It’s Tuesday so we’re baking with Dorie. This week’s recipe was chosen by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles. If you’re a fan of custard… and a fan of lemon… this truly is a wonderful recipe. If you’re one of the TwD bakers who made this and thought it was “meh” and/or “too eggy”, then be sure to read on because I’d love love LOVE to tell you how I tweaked it for maximum lemon flavor. Come on… think about it… I am a huge fan of lemon so you can count on me to find a way to give this fabulous custard dish the most fabulously intense lemon flavor possible! {continued…}
I’m still trying to use up the bounty of lemons that’s come my way lately so the timing of this week’s recipe choice was near perfect. After reading the “Problems and Questions” section on the Tuesdays with Dorie website, I was very concerned this recipe would be blah and have very little lemon flavor. Knowing that would leave me wholly disappointed I thought about ways to kick this up a notch. Along with the lemon zest, some people added lemon extract or lemon oil but still thought the flavor was “meh”. Others added a bit of lemon juice and agreed it was “meh”. So taking a page from one of Dorie’s lemon tart recipes I decided to use pretty much the whole lemon. I figured if I was going to zest the entire lemon for steeping in the milk, I would squeeze in all the juice and add in all the pulp as well… even though I’d halved the recipe! Not wanting to dramatically alter the texture (which retaining the lemon pulp surely would do), I decided to use my immersion blender to make the mixture smoooooooth :) The recipe says to skim off the foam… and I thought I did but my mixture still had quite a bit of foam (no doubt the result of the immersion blender). Eh, no worries :)
After tinkering with the flavor, I followed the baking method and the directions for cooling/chilling… then I was completely rewarded with an amazing lemon custard just bursting with intense lemon flavor and absolutely no “eggy” taste! For a little extra touch, I topped it off with a bit of freshly whipped rose-flavored cream (though vanilla would’ve been just fine too, I mean with this one it’s all about the lemon!!). Now some may question if the lemon pulp altered the texture? Hmmm… perhaps… because it was more like a créme brulee (sans the burnt sugar top) than pudding but I loved it, loved it, loved it! Especially because it was sooooooooo lemony – yum!
If you’d like the recipe, please check Bridget’s blog or better yet get Dorie Greenspan’s book “Baking, From My Home To Yours”. Also, take a moment and check out the results from the other TwD bakers.
Have a delicious day!
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Posted in Dorie Greenspan, Tuesdays with Dorie, lemon, recipes | 23 Comments »
This week our Tuesday With Dorie host is Whitney of What’s Left On The Table and her choice was the recipe for Dorie’s Caramel Crunch Bars. I’m sure it’s just me but the name of this recipe left me scratching my head since there’s absolutely no caramel at all. And that’s fine by me since I’m not a huge fan of caramel anyway :) A brown-sugar chocolate chip type cookie on the bottom… a layer of melted chocolate… covered in a layer of toffee bits? Come on… you tell me… what’s not to like?!?!?!!!! {continue}
These are bar-style cookies… the kind you make in a pan and then cut after cooling. They are definitely not difficult to make although I did have a couple of “challenges”. First off, the recipe calls for toffee bits and all I had was a bag of Heath Toffee and Milk Chocolate bits. I think it was fine but the top layer has bits of chopped chocolate which create a different look than Dorie’s picture. Eh, I’m ok with that :) The second “challenge” was the top layer decided it wasn’t going to set up properly. After waiting about an hour I put the whole pan in the freezer for about 35-45 minutes and hoped for the best. The result? These were incredibly difficult to cut! LOL. DH said they tasted great just the same. Me? I think they’re very very sweet (though I’m not a huge fan of chocolate so don’t let my opinion dissuade you one bit).
For the recipe, check out hostess Whitney’s blog… or better yet… see page 112 of Dorie’s book Baking From My Home To Yours. To see the creations of the rest of the TwD Bakers, check out the Tuesday’s With Dorie Blogroll.
Have a delicious day,
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Posted in Chocolate, Dorie Greenspan, Tuesdays with Dorie, cookies, recipes | 14 Comments »
Back from vacation and boy does it feel good to bake again :) This week’s Tuesday’s-With-Dorie recipe gave me a perfect reason to return to the kitchen… to make the Devil’s Food White Out Cake. I won’t bother with a verbose write up. Instead, I’ll tempt you with pictures and bore you with only a few words… and then I’ll give ya the link to the recipe because yes, you really DO want to make this! {continue}
A devil’s food cake with decadent vanilla icing… yes it’s simple… and scrummy!
Bake two cakes… slice each into two layers… use three of the four layers for the cake… crumble the remaining layer and press into the sides and top after the cake is assembled and frosted.
This week’s host was Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater and if you’d like the recipe, you can find it on her site. Better yet, buy Dorie’s book (Baking from My Home To Yours)… this recipe is featured on the cover and can be found on page 246. To see the other TwD bakers, click here.
