I feel like such a groupie!  In honor of TWD’s one year anniversary,  Dorie Greenspan picked this week’s recipe – her French Pear Tart, which you can find on Dorie’s website, or on pages 368-69 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.  I think this has now moved to the top of the list of my favorite Dorie recipes.  I used canned pears (according to Dorie, a very French thing to do, and I’m not going to argue), and regular old almonds (unblanched).  I used an adaptation of Dorie Greenspan’s Good for Anything Pie Crust, and substituted cream cheese for the shortening.

What can I say?  The dessert is absolutely fantastic.  Master Chow, my honorable husband, announced that this ranks with one of the best desserts he’s ever had – in a restaurant!  He could have eaten the whole thing, and thought that the canned pears (canned without sugar and in their own juice) worked out really well.  The filling combined with the crust to form almost a chewy cookie-like texture at the bottom of the tart.  The frangipane filling was light and flavorful.  I should point out here that I chose to use 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, along with 2 teaspoons of golden rum for the filling, and I’m going to use that again.  I also added a pinch of kosher salt to the almond cream.  And after making the Daring Bakers Buche de Noel (another fabulous dessert, but considerably more work), putting this together was a piece of cake.  Or tart, I should say.

Thank you, Dorie, for a great pick and a great book.  Please check out the blogroll to see how others have fared with the tart, and for an interview with Dorie.

A while back, I bought come extra sharp cheddar cheese at our local Costco.  All I have to say about the “extra sharp” adjective is – HA!  FAT CHANCE! It was about as sharp as a baseball.  Needless to say, I can’t stand wasting food, so I had to find a way to use it up.

First up, Bacon Cheddar Quick Bread with Dried Pears, (by Dorie Greenspan in the October 2008 issue of Bon Appetit).  Yes, I made something out of the magazine, even though I’ve been very disappointed with the change in format this year.  For me, the biggest strike against the magazine is the microscopic, hard-to-read font that they’ve been using.  A few months ago, I counted five different fonts on one page alone, and finally gave up.  And, I’m not alone in my disappointment over the changes in a much-loved magazine. I really appreciate Bon Appetit trying to keep things fresh and interesting, but I think they went a bit too far.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system (thanks for listening), what can I say about this quickbread recipe from dear Dorie?

Pros:  good texture and great idea. I will try it again, but I will tweak the recipe.  Dorie offers some great alternate flavoring suggestions.

Cons:  the flavor.  I hated the bacon and the sage, and I used a quality bacon from Whole Foods, and I usually like sage.  The aforementioned cheddar was completely indiscernible.  Neither Master Chow nor I would eat more than a slice of this bread (and I picked all the bacon out of mine), so it sits in my freezer.  If you decide to make it (and Brilynn had great results, so don’t be afraid), use a really, really sharp cheddar.  The kind that will put hair on your chest.

What I will do differently in the future:  no sage or bacon.  I will use blue cheese, and increase the pears and walnuts.  Did I say no sage?

On to experiment number 2 – a cheese souffle made with the same shameful IMPOSTOR of an extra-sharp cheddar cheese.  If you’ve never made a souffle before, you should know that it is very important to make a strongly flavored base, so that the dish actually tastes like something once it has been mixed with the egg whites, and baked.

I got to work and doctored this recipe from Food and Wine by adding both anchovy paste and sundried tomato paste, since I didn’t have gruyere (nooooo, I had a crappy cheddar).  Voilá! A pretty good cheddar cheese souffle and, unlike the savory bread, Master Chow had several servings of this, as did I.  If you used a really good flavorful cheddar, this would be excellent.  Recipe after the jump . . . .
continue reading "A Cheddar Cheese Tale"

A Sea of Chocolate Heaven

These cookies accomplished a number of things: (1) they helped me clean out my pantry of an alarming amount of chocolate that I needed to use up; (2) they kept me interested in Christmas baking; and, (3) they put me into a chocolate coma. Can life get much better than that?

I am so glad I followed Dorie’s instructions and used premium chocolate (the white chocolate chips that I used were Nestle, but I didn’t skimp on the other chocolates). I used a combination of Ghirardelli, ScharffenBerger, and Valhrona.

These cookies are dense, gooey, and intensely chocolatey. The white chocolate chips provide a startling contrast to the richness of the dark chocolates. I used dried apricots and pecans in the recipe, but next time I might try craisins like Brilynn did over at Jumbo Empanadas. At My Feasts, Maya used raisins and pecans. I don’t like cookie dough (I know, weird), but I had to restrain myself from eating this batter out of the bowl – that’s how good it was.

A few final thoughts. I thought that the apricots were a tad bitter, so I’m going to try another fruit next time. I also think these cookies are not particularly kid friendly (especially with the apricots), unless the child in question has a taste for something other than milk chocolate. Finally, don’t make the cookies too small. I found that a golf-ball sized blob of dough gave me a lot of cookies, yet maintained the gooey consistency inside.

Now THIS is chocolate cookie dough!

