Spring Salad with Strawberries, Asparagus, and Avocado-Orange Dressing

In case there are any long-time readers out there, I know it's been nearly a year since I've posted on this blog.  Although I have not been photographing or posting my food lately, my adventures in the kitchen have not stopped.  There are tempting recipes to be tried - always! - and now, more and more, I've been finding intriguing recipes through social media.  One site (service? obsession?) I've enjoyed has been Pinterest.  Maybe you've tried it too?  It's borderline-addictive to explore food (and crafts, and quotes, and decorating ideas, and organizational tips) that others have "pinned." And it's useful for me to save great ideas by "pinning" as I find them on my internet forays.

One thing that happens with my pins is that they tend to stay pinned - they sit on my pin boards looking beautiful, but that's often as far as it goes.  To date I've pinned 4,175 things.  As for finished projects from those pins? Um, just a handful.

To remedy this common (as it turns out) situation and get us all trying - and finishing - some of the things that we pin, my internet buddy Dorian has started a roundup for finished pins, pin finishers, or "pinishers" as she calls them/us.

This week's Pinisher roundup theme is "food" (her list of weekly themes here) and I have a pinished product to share, and to link up with the other Pinishers! 

I found this spring salad recipe in a link tweeted by Whole Foods about a month ago.  I pinned it immediately.  And then, wonder of wonders, I actually made it the same week.  And every week since then.

 n.o.e.'s notes:

- The recipe for spring salad on Whole Foods' website.  My pin for the salad is here.

- This salad is a snap to put together.  I shaved the raw asparagus with a vegetable peeler, and I mixed the salad dressing with an immersion blender.

- I have found it easier - and more attractive - to toss just the greens with the dressing in a large bowl and then portion them onto individual salad plates.  Then I top the greens with the asparagus and then the strawberries, spooning a little more dressing over it all.

 

the verdict:

I am so glad I pinned and tried this recipe; it will be at the top of my rotation, especially for springtime dinners.  It's perfect for entertaining because it can be prepped ahead of time and assembled quickly before serving.  And it's as delicious as it is pretty.

I'm linking to Dorian's Pinisher roundup: The Pinishers, volume 1, Food - head over there to see the different pinished products, and join in yourself any week.

La Palette Strawberry Tart

Several months ago, when I was in California, I came across some great strawberries.  I snapped them up and immediately baked up Dorie Greenspan's La Palette's Strawberry Tart from Baking From My Home to Yours.  The recipe has only three elements: tart crust, strawberry jam, and macerated fresh strawberries, and  I knew that each element had to shine.  The berries were amazing (so much so that I didn't even macerate), and I know that Dorie's tart crust is perfection.  To match the quality of the first two elements, I splurged on some beautiful French strawberry jam. 

I baked up some little tartlet shells, assembled and photographed them.  I was months ahead of the June posting date! (I'm baking the recipes I missed from the first 7 months of the original Tuesdays With Dorie baking group, and posting on the corresponding date 4 years later.)

But then in May my MacBook hard drive (just over a year old) went to hard drive heaven and took my strawberry tart photos with it.  They were cute photos, too, darn it!

I knew I had to re-bake the tarts, and that finally happened this week.  The photos are from the new tartlets, which we enjoyed every bit as much as the first ones.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Dorie herself posted the recipe in her column for Serious Eats.

-  The first time I baked the tart, I used Dorie's tart crust, which I've made many times before, and love!  The filling was French strawberry jam, and I used the fresh strawberries by themselves.  I didn't add sugar or liquor to them, and forgot the black pepper.

-  The second time I baked the tart, I make gluten-free tart shells using Alice Medrich's shortbread base found in her cookie book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies.  For the crust's sweetnener, I used golden palm sugar rather than plain white sugar, which gave it a golden color and a caramelized flavor.  This time I was home in Georgia and the French jam was still in California.  Rather than buy more strawberry jam I decided to make small batch Strawberry Honey Thyme Jam.  The jam was easy to make and delicious in flavor.  I again left the strawberries plain, and again I forgot the black pepper (darn!)

-  The recipe is interesting because all of the elements are kept separate until the time that the tart is served.  When one big tart is made, the shell is sliced, then spread with the jam and the strawberries are piled on top.

-  I usually find that making mini tarts adversely changes the recipe's proportion of crust to filling but in this case, the tart is assembled after the crust is fully baked, and the jam and berries can be increased or decreased to taste.  In fact, the berries are supposed to spill over the crust.

the verdict:

The recipe sounds so unassuming, a few simple elements, no big deal, but let me tell you: This was a sleeper of a recipe! We loved these tarts. (Both versions!)  The juicy fresh strawberries played off of the sweet strawberry preserves, all in the context of a buttery, almost cookie-like crust.  It's a perfect summer make-ahead dessert, and can be varied with whatever berries happen to be in season.

Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

Here's a piece of life advice: the next time you make a pie, make the crust you need and then immediately make another batch of pie dough.  You've already got the recipe in front of you, the bowls and implements are already dirty, and you will not believe the virtuous feeling you will have when you slip the extra dough into the freezer, knowing that with a bit of work now you are saving yourself a lot of time later.
And later? When you look in your freezer and there is a nice disk or two of pie crust, you know that you can have a pie in the oven in a matter of minutes.  This week I found myself in just that situation.  I had some lovely local blueberries from my farm box order, and with the crust already made, I decided on the spur of the moment to bake Dorie Greenspan's Double Crusted Blueberry Pie.  Even though it was late afternoon, I was able to have it on the dinner table in short order. 


n.o.e.'s notes:

-  The original Tuesdays With Dorie host for this recipe in 2008 was Amy of South in your Mouth.  You can find the recipe on her blog post.  I'm going a bit out of order, but this is a recipe I'm baking in my plan to finish all of the recipes in Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking From My Home to Yours.

