Traditional Madeleines

 

In the course of my baking with the original Tuesdays With Dorie baking group, I've had several opportunities to use my little 6-well madeleine mold from Pairs.  We've baked various flavors of madeleines from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking From My Home to Yours: chocolate, tea infused, and honey, brown sugar and lemon.  But the classic plain madeleine recipe in the book was chosen for the group before I joined.  

Now that I'm busy catching up on all of the recipes from Dorie's book that I missed four years ago, this week brought me to the basic madeleine, baked by the TWD bakers 4 years ago this week.  Not only did this give me a chance to try one of the quintessentially French recipes in the book, it also presented the opportunity to use all of my previous experience to try for madeleines with maximum "humps" on their ridged backs.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-   Click  here for the recipe, on the blog of one of the early TWD host, Tara of the blog Smells Like Home.

- From previous experience with Dorie's recipes for madeleines, I have learned that half recipe makes enough batter to just over-fill my particular madeleine pan with its six wells.  I tried to remind myself that it is deceptively easy to put too much batter in the wells and purposefully left a bit in the bowl.  It turned out to be almost the perfect amount of batter in each well.

-  I also remembered (as I had not the last time I baked madeleines) that on her blog Dorie had given a few new tips for baking madeleines so that they would puff even more while baking, producing a profligate hump.   I followed her suggestion to place the madeleine pan on a hot baking stone in the pre-heated oven.  I did this, and voila! My madeleines formed beautiful puffed shapes as they baked.

the verdict:

These madeleines were easy to mix up, fun to bake, and delicious to eat.  I had forgotten the delicate pleasure of eating a madeleine with a cup of hot tea, but this recipe brought it all back.  And I was very glad to finally bake the basic classic.

Rugelach

This week's recipe for the all-new Tuesdays With Dorie (Baking With Julia edition) is Rugelach.  I have baked rugelach once: Dorie Greenspan's recipe in the original TWD group, which I posted here.  Rugelach is a traditional Jewish cookie, and consists of a cream cheese dough filled with a jam or jam-like spread, and sprinkled with nuts and dried fruit then rolled and baked.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- The host blogs for the rugelach are Jessica of My Baking Heart and Margaret of The Urban Hiker; you can find the recipe if you visit their posts (here and here).

-  The rugelach recipe in Baking With Julia contains several different components.  One is prune or apricot lekvar - a sort of a spread or paste made from dried fruit.  I had some nice soft prunes that I had used for a different recipe and wanted to use them up while they were still fresh.  I made 1/2 recipe of the prune lekvar.  It was easy enough to prepare and I froze the leftover lekvar for a future baking projects.

- For the dough, I had 2 ounces of cream cheese in the fridge to use up so I decided to make 1/6 recipe of the dough and the other components.  I know that I mixed up the dough without incident, but got a little tricky when I moved onto the "filling and topping" component(s)  I was cruising along with my mental calculations and then suddenly I got totally confused by my math in the sugar and nuts measurements.  I know that I reduced the sugar by a little bit, and reduced the cinnamon by a good bit (I wanted the fruit and nuts, not to mention the prune lekvar, to shine)

-  Roll-and-sliced was the recipe's preferred method of shaping the cookies, but it also allowed for the traditional crescent shaping - where you form long thin triangles of dough and rolling those around the fillings.  I decided to go for the crescent shape even though I suspected it would be hard to fit all of the filling inside the cookies.  I rolled my dough into a rough semicircle, spread it with the prune lekvar, scattered the fillings, and cut triangular wedges.  The recipe cautions against rolling the dough too thin, because it has a lot of filling to hold.  As it turned out, filling was spilling out, even before my cookies made it to the baking sheet.

halfway through the process of coating with egg wash and sugar/spices/nuts before baking

-  Once filled and formed, the cookies were treated to an egg wash and rolled in a mixture of  cinnamon, sugar, and nuts.  It turned out that the egg wash glued all of the elements of the cookies together.

-  These cookies, in my hands, were an unholy, glorious mess. They melted all over the baking sheet (thank goodness for silicone mats!) and stopped this side of charring before the pastry was finished baking, but they ended up perfectly baked inside.

the verdict:

Matching their untidy appearance, my rugelach were a riot of fruit and nut flavors, with a hint of sweetness + cinnamon.  My husband and I had no trouble polishing off the half dozen or cookies and wishing for more.  They were especially good with a cup of hot coffee or tea.

