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 - Toasted-Coconut Custard Tart

Sometimes a hectic schedule pays off. Between fighting a cold all week and dealing with everyday life, by yesterday evening it was looking like I wasn't going to have time to make a tart this week. My solution was to make only half of the TWD recipe for Toasted-Coconut Custard Tart - the custard half. I was going to just make coconut custard and be done with it, but in reading over the recipe I had a brilliant idea: Didn't this recipe look a lot like an ice cream base? Leaving out the corn starch, I let the custard cool overnight in the fridge and then popped it into my ice cream maker this afternoon, making THE best coconut ice cream, which I strongly considered not telling my family about so I could eat it all myself. They don't always get around to reading the blog for days, so hey, that's what they get.

So while my ice cream was getting a little harder in the freezer, I set off to run errands this afternoon before picking Anna up and heading over to Whole Foods for our dinner ingredients. I think I've probably mentioned that I spend half my life driving and the other half waiting for someone, right? And that I hate driving, and that I get bored easily? Because of this, I always keep a good selection of audiobooks on hand at all times along with a bit of portable knitting. There I sat, waiting for Anna, knitting and listening to Outlander via the car stereo, when she finally arrived and I turned the key in the ignition. Click. You know that sound? The sound of no battery? It sucks. Thank goodness I have Triple A and the guy was there within 15 minutes to give me a jump, but it was just enough aggravation to make me order pizza for dinner.

And here's the upside to that little aggravation: Because I wasn't making dinner, I had time to bake shortbread instead. I made a very basic recipe and added a little coconut extract and let it bake while I waited for Mr. Pizza Guy to get to my house, and then I served my family a very nice little dessert. We all loved it, but two of us liked the shortbread best and two of us liked the ice cream best. The ice cream was really good - the rum and the cardamom gave it a wonderful perfume and the toasted coconut rounded out the flavor of what was basically a rich vanilla custard - fantastic.

I like coconut a lot; in fact, I order cases of coconut water from Amazon (didja know you could do that?) and drink it after I work out instead of one of the many sports drinks that line the grocery aisles. It's very refreshing. I make a pretty darn good coconut cake, too, universally loved by all who taste it, even the coco-haters. There was no way I was going to miss this week's TWD entirely, that's for sure, and I'm glad I gave it a whirl. Thank you Beryl of Cinemon Girl for this week's pick. One day I may even try it as a tart!

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.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Café Volcano Cookies

I was all set to skip this week of TWD because - let's face it - I think we're all busy, and while there is the opportunity to share creations both knitted and baked with those we love, we're also going to parties and shopping and taking finals and applying to college around here and it's all just too much sometimes! Plus three people in my extended family exhibit unmitigated gall by having their birthdays in December.



There's also the whole nut allergy thing here. John's got to be careful with nuts because, while we aren't quite sure exactly which ones he's allergic to (Understandably enough he doesn't want to do a taste-test to find out.), many of them are processed with peanut oil so they're out no matter what. The result is that I mostly leave the nuts out of stuff - I don't miss them too much and nobody swells up with hives that way. This week's cookies are 90% nut, so leaving them out was not an option. At the last minute I decided to whip them out because they are just so easy to make. I was so glad I did - they're easy, yes, but they're also really good. My family was over on Sunday and they loved them. I'm not sure I'll make them again because there are a million great recipes out there, but once more, Dorie's recipe didn't disappoint.




Thanks MacDuff of The Lonely Sidecar for choosing Café Volcano Cookies!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Sablés

Okay, I know I say this about a lot of things, but these are my favorite Christmas cookies of all. They're buttery and rich, yet delicate and finely textured. I can't help it if I have a long list of favorite things. Don't even get me started on brown paper packages tied up with string.

In a rare instance of perfect timing during this crazy holiday season, Dorie Greenspan's sablés were the TWD pick for this week just when I had to provide cookies for an open house at the La Jolla Historical Society. And in addition to being timely and delicious, they come together in a snap and you can keep the dough in the fridge or freezer to slice and bake whenever you need a few.



Last Christmas I made them several times because they disappeared quickly, and at Easter I made a batch using pink sugar instead of the pretty yellow you see here. I've also tried making them with red and green sugar, but the yellow is my favorite. It plays up the golden buttery flavor of the cookie, I think. Thanks Bungalow Barbara for giving me an excuse to make yet another one of my favorites!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

I was finally able to get a couple of photos of these cookies after baking off three previous batches on other days - that's how much my family liked them. I made the dough a couple of weeks ago, doubling it as a go-to in case any cookie emergencies might arise this month. Little did I know that the emergency would be keeping up with the demand.

The dough is super sticky and it spreads like crazy in the oven, but the resulting cookies are simultaneously crisp and chewy, with a very interesting note added by the black pepper in the recipe. We tried them rolled in raw sugar and also in regular cane sugar, and I think the cane sugar held up better. We also tried them after refrigerating the dough, which made it easier to handle, and after freezing, which was easier still since I made logs and just slice-and-baked.

Despite rave reviews on the taste, I'm not sure I'll make these again. I didn't like handling the dough and I didn't like how much they spread - you can't get that many cookies on a sheet. Instead, I might add a little pepper to another ginger/molasses cookie recipe and see how that goes.

Thank you Pam of Cookies with Boys (Make sure to go look at her cookies - they are perfect.) for suggesting this recipe. This is the second sweet TWD recipe in the last couple of months that called for black pepper - fantastic taste, and a great way to expand the palate!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Cran-Apple Crisp

This Tuesday's entry for TWD is the Cran-Apple Crisp, chosen by Em at The Repressed Pastry Chef. Let me preface by saying that much as I don't like cherries in anything cooked, I'm not all that fond of dried cranberries. I tolerate them, but just barely. I do love cranberry juice (including any permutation with vodka - which sounds so bad; my friends will tell you I'm not really a drinker, really, but I seem to keep referencing cocktails here. Must be indicative of my state of mind but I assure you I rarely imbibe.) and I like cranberry sauce (as long as it's the kind that slides out of a can - is that so bad? I don't like actual cooked cranberry sauce.), but that sour aspect of dried cranberries, coupled with the fact that they stick to your teeth, bugs me.



Luckily, this crisp has plenty of sweetness to counteract the sour. The apples were sweet on their own, and then there was the topping - more of that crumbage I love - and I added golden raisins to mine as Dorie suggests as a variation.

I ended up taking the crisp to Sunday dinner at my sister's where it was served up after a wonderful fall dinner of pot roast, mashed potatoes (which I'd gladly eat every day), and parsnips. It was fantastic, warm from the oven with homemade vanilla ice cream - can you think of a single thing that wouldn't be improved by a scoop a la mode?

"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 - Sweet Potato Biscuits

Okay, here's the reason I decided to join Tuesdays with Dorie this month: It was all for the sweet potato biscuits. You may recall that I made these last year after finding the recipe online (and don't miss the All-in-One Holiday Cake posted on that link - that's awesome). I'd never in my life bought a can of sweet potatoes until I tried this recipe, and then I bought two cans once a week all through the winter.



The biscuits are particularly good if you are serving any kind of pork, but they're also good for breakfast, or when you want something juuuuuuust a little sweet. And you can fool yourself into thinking they're good for you because they have fiber and Vitamin A and beta carotene from the sweet potato, so really, why not eat two? In fact, in the spirit of eating two, I do tend to cut these out on the small size. They don't rise very much so smaller biscuits look better proportioned to me.



Thank you, Erin of Prudence Pennywise, for picking one of my best-loved fall recipes. I can't wait to see how everyone else's sweet potatoes turned out!

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....