- I made half of the pie recipe in my little 7" mini metal pie pan.  I had actually rolled out and frozen a crust right in the pan.  All I needed to do was to fill the pie and roll out the top crust.  The crust thawed as I mixed up the filling.

-  Sometimes blueberry pies can be runny in the middle from all the juice released by the cooking blueberries.  Dorie combats that in two ways: adding a hefty dose of flour to the blueberries, and lining the bottom of the pie crust with dried breadcrumbs.  I don't use prepared breadcrumbs, but usually make mine by crumbling and baking fresh bread.  I was feeling lazy, though, so I skipped the crumb layer.  I added flour to my blueberries, but somehow forgot to add the full amount that I'd measured out.  As it turned out, the pie was perfect, not at all runny and also not dry.

-  The recipe calls for tossing the berries with lemon zest, sugar, flour, salt, and lemon juice.  Dorie gives measurements but advises that we add the amounts to taste, which makes sense because blueberries can vary in sweetness.  I used a bit less sugar (and I used palm sugar) and a healthy squirt of lemon juice.

- So great was my laziness that I also skipped the egg wash on the crust.  Luckily my pie turned out nice and golden anyway.

 
the verdict:

I served this pie at a family dinner last evening, and my husband and daughter agreed that it was an exceptionally excellent blueberry pie!  The lemon zest and juice added a sparkle and brought out the flavor of the berries.  This will be a "go-to" pie in the summer (or even out-of-season with frozen blueberries), especially if I have pie crust in the freezer!

Mixed Berry Cobbler

 

Berries are my favorite fruit group, and I revel in the plentiful, reasonably-priced fresh berries that are available in the summer months.  Last year I had a huge stash of blueberries and blackberries in my fridge and realized that I wasn't going to be able to use them all before an out of town trip.  I put them all in a 2 gallon zipper freezer bag and spread them out as much as my freezer allowed, and they froze beautifully.  I figured that I could bake with them in the cold winter months when berries are sparse, imported from miles and miles away, and expensive.  But you know what?  I was busy over the cool weather months with apples and citrus and didn't really use my frozen berries.  So I was glad when I saw Dorie's Mixed Berry Cobbler on the list of recipes that I had not yet baked from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking From My Home to Yours.  It was the perfect time to use up some of that bounty from the freezer before this summer's berries were in full swing.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  You can find the recipe on the original host blog, Sweet Life Kitchen.

- I used the optional black pepper in the fruit mixture, and lots of lime zest.  Taking a cue from some previous Dorie fruit recipes, I also added a pinch of ginger.

- The topping is made with a biscuit method but it is then rolled out and applied like a pie crust. Because I used a deep baking dish rather than a pie pan but a deeper baking dish, I just tucked the circle of dough down on top of the berries.

- I was worried about my topping because it wouldn't hold together; it was extremely dry and crumbly.  I squished it together as best I could, put it in the oven and crossed my fingers.

-  The cobbler baked up golden on the outside and soft in the middle.  The berries had just the right amount of juiciness.

the verdict:

I served this just from the oven to my book group.  This dessert was a runaway hit with the group members.  The warm soft center of the biscuit topping was almost creamy, and combined perfectly with the berries and a bit of cold whipped cream.  One of my testers said, "This is a recipe I have GOT to have!" and she was very pleased to hear that it was a Dorie recipe, since she owns the book.  My only quibble is that the topping-to-berries was too high. Next time I make this, I will use more berries.

{TWD} not-so-Tropical not-so-Crumble

This week's recipe for the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group is called Tropical Crumble. The recipe's creator, the inimitable Dorie Greenspan, says, "think of this in the dead of winter, when a taste of the tropics can be as warming as a cashmere throw." For Gaye of Laws of the Kitchen who chose this crumble, this was indeed a taste of the tropics during the wintertime - she's in Australia where the seasons are the opposite of what I'm experiencing here in the US.

As for me, I don't have a huge incentive to experience the tropics at the moment; our temperatures have been sky-high for weeks, with humidity to match. Through the wonders of global trade I can definitely buy mangoes and bananas here year-round, but I turned instead to the plenitude of summer fruit that was filling my fridge and freezer. I had some ripce local peaches from my farm box, and a few weeks back when I was overrun with blackberries I'd tossed them in the freezer for future baking projects. Peaches and blackberries sounded like a winning seasonal combination to me.

While the "not so tropical" part was intentional, in the course of baking this recipe I had an unintended crumble fail. In the end, my dessert didn't bear a very close resemblance to the way I imagine this recipe was supposed to turn out.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe on Gaye's post.

- As I was preparing to bake the crumble, my 1st question was how much fruit to use, seeing as I was using completely different fruit. So I put the issue out on twitter: "I need to figure out how many cups of fruit is the equivalent to two mangoes and four bananas. any guesses?" In a matter of minutes, I had a response. From none other than Nancie McDermott, who wrote the book on pies - literally - so if anyone knows her fruit, it's Nancie! And although she is a fellow Southerner (living in North Carolina), the cool thing is that she was traveling in Taiwan when she replied to my question! Her reply: "3 cups." Great! I had a plan.

