followed the recipe exactly (except for halving it, and I weighed everything) and also consulted Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" for good advice and helpful tips on cakes. You know, it seems like I have this problem a lot, especially with very thick batters.

Thinking fast, I crumbled up some of the extra cake top and stuffed it into the larger holes. Good enough.

Above are some of the ingredients for the filling and frosting. Lovely local mascarpone and cream -- man, I love living in Wisconsin!

I'd stocked up on mascarpone a couple months ago when it was on sale, and frozen it. When I started whisking it with sugar and flavorings, the mixture became very runny. No way this was going to make a frosting when combined with whipped cream. It was going to be a sauce! Maybe it was because I froze it? Maybe it's this brand?

Well, that's why there's a package of unflavored gelatin stashed away in a cupboard. I used about 1/2 teaspoon of powdered gelatin, dissolved and warmed, and whisked it in. Then I folded in whipped cream. Still very soft. I chilled it in the refrigerator. Still soft. In went another 1/4 teaspoon gelatin. That wasn't too bad, although I think I should have added more. Next time, I'd do 1 teaspoon.

Finally it was firm enough to fill the cake. I did a double layer of filling with chopped chocolate in between. Yum. Then the cake chilled for a while, got a thin crumb coat of frosting, chilled some more, got the final coat, chilled some more... Finally, a dusting of cocoa, some piped frosting, and chocolate-covered cocoa beans. (By the way, piped frosting really does not want to stick to cocoa. Something to consider for next time.)

Love that thick filling! And the final verdict? The cake was fine, and the filling lovely and light. It was good. Still, I would rather have had my favorite Tiramisu -- the one they serve at The Roman Candle Pizzeria. (They make a great thin-crust Pizza Margherita, too.)

So, what would I change to make this recipe more to our tastes? Well, first, more coffee and more booze. Second, a bit less sugar. Third, more mascarpone. Finally, most likely a more spongey cake to soak up the extra coffee and booze. Hm...may as well just make tiramisu rather than a cake!

Still, many thanks to Megan for choosing this recipe! I got to practice my cake-making, assembling, and decorating skills and ended up with a very good dessert in the bargain.

My husband says he's tired of cake, it's time for pie! Does a lemon tart count as "pie," honey? I hope so, because that's what you're getting next week...

TWD - stay tuned for Tiramisu Cake

2009-05-05T22:34:00.002-05:00

Time has been short this week -- my cake layers are baked, wrapped and waiting in the fridge -- but the TWD Tiramisu cake won't be finished until Wednesday. I have a feeling it's going to be great! Hope you'll come back, and in the meantime, please check out what all the other wonderful "Tuesdays with Dorie" bakers have done.

TWD - no Chocolate Tarts this week

2009-04-28T14:39:00.003-05:00

Sorry, my "Tuesdays with Dorie" friends -- I didn't make the Chocolate Tarts for this week. That Lemon Charlotte (see my last post) ending up taking up all my baking time! Too bad, because I love, love, love chocolate cream pie and was looking forward to trying Dorie's version. You can bet I'll manage to bake it eventually!

In the meantime, please check out what the other TWD bakers did with this recipe!

UPDATE! Jim didn't realize I was supposed to make chocolate cream tarts for TWD this week. Now that he's read this post, the cat is out of the bag. Suddenly I'm hearing all sorts of plaintive comments about my "strange sense of priorities" in putting sometime lemon ahead of something chocolate... So, I have a feeling the chocolate tarts have suddenly been bumped up to high-priority baking. Stay tuned!

Baking With Rose: The Charlotte Challenge - Lemon Charlotte

2009-04-27T18:37:00.001-05:00

Some folks over on the forums of Real Baking With Rose decided to issue a Charlotte Challenge. The challenge was to bake one of the charlotte recipes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Cake Bible." (If you'd like to see the other results, please visit this link. Sorry, no recipes are posted -- you'll have to consult the book.)

I was thinking of making the Ethereal Pear Charlotte, but then -- it turned out organic lemons were on sale at our local food co-op. So, I decided to make an Ethereal Lemon Charlotte instead. Although it turned out more of a "moderately fluffy" half-sized lemon charlotte, it was still good!

The components are: Almond Biscuit Roulade (p. 142-144) and Pierre Hermé's Lemon Cream (from Dorie Greenspan) for the shell, Lemon Cream Illusion (p. 266) for the filling (with Super-Stabilized Whipped Cream, p. 256, added because I messed up the meringue component), Lemon Curd (p. 340-342) for the top, with whipped cream for decoration.

The original Ethereal Pear Charlotte recipe (p. 175-177) calls for a shell made from Biscuit Roulade (a French sponge cake), stuck together with raspberry jam. I went with Almond Biscuit Roulade (p. 142-144), and since this was going in a 6-inch round pan rather than a 9-inch round pan, I just baked one sheet. That was enough with a little left over.

I'm quite pleased with how the roulade turned out -- I've only made it once before. That time it was Chocolate Roulade, and I overbaked it so it was kind of dry and rubbery. Also, I might not have beaten the egg/egg yolk/sugar mixture enough that first time. (This is amazing to watch. I kept beating it with my hand-held power mixer, switching the mixer from hand to hand as I got tired. It just kept getting lighter and lighter, fluffier and fluffier... Eventually it reached a stage where the beater marks were persisting and it formed a very thick, slow ribbon when I raised the beaters. "Patience, Grasshopper," is the key to this process.)

This time, the Biscuit was just right -- moist, fluffy, and springy. I still thought it was rubbery compared to, say, butter cake -- but I suspect that's how it is supposed to be. After all, it is mostly beaten eggs. Sort of a souffle-cake. I found myself gobbling up the trimmings -- always a good sign!

I was thinking of lemon curd for the "glue," but didn't feel like making an extra batch of lemon curd. What's more, there was some luscious lemon cream stashed in the freezer. (Fabulous stuff! Invented by French chef Pierre Hermé. Do try it some time. Here's a link to the recipe, and here are some hints.) So, the lemon cream became the "glue."

Making the charlotte shell is a bit of crafts project -- cutting out 2.5 inch wide strips of Biscuit, layering with the lemon cream, wrapping and freezing...then, next day, cutting the layered strips and fitting them into the spring-form pan. Then, trim and insert the bottom layer, coat it all with a bit more lemon cream (just because!) and refrigerate. Phew!

Now for the filling: I was hesitating between lemon curd lightened with whipped cream, or lemon curd lightened with Italian meringue. The idea of being able to use up the egg whites left over from the curd won out. OK, the plan was: make one recipe of Rose's Lemon Curd (p. 340-342) using only 1/4 cup sugar. Divide it in half and add more sugar (2 Tablespoons) to one batch. Use the less-sweet batch to make a half-recipe of Rose's Lemon Cream Illusion (p. 266), use that for the filling, and then spread the sweeter curd in a thin, smooth layer over the top.

Making the curd went well. I took the time to zest and juice all 10 of my on-sale lemons. The extra juice is now frozen into cubes and stored in the freezer. I mixed the zest with an equal weight of sugar and twice the weight of vodka, and put it into a jar in the fridge. In a few weeks, I will strain out the zest, store it in the freezer (it can still be used for flavoring, just use more), plus I'll have some home-made limoncello!

A couple of changes I made: I whizzed the lemon zest in my mini-food-processor with a little of the sugar so it was really finely ground, and stirred it in after the curd was cooked and strained. I also stirred in about 1 teaspoon of home-made limoncello (my last batch). My last few attempts at lemon curd have been good, but a little runny. This time I just kept cooking and stirring, cooking and stirring, until it got very thick indeed. It still wasn't up to Rose's recommended temperature of 196 degrees -- I've never had the nerve to take it that far. I think it was up to about 185 degrees. Divide, add more sugar to one batch, chill overnight. Phew!

