Category: Dorie

Tuesdays With Dorie has a new logo, a particularly snazzy one designed by Lisa of Surviving Oz. (And someday maybe I’ll manage to get it onto my blog.) As a reward, Lisa got to choose this week’s recipe, and she went with the very yummy-sounding Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies.

We had these a week and a half ago, at our last Friday dinner before #1 Son went off to work at a Civil Air Patrol encampment. As I was still editing 12 hours a day, I handed these off to him, as has become all too common lately. And he did them proud.

The batter for these brownies was absolutely magnificent. I love brownie batter so much. I’m not nearly as fond of actual brownies, but the batter? To die for.

So #1 Son made the brownies, following the recipe exactly. He doesn’t do that often, and I think it chafed. So to put his own inimitable touch on the dessert, he pulled some fudge ripple ice cream out of the freezer and made a cinnamon sauce to cascade gently over the whole mess. (He just warmed some half-and-half and poured it over some cinnamon chips. I’d give you the proportions he used, but he has no idea. Sorry.)

And the brownies were messy. When we cut them, they oozed everywhere. They were baked enough, I think, but gooey. (After being refrigerated all night, they were much more solid. I liked them better the next day.)

See? Gooey.

On their own, I wasn’t impressed by the brownies. (To be fair, as I said above, I’m not a big fan of brownies in general.) They were too dark and heavy and rich. But add the ice cream and — heaven help us — the cinnamon sauce, and the whole thing turned sublime. It was still really rich, but amazing. I loved it. Yum. Really good. Thank you, #1 Son. (And welcome home!)

The rest of the family liked them too.

Husband: I didn’t have the sauce. The little bit of cinnamon in them did add something, I have to admit as a non-fan of cinnamon; it gave them a little bit of depth that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. And the gooeyness quotient was fantastic. I like my brownies almost runny.

#1 Son: Due to my impatience, they were perhaps a wee bit gooey initially, but firmed up well overnight. On their own neither the ice cream nor the brownie was particularly impressive, but combined with the sauce it came together into a stellar dessert. I found the brownies a bit heavy and rich, but I generally prefer a lighter, more caramelly blondie, so I’m biased.

#2 Son: I really liked the brownies — they were all gooey and stuff. Gooey’s the best kind of brownie. The ice cream was really good with it, and the cinnamon sauce worked well.

And here’s the magic sauce:

Go read about the brownies created by all the other TWD bakers, and if you want to try them yourself, buy the book (Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan) or visit Surviving Oz.

I made this cake a month ago. I was so proud of myself — I was ahead for once; I could write the post at my leisure, and just hit Publish when it was time.

But I neglected to actually write the damn thing, or process the photos. I had a month.

Anyway, now it’s 10 p.m. on Monday night, and I suppose this will once again be a not-very-good post. I’m sorry.

I made this cake for #2 Son’s 12th birthday party back in May. He was a good enough sport to accept a white cake, but he held out for chocolate frosting.

So I left out the lemon and added twice as much vanilla, and needless to say I left out the jam. I made the frosting as Dorie instructs, but I melted 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate and added it to the meringue after it was cool. I intended to add the coconut, but there were people here already, and I forgot. (I have a long, inglorious history of decorating birthday cakes while guests are in the next room.)

As I recall, this was easy to make; I even managed to slice the layers in half without destroying them. And as I further recall, I liked it. It wasn’t the best cake I’ve ever had — #1 Son and his beloved America’s Best Recipes were responsible for that — but it was good. I didn’t think the buttercream was buttery enough; I’m a big fan of buttercream, something of a buttercream connoisseur (connoisseuse?), you might say. This was more of a chocolate marshmallow fluff: not bad at all, but not buttercream. And considering how much butter was in there, I was expecting buttercream.

Family thoughts:

Husband: I could taste the strange flour [the cake flour], but it was very light. I thought the overall effect of the chocolate icing on the cake was good. It wasn’t too sweet all together.

#1 Son: [He’s away for the week, working at a Civil Air Patrol encampment. And I seem not to have written down his impressions back when I actually made the cake. Sorry again.]

#2 Son: I thought the frosting was a little sweet, but the cake itself was pretty good. It was too big, though; I had to unlayer it.

Go check the hundreds of variations helpfully provided by the Tuesdays With Dorie bakers, and if you want to try it yourself — it is a Perfect Party Cake, after all — buy the book or visit mix, mix… stir, stir, where Carol will have the recipe.

I like brownies. I love chocolate-chip cookies (most especially ones made from the amazing oatmeal chocolate-chip recipe on the Quaker Oats box). How could I go wrong with this week’s TWD recipe, which combines the two.

I managed.

I made these in a hurry, a couple of hours before #2 Son’s belated 12th-birthday party. He planned it himself; my only job was to provide the food, so I figured this was a perfect opportunity to make this week’s selection. (I also made one of June’s selections, but you’ll have to wait a while to hear about that.)

