{TWD} Lemon Poppyseed Muffins - Guest Post

Earlier this month my oven suddenly failed. I quickly ordered a new one and arranged a delivery date. Then we had 6 inches of snow, followed by too-cold-to-melt-things temperatures, making delivery impossible. It has finally thawed around here and my new oven is scheduled to arrive at dusk this evening, that is, after I could photograph the muffins. I was faced with the prospect of a missed or delayed Tuesdays With Dorie posting, but luckily my daughter Allison, previously known here as A.L.E., agreed to bake and photograph the muffins and write a post for me.

Allison is an artist, writer, entrepreneur, and cook/baker. She chronicles it all on her blog, Friends and Hammers. I'm her mom, so I'm biased, but any time I need a smile or a laugh I head over to her blog.

Here's her post:

My mom asked if I could bake these lemon poppy seed muffins for her, since she's in oven limbo right now and, while you can fry an egg on the sidewalk in Atlanta in the summer, you can't bake muffins on the sidewalk in Atlanta in the winter.

They're super easy and I could do the (few) dishes as I went along. I had all the ingredients except for sour cream, so I used yogurt. You'll notice that my poppy seeds were seriously antique, and I didn't taste them beforehand per Dorie's recommendation, but they were fine.


Best of all, we had guests staying over last night and I was able to greet them with a big basket of baked goods. I like to be able welcome guests with food, especially if they're coming in from a road trip. (I think I get that from my mother!) My usual "impress visitors with minimal effort" standby is Dorie's Swedish Visiting Cake, but these muffins might just become my alternate.

the verdict:

Guests loved the muffins. Roommates loved the muffins. I loved the muffins. They were like fluffy muffin-shaped clouds of perfect lemon flavor.


The muffins were chosen for TWD this week by Betsy, of the blog A Cup of Sweetness, who has posted the recipe here.

"How to Make a Pizza"

Today we have very special guest post of sorts. My daughter A.L.E., who turns 24 today, wrote and illustrated this little book when she was a child. It's called "How to Make a Pizza," and she leaves out no detail. (The purple things are her hands.)

Enjoy! And Happy Birthday to my daughter!!

We knead the dough/ And put it in the pan

Then put sauce on/then the chees

If you want put pepperoni/ put it in the oven

Out you come pizza/ Yummy

We cut it

Then eat it/ all gon

The end

{TWD} Tale of a Perfect Party Cake - Guest Post!

Hi, j.d.e. here, guest-posting for my mom this week. You may not have known that I was into food blogging way before my mom was. I’m not going to take all the credit, but I am actually the one who told her that she should make a food blog. *Ahem!*

Anyway, long long ago, in a land far, far away, way before my mom had her blog (which is to say, the 2007-2008 school year), I was reading all of these food blogs and came across a post featuring the recipe for Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake. I knew I had to make it soon.

Some backstory: I tried to bake a red velvet cake for my boyfriend G’s birthday last May, right before I came home from college, but I didn’t have cake flour, so I used regular flour instead. DON’T EVER DO THAT. That cake ended up turning out rather like a brick (red, dense, and rather dry). Let me tell y’all: brick cake is not where it’s at!

My boyfriend, the saint that he is, did indeed eat some of The Brick Cake—and even managed to squeeze out a compliment or two—but I felt so bad about his failed birthday cake that I decided to make him another cake when he visited Georgia over summer break. And that second cake was Dorie’s cake.

Now, the funny part is that my mom doesn’t remember ANY of this. She recently told me that TWD was making the Perfect Party Cake, and she was extremely surprised when I told her that I’d already made it once. Even my [terrible quality] pictures (see, above and below), very obviously taken in our kitchen, prompted a blank face.

notes:

- I did make four layers, but I didn't put both frosting and jam in each layer. Instead, I put frosting in two layers and jam in the middle one. Much easier.

- I used raspberry jam for the jam layer. If I remember correctly, it had seeds. I thought that the raspberry was great with the lemon, so if I made this again, I probably wouldn't be tempted to use one of my mom's many other exotic jellies. Though we have many.

- I do remember that my mom was very impressed when I split each cake round evenly in half, thus making four cake layers. (This doesn’t sound like a huge feat, but if you’ve ever seen me mangle bagels in the morning, you’d be impressed too!) She also liked the lemony taste of the whole cake overall. And that’s all I can say about the affair.

Don’t let my tale convince you that this cake is not memorable—it really is (for some of us). I do think that this is the cake I’d want if someone threw a party for me. In fact, this cake is what convinced me to buy Dorie’s book later that week. And Dorie’s book is what prompted me to tell my mom about Tuesdays With Dorie. And Tuesdays With Dorie is what prompted my mom to start this blog. The End.

{TWD} Real Butterscotch Pudding

Hello, both a.l.e. and j.d.e. here, taking over the Tuesdays With Dorie post because our mom was busy grappling with our Christmas tree.