OK, now for the half-recipe of Light Italian Meringue (p. 298-299). I was very diligent about measuring and weighing, getting everything ready, and letting the egg whites come to room temperature. Warm sugar syrup, beat egg whites, boil syrup to 248-250 degrees, immediately plunge my small syrup-pan into some water to stop the cooking -- all good. Slowly beat hot syrup into egg whites -- not so good. You see, I have a hand-held mixer and a round-bottomed copper bowl. The bowl spins around and moves on the counter top. I slowly poured the syrup onto the egg whites at the edges of the bowl, but wasn't able to move the whisk beater to the edge to incorporate it quickly enough. As soon as I realized this, I stopped the mixer, put down the syrup and held the bowl so I could incorporate the syrup. (This is one of those moments when you wish you were once of those multi-armed Hindu goddesses.) But some of the syrup ended up stuck to the sides of the bowl. Not to mention that the syrup remaining in my syrup-pan thickened and had to be reheated. What a pain. Well, the meringue did look very white and smooth, and I continued whipping it until cool -- it looked a bit like marshmallow fluff. But as soon as I started beating in the lemon curd, the meringue deflated drastically. Drat!

I tried letting the mixture cool enough that the gelatin started to set, and whipping again, but it didn't want to whip up. It tasted wonderful, but there wasn't enough volume to fill my Charlotte shell, not by a long shot. So, I whipped up 1/2 cup of heavy cream (stabilized with about 1/4 teaspoon of gelatin, see Rose's Super-Stabilized Whipped Cream, p. 256) and folded that in. Problem solved.

One of these days I am going to master Italian meringue, darn it all! Next time, I will rig up some sort of arrangement to hold the round copper bowl steady as I pour in the syrup (I'm thinking of a flatter bowl, lined with a terry towel).

After chilling the filling for about 2 hours, I pulled out the refrigerated lemon curd reserved for the topping. It was too thick to spread, but some careful microwaving and stirring thinned it down a bit. (You want it thick but pourable.) Then, back into the fridge for the final chill. The charlotte looked a bit naked, and the filling didn't come all the way up to the top -- so on went some whipped cream. I didn't bother trying to do a really neat piping job, but even a sloppy job makes it look much nicer!

Yum! As you can see, we got impatient to eat dessert and didn't let it chill long enough to set the lemon curd. I kind of like the lemon waterfall effect...

This is a lovely and tasty dessert, but it's very time-consuming, what with preparing and assembling all the different components. I'm not likely to do it again for "everyday" but I definitely would consider a full-size version for a special occasion! And this time was a great learning experience.

TWD: Chocolate Bread Pudding

2009-04-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

Welcome to another chocolate-y week with "Tuesdays with Dorie!" This weeks recipe is "Four-Star Chocolate Bread Pudding" chosen by Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle. Thank you, Lauren! Bread pudding is a new experience for me.

I wasn't sure if we'd like this dessert, so I made just a quarter of the recipe and baked it in a small casserole dish. How do you measure 3/4 of an egg? I used my scale. 1 large egg (out of the shell) should weight 50 grams, so 3/4 of that is 37.5 grams. I weighed the single egg yolk, too, because I've been hearing that egg yolks are getting smaller. No kidding! Granted, it came from a medium rather than large egg, but my wimpy yolk measured just 13 grams instead of the 18.6 grams that Rose Levy Beranbaum specifies for a large egg yolk. I decided to make up the difference with some of the extra whole egg. It seemed to work OK.

I couldn't get all of the chocolate to melt into the custard. There were tiny specks of chocolate in my custard even after I put it back over the heat and whisked like crazy. I have no idea why that happened. Eventually I just gave up and poured it over the bread. If I try this again, I'm going to melt the chocolate before mixing it into the custard mixture.

Speaking of the bread, I made my own! There isn't much of a selection of white bread at our food co-op, and Jim would give me all sorts of trouble if I brought home a loaf of supermarket white bread (gasp! the horror!) After browsing through some recipes, I decided against a brioche or challah. They sounded like a lot of work and contained a whole lot of eggs. I settled on a sandwich loaf recipe that had milk, one egg, 2 tablespoons of butter, and two tablespoons of sugar in one loaf. And to make it a bit healthier, one-third of the flour was white whole wheat flour. Jim still said it was "way too white-bread," and I thought it was a bit too sweet, but it worked just great for the pudding!

At first I thought I was going to have too much custard, and planned to baked the extra in a small custard cup. But the bread puffed up like crazy after soaking and I ended up needing all of the custard just to cover it. Oh yes, I put in some dried cherries, and sprinkled some Amaretti crumbs over the top just before baking.

Here it is afer baking and cooling. It took about 35-40 minutes to bake, even though I was only making a quarter of the recipe.

Here's what the inside looks like. The chocolate didn't soak all the way into the bread. And the cherries all sank to the bottom even though I had quite deliberately put them in the middle of the two layers of bread cubes. Not really the most elegant of desserts -- but then, it's not supposed to be.

The verdict? It tasted fine, but I doubt I'll make it again. To quote Jim again, "I can think of lots of better ways to use chocolate." (Like last week's cake, for example.) Still, it was fun to try -- I've never made bread pudding before. I might do another one someday, but probably not with chocolate. In fact, I'm thinking maybe a savory one would be good -- with some shaved ham, onions, cheese, and some sort of vegetable -- sort of a quiche without the crust.

TWD: Chocolate Amaretti Torte

2009-04-14T19:14:00.000-05:00

For this week's "Tuesdays with Dorie," Holly of Phe/MOM/enon chose the Chocolate Amaretti Torte. Great choice, Holly!

This recipe calls for Amaretti, which are Italian macaroon cookies made with almonds, egg whites, and sugar. (My husband keeps confusing them with Amaretto, the Italian almond liqueur. No, sweetie, not quite the same thing.) I'm sure I could have found them somewhere in Madison, but in the interest of using up extra egg whites, I made my own instead. Of course, that raises the question of how many to use. Many thanks to Amanda, who had already contacted Dorie Greenspan with the same question, and to Marthe who posted the answer on the "P&Q" (Problems and Questions). (You need 2.75 ounces, which turned out to be exactly 8 of my cookies.)

I used whole blanched almonds and a mixture of 77% Chocolove and 54% Callebaut chocolates for the cake, adding a pinch of salt. It was a little hard to be sure when the cake was done -- the knife kept coming out "goopy" rather than the "streaky" that Dorie says it should be. After several rounds of "just one more minute," I took it out, because with chocolate cakes it's always better to err on the side of underbaked. It turned out just right! Look at the lovely moist crumb in the picture above!

For the ganache glaze, I used a 3.5 ounce bar of Valrhona Noir Amer (71%) eked out with some more Callebaut 54%. It took two "pourings" to cover the cake. I scraped up the drippings from the first pour and put them through a small coarse sieve to remove any crumbs. Doesn't the surface look lovely and mirror-like? (There were a few small bubbles, but I popped them with the tip of a toothpick while the glaze was still runny.)

The bottom line? It was delicious!

Using up egg whites: Amaretti made with almond paste

2009-04-13T15:15:00.000-05:00

Three out of four of this month's Tuesdays with Dorie recipes leave you with left-over egg whites. Argh! I already have three one-cup containers of frozen egg whites in storage! It's time to start using up the egg whites.

For my first try, I decided to make some home-made Amaretti cookies. As they were going to be part of the Chocolate Amaretti Torte for Tuesdays with Dorie, I wanted to make them dry and crunchy, so I put them back into the warm oven to dry out after baking them. This worked very well. They ended up like dry, crunchy rocks with just a faint trace of "chew" at the center. My husband was disappointed -- he wanted to eat some of them! Next time I will save some for eating and only dry out part of the batch.

