Birthday Treats

A little someone turned 5 a few days ago. The celebration wasn't a big one but the anticipation was huge this year. It wasn't for the cake and goodies or even for birthday gifts but for the fact that she was turning **five**. I still don't know what the big deal about being 5 is, but the magnitude of relevance attached to the number is evident from one of several conversations overheard around here these past few weeks:

Daughter: "So, I'll be the mommy and you can be my two daughters"
Friend #1: "No, I'll be the mommy because I'm bigger than you : I'm 5"
Daughter: "Well, I'm going to be five next month so I can be the mommy"
Friend #1: "I'm five and-a-half"
Daughter: "You are not bigger than me. (stands next to friend so their shoulders are touching)We are the same size - see?"
Friend #2: "I'm also five! I want to be the mommy!"
Daughter & Friend #1: "No you are not. You're just three and-a-half. You're a baby. Babies can't be the mommy"
Friend #2 (beginning to have the-mother-of-all-meltdowns): "I'm not a baby! I'm not three! I'm five! I'm five!!"
Daughter & Friend #1: "You are NOT FIVE. You are JUST three-and-a-half"
Friend #2: "I AM FIVE!!!" 
Daughter & Friend #2: "Fine!! Then we are not playing with you!" (And they stomp off, leaving me to deal with a wailing, feet-stamping, miserable 3.5 year old)

Did you just get emotionally drained reading all that? Because I did, just retelling it. Imagine re-living this same conversation at least a couple of times each week. Do you think such unwarranted self-importance deserves a sweet celebration? I don't.

But I melt.

Because this is my little girl who is not a baby any more but also not quite the 'big girl' she would like to be. I am filled with amazement and pride as I watch this little person grow into who she will be one day and my heart fills up with love at the sight of her. Very much her own person from the moment she was born. I love how strong she is, how sure of what she wants. I admire that about her. There is no one quite like her: bossy, fiercely loving, thoughtful, compassionate, independent, deeply sensitive beneath her bravado, creative, silly, talented, funny ... on the move all day long. Being her parent is sometimes so challenging because we tend to lock heads: each of us as stubborn as the other. Some days I just want to throw in the towel and go hide in a cave. Parenting is just so hard. Why didn't anyone ever tell me that?

But it's so wonderful too. You know what they say about how having children makes you feel like you are watching your heart walk around outside your body - that is how I feel when I look at my kids. Literally, at times, it's a physical ache. I can't even get through a blog post about them without getting deeply emotional. So! Let's talk about tea parties and cupcakes!

The cupcakes I made for my girl are actually based on Ina Garten's highly popular Beatty's Chocolate Cake. I picked the recipe because my daughter is a big Ina Garten fan and watches The Barefoot Contessa on Food Network with an avid interest akin to which  most other kids watch cartoons. I left the recipe mostly untouched aside from omitting the egg yolk from the frosting and decreasing the amount of espresso powder in the frosting to only 1 heaped teaspoon. The cupcakes were for kids so I was uneasy about using a raw egg yolk in the frosting and I don't think it suffered from the omission. In fact, I believe it's the frosting that makes these cupcakes. It's quite delicious - especially after the reduction of the espresso powder as recommended in several of the 1589 (no, I did not read them all!) reviews on Food Network. I also consulted this comparison of chocolate frostings on the Crumbly Cookie blog while I briefly contemplated using a different kind of frosting for these cupcakes just in case I was unable to substitute/omit the egg yolk. It seems from the photos on Crumbly Cookie that the addition egg yolk must add more texture because her frosting seems to hold a better shape than mine did. But I don't mind because I did not intend to pipe shapes with it. That said, I'm intrigued to know if you have tried using an egg yolk in a frosting recipe? Does it make a difference? Is there a substitute?

Now because I subscribe to the 'less is more' school of thought, I had to make the birthday cake using an entirely different recipe. You might argue that I didn't need to make a birthday cake at all when I had 24 cupcakes on hand and only 7 guests (all family!) other than the one friend my daughter wished to spend her birthday with. But this is me we are talking about. And me at 3:30 a.m. when I'm faced with choosing between Beatty's Chocolate Cake and Dorie Greenspan's Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake. Ever indecisive and unable to risk shaking the husband awake or texting a friend at such an early hour to ask the quintessential 'what shall it be? Ina Garten or Dorie Greenspan?' question I had to just go with it and bake both. Madness, yes.

