TWD: Tarte Fine

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.

Thanks Leslie of Lethally Delicious for a lovely segue into Fall!

TWD: Crunchy and Custardy Peach Tart

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!

Thanks Rachel of Sweet Tarte for choosing this surprisingly amazing tart for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe!

TWD: Soft Chocolate and Raspberry Tart

this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Rachelle of Mommy? I'm Hungry! I wasn't sure what to expect with this tart because Dorie describes the chocolate as pudding-like and that's not my favorite texture, but wow! this was delicious! The texture was thicker and silkier than pudding. I made sweet tart dough with toasted pecans (I'd only done it with almonds previously) and I will definitely be using pecans again. I also decided to use all bittersweet chocolate instead of the milk chocolate and bittersweet chocolate combination. The flavor was so deep and just a little bitter and perfect with the sweet and tart raspberries. The fresh raspberries are placed in the pre-baked tart shell and then covered with the chocolate mixture before being baked. The raspberries turn kind of jammy but not at all runny and I can't wait to try this tart with other berries! I loved that the tart took so little time to make and yielded such elegant results. Derrick described the flavor as "adult" because of the very dark chocolate but Helen did not agree at all (note the small hand in the picture below).

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!

TWD: Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tart

This is going to be short and sweet. I made this lovely tart for Thanksgiving because I thought it would be an interesting addition to the old standbys: apple, pumpkin, pecan, cranberry etc. All in all we ended up with EIGHT kinds of pie...seriously. At least we had about 30 people to eat it all up and there were tons of leftovers for breakfast on Friday morning.

This pie consists of a basic tart shell, pistachio pastry cream, pears poached in red wine with orange and lemon peel, and caramelized pistachios. The tart was very tasty, but I'm not completely sure that I'd make it again because it did end up being pretty labor intensive. I've never poached pears before and I have to say they turned out fantastically! I will definitely be experimenting more with different pear poaching recipes. I also really loved the caramelized pistachios- I could have eaten those by the handful. The pistachio pastry cream was good, but not great. Now part of this is probably because I could not find unsalted pistachios anywhere so I shelled some salted ones and rinsed and dried them. I opted for leaving the ground nuts in the cream and ended up thinning it out with about a 1/2 cup of freshly whipped cream. Honestly, I just don't love pastry cream. I made the wine reduction syrup to top the tart and promptly forgot it in the refrigerator- I'm sure it would have been a wonderful compliment! oops!


The tart is beautiful with the white and red pears and the green nuts and it was well received by my family so I am glad that I went ahead and made it. This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was chosen by Lauren of I'll Eat You (recipe is on her blog and in Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours).

TWD: Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart

I was telling my Tweetie about this tart the other day when she said, "honey, I don't know how you have the time to bake!" and it got me thinking. You see, I don't have the time to bake. I have to make the time. As cliché as it might sound, baking and cooking keep me sane. I stay at home all day long and care for my darling daughters, I clean the house, I do dozens of loads of laundry, I do all of the grocery (and other) shopping, but baking is something I can always squeeze into my schedule because I can do it any time of day, it's (mostly) inexpensive, and I don't have to leave the house to get it done. I love being in the kitchen and I love feeding people. The time I spend in the kitchen is my creative time. Oh, and of course, I love eating what I've made too!
Well this tart was definitely worth my time! Carla of Chocolate Moosey chose this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe (recipe is on Carla's blog). I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I love Dorie's Sweet Tart Dough- I love it, I love it, I love it! The crust always turns out delicious and beautiful and it is made in the food processor! But the crust is not the greatest part of this tart. The really special part of the tart is a thin layer of soft caramel studded with honey-roasted peanuts. The caramel is very easy to make and tasted divine- I could have eaten it with a spoon. Anyway, the caramel is hidden under a thick layer of chocolate ganache. For some reason, my ganache was a little too soft- I think I might have measured out the chocolate incorrectly- but it still tasted great. Dorie says that the tart should set in the refrigerator for no longer than 30 minutes but I actually kept mine in the refrigerator and had no problems with the crust getting soggy or the caramel getting hard. I didn't really think about it at first, but this was kind of like a very dressy snickers pie. I think I'm going to bring this tart to Thanksgiving this year.