There are a lot of Amaretti recipes out there on the Web. I based my version on these three, but reduced the sugar a lot.
From Joy of Baking: http://www.joyofbaking.com/AmarettiCookies.html
From MyRecipes: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1545760
From Solo Foods: http://solofoods.com/Almond_Macaroons.aspx

Recipe and directions:

1 8-ounce can (227 gm) almond paste (I used Solo brand)
1/2 cup (100 gm) granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 large egg whites (60 gm)
more granulated sugar for sprinkling

Place almond paste into food processor fitted with metal blade. Pulse to break up the paste until it looks like coarse crumbs. Add sugar and salt and pulse until it looks like fine crumbs. With processor running, add egg whites in 4 additions. The mixture may form a ball at first, but once you've added all the egg whites, it should become softer. Process another minute or two. It should be a smooth, soft paste.

Scrape into a pastry bag fitted with 1/2-inch round tip (or smaller for minis) or with a coupler. Put some plastic wrap over the open tip of the bag, fold down the top of the bag, and refrigerate for 2 hours or so to let the sugar finish dissolving.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone sheets. Preheat oven to 325 F. Pipe into small balls about 1 inch across. (I ended up with 27 of them. Your results may vary.) Moisten your fingers with cool water and gently flatten the pointed tops. Sprinkle generously with granulated sugar.

Bake for about 20-22 minutes, until cracked and dry on the tops, golden brown around edges, and beginning to be golden on top. Let cool for about 10 minutes, still on pans. Keep oven door closed but turn off heat.

If you want to save some soft, chewy cookies for eating, remove as many as you want and place on racks. Place the remainder back in oven and prop oven door slightly open. Let sit for about 30 minutes or more in warm oven to finish drying out.

Peel them off the silicone sheet. If you used parchment and they don't want to come off, dampen back of parchment slightly and wait a minute or two.

TWD: Banana Cream Pie

2009-04-07T20:57:00.000-05:00

This week's recipe for "Tuesdays with Dorie" was a Banana Cream Pie, chosen by Amy of Sing For Your Supper. You can find the recipe on her blog.

As you can see, mine were more like pie- or tart-lets. I made half a recipe of Dorie's Sweet Tart Dough and pressed it into some standard-size muffin tins. I ended up with enough for three cups plus a little left over (it got baked and eaten as a cookie-delicious!)

But after they were frozen and baked, the dough puffed up a lot. Hardly any room for the filling! Live and learn. Notes for next time: try dividing the tart dough into 4 pieces (for a half-recipe), rolling each one out, trimming to size and then placing in muffin tins. Also, try a trick I just read about in Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" -- sandwich the dough between two pans and bake it upside down until firm -- then turn right-side up, remove the top pan and finish baking.

Oh well, onwards...I made one-third of the recipe for the pastry cream filling. One change--I used potato starch instead of cornstarch, just because I like it for pie fillings and was curious to see how it worked for pastry cream. The cream thickened up really fast! But a lot of other folks said that, too, so I don't think it was the potato starch. I turned down the heat and whisked it for a bit longer (with difficulty), as I was worried about cooking the eggs enough to kill bacteria. Turns out this was a good thing, although not for that reason. In "Bakewise," it says that you need to heat a starch-thickened custard to 180 F to deactivate an enzyme in the egg yolks. Otherwise your custard (or pastry cream) will thin out and get soupy after standing.

The pastry cream seemed so thick that I whisked in a little cream. It was stored in the fridge for a couple of days. It did seem a bit thin when I took it out. Once again, live and learn.

With those thick tart shells, there was only room for about three slices of banana and a few spoonfuls of pastry cream. Lots of room for the whipped cream on top, though!

The verdict? Well, the ratio of crust to filling was way off, of course. I ended up spooning on more filling on the side. The crust was wonderfully crisp, tender, and buttery. The brown-sugar-and-cinnamon pastry cream was the best part of the whole thing -- I wanted to take a bath in it! Luscious! The touch of tartness from the sour cream in the whipped cream rounded the tastes off nicely.

My husband, on the other hand, said it was "boring" and wanted to know when we were going to have something chocolate. Guess what, honey, you're in luck for the next three weeks at least!

Leftovers -- whipped cream and pastry cream with banana.

Conclusions:
1) I really, really loved the pastry cream. I'd like to use it for a Tropical Cream Pie or Trifle involving bananas, pineapple, coconut and rum....mmmmm.
2) I'm going to have to give the library's copy of "Bakewise" back soon, so my very own copy will soon be on its way -- along with "Angel: After the Fall, Volume 3." Yes, I have eclectic tastes.

TWD: Coconut Butter Thins

2009-03-31T15:32:00.000-05:00

Mmmm, I *love* shortbread cookies! Many thanks to Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch for choosing the Coconut Butter Thins from page 145 of "Baking: from My Home to Yours" for this week's "Tuesday with Dorie" project.

These delicious little cookies are a shortbread flavored with lime zest, shredded coconut, chopped nuts and a pinch of coriander. For the recipe, please visit Jayne's blog. (Take a look at some of her other recipes, too, not to mention her extremely photogenic--and entertaining--children and pets. Jayne has a real gift for finding and conveying the funny, touching, fascinating moments in everyday life.)

Back to the cookies--I substituted roasted, salted cashews for the macadamia nuts. (Macadamia nuts are so pricey!) Also I used unsweetened coconut and reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup. (We're not fans of really sweet things.) Other than that, I stayed with the recipe.

Dorie's suggestion for rolling and chilling the dough in a gallon zip-top bag is a great one! Of course, being the ultra-recycling type, I used a bag that had already been used several times, so I wouldn't have to feel quite so bad about cutting it up and throwing it away.(I am not quite as frugal as my grandmothers were, though. They saved used string. I just cut it up and compost it!)

Something about Dorie's math is a bit off when it comes to her instructions for cutting out the cookies, though. She says you have a 9-by-10 1/2 inch rectangle of dough and you cut it into 1 1/2 inch squares to get 32 squares. By my calculations, you have to cut into 6 pieces along the 9-inch side, and 7 pieces along the 10 1/2 inch side in order to get 1 1/2 inch squares. That's 42 cookies. Yes, I know, picky picky. Maybe I should be a proofreader. Anyway, I ended up with an 8-by-10 inch rectangle and cut it into 6 pieces by 8 pieces. There wasn't room on my baking sheets to place them the full 2 inches apart, so I froze them for about 30 minutes before baking. It seemed to work -- they spread a little, but not enough to run into each other.

I wasn't quite sure how to tell when they were done. I took them out after 20 minutes, but a test nibble revealed the centers were still pretty soft. A few more minutes firmed them up nicely, without browning them. For next time, I'd bake them until they are firm on the edges and almost completely firm in the center, but still pale. If they "give" in the center, they're not quite done.

I thought the lime flavor was just a little more subtle than I'd like, and I couldn't taste the coriander at all. The sweetness level was just right for our tastes. The coconut and nuts were also subtle flavors but just right -- and gave the cookies a nice texture. Yum, yum!

Like most shortbread cookies, these improve with a few days of aging--though you may have trouble keeping them around long enough to tell. Ours are vanishing fast!

TWD: Blueberry Crumb Cake

2009-03-31T00:40:00.000-05:00

OK, yes, I know this was last week's "Tuesdays with Dorie" recipe. Sorry, lots of late posts this month. But I promise the next one will be on time. (I can do that because it's already finished and waiting to post!)

For March 24, our challenge was to bake the "Blueberry Crumb Cake," chosen by Sihan of "Walking in the Rain." (Her blog has previously been known as "Befuddlement" and "Fundamentally Flawed" -- I like the movement towards a more positive name. Hope that reflects a good trend in your life, Sihan!)

