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Tag Archives: Dorie Greenspan
Get ready for your weekly sugar fix as it is Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) time again. Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles picked one of our favorite desserts – custard. I love making custards. It screams COMFORT food for us. As well it is a dessert that is made with basic staples that one always should have on hand – milk, sugar, eggs and some sort of flavoring.
This particular recipe infuses lemon zest with milk. I did use Meyer Lemon zest and I let it infuse for an hour instead of 30 minutes. As well I used an unrefined sugar which gave it a small bite of a caramel undertone. I did not use the optional extract as I wanted the pureness of the Meyer Lemon to be tasted. The custard is baked in a bain marie, which I am very use to using, the only difference this time, was that Dorie asked us to put a double layer of paper towel in the bottom of the pan. Otherwise, it is a simple and straightforward recipe.
The custard came out creamy, light and very fresh. The perfect spring time dessert.
This weeks challenge was brought to us by Lyb of And then I do the dishes and she picked the cake that Dorie got fired over: the Chocolate Armagnac Cake.
I have to say right off, I am glad that Dorie got fired over the creation of this cake – it is FANTASTIC! Basically, Dorie got bored day in and day out of making the same thing and decided to get a little creative when making this cake, in the end she was fired for being creative! I love that! Not, that you lost your job, Dorie; but, the part about being creative and taking a chance.
The past couple of weeks I have made two incredibly dense chocolate cakes that require very little flour if any at all, which I find interesting as the texture is really amazingly light, so different from your tradition cake. This particular recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate and I used the deepest I could find, Scharffen Berger 70% as well it uses ground pecans. I did toast the pecans a bit before grinding which gave them a nice toasty and warm taste. As well we got to flambe prunes in Armagnac, this is the second recipe of Dorie’s that I have gotten to flambe and it is a very fun addition to your baking afternoon. Now you may be thinking to yourself, prunes in a cake? This addition made the cake incredibly moist. The cake is frosted with a simple glaze of more chocolate, very little sugar and butter.
This is a recipe that will become a fall back onto for us. It was ultra moist, dense, nice bite of deep bittersweet chocolate and not overly sweet. With the addition of prunes we like to think it is healthier for us as well, after all we all could use some fiber with our chocolate! It really is a fantastic recipe.
Be sure to check out all the other wonderful Tuesday With Dorie bakers!
Anyone who loves Devils Food cake will surely love this chocolaty, moist and light cake that is frosted with a mildly sweet homemade marshmallow fluff. The best part is that there is also devil’s food cake crumbs pressed all over the outside of the frosting: an ultimate party cake.
I always wondered who would pick this outrageous cake for our Tuesdays with Dorie challenge as it is on the cover of the Dorie cookbook. Stephanie over at Confessions of a City Eater did just that! I was going to sit this week out but when I saw what the challenge was I knew I had to make it. The only problem was … I knew Lenny would not want a big gooey cake sitting around the house so I needed a great reason and I had the perfect one, my friend Evelyn’s birthday. What made this challenge even better was that I got to involve MEM (Evelyn’s too cute kids) in the process.
We made the cake over a two day period since we had school and work schedules to deal with. MEM helped with the cake making process and we had tons of fun. From little fingers tasting everything to chocolate cake batter spattering all over the kitchen and us when I added the hot water on to high of a speed – we just laughed and laughed about it and they just kept tasting and tasting!
The second part of the cake building process I did on my own, which was too bad, because MEM would have loved this part. The frosting for the cake was a meringue that was made with a hot sugary syrup which you drizzled over the peaked meringue while beating constantly. The end result was marshmallow fluff! To put the cake together, I had to slice each cake in half, leaving 4 layers. The fun part and the part that MEM would have loved was taking one layer and crumbling it into little crumbs. Now I know they would have had a great time doing this, I am just not sure how much cake would have been left. The remaining layers were then frosted with the fluffy meringue and then the crumbs were sprinkled all over the cake. This is a great project to do with kids as there is no way around getting messy and making a mess. The messier it is the more crumby the cake!
The cake was really good. Not overly sweet. Very chocolaty. Very moist. Very light.
The littlest M (Maggie), a self proclaimed *foodie* said the next day that she thought it would be good with chocolate frosting. I have to agree. Maybe next time we will add chocolate powder to the meringue, who wouldn’t like chocolate marshmallow fluff!
I had planned to make these for Valentines as Lenny loves them! In fact, whenever I ask about his favorite desserts this is the only one he mentions. Shari of Whisk: a food blog beat me to it as she picked this fablous recipe for our weekly Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) challenge.
The recipe starts with making a Creme Anglaise, which is a light pouring custard. It is made with milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla flavoring. I decided to skip the vanilla extract and add a split vanilla bean to the milk while it simmered. I love the dark speckles floating in the finished creme not to mention the very intense flavor of fresh vanilla.
While the custard was chilling I made the floating islands. Dorie’s recipe was basically egg whites with a little sugar. I normally add a bit of cream of tartar which helps them hold up a bit more. Since this recipe did not call for it, I did not add it. Instead I made my meringues extra big, which was a good idea, as when I removed them from the simmering milk they deflated quite a bit. Tip, save the slightly sweet milk and use in your coffee.
The recipe called for the option a drizzling of caramel, we went for it. I did decide to cook it a little longer then the recipe stated as we love burnt caramel. With the smell of vanilla, frothy milk and burnt sugar lingering in the house, we could not hold out and ate the dish slightly warm. Even though it is better when served a bit colder, we were not complaining as we licked the spoons and bowls clean. This is an easy recipe that tastes fantastic! Sultry creamy custard and comfortable caramel teasing your taste-buds. We may be eating this again on Valentines!