A lot of people mentioned having trouble spreading the cookie dough over the brownie batter. That wasn’t a problem. The batter stiffened a bit while I was making the dough, and I just used small spoonfuls of dough and smooshed them together.

Then I baked it for 45 minutes, less than the 50 to 55 called for in the recipe, and when I took it out the cookie layer was dark, maybe too dark, and had risen higher than I expected. I stuck a knife in and got just a few streaks of chocolate, just like the recipe says. So I let the brownies cool in the pan. They unmolded fine.

I trimmed off the burnt edges, and they were good. I sliced a couple of rows of bars, and except for a distressing tendency for the cookie layer to crack, all was well. But when I got to the third row brownie batter oozed out, essentially unbaked. I happen to love brownie batter, so I’m perfectly happy to eat it that way, but it felt wrong serving raw eggs to other people’s children.

They ate the edge bars, though, and they seemed quite happy with them. I got only three quotes, though; sorry about that.

Friend #1: I’ve never heard of a cookie being on top of a brownie. I thought it was really yummy!

#2 Son: They were pretty good. The brownie was delicious, but the chocolate chip cookies on top were overly salted and too crunchy and not all that good. [That didn’t stop him from scarfing them down.]

Husband: I liked the middle ones better, where the bottom of the cookie layer was still gooey. Overall, I thought they were a little too sweet.

I thought the brownies were pretty good, although too dark for me. I loved the cookies on top. But together, they just weren’t as sublime as I thought they’d be. Oh, well.

Go see what all the other TWD bloggers did with this recipe, and if you want to try it for yourself, buy Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or visit Supplicious; Beth is the blogger who chose this recipe for us this week.

Again with the fruit. I was so not looking forward to this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe, chosen for us by Babette of Babette Feasts. Not only do I not like fruit as fruit, I particularly don’t like citrus fruit, even the flavor.

But you know what? I actually liked this, the only member of my family who did.

As seems to have become a bad habit, #1 Son made the tart. (Am I going to get kicked out of TWD if I don’t start baking again soon? I hope not. I’ve been on one deadline or another for weeks, and I’m just too fried to think, let alone bake. I’m still writing, though! Sometimes.)

So first he made the crust, using the new food processor blade that had just come in the mail and hadn’t yet been washed. I’m going to choose to believe that it wasn’t made in China and that there were no weird chemicals coating it, and that we’re not all going to die. He doesn’t like making crusts, but Dorie’s are at least easy to handle.

Then he made the filling, exactly as the instructions instructed. I noticed in the P&Q on the TWD site that several people had problems with bitterness from the pith of the lemon, and others recommended cutting off the ends of the lemons to mitigate that. But I read that this morning, so he didn’t do it.

My only part in this whole endeavor (besides grocery shopping and teaching the ungrateful child to cook in the first place) was taking the tart out of the oven, which I did when it looked as described in the recipe. Unfortunately, by this time the crust was a bit, shall we say, Cajun.

And then #1 Son added his own little touch: orange whipped cream, made by adding a bit of orange juice and vanilla to Dorie’s whipped cream recipe.

And then we had it, after dinner on Friday night. It was room temperature, and a little puddingy, and I liked it. It was a bit tart, but not horribly, and the lemon was actually nice. (For context, I don’t even like lemonade or lemon water ice. Everyone likes lemonade and lemon water ice.)

But the men of the house, all of whom love lemon, were unanimous:

Husband: I wasn’t fond of the orange whipped cream. The crust had some sort of weird metallic taste to it, and the lemon tasted burnt, as if someone had scorched a lemon and then forced me to eat it.

#1 Son: I thought the lemon was almost bitter — it had almost no depth of flavor. And the crust baked for too long, which was partially my fault and partly the recipe’s fault — it said to cook it till the lemon looked a certain way, but that was too long for the crust. Just overall, not what I wanted or expected. The orange whipped cream blended texture, flavor and presentation into a touch of genius.

#2 Son: I found the crust not horrible. The lemon was weird — Dad’s right about the burnt taste. But I really liked the orange whipped cream.

So what do I know?

We ate it again cold, two days later. It fared a bit better this time:

Husband: The lemon flavor mellowed, but still tasted scorched to me. And the whipped cream tasted even more like a creamsicle. I hate creamsicles.

#1 Son: Some of the graininess went away — it was much smoother cold. The whipped cream thickened beautifully. And while the crust is still overdone, it doesn’t bother me as much cold. I think some moisture got into it and made it softer.

#2 Son: The whipped cream is more like a creamsicle now and I definitely like the lemon taste more, but the crust is still burnt.

I liked it even more cold. I won’t make it again, since chocolate always beats fruit in my book and the men didn’t like it, but I did think it was pretty good.

Go see what hundreds of other bakers did with this, and if their families liked it better than mine did. And if you want to try it yourself, Babette will have the recipe on her blog for you.

Next week (maybe!): Fresh Mango Bread!