- I had a fair amount of ripe peaches to use, and by the time it was all said and done, I probably used close to 4 cups of peaches and blackberries. Trying to approximate Dorie's instructions, first I cooked the peaches about 5 minutes on high and added the frozen blackberries for 2 additional minutes. I added a pinch of salt to Dorie's filling ingredients, and rather than a fresh lime, I used about 1/4 teaspoon of lime zest from my freezer. I refrigerated the cooked fruit mixture overnight.

- The topping recipe calls for 8 T butter to 1/2c brown sugar to 3T flour to 1/2c nuts. I didn't stop to think about that proportion, just measured and combined the ingredients and popped it into the freezer overnight. Looking back at it, that's a lot of butter for a relatively small amount of dry ingredients.

- The following day, I brought the fruit to room temperature, sprinkled on the frozen crumble topping and put it in the oven to bake.

- I'm pretty sure I measured my ingredients correctly. But as the dish was baking, the topping never became crumbly; in fact, it never became topping. It was just big pool of melted butter with some clumps of sugar and pecans discernible among the fruit.

the verdict:

When I went to serve the "crumble" I spooned off as much of the pooled butter as I could, then put it in a bowl with some vanilla ice cream. My husband loved "the compote" and I agreed that it had good flavor. The lime and ginger paired beautifully with the peaches and blackberries, and the crunch from the pecans was lovely. Although it was a crumble #fail, it was at least a tasty flop!

Sometime I'd like to try this recipe as Dorie wrote it, with the bananas and mangoes, but before I did, I'd have to check the proportions of butter to dry ingredients so that it would be a true crumble rather than a buttery mess. I will be interested to see how this recipe worked for everyone else who baked this week.

{TWD} Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake

Perhaps the best part of summer is the return of fresh berries (optimally, local) at affordable prices. I love eating them by the bowlful and handful, but I try to save some for baking also. The bakers of Tuesdays With Dorie got a chance to bake with berries this week; the assigned recipe is Dorie Greenspan's Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake.

It's tempting to doctor this cake up a bit, adding a streusel topping or a glaze, but that would defeat the whole purpose of it being a "plain" cake. I mean, it's right there in the title! It's a quick and easy cake, provided that your ingredients are at room temperature, and I wanted to test it the way Dorie intended it to be. Besides, how plain can a cake really be that boasts both blueberries and brown sugar?

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The recipe for this cake is on this post on the blog Everyday Insanity, by Cindy

- The cake is supposed to be baked in a 7x11 pan. I do have that size pyrex baking dish, and it's pretty rare that I get to use it for baked goods, but I like square cakes, so I used my 8x8 metal pan with a removable bottom. A closer fit would probably have been a 9x9 pan, but I wanted a taller cake.

- I think I truthfully can say I made this one "as written" - absolutely the only thing I changed was the spice component, which was optional. Rather than the 1/2 tsp of cinnamon, I added 1 tsp of ground ginger.

- Including a pint of blueberries made for a high ratio of berries/batter. I gave some thought to dredging the blueberries in flour before folding them into the batter so they wouldn't drop to the bottom of the cake as it baked, but instead I succumbed to laziness. I didn't want to use another clean bowl, and I was hopeful that the batter was thick enough to support the berries without sinkage.

- My cake pan is dark and non-stick, so I decreased the temperature to 360 degrees instead of 375. The cake was in the oven for 40 minutes, and I let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before removing it from the pan via the removable pan bottom.

- As I learned when I cut into the cake, the berries had indeed sunk to the bottom.

the verdict:

This cake may have "plain" in the title, but that doesn't mean it's boring or bland. Or unpopular. My tasters all loved this one, and piece after piece disappeared from the serving plate. I enjoyed the texture and the flavor from the brown sugar, but I was wishing that my blueberries were not those sweet, cultivated ones. To me, the intense flavor burst from tiny wild blueberries would have been better in this cake. My tasters were unconvinced; they liked the cake just as is.

{TWD} Strawberry Rhubarb Double Crisp

There was a bank of rhubarb growing along the driveway of my childhood home, and my mother baked it into pies, combined with apples. I didn't learn until years and years later that the more common combination is rhubarb with strawberries.

Although I enjoyed rhubarb when it came my way, it's been a long time since I've eaten rhubarb, and I've never baked with it myself. So this week's recipe for the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group was an exciting first for me. Luckily our local grocery store had some fresh rhubarb in stock (thank goodness I asked the produce manager; the rhubarb was in the back) and some decent strawberries, so I was all set to bake this dessert.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The recipe was chosen for the group by Sarah of Teapots and Cake Stands. Check out her blog post to find the recipe.

- I made half recipe of this crisp, in an approximately 6" squar-ish ceramic baking dish. I really like this dish, but it's really red. In the ideal world it would be a different color when baking a crisp with a red filling that bubbles at the edges. However we all know this world is far from ideal; the dish was the right size so that's what I used.

- The "double" part of this crisp reflects the fact that in this recipe there is double the amount of crisp topping; half is pressed into the pan to form a bottom crust and the rest is reserved to be crumbled over the top of the fruit filling.

- Strawberries can be a watery fruit for baking, but Dorie solves this problem by cooking the strawberries with sugar and making a saucy filling by thickening them with a cornstarch slurry. This is then poured over the cut rhubarb, topped with the crumbs and put into the oven for a leisurely bake.

- On the advice of Caitlin at EngineerBaker, I cut the amount of sugar by about a quarter. The strawberry filling was still plenty sweet when I tasted it.

- The unusual part of this recipe is that it uses ginger in all components: ground ginger and chopped crystalized ginger in the crust/topping mixture and ground ginger in the filling.

- I love walnuts and was excited to include these in the crust/topping. I made sure to chop the nuts finely so that they would seamlessly combine with the oats.

