TWD - Caramel Crunch Bars

This week's recipe was chosen by Whitney of What's Left on the Table (haha in my house, not much). Great call...these bars are sweet enough to satisfy any sweet tooth but have enough saltiness from the toffee as well as the instant coffee that it's not overly sweet.

I chose to make a half recipe in an 8x8 pan...honestly the 2 sticks of butter in the recipe made my eyes bulge just a little bit. Everything was going swimmingly until I reached for the tin foil and realized we were out, so I used wax paper instead. Cut to 10 minutes later and the wax paper is smoking and two of the smoke alarms are going off. Awesomeeee. I almost dropped the whole mess on the floor trying to get it out of the oven. Fortunately after I cut off most of the excess wax paper and put it back in the oven everything went OK, though I was paying careful attention to any suspicious smells.

One of the things I like about this recipe a lot is that you can whip it up in under an hour, and it's great warmish or cooled. I will probably have to hide these from myself so I don't eat all the rest of them.

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.

A late Valentine's entry...

I just wanted to share what I took to work on Sunday. Those who had been married/divorced got a kick out of the "sign a prenup" one especially.

TWD - Dorie's World Peace Cookies

Jessica of CookBookHabit chose Dorie's renowned World Peace Cookies for this week. Reading the P's and Q's had me kind of nervous; everyone seemed to have issues with super crumbly cookies that didn't slice well. I've never made sables before so I didn't really know what to expect nor do I know if my cookies do or don't fit the sable description.

I didn't have any fleur de sel on hand and used some finely ground kosher salt instead. When making mine, I possibly over mixed just a tad, but I didn't have issues with the dough not coming together as I made the logs. (well except for all the chocolate pieces falling out). I did notice that when I was trying to roll the logs out it felt like they were hollow and would start to kind of separate and so I'd have to smoosh everything together again.


I froze my dough for about 2 hours and had no problems slicing the cookies. Suprisingly I got 30 out of this recipe. Usually I get much less than the amount Dorie projects.



Taste test: very good, but super rich. My brother ate 3 in a row and I don't know how he did it. This may be partially because I ran out of bittersweet chocolate and used semisweet instead. Le sigh...I really need to start reading the recipes more than a day ahead of time so I have a chance to make sure I have all the ingredients. Check the blogroll for everyone else's results!

Tuesdays With Dorie: Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

Well, let's try this again and hope for no blue screens...

Firstly, I just have to share and say that the reason I didn't post last week is because I was in Chicago being touristy and enjoying inauguration festivities. See below:

(The shirt says "Obama in the house")

On to the baking...

This week Heather of Sherry Trifle chose the Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread. Silly as I am, I had made Dorie's flan recipe the night before I was planning on making this gingerbread, so in order to stave off some guilt I decided to make a half recipe. I love ginger and was excited about all the types included in this one, although I didn't have any ginger in syrup and left it out. This was a pretty straightforward recipe, though after I baked it and got a taste, it reminded me a lot of one of my favorite bakery's pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. I guess the muffins are less pumpkiny and more spicy like the gingerbread. I'm always very happy when Dorie puts in little tips like, "Don't worry if your mix looks curdled here,"which is comforting when you're mixing and mixing and it still looks weird. I followed what I am seeing as general wisdom for halving things with odd numbers of eggs and used 2 eggs, resulting in a very moist cake. I have no problems with moist. (haha though I did have a teacher in high school who HATED the word moist)

The icing...mmm. I think the coffee helped give the icing that something extra. I made the full recipe of icing for my half recipe cake and might have just eaten the rest of it. Hm...where are my workout dvds?


Be sure to check out the blogroll and see what everyone else is up to!

It's not a dessert! (This week's TWD)

As much as I have enjoyed all the delicious sweets we've made in the past couple months, I was definitely looking forward to having a savory item about which I could feel moderately less guilty after I eat half of it. (Thank you Rebecca, of Ezra Poundcake - love the blog name) These corn muffins tasted pretty good despite the fact that my brain was elsewhere while I was making them.

Since my dad just kind of scoffs at cornbready type things that aren't made in a cast iron pan, I decided to forgo the muffin aspect of the recipe and just bake it in my skillet. The amount is just fine for that as well if you like your cornbread nice and thick, especially since everyone seems to be eating chili this week. Though I consider myself a true-blood southerner (also someone who's worked at a "soul food" restaurant that served a sweeter cornbread), I like my cornbread on the sweet side. I think I have literally spat out non-sweet cornbread before because I think it tastes like dirt. There may be a time and a place but I haven't found it yet.

Anywho, the recipe was pretty simple to throw together; this made for a quick dinner with a pot of chili. However, I completely forgot to add the chili powder and I used creamed corn instead of regular corn. To try to equalize the wetness, I cut out about a 1/4 C of buttermilk, especially because I added a little more than the 1/4 C of corn called for. I also had to make do with self-rising cornmeal. For this, I just cut the baking powder to 1 Tsp and only put in 1/4 Tsp of baking soda. It worked out just fine and my cornbread did not have the texture of a brick. Hooray.

I remember some people mentioning in the P's and Q's that their muffins were very crumbly and didn't hold together. I tried to eat a slice about 15 minutes after I took the pan out of the oven and this is what happened. Tasted great though. By the time I went for the next slice it had cooled off more and so held together a lot better. I'm not actually sure if I would want to add the chili powder the next time I make these - I like the sweetness of the corn and peppers.

(I feel like my pictures are outrageously yellow, but I bake at night mostly and the light is not good. )

As Rebecca said, if you want to follow the "Great Corn Muffin Debate of 09" check out the rest of us here. Party on!

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!