This cake - well, let me say I am not sorry I baked it. I read the P&Q on the TWD website and I saw that it (especially the buttercream) got mixed reviews but, honestly, I just love this cake. It's the perfect birthday cake. I especially love the buttercream - it's not saccharine like buttercreams tend to be and I did not find it to be either grainy or gritty. I had no problems at all whipping it up and it was fairly smooth with a very faint, but not unpleasant, crunch from the chocolate malted powder. The recipe asks for malted milk powder and I had chocolate flavored Horlicks on hand so that is what I used. I did add the optional melted and cooled chocolate in the cake batter and even though the cake was slightly on the drier side it would be just fine if made as a layered cake, with thick layers of frosting in between. I didn't do layers so each slice consisted of a whole lot of cake and not enough frosting. But, like I said, this is easily remedied. The cake improved while it sat around and was completely gone by the 3rd day so I can tell you that it keeps well, covered and placed on the counter, for 3 days. If it lasts that long. The recipe can be found on Page 256 of Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here.

I was completely washed out by the end of the day. But you know what, she loved it all. The cake. The cupcakes. Her 'tea-party for two' with her best friend... so the lack of sleep, tiredness and everything else seems of little consequence.

The highlight of her day, though, seems to be this little snippet I overheard:

Daughter to her friend: "I'm 5 now. You can't tell me any more what to do because I'm the same age as you"

Happy Birthday, my lovely one. May you have many more.

Baking With Dorie: Quintuple Chocolate Brownies

Five kinds of chocolate in a fudgelicious brownie. 

This is the gooiest, most chocolatey treat I've made in a while. Dense and so fudgy you need to chase these brownies down with a glass of cold milk. But I'll be honest. I don't like the white chocolate frosting and wish I had paid attention to my instincts and left it out. Maybe it's the quality of the white chocolate I used. Or maybe it's the fact that we're not a white-chocolate-loving family. 

But don't let me dissuade you. These brownies are good. Very, very good. Chewy & packed with chocolate flavor. I don't think I need to say a lot more to convince you what a great idea it is to bake these. 

For the recipe, please head over to Shahieda's blog Decadent Delectables, or to page 99 of Baking from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan. Please visit the blogroll here to check out everyone else's posts. 

Next up, we're baking Rhubarb Cherry Cobbler, picked by Ryan. If you'd like to join our baking challenges, please drop me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us! 

Baking With Dorie: Chocolate Chunkers

Dorie says these cookies are fabulous - and so who am I to argue?

Between you and me, I can't stop snacking on them since I made them yesterday. They're insanely good. Almost like a fabulously fudgey-brownie masquerading as a cookie. With a whopping 19 oz of different kinds of chocolate going into the batter, these are a chocolate-lovers dream come true. 

Want to see what I mean by fudgy? Take a look: 

And there's not just chocolate - there are nuts and dried fruit going in there too. I mistakenly added 1.5 cups of whole peanuts instead of chopped ones, so there were a lot of nuts in my cookies, but I really enjoyed the added toasty-crunch and the saltiness from the peanuts. The only thing I would change next time is that I would use dried cherries instead of raisins because they would add more color and contrast in flavor. 

This was Laurie's first pick - thank you Laurie for picking this recipe! Please head over to Laurie's blog Cookin' Up North for the recipe. You can otherwise find the recipe on pages 70-72 of Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan. 

Dorie suggests churning crushed bits of these cookies into home-made ice cream. So I made a pint of Dorie's wonderful & creamy Vanilla Ice Cream (Page 428 of BFMHTY) and added in broken bits of these chocolate chunkers for a twist on my husbands' favorite Cookies n' Cream ice cream. I'm saving it for him till he gets back over the weekend, so I have no idea how good it tastes. But by the looks of it, it's a winner.

Please check out the blogroll here to see what all the other wonderful BWD bakers did with this weeks' recipe. 

Next up, we're baking Banana Cream Pie (Pages 342-3, BFMHTY), chosen by Rebecca of Beurrista. If you'd like to join the challenge, please email me at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us.

Baking With Dorie: Milk Chocolate Mini-Bundt Cakes

First of all, I am so sorry for the belated post. My blogger account acted up last night and wouldn't let me publish on time.

That said, weeks' recipe was chosen by Jennifer, The Rookie Baker, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected to. I went the cupcake route (since I don't own a mini-bundt pan) and also skipped the swirl altogether. Un-frosted, these turned out to be a perfect treat. 