- The crisp was hot and bubbly when I pulled it out of the oven. I spent a bunch of time trying to capture a picture of the crisp in mid-bubble, to no avail.

- We ate the crisp plain, in order to taste it more completely.

the verdict:

This crisp was absolutely delicious! I think it might be my favorite fruit dessert of all time. The rhubarb was meltingly tender and the flavor blended with the strawberry and ginger to produce a fresh, bright, intensely fruity filling that was tempered by the buttery, sweet, crunchy (thanks to the nuts), crust and topping. The oats and the ginger really took this one over the top.

Sarah, I'm so glad that you cared so much about rhubarb that you chose this recipe, and also glad that rhubarb was seasonally available around here when it came time to bake the crisp. I can't wait to bake this one again!

{TWD} Cranberry Lime Galette, and Gluten Free Tart Variation

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is Cranberry Lime Galette, and yes, that makes two cranberry recipes in a row for the bakers of TWD (and three cranberry recipes in the past four posts for the readers of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs!) This bothers me not a bit because I adore cranberries. I always have a jar of homemade cranberry sauce in the fridge (see this post and this one), and I buy bags of fresh cranberries for as long as the local markets sell them, and squirrel them away in the freezer for the times when I can't find fresh berries.

Cranberries are a wonderful, bright counterpoint to roast meat or buttery baked goods. And speaking of buttery, I'm going to resist comparing this recipe to last week's because, well, they're as different as apples and oranges - literally, since last week's cake paired oranges with the cranberries and this week it's apples that join the cranberries.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- Whitney, April, and Elizabeth of Celestial Confections chose the Cranberry Lime Galette, and you can find the recipe on their blog today.

- A galette is a free-form pie, baked on a cookie sheet. Rolled-out pie dough is pulled up and tucked like a blanket around the fruit filling mounded in the center.

- I made a full recipe of the cranberry mixture, and divided it into a small galette with regular pie crust, and a medium tart with a gluten/grain free crust.


- My freezer had a half-single recipe of pie crust, which rolled out to a 7 inch circle. I marked the inner circle at 4.5 inches, and ended up with an adorable little galette.

- For the gluten/grain-free tart, I used a variation of the nut crust that I posted here, this time with pecans, almonds, and coconut flour.

- The filling for this galette contains fresh cranberries, lime zest and juice, apples, chopped fresh ginger, jam, and, optionally, plump dried cranberries. I didn't have any of those on hand, but I did have some plump dried Montmorency cherries from Trader Joe's, which I used instead, cutting them in pieces first. Continuing the theme, rather than raspberry jam, I used black cherry jam.

- An 8 ounces bag of cranberries yielded 2 cups, once I discarded a few soft cranberries

- The 1.5 inch piece of fresh ginger specified in the recipe produced nearly 1/4 cup when chopped. Did you know that you can throw ginger root right into the freezer and it will peel and grate perfectly when frozen? Another tip: scrape the ginger with the edge of a spoon to peel it easily. I did let the ginger thaw before chopping it; didn't want any knife accidents.

- My lime was pretty large, so I probably ended up using extra lime juice.

- To balance all of the tartness, I used a bit more chopped apple - 2 smallish ones. I don't know what kind of apple they were, since they were from my farm box, but they were fairly sweet.

- I didn't want to use bread crumbs in the tart since I was keeping it gluten/grain free, so I used a mixture of coconut flour and ground hazelnuts to line the dough. Because I was lazy, I used the same mixture for the galette as well.


the verdict:

I served the galette with whipped cream at the end of our family dinner on Sunday. My husband was bowled over by the flavors, and happily welcomed a generous second helping, saying, "This might be the best pie of any sort I've ever eaten; and I've eaten some good pies, too, if you catch my drift."

I'm well aware that his is not going to be the universal response to this galette. It is brash and bold, fresh and tart. The flavors are strong, but quite balanced. The cranberries are straight-out bitter/tart. The apples add the sweet note, the dried cherries amp up the flavor, and the jam combines with the lime and the ginger and the sugar to make a vivid, sweet glaze. The whipped cream (I used unsweetened) was a perfect accompaniment to the galette; it performed the welcome job of mellowing the flavors.

We enjoyed the tart also; the strong taste of the cranberry filling stood up nicely to the sturdy nut crust. All in all, this recipe was a winner, one that I wouldn't mind seeing on the Thanksgiving dessert buffet.

Another way to prepare this recipe would be to bake it as a one-crust pie, and add a streusel topping, which would moderate the tartness of the filling somewhat.

{TWD} Cranberry Shortbread Cake

After nearly two and a half years of baking weekly from Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours, one would think - really, one would know by now - that the book is filled with surprises. There are the recipes that sound improbable but turn out to be wonderful. And then there are recipes that somehow escape notice, even though I have read and re-read the book, have gone through it page-by-page, and have studied both the table of contents and the index. This week's recipe for the baking group Tuesdays With Dorie is one of those sleepers. Until my very good baking buddy Jessica, of Singleton in the Kitchen, chose the Not-Just-For-Thanksgiving Cranberry Shortbread Cake I didn't even know it was in the book.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Jessica will have the recipe on her site today.

- This is one of those fabulously versatile recipes; it is two layers of buttery shortbread-like cake, with a filling of cranberry "jam" that can be whipped up on the stove top in minutes. But the cake filling could also varied to suit the season or your mood; so it could be sauteed cinnamon apples, or any kind of jam that you fancy and/or have in the pantry. I was excited to make the first cranberry dessert of the season, so I went that route.