Chocolate Chunkers

Adapted from a recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan

1/3 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Droste Dutch processed cocoa)
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. baking powder
3 tablespoon unsalted butter – cut into pieces
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used Valhrona)
2 large eggs (at room temperature)
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
6 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped (I used Scharffenberger)
6 oz. white chocolate, chopped (I used Nestle’s white chocolate chips)
1 ½ coarsely chopped nuts ( I used pecans)
1 cup dark or golden raisins, plump dried apricots, or another dried fruit that you like.

Center rack in the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mats (don’t skip this step).

Sift together flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder. Melt butter with unsweetened and bittersweet chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. The chocolate should be smooth and shiny. Set on counter to cool.

Beat eggs and sugar on medium high speed until mixture is pale and foamy. Reduce speed, add vanilla. Then add cooled melted chocolate, and mix only until incorporated. Add dry ingredients. Do not over mix. Dough will be thick and shiny. Try not to eat all the dough out of the bowl.

Add semisweet and white chocolate chunks, nuts, and raisins. Drop dough onto baking sheets, making each cookie about the size of a golf ball. Leave an inch between dough. Bake for 10-12 minutes, but start to check your cookies at about 7-8 minutes. It’s very hard to tell if a chocolate cookie is “done,” and burned chocolate tastes terrible. Dorie recommends baking until the “tops of the cookies look a little dry.”

Cool cookies. These freeze very well.

These are for you if: (1) you love chocolate, (2) would like to find an excuse to eat it for breakfast, and (3) don’t like baked goods that are too sweet. I definitely like chocolate, and have a fondness for muffins that don’t make my teeth ache from too much sugar, so I thought I’d give these a try. I uploaded the photos before my entire computer crashed, so I have something to blog about!

The pros: a tender crumb, moist, crunchy top, and they freeze well. The cons: I will definitely switch to semisweet chocolate next time (they need it), and double wrap these muffins if you freeze them, or they pick up every flavor in the freezer.

I used Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate:

I made a couple of adaptations: I added 1.5 teaspoons of espresso coffee crystals to augment the chocolate flavor, and I sprinkled turbinado sugar on top of the muffins before baking.

Chocolate Chocolate-Chunk Muffins

Adapted from Dorie Greespan’s Baking, From My Home to Yours

6 Tablespoons unsalted butter

4 oz. bittersweet chocolate (next time I’ll use semisweet), coarsely chopped

2 cups all purpose flour

2/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup cocoa powder, sifted (I used Droste brand)

1 1/2 teaspoons espresso coffee crystals

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

1 large egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Center a rack in the oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter or spray a 12- slot muffin pan, or line with muffin liners. Place pan on a baking sheet.

Melt butter and half the chopped chocolate in a bowl over simmering water (or in the microwave). Add the coffee crystals and stir to dissolve. Take off heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, egg, and vanilla together until well combined.

Pour the buttermilk mixture and the chocolate mixture into the dry ingredients. Mix gently but quickly to blend, but do not over mix as this will toughen the muffins. A few lumps are OK! Stir in the remaining chopped chocolate.

Divide batter among the muffin tins. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a thin skewer inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean. Cool pan on a rack for 5 minutes before removing muffins from pan.

I am a big fan of Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. Her descriptions of each tasty treat, along with wonderful pictures, are enough for me to put on five pounds, just by reading. Alas, I do not have Kathy’s (of A Passion for Food) metabolism. That girl can eat!

So, I decided to try her Cream Scone recipe. Delicious. These are flaky with a rich, buttery taste. Ah, butter. Further proof that God loves us! Of course, I snatched one up right out of the oven – I should have listened to Dorie and let them sit for about 10 minutes. The flavor will really develop during that time, and the scones will pull together and not be quite as crumbly to eat.

There was a small mistake in the recipe (it called for currants but did not include an instruction for adding them into the dough). I tweaked it a bit to suit my tastes: I eliminated the currants and added chocolate chips, plus some vanilla bean paste. If you don’t have the paste, substitute two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Dorie gives great instructions on how to make the scones by hand, but they are a snap to put together if you mix the whole batch in a food processor so that you don’t over mix the butter or the dough.

 Cream Scones

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking from My Home to Yours”

1 large egg
2/3 cup cold heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons butter, cut in small pieces and chilled
3/4 cup chocolate chips
cream or milk, and sugar for glazing

Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 425 degree F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat.

Stir together the egg, cream, and vanilla bean paste.

In a food processor, pulse together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the butter and pulse about 5 or 6 times, until you have a mixture that includes both pea-sized and smaller pieces of butter. Add the cream mixture and pulse two or three times. Do not over mix! You will finish pulling the dough together in a moment. It should still appear rather crumbly.

Lightly dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Gently work in the chocolate chips. Knead only about 8 to 10 times as you pat the dough into a circle, about 3/4 of an inch thick. With a sharp knife, cut the circle into six wedges and place on prepared baking sheet.

Brush tops of scones lightly with cream or milk, then sprinkle with sugar. Bake 20-22 minutes until tops are golden and firm.

After removing from oven, let scones rest for about 10 minutes before eating them. If you have the willpower to do so, that is.