Saratoga (Parisian) Apple Tart and Peonies

This week's TWD Parisian Apple Tart is a keeper and will be a regular dessert feature for future dinner parties. The recipe was selected by Jessica of My Baking Heart and the recipe is available on her blog. Because of this week's TWD, I now have puff pastry sheets to last a long time. To try to get a better quality puff pastry dough, I visited Adventure in Food, a specialty food wholesaler in Albany, NY, where I purchased a "small" box of frozen puff pastry -- made by Pennant from France. The small box isn't really that small and as a result I now have 20 (- 1/2 sheet) 12 oz pastry sheets resting in my freezer. I like them already because they're packaged flat rather than folded like the Pepperidge Farm puff pastry. I always hated rolling across the fold. Anyway, I'm seeing a summer of beautiful tomato tarts with the beautiful San Marzano tomatos that I anticipate harvesting from my garden.

Speaking of gardens -- my first peony is now blooming. The flowers are easily 6 inches across and they smell delightful. I took some pictures to share as well as my newly remodelled veggie garden.

Cinnamon Squares??? - Chocolate Heaven

When I first saw the listing for this week's TWD selection, I wasn't impressed and didn't think I would participate. Over the weekend I looked at the recipe and thought it looked interesting and really easy to make. I've been spending a lot of my time in the garden so I'm looking for easy right now. It was easy, but I think the name is wrong. It should be a name that includes the abundant chocolate in the recipe -- maybe Dark Chocolate Squares or maybe Chocolate Heaven. Any suggestions? The recipe is available at http://traceysculinaryadventures.blogspot.com. In my recipe, I substituted buttermilk for whole milk.

The veggie garden is planted but still kind of young to photograph. I've added some features to make it fit better with my old 1840s house. Pictures will come soon. The perennial flowers are starting their display. The clematis and columbine are blooming and the gorgeous peony is about ready to pop. The macro lens makes everything look incredible.

TWD - Tartest Lemon Tart

Okay, I love this recipe but couldn't really believe that it called for whole lemons! I wonder how common this is? Yesterday David Lebovitz posted a lemon tart recipe in which he used only lemon zest and lemon juice -- http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2009/05/tart_au_citron_french_lemon_tart.html. His recipe made a point of using unsprayed lemons. I can hardly believe that any fruit is brought to market without being sprayed with all the creepy crawlers and insects in the warm climates where they grow. I used my supermarket lemons and scrubbed them with warm soapy water and a good brush -- making sure to remove the green Sunkist ink!

This was the last recipe I made during my marathon baking day for my friend's wake last week -- Tiramisu cake, peanut butter cookies and then this tart. The fact that tart crust was pressed in rather than rolled out, saved a ton of time and anguish. I finished off the tart with powdered sugar rather than creme fraiche. The recipe can be found at http://www.ayearfromoakcottage.com/.

RIP - Dear Friend, Kate

Today was the funeral for my friend Kate O'Connell, who passed last week. She was a poet, photographer, philospher and wonderful friend. Over the past few summers we had memorable jaunts to Tanglewood and the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown. I will miss her.

Following her funeral, there was a reception for friends and family. This week's TWD Tiramisu cake (and next week's Lemon Tart) were part of my contribution. The recipe for the Tiramisu cake can be found on Megan's blog My Baking Adventures.

Bumble my Blueberries – Making Substitutions

Last week I glanced at the recipe for this cake and thought how simple it looked and didn’t include any unfamiliar techniques. I made the classic cooking mistake and didn’t read through ingredient list carefully. Yesterday I started making the cake. As I worked along, I came to the final steps that included combining the dry ingredients with buttermilk. No buttermilk in the pantry! Two choices – make a quick trip to the market or look for a substitution. Dorie’s Baking has a whole list of substitutions in the back of the book. I used her recommendation for buttermilk substitute by combining 2/3 cup of plain yogurt and 1/3 cup milk. It worked fine.

The recipe for Blueberry Crumb Cake is available at http://fundamentally-flawed.blogspot.com/. Thanks to Sihan for selecting the recipe.

Blueberry Crumb Cake in the late afternoon sun.

French Yogurt Cake with Lemon Glaze – TWD

What an easy recipe! Like so many of TWD members, I couldn’t find lemon marmalade so I used lemon curd. I thinned it with a little freshly squeezed lemon juice which produced a very lemony flavor. One of my tasters (who’s known to like a lot of extra butter and cream) suggested serving it with cream cheese.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Brown out on Devils Food White Out Cake - TWD

This is a cake worthy of the cookbook cover - a real show stopper! I browned mine with as many of the crumbs as I could get on it -- so it's a browned out devil's food white out cake.