Spice Bars with Pecans and Raisins

 At this point you might be "fussed-out" from rolling, cutting, decorating, and eating fancy cookies during the December baking season.  These Raisin Pecan Spice Bars  are a perfect January treat: they are simple to throw together and their warm spices, nuts, and dried fruit make them very welcome if you're caught in deep winter's chilly grip.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The recipe from The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri.  Since I am a (very lax) member of the The Modern Baker Challenge, and the group has agreed to not post the recipes baked from the book, I'm not including the recipe.  I can give you a glimpse of the ingredient list, though: all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, butter, dark brown sugar, sugar, eggs, molasses, sour cream, raisins, and pecans. 

-  I couldn't find any sour cream in the fridge so I used yogurt.

- I stirred a mixture of golden and dark raisins into my batter.

-  Chopped toasted pecans from Trader Joe's are a great time saver and give a wonderful nutty flavor in baked goods!

-  Instead of one 9x13 pan, I baked the recipe in two 8x8 pans because I wanted to make sure the middle got baked through.

-  My bars took 30 -35 minutes to bake, and were still quite moist inside, with a nice crackly top.

- I cut the bars small because they were going on a big platter of bar cookies and brownies.

the verdict:

These bars have a perfectly balanced combination of flavors. The raisins are a strong presence but blend beautifully with the spices and nuts.  I like the way these bars round out a collection of bar cookies - they are great with blondies and brownies.  On the other hand, they are strong enough to stand all by themselves.  I'll turn to this recipe time and again for a versatile cool-weather cookie.

I have been enjoying the streamlined, delicious recipes from The Modern Baker.  In fact I included the book as one of my favorites in my 2010 Cookbook Roundup and purchased three copies of the cookbook in hardcover: for me and for each of my daughters.  If you don't have a copy, the book is now available at very reasonable cost in paperback!  I was honored that Nick Malgieri recently sent a paperback copy of the book to each member of The Modern Baker Challenge.

Brown Sugar Pecan Shortbread Cookies (in three sizes)

As we saw in last week's post, the Tuesdays With Dorie group is officially finished with Dorie Greenspan's Baking; From My Home to Yours, having selected every recipe in the book over a 4 year period of weekly baking assignments. I wasn't a member in the first several months of the group's history, so I'm going back now and catching up on what I missed by baking the recipes that were selected early on. I am following the order that the recipes were originally selected in 2008 in Tuesday of the corresponding week here in 2012.

Here's the way it will work: The group (although I think it was just 2 bakers at that point) baked the first recipe, Brown Sugar Shortbread Cookies, on Tuesday January 1, 2008. I baked the recipe and am posting it today, the first Tuesday of January in 2012. And so on until July, when I will reach the corresponding week to the one where I joined the group in 2008, and at that point I will have baked every recipe in the book!



n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe on Michelle's blog post from 2008 on her blog Sugar & Spice (the blog was later renamed Brown Eyed Baker.) Michelle was one of the two bakers in Tuesdays With Dorie that first week along with the group's founder, Laurie.

- Rather than grinding up my own pecans (which isn't particularly difficult in a food processor) I used pecan meal, which is very finely ground pecans. Knowing that the meal would come in very handy some day, I'd ordered it a while ago when King Arthur Flour offered one of its periodic free shipping promotions.

- I doubled the quantity of salt in the recipe, and even so it was not very noticeable in the dough.

- The recipe calls for a pinch of cloves; I couldn't wait to see what they would contribute to the shortbread.


- Dorie's instructions are to roll the shortbread dough (in a zipper plastic bag, which is a very cool technique), cut it in squares, poke holes in the cookies with a fork before baking. I've done that with some of the past TWD shortbread recipes (here and here.) I almost always have issues with my shortbread spreading as it bakes, unless I bake it in a pie or tart pan, as I did in this post. and this one. Also my baking buddy Phyl made some shortbread cookies with cookie cutters recently, so I decided to do some experimenting with shaping my cookies:

1. I rolled some of the dough then cut it with a fluted cookie cutter. The cookies turned out pretty well, although they spread a little bit and lost some of their definition.

2. I patted some of the dough into the molds in my silicone mini tart pan. After baking, these popped out of the pan and cooled on a rack.

3. And finally, I spread some dough into my 4" fluted tart pans with removable bottoms. They released well, and produced a hefty cookie.

