Author: Lillian

Categories
baking Dorie fruit

Tuesdays With Dorie: Blueberry Crumb Cake

blueberry-cake-4

I’m back! (Although, sadly, Passover is approaching. I’m hoping the April recipes are posted soon, so I can work ahead.)

I don’t like fruit; you all know that. I have actually skipped TWD recipes because they were fruit-based. But my two weeks of slacking guilted me into making this cake, and I am so glad I did.

This week’s recipe was Blueberry Crumb Cake. I like crumbs. I don’t like blueberries.

I decided this sounded like a breakfast cake, so breakfast it was. In a pathetic attempt to make it a touch more healthful, I used my beloved King Arthur white whole-wheat flour. See? It’s breakfast! It’s whole-grain!

Right.

blueberry-cake-2

So I used the flour and I used frozen wild blueberries (because they’re smaller) and I used pecans rather than walnuts in the crumbs (because I like them better), but other than that I made this straight, exactly as Dorie prescribes. I even used the lemon zest, which I have left out of every single recipe I’ve ever made that has called for it. (I actually had to look up what zest is, because I was unsure, although #2 Son told me, and he was right.)

We had it for Monday breakfast, to celebrate the fact that Husband didn’t have to go to work for a whole week. Happy vacation! We’re not going anywhere, although he’s going to spend a few days with his father, but vacation is vacation!

Despite my worries about the whole fruit thing, it is delicious. Really delicious. The best fruit cake I’ve every had, and right up there contending for the spot of best cake ever. It’s moist (I never know when to take cakes out, so I generally get it wrong; got this one right) and flavorful (I actually likes the slight lemon flavor from the zest!), and the crumbs on top lend the perfect amount of sweetness. Magnificent. There have been TWD recipes that I haven’t been terribly impressed with, but this is not one of them.

blueberry-cake-1

And the gang says:

Husband: Delicious breakfast cake. It was just phenomenal. I wish I’d had some coffee with it. [I tried to pin him down. Didn’t work.] It was just awesome. The whole thing, the sweetness and the … I don’t even know what you’d call it. [He’s a writer.] It almost tasted like toasted whole grains, like a meal.

#1 Son: Really delicious. Moist, great flavor, and the praline on top was simply magnificent.

#2 Son: Please can I have some more? It could have used a bit fewer blueberries in my second slice, because they overwhelmed the praline topping. The praline really makes it much better; it would not work without the praline. Yum. Please?

I guess the takeaway here is that my family is considerably less erudite when they like something than when they don’t. They liked this cake, a lot.

blueberry-cake-3

Go check out the hundreds of other versions of this cake, and then get yourself a copy of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan and make it. Blueberry Crumb Cake was chosen for us this week by Sihan of Befuddlement (or maybe Walking in the Rain?), so you can also just head over there to get the recipe. But make it you must, no matter how you feel about fruit in your cake.

Categories
bread holidays meat

An Irish-ish Meal

soda-bread-1

I promised this post on Tuesday night, but better late than never, I suppose.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we ate Irish (or a facsimile thereof): Irish stew and soda bread (and Guinness for the oldest two male members of the household). Husband couldn’t find lamb in the city or over here, so we wound up with beef for the stew, and I discovered at the last minute that I was out of King Arthur’s white whole-wheat flour and that neither of the supermarkets within two miles of my house carry it.

So beef stew and white soda bread it was.

I used a stew recipe I found on AllRecipes, although I made some modifications; I try a new recipe every time I make Irish stew, and this one had Guinness in it; I thought the boys would appreciate that. I dredged the beef (2½ pounds, rather than the recipe’s 1) in salted and garlicked flour, then browned it in my beautiful new 12-inch skillet (thank you, Freecycle!), then threw it in the crockpot.

Softened an onion and garlic and some celery — I did say it was Irish-ish — and threw that into the crockpot too.

Then broth and beer and a couple of bay leaves and oregano, but no tomato paste or mushrooms. They’re not Irish at all. (I have malleable standards.)

Cooked it for hours, four or so, then added the cornstarch to thicken. And some salt.

Yum.

irish-stew

The soda bread recipe came from Gourmet. Real Irish soda bread is whole-wheat, but as mentioned above, not this year. Everyone seemed happy with it, though, and #2 Son has been eating the leftovers for two days now.

So that was our St. Patrick’s Day. What did you do?

soda-bread-2

Categories
boys candy Dorie holidays

And Again, No Tuesdays With Dorie

But I bring you another in what seems to be a series of ethnic holiday dishes (although this one, technically, is not my ethnicity, nor is it the ethnicity of anyone on either side of my family, or my husband’s; that’s got to make us pretty unusual.)

