Happy 2 year (and 1 week) Birthday TWD!

Surprise, surprise, I'm late with my Tuesdays with Dorie post! This should have appeared last Tuesday, when the Tuesdays with Dorie baking group was celebrating it's 2nd birthday...but things kept turning up and while I was able to bake on schedule I couldn't figure out how to get the pictures off my new camera and onto my computer.

Because this was TWD's 2nd birthday, our fearless leader, Laurie, of Slush decided to let us bake two treats this week! The first selection is Cocoa Buttermilk Cake, which as you can see I turned into cupcakes. These were truly delicious, they were incredibly moist and the cocoa flavor was really delicate and wonderful. I actually made my own buttermilk by adding a tablespoon of lemon juice to one cup of regular milk and it worked perfectly (although I imagine real buttermilk would have yielded even better results). The recipe calls for a chocolate frosting with malt powder and I would actually love to try it out sometime but I was unable to get my hands on it this week so I stole Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventure's idea of topping the cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Wow! it that is a recipe that I will use all of the time now- so easy and such perfect flavor and consistency. I brought these to my dear friend Sadiha for her 25th birthday and they were a big hit! I'm thinking about making this as an actual cake for Helen's upcoming 2nd birthday.


The second selection was a traditional French Tarte Tatin or upside down apple tart. You melt a stick of butter and 3/4 cup sugar in a cast iron skillet on the stove and then place peeled, quartered pieces of apple in the pan and let it caramelize before laying the pie dough over the top of the apples and baking it in the oven. My apples took a good 20 minutes to caramelize but I really wanted to make sure that I achieved a nice deep amber color. Dorie says that you can use puff pastry, sweet tart dough, or good for anything pie dough and I decided on the good for anything pie dough. The last time I made Dorie's good for anything pie dough I was a little disapointed with the results, but this time I used a pastry cutter instead of the food processor and the crust was amazing. It puffed up with all kinds of buttery layers almost like puff pastry! The hardest part, of course, was flipping the tart out of the skillet but I did it quickly and only lost a tiny corner! This was by far one of my favorite recipes to date! I shared the tart with my parents, brother, sister, Derrick, and Helen and it disappeared very quickly! If I had left it at home I think I would have eaten the entire thing instead of the one slice I allowed myself (in keeping with Ten in 10!)


So thank you Laurie, and thank you Dorie, and of course thanks to all of the other TWD bakers who make baking through Baking From My Home to Yours so much fun!