This recipe made a really thick cake batter -- it was like a cross between a batter and a dough. I used two cups of frozen wild blueberries (8 ounces by weight) which did turn the batter a little bit purple. (No problem as far as I'm concerned.) The cake rose beautifully in the oven and came out tall and fluffy. Some folks said theirs was dry, but mine wasn't. It took a bit longer to bake than the book said, and I got a couple of small pools of butter on top when the topping melted. They ended up making two sunken, somewhat mushy spots underneath.

See the sunken spot in the center?

Overall, this was good, but too sweet for our tastes. Jim and I are both way on the "not sweet" side of the bell curve of taste preferences. I mostly end up reducing the sugar in recipes, but I was nervous about doing it for a cake recipe. They can be tricky. Also, the blueberries had been in the freezer too long and weren't all that flavorful anymore. My bad. I also thought I would have liked more of them.

I'd like to play around with this recipe -- reducing the sugar in the cake, adding more berries, and maybe adjusting the amount of butter in the topping. I liked the way the heavy batter turned into a light and tender cake! And we have lots of frozen home-grown black raspberries -- I bet they'd be great in this cake. (Yes, that will mean more purple batter. Purple is good!)

TWD Late Report: Orange-Star Anise Cup Custard

2009-03-22T19:03:00.001-05:00

Hi folks, this is a late post about the "Tuesdays with Dorie" choice of the week for March 10, 2009 -- the Lemon Cup Custards, chosen by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles. Bridget, I want to thank you for choosing this recipe, especially since it got a number of negative comments on the P&Q section. While it isn't going to end up on my list of all-time Dorie favorites, it was tasty, and I was very glad to have the chance to try this recipe and find out more about making custard!

I went for the Orange-Star Anise flavoring variation. (Actually, it was a tangelo, not an orange. Close enough.) I replaced 2 tablespoons of the milk with the same amount of heavy cream, for extra richness. (We love our butterfat!) I cut the recipe in half but left the zest, star anise, and orange extract amounts the same, based on some of the reports in the P&Q section.

I strained out the tangelo zest as per instructions, but it looked so pretty and flavorful that I changed my mind and stirred it back in again! The zest ended up all sinking down to the bottom of the custards. This would have been kind of a nice effect for a flan, or a custard that was going to be unmolded and served upside down, but I didn't like it as well for a plain cup custard. Tasted fine, though. Live and learn!

I had 4 smaller custard cups to bake for my half-recipe, and they ended up taking only about 25-30 minutes until they were just a bit jiggly. At this point I made a mistake -- I took them out of the oven, but left them in the water bath to cool for about 15 more minutes. By the time I took them out, they were firm. The final texture was OK, but a bit more firm than I would have liked.

The flavoring was pretty subtle despite having increased the amount of flavorings. And yes, it was a bit eggy, but hey, this is custard! The texture was good and would have been perfect if I hadn't left them in the water bath. Adding a flavorful topping made them really, really good. I used home-canned mandarin orange segments in syrup and brandy. Yummy, yummy, yummy!

I'm sure the custards would have been even better if I hadn't overcooked them. However, I don't think this is going to become my go-to baked custard recipe. Actually, I don't have a go-to baked custard recipe. Any suggestions? I think we want something more rich, creamy, decadent and flavorful. Still, I'm grateful for the experience and the chance to find out more about baked custards.

TWD: French Lemon Yogurt Cake, twice

2009-03-22T18:03:00.001-05:00

This week's choice for "Tuesdays with Dorie" was the French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze, chosen by Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction. (Liliana, you're not the only one around here with a cookbook addiction!) You can find the recipe on Liliana's blog, and there are also variations posted on Epicurious and Serious Eats. And, of course, it's in the cookbook we all bake from -- "Baking: From My Home to Yours," by Dorie Greenspan.

I had a feeling I was going to like this cake, so I actually made it twice. The first time was a lemon version, with all flour (no almond meal). I used bleached flour and made cupcakes. The only other adjustment was to reduce the baking powder to 1 3/4 teaspoons, as I have read that too much baking powder can make for flat cupcakes. The recipe made 12 lovely, nicely domed cupcakes with a subtle lemon/vanilla flavor. (Baking time was about 20 minutes.) They just cried out for an intensely lemony filling and frosting!

I went with the Lemon Cream on page 461 of "Baking" -- which is actually the same as the filling for the Most Extraordinary Lemon Cream Tart on page 331-333. This was a past TWD pick, chosen by Mary of Starting From Scratch. Her blog seems to have been discontinued, but you can find the recipe on Serious Eats, and read some extra hints from Dorie on her own Web site.

Wow! This stuff really is extraordinary! (I really wanted to lick out the blender jar--ended up resorting to spatula and fingers to reach down to the bottom.) The cream has a lovely soft texture and intense tart-sweet-creamy-lemony flavor. (I did modify the recipe very slightly by adding 2 teaspoons of home-made lemon extract. It's not nearly as intense as store-bought extract--I made it by steeping grated lemon zest in vodka for about 6 weeks, then straining out the zest.) The cream's texture is really a bit too soft and runny for a good frosting -- it's sort of halfway between a frosting and a sauce. But who cares when it tastes that good!

My second cake was the Riviera variation with ground almonds (blanched and lightly toasted,then ground), strained yogurt (amazing how much water drained out!), olive oil, and the zest from a Meyer lemon. I thought the cupcakes were just a bit on the sweet side, so I reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup. That was perfect! I took two teaspoons of dried Herbes de Provence from Penzeys, ground it up fine in the coffee grinder I use as a spice grinder, steeped it for 30 minutes or so in warm olive oil, then strained the herbs out.

When I made the cupcakes, I found it was a bit difficult to stir in the oil at the end. So for the loaf, I just used the standard quick-bread or "muffin method" (as Alton Brown calls it). I mixed together all the dry ingredients except the flour & zest. In another bowl, I rubbed the zest into the sugar, then beat in all the wet ingredients -- eggs, yogurt, vanilla, oil. Then I made a well in the dry ingredients, dumped in the wet ingredients, and mixed gently until just combined. It seemed to work just as well and was easier as far as I'm concerned!

Since the loaf was baked in a Pyrex pan, I reduced the oven heat to 325 F, but even so, the cake took less time to bake than Dorie said. (I may have to check my oven temperature.) It was very brown on the outside, but tasted fine, and the crust and was not hard or tough.

As for topping, I'm pretty sure the local Woodman's store carries lemon marmalade, but I didn't have time for a shopping run. So I brushed the cake with a syrup made from Meyer lemon juice and sugar, plus some home-made Meyer lemon extract. Wonderful! My husband liked this version the best, but I preferred the cupcakes. We're both happy!

Visit to Mexico: Chapala

2009-03-04T15:15:00.001-06:00

Hello folks! Here are some pictures from our visit to Mexico. Today I'll show you the town of Chapala, the largest town on the shores of Lake Chapala.

Lake Chapala is located south of Guadalajara, Mexico. It's a large lake, about 50 miles long but not very wide, and quite shallow in most parts. It's up on the mountainous central plateau of Mexico, so the altitude is about 5000 feet above sea level.

View Larger Map

How did we come to be visiting this part of Mexico? (Aside from the obvious -- we live in Wisconsin, of course we jumped at the chance to go south for 10 days!) Well, Jim's parents retired down here in 1982. Jim's dad was from Wisconsin, his mom was born in Canada. After they retired, they became "snowbirds" and traveled south for the winter, checking out various places. Eventually they decided to settle permanently on the north shore of Lake Chapala. Jim's dad died several years ago, and his mother has now moved into a nice assisted living place in the same area. (She said there was no way in **** she was moving back to Wisconsin!) So, we go down once a year or so to check up on her and have a nice vacation.