First, if you want to read about French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze (which sounds heavenly, I must say), check out all the other TWD blogs, most especially My Cookbook Addiction, where Liliana (who chose the recipe for us this week) will have the recipe for you. You should definitely also buy Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, the founder of our weekly feasts.

So today is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. We like all things English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh around here (although again, no family history in any of those places), and so we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day the same way we celebrate everything else: with food.

#2 Son made the Irish potatoes (such as they were) this year, and being #2 Son he did them his own way (and in the process learned that there is a very definite difference between regular cinnamon and Penzey’s Vietnamese cinnamon). For those of you who don’t know Irish potatoes — you poor deprived souls — they’re not potatoes at all, or Irish. They’re a mix of cream cheese and butter and powdered sugar and coconut, rolled into little balls of heaven and coated in cinnamon. I’ve heard that they’re a Philadelphia thing, not widely known outside the city; I can’t confirm or deny that. But if you haven’t ever tried them, do it now.

He started out making potatoes:

irish-potatoes-ben

But he quickly decided that potatoes just wouldn’t do. There was a famine, after all, and all the potatoes turned black.

So he made some other shapes:

Shamrock
Shamrock
Celtic cross
Celtic cross
Snake, in honor of St. Patrick
Snake, in honor of St. Patrick
Bottle of Guinness (yes, he's 11)
Bottle of Guinness (yes, he’s 11)
And what turned out to look like a standing stone, even though it wasn't meant to be
And what turned out to look like a standing stone, even though it wasn’t meant to be

Later tonight I’ll write about the Irish stew and soda bread we’re having for dinner. But for now, here’s our recipe for Irish potatoes, originally provided by Donna Pilato at About.com: Entertaining (my comments in parentheses):

  • ¼ cup (½ stick) butter, softened
  • 4 ounces regular cream cheese, softened (Donna says don’t use low fat or whipped, but we used Neufchatel with no problems)
  • 1 pound powdered sugar, plus extra for coating hands
  • 7 ounces sweetened coconut flakes
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon (we have also used allspice and nutmeg, both of which were delicious)

With mixer, cream together cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl. Mix in sugar and vanilla, being careful to add sugar slowly to avoid creating a large sugar cloud. Stir in the coconut flakes. Put cinnamon into a small bowl. (If you discover that you have accidentally used extraordinarily strong Vietnamese cinnamon, mix in some powdered sugar to cut it.) Coat dry hands with a little powdered sugar, and using your hands take small pieces of mixture (about 2 teaspoons apiece) and form into potato shape (or as you wish!). Drop potatoes into cinnamon and roll to coat. Place on baking sheet. When all the potatoes have been formed and dipped in cinnamon, refrigerate for several hours until firm. (Or eat right away. Whatever.)

Categories
baking boys

No Tuesdays With Dorie, but Lovely Hamantaschen Instead!

hamantaschen1

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was Lemon Cup Custard, chosen for us by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles. I didn’t make it. Today is Purim, a Jewish holiday celebrated most significantly, at least for my family, with hamantaschen, and given that we made two batches on two different days, I decided to skip the custard. If you want to read about Lemon Cup Custard, visit the several hundred other TWD blogs, where you will no doubt see many lovely photos and read many vivid descriptions.

But if you want to read about hamantaschen, stay right here.

When I was young, I learned that hamantaschen were named for Haman’s hat, Haman being the awful nasty villain at the heart of the Purim story. Turns out that, as with so many other things we learn as children, that’s probably not true. And I always wondered why we were eating a bad guy’s hat anyway. But no matter why we eat hamantaschen, we do eat them. A lot of them.

Traditionally (meaning the ones I ate as a child, and the ones you see in bakeries today), hamantaschen are filled with cherry, prune, or poppyseed fillings. We are not traditional.

We’ve been refining our filling selections over the years since #1 Son was very young, and we’ve settled on some perennial favorites: Marshmallow Fluff and chocolate chips, almond pie filling and chocolate chips, cherry pie filling and chocolate chips …

Did you pick up on the common thread there?

We also use Nutella and pecans, plain cherry filling, almond butter and sweetened shredded coconut, and other things I’m forgetting right now.

On Friday #1 Son made a batch of dough, using a new recipe for us (because we couldn’t find the book with our regular recipe, but let’s not discuss that right now). He and his girlfriend and #2 Son and a friend of his made hamantaschen Friday afternoon. Fun was had. But the recipe didn’t make very many, and I didn’t get even one.