- In making the filling, I used the minimum amount of sugar Dorie specified, since she said to add more if it was too tart. But even with the smallest amount of sugar the filling was too sweet for me, so I added some lime juice, which helped, although it was still on the sweet side.

- I made 2/3 recipe in fluted deep tart pan rather than a springform pan. I didn't roll the dough quite big enough for the pan, so ended up spreading the dough with my fingers. I was worried that it would look patched and rough, but as it baked the cake rose and filled in all the little gaps in the dough. A little powdered sugar on top when it was cool and none the wiser!

- It was difficult for me to gauge the done-ness of the cake. The knife was fairly clean from early on in the baking time. I ended up waiting for the cake to be golden on top but at the same time not look dried out.


the verdict:

There was a split of opinion when I served this this cake. Not on the general merits of the recipe; everyone who ate the cake loved it. The real question was whether the cranberry jam filling was tart enough. One of my tasters, JT, and I thought "no, too sweet," daughter JDE, through puckered mouth, said it was plenty tart, thank you. Hubs was so busy helping himself to a third piece that he wasn't quibbling over the finer points.

The shortbread layers were wonderful, buttery, and just sweet enough. The cranberry jam was fun to make, and provided a nice tart counterpoint to the sweetness of the cake.

If you are not wed to pie on Thanksgiving (we definitely are) then this would be a great addition to the dessert table. It is absolutely festive in appearance, and wonderfully seasonal in flavor.

As for me, I plan to serve this as part of our Christmas celebration, probably with the beautiful red cranberry jam again. I also am dying to try some other versions of this cake, using different flavors of jam. I'm most excited about the prospect of using citrus marmalade; I think it will be the perfect sweet/tart combination.

{TWD} White Chocolate Brownies

I have a confession to make: for a long time I've had a bad attitude about Dorie Greenspan's recipe for White Chocolate Brownies in Baking: From My Home to Yours. I don't like the sickly-sweet taste of white chocolate, so the prospect of white chocolate brownies was just plain unappealing to me. But then I'd reason with myself: "Self, don't forget this is Dorie Greenspan's recipe. You've been pleasantly surprised many times by her recipes; as recently as last week's coconut banana ice cream pie. Maybe, just maybe, you'll like these when the time comes to bake them for Tuesdays With Dorie."

The brownies were finally chosen for this week and I stepped up and baked them, hoping to be proven wrong in my prejudgment of the recipe.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- My opinion of the brownies is no reflection of my feelings about Marthe of the blog Culinary Delights who chose the recipe this week. Marthe is an enthusiastic and generous member of Tuesdays With Dorie, and her blog is filled with yummy treats. Luckily she loved the brownies, and she gives some very helpful tips in her post (along with the recipe).

- My hopes were raised when I was that there was a surprisingly little amount of white chocolate in the brownie recipe, and a lot of orange zest in the batter, which made the brownies smell delicious as they baked.

- A full recipe would fill a 9"x13" pan. I decided to use two 8" square pans - so the brownies would cook more quickly in the middles and release from pans easily. I baked these early, before this week's P&Q was posted, but I somehow suspected that doneness - or rather, underdoneness - would be an issue. I also lined my pans with a parchment sling so that I could remove the brownies from the pan without stickage.

- The recipe calls for ground almonds and I used almond flour/meal from Bob's Red Mill. It's more finely ground and fluffy than I've been able to achieve in my food processor. Plus, it's made with blanched almonds, so it's a lovely pale golden color.

- I was tempted to use a swirl of jam rather than berries (doesn't that sound good?) but I dutifully used the specified raspberries (exactly 20 of them).


- My meringue layer turned out to be unexpectedly thin when I spread it over the brownie batter.

- It took absolutely forever for the brownies to get baked. I kept putting them back in oven for another 5 minutes. On the bright side, testing the brownies wasn't as hard as I thought it would be the knife went through the meringue layer and tested the brownie layer .

- I thought the brownies looked so pretty when I cut them - the deep red raspberries punctuating the creamy yellow crumb. I piled them on a platter with some other brownies and brought them to a neighborhood dinner gathering. Unfortunately we were not able to stay at the party, so I don't know how well they were received. I kept out a couple of brownies to photograph the next day.

- Unfortunately the meringue didn't hold up for long, and when I photographed the brownies it was a bit weepy.

the verdict:

I bit into a brownie with trepidation, and ...it was much tastier than I had expected. The orange flavor and the raspberry notes were nice and strong, and the white chocolate was all but undetectable. Although the brownies tasted nowhere near as bad as I was expecting, mine had an odd spongy dense texture which I did not enjoy.

{TWD} Quick Classic Berry Tart

I am always excited to see one of Dorie Greenspan's tarts come up in the recipe rotation for the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group. So far, Dorie has batted 1.000 on her tart recipes. And if I can use the early local strawberries from my farm box, then so much the better! This week's Quick Classic Berry Tart was a perfect choice for this week.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The tart recipe was chosen by Cristine of Cooking with Cristine. You can find the recipe on her site or on page 377 of Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home to Yours.

- Dorie calls this tart "Quick" - right there in the recipe's title. While it's not exactly difficult I wouldn't be tempted categorize it as a fast recipe. The tart consists of a shortbread-like crust, pastry cream filling, fresh fruit and a jelly glaze. For best results, the tart is assembled at the last minute.

- I've always loved Dorie's tart crust. I chose to make the version with nuts, using almond meal to replace 1/4 cup of the recipe's flour. Dorie gives quite detailed instructions for making the crust; the key elements being: freezing the butter before mixing it with the dry ingredients in the food processor, processing the ingredients long enough for the dough to form into "clumps and curds", and freezing the formed tart shell before baking. Nothing too tricky, but a bit time consuming. If you have the foresight to keep an extra tart shell in your freezer (actually a great idea) then this recipe might qualify as quick-ish, but there's still the matter of making pastry cream.

