Tuesdays with Dorie - Thumbprints for Us Big Guys

I know, they look like little fried eggs, no? They're actually delicious, melt-in-your-mouth hazelnut cookies with lemon curd filling without one bit of egginess - they don't even have egg in the dough! These were the TWD pick for this week from Mike of Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude, and they came in very handy because I volunteered to provide baked goods for someone on Monday morning and then promptly forgot and went out of town instead. Sunday afternoon found me watching the Oscars and scraping the skins off hazelnuts whilst discovering I was out of raspberry jam.



It was lucky that I almost always have raw hazelnuts in the pantry for just such emergencies and I always have lots of lemons, so at least I could bake something - and with all those lemons, lemon curd it was. The recipe made about five dozen cookies and I sent four dozen off to make other people happy. The remaining two dozen stayed behind to make my husband happy, which I think he deserves at least once a week so it's a good thing there's TWD.



Back to the Oscars. By the time all was said and done, I'd managed to watch just a couple more of the nominees, but even so, it was so much more interesting because I knew what the hoopla was about. I now have a Netflix queue full of even more movies and last night I watched the nominated animated shorts, because they always look so interesting to me. I loved La Dama y La Muerte and Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty. And if you're interested, there was a link online to Logorama, the winner, here. Logorama turned out to be not at all what I was expecting.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Honey Wheat Cookies

On the heels of being completely grossed out by my discovery of chicken rings, I just finished watching Food Inc. and reading both In Defense of Food and Food Rules. While In Defense of Food reinforced my belief that my grandparents' diet (along with their lifestyle - i.e., walking a lot, socializing while eating, and generally maintaining a much more relaxed attitude in regard to just about everything) helped them live long, healthy lives, it also gave me a nice dose of additional stress to pile onto the normal everyday paranoia that seeps into virtually every one of my life choices. For example, bread. I now feel like I must plant ancestral grains and somehow harvest, thresh and grind them myself, little red hen-wise, before I can eat a sandwich. (It goes without saying that I will also have to figure out how to raise a pig, plan for its humane demise, and cure a ham from its eventual parts in La Jolla . Good luck with that.)

Anyway, that's all pretty ambitious. I do try to buy whole ingredients and cook a lot, and we eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, and I've been getting a CSA bag for the last month or so. This week I even bought some whole wheat flour to try to integrate more of that into my biiiiiiiiggggg weakness: homebaked anything. I love bread, pastries, cakes, etc., and I love them with real sugar, butter, and white flour. I don't think I'll ever be one of those people who can sub applesauce for butter and sugar, but I'm trying to use honey a little more (Yes, I know it's still sugar, but at least it's closer to its natural state than the white stuff.) and I'm backing off on using highly refined staples period. This week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick by Flour Child was the recipe for Honey Wheat Cookies, so that fit in nicely with my plan.

There's still sugar and white flour in these cookies, but I subbed in half whole-wheat flour, and the recipe calls for honey in place of some of the sugar. The dough has to be refrigerated for a couple of hours and then you roll it in wheat germ before baking. The result is a subtly-flavored honey-lemon-toasty deliciousness that is perfect with a cup of tea. I loved these cookies. John said they were only okay but he did eat 10 of them, so I'm not sure you should listen.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Cocoa Nana Bread

After a couple of weeks' hiatus from TWD we're back with this week's entry, a quickbread using chocolate and bananas as the main components. I love bananas and eat one probably every day, but John is allergic - he can't even touch a banana. A few people on the TWD boards said they were substituting either Greek yogurt or sour cream for the bananas, so that's what I did; I used a cup of sour cream in place of the two bananas called for in the recipe. As a further disclaimer, I believe I undercooked it somewhat because, as usual, I was baking late at night and I just had to go to bed regardless of whether my bread was ready!

After cooling and cutting, I decided it looked pretty dense and needed something to lighten it up, so I thought of whipped cream. Because really, what can't be improved by adding whipped cream? I defy you to name one thing, unless it's something that could be improved by adding bacon fat. Go on. I'll wait over here while you think about it, my non-vegan friends.

Anyway. I took the bread to my seasonal care-package-for-our-college-girls group where it was very well received, and the whipped cream was an excellent call. Thank you for this week's entry, Steph of Obsessed with Baking!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Apple Tarte Tatin

In the spirit of Julia "Never Apologize" Child, I'm just going to pretend my Apple Tarte Tatin is flattened ice cream topping and call it a day.

PS It would have to be the one I had to take pictures of.

PPS It still tastes divine.

PPPS Next time, don't overthink the flipping.

Happy anniversary, Tuesdays with Dorie and thank you for choosing this week's Apple Tarte Tatin - practically perfect in every way.

Holiday Baking

Cardamom Crescents

Here it is, 2010, the Monday after the holiday break. There was so much baking, cooking, knitting, wrapping, decking, and general revelry that I completely forgot to post my Tuesdays with Dorie entry for last week (chocolate cheesecake, which I even baked two weeks ahead because I knew I'd get entangled in the day-to-day) and I haven't taken pictures of any of my knitting.