When our mom approached us individually about cooking one of the Tuesdays With Dorie recipes together, we both separately picked this one. Fate! I [j.d.e.] am a notorious fan of butter, and my sister is a notorious fan of scotch, so this post is, one could say, the perfect mix.

a.l.e and j.d.e., keeping a watchful eye on the simmering scotch

While j. and Mom fiddled around with various ingredients, I (a.l.e.) got down to the very serious business of ascertaining the most optimal Scotch for the occasion. Cautionary tales of boozy grown-ups-only-style puddings ringing in my head, I began the taste testing. Now, we have a pretty prodigious liquor cabinet going, and that is especially true in terms of Scotch Whisky:

After DQing several (including the 3 unopened bottles) - Laphroaig was way too smoky, Edradour was too wonderful to use up in a pudding, Tallisker made me go "Phroooowargh" - it was down to the Macallan 12 yo and the Glenfiddich Special Reserve 12yo. The latter took the prize. A word to the wise: it would probably be best to aim for a mellow single malt rather than the strong variety as suggested by the recipe. Even a blend would work - Cutty Sark and J&B were close runners up in butterscotchy flavor potential.

I, however, don't like Scotch, so I was happy to absent-mindedly stir bowls of ingredients (unnecessarily) and provide for the music (alternating between singing David Bowie and the music from Les Miserables). We decided to make two variations of the pudding: one for the girl who thinks that Scotch tastes like burned jet fuel, and one for the other, who has instituted a cocktail hour in our household. We decided to make my version (1/3 recipe) using none of the scotch, double the vanilla, and a tablespoon of eggnog, and my sister's (2/3 recipe) was made using the technique whereby the scotch is added while the milk mixture is heating, so that we didn't get that "I'm eating cold, mushy congealed raw scotch" sensation.

Despite several mishaps, which luckily all happened to my sister's (non-alcoholic) batch, the puddings tasted fantastic. Besides forgetting to set aside some milk for the sugar/egg mix rather than dumping it all into the hot sugar, I started making the next batch in the Cuisinart before the first batch had been through its final mixing. We made do with a whisk and Mom's whisking talent and arm-power, and though slightly lumpier than the next batch, it was v. good. Having learned from our mistakes, the Scotchy batch came out picture-perfect, and tasting just like butterscotch should.

here's the real boozehound in the family.

the verdict:

Hi, Nancy here! This pudding was our dessert for Christmas dinner. We found it absolutely delicious. All of us preferred the "with scotch" version - even the scotch-hating j.d.e. It was silky smooth (from the food processor) and subtly butterscotch-y (from the scotch).

We had such fun cooking this together - I'm so thankful that my girls are such competent hands in the kitchen and also that they're great at writing guest posts! I'm going to cry when they leave home this weekend, going 950 miles and 4,700 miles away, but in the meantime we're doing lots of cooking... and talking, and laughing!


I've had fun baking all 5 of December's recipes. Luckily we were given leeway on which order we could bake and post our creations; this was a huge help during the busy holiday season!

The pudding was technically last week's Tuesdays with Dorie assignment, and was chosen by Donna of Spatulas, Corkscrews & Suitcases, who made an incredible butterscotch pie with it (you can find the pudding recipe on that post or on page 386 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours. )

This week Anne of Anne Strawberry chose the Tall and Creamy Cheesecake (which I posted last week!). Go to her post to see an incredible peppermint bark cheesecake and find the recipe. Or you can pick up your very own copy of Dorie's book (cheesecake recipe on page 235-237 ).

"SCONES!"

Greetings from Germanland! This is younger daughter here, j.d.e., with a guest post.

I am spending the year in Berlin, taking classes at the Freie Universität Berlin, and since it’s close to Christmas, my Portuguese class is having a giant breakfast before we get out for break. When my professor first suggested the idea of brunch during class, I immediately thought: “SCONES!” Actually, I said it out loud. Twelve or thirteen confused faces turned my way.

It turns out that apparently no German students have any idea what scones are, so I got a lot of blank stares. But out of the darkness came a bright light… "Yesssss!” I heard (in German, of course, so this was more like “Jaaaaaaaa!”) from the front of the room. Now everyone was staring at Maria João. We spent the next five minutes or so doing a tag-team explanation of what scones are. (All we really said, however, was, "They're bread, kind of, but not really. But kind of.")

Yes, my Portuguese professor loves scones. I like scones, but I haven’t had them in a while, so maybe that’s why I yelled out “SCONES!”.—my subconscious wants me to know that it just can’t get enough of English breakfast food. So scones it is. My subconscious also really likes making me say "Stone of Scone" in a cheesy Scottish accent (not to mention making me talk to my roommate's cat in a Russian gangster voice), so I was kind of taking a big chance here, trusting my subconscious and everything.

My mom is visiting me in Berlin, so I thought that it would be fun to bake these bad boys, as we say in my family, with her. Maria João requested that I leave out raisins, which I am happy to comply with, so I decided on two kinds of scones, one savory and one sweet. The former is a recipe from Farmgirl Fare, one of the many food blogs I stalk, and the other is from that bastion of culinary steadfastness, Epicurious.

