Baking With Dorie: Links to BWD bakers this week (Big Bill's Carrot Cake)

My entire kitchen had to be packed up earlier than anticipated as our renovation comes to an end & so I have not been able to bake this cake despite every intention to make it ahead of time.

A few others are skipping the challenge so please head over here to check out the blogroll & the links to bakers this week. For the recipe, please head over to Rebecca's blog Beurrista or page 254 of Baking from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Baking with Dorie: Brrrrrr-ownies

I couldn't make these because, where I live, peppermint patties have been impossible to find & I wasn't able to make my own (no peppermint extract either).

Everyone else in the group seemed to have loved these. Have a look at the blogroll here to see their posts & for the recipe. 

Baking With Dorie: Cinnamon Squares

While I love both cinnamon & chocolate and don't mind combining them together in a dessert, this recipe disappointed me a little (Sorry, Dorie!).

I made the Cappuccino version suggested in the book but even with addition of extra espresso, the cinnamon flavor was too over-powering for my family & even myself. I liked the chocolate & crunchy-sugar-cinnamon-y swirl in the middle of the cake as well as the chocolate frosting & the cake was very moist. But overall, this was not my favorite bake from BFMHTY. Which makes me very glad that I cut the recipe in half and baked mini-cakes. Maybe I wold have liked it better had I made the original version so that is something I would like to try out at some point in the future. 

I was aiming to get mini heart-shaped cakes (despite the fact that I'm a Valentine Grinch), but I over-filled my molds and ended up with some mushroom-topped cakes that looked nothing like hearts. Oh well, better luck next time. 

Please check out Chaya's blog Bizzy B. Bakes for the recipe (or pages 210-11 of Baking from my hoome to yours by Dorie Greenspan) and the blogroll here to see everyone else's versions. So far they've all enjoyed this cake better than I have. Next up we're baking Brownie Buttons. If you'd like to be a part of our baking challenge, please email  me at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have  you bake along with us!

Baking With Dorie: Apple Coconut Family Cake

There's something so rustic & comforting about the term 'family cake'. And I expected to like this one very much because of the unlikely combination of apples and coconut. As usual, I wasn't disappointed. 

I halved the recipe & used just one large apple for the filling. It may have been too little because my cakes were airy & moist whereas other BWD bakers described theirs as slightly 'mushy'. 

I used unsweetened, finely shredded coconut which lent a nice chewiness to these cakes & coconut was the dominant flavor here because I had subbed water for the rum. Once baked, I brushed my cakes with very little thinned orange marmalade because that is what I had on hand.

Verdict: very simple & delicious cake which, if given the chance to sit overnight, will taste even better the next day. Although this might be more of a 'cake for adults' as Tina said because even though my daughter 'helped' me make it (she layered the apples on top and then sprinkled them with sugar) she didn't quite seem to like it very much. Here's a look at one of her creations: 

If you'd like to get the recipe for this cake, please head over to Mia's wonderful blog Bright Morning Star, or to page 214 of Baking from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan. 

Next up, we're baking Coffee Break Muffins. If you'd like to join our baking challenge, please drop me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us!

Baking With Dorie: World Peace Cookies

It is so hard for me to describe these fabulous & famous cookies and so I can only summarize by saying that these are the most wonderful chocolate cookies I have ever had.

Closely related to sablés in texture, these cookies are light and sandy but with a stronger burst of chocolate flavor. The tiny bits of hand-chopped chocolate & intense cocoa flavor make them seem almost like a fudgy brownie. In fact the thicker they are sliced the more fudgy-brownie-like they taste because their middles are soft & the edges crispy.  I'd say this is a rather sophisticated, yet unassuming cookie.

Since I have zero will-power, I halved the recipe & wanted to use a Lindt Chili Bar in place of the dark chocolate required but then I discovered I didn't have it on hand like I usually do. So I added in just a little over 1 teaspoon of ground Chipotle Chili Pepper. That may have been a little  bit too much since I had halved the recipe - of course that didn't occur to me while adding it in. 

I had a few problems with the dough - it came together really well because I used softened butter. But after the dough had been shaped &refrigerated and I began slicing it, it would split in half. I pressed the sliced & split rounds together and baked the as they were while I refrigerated the log again. Eventually the problem solved itself when I sliced the cookies very thick which also meant very fat cookies. But I'm not complaining! 

I have to say the chipotle pepper added a deceptive heat to these cookies and, for me, it was an interesting blend of flavors. I should have added a little less chili powder because it pricked a little at the back of my throat. But here's the real surprise: my kids ate them. Not one each, but several - and they think 'the chili pepper is kind of nice' but 'these cookies are so, so good - they would be even better without the chili pepper'. I guess I was really pushing my luck with those chilies, wasn't I?

That said, I'm not done talking about these cookies yet. I wanted to compare them to chocolate sablés and figure out which I like better because I really couldn't decide.

Here are the sablés I used for comparison purposes:

One bite is never enough to decide. I took several: 

 

Was I any closer to deciding? No. 

The verdict: I love them both! The sablés taste far more buttery and were slightly little less sweet than world peace cookies.

The addition of fleur de sel  intensifies the cocoa flavor in the world peace cookies which, along with the hand-chopped dark chocolate, satisfies every chocolate craving I could ever have. They're not really like shortbread but taste more like double chocolate chip cookies with a pleasant saltiness.

Thanks for picking this recipe Rebecca! It was a wonderful way to roll in the new year. You can find the recipe for World Peace Cookies on Rebecca's blog Beurrista or pages 138-9 of Baking from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan. 

Next up we're making Apple Coconut Family Cake. If you'd like to join our baking challenge, please email me at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us!

Happy New Year to you all & I hope 2011 brings peace to all mankind!

Baking With Dorie: Tender Shortcakes

These baking challenges and this blog are turning out to be the reason why I have to hit the gym at 5 a.m. daily. Seriously.  

But does the guilt stop me from at least wholly consuming everything I make? Nah. You already knew that, didn't you?

This weeks' recipe was chosen by Susi of Susi's Kochen Und Backen Adventures & we're joined this week by two new bloggers who have joined our baking group.

I made these short cakes in a hurry this morning & was glad that it wasn't an elaborate dessert that I would have had to labor over.

I've never made shortcakes before, so I was a little perplexed over the dough which looked too crumbly and didn't come together as well as I had expected it to. I didn't want to overwork it, but had no idea if this was even what it was supposed to look like. 

So, I just took the plunge and baked a batch of 4 to begin with. And guess what happened: burnt the bottoms. I had better luck with the second batch which came out looking great and was only slightly scorched on the bottom. 

Now handling these cakes was tough - they were crumbly and using a serrated knife to slice them just didn't work. So I did what Dorie alternatively suggests: pricked with a fork all around and then just lifted the top off with a spatula & layered it back on after spreading the bottom halves with fruit & whipped cream.

For the fruit, I chose to use chopped mangoes with a squirt of lime (as suggested by Dorie on page 425) . Her original recipe asks for berries, but I used mangoes because they are my favorite fruit and it's hard to resist them now, with the beginning of mango season here. 

I also played around with the dough & took up one of Dorie's suggestions of adding powdered as well as candied ginger into the dough. And for me, the blend of flavors from the lime, mango and ginger were a real treat. 

All the shortcakes then  needed, was some simple whipped cream.

Please go over to Susi's blog for the recipe, and the blogroll here to check out the other BWD bakers versions.

Our next recipe, due on June 7, is the Lemon Cup Custard (page 387). If you'd like to join the challenge, please drop  me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com.