- All of the cookie shapes turned out well. My favorites were the ones in the silicone pan - they were a great size, baked evenly, and I loved how easily they released from the pan after baking.


the verdict:

After all the fun I had shaping and baking the shortbread it was time to see how it tasted!
The cookies were crisp around the edges and tender in the middle. They were quite buttery, with complex flavor from the brown sugar, pecans, and cloves (which were not at all noticeable as an individual element, but added a mysterious little hint of spice.) There was just enough salt. I loved these cookies and will definitely bake them again!


[edited on January 4, 2012 to add: the next recipe in the TWD rotation was Quintuple Chocolate Brownies. I previously baked this recipe and posted it here, so next Tuesday, January 10, I don't have a catch-up TWD post.]

My 500th post: the final recipe of TWD {Peanut Butter & Jam Thumbprint Cookies}

Although I baked these cookies three weeks ago, I'm hurrying to write this post in the remaining few minutes of Tuesday. Hurrying, that is, after I have procrastinated and found countless excuses to postpone sitting down at the keyboard. The reason for my hesitation? This post is all about milestones and their accompanying transitions.

The first milestone: My 500th post! This is the 500th time that I've filled a blank white box on the computer screen with words and images and shared it electronically under the banner of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs. 500 is a big round number so it's a good reason to pause for thought. But there's an even bigger reason to pause, and to think, remember, sigh, dab the corner of the eye. The second milestone of today: the baking group Tuesdays With Dorie has reached the final recipe in Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking; From My Home to Yours.

Tuesdays With Dorie began on the first Tuesday of 2008 with two or three bakers joining Laurie (of the blog Slush) in her invitation to bake through all of Dorie's Baking. Today, the last Tuesday of 2011, the group finishes the book. The group has assigned every recipe in the four years of Tuesdays, and I'm guessing that at least one baker in the group may have completed the entire book.

I have baked every recipe since I joined TWD in July of 2008, but there were seven months of recipes chosen before I was a member. It's impossible for me to come this far and not finish the task so even though the TWD group is finished with the book I intend to bake all of the recipes that I missed, beginning next Tuesday. I'll bake them in the order that they were originally chosen, and post them on the corresponding Tuesday to their original baking date. Given that schedule, I'll finish all of the recipes in July. That will be a momentous day, but it will not touch the bittersweet feeling that has haunted me all day today - the final day of the group.

The past four years have brought some of the most challenging and busy times of my life. I've dealt with joy and loss, with extended periods of travel, and months and months of ongoing renovations in my house. Making sure I published a blog post for TWD every single week - on Tuesday - and planning my schedule so that I could bake ahead if necessary - gave me a steady outlet for much needed creative activity. And there was something else: the support of dozens of other bakers, who offered encouragement, tips, comments and support, for matters in the kitchen and out.

It is this original community of TWD bakers that is ending (even as plans are being made for a second round of TWD to begin in February 2012, using Dorie's book Baking With Julia.) Dorie wrote a lovely post on her blog today about the ending of TWD, and the connections we all have made over our common experience of baking her recipes. I have been fortunate to have met about a score of TWD bakers in real life in the past several years. I previously wrote about the TWD friendships and about being interviewed about the TWD community for O Magazine.

Not all of the bakers will continue in the new version of Tuesdays With Dorie. And while the new book will have wonderful recipes, and present even greater technical challenges, the freshness of our shared experience of "I really can bake that successfully" or "Wow, that was such a failure" is behind us. Thanks to Dorie's steady guidance and the support of fellow bakers, we've all become much more competent and confident in our own kitchens.

Transitions are often difficult, and this one has made me quite sad. I'll miss the sense of purpose of the original TWD community: the weekly rhythm of writing, posting, comparing notes with many other baking buddies, and then stealing the time to visit other blogs to see, read, and leave comments.


And now, onto the week's recipe: Kids' Thumbprint Cookies.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Dorie herself is the host for this last recipe of the TWD group. You can find the recipe, and a lovely reflection about what TWD has meant to her (she calls it "the end of a delicious journey") on Dorie's blog post today.

- I baked these cookies with my daughter JDE and our friend JH in a marathon Christmas cookie-baking session. It felt so right to be baking and sharing these cookies. JDE was responsible for getting me started in TWD in the first place, and JH has been one of my blog's most loyal readers over the past several years.

- After a little bit of debate, we skipped the egg white wash + chopped peanuts on outside of the cookies. I knew I would like the texture better without the crunch peanuts, but the peanuts make the cookies look quite festive.