I'll post some more information about this area later on. It has long been a haven for expatriates and retirees, and has a large English-speaking population.

In the meantime, here are pictures from Chapala:

Looking northwest from the boat pier.

And northeast from the boat pier. There's a lovely park along the lakefront here, although the walkways were all torn up for renovation at the time we were there.

Looking east from the boat pier. There are a number of restaurants and cafes on the pier in left part of this picture. The white birds (pelicans, I think) are all standing in a particularly shallow part of the lake. Maybe it's a sort of bird cafe.

An egret -- there were lots of them around, too. The boat pier is in the background.

Then we walked a few blocks to the town plaza. I wish I'd taken a picture of the plaza -- all the towns in this area have one. But I didn't. Here's some of what we saw along the way.

A typical storefront. Small, brightly painted, and open to the street. This store sells office and school supplies. Quite a difference from Office Depot, no?

A store selling fruit and vegetables. The young lady is wearing the typical clothing of teenage girls and young women -- jeans and a tight and/or skimpy shirt. Sounds familiar, right? (Older ladies seem to go for slacks and a less revealing shirt.) Plus the smock, which is typical work-wear for women of all ages.

Chapala also has an indoor market. Here's one of the stalls. I recognized a lot of the fruit here -- but there were some things I'd never seen before.

This stall sells smoothies and desserts. Very tempting, but we weren't hungry.

There was a carneceria (meat-selling) stall just across from this one. Wish I'd taken a picture. Or maybe not -- it might have grossed out the vegetarians.

Jim in front of another stall in the indoor market.

That's all for now, folks!

TWD: Chocolate Armagnac Cake

2009-03-03T23:15:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone! We had a great trip to Mexico (more posts and pictures to follow). Now I'm back and into baking for "Tuesdays with Dorie" again.

This week's assignment was "Chocolate Armagnac Cake," chosen by LyB of And then I do the dishes. Wow! Seven ounces of chocolate, ground pecans, prunes flambéd in fancy brandy, almost no flour, and three more ounces of chocolate in the glaze. This is the sort of dessert I love!

For the recipe, check out LyB's post. Or buy Dorie Greenspan's great cookbook, "Baking: From My Home to Yours."

What I did: used half almonds and half pecans because I had some ground-up almonds left over from January's French Pear Tart. Used mostly Scharffenberger 70% chocolate with a bit of Callebaut bittersweet when the Scharfenberger ran out. Used nice organic prunes and a mixture of good cognac and not-too-expensive brandy. Other than that, this is one recipe where I just followed the directions! A couple of tips: a pair of kitchen scissors works wonderfully for cutting up the prunes. Snip, snip, snip -- if the shears get sticky just wipe them with a damp cloth. Much easier than chopping with a knife. And, if there are any lumps at all in the confectioners' sugar for the glaze, be sure to sift it after measuring and before using.

whipping egg whites in the lovely copper bowl that my sweetie found in a second-hand store

My cake was definitely done after 30 minutes in the oven. In fact, I was worried that I might have overbaked it a bit, but tasting it later proved it was just right! My only complaint was that I couldn't really taste the brandy.

I can see making this again with different combinations of ground nuts, dried fruit and booze. Raisins and whisky -- candied orange peel and Grand Marnier -- dried cherries and brandy or rum -- delicious!

Visit to Mexico 1: Flowers

2009-02-21T16:07:00.000-06:00

Some lovely flowers from the Lake Chapala region of Mexico, where Jim and I are staying:

Bouganvillia (you see it everywhere here)

Bouganvillia close up

unknown (isn't it lovely, though?)

Hibiscus

flower of a tree (I don't know its name)

Bird of Paradise

a flowering vine

TWD: Devils Food White Out Cake

2009-02-17T07:00:00.008-06:00

This week, the "Tuesdays with Dorie" crew are baking the "cover cake" -- Devil's Food White-Out Cake, featured on the cover of "Baking: From My Home to Yours" by Dorie Greenspan. Many thanks to Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater for choosing this! You can find the recipe on her blog, or on National Public Radio's website.

With the goal of not expanding our waistlines, I made a half-recipe and baked it in two 6-inch round cake pans. The batter wasn't very deep when I poured it into the pans, and even though it rose nicely, the resulting cake layers weren't very thick. Next time, I'd use two-thirds of the recipe for this size of pan.

As I was planning a coffee-flavored frosting, I substituted brewed coffee for both the buttermilk and the water in the recipe. I also added some instant espresso powder (dissolved in the coffee), and added some dried buttermilk powder to the dry ingredients. I used bleached all-purpose flour (4.8 ounces to a cup) and a mixture of half Dutch-processed cocoa and half natural cocoa (3 ounces to a cup).

Jim and I don't like meringue. And we don't like sweet frostings. And we live in Wisconsin and do love our dairy products, so a whipped cream frosting sounded like just the ticket! I combined Dorie's recipe for White Chocolate Whipped Cream on page 458 of "Baking," and Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe for Super-Stabilized Whipped Cream on page 256 of "The Cake Bible," and added coffee and Kahlua for flavoring. Here's my recipe:

Coffee-Kahlua-White Chocolate Whipped Cream for a 3-layer 6-inch round cake

2 cups heavy cream, cold
4 ounces good-quality white chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons water
4 teaspoons instant espresso powder
1 1/8 teaspoon unflavored powdered gelatin
3 tablespoons Kahlua

Place the white chocolate and 6 tablespoons of the cream in a heatproof bowl and set over hot water. Stir frequently until chocolate melts and mixture is smooth. Do not overheat. Remove from heat and let cool.
Mix water and espresso powder until there are no lumps. Sprinkle gelatin over the top and let sit for 5 minutes until gelatin swells and starts to dissolve. Set over the hot water and stir until gelatin dissolves and mixture is warm. Stir into white chocolate mixture.
Once the white chocolate mixture is fairly cool, stir in Kahlua. Wait until mixture is room temperature before beating cream.
In chilled bowl with chilled whisk or beaters, beat the cream just until the marks of the beaters remain on top. Beat in the white chocolate mixture in a steady stream. Continue beating until mixture forms firm peaks. Place in refrigerator to chill for a little while.

Split the cake layers as in the recipe. Brush each one lightly with Kahlua (for my smaller cakes, it took about 1 teaspoon per layer). Fill generously with the whipped cream, frost sides and top lightly, and place in refrigerator to chill and set.

Add more frosting to sides and top (you may have a little left over--I had just enough to fill two small custard cups) and decorate with cake crumbs as per recipe. (My cake crumbs were very moist, so I took a tip from Lauren on the Problems & Questions page and toasted them lightly. Great idea!)

The contrasts of dense cake, crunchy crumbs, crunchy chopped chocolate bits in the cake, and smooth creamy frosting were wonderful!

By the time this is posted, we'll be on an airplane headed for Mexico! So I probably won't be able to do next week's recipe. I hope to post some pictures from our trip. In the meantime, please check out everyone else's cakes -- I bet they're fabulous!

TWD Rewind: Tall and Creamy Cheescake

2009-02-15T22:02:00.000-06:00

This was the "Tuesdays with Dorie" recipe of the week for January 30, 2008. I didn't get around to making it then, but really wanted to try it -- especially after browsing through all the luscious pictures posted by the other TWD bakers!

It was even better than the pictures!

Since we really don't need the gazillion calories in a whole cheesecake, I made a half recipe. The original recipe calls for a 9-inch springform, so what I would need is a 9 x 0.707 inch pan. Well, I don't have a 6.363 inch round pan, so I decided to round up to a 7-inch pan. That was a good choice, as it turns out -- the batter filled the pan almost to the top. No way would it have fit into a 6-inch pan.

