TWD: Savarin

Oh my, I'm definitely loosing track with the group. I'm a bad team-member. In the last weeks I either was on holiday, forgot to bake, forgot to take pics, forgot to blog (or to publish the text...) - or forgot to leave my link. But here we are - hooray!

The Savarin is relatively simple and done quickly. Just two short rising periods. Nevertheless I don't become good friends with this cake. I had to read and re-read and read again how it is assembled. Can it be you more or less just put the "filling" beside the cake? - Yes, it can.

Making the batter is also a bit unconventional for me, as you do not cream butter and sugar at first, but put in the butter last.

I had no ring-mold so I made some improvisation and used a usual spring form and put a small soufflée-form in the middle. That worked pretty well. But the dough did rise quite abit during baking and so I ended up with a too high cake. I split it in the middle, but that neither didn't look right. So I brought the two halves together again, spreading some orange jam inbetween the 'layers' to make them stick together. I am pretty convinced that my cake does not look like a Savarin at all.

The taste is ok, but not special and it was ok to try it, but next time I would prefer to do the Babas, which sound much more interesting! But what do I know. And I am sure the other bakers found wonderful ways to dress this cake up a bit more and turn it into something special!

For the recipe have a look at Dorie Greenspan's book at pp 415-416.

TWD: Missed recipe make-up - Quick Berry Tarte

This is a three-tuesday-month, therefore we have a "free ride" today. Since we did not make so many recipe so far from "Baking with Julia" I decided to catch up with one of the recipe I missed with the first round of TWD - Baking: From my home to yours. I decided on the Apple Coconut Family-Cake. For the recipe, turn to Ambers blog "Cobbler du Monde" or have a look into Dorie Greenspan's book on p. 214.

I combined the playing around-version with the original and made a coconut-nut-apple cake. It's a simple, easy in the making and very tasty and moisty cake. Nothing too extraordinary, but that's not always necessary, in my view.
As it was so tasty, it went away at my office faster than I could take pictures :o[

But I made a second recipe, because one of my colleagues finished her master studies and we did celebrate a bit today. We are all pretty proud of her, because we have a quite busy job and she managed to finish her studies while working the same amoutn as everybody else of us. What is a pretty amazing hard piece of work!
I (re)made the Quick Berry Tarte, which looks great, taste delicious, but is not quick at all. Well, it is quick in the making itself as you just have to fill the tarte shell with the cream and spread berries over it. But tarte dough takes time (chilling the butter, freezing the dough, freezing the rolled out dough again, baking, cooling,...) and also for the cream to prepare. In the end, I always need two days for it. But it was a success and worth it anyways! You may find the recipe at Cristine's of Cooking with Cristine or on page 377 of Dorie Greenspan's book.

And I do have pictures of this :o]

TWD: Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies (and catching up with the Strawberry Rhubarb Double Crisp)

(Lenten season is over - hooray! So I can finally get back in track and bake along with the Tuesdays with Dorie-group, instead of doing some sugar-less rewind...)
And what a re-start - shortbread! I am a huge shortbread fan, and some of my colleagues (who are always the beneficiaries of all my baking) are, too. So, thanks a lot to Valerie of Une Gamine dans la Cuisine for chosing Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies. For the recipe, go to Valerie's page or have a look in Dorie Greenspan's fantastic book on page 130.

I used polenta instead of cornmeal (and idea I had stolen from Heather of Sherry Trifle and Cats), merely for getting-rid-of-it reasons. I cooked the polenta, because I thought it would be too granular and hard otherwise. The only other change I made is that I sprinkled about half of them with roasted, chopped nuts. They were great with and without the nuts. But maybe the plain version is even better.

They turned out just great, wonderful, marvelous. But, it's shortbread - what else can you expect?

And here comes a "sorry it is Lenten season, so no baking for me"-related catch-up rewind: I made the Strawberry Rhubarb Double Crisp, chosen by Sarah of Teapots and Cakestands. I HAD to do this as soon as possible, because in spring I merely live from strawberry-rhubarb compote, sometimes with vanilla sauce or joghurt, sometimes with some lemon balm, sometimes just plain. And I am a huge crisp/cobbler fan. So - perfect recipe for me. For the filling I made 1 1/2 recipes, and for the streusel I doubled everything, because for me there can never be too much streusel and I am always afraid it won't be enough. I tossed the sliced strawberries in some lemon-mint-lemonpepper-tinybitofchampagne-juice and let it in the refrigerator for some hours.
For the streusel I exchanged about half the nuts by coconut. I didn't look at the recipe thoroughly enough, so I didn't see it calls for candied ginger, which therefor I did not have at home and just omitted.

For the original recipe, go to Sarah's page or have a look in Dorie's book at pages 420 and 421.

And, btw, this is perfection!! Love it. Hope my colleagues will too, tomorrow. But let's face it: They get strawberry rhubarb crisp and shortbread. If they are not happy with that, I don't know what could please them....

Unfortunately, my pictures are not able to catch the superbness of this dessert.
(If I really have to give the grinch: It was, as often, too sweet. But maybe this is also due to the fact I didn't eat any sugar in the last seven weeks, so my senses are extremely sharpened at the moment).

Espresso Cheesecake Brownies

It's not often that I bake&blog beside the weekly Tuesdays-with-Dorie recipe, and it has become even more rarely since I changed to a new and very, very demanding (but also very, very exciting job).
Some weeks ago I bought some Philadelphia because it was an offer (I am so easy to manipulate...). So before it expires I had to make some cheesecake with it.

Doing cheesecake is not that easy where I life, because we do not have creamcheese round here. There are numerous webpages offering hints how to mix different dairy products so they come as close as possible to creamcheese. I mostly use about 3/4 Philadelphia and 1/4 curd cheese and for me that works.

I had a "TWD-free" weeke-end last week because I pre-made the scheduled recipe (the Banana Coconut Icecream Pie) already some weeks before. I love american desserts even more than french ones, and I particularily adore cheesecakes. And brownies. So this combination screamed "bake me" for aeons.
And I really loved it. The brownie-layer turned out comparatively dense, but in combination with the cheesecake-layer that was just about right. Marbeling didn't work, because I used a too big pan so I had not enough batter left, but I used a white-chocolate glazé and decorated it with some dark chocolate glazé.
I served it with a rhubarb-strawberry hotchpotch - and look at the colour combination!!

Definitely a "do me again"-recipe.

(the only downer is that many bowls and  pots are involved due to the different layers)

P.S.: The recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspan's book "Baking: From my home to yours", or on Melissa's page Life in a peanut shell, who opted for this recipe back in September 2009)