This is going to be short and sweet because I'm in holiday overdrive mode/ I'm now 30weeks pregnant and always exhausted mode. These tuiles are absolutely beautiful and not nearly as fussy as I had anticipated them being! I might have over baked them just a smidge (7 minutes at 400 degrees) but I also had no problems with them being floppy or chewy so I'm not quite sure...
This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Hindy of Bubie's Little Baker. Thank you Hindy and Dorie for a lovely addition to any holiday cookie tray!
I was very excited to see that Laurie, the creator and leader of Tuesdays with Dorie gave us a rewind week for Thanksgiving! I had wanted to make the Fluted Ricotta and Polenta Cake but unfortunately I couldn't get to the store it time so I decided on Orange Berry Muffins which was the 4th recipe chosen by the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers. The recipe calls for blueberries but I have a giant bag of cranberries in my fridge so I subbed them. The muffins had a good light consistency but I can't say that I was very impressed with the orange flavor. This might have to do with the orange I used- I'll probably try these again with a nicer, more fragrant orange and maybe double the zest. I'm probably going to end up rewinding quite a few other recipes from Baking From My Home to Yours for Thanksgiving Day- my only problem is narrowing it down to two or three favorites!
This is going to be very short, because my kids are still sick. They just keep getting one thing after another and we are all very sleep deprived! Hopefully this is the end of it!
This cake was delicious! I knew I was going to love it the moment I read the description- basically it is two layers of shortbread sandwiching a homemade orange cranberry jam. The cake is extremely versatile- you can use caramelized apples or any jam as the filling- but I LOVED the cranberry filling. My only complaint was that the bottom layer did bake up as firmly as I had hoped it would. I think that next time I'll bake the cake without a cookie sheet under the spring-form pan to see if the bottom layer of shortbread might get a bit crisper. I seriously cannot wait to make this cake again! Thanks Jessica of A Singleton in the Kitchen for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe!
I also have to give a shout out to last week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for Peanuttiest Brownies which was selected by Nicole of Bakeologie because they were so incredibly delicious!
"It's like rain on your wedding day It's a free ride when you've already paid It's the good advice that you just didn't take Who would've thought ... it figures"
Remember that mid 90's Alanis Morissette song, "Ironic"? The thing I remember most about it is my Middle School English teacher insisting to us that most of the lyrics were not in fact examples of Irony at all, but that's beside the point. Sadly the lyrics sort of sum up my week, you see today is my pick for Tuesdays with Dorie and I've been so excited about picking for literally two years now and ironically (or is it ironic? my brain has clearly atrophied since I received a B.A. in English three short years ago), my kids have been sick all week and I have had no time to bake! While, normally, a measly cold wouldn't keep me out of the kitchen, Eloise got a stomach virus on Wednesday and of course passed it to Helen. And just when they started to get over it, Eloise's cold turned into an ear infection, which, of course, transformed back into a stomach virus! Anyway, I had been dreaming of making this pie just about every single day since I picked it at the end of September but didn't actually get to round up all of the ingredients and get down to business until Monday afternoon. I ended up making the crust during Helen's nap while Eloise sat whining on my hip and then later assembled the pie during Eloise's nap while trying to keep Helen's little germy hands out of the sugar coated apples! Needless to say, my results were less than stellar. The pie tasted good, but it sure wasn't pretty!
Now, let me rewind a bit and say that, first of all, I LOVE apple pie. I really, really love apple pie, and I would choose it over any other dessert, even those involving chocolate (which is saying a lot!). In fact, when I was little, I often would request apple pie in place of a birthday cake! So, I couldn't wait to try Dorie's version. Now while I've made quite a few apple pies over the years, I've never made a double crusted one. Usually, my mom tops her pies with a lattice crust, and, every Thanksgiving, my Uncle Mark makes his famous Dutch apple pie with a crumb topping, so I've always stuck to either lattice or crumbs because they're the only two I've really felt confident doing. Well my friends, there is a reason that I never tried the double crust. I know that if I'd had a little more time and and a little more energy and, perhaps, if I had had a little less chaos in my kitchen, then I would have had a little more success with this pie. And, let me just say, making a double crust is not what one might call, "easy as pie". Shortly after it entered the oven, my vents caved in and the whole thing just kind of fell apart. The good news is that Dorie's Good for Almost Everything Pie Crust is really just that- with that much butter it would be nearly impossible for the finished product not to be flaky and delicious!
