TWD: Double Apple Bundt Cake

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!

TWD: Cranberry Upside-Downer

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!

TWD: Raisin Swirl Bread

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.

TWD: Molasses Spice Cookies

When I was about nine years old I remember helping my mom clean the kitchen after dinner. I was clearing the table while she swept the floor. At this point, my brother was seven and my sister was three so you can imagine what kind of a mess ended up under the table. Once she had swept the debris into a little neat pile my mom gathered it up into the dustpan and said to me, "you know there are people in the world who will never even see the crumbs that fell off the table during a meal and there are many others who have to eat these crumbs". I don't know why that stuck with me the way it did but I have never forgotten what she said and I almost always think about it when I sweep my own kitchen. It helps me to pause and put things in perspective. Yes, we have to plan carefully so that we can pay all of our bills every month and it will be quite some time before we can purchase a second car but we always have plenty of food and even if for some reason we could not purchase food we have wonderful family who would never ever hesitate to help us in any way we asked. With Thanksgiving around the corner I can't help but be overwhelmingly thankful for how lucky I am for all of the blessings in my life.


I love Thanksgiving because it really does allow for us to remember everything we are thankful for and to celebrate it with all the people we love. Breaking bread is one of the most universal and yet special things a group of people can do together. The Thanksgiving meal is especially wonderful because so much time and love goes into preparing it. This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was selected by Pamela of Cookies with Boys and it would be a fabulous addition to the dessert table for Thanksgiving Day! I don't know if I can easily explain how much I love these spicy, crunchy on the edges and chewy in the middle cookies. Well yes I can: I made a batch of these about a month ago and we ate every last one before I took one solitary picture. I made a half batch again last night so that I could snap a few shots and they have already disappeared again! They are so wonderful and so easy to make. Oh and they are really very pretty too thanks to the sparkly sugar crust. Make these, enjoy them, and be thankful!

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: Applesauce Spice Bars

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Karen of Something Sweet by Karen. I was really excited when I saw that this recipe had finally been selected because the picture in the book looks so delicious! So in actuality these are delicious but not spectacular. I think that I was partially a bit disappointed because they are really more of a thin cake than a bar. Basically, this is an apple cake with applesauce in the batter and bits of apple, raisins, and pecans scattered throughout- the flavor is quite delicious and very autumnal and it makes a good breakfast too! I'm trying to convince myself that I have eaten almost half of it by myself in order to keep my milk supply up for this plump little gal:

I think I will heed the advice of some other TWD bakers and make this in an 8x8 pan instead of a 9x13 next time so that I can get a more substantial "cake". The cake is topped with a tasty brown sugar glaze that sort of sinks into the cake and I think that doing the cake in an 8x8 would also allow for a little thicker layer of glaze. All in all this was a good and very easy recipe that has me looking forward to the Fall and some cool weather!

TWD: Cinnamon Chocolate Cake

This week's amazing Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures. The recipe is actually called Cinnamon Squares but I decided to do it in a round pan and put in on my cake stand because the recipe sounded too delicious to be made into ordinary squares! The combination of a cinnamon batter with a ribbon of cinnamon sugar, espresso powder, and chopped chocolate running through the middle of it and a delicious chocolate frosting is such a beautiful pairing that I cannot believe that I was ambivalent about the cinnamon and chocolate combo! As a matter of fact, many of the TWD bakers weren't impressed with the idea of combining the two potent (but rarely seen together) flavors... then of course they tried a bite and fell in love! Seriously, I am so surprised that I loved this so much!

When I popped my cake out of the pan I was a little nervous because it looked like a fair amount of my chopped chocolate had sunk to the bottom of the cake and the cake itself fell a little in the middle.
It smelled so wonderful though and it still looked presentable so I went ahead and frosted it with the simple chocolate/butter frosting and that dressed it up quite a bit. When I cut into the cake I found that the ribbon actually looked fairly intact (although it was closer to the bottom of the cake than Dorie's picture) once the pieces were sliced up- so I guessed I worried needlessly!


This was such a winner- I honestly think I'm going to make it again tomorrow for my little brother who just graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design last week and will be heading home to NOLA. I just can't stop thinking about that delicious cinnamony chocolaty goodness!

TWD: Linzer Sablés

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was Linzer Sablés selected by Noskos of Living the Life! I was so excited to see that someone finally picked this recipe because it is one that I have been dying to make since I bought Baking From my Home to Yours. I love Linzer cookies- but the ones that I'm familiar with are more of a tender butter cookie with raspberry jam sandwiched between them- these cookies are different from the delicate little tea cookie that were always such a special treat. Dorie uses a spicey, nutty, and very sturdy cookie to sandwich together the jam. The dough is comprised of ground almonds, flour, sugar, butter, an egg, and the surprise guests: cinnamon and cloves.


Now, this isn't the first time that the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers have encountered Dorie's masterful approach to combining spices with sweet fruit spreads (and even chocolate)- but again, I was a little ambivilant about whether or not the strong aromas of cinnamon and more particularly cloves would overpower the sweet and tart jam. And...again I worried for nought. This is a wonderful cookie for Christmas and it's even fancy enough to present as dessert alongside vanilla ice cream at a dinner party (like I did last night- nothing like combining TWD with real life!). Raspberry jam is my favorite, but sadly my local grocery was out of it so I used a tart blackberry jam and I was very pleased with the results.


