Pie, Y'all!

Fittingly for the season, our recipe this week was the Nectarine and Blueberry Pie. I like how versatile this recipe seems. Nectarines and blueberries are great for summer but it could be adapted easily to fall or winter fruits.

I had a few issues making the pie dough. A: I didn't have ice for the water, which I know is weird, but true. B. The shortening was mushy even though I put it in the freezer for about an hour before I used it. And C: I don't think the dough needed a whole cup of water. It was so sticky that I added probably close to another 1/2 C of flour and put the whole bowl into the freezer for a couple minutes before I even shaped the dough into disks to rest.

Aside from making the dough, constructing the pie was nice and easy. As I mentioned last week, I think my oven cooks on the cool side. This baking confirmed that 100%. After the recommended 40ish minutes I still had uncooked eggwash on the top of my very blond pie. The total cooking time was nearly 1:30 but it finally bubbled and got good color. Fortunately, I had to go to work this morning while it was cooling so there wasn't temptation to cut into the pie before time. This crust is delicious and flaky, but I do feel like it's a little heavy. Maybe I should just roll the top crust a little thinner if I'm making it again. I did make the full dough recipe so I'll have at least another pie's worth to play around with.

Check out the hosts for this week's recipe: Hilary and Liz.

For the rest of the TWD bakers check out the blogroll.

Semolina Loaf - TWD/BWJ

Ironic that I made this loaf a week early and it took me so long to get the post written up! Oh well. My initial impression of this bread was not great. If I bake, it's usually on my days off...and that means I have more things to do than schedule my day around bread dough rising. That being said, I tried to stick to the schedule, but every rise went over the recommended time. By the evening, though I had shaped the loaf, it was time to go to a birthday party and I just ended up putting the bread in the fridge overnight. In the light of day, my bread looked...sad and flat.

I carried on and baked the bread for the recommended time. I'm beginning to suspect my oven is a little on the cool side, as it had NO color. So I turned the broiler on for a couple minutes. Mucho better. 

While my loaf wasn't good for sandwiches or anything (was it even supposed to be?), it made great crostini! I made some fresh bruschetta and rubbed the slices with garlic and put it in the oven to crisp up. I think the subtle texture difference from the semolina was a nice change.

For the recipe, check out this week's hosts: Anna of Keep it Luce and Renee of The Way to My Family's Heart.

TWD: BWJ Oasis Naan

I enjoyed the simplicity of this naan recipe after some of the other more complicated ones lately. Some of mine ended up stretching out like the recipe said for the Persian naan, but it wasn't a big deal.
I just did simple garlic and kosher salt since I didn't have scallions on hand. My only problem seemed to be that they didn't get much color on top, even though I left them for longer than 8 minutes.
Verdict: tasty, but I might want to play around with the toppings more next time.

TWD: BWJ Lemon Loaves

One thing I can say first off about this week's selection is that it comes together very quickly. As in I went to get lemons at 8:20 this morning and was enjoying the results by 9:45. I made two mini loaves out of a half-recipe and it worked perfectly. Baking time was right around 33 minutes for that. The texture is great - kind of
like a lighter pound cake but still with a nice tight crumb. If I made it again, I'd definitely go for some sort of glaze per the top.

TWD: BWJ - Irish Soda Bread

Super simple recipe. Thank god. This really reminded me of just making a big biscuit or a scone, which if you are comparing ingredients, really all that's missing is butter or shortening. I may not have kneaded mine quite long enough but it never really got to the point where I could make a "disk" so into the pan it went.  

I chose to put raisins in mine, which I now regret, haha. I think it just kind of mars the nice taste and texture of the soda bread by itself. Fresh out of the oven, without even any butter, it was really quite good. I heard my mom mention something about soda bread french toast the other day; that might be how the rest of this loaf gets used up.

On a happy note, I made it to the bottom of my flour container! Wooo! Re-upped with some White Lily this time. For the recipes you can check out Cathy or Carla's sites and the main TWD site for the rest of the posters. Until next time!

Megan

Update: 

Forgot to mention this earlier but I actually used fat free buttermilk (store only had a big jug of regular or the right size of fat free, so I went with that). From the taste/texture, it really wasn't affected by the lack of fat.

TWD is BACK! White Loaves

I'm so happy to be baking along with all you ladies and gents again!

For the first recipe of the new book, the white loaves were a great choice. Personally, I needed a good rebound from those flipping marshmallows. The dough came together so easily, wasn't too sticky, and even after the butter was incorporated it was nice and pliable. I chose to knead partially by hand because I'm paranoid about overheating my KitchenAid. What would I do without it?! 

I probably could have left the bread in the oven for a little longer to get more of a golden color but honestly it smelled so good, I just wanted to get the bread out so I could have some. When rolling it out I added a layer of Parmesan cheese, which made a nice (small) swirl through the bread. It's been fantastic for sandwiches and grilled cheese. The crumb is nice and fine but it's not too dense either. Bottom line: I'm very happy with this and will be making it again soon!