Now I'm still a little on the fence about the filling. You see, I've never used tapioca in a fruit pie before- I've always sprinkled a tablespoon or two of flour in with my apples. While the tapioca did not change the flavor of the filling, it did cause the apple juice to gel more than I'm accustomed to. I can't say that I disliked it, and it certainly wasn't gummy or gloppy like I feared it might be, but I missed that looser, juicer filling. I completely forgot the graham cracker crumbs that were supposed to be on the bottom crust, but my crust still stayed pretty sturdy, so I don't think that was too big of a loss. I really loved how Dorie calls for so many apples to "mound" over the crust. I don't usually use six apples in my pies, but I thought it gave a perfect ratio of fruit to crust. I went with Dorie's suggestion to use a variety of apples (yet another first for me) and ended up using Honeycrisps, Galas, Macintoshes, and Fujis- this was another wonderful improvement because it allows the filling to have so many different textures and flavors.
So, all in all, the pie was a success, and, although it turned out somewhat unattractive (ok, it was ugly), I am determined to try the double crust again... you know when the baby I'm pregnant with now is in Middle School and I have an hour or two to myself! Thanks everyone for baking along with me this week- I hope you have a wonderful new recipe for your Thanksgiving feast this year!!
3 cups all purpose flour ¼ cup sugar 1 ½ tsp salt 2 ½ sticks very cold unsalted butter, cut into tbsp size pieces 1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces About ½ cup ice water
Put the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor fitted with a metal blade, pulse just to combine the ingredients. Drop in the butter and shortening and pulse only until the butter and shortening are cut into the flour. Don’t overdo the mixing- what you’re aiming for is to have some pieces the size of fat green peas and others the size of barley. Pulsing the machine on and off, gradually add about 6 tbsps of the water- add a little water and pulse once, add some more water, pulse again and keep going that way. Then use a few long pulses to get the water into the flour. If, after a dozen or so pulses, the dough doesn’t look evenly moistened or form soft curds, pulse in as much of the remaining water as necessary, or even a few drops more, to get a dough that will stick together when pinched. Big pieces of butter are fine. Scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a work surface.
Divide the dough in half. Gather each half into a ball, flatten each ball into a disk and wrap each half in plastic. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour before rolling (if your ingredients were very cold and you worked quickly, though, you might be able to roll the dough immediately: the dough should be as cold as if it had just come out of the fridge).
To Roll Out the Dough: Have a buttered 9 inch pie plate at hand.
You can roll the dough out onto a floured surface or between sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap or in a rolling slipcover. If you’re working on a counter, turn the dough over frequently and keep the counter floured. If you are rolling between paper, plastic or in a slipcover, make sure to turn the dough over often and to life the paper, plastic, or cover frequently so that it doesn’t roll into the dough and form creases.
If you’ve got time, slide the rolled out dough into the fridge for about 20 minutes to rest and firm up. For the Pie
4 pounds (about 6 very large) apples 3/4 cup sugar Grated zest of 1 lemon 2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/8-1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons graham cracker crumbs (or dry bread crumbs) 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
For the Glaze (optional) Milk or heavy cream Decorating (coarse) or granulated sugar
Getting Ready: Butter a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate (I use a Pyrex pie plate). If you want to use a standard 9-inch pie plate, just reduce the amount of filling by about one quarter.