The chocolate flavor in these cakes is not as overwhelming as I had hoped for it to be, but they are wonderfully moist and have just the right balance of sweetness making the glaze almost unnecessary. I have to stress on 'almost' because I am sure that if I had gotten the glaze right, these cupcakes would have been even more wonderful. 

I tried, honestly I did. But all I got was an un-spreadable blob. Let's call it my first BFMHTY-fail. I'm sure there is a way to get it right, but it just didn't work for me this time. See:

Looks more like a thick frosting than glaze :(

But my daughter loved it

For the recipe, please head over to pages 188-9 of Baking: From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, or Jennifers' blog and take a look at the BWD blogroll to see how the BWD bakers did this week.

Next up, we're baking Chocolate Chunkers (Page 70, BFMHTY) chosen by Laurie of Cookin' Up North. If you'd like to join us, please drop me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake with us!

Baking With Dorie: Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

Chaya saved me the effort of making myself a birthday cake tomorrow by choosing this recipe for the BWD challenge this week. It's just what I wanted: simple, non-fussy and, judging by the deliciously caramel-sweet aroma of brown sugar and apples infusing my house, deeply comforting and flavorful. 

I'm afraid I can't say much about the flavors because I haven't sliced into it as yet - I'm doing what Dorie suggests and keeping it on the kitchen counter, tightly-wrapped. Till tomorrow. So that I can have myself a birthday cake. And I'm so sure it's a winner, like every recipe of Dories' that I've baked so far. 

You can find the recipe on Chaya's blog or on Page 179 of Baking: From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan. Be sure to check out the other BWD bakers here and here. This week we were joined by two new bakers - welcome Laurie & Rebecca! 

Our next challenge, coming up on August 30th, is Milk Chocolate Mini-Bundt Cakes on pages 188-9 of Baking: From My Home To Yours and has been chosen by Jennifer. If you'd like to join us, please drop me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have  you bake along with us!

M&M and Chocolate Chip Cookies

It is my sons' first day at school today. Also his first day in the 1st grade and in a new school.. I felt the same tug at my heart this morning, leaving him in his new class, that I had felt the day I dropped him off at his Kindergarten class for the first time. According to my husband I am quite literally worse than my kids and have more separation-anxiety than they do.

Sigh. Where did my baby boy go? 

That's him, hiding his face with his hand and probably thinking, 'Get a grip Mom'.

 

Okay, I admit - I'm having an emotionally-wrenching kind of day. But lets get over that already.  Let me introduce to you my sons' favorite chocolate chip cookies. The ones he requested as an after-school snack today - with 'a glass of really, really cold milk'. 

The recipe is very slightly adapted from Dorie Greenspans' 'Best Chocolate Chip Cookies'  & is the first recipe of Dories' that I ever tried, a little over two years ago. Much before I owned her book and before starting to Bake With Dorie. I've made these cookies several ways, countless times. My most favorite way to make them is the 'cocoa chocolate' version with peppermint extract - it's like biting into an After Eight chocolate. 

But I didn't make them that way today. I had started by wanting to - but when I was measuring out the dry ingredients, I 'forgot' to add cocoa powder and only realized my mistake when the cookie batter came together and it wasn't brown. Oops.

Too late to turn back, so I threw in M&Ms for fun instead of nuts. From the grin on my boys' face, I can tell they're yummy.

 

M&M and Chocolate Chip Cookies

slightly adapted from Dorie Greenspans' Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, found on Page 68 of Baking: From My Home To Yours

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

2 sticks butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 tsp peppermint extract

2 large eggs

12 ounces or 2C chocolate chips

1 cup finely M & Ms

Center a rack in the oven and preheat oven to 375F. Line two baking sheets with parchment. 

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. 

In a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for 1 minute. Add the sugars and beat for 2 more minutes. Beat in the vanilla and then add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Reduce the speed and add in the dry ingredients in 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is incorporated. Mix in the chocolate chips and M&Ms. 

Scoop tablespoons of dough onto the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between each spoonful (these cookies spread a lot). 

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes (rotating the sheet at the midway point) or until they are brown on the edges and golden in the middle. Remove from oven, allow to cool on sheets for 1 minute before removing to wire rack to cool.