- Our cookies baked faster than the recipe; we had to watch them for doneness beginning at 9 minutes. When they were out of the oven and still hot, I pressed the indentation again, to make sure there was plenty of room for jam (the cookies puffed when in the oven).

- We had one "awkward batch," the one where the oven got turned off and I didn't realize it until the cookies had been baking in a - cooling - oven for a while. Then I turned the oven back on and got distracted looking for cookie cutters for another recipe and JH had to remind me of the cookies in the oven. The ended up just a little browned and crispy, and I managed to ruin several of them by poking holes all the way through them so they resembled little donuts and wouldn't hold any jam.

- I grew up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and so did my daughters. My mom always bought grape jelly but I used strawberry jam for my girls' sandwiches. For these cookies I used both flavors of jam: a jar of French strawberry preserves for most of the cookies, and a few cookies got the remaining drops of a jar of muscadine grape jelly that my daughter ALE had made last year.

the verdict:

One bite and I knew exactly why Dorie called these thumbprints for kids: they taste exactly like a pb+jam sandwich in cookie form. The cookies were even better when they sat for a day or so. They were tender and delicately peanutty in flavor, with an intense jolt of strawberry (or grape) from the boiled jam. I loved this recipe, and I loved being a member of the Tuesdays With Dorie group!

Thank you Dorie (for the wonderful book)
Thank you Laurie (for starting the group)
Thank you Julie (and others who have helped administer the group over the past 4 years)
and finally, Thank you fellow bakers and friends and readers for sharing the sweet journey of Tuesdays With Dorie!

Ginger Plum Rum Balls (gluten-free)

Bourbon balls were a fixture of my childhood at Christmas time. My mother's recipe - as most - used vanilla wafers as a base, combined with sugar, nuts, and of course booze. I could eat them by the handful. Even as an adult, if there aren't bourbon balls in the house Christmas is always missing a small but vital element.

About a month ago the home-cook-sourced site, Food 52, featured Ginger Plum Brandy Balls in their "Best Holiday Confection" contest. These were based on gingersnaps, and I knew I had to try them.

As luck would have it my fabulous daughter JDE needed to bake something gluten-free for a party. I had some Trader Joe's gluten free gingersnaps in the cupboard, so she threw these together and kindly left me some. Christmas bliss!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe here on Food 52's site.

- These couldn't be easier for me to make, because all I did was gather a few ingredients and my daughter prepared them in my kitchen! Happily this recipe was quick and easy for her also; there's no baking involved and most of the prep is done in the food processor.

- The recipe gives a pretty wide latitude as to the type of alcohol to use. We had a bottle of spiced rum on the counter, so that's what we used.

- Cocoa powder is optional in the recipe. JDE opted to use it.

- I love the way the recipe's title uses the word "plum" - if it said prunes (which in fairness really are dried plums) it wouldn't sound nearly as appetizing I suppose. Our prunes were the cherry-flavored ones. For the rest of the dried fruit JDE used a mixture of dried cherries and cranberries (translate: whatever we could scrounge in the dried fruit drawer.)

the verdict:

These rum balls were very good, so good that I plan to make another batch to have on hand for our house guests during the holidays. Next time I'll skip the cocoa powder (I think chocolate tends to mask the flavor of spices) and try bourbon. They'll be a true throwback to my childhood Christmas treats!

Church Windows Marshmallow Candy

It's Sunday, and just a week before Christmas - what better time is there to post Church Windows Marshmallow Candies? From the first minute that I saw these candies I knew that I wanted to make them. They are pretty and unusual and they looked relatively easy to make. I loved that they evoked a church, which makes them perfect to mark the holiday (holy day) season.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe on this blog post.

- After melting butter and chocolate chips, and cooling the mixture a bit, you stir in the marshmallows. Then you divide the mixture in two and roll each half into a log shape.

- I experimented a bit with the coating for the chocolate rolls. For half the recipe, I rolled the chocolate log in in dessicated coconut, and the other log in hazelnut meal. In the future I'd like to experiment with different rolling and coating techniques. I think powdered sugar would be nice, or chocolate sprinkles, or crumbs of chocolate wafer cookies.

- The colored mini marshmallows can be a bit difficult to find. The first couple of grocery stores that I checked didn't have them, so I was thrilled to find them in Target. In theory each of the 4 colors of marshmallows has a different flavor, and if I concentrated very hard I could detect it - but that was before putting the marshmallows with the chocolate.