So Sunday night I made another batch, and this morning I baked them (with a little help from #2 Son, who made a turkey version).

hamantaschen-turkey

First I rolled out the dough and cut it into circles; our regular recipe involves rolling the dough into logs and slicing (like World Peace Cookies!), then rolling out each individual circle.

hamantaschen-cut

Next I put a dollop of filling in the middle of each cookie.

hamantaschen-cut-cherry

I used lots of different fillings.

hamantaschen-coconut

hamantaschen-cherry

And then I folded them into adorable little three-cornered hat simulacra.

hamantaschen7

The dough was much drier than our usual. #1 Son had neglected to mention that, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I made do. They’re not the prettiest hamantaschen ever; some were prettier than others.

hamantaschen2

But they are absolutely delicious, as always, and I am very happy with them. And I am even happier that I made them in daylight, and so got some decent photos for a change.

hamantaschen3

hamantaschen4

Categories
baking boys Dorie

Tuesdays With Dorie: Chocolate Armagnac Cake

choc-armagnac-cake1

This week’s recipe, chosen for us by LyB of And Then I Do the Dishes, did not sound the slightest bit yummy to me. I don’t like fruit. I don’t like alcohol (except for Kahlua and the amazing mudslide mix my father-in-law buys at Christmas). And I’m sick to death of dark chocolate.

I wasn’t going to make it. I do TWD almost every week, so I figured I could skip a week.

Then #1 Son got hold of the recipe. He likes fruit. He loves alcohol. And he loves dark chocolate.

So I turn over the bulk of this post to my guest blogger:

“I made it with rum and prunes, and it was one of the easiest and tastiest chocolate cakes I have ever made. I would happily make it again.”

He’s a man of few words, at least when there’s no bacon involved.

So I guess that wasn’t the bulk of the post, and I apologize for its brevity. He cut the recipe by two-thirds and baked the result in an oval ramekin.

choc-armagnac-cake2

I had the smallest bite of this cake, and as expected, I didn’t like it. The rest of them did, though:

Husband: I actually thought that the alcohol-softened prunes added quite a bit to the dark fudginess. There was a light fruit note that was quite enticing. I found the glaze a little simple, but it didn’t detract. I didn’t think it was necessary, ultimately. Given my choice, I would have put a little dollop of unsweetened whipped cream on top.

#1 Son: I liked it a lot. It had a really great fudgy texture, but wasn’t too rich and had a real depth of flavor. It was my favorite thing out of the Dorie book so far. Didn’t get much prune or rum flavor, though. I would have liked it with a little orange marmalade on top. That would have enhanced both the dark chocolate and fruit flavors, and been a light counterpart to the fudginess.

#2 Son: It was pretty good overall. The cake was good; I liked the bits of prune.

choc-armagnac-cake3

Sorry, folks — that’s all I’ve got today. Go check out all the other TWD bloggers to see what they did with the cake, and if you want to try it yourself, buy Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, or visit And Then I Do the Dishes, where the recipe will appear.

Categories
boys food recipes

Snow Day!

Here in the mid-Atlantic we got our first real snow of the season today. On March 1st. And what’s really sad is that #2 Son, who is almost 12, was overjoyed when he woke up this morning; he thought this was a huge amount of snow.

snow-fort

snow-dogs

#1 Son remembers — just barely — the Great Snow of 1996, when we got 30 inches and it lasted for days. He was not quite 4 then, and our exchange student from Austria built him a snow cave to play in. That was a huge amount of snow. But poor #2 Son hasn’t seen much snow in recent years, and he really, really, really likes snow.

Where is the food-related content in this post? you may be wondering. Never fear: It’s coming.

This afternoon #2 Son scooped up a bowl of snow and prepared to mix it with maple syrup, as we’ve done with our pitiful little snowfalls in the past. But I remembered seeing a technique for pouring hot syrup over snow to make candy, so we tried that. (I Googled and found a recipe here.)

It took a while to get the syrup to the right temperature; as with every other kind of sugar syrup I’ve ever dealt with, it’s a long process that progresses almost instantly at the end to disaster. But I managed to get it just about right this time, and we dribbled it over the snow.

maple-snow-1

The syrup hardens almost instantly to candy: chewy or brittle depending on the exact temperature at the moment of pouring. Either way, it’s yummy.

maple-candy-1

And it’s very pretty, too!

maple-candy-2

More snow!!!