Hazelnut Shortbread Sticks

There were holiday concerts to go to, dinners to host, trees to trim, and movies to watch, and we topped the break off with a trip to see the snow yesterday (more on that to come). Fiona was home so of course we had to see New Moon (a thinly-disguised excuse for a bunch of baby men to take their shirts off, if you ask me) but we also saw Avatar and Up in the Air, both of which were excellent. Plus how amazing is George Clooney? He even manages to be cute in Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Coconut-Orange Snowballs

Snoopy turned three on New Year's Day, and even though we didn't throw him a party he marked the day himself by accidentally falling into the pool, which was exciting because he hates the water and completely overreacted and then dried himself off by running under bushes which necessitated a trip to the doggy spa and a second dunking. He's so small, and loves being inside so much, that it was the first time he'd ever gotten dirty with actually dirt.

Sablés

Anyway, I thought I'd wrap this post up with a few pictures of my holiday baking. The cookies, well, you've gotta have Christmas cookies. In addition to the sablés, molasses ginger, and chocolate crinkles I've made before, I tried three new recipes as well: coconut, hazelnut shortbread sticks (these were voted the best) and cardamom crescents. I probably won't make the coconut ones again, and although we all liked the cardamom ones, the hazelnut ones were so amazing I'll stick with those.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

For dessert after Christmas dinner, I made flourless chocolate cake with warm caramel sauce and a French pear tart so people could choose chocolate or fruit. (Or both. I'm looking at you, Self.) This was the first time I ever made frangipane...so good. The tart proved to be very popular so I will definitely make that again next year and the chocolate cake is a recipe I make often because it's fast and delicious.

French Pear Tart

And just in case you think we didn't have enough sweets, the leftover caramel sauce became the topping for homemade ice cream on New Year's Eve, forever spoiling me for caramel out of a jar. Happy 2010!

Molasses-Ginger Chewies

"Boil for one minute, then stand back and carefully ignite the Kirsch."

First let me state for the record that I despise cherries in baked things. After being subjected to heat they always looked like some kind of organ to me, and organs in my dessert? No thank you - I'll pass. Cherries from a tree eaten out of hand, yes. Maraschino cherries? Double yes, especially accompanied by rum, fruit juice, and a tiny umbrella. But cooked? No. No thank you. Not even chocolate can change my mind on that.



But here I was faced with this week's Tuesdays With Dorie selection: Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte. I figured I'd just knock it out and get it over with and take it with me on the bus to the Head of the American River, to be consumed by a horde of hungry teenaged girls. That was when I pre-read the recipe and came upon these directions: "...stand back and carefully ignite..." and I thought, maybe I oughta wait until John gets home from work so he can either: a) man the fire extinguisher or b) call 911 or c) all of the above. Plus...mousse filling. Not really roadtrip friendly.



So last Thursday after John got home (so I'd have a spotter...you don't need one too often in the kitchen but every now and then when you attempt a particularly adventuresome maneuver it seems like a good idea) I made the brownie layer, cooled it, and left it in the fridge all wrapped up so I could go off on my chaperoning adventure and find it waiting for me when I got back.

The mousse layer was simple to put together and delicious to clean up from - I don't often lick the beater blade but if you were trying to seduce me with food and didn't have any chocolate, a mixture of mascarpone, sugar, and heavy cream would probably do the trick.

Would you like to see a little video of me almost losing my carefully tended eyebrows? I knew that you would:

And would you like to know how the torte turned out in general? I ate the little slice you see pictured above, just to try it before I served it to my family. It was the bomb! It's more like Cherry Garcia than weird cooked cherries, and the bottom layer was fudgy and chewy with little chunks of chocolate still whole. I ate it and then I wished I had time to lie down because it was definitely kind of heavy, but the flavors were interesting and went together very well. Thanks for this week's pick, April!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Allspice Crumb Muffins

This week's entry for Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Kayte (Thanks Kayte!) of Grandma's Kitchen Table: Allspice Crumb Muffins. I don't do a lot of baking with allspice as the main flavor note - usually it's just one component in a blend of spices - so I actually went all-out and bought a little packet of fresh allspice instead of using the 100-year-old bottle that's been languishing in the back of my kitchen cupboard gathering dust. I had to move the 100-year-old mace to get to that one.



These muffins were pretty good - John and the girls liked them, and I didn't have the sliding streusel problem some other bakers seemed to have. I'm not sure why, because I didn't press the crumbs down into the batter or anything; what I did do was load each one up with so much crummage (crumbage? That seems wrong...) it seemed like overkill, but I figured there had to be a reason there was so much of it and I suspect the sheer weight of it kept it in place. I followed the recipe just as written and included the optional grated lemon rind because I'm always all about the grated lemon rind. The crumb topping was the best part - isn't it always? - and I had just about decided that I probably wouldn't make these twice when I tasted one the day after baking them...it was actually a little better and it was still moist and delish. Maybe I'll try these again with cinnamon or a blend of spices. Or maybe I'll bust out the allspice again. It did feel very much like fall was in the air....

Not a Tuesday...

Somewhat misshapen, altogether delicious.

Some of you might've clicked on Dorie Greenspan's link in my post about Split Level pudding and seen that she was talking about brioche on her own blog. I myself went beyond the clicking and straight to the baking. Two batches of brioche later, I think I'm in love. Some of the dough went into little breakfast brioches, which made up for the inevitable argument I have with someone in the morning ("Are you wearing that to school?" Stomp, stomp, stomp.) and reminded my family that they should keep me around for while longer. The rest went into a tarte au sucre...I got a little crazy folding the dough over in the pan and I think the next one will be more beautiful to look at, but even the lumpy one was delicious.

Here's the 2nd rise in the early morning. They are about to make my house smell amazing.

Pardon the terrible iPhone photos of the lovely brioche - I forgot to recharge my camera battery and desperate times call for makeshift measures, I guess.