TWD: French Apple Tart

For years, I had big troubles with tartes and pies, because I never managed to get the dough right. With the "new" book, it seems I finally found the one recipe I am able to master! I made the Flaky Pie Dough for the second time now, and for so far everything went fine. Good news, as I like tartes and pies. And - this recipe is also good for non-sweet tartes, so it is kind of a multi-tasking dough :o]

The French Apple Tart is a tart filled with kind of a home-made apple-sauce and the usual apple slices on top. It takes some time because additionally to the shell you also have to do the apple-sauce. But it is very simple and the result looks great!

I made half the recipe and got a small tart (but still about 8 slices or 12 very thin slices) and an individual tart. I could have used a bit more sauce - I used three apples, one very big one, two normal ones, and it was fine, but more would have been also ok.
Baking time was a bit longer than the recipe tells, what is unusual. It was more like 40 minutes. But I only slightly pre-baked the crust so maybe that's the point.

I brought it to the office the next day and absolutely everybody fell in love with it! I wouldn't say it looses over night, but for sure, a warm apple tart is always extraordinary as well.
If you want to find out about the recipe turn to Gaye's blog "Law of the Kitchen" or have a look at the book by Dorie Greenspan on pp 379-381.

TWD: Apple-Nut Muffin Cake

October!

Here in Vienna we actually get a full compensation for the terrible summer. Maybe you guys in the US can't belive it, but in Europe we had the probably most awful summer in decades - rain, rain, rain and cold weather. But now it is indian summer, and the "summer" dominates". You can sit outside in the evening and get sunburnt when you stay out around noon. It's not too hot, but just perfect. Wonderful!

Therefore, this week's TWD-recipe, The Apple-Nut Muffin Cake, did correspond perfectly with the calender - but not so much with the weather. Katrina of Baking and Boys has opted for this wonderful autumn-recipe.

This is a good, in my perception almost classic, apple-cake recipe. Nothing too extraordinary, nothing too difficult. Apples, nuts, raisins, that's it. Add some oats and you get an interesting tiny crunchy texture. Go to Katrin's page to find out about the recipe, or have a look into Dorie's book on p. 37.

I have no square pan, so I made it in my loaf form (and additionally one muffin, to have a "test-piece") and it did work out fine. Funnily, when the cake was already in the oven I figured out I completely forgot to add the butter. But to my surprise - I didn't miss it at all! Does this work with all cakes? Or was I just extremely lucky? 

TWD: Cornmeal and Fruit Loaf

 And another breakfast-recipe for the last week auf August! Caitlin of Engineer Baker chose Cornmeal and Fruit Loaf from p. 43 in Dorie's book for this week's TWD. You will find the recipe also on Caitlin'spage.

The recipe is pretty easy and quick. I made some exchanges: I used polenta instead of cornmeal, but I guess that doe almost not really count as an exchange, as it is fairly similar.
I opted for a fresh pear but dried apples.
And I reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup, used nutmeg an no cinnamon - and  did include some freshly grounded pepper (I used a colour-pepper-mix). And I added a bit dried rosmeary, althoug there was no recommendation for it in the "playing around" section. But I recently developped a fond love for rosemary and think it matches very well with the pear.

I am pretty happy with the result! The cornmeal/polenta gives it a tiny crunchy side I like very much. As it is an easy-made, fast recipe, that is open for some exchanges, I guess I will do it some day again, in one version or the other.

[The pictures show the little test-piece I made, but the original-sized loaf was not standing behind in taste and looks!]

TWD - Applesauce Spice Bars (Thanksgiving rewind)

Give me options and see me overextended. Once I got a yes-no-coin from a friend I visited in Budapest. She was completely enervated by my unability to meet a decision (how can I decide between strawberry and blueberry yoghurt? and what about vanilla? vanilla might be fine as well. and what to drink in the morning? coffee? tea? which tea? aaaaahhhhh!!!)

At the same time, when I read "rewind" I was all "hooray, I can pick one of the many, many recipes I missed because I strated TWD so late".

So I limited the enourmous range of possibilities. And limited them further, and further, and further, until... until I recognized that I have about a million apples waiting to be eaten. So in the end it was an easy decision. I opted for the Applesauce Spice Bars, originally due for August 18, 2009. You can find the recipe in Dorie's book on pages 117 and118 or on Karen's blog, who was the first to choose this recipe for a regular TWD. Her bars look perfect, just like the picture in the book.