Categories
baking Daring Bakers

Daring Bakers: For the Love of Chocolate

My first Daring Bakers post! This is so exciting!! I don’t think I’ve ever used so many exclamation points before!!!

chocolatecake1

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s Blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. They have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan, a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm, and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

This cake has three ingredients: chocolate, butter, and eggs. With something that basic, quality really matters. I used Trader Joe’s dark chocolate, because that’s what I had in the house, and because three-quarters of my family really likes it. (All three of you loyal readers will know I’m the fourth quarter!) The resulting cake tasted exactly like that chocolate, but warmer and gooier. (That does not look like a word, but it is, according to the fine folks at Merriam-Webster.)

And because it tasted just like the chocolate, I really wasn’t terribly fond of it. It was interesting, and the texture was great. And it melded perfectly with the peppermint ice cream, but the cake on its own, not so much. Had I gone with the Trader Joe’s milk chocolate, or even better the absolutely amazing Icelandic milk chocolate I can get at Whole Foods on the extremely rare occasions that it’s on sale, I’d have loved it.

I was overruled, though. Everyone else loved it, including the four guests we had for dinner and dessert the night I made it. I didn’t interview the guests, but here’s what my people had to say:

Husband: It was semi-jelled pudding, in a good way.

#1 Son: Hugely rich, but gooey and wonderful too. Fantastic with the mint ice cream.

#2 Son: Delish. It was chocolate, but held together by butter and eggs! It was delicious. It was really good with the peppermint ice cream.

chocolatecake2

So there you have it. Chocolate Valentino comes from Chef Wan’s Sweet Treats, which is apparently not easily available in the United States. Here’s your opportunity to try out one of the recipes without spending $55 for the one copy available at Amazon.com.

You can use any shape pan that gives you an area of about 50”; I used an 8-inch cake pan. A lot of people probably used heart-shaped pan, in keeping with the chocolate/Valentine’s Day thing, but I don’t have one.

Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time:  20 minutes

16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs, separated

  • Preheat the oven to 375F/190C.
  • Put chocolate and butter in a heat-proof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
  • While the chocolate-butter mixture is cooling, butter the pan and line it with a parchment circle, then butter the parchment.
  • Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
  • Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry). Set aside.
  • Beat the egg yolks.
  • Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
  • Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then another 1/3, then the remaining 1/3. Fold until no white remains, being careful not to deflate the batter.
  • Pour batter into prepared pan. The batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full.
  • Bake for 25 minutes or until an instant-read thermometer reads 140F/60C. If you do not have an instant-read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
  • Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes, then unmold.

The Daring Bakers challenge included ice cream. I love ice cream. I love making ice cream. The challenge provided two recipes for vanilla ice cream, classic (with eggs) and Philadelphia-style (without eggs). Until I discovered David Lebovitz‘s Perfect Scoop I almost always made Philadelphia-style, but he has really converted me to the joys of custard.

This time, though, I thought less rich was the way to go, given the richness of the cake. And I was so right. I made peppermint ice cream using (with slight modification) the recipe in Bruce Weinstein’s Ultimate Ice Cream Book. Lots of good recipes in this one, kids.

Mint Ice Cream, Philadelphia Style

3 cups heavy cream [I used 2 cups whole milk and 1 cup half-and-half]
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon peppermint extract [the first time I made this, it was hideously strong, so I cut this down to 1 teaspoon; it was still pretty strong]

Heat the cream (or milk, or half-and-half) in a heavy medium saucepan until small bubbles appear around the edge. Do not let the cream boil. Remove from the heat and add the sugar. Stir until the sugar dissolves completely. Cool to room temperature. Stir in the mint extract. You might want to start with ½ teaspoon and taste the result. Refrigerate till cold or overnight. Freeze in your ice cream maker!

Check out what all the other Daring Bakers did — there are sure to be all kinds of interesting ice cream variations. Enjoy!

Categories
baking Dorie Friday dinner

Tuesdays With Dorie: Caramel Crunch Bars

We’re back to cookies this time, but cookies of a different flavor. This week’s recipe, chosen for us by Whitney of What’s Left on the Table?, was for Caramel Crunch Bars — essentially chocolate-chip shortbread with chocolate and toffee bits on top.

This was not a big production. I made them fairly late in the day, and (unlike last week) they didn’t keep me up way past my bedtime. Make the dough — in the mixer, not the food processor, which is where I generally make shortbread — and bake the dough. This dough is thick and sticky, and I knew from reading the comments that a lot of people were using a smaller pan, but I’m brave (and I was having a party the next day); I went for the recipe-specified 9×13. But forewarned is fore-utensiled, and I used my offset spatula, sprayed with butter-flavored cooking spray, to spread it around. Easy as shortbread.