Baking With Dorie: Mango Crumb Cake

I'm back. The hiatus is over. And I've discovered yet another delicious way to incorporate mangoes into a BWD challenge. This week Tina of My Domestic Bliss chose the Blueberry Crumb Cake and I had no choice but to play around with the recipe.

I have to admit that I didn't plan this one. It happened quite simply because I'm back home after days, had no time for grocery shopping and mangoes and pecans were what I had on hand. I love mangoes. I love streusel toppings. And I love pecans. It couldn't go wrong.

And I was right. This cake is light and super-moist; the buttery, sugary, streusel adds a nice crunch. The flavors from the mango in the cake and the cinnamon in the crust came together to form a complex flavor instead of overpowering each other. For me - the streusel is the super star in this recipe. There is nothing I didn't love about this bake!

Thank you for choosing this recipe, Tina! You can find the recipe on Tina's blog, My Domestic Bliss, or on Pages 192-3 of Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Please check out the blogroll here to check out the other BWD bakers. Our next challenge will be posted on August 16, and it is the Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, chosen by Chaya of Chaya's Comfy Cook Blog. If you'd like to join us, please drop me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us!

Baking With Dorie: Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie

I'm speechless. Really. 'Sublime' doesn't quite cut it. 

This cheek-puckering, silky lime cream with its' hint of ginger surpasses the velvety deliciousness of the lemon cream we made for the Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart.

One of my favorite things about baking is the element of surprise - nothing really matches the fun of trying out a new recipe and then being bowled over by how much you love it. And so I have to admit that the lime cream was a delicious surprise. Combined with Dorie's sweet & flaky pie crust and the cloudy meringue, that does nothing to fight the zingy flavors at play, this pie is awesome. Awe-some. I played around with Dorie's suggestions (but you already knew I would) and added a layer of ginger and lime-infused mango cubes underneath the lime cream, but the flavor from the mango was barely discernible. I didn't mind. Didn't I already explain how the lime cream makes this a sublime pie?

A *huge* thanks to Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101 for picking the recipe this week. For gluten-free versions of this pie, please head over to Gluten-Free Baking 101. And please take a look at the BWD blogroll to check out everyone else's scrumptious pies. 

Our challenge for 2nd August is the Blueberry Crumb Cake and has been picked by Tina of My Domestic Bliss. If  you'd like to join us, please email me at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us!

You can find the recipe for the Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie on pages 337-339 of Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or right here after the jump: 

Baking With Dorie: Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake

It is impossible to look through Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan and not stop to drool over the photos of this cake. A brownie base with salted peanuts and sticky, gooey, dripping caramel . . . it had my name all over it & so I was very happy to be able to pick the recipe for this weeks' Baking With Dorie challenge. 

It takes hardly any time to make the cake and it came out looking perfect, but it was cakier than the  super-moist, fudgy brownie I had been envisioning all along. It caved in while cooling, but Dorie already tells us to expect that it will. So, no surprises or panic attacks there.

Next up was the tricky part: making the Caramel. Needless to say, I've never made it from scratch before. Since I made this cake in a frightful hurry, at the eleventh hour, I completely forgot that I could have referred to David Lebovitz's post on how to make Caramel. And Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101 has added a wonderful step-by-step tutorial within her post this week - just in case you want to get some great visual tips on how to get it right.

Otherwise, Dorie's directions are very clear and guide you right through the process. The only thing was, my caramel took longer to cook than the 10 minutes she said it would. But that has mostly to do with the size of saucepan I used and how much heat I gave it. I really didn't want to burn the caramel since I had very little time to start from scratch all over again, so I watched it like a hawk for maybe 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I had fun doing the 'white plate test' every couple of minutes:

The fun part came next - mixing in the nuts and then pouring everything over the cake. Dorie recommends waiting till the caramel is completely cool before releasing the sides of the springform pan. But I just couldn't wait, because: 

a) I'm highly impatient

b) my kids were hovering around me like flies, wanting to poke their fingers into the cake that they just couldn't wait to eat (now I wonder where they get that from?)

c) I'm highly impatient. 

And this is what happens to impatient people who not only remove their cake from the pan but also slice it right away: 

Yup. Caramel Explosion. Never mind that it looks mouthwatering. 

Next time I'm going to have to listen to the wiser, saner Dorie and let things be. The wisdom in that would have been that the caramel would have set up a little, and some of it would have soaked through and made the cake very moist - almost fudgy. The next morning, this tasted somewhat like a chocolate-peanut version of a sticky-toffee pudding. Do I really need to say it was scrumptious!