For the recipe, visit either Jules or Laurie's blogs at Slush or Someone's In the Kitchen

TWD - French Yogurt Cake w/ Marmelade Glaze

For this week, Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction chose Dorie's French Yogurt Cake with Marmelade Glaze. I've been looking forward to making this recipe for a while and it did not disappoint. This is definitely one of the ones you can decide to make semi-spur of the moment and you will likely have all the ingredients on hand for it - I didn't even have to make a run to the grocery store for this cake. I also got a chance to use some of the farm fresh eggs that a friend of a friend gave us; they're so much prettier than regular white eggs!


The batter for the cake was a breeze to put together, except I wasn't paying attention and added the oil with the other wet ingredients rather than waiting til after I added the dry ones. Fortunately it seems like everything worked out OK. In my oven, which I think usually runs a little warm, this took the whole 55 minutes to get done on the inside. The outside, however, was a bit more colored and the sides were slightly more crispy than I would like but it doesn't really affect the taste. I might try this in some of my smaller loaf pans when I next bake it (because I really want to try the Riviera version) and hopefully that will help with the brownness.

I used orange marmelade with a little lemon juice added (saw someone did that in the Ps and Qs), but I'm actually not that crazy about it. I've got some lemon curd too and that is just scrumdidliumptious on the cake. I should not keep jars of lemon curd in my house.


Anyway, thanks to Liliana for a great recipe. Stop by the TWD website to see what everyone else ended up with.

PS - I have had a new food blog addiction for this past week: Alinea at Home, by a lady in DC. She had previously cooked through the French Laundry at Home and is now taking on Grant Achatz's Alinea cookbook. It's great reading to see a normal person tackle molecular gastronomy.

Tuesdays with Dorie: The Cover Cake!

This week, Stephanie of Confessions of a City eater chose the cover cake of "Baking From My Home to Yours," also known as the Devil's Food White Out Cake.

Part of me wanted to make a mini-cake this week (I guess that's latent holdiay/Valentine's eating guilt setting in) but a. I have no mini pans and b. I feel like everyone's been waiting to make this cake for ages, so why not go big?

I didn't read the P's and Q's this week, but my cake layers ended up being way more thin than I expected and they also didn't settle as well. I guess I will take Dorie more literally when she says to smooth out the top of the batter. I was glad to be able to put my cake lifter to good use - it's nice to not have to worry about cracking my layers in half like I have done in the past.



I am a big fan of the marshmallowy frosting that goes with this cake - it's not overly sweet and it complements the cake very well. I don't make cooked frostings that often but aside from taking longer than I thought it should have, it turned out very tasty and holds its shape very well for how light it is.




So, thanks Stephanie for choosing the cover cake! Check out the blogroll for everyone else's cakes.

Bonne Annee and TWD!

I was so excited to find out the recipe for this week was chosen by Dorie herself! (I'm sure most of us were, really who wouldn't be?) What I found to be ironic is that I immediately realized how the pears were intended to be sliced but yet had some confusion about the almond cream. In my mind's eye it was supposed to be fluffy and smooth, but mine felt like I was spreading soft cream cheese. Next time I will probably process my almonds a little finer; in heeding the advice about not making nut butter I might have stopped grinding them a little early. The dough was delicious. I only had an 11' tart pan but I just pressed the dough out as well as I could and it worked out great. No cracks and no appreciable shrinking.

It's pretty funny that the standard ingredient for this in France is canned pears, but after poaching mine and trying a slice or two, the texture is way similar so I can see why that is the case.

Getting ready to go in the oven:


Here's my baked tart:


If Dorie herself happens to stop by here, I just want to say thank you thank you for providing such great recipes! I've always been a confident baker but the regularity of TWD (thanks Laurie et al) has just made it all the better. I'm a much cleaner baker too now, which probably makes other people more happy that it does me haha. Stop by the blogroll to see how everyone else's tarts turned out!

TWD and a Celebration

Firstly, I just want to share that I am now officially a CAROLINA ALUM! ...that is, once all my library fines are paid haha. Great success!

On to the baking -

This week's TWD selection from Heather of Randomosity and the Girl was another holiday/busytime friendly recipe. The (mostly) weekly baking is getting me into a much more efficient method of baking, which I hadn't really thought would happen. It's a nice little side benefit to doing this I guess. Anyway, these were a snap to throw together and I could see myself making gobs of them with various flavors of jam.

I don't actually own a scooper that would have been useful for these cookies, so I first tried to use two spoons but the cookies were just ugly. Can't have ugly cookies. I ended up scooping out the dough and then rolling them into a ball with my hands and then squashing the tops down with the bottom of a bowl. I think my cookies were a bit biggah (does anyone else think Old Greg when they say that?) since I only got about 3 dozen.