Working on a well-floured surface (or between wax paper or plastic wrap), roll out one piece of the dough to a thickness of about 1/8 inch. Fit the dough into the buttered pie plate and trim the edges to a 1/2-inch overhang. Roll the other piece of dough into a 1/8-inch-thick circle and slip it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat. Cover both the circle and the crust in the pie plate with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 20 minutes, while you preheat the oven and prepare the filling. (If it's more convenient, the crust can be well covered and kept refrigerated overnight.)
Getting Ready to Bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Peel, core and slice the apples. You've got a choice for slicing: you can cut each apple in half and then slice each half crosswise or lengthwise into slices about 1/4 inch thick, or you can cut the apples into chunks about 1/4 to 1/2 inch on a side. In either case, put the apples into a large bowl and add the sugar, lemon zest tapioca, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Toss everything together really well- I do this with my hands. If you've got a little time, let the mix sit for about 5 minutes, until juice starts to accumulate in the bottom of the bowl.
Remove the pie plate and top crust from the refrigerator and put the pie plate on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat. Sprinkle the crumbs evenly over the bottom of the crust-this will help keep it from getting too soggy (some sog is inevitable)- and then turn the apples and their juices into the crust. The apples will heap over the top of the crust. Pat them into an even mound. Dot the apples with the bits of cold butter.
Very lightly moisten the rim of the bottom crust with water, then center the top crust over the apples. (If the crusts-top and bottom- are still very cold and in danger of cracking when you work with them, let them sit at room temperature for about 5 minutes.) Either fold the overhang from the top crust under the bottom crust and crimp the crust attractively, or press the top crust against the bottom crust and trim the overhang from both crusts even with the rim of the pie plate. If you've pressed and trimmed the crust, use the tines of a fork to press the two crusts together securely.
Use a sharp paring knife to cut about 6 slits int eh top crust. I always use the wide end of a piping tip to cut a circle out of the center of the crust as a steam vent. if you'd like, brush the top crust with a little milk or cream and sprinkle it with sugar.
Bake the pie for 15 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees F, and bake the pie for another 50 to 60 minutes (total baking time is between 65 and 75 minutes), or until the crust is gorgeously browned and the juices bubble up through the top crust. After about 40 minutes in the oven, if the top crust looks as if it's browning too quickly, cover the pie loosely with a foil tent.
Transfer the pie to a rack and let it rest until it is only just warm or until it reaches room temperature.
Just like most food bloggers in Fall, I have the pumpkin bug. I tried to tell myself that I'd hold off until the weather felt more like Fall, but let's face it, in New Orleans that might not happen until late November! So I was delighted when I saw that Janell of Mortensen Family Memoirs had chosen Caramel Pumpkin Pie for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe! Of course, when I went to the store to buy the pumpkin puree I had to pick up a few extra cans and even though I didn't snap any pictures I ended up making these delicious Pumpkin Scones from Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles (they are easy to make and amazing, please make them soon) for Eloise's baptism brunch last week:
That's my mom doing the baptism! She's an Episcopal priest which works out nicely because Eloise didn't wiggle around or fuss for her "GiGi" while she poured the water on her head the way many babies do!
Then when I woke up on Saturday morning at 4:30 am with my little early-risers I decided to make this Pumpkin Bread from AllRecipes- I have tried a few other pumpkin bread recipes but this one really is the best, very moist and very spicy.
Anyway, onto the pie! I really like pumpkin pie, but it's never been a family favorite for Thanksgiving: my dad likes it, my Uncle Bobby likes it, and that's about it. So I've made a plain old back of the can Libby's Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving once or twice but it never gets eaten the way that pecan, apple, and cranberry pie do. I was excited to try a different pumpkin pie recipe, especially because Dorie describes the pie as a more sophisticated and unusual pumpkin pie because of the very dark (almost black) caramel that is mixed into the usual pumpkin pie components. I really liked this pie, and so did Eloise, but Helen and Derrick didn't even touch it, so we ended up with quite a bit that didn't get eaten. The pie is still pumpkin-y but it has that smokey, sweet-bitter burnt sugar flavor too. Two things that surprised me about this pie were that 1) the caramel does not taste very sweet on it's own so I was concerned that the pie would be very bitter, but the pie itself has a wonderful flavor- no need to worry! 2) Dorie says that the pie shouldn't jiggle at all and that a knife will come out clean when the pie is done. My pie took about 7 extra minutes to bake and then I went ahead and pulled it out even though it still jiggled and the knife was not completely clean and the consistency of the pie was perfect once it had time to cool.