I ate this piece immediately after snapping the photo and found the strawberry was a perfect accompaniment. So, it's a longer walk with the dog and a couple more hours on the treadmill! Handing off the rest of the cake to my neighbors and friends.

This cake was much easier than I thought and way easier than the photograph would suggest!

Thanks to Stephanie for chosing the cake! Check out her blog at Confessions of a City Eater for the recipe for the Devil's Food White Out Cake.

TWD - Chocolate Gingerbread!

Gingerbread is not one of my favorite sweets -- but chocolate is! The result is that this week's TWD recipe is one that I would make again. The exact recipe can be found at Sherry Triffle, the blog of Heather who selected the challenge.

I changed the recipe slightly by baking it in smaller pans. I baked it in two 3 inch springform pans and 12 normal sized cupcakes. Following Dorie's note, I filled the pans about 2/3 full which worked out really well. Also, I cut the baking time to about 30 minutes.

TWD – Berry Surprise Cake

Struck out with this one! From the photo evidence, I made the genoise cake. When I pulled it out of the oven, it collapsed in the middle. I did a little research about why it collapsed and discovered that opening the oven can cause it to take a dip. Well, I probably opened the oven 3-4 times during baking. I was preparing to start over and decided to taste the sponge. I didn’t like it – not the texture or the taste -- so I abandoned the project.

Ooh-lah-lah French Pear Tart - TWD

Dorie's recipe note that this is such an easy recipe is totally on the mark. I had some sweet tart crusts frozen and pulled them out and used canned pears. I made them in small 6 inch tart pans and it took about a half or more pears per tart. The recipe was so easy to make. I'm constantly impressed by Dorie's pastries -- that they may sound complicated but are easy to make and produce tasty pastries. Thanks Dorie - I'll make this again!

Linzer Sables - TWD

You say sables -- I say I love Linzer tarts. My love goes back to my student days in Switzerland and Germany and being introduced to Linzer torts. Those lovely hazelnuts and raspberry jam and the interlaced crust -- what's not to like! And Linzer tarts are a great reminder.

If you had to grind nuts for the dough, this recipe would take more effort. A few years ago, I was introduced to buying ground nuts and I generally keep a supply of them in my pantry. I used some ground almonds for this recipe -- although ground hazelnuts would have been my preference. This was definately a shortcut to whip up these cookies.

I want to share another great baking short-cut. I recently bought an add-on for my stand mixer. This is in the form of a flat paddle beater with little wings. What this incredible item provides is scraping the bowl as it turns -- eliminating the need to stop and scrape down the side of the bowl. I found mine on the internet.

Here it is in action.

Here are my maple leaf Linzer sables. Dusted two and the reminder are in the freezer waiting for the holidays. Check out Living the Life for the recipe.

Wow - Twofer Pie - TWD

With everyone watching their calorie intake, it's not unusual to see people eat the pie filling and pick away at the crust and leave most of it behind. Dorie's Good for Everything Pie Crust is not like that -- and my TG guests ate the whole pie (or at least their piece of pie). One of them said, this was the best pie they had ever eaten and I have to agree. This is a keeper!

Kugelhopf Tastes Like Grandma's Coffee Cake

At first glance, the kugelhopf recipe scared me and I decided I would skip this week's posting. On Sunday, I gave the recipe a second look and changed my mind. I'm not home this week and took Dorie's advice about the kugelhopf making great toast so from the start planned to bake it in a loaf pan. I finished baking it late Sunday, tried a "few" slices (not toasted), wrapped the remaining loaf and threw it in the freezer. Given my compressed schedule and less than dramatic load pan presentation, there are no photographs of the finished cake for my posting.


My reaction, this tasted great and, even more, it reminded me of my Grandma Arps' coffee cake. She made coffee cakes for holidays -- especially Christmas. She rolled her coffee cakes much thinner (one or two inches thick) and they were sized to fit in a baking pan. She soaked the just baked cakes in butter and sugar just like the kugelhopf but also added cinnamon to the mixture. This would no doubt be a nice adaptation for the kugelhopf. Grandma Arps lived to be 92 and her parents emigrated from Wittorf in northern Germany to northwestern Ohio where many families from the same community landed. She was a great baker and made lots of cakes (one of my favorites was white hickory nut cake), cookies and homemade noodles. Grandma, thanks for the love of baking.

Yummy Chocolate Cupcakes

For me, there's never enough chocolate. I've taken chocolate classes -- learning to temper chocolate and produce tasty bonbons. So, there's always a supply of chocolate in my pantry. So this recipe was bound to please -- chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting. These were so easy to make -- just love them. I added a sprinkling of orange sugar to for Halloween. As usual, I gave most of them away! Check out Clara of I Heart Food4Thought for the recipe.

I got carried away with the pictures this week but enjoy.

