Chocolate Creme Sandwiches

My first impression of Dorie Greenspan's newest cookbook, Dorie's Cookies, is that it looks like a textbook.  It is so square, heavy, and full of coloured photos - it reminds me of my university biology textbook.  I am so looking forward to reading and baking from this book.

For this first posting with the Tuesdays With Dorie online baking group we had a choice to make chocolate sandwich cookies or peanut butter cookies.  I made the chocolate sandwich cookies because I had all the ingredients:  butter, sugar, egg, flour, cocoa, vanilla, salt.

The recipe is clear and helpful in explaining how long to mix as you add ingredients, both for the cookies and the filling.

I have a small kitchen and rolling out dough always seems like such a big production.  With this recipe the dough is frozen for an hour after rolling, and then cut into rounds.  My round cookie cutter is plastic, and I had trouble cutting the frozen dough, but as it warmed the task got easier.

These are tasty cookies, and we will enjoy eating them.

Custardy Apple Squares

Custardy Apple Squares is a quick and easy recipe.  Peel and slice three apples thinly.  Make a batter with flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, and vanilla.  Combine the batter and the apples in a square pan, bake, and 40 minutes later you have a lovely apple cake.

The recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi lists variations with pear, mango or quince and additions of rum or other liquor or almond extract.

The simple, unadorned flavor of this cake is what makes it outstanding.

Pear Tart with Crunchy Almond Topping

One of the challenges of baking my way through Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi with the Tuesdays With Dorie online baking group is that each recipe is brand new to me, and I never know if it is going to turn out well or not.  The uncertainty lies more with my baking ability than with the recipes which are clear and well written.  In any case I don't usually plan to serve my creations at a dinner party.

I made an exception this week with the pear tart, which I served at Canadian Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a great success.

The recipe is straightforward.  Make a shortbread crust, prepare a filling of pears cooked in butter and sugar, and top with a mixture of egg whites, confectioners' sugar, and sliced almonds,  My only goof was forgetting to butter the pie pan before patting in the crust, which made the tart a bit hard to serve.

Edouard's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies, with a French twist.  That's what I baked this afternoon to participate in the Tuesdays with Dorie online baking group.

The recipe is similar to the basic North American chocolate chip cookie recipe, but with more flour and the addition of hazelnut or almond flour.

"Chewy and rich" was the comment from the first taster.  The cookies are quite substantial and if I was going hiking this week I would bring them along.

Esquimaux Pops for Grown-Ups

This week I made Esquimaux Pops for Grown-Ups for the Tuesdays With Dorie online baking group.

I made several substitutions because I wasn't comfortable using raw eggs and I wanted the dessert to be alcohol free.

If you are a vegan or read vegan food blogs you will have heard of aquafaba ("bean water").  This is the liquid from canned beans.  It sounds disgusting, but amazingly it whips up just like egg whites.  I've been wanting to experiment with aquafaba and this was a good opportunity.  I used the leftover liquid from an unsalted, BPA free can of navy beans.

Here's how it looked after whipping:



It did not taste like beans, in fact it was pretty tasteless.

Because I wasn't using liqueur I wanted to add another flavour, so I put in a frozen banana.  Frozen bananas whipped up in a food processor make good banana soft serve ice cream, so I thought this would work well.  Unfortunately the cold banana made the melted chocolate mixture harden up, so I heated the mixture gently in the microwave and carried on.

Thinking that the banana was sweet I didn't add the confectioners' sugar called for in the recipe.  This was a mistake, as the final result could have been sweeter and more flavourful.  My taster suggested that almond extract would have made a nice addition.

After reading about other people's difficulties in getting the pops out of the molds I just froze the mousse in a single container.  I leave it out to soften before serving and that works well.  It was fun to play around with this recipe.

Philadelphia Blueberry-Corn Tart

It was truly a pleasure to get in the kitchen and prepare the tart for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie online baking project.

Philadelphia Blueberry-Corn Tart, from the Tarts and Galettes section of Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi, is an unbaked cheesecake with two special ingredients.  I confess I didn't use one of the ingredients, fresh rosemary.  Corn, the other unusual ingredient, was right there in my freezer, so in it went, adding a crunchy texture to the topping.

All who tasted this creation enjoyed it.  Blueberries, lemon, whipped cream, and cream cheese - delicious!

Cornmeal and Berry Cakes

It was fun to get back to baking again with Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Cornmeal and Berry Cakes, from Baking Chez Moi.

This is an easy quick bread recipe that uses cornmeal, lemon, and fresh raspberries.  Our raspberry bushes are not doing well this year, but I was able to pick enough ripe berries for this project.

The recipe is written for four mini loaf pans.  I made three loaves in slightly bigger pans.

I really like cornmeal in baked goods, and the other tasters also enjoyed the flavor and texture.