- Pastry cream is a cousin to custard, in that you are using egg yolks (and cornstarch in the case of pastry cream) to thicken a liquid mixture over heat on the stove top. We've made it for other TWD desserts, so I while I wasn't particularly worried I did want to make some changes. In the past my pastry cream has been passable although you could say it puts the "paste" in past-ry cream. It always thickens immediately without giving the cornstarch a chance to cook. I decided to try for a thinner consistency this time around, so I reduced the cornstarch and made sure that my egg yolks were not super-large (I used 99 g of yolk total for a full recipe of pastry cream) The cream was a lot more manageable this time; it cooked for a while before I deemed it thick enough. In retrospect, I probably should have left it on the flame for just a little while longer.

- I piled the pastry cream high in the tart shell, disregarding Dorie's directions to fill to below the rim of the shell.

- The fruit topping was no more difficult than washing the berries (and slicing in the case of the strawberries). When I assembled the tart, I arranged the different berries in stripes so each person could cut a piece with a favorite type of berry.

- The tart's final element is a glaze made from red currant jelly boiled with a bit of water. I surveyed my jam collection two or three times without locating the currant jelly I was sure I owned, before using the apple jelly that was in my fridge. Dorie gives the option of dotting each piece of fruit with a drop of glaze, or brushing the glaze over the entire surface of the fruit. I painted my glaze with a pastry brush, and had a ton of glaze left over. A tablespoon or two of jelly with a few drops of water would have been sufficient.

- I brought the tart to book group last Thursday. The combination of the slightly thin pastry cream and the overfilled nature of the tart shell made the tart very difficult to transport. I wouldn't use the word "sloshed" but every time the car turned a corner, there was a wave-like effect in the pastry cream, and some spilled over the sides. Luckily I had taken pictures before it left my kitchen.



the verdict:

The book group members devoured the tart, and while I agreed that it was delicious, I was distracted by my disappointment at how poorly the tart had survived its 5 mile car trip, and by my nagging worries that the pastry cream was too thin. In truth, those things did not matter; the tart was quite good.

In fact, thanks to my husband I now know that I can bake as authentic a French fruit tart as a French restaurant in town. It turns out that on the day I served this tart at book group he had eaten a business lunch at a lovely French restaurant and had ordered fruit tart for dessert. He told me that mine was pretty much equal in taste.

{TWD} Soft Chocolate Blackberry Tarts

The overwhelming majority of Dorie Greenspan recipes that I've tried have been very good, but her tart recipes have been particularly outstanding. I'm always very excited the weeks when a tart assignment comes up in the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group, and a two-tart month like March is an unprecedented special thrill!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Rachelle of Mommy? I’m Hungry! chose this tart for us to bake this week. You can find the recipe on her blog, or on page 354 of the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

- I used the same batch of gluten-free nut crust for this tart that I used for the Coconut Custard Tart from two weeks ago. I made the recipes back-to-back, making minis of both, and I still have a 7" tart crust in the freezer for another occasion.

- The recipe calls for raspberries, but Dorie says that other berries work nicely also. I've tasted chocolate and raspberry flavors together plenty of times, so this time I decided to try blackberries because I was curious to see how they'd combine with chocolate (and because I love blackberries!)


- There are two kinds of chocolate in this recipe: milk chocolate and bittersweet chocolate. Dorie says the interplay of the two chocolate intensities is what makes this tart so good. I used Valrhona milk chocolate fevres, and a small block of Valrhona bittersweet chocolate. In the pictures you can see the two chocolates, the berries, and the nut crust.

- I made 1/3 recipe, which I was hoping would yield 3 mini tarts. I lined 3 baked tart crusts with blackberries, but there really was only enough filling for two, so my berry-to-chocolate ratio was only 2/3 of what it should have been.

- My tarts were in my oven at 280 degrees on "convect bake" for 18 minutes when I checked them and found them done (if not just a tad over-baked.) I was expecting the tart filling to be pudding-like in consistency, but mine looked a lot more like soft brownies.

- I served the tarts with soft whipped cream. My daughter was visiting home the weekend I baked them, and she had one for dessert after dinner Saturday and the other one for breakfast on her way to the airport the next morning. Both times were dark, so I'm sorry to say I didn't get decent pictures of the tarts before they were history. I had a bite of each of her tarts (quality control check, of course!)


the verdict:

The unusual taste combination of chocolate and blackberry was a wonderful find! I don't always love the fruit and chocolate combination, but I even wished that I'd put more blackberries in these tarts. I was also happy to find that the chocolate and berry flavors were strong enough to match well with the walnut/pecan crust.

{TWD} All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake

November is the month for giving thanks, and I'm thankful that we have permission to post the November Tuesdays With Dorie recipes in any order, and I have another week to get the time-intensive Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake baked! The recipe that I'm posting this week is the All in One Holiday Bundt Cake.

When I saw this recipe I was skeptical. I don't have a very good history with Dorie's hybrid desserts, especially where pumpkin and/or spices are concerned. (Last Thanksgiving's Twofer Pie (Pumpkin + Pecan) and the Chocolate Gingerbread were not successful combinations in my opinion.) I hoped that the cranberries and apples (and pecans) in this recipe would give the underlying pumpkin cake an interesting twist, but I worried that it would be a hodge-podge of disparate flavors from the multiple ingredients.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- For once I used the full amount of all-purpose flour, without adding any whole grain flour! I figured that I was making enough adjustments to the recipe as it was.

