HCB: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

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

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!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: True Orange Genoise (tangelo version)

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

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.

TWD: Cocoa-Nana Bread

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

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: Cran-Apple Crisps

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: Apple Upside-Down Cake

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: Applesauce Spice Bars, a little late

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

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

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

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: Coconut - Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

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!

Cornmeal Mango Muffins for Memorial Day

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

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: Banana Cream Pie

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: Blueberry Crumb Cake

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: Chocolate Armagnac Cake

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!

TWD: Berry Surprise Cake

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 on Sunday: French Pear Tart

I got a late start on this week's "Tuesdays with Dorie" project, but no way was I going to skip this week's French Almond Tart! How could I pass up a chance to bake along with Dorie herself on the recipe she'd chosen?


Dorie says this is her husband's favorite dessert. It didn't quite reach that point on our "charts" -- a really good fruit pie or galette is still in the lead -- but I can certainly see why Mr. Greenspan loves it! A tender pastry crust, lovely crunchy/creamy almond filling, and sweet, subtle poached pears ornamentally sliced on top. Oo-la-la!

I'd purchased a bag of white whole wheat flour a little while ago when our co-op was having a sale on Bob's Red Mill flours. This seemed like a good time to try it. I made the crust with 40% white whole wheat flour and 60% unbleached pastry flour. I reduced the sugar to 40 grams (about 1/3 of a cup of confectioner's sugar) because the crust seemed a little too sweet last time I made it. Excellent! It was very tender and tasty, and you could barely tell it had it whole wheat in it. (Both of us like whole wheat, actually, but I wanted to test out the white whole wheat flour for those times when I'm baking for folks who are not whole wheat enthusiasts.)

I made the almond cream as written -- well, almost. I had an extra tablespoon or so of finely ground almonds, so I just tossed them in rather than waste them. Oh, and I reduced the sugar to 9 tablespoons because we like things less sweet. This stuff was yummy! I had to restrain myself to keep from eating it up before it made it into the tart.

For the poached pears, the only change I made was to add a few strips of lemon peel to the poaching liquid, then strain it out after the pears were done. I didn't poach the pears long enough, though. When I cut them up for the tart, after a few days sitting in the poaching liquid in the refrigerator, I noticed a brown layer around the core of each one. (You can really see it in the pear at 10:30 o'clock on the picture below.) The cores themselves were very firm and almost uncooked. A taste test revealed the pears still tasted fine, though, so I went ahead and used them. Next time I will poach them longer. I may even cut them in half and core them before poaching. Also, next time I'll buy some extra pears in case some of them turn out to have hidden bad spots (as one of mine did). There will be no problem finding a use for extra pears!


My pears were rather small and had short stubby tops. I wasn't sure they'd fill up a 9-inch tart pan, so I used an 8-by- 1 1/2 inch round cake pan instead. That left me with some extra tart dough, which got turned into dough cookies. (By the way, someone or other on the TWD blog list introduced me to the idea of calling dough cookies "dodos" -- I love it! Thank you, whoever you are.) Because of the higher sides of this pan, I used pie weights when prebaking the tart shell. I was afraid the sides would soften and slither down the sides without the weights to hold them in place. It only took about 20 minutes to prebake. I brushed the bottom and sides with a bit of egg white mixed with water and popped it back in the oven for about 15 seconds -- this helps to seal the crust and keep it from getting soggy.

In went the whole recipe of almond cream and on went the sliced pears. I put an aluminum ring over the tart dough around the edges to keep it from burning. My tart only took about 45 minutes to bake, and it was very brown indeed on the top and around the edges. However, the almond cream in the middle and bottom seemed only barely done. Probably this was because of using such a dark colored pan -- plus maybe a little because of using a smaller, deeper pan. I should have reduced the oven temperature by 25 degrees. Oh well, another thing to try for next time.

This was delicious! I'd love to try it with a more intensely flavored fruit, like plums. It would be a great dessert to serve to guests because it can be made mostly in advance and looks harder to make than it really is!