TWD: Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte

So, great news. I'm now brave enough to take showers during the day when I'm all alone with both babies! Yeah, Eloise Grace will be four months old on Friday which means that for the last four months I have been averaging between 3 and 4 showers a week and that is simply unacceptable. I had no idea how invigorating and, dare I say, humanizing showering can be. This is how I do it: nurse Eloise until she passes out and quickly pop pacifier into her mouth then very gently transfer her to the swing. Oh yeah, and I HAVE to do this at approximately 9am because that is when Sesame Street comes on. That's right parenting gods, I know I promised to wait until Helen Mae was two before letting her so much as glance at the TV, but guess what, she's 20 months old and she is in love with Elmo. Oh, and I've decided not to feel guilty about it either- I've decided to save up my guilt for better things. Things like having two slices of this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: cherry-fudge brownie torte in place of doing my pilates DVD last night.

This week's delicious recipe was chosen by April of Short + Rose and can be found on her blog. I decided to skip the mousse (cream cheese, cream, mascarpone cheese, and sugar) that was supposed to adorn the top of this lovely, rich cake. The cake was so good that I didn't want to risk hating the mousse because of the cream cheese- I know, I know, that's kind of babyish, but I really hate it! The texture of the cake is very fudgy (as the name would imply). The cake is full of chocolate- both melted semi-sweet and cocoa powder and studded with dried cherries that have been cooked down in cherry brandy (couldn't find the kirsch that Dorie called for). I really, really loved the combination- it was a very sophisticated take on Black Forrest cake- I might even top it with plain old whipped cream next time I make it.

This cake was so good that I gave a third of it away and put a third of it in the freezer so that we wouldn't scarf the whole thing down!

TWD: Sweet Potato Biscuits

You know, it's funny that I've never written about biscuits on this blog. You see, during my first year of marriage I spent every Saturday morning searching desprately for the perfect biscuit recipe. Since Derrick was born and raised in the Tennessee mountains I felt like it was my duty as a good Southern wife to be able to produce delicious, fluffy biscuits that didn't come out of a Bisquick box. I made a whole lot of flat, tasteless discs before discovering the joy of buttermilk and what it can do for even the simplest biscuit recipe. Now I was an English and French major so don't quote me on this chemistry, but the buttermilk reacts with the baking soda to make light, flaky layers. Since then I've also learned how important it is to hold yourself back from cutting the cold butter too finely and to mix/handle the dough as little as possible. Another great trick is to press the biscuit cutter into the dough without twisting it for optimal rising. But this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is not buttermilk biscuits it's sweet potato biscuits! Erin of Prudence Pennywise (one of my all time favorite blogs!) chose this week's recipe and you can find it on her blog.
These biscuits do not rise as high and my buttermilk ones do- but dear Lord are they delicious! Dorie says that you can use canned sweet potatoes or cooked sweet potatoes. Since Dorie uses the canned ones, I figured it was safe to do the same- and boy did that make this recipe easy to make!

I used 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg which really helped heighten the sweet potato flavor. Even though the biscuits are not high, they do have wonderful dense layers. These are a great accompaniment to breakfast, lunch, or dinner. In fact I threw these together quickly this morning while my two little sous chefs watched patiently.

Cinnamon and Allspice Swirl Yeasted Coffee Cake

Great news! I decided that there was nothing I could do to hurt my camera worse than Helen Mae had already hurt it so I shoved the lens with all of my might... and the camera magically started working again! In other news, I decided that I was going to force Fall to come to New Orleans by baking Autumnal treats non-stop until the cool, dry weather appeared- and it worked!! Last night I decided to jump on a little project that I've wanted to start for a long time: yeasted coffee cake. I want to make something like this for Christmas morning this year, but I want to make sure I do a few dry runs first.

This Christmas will be the first one that I have not awakened Christmas morning at my parents' house. Unbelievable, huh? Well, I went away to college in Tennessee when I was eighteen but I always came home for Christmas break. Then the first year I was out of college my husband was still in school so we came home again and spent Christmas at my parents' house. Then last year we were living with my parents while we looked for an apartment. Now here we are in our own little townhouse, and I feel like it will be so strange to wake up on Christmas morning without my sister, brother, mom and dad. Never mind the fact that we'll be heading over there for lunch with the rest of the extended family or that my parents live about 4 minutes away from us. It will just feel strange being on the other side of Christmas- Derrick and I will be playing Santa and our girls will be where I was only a couple of years ago! This is especially apparent for Derrick and me because we are both the oldest kids in our families- all of our siblings are still living at home!