- Cranberry bread/cake is one of Winter's little joys, and the more cranberries the better. I didn't want insipid widely-scattered cranberries, so I increased the quantity of cranberries to 1 1/3 cups. I correspondingly I decreased the amount of apple (I used 1 cup of apple, which is equivalent to a medium apple rather than the recipe's specified large one)

- Although you really can't tell from the pictures, I cut the cranberrries in half (while they were still frozen) rather than chopping them. That's what we did with the cranberries in our cranberry bread when I was growing up, and I love the way they look.

- To build a little intensity in the cake I increased all the spices by half, except the fresh-ground nutmeg, which I mistakenly tripled. Instead of light brown sugar, I used the dark stuff.

- I substituted light tasting olive oil for 2 tablespoons of the butter.

- My bundt loaf pan is 10 cup capacity, and it was the perfect size for this recipe. I spooned a bit of the batter into a single silicone cupcake mold and baked it so that I could have a taste without cutting into the big cake.

- The bottom of the cake got a little soft after the first day or so, probably from the moisture of the apples. I think that if I were to bake this cake again that I'd decrease the quantity of apple a bit more - or maybe use dried apples - and definitely increase the cranberries.



the verdict:

Upon tasting the little cupcake, my first reaction was that it needed more salt. Then I realized that I had forgotten to put any salt in the cake at all.

Despite my apprehension, I found this to be a lovely cake. the combination works surprisingly well. The apple transforms the cake into a whole new dessert - sweet and tart, fresh and spiced - with all the different flavors contributing to the whole rather than fighting with each other. I loved the cranberries the most, and was very glad I'd increased the amount. In fact, I wish there were even more cranberries! The maple glaze dressed up the appearance of the cake, and had a nice flavor, but I wouldn't say it was necessary.

I brought the cake to a neighborhood supper club and it held its own next to a store-bought cheesecake and a store-bought caramel layer cake. (Our street has been meeting for supper club for 20 years, and I don't remember ever seeing store-bought desserts, but I will spare you an extended rant.)

And now I have a confession to make, something that wouldn't have crossed my mine before I started food blogging: I brought the cake over whole, figuring that there would be a lot of cake left over (this is a bundt cake after all, and can serve a ton of people - there are always leftovers!) and I could photograph a slice the next day. When dessert time arrived, I saw that the hostess had cut up the entire huge cake into small pieces. My first thought was: "Oh, no! What am I going to do about my pictures?" All was forgiven when she - and her sons - loved the cake and were excited to keep half the leftovers. The next day I put some of the little half slices on a plate, and took pictures, which were just fine.

Thanks to Britin of The Nitty Britty for choosing this lovely All in One Holiday Bundt Cake on pages 186 and 187 of of Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. The recipe is up on Britin's blog - click here - and on November 24, she will have her own bundt cake posted on her blog.

{TWD} Cran-Apple Crisp

The recipes chosen for November in the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group are all quite seasonal, variously featuring the flavors of apple, cranberry, pumpkin, molasses, and chestnut (and chocolate, too, we can't have a month without chocolate!) Since any of these recipes could find a place on the Thanksgiving dessert table, the TWD powers-that-be have relaxed the rules for this month. The TWD bakers are free to bake and post the four recipes in any order, as long as we post on Tuesdays (and even that rule is suspended for the week of Thanksgiving, when we can post on any day of the week).

So, although technically this week's assigned recipe is the Chestnut Chocolate Cake, chosen by Katya of Second Dinner, I baked the Cran-Apple Crisp, chosen by Em of The Repressed Pastry Chef. Are you sufficiently confused?

Let's move right to the crisp then, shall we?

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Preparing this crisp couldn't have been easier. The topping ingredients are quickly mixed then chilled until it is time to assemble the crisp - in my case a day or two later. The fruit is tossed together in a bowl with a bit of flour and sugar. Then the two are layered and popped into the oven. Done!

- For the topping I was working with such small quantities (I was making 1/4 recipe) that my mini food processor was just the thing for mixing. I used whole grain flour, which I think works beautifully in a crumb topping. I substituted chopped toasted pecans for the sweetened coconut because I was only using 1/8 cup, and it didn't seem worthwhile to open a package of coconut for that little dab. I also added a pinch of salt to the topping.

- I had some local cooking apples from my farm box, and some other local apples from a fruit stand. I cut up one small apple of each kind, but I don't know the name of either apple variety.

- Instead of sugar, I tossed the apples and cranberries (two kinds: frozen and dried) with some molasses granules, which I'd just bought and was dying to use. We love the flavor of molasses, and the granules make for an easy substitution for granulated white sugar. [Edit: I ordered the molasses granules online from Prepared Pantry. I also picked up cinnamon chips, maple chips, honey granules.]

- I baked the crisp in one small baking dish. There was plenty of topping even though the dish was very shallow.

- There was just enough crisp to serve two.


the verdict:

This was a delightful crisp! The flavors of apple and cranberry were very well balanced. I loved the different textures and flavors from the dried and fresh (frozen) cranberries. The best thing about a crisp is that you get the wonderful fruit flavor and crumbly topping of a pie without having to take the time (and ingredients/calories) that go along with pie-making. The crisp was good with homemade vanilla ice cream and it was good on its own.

This recipe is a keeper - simple and delicious, what could be better?