I followed the recipe pretty much as written, making a lime-flavored version and using a graham-cracker crust. I used mostly regular cream cheese with a little Neufchatel cheese (lower-fat) and a mixture of about one part sour cream to two parts heavy cream. I wrapped the bottom of the pan in one layer of extra-heavy-duty foil. My, this is a "leisure-loving" cheesecake! Even with half a recipe, it took almost an hour and a half to bake in its water bath -- then it lolled around for another hour in its little "spa" in the oven, then it chilled out overnight in the fridge. Well worth waiting for, though!

Mine didn't get all that brown on the top. It didn't crack while baking, but split a bit while cooling. No water leaked in through the extra-heavy foil, but my graham cracker crust was still kind of soggy. I think it soaked up water from the cheesecake batter itself. Maybe I'll try something different next time. Rose Levy Beranbaum suggests pressing the crumbs onto the bottom and sides of the cheesecake after baking, but that sounds just too fussy (and also difficult) for me.

Perhaps I should make a specialty of "bare-bottomed" cheesecake. That's especially appropriate since our very small town used to be chiefly known for the (in)famous nude beach located some miles north of town. I'll call it the "Mazo Beach Bare-bottomed Cheesecake!"

Mazomanie is moving up in the world, though. Recently we were named one of the "Ten Coolest Small Towns in America" by Budget Travel magazine. Yay for us!

In the meantime, we still have a stash of frozen cheesecake to get us through the winter. (I'm pleased to report that this cheesecake freezes beautifully.)

TWD: Sorry, no Floating Islands here

2009-02-11T22:39:00.004-06:00

Sorry folks, I decided not to make this week's recipe for "Tuesdays with Dorie," the Floating Islands.

You see, my husband and I share a dislike of meringue. We both agree that it is way too sweet, doesn't taste like much of anything other than sugar, and is basically just boring. I must admit, the processes of making the meringue and the sauce and the caramel all sounded quite fascinating...but there was no-one around to eat the results! If I ever find a friend or family member who's a meringue fan, I may try this. And I really hope we have some other chance to make the creme anglaise sauce...

I'll be posting a rewind of the Tall and Creamy Cheesecake very soon, and can't wait to get started on next week's White-out Cake! (Although, given our dislike of meringue, I may make a different frosting. I'm thinking whipped cream flavored with coffee and Kahlua, stabilized with white chocolate and gelatin. It'll be a brown-out cake instead!)

Meanwhile, please check out all the other TWD blogs for some fabulous Floating Islands.

TWD Rewind: Triple Gingerbread Cake (sans Chocolate)

2009-02-06T00:12:00.001-06:00

For the week of January 27, 2009, the "Tuesdays with Dorie" recipe was "Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread." Somehow I just wasn't feeling enthusiasm for this recipe. I sat myself down and thought about it for a while, and realized -- it's the chocolate. I just didn't care for the idea of gingerbread and chocolate together. (Don't get me wrong, I suspect it's a great combination, it's just that my taste buds were somehow not in the mood.) Now, plain gingerbread, with three kinds of ginger, and maybe a cream cheese frosting on top -- that sounded just right!

So, a little late, I made "Triple-Ginger Gingerbread Cake with White Chocolate-Cream Cheese Frosting" instead. We've been a bit overloaded on sweets lately, so I made 2/3 of the recipe, but baked it in the same size pan (9-inch square) for a thinner cake. I went with bleached all-purpose flour, as I've been reading that bleached flour is better for cakes. Two-thirds of the amount of butter turned out to be an awkward amount -- I rounded up to 8 tablespoons. Then I decided to use 6 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of oil instead, for a moister cake, which worked well. In the midst of measuring everything out, I discovered we were out of regular molasses and only had blackstrap molasses, which has a very strong flavor. Yikes! I made a quick substitution of half blackstrap molasses and half Lyle's golden syrup. That worked too!

It was hard to figure out how much fresh ginger to use -- I grated mine with my beloved Microplane grater, which turned it into a dense paste rather than a fluffy mince. I used about a tablespoon, I think -- 18 grams. With no stem ginger in syrup on hand, I turned to delicious Australian crystallized ginger instead.

The cake baked up wonderfully moist and springy! And the icing was already in the freezer -- leftover white chocolate-cream cheese icing that I made for the TWD Chocolate Cupcakes for Halloween. (Having a big freezer in the basement is so great...) All it needed was a splash of rum and some finely chopped crystallized ginger.

This is excellent gingerbread, although next time I'd add more ground ginger and crystallized ginger. Spicy gingerbread is what I like!

Thanks to Heather of Sherry Trifle for choosing this recipe! My apologies for doubting you and Dorie -- it was a great choice. (You can also find the recipe here as well.)

Home-made Crackers!

2009-02-03T21:26:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine at work is having to eat a very limited diet for a while, due to recent surgery on her small intestine. She told me she was getting really bored with crackers! That inspired me to try making some home-made ones. So far, I've done two batches of graham crackers, two of cracked wheat crackers, and one batch of herbed wheat crackers. They're fun!

Graham Crackers

Here are my hints for crackers, based on my experiences so far:
1) Try to roll them as evenly as possible, so they bake evenly. Also, be sure they're very thin, or they will end up soft and doughy on the inside, not crisp and "crackery."
2) You definitely don't want to underbake crackers, as that will also make them soft and doughy. On the other hand, if they are deeply browned all over they don't taste as good. You want to aim for brown edges and golden in the center.
3) You'll have to hover over them and watch carefully towards the end of baking. It will help to have a spatula and small pan or rack ready, so you can scoop off the ones that have gotten done a little early and push the rest of them back into the oven to finish up.

The graham crackers were from the recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. They do have a graham cracker recipe posted on their Web site, but it's not the same one. The one from the book has a higher ratio of whole wheat to white flour, butter instead of oil, confectioners' sugar instead of plain sugar, and no egg.

The Best Graham Crackers, from “The King Arthur Cookie Companion,” p. 332-333

1/2 c. (2 oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 c. (7 7/8 oz.) whole wheat flour
3/4 c. (3 oz.) confectioners’ sugar (I reduced this to 2 oz. the second time, which we preferred)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon (optional) (I reduced this to 1/2 tsp.)
1/2 c. (4 oz.) unsalted butter, cold, cut into chunks
2 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. vanilla extract (not in original recipe, I added it)
2 Tbsp. cold milk (not skim), or more as needed

* Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cut out two sheets of parchment paper as big as your baking sheets.
* In small bowl, combine honey, vanilla, and milk, stirring until honey dissolves. In bowl of food processor, process together flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stop processor, add butter chunks, and pulse them in until mixture is crumbly and looks like coarse corn meal. (You do not want any large pieces--this is not pie crust.)
* Gradually pour milk/honey mixture through feed tube and process until mixture mostly comes together. Remove bowl from food processor, toss mixture with fork and gradually add more milk if needed. It should come together and not be dry, but not sticky either. (Note: the King Arthur recipe calls for cutting the butter in by hand, but I love to use my food processor!)
* Turn dough onto floured surface and fold it over gently a few times, until smooth. Divide into two pieces. You may wrap and chill the dough at this point, if you wish, but it is not necessary. (You can also freeze it for future use.)
* Work with half the dough at a time, keeping the remaining half covered. Lay one of the pieces of parchment paper out on your work surface, and flour very lightly. Roll out dough into a rectangle a little bigger than 10 by 14 inches. Trim edges evenly and prick all over with fork or dough docker. Use pizza wheel to cut dough into rectangles. (They recommend 16 rectangles, 4 strips x 4 strips, but I did more like 4 x 8 for smaller crackers.) Pick up the parchment and transfer to baking sheet. There is no need to separate the crackers from each other.
* Bake for about 15 minutes, until just browning around the edges and medium gold color in center. Remove from heat and let cool 8 to 10 minutes on pan, until just barely warm. The second time I made these, I used the convection bake setting at about 315 degrees. They may not take quite as long to bake that way.
* Break crackers apart along scored lines and cool completely on rack.