The thing that impressed me most about this pie was how crisp and flaky my crust stayed! Even with a partially baked crust, I've never really been able to keep the crust on my pumpkin pies from getting soft- but Dorie's Good For Almost Anything Pie Crust did the trick! I would definitely make this again and I'm going to try the almond streusel topping from the playing around section!
Another amazing bundt cake from Dorie! This is a perfect cake to bring in the fabulous Fall weather we are finally getting here in New Orleans! The cake contains both grated apples and apple butter so it stays beautifully moist for at least four days (as long as ours lasted!). A few people thought the cake was maybe a little too sweet, but I used an unsweetened apple butter with no spices and I thought the sweetness level was spot on. I did sub 1/4 cup of brown sugar for some of the white and I might even sub more next time- I love the combination of brown sugar and apples! I also upped the spices just a little since my apple butter was so plain. I The cake is studded with pecans and raisins with add a really great textural contrast. Thank you Lynne of Honey Muffin for choosing this week's Tuesdays with Dorie cake!
I really, really want to make my own puff pastry. However, it's one of the many things on my baking/cooking to do list that I have to put on hold for awhile- at least until everyone's on the same nap schedule. So when I looked at the recipe for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick I immediately felt a little torn. Don't get me wrong, Dorie actually recommends using store-bought puff pastry...but she is extremely specific about using all butter puff pastry AKA not Pepperidge Farm puff pastry and that is the only brand that I could find in three grocery stores. Although I felt kind of defeated, I went ahead and bought the Pepperidge Farm puff pastry and of course, it was completely fine! I will go back one day and do this with homemade puff pastry and I'm sure it will be amazing but it was fine with store-bought, non-all butter crust.
This is an extremely easy tart to throw together (especially with the store bought puff pastry). I decided to make my tart long and skinny so it would be easier to slice into pieces. Dorie gives alternative instructions for making a sweeter tart and once I sliced up my beautiful Mcintosh apples and tasted how very tart they were I realized that I would have to go that route. The dough is dotted with a bit of butter and sprinkled with sugar and then lined with very thin slices of apple. Before popping it in the oven the apples are brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with a bit of sugar. The tart is baked until the apples brown and the pastry is puffed. I liked the tart- I wouldn't say I loved it, but it was very tasty. Derrick, on the other hand, ate 3/4 of tart within an hour of it coming out of the oven which is actually a good thing because this is not a keeper- it should be eaten quickly because it goes soggy after a few hours.
I've gotten to the point where I always have just enough energy at the end of the day to cook dinner for my family, feed them, clean the girls up after dinner, entertain them for a few hours after dinner, and get them into bed...but that's it. The bedtime routine stretches from Eloise whose teeth I start brushing at 8:00 and who gets in her crib around 8:30 to Helen who I start reading bedtime stories to at 8:30 and finally (if I'm lucky) get into bed around 9:30. Lately, Helen has been getting out of bed approximately five times before actually falling asleep (don't even ask me about our hour long knock down drag out fight everyday for nap time...which they never ever take at the same time). So guess what, every night I try to drag myself back into the kitchen to wash dishes, scrub pots, sweep, clean the highchair, etc. but that has not happened since this pregnancy started! So then the next morning (is 4:50am considered morning?) I have a horribly dirty kitchen staring me in the face- a kitchen that I must clean prior to starting breakfast and packing Derrick's lunch. So let me tell you about these Coffee Break Muffins. Let me just say they will be a staple for this house for the remainder of this pregnancy!!