I made the applesauce myself, what is pretty easy (just cook the cored and peeled apples as a whole in a tiny bit of water, until they fall apart by themselves). Apple sauce is incredible, because it has very few calories and still tastes so sweet! Love it.
I ate a bit of the bar with applesauce and vanilla pudding and completely enjoyed it.

Apples and fall are a wonderful combo. But honestly spoken, I am not too sorry fall is almost over and I can for some months leave all the (wonderful, fabulous and delicious) apple-recipes behind me, and head over to some other things.

TWD - All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie

So here we go - this is my TWD-"birthday" entry, because I started just one year ago with TWD. Emily of Sandmuffin chose the All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie (to be found on her page or on pages 300-302 in Dorie's book) for this special week.

For me, this is a wonderful "TWD-birthday"-pick, because I love apple pies.

I made it according to the recipe but did skip the tapioka, because it is hard to get round here and I didn't wanted to by 1 kg of tapioka for using just two spoons. I used some shredded nuts instead, but maybe should have taken more or some floor or anything else that holds the filling together, because it fell apart a bit.
I also included some raisins. (I know, there are raisin-haters out there, but I like it, and I am the baker here on this blog, so, harhar, I only just do what I want :o])

The pie is pretty easy made, you just need some preparation time for the pie crust. But once you are used to it, you get a routine for doing the dough and then it is no problem.
The name of the pie is no exaggeration - it is an all delish pie, indeed! And it is a perfect fall recipe. So I guess, this is a keeper. I can even imagine it, made as minis in small soufflé forms, as part of a christmas dessert plate.

P.S.: Wow, one year of baking. Who would have thought so. And so much did happen in this year. A lot of good things, some not so good. But over all, the balance sheet is far in the blacks. And I am pretty much happy for all the wonderful things that did happen to me and the great people I met.

TWD - Double Apple Bundt Cake

It's fall! I like fall. I love fall. Fall is my time. Maybe it has something to do with my red hair and pale skin, what makes me the "autumn type". Maybe it has something to do with the possibility of wearing boots with your short skirts, what makes me always more comfortable than with ballerinas. Or maybe it is because I just love walking with a cappuccino to go in my hand through the red and brown leaves in the parks of Vienna before returning home for making a big pitcher of chai tea just for myself.

One of my favourite songs from my favourite band is about why they love their wives and girlfriends and all their freaky nuttiness that makes them even more adoreable, and one line translates to "because you love fall more than summer". I love this line! :o]

So, let's talk about this week's Tuesdays with Dorie, the Double Apple Bundt Cake, which is chosen by Lynne of Honey Muffin. You can find the recipe on her page or in Dorie's book on  pages 184 and 185.
It's a "double" apple bundt because you use apple butter and grated apples - and therefore end up with a pretty moisty, soft bundt cake.

It's easy made, has a great consistence, is full of autumn-flavour thanks to the appels and nuts (I skipped the raisins because I halfed the recipe, and it wasn't worth opening a whole pack of rasins for not even a handful of fruits).

I halved the recipe and made12 minis and really, really liked them. The right cake for the right time of the year! (see on the right side: a flying mini double apple bundt cake :o])

I joined TWD not even a year ago, so there are a lot of recipes I didn't bake with the group. With some I try to catch up. We had a birthday girl in the office, so I tried my luck with the Peanut Butter Torte. It was one of the early recipes in TWD, and it is easy to see, why: Because it is just incredible! It has a crust made of oreos, the filling is a mix of peanutbutter, salted peanuts, a bit of bittersweet chocolate and whipped cream. I love anything peanut, and peanutbutter is my nemesis, so it was easy to cinvince me of this torte. I am pretty satsified with the taste and looks of it, but the cream didn't firm completely. Therefore, it turned out more as a spoon dessert than a torte. But who cares as long as it is an oreo-peanut-peanutbutter-with-a-tad-of-bittersweet-chocolate-spoon-dessert!

TWD - Tarte Fine

For this week of TWD Leslie of Lethally Delicious decided on Tarte Fine - go to her page to find the recipe, or flip through Dorie's book to page 315.

Tarte Fine is a french classic - the recipe says. When I read the ingredients and this introduction, I had a certain picture in mind. A picture of a very thin tarte crust (the "fine" part in the Tarte Fine, I thought), layered with apples. Well, the second part of my guess was right, but the "crust" should be puff pastry.

Unfortunately, I am not a big fan of puff pastry. It has a lot of fat and calories for not so enormously much taste. In this respect it reminds me very much on a croissant. When I see a croissant I always ask myself why I should eat something as fat and full of calories as a muffin, but without any taste of itself (despite, maybe, the taste of butter).
That doesn not mean I never eat croissants :o]
And it does not mean I didn't try the Tarte Fine...