TWD - Pumpkin Muffins - What Not To Do

What not to do is mis-read the ingredient list and decorate your muffins with salty pumpkin seeds and be extra generous with the seeds. It didn't even taste good, didn't look like the muffins in Dorie's cookbook -- what was I thinking?

What to do then, is to carefully pick off the offending decoration! Much better, but don't look too closely.

Orange - Walnut Biscotti

This week's TWD recipe is perfect as gifts for friends. The ones I made are going to England with me today and will be a little gift to my hosts there. I packed them into decorative cello bags and they look quite impressive.

But back to the recipe. I'm not a fan of almond flavor and I could tell from the list of ingredients that the almond flavor would be overwhelming to my palate. So I substituted orange extract for the almond extract and used chopped walnuts. The result was outstanding -- mild orange flavor and the crunchy walnuts.

To the suitcase!

TWD - Malted Milk Chocolate Drops and Saratoga Wine & Food Festival

The recipe Q&A this week provided a warning that malted milk powder might be hard to find in the stores, but my neighborhood market had Olvatine – so it was no problem. My challenge was finding Whoppers. Tried three markets with no luck and it finally struck me that the local candy shop might have them. They didn’t carry Whoppers but something better – homemade malted milk balls – with a choice of milk or dark chocolate coating. Naturally, I picked the dark chocolate ones.

Ingredients in place, I quickly made up the batch of cookies. On Monday, I took the cookies to the office and everyone loved them -- one more great recipe from Dorie’s cookbook.

Last weekend, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center hosted a Wine and Food festival – culminating in the Grand Tasting on Saturday. What a terrific event. Many fine restaurants from the area and several hundred vineyards served samples. Even more fun was a special seminar and wine tasting hosted by Kevin Zraly and Burt Wolf. We tasted seven red wines – my favorites were the Brunello di Montalcino 2003 from Aleramici, the Barabaresco 2004 from Marchesi di Gresy and the Amarone Classico 2003 from Tedeschi. From the picture, there was a whole lot of sipping going on! The Wine and Food festival is the first weekend after Labor Day – can’t wait until next year’s edition.

TWD - Got Milk??

Whether home-made cookies or mass produced oreos, cookies taste best when dunked in a glass of milk. Dorie’s peanut butter chocolate chip cookies especially taste good with a nice cold glass of milk.

Cookies and milk almost gone!

Two things about this week’s recipe were different than other chocolate chip cookie recipes I’ve made. You can find the recipe at Proceed with Caution. The first was the proportion of oatmeal and flour – the recipe called for 3 parts old-fashioned oatmeal and one part flour. Other recipes I’ve used have 2-3 cups of flour to one cup of oatmeal. The second was the addition of cinnamon and nutmeg. I’ve never made a chocolate chip or peanut butter cookie recipe with those spices and they are very prominent in the flavor of the final product. The flavor was not unpleasant but not exactly to my liking.

Cookies are so easy to make. The tricks are chilling the dough so they don’t bake so fast and hold together better and slightly under-baking the cookies. If a recipe calls for 15-17 minutes baking, I’ll usually bake them for 15 minutes. You have to know your oven and check that the cookies are nicely browned.

This was the last weekend of summer and I visited friends in Adamant, Vermont. I took a little short cut home – the Essex Ferry across Lake Champlain. It was a fantastic summer day and the sailors were out in force on the lake with the Adirondack Mountains to the west and Green Mountains to the east. Little Bess loved the journey.

TWD - Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream with Chocolate Chunks

Graeter's Ice Cream in Ohio http://www.graeters.com/ makes some of the best ice cream I've ever eaten. My favorite Graeter's flavor is black raspberry with chocolate chunks. As an homage to Graeter's, I decided to add some chocolate chunks to TWD Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream. I couldn't decide wheter to use dark or milk chocolate. My thought being the milk chocolate would balance the sour cream flavor in the ice cream better than the dark chocolate. The chocolate didn't really impact the flavor but added to the texture and "mouth-feel". The key to working with the chocolate was to add it to the ice cream machine just before it's finished.

As others noted in the P&Q, the sour cream flavor was strong, not exactly what you expect in ice cream. Check out http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/ for the recipe for Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream.

I took my camera with me when I walked my dog on Saturday and snapped some pictures of flowers. I'm definately loving my new macro lens.

TWD - Black and White Banana Loaf

There were ripe bananas on the counter and I always have couverture chocolate so I was all prepared for this week's TWD recipe.

I didn't mash the bananas too finely and the batter came together exactly as described in the recipe. I globbed the two mixtures together but didn't stir them after combining them in the pan so the marbling stayed intact.


This recipe took a lot of bowls to prepare! This wasn't one of my favorite recipes.