First of all, they are extremely simple to throw together. The butter is melted, so no having to remember to put it out to soften on the counter. There is no citrus zesting. No sifting of flour. No chopping of chocolate. No toasting of nuts. You get the picture! If you are plagued with a dish washing epidemic like I am, you can even just use one bowl and dump the liquid ingredients directly into the dry! Oh and although Dorie calls for baking the muffins for 20 minutes, mine were ready in about 13. Now, most importantly, the muffins contain both a strong cup of coffee and a tablespoon of espresso powder so these muffins are actually caffeinated- music to my sleep deprived ears! When you're pregnant you aren't supposed drink much caffeine, most doctors say one cup of coffee a day is the limit, and I have been pretty dedicated to not really drinking more than 1/4 a diet coke every few days so these muffins were like gold! The whole family loved them! Thank you Rhiani of Chocoholic Anonymous for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie!
Today is my darling husband's 26th birthday! Happy Birthday Derrick! So, being the loving wife that I am I spent a good part of the day baking him a giant cheesecake...and then I kind of forgot about the Cranberry Upside-Downer... until about 5 o'clock. But I had to bake this cake! I have been eying the gorgeous photo since I purchased Dorie Greenspan's amazing book and joined Tuesdays with Dorie so I wasn't about to pass it up when Sabrina of Superfluous finally selected it for this week's recipe!
It's a little early for fresh cranberries but I was lucky enough to get my hands on some frozen ones from Whole Foods and they worked perfectly in this Fall take on the classic Pineapple Upside Down Cake. The cake looks impressive because of the beautiful shiny, ruby-red crown but it's very simple to put together. Butter and sugar are cooked together in a saucepan on the stove and then poured into the cake pan, the cranberries and pecans then go directly on top of the butter mixture and the whole thing is topped with a cinnamony cake batter. The cake bakes into the little nooks and crannies in between the cranberries and nuts and the sugar caramelizes around the fruit making a truly outstanding Fall cake! I'm so glad to have this delicious cake to add to my list of favorite cranberry recipes, I will be making it throughout the cranberry season! It was hard to keep the little hands away from the cake until it was cool enough to eat- I can promise you they will be begging for a piece for breakfast tomorrow too!
I was really excited that Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine picked Peanut Butter Crisscrosses for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe! These are some of my favorite cookies, this is the recipe I usually use when I make them but I thought Dorie's recipe was just as good! Dorie calls for chopped peanuts which I think is a fabulous addition, but unfortunately since my girls are both under the age of four they can't eat big pieces of nuts yet so I decided to leave them out this time. I also found that the cookies reached a perfect soft, chewy consistency at about 10 minutes instead of the recommended 12 minutes. I loved these! Perfect classic cookie!
On another note, Helen has recently become obsessed with taking pictures with my camera. Since she's only 2 and 1/2 I've been a little hesitant to let her use the camera without extremely close supervision. Here's her best shot so far: Yep, a picture of Eloise's chubby legs hanging out of her highchair. This is her best shot because there is actually recognizable subject matter unlike the majority of her other pictures which ended more like this:I can't really say much about this though because let's face it, these days my pictures don't look much better! I'm usually so impressed with myself for baking and posting on time that I haven't really been able to take much time to make things look as appealing as they actually taste!
You know it has been a very, very long time since I've had to say this but I didn't really like this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. Now I'm going to take some credit for it because I was out of confectioner's sugar so I used regular sugar and I'm sure that really changed the consistency. Also, my espresso powder is about 2 years old and I can't help but wonder if maybe the flavor was a little off. So I should probably try these again at some point because every other shortbread/sable recipe in Baking From My Home to Yours are delicious and have an amazing crumbly consistency. Thanks Donna of Life's Too Short Not to Eat Dessert First for choosing this week's recipe!