Thanks to Em for choosing this recipe. Look for the recipe on her blog as of next Tuesday, November 10, or you can find it on page 422 of Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Lemon Pudding Cakes

This is the final week for the Tyler Florence Fridays group, which was formed last November so that bloggers spend a year exploring Tyler's varied repertory of recipes. As the TFF Powers That Be put it:

"So TFF peeps and fans, next week, Friday October 30 will be our last official weekly Tyler Florence Fridays Round-up. (Sniff, sniff) It has been a ton of fun over the past year and we have enjoyed getting to know so many great bloggers. We hope to see you all here for the party--with a new Tyler dish or maybe repeating a past favorite."

I've enjoyed participating - however sporadically - in TFF over the past year, and couldn't miss posting in this final week. Funnily enough, this is the first Tyler Florence dish that I ever prepared, his Lemon Pudding Cakes. I baked these last November and the post has been in my drafts folder ever since!

On a chilly day last Fall we had another couple over for a casual dinner. I served a hearty beef stew and wanted to finish with something rather light and refreshing; Tyler's recipe for Lemon Pudding Cakes sounded perfect. I love serving individual-portion desserts to company.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- This is an easy and straightforward recipe to prepare, and many of the steps can be done ahead, making it ideal for entertaining.

- As it bakes, this dessert separates into a cake layer on the bottom and a pudding layer on top. I guess that's why Tyler calls them "pudding cakes"!

- I used a tea ball for dusting the powdered sugar on top.


the verdict:

These pudding/cakes really hit the spot. I loved the different textures of the two lemony layers and the berries were a delicious counterpoint. I had one tiny quibble: I thought the pudding/cake was a bit too sweet, so next time I'll reduce the sugar.

This is an elegant and easy dessert for entertaining, or for enjoying all by yourself!

Blueberry Frozen Yogurt

Earlier in the summer I made strawberry frozen yogurt from David Lebovitz' book The Perfect Scoop and we loved it - so much strawberry flavor and such a lovely texture - so I was looking forward to trying the blueberry version.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe on Pam's blog, here.

- Since these were pretty sweet (they were not wild blueberries) I cut the sugar a bit.

- The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of yogurt. I used 1 c Greek yogurt and 1/2 cup berry yogurt from Trader's Point Creamery. This delicious organic yogurt, produced from grass-fed cows, was voted the #1 yogurt by the American Cheese Society. It's a thin yogurt that comes in a beautiful glass bottle, and I've been able to find it at a decent price at Fresh Market. (Whole Foods also carries it)

the verdict

For some reason we had mixed reactions to this yogurt the day we first made it. My husband loved it, but I was bothered by something - the blueberry skins, maybe? It tasted a little odd, sort of chalky. But the next day it tasted very good to both of us and to some guests that sampled it. I'd like to try making this again with wild blueberries (fresh or frozen).

{TWD} Blackberry Blanc Manger (Will it win Wimbleton?)

This week's TWD assignment is what Dorie calls Blanc Manger, also commonly known as blancmange. Wikipedia says that it is "one of the few truly international dishes of medieval and early modern Europe." It falls in the category of "white dishes" and was originally made with almond milk, and chicken or fish and considered an ideal dish for the ill. It later became a dessert pudding with cream, eggs, and gelatin. Wow, interesting history, right? Although I’d never actually tasted blanc manger/blancmange I was long familiar with it from years of watching Monty Python. I knew that it's pronounced "blah mahnge" and that as a group, the desserts have a devious ambition to be tennis champions. Check out this video which features blancmanges and reveals that "they mean to win Wimbleton," - one particularly agile blancmange plays a Scotsman for the tournament final:




This is no ordinary boring dessert!

n.o.e. notes:

- The blancmange in the Monty Python video was obviously formed in a fancy mold (see the little ruffled knobs around the top edge?), so I decided that no ordinary round cake pan would suffice for my version of the dessert. I chose a vintage mold and an oval baking dish, and I decided to divide a full recipe between the two, and give one to my good friend D, who has celiac disease, as the dessert is gluten-free. A few weeks ago I had planned to give her a dacquoise, but had to abandon the plan when I ruined the ganache. I'd previously tried to give her some Hidden Berry Torte (that became Hidden Berry Trifle.) My fingers were crossed that this one would be a success! I figured I’d give her the one that most successfully unmolded…


- This dessert would also be suited to individual molds or ramekins.

- I found some ground almond meal/almond flour made by Bob’s Red Mill, which is much finer grind than I am able to achieve with my food processor.

- There is no "undo" button on the coulis. once it's on the white surface of the blanc manger, it's there. (And it starts to bleed into the white pretty quickly also.) Let's just say I need a bit of work on the "coulis drizzle" technique.

- For the blackberry coulis, I combined blackberries, lime juice and agave to taste, whirling it with the immersion blender.

- Oops, I forgot to save out any berries for garnish. Thank goodness for mint leaves!


the verdict:

The blanc manger is like a creamy vanilla mouse. We love "spoon foods" around here, so we thought it was deliciously refreshing. My husband's commented, "This stuff is really good. Not as good as ice cream, but really good."

My friend D was thrilled with her blanc manger, and sent me the following email:

"Are you sure it is without gluten…way too good….like, but better than, a crème brulee(sp)…not as overwhelmingly sweet. Wow…was it hard to make? I am going back for just a little more…"

The bottom line: this blanc manger was so versatile and fabulous, I wouldn't be surprised if it took Wimbleton after all. Move over, Roger Federer and Andy Roddick!

Note: I'm in the middle of celebrating my one-year blogiversary! As part of the festivities, I'm giving away a pretty cool pair of vintage baking pans. Stop by and leave a comment on that post by Friday, July 24, for your chance to win!!