I was also really happy with the process of rolling the freshly mixed dough out between two pieces of waxed paper and then chilling the dough. In the past I have always chilled dough as a little disk and then rolled it out once it was cold enough- but I can assure you that I won't do that again! This way, you simply pop the rolled dough out of the fridge and cookie-cut away! As always with Tuesdays with Dorie, you can find this recipe on the blog of th person who selected it and in Dorie's wonderful book!

TWD: Rugelach

Ok so let me tell you about something I really really hate: cream cheese. I hate cream cheese- I really really hate it- and I almost never use the word hate. I reserve it for things like cream cheese. I hate cheesecake, I hate cream cheese based dips, I hate cream cheese frosting on carrot cake (I love the cake part), and I really hate it on bagels (why ruin a perfectly good breakfast?). So this, my friends, is why I have never ever tasted rugelach before last night. I was so prejudiced against these beautiful cookies simply because the dough is made up of flour, butter, and you guessed it: cream cheese. But, I have great news! These cookies do not taste like cream cheese- even the cream cheese lovers in my life couldn't detect it's presence! Imagine all the years I've been missing out on these sweet little babies! The horror, the horror!


This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Piggy of Piggy's Cooking Journal. Thank you piggy! You have allowed me to become a more accepting and loving individual! I can no longer say that I hate cream cheese (well at least not with the same passion that I used to). Dorie's recipe is very easy- it is a bit time consuming because you have to refrigerate the dough after you make it and then again after you form the cookies- but the effort is well worth results.


I went ahead and used almost the exact filling that Dorie recommends: bittersweet chocolate (I used dark chocolate), apricot jam, pecans, cinnamon sugar, and currants (I used golden raisins). I was a little unsure about combining the tartness of the apricot jam and currants with the sweetness of the cinnamon sugar and the chocolatiness of the chocolate- it seemed like a whole lot of flavors for one cookie- but my worries were unfounded. They turned out delicious! I think that I will expirement with the fillings the next time I make these, only because the chocolate overwhelmed the fruit a bit and completely covered up the cinnamon- so I might make some fruit, some cinnamon and pecan, and some chocolate and ground almond next time- just to be able to taste the flavors on their own. And now let me do a little shout out to my new best baking bud- SILICONE BAKING MAT!! How did I live without you for all of these years? You make baked on sugar and crystallized jam slide off a cookie sheet with a gentle nudge! Go out and buy one right now if you don't already have one!


And I leave you with this: All hail Queen Helen Mae! Baby who now awakens at 4:45 am each morning (thanks to Daylight Savings Time) and wishes to go down for a nap at approximately 6:00am!

Muffin Monday: Blueberry Cinnamon Buns

My grandmother is almost like a storybook character (seriously the way I'm about to describe her will make you think that I'm just trying to be cool by inventing myself such a rockin' grandma). First of all, she does all of the great regular grandmother stuff like cook delicious meals, do fun crafts, bake wonderful Christmas cookies, and take you on exciting outings to the park- but with Tweetie (yes that's what I call my grandmother) the fun doesn't stop there- she also taught us how to meditate with the Buddhist monks (imagine listening to a tape in the car on the way to school of OOOHHHHHHHHHHMMMMM), she recites poetry off the top of her head, she marches in peace rallies, she sees far more movies in theaters than I do, she's a vegetarian, she gives historical tours of the French Quarter, she volunteers at the library and the hospital, and, at 72, she goes to a jazzercise class every morning.

That's a brief glimpse of Tweetie- so what has she to do with muffins? you might ask. Well along with being a vegetarian- Tweetie is always looking for little health tricks: a handful of almonds will give you your daily requirement of Vitamin E, soy wards of breast cancer, and one of her favorites- blueberries help with memory. Now Tweetie (who the other day was disappointed that she could only spout off about 9 of Eugene O'Neill's most famous plays-umm I was an English major and I only knew The Iceman Cometh) needs no help with her memory. However, she is convinced that the blueberries will help preserve her veritable pantheon of knowledge, and she is also dedicated to making sure that none of us fall privy to memory loss. As a result, my mom had about ten pounds of frozen organic blueberries in her freezer and with it still being hurricane season down here in New Orleans, we decided that we had to get baking (for you lucky folks who don't have hurricanes- you DO NOT want to have a freezer full of food when the electricity goes out for 3 days in 97 degree weather)!

So my mom suggested we make some good old fashioned blueberry muffins- and we have a really good blueberry muffin recipe- but- I, of course, found a different recipe in my old standard, Cookies, irresistible biscuits, brownies, and bars by Hilaire Walden (P.S. this is the last recipe I'm going to post from this book because I really think you should purchase a copy for yourself!) The recipe is called Fruit and Cinnamon Buns- they end up looking pretty similar to muffins- but they don't get that big muffin dome on the top. The crumb of these muffins is not as good as our old standby blueberry muffin but the cinnamon flavor is wonderful with the blueberries and it is hands down the easiest muffin I've ever made. You've heard of dump cakes where you just throw everything together and mix it up- well this is the dump muffin.

Fruit and Cinnamon Buns

1 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
pinch of salt
scant 1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup fresh or thawed frozen blueberries, or black currants

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease eight muffin pans (I highly suggest using paper muffin liners because the blueberries tend to stick to the pan). With an electric mixer, beat together the first eight ingredients until smooth.


Fold the blueberries or black currants into the other ingredients until just evenly combined. Spoon the mixture into the muffin pans, filling them two-thirds full (we topped them with raw cane sugar- which gave the top a great little crunch). Bake for about 25 minutes, until a skewer or cake tester inserted in the center of a bun comes out clean. Allow to cool in the muffin pans, on a wire rack, for 10 minutes, then transfer the buns to the wire rack and allow to cool completely.