The second point why I am not a huge fan of puff pastry is that it's not a good keeper. I always bake on Sunday and bring the treats to work the next day, so anything puff pastry is always difficult and never a big success.

The Tarte Fine didn't taste bad, but it had the looks of a cold Pizza and wasn't a big hit around here. Maybe it didn't help I used the jam as a bottom layer between the pastry and the apples...

So. Let's just not speak too much about this tarte and start thinkig about the next apple recipe, which is just one week ahead with the Double Apple Bundt Cake to come!


PS: Don't forget to visit Leslie's page anyways! She is one of the nicest, most helpful and most awesome bakers of all these awesome TWD-ers!

PPS.: Now that I had a look at Leslie's page and some other TWD-bakers I found out what the Tarte Fine should actually look like! And as I had some puff pastry left, I just tried it out. Looks much better! Now my colleagues will have to deal with another Tarte tomorrow...

TWD: Oatmeal Breakfast Bread

I don't know how it happened - but I forgot to take pictures, so - sorry for the awful pics of the rest of the rest...
For this TWD-week, Natalie of Oven Love selected Oatmeal Breakfast Bread (you can find it on page 44 in Dorie's book or on Natlie's page).

I was really looking forward to making this, because it is chocolate-free and - I know, that's not the way how to make friends in a baking group ;o] - but in summer I do not need too much chocolate. And last week was already chocolate-packed.
I made some minor changes - a bit less sugar, some more fruits (about 1/4 cup more - still more would have been even better). Used dried figues and apricots (no good idea - usually I like it more to stick with one taste. And there is good reason for...). Then I recognized my "oats" (I wanted to use spelt, what I always have at home) were not useable anymore. So I had to substitute them for 1/2 cup shredded almonds and 1/2 cup flour, what worked out.

I had to bake the bread a bit longer (about 70 mins), and then the consistency was perfect, but the crust became too crusty - for not to say, briquette-like. I am exaggerating a bit. It was still ok. But far away from perfect. What is no problem, because most of my baking is always far away from perfect. But bread is something I master a bit better than the rest, because I bake bread for a comparatively long time, so it was a bit a disappointment.

Despite the bread was ok, I am not jumping and hooraying. It is fruit bread. A good one. But still fruit bread. I think of it as a good basic recipe. I can imagine it with creamcheese and jam. But when it comes to sweet (or at least not completely savory) breads, I like brioche based recipes more.

TWD: Swedish Visiting Cake

When I was at university I took a swedish class for a year. I was interested in the language because I generally think of Sweden as a very interesting country. I mostly like how things are run there, and always thought that we can learn a lot from them. I like that politicians and top-managers are never seen as irreplaceable and VIPs. You can bump into them on Friday evening when they are at the movies with their friends and family. (Unfortunately, this also leeds to unwanted consequences, as things like this or that would not be possible in most other countries, due to big security entourages.)  like their way dealing with female participation in the workforce and the involvement of fathers in child-raising and homework-duties. And I am convinced that their open-mindness towards income and wealth transparency is a role-model.

And I think that it sounds funny when Swedish people speak. :o]

So I learned Swedish, but by chance, after the summer-holidays that year I went to Strasbourg, France, for an exchange semester, that ultimately became an exchange year and the basis of my love of France (which was the complete opposite before - my mother's a french teacher. You can imagine all the rest about teenage rebellion against parents...).

But the topic here is Sweden. So, to make it short, I forgot all my Swedish (read: the little bit Swedish I lernt in this one year), and almost all I can say is "min mor är en kassörska", what means "my mother is a till girl" - what is not even true (I seriously have  no idea why I did remind that!), and the most simple things like hello, good bye and thanks.

TWD rewind: Cheddar-Apple Scones

Prologue
This is my first "Sorry, it's Lenten season, I can't bake without tasting so I am not following the right TWD-recipe-rotation"-entry. I found at least five recipes in Dorie's book where omitting the sugar probably won't make a big difference: Corn &Pepper Muffins, Basic Biscuits, Cheddar-Apple Scones , Sweet Potato Biscuits and the Parmesan Sablés. They all have only 2-3 tabelspoons sugar. Some other scones (especially the Toasted Almond Scones and the Cream Scones) also call for very limited teaspoons of sugar, so it should be possible to leave it out. But the latter two sound almost a bit like a sweet treat and I can better imagine pairing them with nut-spread, chocolate chips or honey than with savory spreads. Lucky me, I love, no, I adore scones and biscuits, no matter if more on the sweet or the savory side.
I only need four recipes for the weeks to come until Easter. I recognized that not all of them have already been in the recipe rotation, and I am afraid it only counts when I "catch-up" with somehting all the other eager and gifted bakers made in the almost two years before I joined.

