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!

TWD: Hazelnut Biscotti (Pistacchio Cranberry Biscotti)

I am too late with posting, but I made them in time!For these biscotti did opt for the "playing around" options and made Pistachio-Cranberry Biscotti. The combo was great in colour and taste.

The biscotti are very very easy to make and can also be eaten by my lactose intolerant friends, as there is not even butter in the recipe.

I liked them very much and am sure to make them again. I am not sure if I would opt for any other ingredients the next time, because I was so convinced of these, and so were my colleagues at work!

To find out about the (original Hazelnut Biscotti) recipe have a look at our hosts blog: Jodi of Homemade and Wholesome and Katrina of Baking and Boys or have a look at "Baking with Julia" by Dorie Greenspan on pp 315-316.

TWD: Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tarte, revisited

Oh boy, it's still Tuesday, even here in middle-Europe, and I got to give a confirmation of operation!

I made a new dough in the evening. A friend passed by and patiently waited until I did fit the dough in the tarte shell. While it was baking I wanted to present him the remaining failed dough shell.
And - miracles happen - after two days on the sill between the outer and the inner window, the tarte shell was perfect!! So I spread the remaining pastry cream on it, placed the pears and caramelized pistachios on it - and it was perfect!
My friend and I just LOVED it! It did not only taste so wonderful, it also looked great!

 Before baking                                                                                                 The tarte formerly known as Failed

Now, lets hope that the two mini-tartes I baked today for my nice colleague are still well tomorrow. I placed them in the fridge, although the recipe calls for eating them in between 4 hours. But I had to cheat a bit - because I made an easier, safer dough today I had to bake the tarte with the cream and the pears already on it. So, it looks a bit  different than it maybe should, and they have to wait until tomorrow to be eaten. I cross my fingers that in the fridge they won't get too soggy.

TWD: Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tarte

So, first I got to say that this Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tarte chosen by Lauren of I'll eat you is tasty, tasty, tasty. Just what I like. A tarte dough tasting a bit like shortbread (which is similarly crumbly), poached pears, a colorful and at the same time perfectly taste-matching topping by caramelized pistachios. The pear-pistachio combination is not only an eye-catcher, but also a wonderful combination of tastes.
And now the bad part.

First, again I had to learn the hard way to stick to the recipe. When it calls for poaching the whole pears, don't cut them in slices, only because you think that's easier to handle. The result will be, that the whole fruit is deep red. What is ok, but I sliced only one pear and halfed the other one - and there I saw how it was ment to look like, and what the text mentioned as "you will see how wonderful it looks with the deep red outside and the rosé inside of the pears".

Secondly, I really had troubles with the dough. I could not imagine that it should be that crumbly and not sticking together to one piece. So I filled way too much dough in my little molds. When I baked it, it came up. I tried to give it an emergency relief and put a whole lot of beans on them, and it was a bit better afterwards. But in the end, I do not think that's what it should look like.


It was the first time I made a dough that deviated a bit from the completely easy tarte dough I usually make, and what came out was a slight desaster. And the dough was really not a tough cookie. So I am a bit frustrated.
The dough was too high and thick, there was not enough room to really fill in the cream (I more or less spread some of it as good as possible), and, what was the worst part - it was too hard to cut.

As I said in the beginning, nevertheless I really liked it. It did look ugly when I started to eat it because I more or less had to spoon it out the mold. But it was more than tasty. So I really have to try it again, some other day. When I find enough courage.

I am not going to bring the other second little tarte to the office tomorrow. What is a pitty, because I made it for one of my nicest colleagues, who didn't arrive to get anything I made in the last weeks. And who has to listen to everybody else in the department, still weeks afterwards speaking about the cakes and crumbles and cookies I made (I guess they are, just like me, still surprised that I should be able to bake - that's not the usual image of me...). I have to think about something else to compensate her. And about what to do with the tarte shell, the poached pears and the pistacchio cream...