I made these twice, one time with regular whole wheat flour and buckwheat honey, one time with white whole wheat flour and barley malt syrup. They were great! My friend at work really liked them. So did my husband -- he promptly pulled out a jar of peanut butter and went to town. (That's why I had to make a second batch!)

My husband then said, "Could you make those Stoned Wheat Thins at home?" We go through a lot of them, so it seemed worth a try. After reading the ingredients and looking through cookbooks, I modified the Soda Cracker recipe from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Bread. (If you like to make bread, you really must get this book, by the way. More recipes than you'll get through in a lifetime -- unless you bake bread as often as Mr. Clayton!)

rolling out the Bulgur Wheat Crackers

Bulgur Wheat Crackers adapted from Plain Soda Crackers, p. 694-697, Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads

1/4 c. bulgur wheat (1.4 oz / 40 gm), pulsed in mini food processor to break up the largest bits
2 Tbsp. solid vegetable shortening
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. malt syrup
3/4 c. boiling water
1/4 c. white whole wheat flour (1.25 oz / 35 gm)
3/4 c. unbleached all-purpose flour (3.75 oz / 106 gm)
1 1/2 tsp. instant dry yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 c. (2.5 oz / 71 gm) all-purpose flour, or more as needed to make dough
more flour as needed for kneading and rolling out
2 Tbsp. melted butter for brushing (I used browned butter for more flavor)
salt for sprinkling

* Place bulgur, shortening, oil, and malt syrup in heat-proof bowl. Pour boiling water on top and stir until shortening melts. Let cool to 120 to 130 degrees F.
* In mixing bowl, place white wheat flour, 3/4 c. all-purpose flour, yeast, salt, baking powder, and cream of tartar. Whisk to mix.
* Pour liquid over dry ingredients; stir vigorously to blend with spoon or spatula. Gradually add the rest of the flour to make a dough that can be kneaded. If the dough is sticky, sprinkle in more flour until it can be worked.
* Turn out on lightly floured surface and knead until soft and elastic, about 4 minutes. If the dough is too sticky, add sprinkles of flour as needed.
* Place dough into oiled or buttered bowl, cover, and refrigerate. The longer the better, up to 18 hours.
* Place one rack in center of oven and preheat to 425 F. If you have a convection oven, set to 375 F convection bake instead.
* Cut two pieces of parchment paper the size of your baking sheets. Cut another piece about a yard long.
* Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to a long rectangle about 18 inches by 6 inches. Fold one-third of dough into center from short ends, so you end up with a dough packet about 6-by-6 inches and 3 layers thick.
* Lay the large parchment out on your work surface. Roll the dough out to a very large rectangle -- aim for about 11 by 26 to 28 inches. (If you don't have enough room for this, cut dough in half and roll it in two smaller batches.)
* If the dough gets too stretchy and hard to roll, cover it up and let it rest for a few minutes so the gluten can relax. Once you've finished rolling, again let it sit for a few minutes to relax. Trim the edges neatly and remove the scraps. (Note: breaks in the dough can be patched by moistening the area lightly and applying a small piece of dough pinched from the edge. Squish the patch into place and go over it lightly with the rolling pin to flatten it out. You can use a similar technique to even up the edges.)
* Cut the long dough rectangle into two equal pieces about 11 by 13 inches. Place the two pan-sized parchment papers over the dough, centering each one on one of the dough pieces. (The parchments will overlap.) Flip the whole "sandwich" over and peel off the top layer of parchment paper. Gently pull apart the two pieces of parchment paper.
* Prick the dough all over with a fork and cut into the size and shape of crackers you desire (a ruler and a pizza wheel are good for this). Brush the top of the dough all over with the melted butter, and sprinkle lightly with salt. (Mr. Clayton recommends sprinkling from about 12 inches above the dough to get a light, even coat of salt.)
* Slide the crackers on parchment onto your baking sheet. They will shrink slightly when baked, so it will not be necessary to separate them. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes, until brown at the edges and golden over almost all of the top. Remove to rack to cool.

Herbed Wheat Crackers

My last batch was Herbed Wheat Crackers,
adapted from Plain Soda Crackers, p. 694-697, Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads

About 1 Tbsp. dried rosemary and 1 tsp. dried thyme, pulsed in spice grinder or mini food processor until rosemary is in small pieces (I'm sure fresh would have been better. Maybe next time.)
2 Tbsp. solid vegetable shortening
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. malt syrup
3/4 c. boiling water
1/2 c. white whole wheat flour (2.5 oz / 71 gm)
1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour (2.5 oz / 71 gm)
1 1/2 tsp. instant dry yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 c. (2.5 oz / 71 gm) all-purpose flour, or more as needed to make dough
more flour as needed for kneading and rolling out
2 Tbsp. olive oil for brushing
salt for sprinkling

* Place herbs, shortening, oil, and malt syrup in heat-proof bowl. Pour boiling water on top and stir until shortening melts. Let cool to 120 to 130 degrees F.
* In mixing bowl, place white wheat flour, 1/2 c. all-purpose flour, yeast, salt, baking powder, and cream of tartar. Whisk to mix.
* Continue as for Bulgur Wheat crackers above.

Now that I have mastered a couple of basic recipes, I want to branch out to fancier crackers! I'd like to try something with cornmeal, olive oil, and fresh rosemary, for example. And some sort of sesame cracker. Then there were all the fancy ones I saw at Whole Foods -- sundried tomato and olive, for example. All sorts of tastes in a simple cracker!

TWD: World Peace Cookies

2009-02-03T20:37:00.003-06:00

This week, the "Tuesdays with Dorie" crowd made the world-famous "World Peace Cookies." Thanks so much to Jessica of cookbookhabit for choosing this recipe! Head on over to her blog for the recipe -- you can also find it here, here, or here (scroll down to the bottom).

This is a simple but wonderful cookie -- a French sablé (or shortbread cookie) with the addition of cocoa, chopped chocolate and flakes of sea salt. They're easy to make, easy to form (roll up, freeze, slice-and-bake) and fabulous to eat!

Now, I actually made the dough for these cookies back before Christmas, and then never got around to baking it up. (The dough keeps well in the freezer!) So I don't remember all the details of making them. I do recall that I weighed my flour and cocoa, using that 1 cup of flour = 4.8 oz and 1 cup of cocoa = 3.0 oz. But as to what chocolate and cocoa I used -- sorry, I can't recall. I know I wouldn't have gone for the "cheap stuff" with these fabulous cookies! For salt, I used French "sel gris" (the lower-budget version of French fleur de sel) that I'd picked up on sale. I do think using a flake salt rather than a finely ground salt adds a certain flair to these cookies.

I sliced 'em thick, as Dorie specifies, and that was perfect. They spread and flatten as they bake. And yes, trust Dorie when she says to take them out before they look done. Mine had cracked a bit and turned dull on the surface, but were still extremely soft. Once they cooled they were perfect!

Will these bring about world peace? Well, Jim and I have been feeling quite mellow since I baked these...but...we don't want to share them with anyone else! (So much for world peace, I guess...)

Take a look at all the other TWD bakers' blogs for more of these delicious cookies -- and don't forget to visit Dorie Greenspan's blog to see what the recipe author herself has to say!

TWD: Berry Surprise Cake

2009-01-20T01:20:00.000-06:00

Welcome to this week's installment of "Tuesdays with Dorie" -- the Berry Surprise Cake from pages 273-275 of "Baking: from My Home to Yours," chosen by Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen.