Be sure to check out all the other TWD Floating Islands as well!
Mary over at Meet Me in the Kitchen is the hostess for this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie challenge and she picked the Berry Surprise Cake. What a fantastic recipe!
Dorie was inspired to create this recipe from her childhood days of having a Charlotte Russe. Charlotte Russe is a combination of sponge cake, fruit or jam, lots of whipped cream, and topped with a cherry. I have never had a Charlotte Russe so I was very anxious to try this recipe out.
The base of this recipe is a genoise whole-egg sponge cake. I was concerned the height of my cake would not be perfect as Dorie suggests using a 3″ spring-form pan, which I do not have, so I doubled the recipe and made two 9″ cake-pan layers.
The filling is a layer of simple syrup, a cream cheese based mixture and fresh raspberries. The simple syrup we decided to flavor with orange liqueur and cardamon, it was the perfect combination of sweet and spice. The cream cheese layer was simply cream cheese, whipping cream and very little sugar, I used the sugar from our sugar bowl that is full of vanilla beans and unrefined sugar! Finally a layer of raspberries.
The recipe calls for you to hollow out the middle of your cake, brush the center with the simple syrup, fill with a small layer of cream cheese and top with the berries, as I had two layers I did this with each layer. Then I topped them upon each other.
The outer frosting was pure whipping cream with a bit of sugar and vanilla. I had some extra cream cheese filling left over and since I did not want to waste it nor did I want it sitting on my waistline, so I added it to the frosting. It definitely gave it a bit more structure and made it easier to frost. After chilling for a couple hours it was ready to serve!
This dessert was soft and slightly sweet, just like a new summer day. A few of my fellow TWD bakers said that they did not think it was sweet enough and I was concerned when serving it, but we all liked that the flavors of the eggy genoise cake came through as well as the jammy flavors of the berries which was only enhanced by the traces of sugar and vanilla. This would be a delightful substitution to your typical strawberry shortcake.
Be sure to check out all of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers.
 
I have to say I am really disappointed about how the holidays, especially Christmas have become all about $$$ – it is so over commercialized, so much in fact, I am sure people have really lost site of the truly meaning. Even us to a point. I spent the morning cramming in all of our holiday shopping. I use to spread the joy out for an entire month before the holidays with shopping for the perfect gift, decorating, baking gifts to send out, and endless entertaining, etc…. The past couple of years I have just lost that holiday mojo. I have cut back a lot! I still make sure that the gifts we do buy fit the receiver perfectly, I cannot buy for the purpose of buying or producing a gift. I don’t bake as much as I use too and we don’t entertain as much as we use too. Maybe this year was different because Lenny is leaving in two days or maybe because the country is in a different economic state or maybe it is because I just feel like we have really lost the true meaning of Christmas! We have not decorated. We have not baked nearly as much as we do. And then half way through shopping today, it just hit me, that I was kind of going through the holiday motions and it bummed me out. Maybe it hit me because I had just read Jen’s blog posting about all the great holiday things she was making and sharing with everyone? Or maybe it was because we were not going to be together this year – we are each going to be on different coasts this year. Regardless, I was determined to get some of that holiday joy back into our lives before Lenny leaves and before the year ends …..
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Heather with Randomosity and the Girl, chose this TWD recipe. My sister (who is not a baker) needed a cookie to take to a party so I made these for her. The recipe is very straight forward and easy, in fact I can see this becoming a come to recipe when I need a quick cookie. I did use apricot jam as I like the sweetness of it but I also thought marmalade would make a wonderful addition. There is no shaping involved it is a drop cookie that bakes up very nicely! I wish I could tell you how it tastes, I will later, but right now I have the flu and a cookie is the last thing I want unfortunately!
Thanks Heather for picking such an easy holiday cookie! Be sure to check out all the other Tuesdays With Dorie cookies this month!
Guess what, it is Tuesdays with Dorie time and the wonderful Isabelle of Les Gourmandises d’Isa picked one of our favorite desserts, one that goes back to both of our childhoods and our cultures – Lenny, Portuguese and I, Basque. We both remember our great-grandmothers, our grandmothers, and our mothers making rice pudding. It is a very comfortable ending to a meal. The only thing with these old family recipes is that they seem to come out a bit dry or startchy no matter how much extra milk I add. I feel bad even saying this, but, I have tried and tried …. now there is a new girl in town!
Dorie always seems to have the “perfect recipe”. Every time I make a TWD recipe, it is right on, from serving size, to baking times and ingredients. This recipe was the exception ….. it was even easier, in fact it was the easiest rice pudding I have ever made. Basically, you gently simmer rice with milk and sugar, then add flavorings, I did use a vanilla bean instead of extract, which gave it a really nice warm taste and essence. T add a bit of fall to the recipe, I soaked unsweetened cranberries in a French orange brandy for 10 hours and then lightly drizzled it over the top – very good! The end result, it was ultra creamy with a slight bite of crunch (that texture we so love) thanks to the Arborio rice.
I served this after we had the Merguez Lamb stew dinner- it was the perfect ending to a wonderful meal, the flavors all really came together. This was definitely the easiest and the best rice pudding recipe I have ever made and it will become the go to in our house and you should make it yours as well.
Thank you, Isabelle!
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