One tip: Dorie suggests we don't dump the entire quantity of caramel over the cake and that we should be left with a lot more than we actually need. As usual she's spot on, so, don't be tempted. Less is definitely more as it will make your cake exceedingly sweet.

To check out what the other bakers did with this weeks' recipe, please check the blogroll here and here. Our next challenge, coming up on July 19, is the Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie, chosen by Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101. If you'd like to join the challenge, please drop me an email. We'd love to have you bake along with us!

You can find the recipe for this cake on pages 264-5 of Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Or you can find it right here after the jump:

Baking With Dorie: Summer Fruit Galette

Ever since Elizabeth picked the recipe for this weeks' challenge, I've been constantly dreaming about this galette. I felt it was another very versatile recipe that could be varied in many ways. I dreamed up, in elaborate length, what I would do with it & was meant to bake the galette before I left for our short holiday. But with so many things to do before we left, the galette took a back seat and I had to bake it in a hurry this morning. 

I had already decided, before I left, that I would make it with pineapples. The other recommended fruits are in season (apricots, plums, peaches), but I found the freshly cut rings of pineapples so appealing when I was out grocery shopping one day that I decided right then I'd have to use them in the galette. 

For the jam, I used a thin layer of homemade mandarin marmalade and topped it with a generous amount of crushed Speculoos (my current addiction) & spooned over just a little custard before baking it for the second time.  For those who don't know what Speculoos are: they are traditional Belgian bisuits that are crisp, caramelized and slightly spicy. After eating my way through many, many Speculoos-flavored gelatos and ice creams, I have still not had enough and I felt the slight gingery-spiciness would go really well with the pineapple.

And now I wish I had some ice cream to go along with this galette that is so delicious, warm from the oven. So delicious, in fact, that you'll wish you had made enough dough for a 9" double crust. It made me wish, also, that I had enough time to make the ice cream I had originally planned to go along with it. A summer gallette does seem kind of lonely without ice cream. 

Thanks for choosing this recipe Elizabeth! For a gluten-free version of this dessert, please go over to Elizabeths' blog Gluten-Free Baking 101. 

Check out what the other BWD bakers have done with this weeks' challenge by checking out the blogroll here or here. For the recipe, please go over to Tina's blog My Domestic Bliss, or pages 366-7 of Baking: From my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan.

If youd' like to join us for our next BWD challenge on July 5 (Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake, pages 264-5), please drop me an email. We'd love to have you bake along with us. 

Baking With Dorie: Lemon Cup Custard

If you've read my previous blog posts about BWD challenges, you'll know that I try to play around with these recipes - taking my cues from the alternative suggestions in the book. So, even though I chose the recipe for this weeks' challenge, I already knew I'd end up making anything but the Lemon Cup custard. 

And how glad I am that I tried other variations. In fact, I tried two: the espresso-cinnamon cup custard and the orange-star anise version. I'll eat anything with cinnamon in it (I even eat fruit with a generous sprinkle of cinnamon), so I knew I was going to love the espresso custard. And I did. 

The most enjoyable part of this challenge was baking these custards. I used espresso cups to bake my espresso-cinnamon custard and halved the recipe because I wanted to try more versions. The custard came out slightly jiggly after 20 minutes and I felt I might have under-baked it just a little.

I had plenty of custard left over but own only 3 espresso cups (don't ask me why). Since I was obsessed with the idea of making it in small cups, I baked the remaining amount in my daughters' tea cups (from Ikea). I loved how cute they looked:

This time I baked for 20 minutes again and it seemed just right. I cooled the custards overnight and dusted with cocoa powder right before taking these photos. I know it looks like specks of chocolate here but it's actually cocoa powder that just turned strangely solid, speck-like as soon as it came in contact with the very cold custard. 

Regardless of how strange it looked, the espresso custard was lovely - the texture was that of a classic baked custard but there was no eggy taste because of the strong flavors from the espresso and cinnamon (I think I may have used a lot of cinnamon - but I did say I love cinnamon, didn't I?)

Since I'd made the Espresso Custard a week back, I still had plenty of time to do another version but it was hard to decide which one. I almost discarded the idea, but then Tina sparked my curiosity by talking about the 'egginess' of the custard and how bakers from TWD had been generally unhappy with this custard because of the eggy factor and the lack of strong lemon flavor. 