I am notoriously bad at knowing when to take things out of the oven; I can never make reality line up with the description in the recipe, and this time was no different. Dorie says the dough will look as if it’s “trying to pull away from the sides” of the pan. Never got that. The edges were browning and the center looked done, so I finally took them out after about 23 minutes. (My oven temperature is fairly random.)

I chopped the chocolate for the top in the food processor, and I made it very fine — almost like commercial breadcrumbs. So when I sprinkled it on top of the hot cookies, I didn’t have to spread it around; it just melted in place. One invariably frustrating step saved. Then I sprinkled on the the toffee bits and pressed them down with the back of my offset spatula. Piece of shortbread.

I liked these a lot. They weren’t World Peace league, but they were good. I’d have liked them better if I’d used milk chocolate on top, but I was pandering to the masses:

Husband: It just tasted like a big Heath bar, nothing particularly special. They were tasty, but I didn’t get the point of them. [Allow me to interject here that the point of them is the same as the point of Heath bars: They’re delicious.]

#1 Son: Pretty damned good. They could have used a little more crunch and a little less sweetness, but I liked them.

#2 Son: The bottom really adds nothing to it but texture — it’s just a Heath bar. But it’s a really good Heath bar. I would eat a billion of these again. And again. And again. [Allow me to interject once again to point out that Husband and #2 Son made these comments in isolation. They are scarily alike.]

There were four extra people at my house when I served these cookies, but there were also two whole cakes, homemade ice cream, and more cookies — not to mention quite a bit of my amazing homemade pizza — and every single cookie was eaten. One guest even asked for the recipe. I guess that means they were a hit.

Oh, and I apologize for the lack of photographs this week. My camera did something odd, and the 30 or so photos I shot seem to have vanished into the mist. My pictures are never all that good anyway, so no big loss!

Lots of other people made these, and I bet there are tons of interesting variations (and lots of photos!). Go check them out. If you’d like to try these for yourself, buy Baking: From My Home to Yours or head on over to What’s Left on the Table?.

Categories
boys meat

Better Late Than Never: Bacon Explosion

#1 Son found this recipe on the Internet, and he was immediately consumed with the need to make it. Right then. Luckily for me (and the family’s cardiovascular systems), it was two days before Superbowl Sunday. I managed to delay him by telling him what a marvelous contribution the Bacon Explosion would be to the Superbowl party we were going to attend.

Whew.

I asked him to write this post, because he is a much better writer than I’ll ever be. It’s been three weeks, but here, at last, without further ado, I present to you: the Bacon Explosion, as written by #1 Son, with my comments in square brackets:

____________________________________________________________________

This. This is how cults are formed, when men create objects so perfect, so beautiful that they can only have come from the divine. Welcome your new god. Welcome the Bacon Explosion.

My recipe deviated from the initial incarnation of the One True Bacon Explosion, I’m afraid. As I had neither barbecue rub nor barbecue sauce, I substituted some City Tavern Herb Rub (excellent, highly recommended [salt, onion, garlic powder, white pepper, cayenne pepper, Hungarian sweet paprika, thyme, oregano, marjoram, sweet basil, sage]) and Peter Luger steak sauce, which I could happily drink from the bottle (really.)

The first step in ushering in the Age of Bacon is to weave the sacred meat together. Who would have thought religious devotion would be so much fun?

bacon-woven

The weave was spread with the herb rub and topped with two pounds of Italian sausage, helpfully decased by the Acolyte [otherwise known as #2 Son] here.

bacon-decasing

That was further topped by the absolute maximum amount of bacon I could fit on my stove, which I realize now is wholly inadequate [the stove, he means].

bacon-stove

After another layer of herb rub and a layer of steak sauce, the Assembly began. This unworthy one rolled the sausage mixture together first into a tight roll, then back the other way with the bacon weave.

bacon-construction

bacon-prerolled

bacon-rolled

Two and a half hours later, a tear came to this one’s eyes as he beheld his creation. He fell to his knees and prayed for salvation. The Bacon Explosion did not disappoint him. Two slices, a thousand calories and a Steelers win later, all was right with the world.

bacon-cooked

bacon-cooked-and-cut

Categories
boys food

Dinner, Made by Someone Else

#2 Son wanted to make dinner the other night. I wasn’t going to stop him. He puttered around our almost-empty kitchen for a while (it had been a while since I’d been shopping) and came up with Trader Joe’s ravioli with pesto (made in September with my bounty of basil). That would have been a tasty if staid dinner; I often do the same thing with TJ’s tortellini.

But #2 Son took it further. He sliced up an onion, caramelized it, and added some toasted pine nuts.

He’s more creative in the kitchen than I am, that’s for sure. The kid has a future (of cooking for us, at the very least).