Have a delicious day,
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Posted in Chocolate, Dorie Greenspan, Tuesdays with Dorie, cake, recipes | 25 Comments »
After ten straight days of temps exceeding 80°F… in January… I’ll admit we were getting quite spoiled. Last Thursday it all changed and we had 4 days of rain that was very much needed. The cooler temps made it psychologically much easier to make this week’s Tuesday With Dorie recipe – Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread. Prior to this I’d only had gingerbread as a cookie but this cake-like gem of a baked good covered in a thick layer of chocolate ganache icing turned out to be a real treat. I made this on Sunday night, took it to work on Monday and returned home with an empty tray – my colleagues really enjoyed it! {continued…}
I’ll be upfront and say this was one of the most fussy of recipes and more than once I thought I must have been crazy to have even started it. In the end, however, the only real problem I had was with the icing… but I’ll get to that in a minute ;-)
The recipe for the cake calls for three different kinds of ginger… fresh, ground and stem ginger in syrup. I could not find the stem ginger in syrup so I used some candied ginger instead. Dorie’s recipe also calls for adding both melted chocolate and chopped chocolate to the cake batter. Well, at the time I wasn’t feeling up to melting or chopping chocolate so I tossed in about 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips and called it a day.
After baking the cake and letting it cool it was time to make the icing… no way to avoid melting chocolate at that point ;-) Well, somewhere along the line I misunderstood the part of the directions which said to add one tablespoon of strong coffee to the chocolate being melted. Instead of using coffee I used instant coffee crystals and quite honestly I have absolutely no idea why. My glaze was crunchy for obvious reasons so I thought I’d try and recover by adding a tablespoon of hot water and whisking the livin daylights out of it. That seemed to make it a bit better but oh my word did it have a very strong coffee flavor. At that point it was getting late and I figured I’d just move on to adding the powdered sugar but I was lazy and didn’t sift it and I had very small lumps of sugar that just would not dissolve no matter how much I whisked. I went ahead and used it to glaze the cake hoping upon cooling it wouldn’t be so noticeable. Uh… no, didn’t quite work out that way. The glaze was super thin and not at all smooth. I ended up making the glaze again, this time omitting the coffee and powdered sugar entirely. I poured it over the cake so that it had two layers of chocolate and at that point I was both very tired and somewhat pleased to call it a night! LOL
In terms of flavor this is tasty but the recipe is too fussy for me to make it again. I do like the combination of gingerbread and chocolate… and my DH and co-workers really enjoyed it… so I can see making chocolate gingerbread with ganache icing at some point in the future.
If you’d like the recipe, please visit this week’s host Heather of Sherry Trifle… and while you’re at it please check out the rest of the TwD bakers too.
Have a delicious day!
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Posted in Dorie Greenspan, Tuesdays with Dorie, cake, recipes | 21 Comments »
It’s Inauguration Day in the US. Last November we elected a new leader and today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States! I used to live in the suburbs of Washington DC have been chatting up a storm with all my friends. I got caught up in the excitement and I’ll admit the week kind of got away from me. It didn’t help that this week’s recipe choice was yet another that I talked myself into… and out of… about a dozen times before deciding to just go for it. Though I baked and photographed yesterday, I didn’t get around to downloading, editing or writing until this morning (nice to have the day off work and not feel totally TwD-rushed on Monday night). So I read the recipe over and over again… it was “fussy” and the other TwD bakers were reporting pretty much nothing but problems as they made it. I hemmed… I hawed… I just didn’t feel like being bothered investing tons of energy in something that would seemingly be so meager in the payoff department. BOY WAS I WRONG… sorta! While yes, the recipe was indeed fussy but OMG the payoff was enormous!!!!!!!! Cake.. berries… whipped cream… m’mmmm…. can’t go wrong with this one :) {continues…}
The basic elements of this cake are a whole-egg genoise, a simple syrup, raspberries, cream cheese filling and a whipped cream topping. Mixed with a bit of sugar, the eggs are whipped…. and whipped… and whipped… and whipped. Dorie’s recipe calls for about 5 minutes of whipping until the egg mixture triples in volume. Well, let me tell you, my experience was that it took about 12-15 minutes before my egg mixture volume tripled. As written, the recipe calls for baking in an 8″ springform pan. I halved it and tried using a 4″ springform – uh unh – wrong – nice try, thanks for playing. My egg mixture *filled* the pan and I still had enough for 4 cupcakes.
After about 5 minutes of baking I peeked thru the oven door and saw the batter had risen past the top of the cake pan and was gracefully oozing down the sides. Uhmmmm yeah, not a good start. Luckily my cupcakes survived and I was able to make “Berry Surprise CUPCAKES” hahahah
Once baked the cakes are cooled then a thin layer of the top is cut away and set aside. The inside is then hollowed out just a bit (taking care to leave a good bit at the bottom), bathed in the syrup and filled with layers of berries and cream cheese filling. Next the top is replaced and the whole cake enrobed in fluffy whipped cream. It’s everything I love… cake, cream and berries. How could this be anything but delicious?
My cream cheese filling was a bit more creamy than fluffy but that’s okay – it was fabulous with the berries. And speaking of berries, I only had frozen raspberries which thawed into a sorry looking state that was most assuredly less than photogenic. Thankfully this had no impact on how tasty this dessert is. I think I’ll try it again when berries are in season and I’ll probably use strawberries with a lemon curd filling. OMG – just thinking of it makes me all drooly!
If you’d like the recipe, please check out the site of this week’s host MaryAnn of Meet Me In The Kitchen. And while you’re at it, please check out the other TwD bakers – they have some lovely creations!
Have a delicious day!
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Posted in Dorie Greenspan, Tuesdays with Dorie, cake, recipes | 18 Comments »
