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: 

Blogging Break

You know you're in trouble when your 2.5 year old draws a person for the very first time - and it's you, but you're wearing a frown.

So, that's it - I'm taking a break. I have actually been very efficient  (even though I've been blogging sporadically) and have quite a few future posts that I drafted & took photos for in advance. I was going to publish them over the course of this month, but I've changed my mind. Apart from the BWD challenge that's coming up next Monday, I will not be doing any posts for the rest of July.

I'll spend this time chilling out with the kiddos, before my son goes back to school in a couple of weeks, and hopefully won't have to hear him whine, 'but I hate it when you're always so busy, Mama!' 

See you when the hiatus is over! 

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from something I received in a forward some time back, as well as a very old song that I really love & used to sing to my baby sister as a lullaby many, many moons ago . . :

To my child:

(...)Just for this morning, I am going to step

over the laundry and pick you up and take you to the park to play

Just for this morning, I will leave the dishes in the sink, and let you teach me how to put

that puzzle of yours together

Just for this afternoon, I will unplug

the telephone and keep the computer off, and sit with you

in the backyard and blow bubbles.

Just for this afternoon, I will not yell

once not even a tiny grumble when you scream and

whine for the ice cream truck, and I will buy you one

if he comes by

(...) Just for this afternoon I will let you

help me bake cookies, and I won't stand over you

trying to fix them

Just for this afternoon, I will take us

to McDonalds and buy us both a happy meal so you can

have both toys . . 

Just for this evening, I will hold you in my arms

and tell you a story about how you were 

born and how much I love you.

Just for this evening, I will let you

splash in the tub and not get angry.

Just for this evening, I will let you

stay up late while we sit on the porch and count all the stars

Just for this evening, I will snuggle

beside you for hours, and miss my favorite tv shows

Just for this evening I will run my

fingers through your hair as you pray, I will simply be

grateful that God has given me the greatest gift ever given. 

Versatile Blogger Award

I was recently presented the Versatile Blogger Award by the lovely Sage Trifle . Thank you so much Sage Trifle! I'm so very flattered!

The guidelines for accepting this award are : 

Thank the person who gave it to you

Tell 7 things about yourself

Pass the award on to 15 bloggers whom you have recently discovered, and think are fantastic. 

First things first - 7 random things about me:

• I love making lists. They make me feel calm & in-control. My day can be pretty chaotic at times so it helps me to sit down, shut out all the noise of daily existence, and focus on making that list!
• I don't really like sea-food very much, but I'll try everything at least once.
• I think the first ever thing I made in the kitchen, at the age of 10, was a crisps-and-ketchup sandwich: a generous layer of crinkly potato crisps crushed between two slices of bread smeared with tomato ketchup. I don't know what I was thinking.
• There is nothing I enjoy better than sitting in a quiet place and reading a book.
• I think snowfalls are one of the most magical sights in the world.
• If I won a million dollars, I'd buy an apartment in one of the Islands surrounding Istanbul. And one in Paris, of course ;-) 
• I love people who make me laugh (I wouldn't have married my husband otherwise)

I follow a lot of blogs and I don't always have time to read them all, but I always enjoy posts by the following bloggers when I do eventually manage to make the time to do so. Here's a list of fantastic food blogs I have discovered in the past two months or less, I hope that you'll enjoy them as much as I do:

1. 80 Breakfasts 
2. Allotment 2 Kitchen
3. Chaya's Comfy Cook Blog
4. Cook & Be Merry
5. Cream Puffs in Venice
6. Delicious Delicious Delicious
7. Dinner with Julie
8. Eat, Run, Read
9. Food Loves Writing
10. Gourmet Worrier
11. i am baker
12. Lost Past Remembered
13. My French Cuisine
14.  Taste of Beirut
15. The Purple Foodie

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:

Nutella-Cherry Sandwich

Were you beginning to think I forgot that I have a food blog? I did get a bit carried away there with the travel photos, didn't I? Sigh... I might go back there... but right now it's time to present you with a serious sugar rush in the form of this sandwich. This isn't really a recipe, but just inspiration to play around with that jar of Nutella you have sitting on your kitchen counter.

Remember that cherry frozen yogurt I made? Remember I strained the cooked cherries? Well, I didn't throw them away. Here's what I did with them: 

I spread two slices of whole-wheat bread with Nutella. Spooned the cherries over one half.

