TWD: Nutella Buttons

To start with: I ran out of Nutella (or any other chocolate spread). As it is Sunday, and in Austria shops are closed on Sundays - I quickly decided that these little Nutella Buttons will also be good filled with marmelade.

I used lemon marmelade I had left over and black butter, a typical apple-spice-spread from the Channel Island. For the decoration I went with Dorie's recommendation and used white chocolate.

The lemon-chocolate-combo is great! I had no taste of the ones I made with black butter. But I am pretty sure they are as great as the others!

I can imagine them very well with nutella or chocolate, but I guess any spread is fine. I used mini-muffin-tins (mine hold about 2 teaspoons of batter). Next time I would use even smaller ones - just fot the looks. I think they would be even prettier as "one-biters" :-)

For the recipe, have a look at Dorie's great book at p 188, and don't forget to stop by the groups page to see what the rest of us made out of this recipe!

TWD: Limoncello Cupcakes

My colleague has relatives in Sicily and goes there two or three times a year. Last autumn he brought back so many lemons that he made tons and gallons of marmelade and limoncello. The best limoncello you can imagine! I got a bottle from him and almost everything is gone, but some tablespoons where left - just enough for these Limoncello Cupcakes.

They are gorgeous. They are great. I followed the recipe as written and ended up with 18 cupcakes. There could have been more frosting for topping them more excessively. But they are also pretty like that - and honestly spoken: I am not such a big fan of cupcakes as I don't like the excessive buttercream on top. So - for me the amount of topping was perfect, but if you like little mountains of frosting you should raise the quantity.

Not much more to say about it. They taste great (at least if you are into lemon-taste). It was my first time I piped some frosting (usually I only spread it) and for my first attempt I am pretty happy with the result.

For the recipe, have a look at Dorie Greenspans book "Baking chez moi" on p 194. And to find out if the rest of the group did like it as much as me - have a look here!

TWD: Pink Grapefruit Tart

(I'm still on time with this post :-)

I am always a bit reluctant from making tarts because I never manage to make the dough really right. But this dough was good to handle for me, although I didn't manage to roll and fit it in the shell (it broke while transferring). So I went half rolled dough half pressing dough and it was all rigth like that. I like the texture and taste of the dough so I think I am going to stay with this recipe as often as I can.

I also like the filling of the Pink Grapefruit Tart very much. Like with many tarts, you can prepare all the parts seperately and that can be a big advantage (if you have not so much time but are organized enough to start one or two days ahead) but also a disadvantage (if you are not so organized but would have time). I started two days ahead and that gave me plenty time for all the cooling periods needed here.

I did not really get the idea of the almond-lemon cream. My cream more or less "baked in", i.e. made something like a second layer to the tart shell. Ok - but what for? First I thought it is for preventing the tart shell to get soggy. But it is also a "dough" and does not have the consistence of a chocolate or at least jam layer. Anyhow - the taste was great, so why not?

The cremeux is mervellous! I like the light pink colour and also it's taste. I don't think the pictures give the colour as bright eas it was in realiyt. I used Aperol instead of Martini because that was what I had at hand - and I don't think it makes a difference. Maybe Aperol is a bit sweeter.

Preparing the fruit topping was aweful. I don't think I would do this ever again. Even though it is clearly worth all the mess. But I am a lazy baker. And as long as I don't find canned, stripped and ready-to-use- grapefruits, I will have to use other fruits for the next try.
But - as I said - I am a very lazy baker, so if you don't mind a bit more extra effort to have a very much extra looking tart, you should try it!

Have a look at the groups page to see the wonderful results of the other bakerds and buy the book by Dorie Greenspan for getting the recipe (p. 138)

PS.: I also made kind of a Crème Bruleed Chocolate Bundt from Baking with Julia (p 280-281), but, uhm, I didn't do the Crème Brulee, so I guess it doesn't count :-)

TWD: Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake - and a lot of catching up

I don't post, I don't post, I don't post... bad me :-(
I try to catch up...

Let's start whit the most recent one, the Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake. The probably longest name of a cake I made up to now :-)

I used a special sugar I have from a friend, a "seasoned sugar". What I did not think about was, that the spice-mix included also rosemary and mint, what was not too bad for the cake but for sure dominated the vanilla... and made the cake green. Funnily, I did not even think about that as a possibility until I mixed the sugar into the butter. Big surprise, haha!
The recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspans book Baking Chez Moi, p. 6. For the results of the whole group, head over to TWD! (this is true also for the ther recipes mentioned here except the Amnesty Cookies and the Eiffel-Towers!)

As the cake was not quite like the recipe wanted it to be anyways, I decided to top the cake with a creamcheese frosting (from Dorie Greenspans "Big Bill's Carrot Cake" from Baking, from my home to yours). To avoid the cake to loose its flufiness, I split the cake and added some Black Butter, a speciality from Jersey/Channel Islands - a spread made from apple cider, licquorice and spices. That worked very well with the spices from the sugar!

I like this cake very much because it is very easy made and very very moist. Next time I'll try the classic version :-)

What I made some way back are the Granola Energy Bars (Baking Chez Moi, p. 328). I had to use maple syrup and gold syrup so they went dark brown, but the taste was good and I think only the looks differ from the recipe.

Then I made back in December the annual Amnesty Cookies, As usual, they turned out great in taste, as usual, they turned out ugly in looks. But why change a winning team ;-) The recipe can be found at David Lebovitz' page.

And I made "Rugelachs that won over France" (recipe on p. 301 in Baking chez Moi). For the Rugelachs I have to say, that they turned out really really ugly. I don't know why exactly. Rugelachs are a bit finickey to make, but  I made them several times, with different recepies from the other TWD-books, and they turned out better. But in the end Rugelachs are always great, whatever they look like. This is one of the treats I am happy to got to know trough TWD because in Vienna I never saw Rugelachs before.

As I go on writing I see that I actually made a lot the last weeks... I really forgot about it! How good to catch up!

One of my colleagues leaves us and heads over to Paris to start a great job there. She is goint to spend t least two years there with her partner and their adopted child. I am a bit jealous but most of all very happy for them!
For their farewell-party I made plain Sugar Cookies with a bit of lemon taste and used Eiffel-Tower cookie cutters. I glazed some of them and sprinkled them in red, blue, whit, the colours of the french flag. Unfortunately; I have no picture of the sprinkled ones.

Uh, and then there was the Vanilla Hazelnut Cheesecake as a rewind. (Baking with Julia, p.) Very good. Maybe not my all-time favourite cheesecake recipe, as I prefer more cheesecakes with mostly creamcheese and not so much cottage cheese. Unfortunately I used a too big form so it went very flat.  But it was very good - how can a cheesecake not be very good?

Done! Yay!