Wow! This tart was so good! Honestly, it caught me off guard because I don't like custard and I really don't love peaches that much. The tart crust was supposed to be an almond crust but I had a freezer full of pecans and I decided to do a Southern take on Dorie's French tart. Cream, an egg, sugar, and a little almond extract are poured over fresh peaches and topped with a pecan crumble.
Again, this tart just wasn't what I was expecting! It was so delicious and had such a sophisticated flavor and texture. The tart was wonderful warm, room temperature, an especially chilled! We ate the whole thing in a little over two days- Derrick was eating it straight off the tart pan!
Now that school is back in session I've been making a lot of muffins, breads, biscuits, etc. lately for breakfast. I've been trying to stock my freezer full of things that Derrick can grab on the way out the door, eat on the way in to school, or eat during his planning period...but, my plan is not working. You see, Derrick is about the size of a beanpole with the appetite of an elephant so every time I pull a batch of 12 muffins or 8 biscuits out the oven imagining that we'll have enough for today and the rest of the week they mysteriously disappear before they are cool enough to wrap up and freeze! Of course, the kids aren't really helping out with my plan either...and let's face it, now that I'm in the 2nd trimester and still nursing Eloise, I'm pretty hungry too, so I guess I can't blame it all on the husband!
Anyway, this bread fit nicely into my breakfast baking bonanza. It was soft, incredibly moist, flavorful, and not too unhealthy so it was pretty much finished off before I could really get a good picture of it! Some of the fat is replaced by unsweetened applesauce and I ended up subbing half the white flour for whole wheat flour and fat free plain yogurt for buttermilk just to up the health factor. Dorie says you can use any type of dried fruit but all I had on hand were big, plump raisins so mine wasn't too exciting- I'd love to try cherries or apricots.
I actually ended up making these again as muffins but I did about forty-million substitutions- peach puree for applesauce, prunes for raisins, and a bunch of different spices and they still turned out really delicious! The only problem I found with the muffins was that they were so soft that some of them stuck to the pan- not that that stopped them from being eaten in one day... Seriously, I don't know how to fill the man up!
Thanks Natalie of Oven Love for choosing this versatile and delicious recipe for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick!
Oh my gosh, this ice cream was really delicious! In fact, I can't stop eating it. I'm going to blame it partly on Dorie's fabulous recipe and partly on the fact that....I'm pregnant...again! Three under three here we come! I'm finally in the second trimester now and finally wanting to eat again! The ice cream is exactly what it sounds like, creamy, very rich, basically the perfect chocolate ice cream. The base is a bittersweet ganache and unlike many chocolate ice cream recipes, this one doesn't have any cocoa, so the chocolate comes entirely from actual melted chocolate. And because enough is never enough when it comes to chocolate, I added a fudge ripple from David Lebovitz's amazing book, The Perfect Scoop. The possibilities for mix-ins are pretty much endless here- I also can't wait to try peanut butter cups, marshmallows, and peppermint patties (but not all together...unless the weird pregnancy cravings start kicking in). Thanks Katrina of Baking and Boys for selecting this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. There is nothing like fresh churned, homemade ice cream to beat the insane August heat in New Orleans so I imagine I'll be making this one again soon!
Wow, I feel really bad that I have not posted in so long. The thing is I have been baking along with Tuesdays with Dorie pretty religiously but have barely posted all summer. It has been a crazy summer so I'll blame it on that...
I made these delicious blondies a few weeks ago and they were quickly devoured. The texture is a perfect combo of chewy and soft in the middle and the flavor is sweet and delicious! The blondies are studded with bittersweet chocolate chunks, sweetened coconut, and butterscotch chips (I subbed white chocolate chips)- I left the nuts out so that my little girls could eat them but I think they would make a fabulous addition. The base of bar is so good that you could really chop any kind of candy bar or chocolate and change the flavor up a little. I will be making these again and again. Thanks Nicole of Cookies on Friday for a wonderful and versatile treat!