TWD: Parisian Apple (and Nectarine) Tarts

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Jessica of My Baking Heart. I was really excited when I read the recipe because 1) it looked delicious and 2) it looked sooooo easy! Seriously, the only ingredients are puff pastry, butter, brown sugar, and the fruit. Ok, so even though this was insanely easy to throw together I still managed to make it somewhat complicated... I blame the 15 month old pulling at my pants leg the entire time I was trying to put this together. The first thing I did wrong was coring the apple (I have no idea why but I always screw up when I core fruit)- I ended up with a mauled apple half instead of the perfect little apple blossom featured in the book. I did an even worse job with the nectarine tart- the pit made the fruit look very sloppy. But my really pregnancy-brain related mistake was putting the tarts on waxed paper instead of the parchment paper called for in the recipe- of course I ended up with a kitchen filled with smoke and a lovely smokey odor in my home for the rest of the morning! Believe it or not the tarts still turned out nicely! The brown sugar and butter makes a wonderful caramel glaze on the fruit and the result is simply delicious!


I used Peppridge Farm puff pastry even though Dorie specifically says that the tarts are only good with all butter puff pastry. I'm sure that she's right and that if I had an all butter puff pastry to compare it to that I would be disappointed with the Pepperidge Farm pastry- but honestly, it was all that my grocery store carried and I thought it tasted great! I used the extra little puff pastry scraps to wrap my mauled apple and nectarine pieces that didn't make it into the regular sized tarts. I thought these were a great and easy little treat!

TWD: Tartest Lemon Tart and Tiramisu Cake

Ok, bear with me, we are moving into a new apartment, I'm thirty weeks pregnant, and dear little Helen Mae is getting her incisors. I made both this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe (Tartest Lemon Tart- selected by Barb of Babette Feasts) and last week's recipe (Tiramisu Cake selected by Megan of My Baking Adventures) a few weeks ago so that I wouldn't be rushing around like I am now to write them up! So much for that plan!!


Anyway... the lemon tart was really delicious! The almond crust is absolutely foolproof and really tasty- I can't wait to try it with other nuts. The lemon filling contains the ENTIRE lemon- yep, rind and all- blended in the blender with egg, sugar, and cream. Now apparently some TWD bakers found the filling bitter because of the rind- but honestly I used the whole lemon and I didn't have any problem- I really don't know if I was just lucky or what! The filling is poured into the partially baked crust and the whole tart bakes at a pretty low temp for a good long while. The filling is almost like a lemon jelly- and although it is not the prettiest tart in the world the entire thing disappeared in a matter of minutes at the party I brought it to! In fact, I didn't even get a picture of an individual slice! I will definitely make this again.


The Tiramisu Cake was a bit of a different story. I'm still trying to weigh out the results in my head. You see, I didn't really like it very much at all- I found the cake to be dry and I thought the espresso/ kahlua syrup was too tame. I can't really say that it was awful or anything- it just wasn't great. Though the cake is not hard to make, there are quite a few components to it and it does take a good amount of time to make so I can't imagine that I'd make this again. The only thing that would keep me from saying that this was a definite miss is that my brother, my dad, and my aunt really enjoyed it (at least they said did multiple times and ate quite a few pieces each!). Honestly, I was very excited about this cake and sadly, it ended up being a let down for me.

TWD: Chocolate Cream Tart

This is going to be a short but extremely sweet post. This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Kim of Scrumptious Photography (recipe is on her blog). I made this delicious tart for Easter and everyone who tasted it really loved it- not just polite, "thank you, that was delicious" but like really wanted another slice and asked for the recipe loved it!


The crust is a chocolate shortbread that you make in the food processor and press into the tart pan. I always press my dough into the pan and then leave it in the refrigerator overnight before baking it- I find that the unfilled shell doesn't puff up as much that way. This is not a sweet chocolate crust- instead it has an intensely chocolate flavor but maintains the somewhat saltiness of normal pie crust. I was skeptical at first- but it pairs magnificently with the chocolate cream!


The cream is a chocolate pastry cream that you cook on the stove- also very easy! The one strange thing is how quickly it thickens- you feel like you are stirring a liquidy, milky substance for a few minutes and then in 3 seconds it becomes the cream! The flavor of the cream is divine and the texture is so silky!

Finally you top it with whipped cream- I doubled mine because I wanted to do it up big for Easter!

Thanks to my mom who took these pictures for me at the party at my aunt's house since they cut the pie while I was putting Helen Mae down for a nap- she's a really great mom!!