I knew then that I had to do another version and find out for myself. I'd been partial towards the idea of Orange and Star Anise quite simply because I've never had a dessert flavored with star anise. Where I come from, star anise is used primarily in meat dishes, and then also, sparingly. The closest I've come to having it in something non-savory is green tea. So I was skeptical but too curious not to try it out. 

Again, I halved the recipe and used the zest of 2 oranges instead of 1. I had a star anise with just 3 points so I threw the whole bud into the milk instead of removing 3 points from it. After the milk came to a boil, I removed it from the heat and then let everything infuse for about 45 minutes (or a little more) instead of 30.

This time, I baked the custard in a bowl instead of ramekins so I wasn't sure about the baking time and may have over-baked it just a little because the center jiggled only slightly. The custard smelled slightly eggy & I couldn't be sure the orange flavor had really come through because once again, I refrigerated the custard overnight before finally tasting it the next morning. 

Let's just say it was simply wonderful! It took a few minutes for my taste-buds to adjust to the idea of star anise in a dessert, and then there was no looking back! It was slightly over-baked, but still very flan-like in texture with a wonderful burst of citrus flavor and the surprising warm undertone from the star anise. This recipe was, for me, a winner in every way and I may never go back to making custard with short-cut instant mixes when it is so simple to make it from scratch, and that too, with so many variations.

Do check out the BWD blogroll here and here to see the other versions of this dessert by my fellow BWD bakers. If you'd like to join us for our next BWD challenge on June 21 (Summer Fruit Galette, chosen by Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101), drop me an email - we'd love to have you bake along with us.

You can get the recipe right here, after the jump:

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. 

Baking With Dorie: Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte

Dorie Greenspan: where were you my entire life? 

My husband and I love a good cheesecake & so I've attempted to make it a couple of times in past years and always found it to be one of those elusive things that I just can't quite get right. Either I would burn the crust, under-bake the filling or the filling would split in the middle - making a very messy looking cake. In fact, I've never been able to make a cheesecake with a filling that didn't crack. And I've always found the recipes I've tried to be too sweet, too heavy.

When Elizabeth of Gluten Free Baking 101 chose this recipe for this weeks' Baking With Dorie challenge, I was prepared for cheesecake-fail. But then I thought: so far Dorie hasn't let me down & so maybe this time I would finally succeed in making a good & smooth-looking cheesecake!

The ingredient list called for cottage cheese which isn't available locally where I live & Ricotta is prohibitively expensive, so I told my baking partners Susi and Elizabeth that I would be making my own cottage cheese. 

That is easy enough. But then I couldn't come up with cherry jam and decided to make my own jam as well. I used David Lebovitz's directions for making cherry jam using two pounds of cherries; half fresh sour cherries and half frozen, dark & sweet ones. The directions are available here. Since I wanted a very thick jam, I used only enough water to cover the cherries, added the zest of two whole lemons and followed the rest of David's directions. The jam was ready in around half an hour & I've had a very, very hard time restraining myself from eating any of it before I could use it for the baking challenge today. It is so good & I like it even better than my homemade strawberry jam. 

Susi joked that I've turned this week's challenge into a Daring Bakers challenge by making all the ingredients by scratch. It's been a bit of work in that sense & I've stretched it over a couple of days like I did with the lemon tart we made for the last challenge, but I enjoyed it so much. 

I finally got around to baking the torte this morning. Dorie's instructions are easy to follow, and I thought I got everything right. . . 

But: my cake split again :( 

I got past my disappointment, waited for the cake to cool slightly and dusted with icing sugar. 

I released the sides of the pan but didn't try to remove the base of the spring-form pan that I baked in - just in case I broke the bottom of the crust and I didn't want to deal with that kind of disaster at this point.

Then I cut myself a slice of not quite-as-yet-cold-cheesecake. Pure heaven. I can only imagine how much better it will taste when completely chilled.

I think I finally succeeded in making the perfect cheesecake: perfect crust, smooth filling (except for the cracks) that wasn't too sweet. or too heavy Simple to make. Thank you Dorie! I've gotta tell you: I really love you!

For the recipe, check out Susi's page & do go over to Elizabeth's blog and see how she made a Gluten-Free version of this torte. 

Our next challenge is Tender Shortcakes on Pages 423-424, picked by Susi. If you would like to join the challenge, please drop me an email.