Spread the outsides lightly with margarine, sprayed a non-stick frying pan with cooking spray & grilled lightly on both sides (around 3 mins each).

Nutella has a way of making everything dreamy, doesn't it?

Care to join me for another walk through Paris?

I am not ready to leave Paris behind as yet, so please indulge me a little longer if you will. 

There are so many reasons why this trip was so special to me. I've been meaning to visit Paris for years and gave up an opportunity to be there for a brief visit almost a decade ago. How I regretted that decision for years! Being there now, finally, I was hit with a strong wave of nostalgia: a reminder of many, many good times and lovely friends.  

How could I feel nostalgic about a place I have never been? Because the very first formal job I ever had was at the Alliance Française in my hometown. I worked there for a few years and was immersed in a completely 'French' environment. I made a lot of friends, was exposed to not only the language but also French culture & got to meet a diverse group of artists from France; some of whom became friends that I have kept sporadically in touch with over the years. But sadly, there are many friends that I lost touch with - through my own fault, more than anything else. Being in France gave me the opportunity to look them up and reconnect with a few. And it felt wonderful. 

As we approached Paris and prepared for landing, all I could see below was a bed of thick clouds. It was like descending into nothing - which was a little disconcerting but at the same time reminded me of what Baudelaire (I think it was him) said, " J'aime les nuages.. les nuages qui passent la-bas . . des merveilleux nuages!". That thought came out of nowhere & was the first of a series of random literary references that swam through my head the entire time that I was there. 

After a rainy landing, we were there. 

It took a while for it to sink in that I was really there, I was in France. 

I barely slept that night. After taking a nap for two hours, I was up again because I had to work on an assignment for school. I got over with it around 5 a.m. and then, because I couldn't sleep & because I couldn't stand it any more, I went for a walk at 5:45 a.m. The guy at the front desk of our hotel gave me a very strange look as I was walking out the door and I should have understood why: because the only other people out on the streets at that time were trash-collectors. 

 

We were close to the Champs Elysees, so I walked down the avenue, down Boulevard Haussmann, and then through winding streets until I reached my hotel after almost two hours. Paris was a very sleepy town, there was little traffic - even at 7 a.m.- and I felt completely wide awake: intoxicated by the beauty of the city. 

I finally managed to take another brief nap before we went out to explore the city later in the morning . . and then I went and got really sick later that night. I think it was just a combination of lack of sleep & jet-lag, but I had to sit around nursing a really bad case of flu for the next two days. All I had energy for, was bus-tours. And while I got really good photos out of the experience, my kids were essentially tortured for two days! 

And then I was back on my feet and walking all over the city again . . 

Or taking little Cafe-breaks and sitting around just watching traffic and passersby. 

 

Or taking photos of cafes . . 

Or of my other obsession: Parisien Metro signs

  

And while winding streets are charming . . . 

. . some of them also contain surprises:

 Walking through streets is not all that I did . . among other things we did with the kids, we went to the fantastic Jardin d'Acclimatation & it was hard to tear my kids away at the end of the day .

 I wouldn't mind living in the Jardin d'Acclimatation - it's magical and beautiful, with lots of surprises. Like this little guy who decided to take a walk alongside us:

I felt a bit like this statue upon leaving France . . 

"C'est comme une rêve" remarked a child, sitting in front of me in the plane, as he stared down at the city we were departing from. And he was so right because it really was a dream. . 

Did you enjoy the walk with me? I have lots more photos where these came from and I took them doing what I do best: walking randomly and aimlessly across cities. A friend of mine once asked me in a letter, years and years ago: " fais-tu toujours de grandes promenades?"  (do you still take longs walks?) and I would have to say, yes I do and I love it still. 

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. 

Paris - one last time

I took the train to Paris for the last time yesterday morning, leaving my sleeping family behind so that I could have one last visit. . I got there early in the morning and here's the route I took . .

Rue Montorgueil was sleepy-town when I got there. .

But there were still temptations to be found:

Back near the Quartier Latin

Gotta love Parisien windows

Au revoir Paris

Que Je T'aime, Paris!

This is why I'm so quiet... No words needed. . Just enjoy the promenade with me . . .