So I present to you:

Klara

The dog that eats the crumbs around my apartment. Look at those eyes. How could you not give her crumbs?

Lemon Cream Scones

Instead of dried apricots, I put in candied ginger. Apricots, Schmapricots--Ginger wins out any day for me. The oven temperature was a bit awry, so these cooked a lot faster than we expected and didn't really get a chance to fluff up.

As a kid, I was always in charge of mixing together the dry ingredients. This time was no different. I guess the dry ingredients are kind of boring to look at, but my mom was so amused at the tiny spoon I had grabbed to mix with that we had to take a picture.

There, that's a bit more interesting, isn't it? All ready to cut into slices and bake.

The finished product...plus my messy kitchen in the background. I'm a student though, so I cut myself some slack as far as cleaning up goes.

Cheese and Scallion Scones

I ended up having to use the full three cups of flour on these, but they ended up having the best, fluffiest texture! The dough, however, smelled like old feet, which had me worried until they came out of the oven, looking and tasting perfect.

Due to the scallions, these dry ingredients were a bit more interesting to look at. Since I know that we all bake for looks, don't we? (This couldn't be any further from the truth for me, actually. I'm about as rustic as it gets in terms of presentation.)

[This is Nancy, just breaking in for a minute to say that we subbed goat cheese for the feta in these yummy scones.]

Here are the scones right out of the oven. They look kind of like small forest animals, gathering together in some sort of clan formation (which makes sense because scones are Scottish).

The Verdict:

GUILTY!

...oh, wrong case. Both recipes delivered strong results, I'd say. I wish there were more lemon flavor in the sweet scones. And although the savory dough definitely smelled like foot odor,* I'd make them again in a heartbeat. My fellow students loved both kinds, and actually clamored to take home the leftovers. I gave a lot of them to Maria João, though, because I know which side my bread [scone] is buttered on, and the end of the semester is approaching...

___

* If you search "foot odor" on YouTube, you get some pretty great results. Including a video of a band of shady looking youths playing guitar in the church hall of some Portuguese speaking land. Perhaps I can get some extra credit.

{Guest Post} A.L.E. makes rustic risotto

We're back to introduce a guest post by A.L.E - the one lying on the floor in the banner picture up at the top of the page. She's a great cook, and we love to help her because she never forgets to save some for us. Too bad she lives 1000 miles away, or we'd be spoiled all the time.
-The Dogs

I'm excited to be featured on my mom's blog - that is, other than in the pictures on the side! We've always had a great time cooking together, and I'm a regular reader.
I make this risotto at least once a week. It's basically the staple of my diet as a cash-strapped grad - easy, filling, (fairly) healthy, and amazing as leftovers. With all the alterations I've made to the classic formula, I almost feel guilty calling it risotto! In school, I lived with mainly vegetarians and vegans for a year and a half and, although I remain omnivorous, I picked up some habits.

I use oil instead of butter and am currently trying vegan stock instead of chicken - since the most questionable parts of the most miserable birds go into chicken bouillon and my guilt-free chicken source - the local farmer's market - just closed up shop till spring, this is a reasonable and tasty compromise. Also having vegan friends to feed, etc.

Using brown rice is definitely unthinkable in a classic risotto, but it's much healthier, it's ridiculously cheap in bulk, and I like the feel and flavor. And usually I'm the only one eating at my house, so I do what I want.

Rustic Risotto

Ingredients:

4 cups stock + 1 cup water

2 cups short grain brown rice

1 cup white wine

Oil

Salt - if bouillon is salt free - and pepper

Saffron, or other seasonings of your choice (mine was left in our house by summer tenants, I probably wouldn't have sprung for it otherwise)

Procedure:

Have your stock in a pan on low heat - throw in any salt or seasonings. Heat a generous pour of oil in a pot or pan (I use a cast iron skillet) on medium-med hi heat. You'll know it's hot when you flick some water into the pan and it sizzles. Saute the rice until it gets vaguely transparent. Don't let it burn! When the rice becomes translucent, throw in the wine, stirring to incorporate. As it's absorbed, turn the heat down to a simmer.

Crumble in a few threads of saffron if you're using it, and start adding the stock about a cup at a time. Either stir constantly, occasionally, or go watch TV in the other room - I usually opt for the last option, but I'll stir if there's company, because it is a little better that way.

When it looks thirsty (liquid only covering lower half of rice or thereabouts), add another cup. You'll probably need to throw in the cup of water when you run out of broth, because brown rice is pretty thirsty. Remove from heat when the rice is fully cooked and most of the water is gone but it's still quite moist.

Serve hot. I like parmesan or cheddar grated over mine, but you can also swirl in pesto or add squash, tomato, sausage, chicken, whatever you feel would add that certain something. Go wild, and remember that you can't mess this recipe up: it's "rustic."

Happy cooking and eating!

- A.L.E.