Despite some problems, this was dangerously delicious and quite impressive looking! For the recipe, please visit Mary Ann's blog.

As written, Dorie's recipe calls for you to bake a French sponge cake or genoise in an 8-by-3-inch round pan. Then you slice off the top, hollow out the inside, and sprinkle with syrup. Fill the inside with a cream cheese & whipped cream filling, layered with fresh berries. Put the top back on and frost with billows of whipped cream, then decorate with berries. Wow! Two of my favorite foods, berries and cream!

Since fresh berries are not in season here in Wisconsin, and I don't care for the expensive and mostly tasteless ones you can still buy in the store, I decided to go with frozen berries. I had a bag of frozen home-grown wild black raspberries, so I scooped out about 2 cups and made a fruit compote. At some point I realized that some blueberries had snuck into that bag too -- probably I dumped the leftovers from a bag of store-bought frozen ones in at some point and forgot about it. (Moral of story -- label your freezer bags! I'm getting better at that, I really am...)

At any rate, I added in a few tablespoons of raspberry jelly (all that was left at the bottom of the jar), about 1/4 cup of frozen red raspberry puree (also home-grown, from one of my neighbors), and some sugar. After the berries thawed, the mixture seemed a bit watery, so I drained off the liquid, thickened it with about 1/2 teaspoon of Sure-Jell no-sugar-needed pectin, and mixed it back into the berries. Voila! A lovely berry compote.

Next came the cake, and that was where the trouble began. I have never made a genoise before, though I've read about them in cookbooks and on blogs. I was really psyched to try one! The plan was to make a whole recipe of the batter, and divide it between two smaller 6-inch round springform pans. That way I'd have an extra cake to play around with. (By the way, if you want to know how big a pan you should use for half a recipe, multiply the original pan size by 0.707 -- the square root of one-half. If you want to bake a quarter of the recipe, multiply the pan size by 1/2 -- the square root of 1/4.)

For a genoise, you start by beating whole eggs and sugar together. I wondered if I should reduce the sugar, but was worried it would affect the cake badly. However, I consulted another recipe, Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Classic Genoise." (You can find a link to the recipe on this page - look for French Genoise.) Rose's recipe uses the same amount of eggs and about the same amount of flour/starch, but only 1/2 cup of sugar -- so I went with that. I took another idea from Rose's recipe and used clarified, lightly browned butter. Then I warmed up my eggs and beat the h*** out of them! The whole process must have taken about 15 minutes using my hand-held power mixer -- with a couple of trips back to the hot water bath to warm up the eggs again. They were lovely! I wish I'd taken a picture. Pale golden, densely foamy, almost at the "soft peak" stage. They didn't form a ribbon when I raised the one whisk beater -- more of a thick column of egg foam that slowly, slowly poured back into the bowl and formed a little mound before subsiding. I think I got that part right.

I took another hint from Rose and took out some of the egg foam to mix with the melted butter. Good thing I had the hot water bath still around, because the butter had solidified. (We're keeping the heat down, and I still hate to think of the utility bill...) Now it was time to sift the half the flour on top, add the butter, and then sift the other half on top, folding in as you go. Here's where I blew it. I kept spotting streaks and lumps of flour in the batter, and so I kept folding. I was concentrating so hard on those bits of flour -- and then suddenly I paid attention to the batter again and saw that it had deflated dramatically. Oh, %@!*!^%*!

"Well, we'll see what happens," I said, poured the batter into the two pans, and baked it. They rose a bit but were still pretty flat and sad, as you can see below.

So I changed my plans a bit. I trimmed off the rounded tops of the cakes, and also the thin crusts on the bottom. I made a whole recipe of syrup and brushed nearly all of it onto the two cake layers. The trimmings tasted pretty good! Dense, yes. A bit dry, but that's what the syrup is for. But there was a nice nutty/buttery taste from the browned butter. Hm, this might work.

Oh, here's the liqueur I used for the syrup. Good stuff!

Then I made just half of the recipe for the filling, since I was using a smaller pan. Some folks had mentioned on the "Problems & Questions" forum that they thought the filling was a bit tart, so I doubled the sugar. Since my cake now wasn't going to have any sides to hold the filling in place, I also dissolved 1/2 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin in the last couple of tablespoons of syrup and added that. Oh, and I used Neufchatel instead of cream cheese -- it has a bit less fat.

Then I lined the sides of the original pan with some lightly greased wax paper and started layering in the components -- syruped cake, filling, some fruit compote (I had a bit left over), the rest of the filling, a top layer of syruped cake. The cake chilled for about an hour. Here's what it looked like after it came out of the pan.

Then I whipped up 2/3 of a cup of heavy cream with some vanilla-flavored powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin dissolved in 1 Tablespoon of water, and another 1 1/2 teaspoons of liqueur. The compote kind of bled into the whipped cream as I put it on the sides, but I decided to just pretend it was supposed to be that way. And it did look pretty! Then came the fun part -- I pulled out the cake decorating kit I'd recently purchased and used the decorating comb and a couple of decorating tips to "fancy up" the cake. This was my very first time with decorating, so it was a little rough -- but all the same, it was absolutely amazing how much fancier the cake looked!

And it tasted really great, too! OK, the cake was still a little dense, but everything else was fabulous! So my story has a happy ending. And by the time fresh berries are in season, I hope to have figured out how to make genoise. Maybe.

TWD: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

2009-01-13T00:01:00.003-06:00

This week's project for "Tuesdays with Dorie" was Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins, chosen by Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake. For the recipe, check out Rebecca's blog, or better yet, buy "Baking: From My Home to Yours" by the delightful Dorie Greenspan!

This turned into a bit of a "use it up" project. We didn't have a jalapeño pepper on hand, and the only sweet red pepper was chopped and frozen (though I'm sure that would have been fine). No fresh cilantro, either. I suppose I could have taken a quick drive up to the Mexican market in Sauk Prairie, and maybe even watched some bald eagles as well, but I didn't really feel like traveling on this cold Wisconsin day.

So I rummaged around to see what needed using up. The partly-used package of frozen corn held about 1/2 cup. OK, use that up. Leave out the red peppers because I didn't want to load these down with too much stuff. (Now that I've made them, I think they'd be great with lots of add-ins!) Here's about half a cup of grated cheddar cheese. All right, add that in too. How about 2 tablespoons of freeze-dried chives from Penzeys? I've been meaning to use those chives more often -- let's do it!

Other than that, I stayed with the recipe -- using 1 1/2 teaspoons of very mild home-grown chili powder plus a teensy-tiny pinch of super-duper-hot home-grown chile piquin powder. I reduced the sugar to 2 tablespoons -- just right for our tastes -- and the melted butter to 4 tablespoons. (Next time I'd use 6 tablespoons instead.)

This was more like a dough than a batter, about the same consistency as drop biscuits. Here they are spooned into the muffin tin:

And here they are after exactly 20 minutes in the oven:

Let's have dinner! Home-made lentil soup, corn muffins and red wine. Great for a winter evening!

These were excellent -- crunchy on the outside, tender and tasty on the inside. The cheddar and chive flavors were really subtle. The chili and corn were just right. I can see playing around with these -- one idea is to use more cheddar, cut into small chunks so you get little melty cheese bites here and there, with scallions instead of chives. How about some fresh chopped garlic tops in early spring? Hey, would roasted garlic be good? And I can't wait until late summer to try different varieties of home-grown peppers! I'm thinking the very mild Delicias jalapeños with sweet red Apple peppers, or the mildly hot red Beaver Dam bell peppers all by themselves.

Which reminds me, it's time to check our seed collection and order seeds...see you all next week!