Anyway, I thought it might be nice to make a little coffee cake to bring over to my parents' house so that we could have a little family breakfast before the aunts and uncles and cousins etc. start rolling in. This recipe comes from none other than my old, trusty Joy of Cooking book. Whenever I want a good bare-bones, basic recipe I turn to Joy because it usually gives me an easy base to start with. I think this is the right jumping off point, but I'm not positive that this is the exact way I want my coffee cake to end up for Christmas- I mean it's Christmas, it has to be really special! The cake's texture is a lot like cinnamon raisin bread- in fact, I'm definitely going to put some dried fruit and nuts in this cake next time. The major problem I had with this cake was that I tested it with a knife after the timer went off and it was still completely unbaked in the middle- so I gave it a little extra time and then I think I over-baked it! It was a little dry, especially along the edges- so I'll have to pull it out right on time next time and see if the middle sets once it is out of the oven.



Did I mention that Helen loved this cake? I found that the flavor was much more delicious after the cake cooled completely, which is fairly common for yeasty treats like this one. However, also like most yeasted cakes, this one got stale by the next day- it is not much of a keeper!

Yeasted Coffee Cake

pg. 621 of Joy of Cooking
1 loaf
Combine in a large bowl or the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer and let stand until the yeast is dissolved, about 5 minutes:
1/4 cup warm (105 to 115 F) water
1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
Add:
1/2 cup ap flour or bread flour (confession: I ran out of ap and used some cake flour!)
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
Mix by hand or on low speed until blended. Gradually stir in:
2 to 2 1/4 cup ap or bread flour
Mix for 1 minute, or until the dough comes together. Knead by hand for about 10 minutes or with the dough hook on low to medium speed for 5 to 7 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic and no longer sticks to your hands or the bowl (mine was still pretty sticky). Add:
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter, very soft
Vigorously knead in the butter until completely incorporated and the dough is once again smooth.
Place the dough in a large buttered bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place (75-85 F) until doubled in volume, about 1 1/2 hours.
Punch down the dough, knead briefly, and refrigerate, covered, until doubled again, 4 to 12 hours (I left mine for about 7 hours).
Butter a 9x4 inch loaf pan. Punch down dough and roll out to a 16x9 inch rectangle, about 1/3 inch thick. Brush the surface with
1 1//2 tsp melted butter
Sprinkle evenly with half the streusel topping, nuts, dried fruit, or filling of your choice. Starting from one short side, roll the dough as you would a jelly roll. Place seam side down in a loaf pan, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume about 1 1/2 hours. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Whisk together and brush over the top of the loaf:
1 egg
a pinch of salt
Sprinkle the remaining streusel topping over the dough. Bake the loaf until golden brown and a knife comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Unmold the loaf onto a rack and let cool.

TWD: Allspice Crumb Muffin(mess)

Ok, you'll have to take my word on these muffins because my lovely and talented daughter, Miss Helen Mae, dropped and broke my camera earlier this week. Just one of the many delights I'm facing now that she can reach up and pull things off of the kitchen counter! I'm trying to decide if it is worth trying to fix it or if the time has come to get a new (and better) camera! I'd love to hear recommendations for an easy to use and not very expensive camera!

Anyway, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table (you can find the recipe on her blog- and her muffins look gorgeous). I'm sorry to say that these muffins were a total disaster for me! I'm actually pretty surprised at how poorly they turned out because I've made most of the muffins in Baking From My Home to Yours and I've only had success with Dorie's muffins.

Apparently I was not the only one who had problems with these. It seems that many of the TWD bakers put these in the oven only to find that the lovely crumbly streusel topping had melted off the top and onto the muffin pan. My streusel also sank to the bottom of the batter creating a strange little swirl of allspice and brown sugar inside the muffin. In fact, I could not pry even one intact muffin out of the tin! I can't really call these a complete disaster though, because the flavor and even the texture was delicious!! Allspice is such a wonderful, complex spice that I really don't use often enough! These were so tasty that Derrick, Helen Mae, and I ate all twelve of them (straight out of the pan) over the course of one day! I don't think that's ever happened before! So, I'm tempted to try them again, maybe with a little less butter in the crumb topping?

Magazine Mondays: Applesauce Cake

We got a teeny tiny taste of Fall last week- it only lasted about three days- but I made good use of the cool weather and took the babies on plenty of nice long walks. I also felt better about turning on my oven to make this delicious Applesauce Cake (recipe here) from Everyday Food. I love that magazine and I'm finally participating in Magazine Mondays a fun and relatively informal (I need all the flexibility I can get these days!) event hosted by Cream Puffs in Venice, a blog which I have followed for a very long time! . Anyway, this is an old magazine recipe from October 2005 which means that I must have gotten it back when I was in college and my life looked like this:


Don't worry, we didn't burn the whole forest down...I don't think... But seriously, about two months after this picture was taken (at my graduation party) I did this:


Then about nine months later I did this:

Sixteen months after that, I did this:


Now here I am with a three month old and 19 month old baking Applesauce Cakes out of old magazines that I kept telling myself to throw away and snapping hasty, out-of-focus pictures of them to upload to my sometimes interesting, sometimes bare bones blog. This is a delicious cake, easy to make, and perfect for welcoming Fall.