After reading about some people having their cookies turn pretty dark on the bottoms, I only baked for 10 minutes. My oven/pans have been known to burn things within the recommended time so I played it safe. The cookies did spread a bit - I took care not to overmix at the end so that helped for sure.

My parents once upon a time brought back some raspberry cookies from Seattle and the taste of these reminded me of those, so I thought I'd dust some of them in powdered sugar like the ones I remembered.

Both versions are pretty tasty, though I think next time I would add more jam and maybe heat it up a little beforehand so the consistency is easier to mix into the batter. Other than that they were great! My dad is definitely loving this kick of cookies because he prefers ones that aren't so out of this world sweet and these fit the bill.

Be sure to check out everyone else on the TWD blogroll! Thanks again Heather for a great pick.

TWD - Grandma's All Occasion Sugar Cookies

Ah sugar cookies. Can't have Christmas without them. I am also happy that these were a nice easy selection...I am in the middle of studying for two exams at the end of this week and these made a nice study break.

After reading of some people's issues with sticky dough, I made sure to make my dough earlier and refrigerate it overnight. I had zero issues with problematic dough, and it was actually kind of hard to get the sugar to stick to the sides of my first log because it was still pretty cold.

I made the second log with some orange extract in it. It would have been nice to have some orange zest to put in it, but I didn't have time to go to the store. I was trying to figure out how to decorate these and DUH! Orange and chocolate. That's not weird is it? Hopefully other people think it tastes good too. I love using my little parchment sheets to do decorations like this. It takes about 5 seconds but looks like it is professionally done.


Ta-dah! I even broke out mi madre's Christmas china!



Here's a secret glimpse of what my mixer looked like after T-giving. Didn't even realize it til this week. Ah the shame.

As always, check out what the other Tuesdays With Dorie bloggers have come up with!

T-giving Rehash

Yayyyy the semester is almost over save for two more exams! I didn't realize how quickly time had passed since Thanksgiving while I was in the middle of all my end of the semester stuff, so my overview of all the baking I did is kind of late...obviously.

I had the grand idea to make some apple cider caramels from a recipe I found over on Sugarpunk's site. They started out well, but since I have very little experience with candy-making, I'm thinking I might have over cooked it since it never set up. It did, however, make a nice bottom layer/topping for the pumpkin cheesecake I made. This one had a gingersnap crust that was really tasty. I don't think it lasted longer than about 2 days in my house, so it was a hit.



I also decided to make some Pumpkin Challah from Martha Stewart's recipe. Like every other challah recipe I've used, this makes a crap-ton of bread. I envisioned these rolls as sort of post-thanksgiving sandwich bread, but I failed to think about how big they'd be by the time they were done baking.

Other than the obvious ugliness here, the dough was really easy to work with, except I can only braid going one direction and starting from the middle throws me off in a big way.

Like I said, there was so much of this bread. I think I made french toast for everyone at least twice. It wasn't overly pumpkiny, which I think is a good thing since it could go savory or sweet.


I did actually bake the Two-fer Pie the day after Thanksgiving, but due to a misplacement of my camera connector cord, I have only just gotten all of these pictures onto my computer. Alas. Anyway, the dough was way easy to make, but it seemed like 25 plus 8 minutes was a long time to prebake. Mine, as seen in the middle pic below, got kind of crispy at the end of that time.

The filling was also...filling. I managed to get most of it into the pie and there were only a couple spots where I could tell that it had run over and made the crust stick to the pie pan a little.


Overall, I think the pie turned out pretty well. I like the addition of rum in the pumpkin at the beginning, but it got stronger over time which I liked less. I think that, while this pie is tasty, it is too much of a hassle to make any more than maybe once a year.

TWD - Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

When I saw the recipe selection for this weeks was chocolate cupcakes I inwardly groaned. I think this is the third time in a month I have made cupcakes but I figured since this is my first TWD post I sort of had to make them. At least I could make these sort of Halloweeny. :)

Off we go:
Mix mix mix...I've found that the warmer zone on my oven is good for speeding butter to room temperature if I forget to set it out earlier, which is pretty much always.

The batter was nice and light and tasted awesome.

Here they are out of the oven...had I read the P's and Q's I would have seen that many people were having problems with dryness and baked for a shorter period of time. I did 22 minutes on the dot, but I probably should have checked them earlier.

This wasn't a great week for innovation in Megan-land since really I was baking these as stress relief and so I just stuck with Dorie's glaze, using semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet. It was a very rich glaze but tasty.

And here I exhausted my creative brain cells for the day by using the awesome Halloween sprinkles that were in the cabinet.


The verdict:
Mine were a little dry, there's no getting around it. Probably if I had done what others did and added a second whole egg instead of the yolk, or baked for less time they would have turned out ok. Still, they were very edible...I just wanted a glass of milk with them!

Thanks to Clara for picking a fun recipe!