Baking With Dorie: The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart

I have been more than ready for BWD Monday: this has been the longest, most exhausting and emotionally draining week for me. And so this recipe for Lemon Cream Tart, chosen this week by Elizabeth of Gluten Free Baking, was just what I needed to help me unwind. 

I turned it into a weekend project, and let me tell you: making this tart was a real labor of love. I started by making the lemon cream a day in advance. Now I love all things lemon - and any desserts with 'lemon' in the title sound wonderfully light and refreshing. Which is why I gawked a little when I read the recipe and discovered how much butter just the lemon cream requires: 21 tablespoons!! Yes, you read that right. 21. And 9 more in the tart. Did you just feel your arteries clog up upon reading that? I did! 

This was a tough one: I had to decide whether to play around and reduce the amount of butter or just go ahead and make it the way it is. But since this was my first attempt at making any kind of tart, I didn't want to mess it up. So, I chose the latter option, and decided to make mini-tarts and spread the love, so to speak, instead of making one large tart. 

The lemon cream: let's just call it extraordinary and leave it at that. Because I can't find a better word to describe how lovely it is: less sweet than lemon curd, tangy and silky with a burst of citrus flavor. In short: the stuff MY dreams are made of. 

Now if only it contained less butter! 

It took me just a little over 10 minutes to prepare the cream. I don't own a double boiler so I prepared it in a stainless steel bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. I wasn't really sure if I was getting it right - my candy thermometer crept up to almost 180F but the cream didn't look very thick to me. So I left it on for a few more minutes and then strained it into my food processor. My butter was very, very soft so it got incorporated pretty quickly. And my food processor didn't even protest, like Dorie had predicted it might. 

I still don't have much of a sense of smell and can only catch faint whiffs of stuff. Most of the time it is undertones that other people can't smell at all which makes me a freak of nature, so all I could smell was the eggs in this cream while I prepared it. I couldn't smell the lemon at all. While pouring it out into a jar for refrigeration, I decided I was going to give all the tarts away because I was definitely not going to like eating something that smelled so egg-ish. 

And then I licked my spatula. Oh my. 

I decided right then: I'm not sharing! 

And I also decided that I had to do one better than just simple Sweet Tart Dough and make it with either pecans or almonds. The lemon cream really deserved that little extra attention to detail.

So I reduced the amount of flour and made the Sweet Tart Dough with ground pecans like Dorie suggests. And I wasn't disappointed. I really loved the hint of nuttiness they lent to this tart.

Once again, the dough was easy to make and I didn't need to knead it at all because I figure I over-processed it and it formed a ball of dough right there in my food processor. I didn't have mini-tart molds with removable bottoms so I lined my mini tart pan with foil, which I greased lightly, pressed the dough in and froze the pan for half an hour. 

Since I have never made tarts before, I wasn't sure how thick the shells should be. And I had been warned by Susi that the dough could get flaky, so I kept them on the thicker side and made just 6. 

I ended up over-baking a little because I forgot that I was using a dark pan and should have reduced the temperature. No harm done: the tarts came out great. They were a little puffy in the middle so I pressed them down gently with the back of a spoon as soon as I got them out of the oven. I didn't put them back to bake longer even though the middles looked like they might be a little under-baked - I was too afraid I'd burn them because the edges were brown already. 

The only problem I had with this recipe was that when I took out the lemon cream out of the fridge the next morning the texture was not soft and pillowy as I had imagined, but a little on the harder side. I figured, I must have added a little more butter than called for: that is the only explanation I could come up with. Our sticks of butter here are not marked with tablespoon measures so we really  have to eye-ball it. 

Leaving the cream out on the counter for a short while solved the issue - it softened up and then I simply whipped it a little before adding to the tarts. The whipping seemed to have done the trick because I refrigerated the filled tarts, and hours later the cream was still soft. So it wasn't the quantity of butter after all. 

Will I make this again? Yes : but only if I can find a way to reduce the amount of butter in the cream. I really, really loved the lemon cream and artery-clogging it might be, but I am still going to save the leftover cream in my freezer and think up other uses for it. I dipped some gingersnaps in it & I loved the combination of flavors so it could be great as a filling for gingersnap sandwiches. Or something. I'll find a way to use it.

I'm beginning to think that every recipe in this book is extraordinary & I'm loving Baking With Dorie.

Check out what my fellow bakers Susi and Elizabeth have done with their Extraordinary Lemon Cream Tarts. 

For the recipe, follow me . .