I'm so tired guys, so this is another very short post. I baked this amazingly perfect bread today. It was easy (as yeast breads go), delicious, and it is almost gone. I will be making this again and again. Thank you Susan of Food.Baby for choosing this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe.
These shortcakes were everything I could have asked for in a shortcake: a little crunch on the surface, soft and pillowy on the inside, and a delicate sweet biscuit flavor. The recipe makes a ton of shortcakes- I got about 14 large ones (baked half, froze half unbaked for later) and they can be filled with anything. I was hoping to do traditional strawberry shortcakes but our strawberry selection was pretty unappealing so I settled on fresh raspberries and blackberries. The taste was great, but I think I prefer the juiciness that strawberries provide the traditional strawberry shortcake. I think I might serve the ones that I froze with homemade vanilla or cinnamon ice cream and strawberries and blueberries. Thank you Cathy of The Tortefeasor for choosing this week's delightfully summery Tuesdays with Dorie selection!
Wow, I have been totally slacking with Tuesdays with Dorie! Don't get me wrong, I actually made both the Burnt Sugar Ice Cream and the Quick Classic Berry Tart and I even took pictures (not good pictures...) and then I just could not get a post up in time. I've been so insanely busy- May is always a wild month- but that's really no excuse. So last night after I put the girls to bed and whipped up a four layer chocolate cake for my brother Jordan's 23rd birthday, I decided that I had to make this Apple-Apple Bread Pudding and actually post on it! The thing is, I don't really like bread pudding so I wasn't too excited about this recipe. But you know what? I was pleasantly surprised! I mean, I still don't love the consistency of bread pudding, but the flavor was great. I used some homemade challah for this recipe and I think that really added to the success of this bread pudding.
The pudding is a layer of challah spread with apple butter topped with caramelized apples and another layer of challah spread with apple butter. A mixture of cream, milk, eggs, and egg yolks is then poured over the entire thing and is left to soak for about 30 minutes before being baked in a water bath. I think the chunks of caramelized apples really enhanced the texture of the bread pudding. Thanks Elizabeth of Cake or Death? for picking this very nice recipe.
Honestly, these cookies were OK but not my favorite. I was surprised that I didn't like these because I have really loved all of the cookies Tuesdays With Dorie has baked from Baking From my Home to Yours. There was something about the molasses, oats, chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, coconut combination that just seemed a bit overwhelming. I love all of the components of these cookies but together it was just too many flavors and textures. I can't complain because this was really the first TWD recipe that I haven't loved in a good long while! Thanks Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet for choosing this recipe because I have been eying it for a long time!
In other news, Helen has moved from her crib to a toddler bed and Eloise is now in Helen's old crib! I cannot believe how amazing it feels to put both girls to bed in their own bedroom and actually have a few minutes to actually get things done at night. I have been either pregnant and/or breastfeeding a (co-sleeping) baby for almost three years- Eloise is still breastfeeding during the day but I've finally eliminated all night feedings and it is SO liberating. Now if I can get their nap schedules synchronized, I guess we'll move on to potty training!
I love biscuits. But...I've said it before and I'll say it again: I only love homemade biscuits. I used to actually think those biscuits in a tube were pretty tasty, but now I literally cannot stand them. That sounds so snobby but they taste like straight up chemicals. The funny thing is that biscuits are so easy to make from scratch- no exotic ingredients, no waiting for dough to rise, no refrigeration, no fancy techniques. And if you thought buttermilk biscuits were easy, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for Sweet Cream Biscuits will blow you away. You see these biscuits rely on heavy cream for all of the fat which means no butter, which means no cutting in the butter= even less time to throw together! I've made these biscuits a few times and I really love them- they are light and fluffy and the flavor is sweeter than a traditional biscuit. This time I baked half of the biscuits and and froze the other half. The frozen biscuits baked up just as perfectly as the ones zqAAaaI baked immediately after mixing. Thanks Melissa of Love at First Bite for choosing this delightful recipe!