So I started with the Cheddar-Apple Scones. It was originally due for July 1st 2008 and chosen by Karina of The Floured Apron. The recipe can be found on her blog or on page 32 of Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From my home to yours".

When I woke up on Sunday morning I decided to get up and bake them for breakfast. Can a Sunday morning breakfast start better than with fresh, warm scones?

In the end, I dawdled away with whatever stuff, and didn't get started before almost lunch time. (Lunch-time on week-days. I believe there is a different time-zone applying for weekdays and week-ends. So it was still like Brunch-time on a weekend. And can a Sunday Brunch start better than with fresh, warm scones? :o])

I followed the recipe as written except that I used a bit more corn-meal and left out some all-purpose (spelt) flour instead, because I started to like corn-meal. Not that I had ever used it (or heard of it...) before I started with TWD, what is not really long ago, but since I really started to appreciate it for the texture it brings about, and I even have the feeling it slightly influences the colour. I switched only 1/4 cup.

I am a big cheese-in-any-ways lover and cheddar is an all-time favourite. I had some grated cheddar left from, uh, no idea. Just had it.

The scones turned out won-der-ful. I made several batches. For the first batch I used tablespoons to spoon them on the baking sheet. I often need less baking-time than indicated in the recipes, no idea why. I got them out the oven just in the very last minute before they turned dark-brown/black. I saved them, but it was nearly too late. And I found out why the recipe asks for grated or very finely chopped dry apples, for what I was too lazy. I only made medium sized chunks, and the pieces on the surface turned very dark. No, that's not true - they actually turned black.(But it didn't harm the overall picture too much.)

For the second batch I used a silicone mold for six minis with flower-shaped bottoms. The second batch I pulled out the oven too early. Hm, alright, I thought, I even have enough batter for a third batch. For this last rack I used a teaspoon to bring them on the baking sheet, because I thought they could be served as tea-biscuits at the office, and therefore it would be better if the scones were mini-scones.

And, what can I say, the third better turned out just fine.

But the best of all was to eat a first test-piece of the very first batch while the second was in the oven. To brake them up, and see them steam. Per-fect.








(I don't have to speak about the taste, do I? Won-der-ful!! Maybe, I thought, some nuts would not have been too bad. But you know what? They are just perfect without. Combining a lot of tastes can be fun, but it's not always necessary to include everything and all that could possibly also go with it. Sometimes more pureness is just adequate.)


Even more lucky me, I used all the wonderful cup- and spoon-measures I brought home from NYC, so I did not waste this huge amount of time I used to for converting measures into grams. Yeah! Baking is even more fun like that!!

TWD: Tarte Tatin - Happy Birthday, TWD!

Before I present you my result of theTarte Tatinwhich we all did choose together for TWDs 2nd birthday, I would like to thank the founder (Laurie of Quirky Cupcake) of and all the people supporting TWD for having the nice idea to bake together trough Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From my home to yours, to run the homepage, and to put so much effort into it!
Thanks a lot, and lets head forward to a new year of exiting baking adventures!

For the second birthday, Laurie asked everybody to vote for a recipe, and in the end the match was made by Tarte Tatin (which I heavily opted for myself) and the Coconut-Buttermilk Birthday Cake. Coconut is fine, buttermilk is fine, Birthday cakes are fine - but creamy cakes are not my favourite. And I brought a Tarte Tatin pan back from my last trip to Paris, so I was happy to use it!
Furthermore, Tarte Tatin did appear to me as the perfect choice. Because Dorie Greenspan lives (at least part of her life) in Paris and this tarte is for me one of the most typical french sweets, and her recipes are sometimes very classic/classy, as is this tarte, too.

To spoil the end: I didn't arrive to make a Tarte Tatin. I won't say I made a bad cake (does something like a "bad" cake exist?), but whatever it turned out, it didn't turn out to be a Tatin.
Tant pis.

My Tarte Tatin Pan                                                                                 before baking

and after baking

 I took too many apples, made too high layers, didn't turn the dough deep enough into the pan.

So, what I made is a, uhm, strange kind of an apple tarte. Not too bad, anyways, as caramel sauce and cooked apples are never too bad. But I will have to retry it.