- I'm sure that you could make your own marshmallows for this candy; if you do, let me know how it goes!

- Be sure to use a very sharp knife to cut slices of the candy, so the chocolate doesn't drag through the marshmallow, and so the marshmallow cuts cleanly.

the verdict:

These are good at room temperature and straight from the fridge. Because they are so quick to throw together, they're perfect for adding to Christmas trays.

Soft Gingerbread Molded Cookies

logo by Allifer Designs

Three times in the past decade I had the good fortune to travel to Germany in December. Each city and town we visited had its own Christmas Market and I loved poking around the wares in the stalls of the market vendors.

Christmas market in the Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin

I browsed through woolens, and toys, and acres of Christmas decorations - wood, straw, glass, lead, cloth - and I always kept my eyes open for carved wooden cookie molds. Over the several visits, I managed to put together a little collection of pretty molds. (In case you'd like cookie molds of your own, I've included some information at the end of this post.)

My German molds are a mixture of Christmas/winter (snowman, Father Christmas, church, tree) and general (flowers, birds, fruit) in subject.

The molds below are especially nice because the carving is deep and detailed.

The mold below is one of my favorites. When I bought it I had no idea who it was or what it meant.

After a bit of internet sleuthing my good buddy Wikipedia turned up the answer for me:

Münchner Kindl is German for "Munich child", the symbol on the coat-of-arms of the city Munich. This symbol has been the coat-of-arms of Munich since the 13th century. The figure portrayed was originally a monk (or friar) holding a book, but by the 16th century it evolved in different portrayals into the figure of a small child wearing a pointed hood, often shown holding a beer mug and a radish. It has been theorized that the name for the city of Munich (München in German) comes from the term "Kloster von Mönchen" or "Cloister for Monks" due to the Imperial Abbey of Tegernsee--a Benedictine Monastery near which the original town of Munich was built.

It took me a while to actually use my molds, though. The prospect was a bit intimidating; I didn't have a tried-and-true recipe, and I wanted the recipe to be as wonderful as the molds. In my mind, it added up to an Epic Project, and, as such, it never actually got started.

Then I got my copy of the lovely baking book Tartine, and saw molded cookies on the cover. I knew it was time to try out my German cookie molds with the Soft Gingerbread recipe in Tartine.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Tartine's recipe for soft gingerbread can be found here, or buy the book! Of all the bakery cookbooks I've seen and baked from, this one's the best, and I highly recommend it.

- Blackstrap molasses gets very little love, and I was glad to see it featured in this recipe.

- This dough is perfect for rolling in a gallon ziploc bag.

- The way that I found to work in shaping the cookies in their molds is to place the mold face down on the rolled dough, and cut around the outside with a bench scraper. Then turn mold over and press dough gently so it fits into the indentations. I've even rolled the back lightly with the rolling pin. The next step is to turn the mold over onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, remove mold, trimming as necessary with the bench scraper, before baking as directed.

- The cookies puffed in the oven more than I expected, so some of the definition was unfortunately lost.

- I didn't glaze the cookies with the optional glaze in the recipe because I prefer my cookies plain.

- I also used this dough for gingerbread cookies made with regular cookie cutters and they came out beautifully.


the verdict:

This recipe makes the perfect gingerbread cookies, either rolled/pressed into molds or rolled/cut with cookie cutters. The taste is fantastic, with the perfect balance of molasses and spices. I love working with this dough, and it has become my go-to gingerbread cookie recipe. The molded cookies lost more definition than I'd like, but with flavor this good, it's hard to care.

This cookie is my contribution to the 2nd Annual Virtual Cookie Exchange over at Di's Kitchen Notebook. Visit Di's blog in about a week to see a roundup of all participating blogs and delicious cookies, still in time for Christmas baking! I'll add that the cookie exchange badge was painted by my daughter Allison; if you need any form of custom art visit her website.

Christmas market in Leipzig

more about cookie molds:

An article in the December, 2008 Martha Stewart magazine featured molded cookies and included a recipe for Speculaas cookies, a spice cookie traditional in the Netherlands and Germany. The online reviews were very mixed, however, so I never baked that recipe. The source for Martha's cookie molds is House on the Hill (www.houseonthehill.net) I have ordered a couple of molds from House on the Hill to supplement my collection, and they are beautiful.

If you have a Springerle rolling pin, you can use that to make molded cookies, cutting them apart either before or after baking. You can also find molds on ebay, or keep your eye open at the local thrift shop or antiques market.