Has it really been 3 months since my last post????  I missed you blog-osphere, and I hope that I can stick around and visit for a while.  I have all sorts of reasons for my absence, but I’ll nip this conversation in bud right now.   My life is less than perfect right now, so I will leave it at that…  ***breathe***

With strawberry season in full swing, I was inspired to get off my rear and work on this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Double Crisp.     Two things intrigued me about this recipe – 1) the idea of a warm strawberry dessert and 2) exploring the ginger-strawberry flavor combination.   I didn’t go hunting for rhubarb, so I substituted with a chopped granny smith apple tossed with a healthy squeeze of lemon.

With only the hubs and myself at home, it only made sense to scale this recipe down.  The full recipe will serve 9, but a quarter of the recipe  made a perfect dessert for two. 

Dorie Greenspan’s recipe calls for a typical crisp topping  but with a little spicy surprise added to the mix — finely chopped crystallized ginger.  Some of the crisp topping is layered at the bottom of the baking dish.

The chopped apple (or rhubarb) is added, then a quickly cooked strawberry mixture is poured over.   With the apple substitution and the super sweetness of the in-season berries, I reduced the amount of sugar called for in the strawberry concoction by half.

The remaining crisp topping is sprinkled on top, and this beauty of a dessert is popped in the oven.  This smaller portion took only 20 minutes to bake.  I love how the topping became crispy with a beautiful golden brown color.

A scoop of homemade vanilla bean ice cream was the perfect accompaniament for this beautiful and delicious rustic dessert.

Cooking the strawberries really intensified its flavor, and I’m glad that I scaled back the sugar.  The berries and the apples were sweet, but not in that toothy-sugary way.  The ginger was a fantastic surprise, it provided a spicy undertone that helped balance the sweetness of the fruit. 

I now want to hunt down some rhubarb and try the recipe as it was originally intended…

Thank you Sarah of Teapots and Cakestands for a terrific selection this week!  Sarah has the complete recipe on her blog.

Wow, I can’t believe that it’s been over two months since I’ve updated my blog!   Life was getting a bit hectic and overwhelming, so I consciously decided to “unplug” over the holidays and take a breather.   I’m finally feeling on top of things again, and so happy to be back.  My google reader is bursting at its virtual seams as I haven’t been keeping up with everyone’s blogs, so I’ve got quite a bit of reading and commenting  to catch up on.

Writing about this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Lemon Poppyseed Muffins was the perfect way to get my blogging mojo back.    I’m so happy that Betsy of A Cup of Sweetness selected this recipe (you can find the detailed recipe at Betsy’s blog)!  I’ve been baking these exceptionally yummy breakfast treats on a regular basis for the past year, and I’ve been patiently waiting for someone to pick this recipe so I can gush about them. 

These muffins get their citrus zing from lemon juice and zest, and topped with a tart and sweet lemon glaze.    I enjoy the more assertive lemon flavor, so I usually double the amount of zest called for in the original recipe. 

A combination of butter and sour cream give these muffins its wonderfully moist and tender texture.  At times, I’ve substituted whole milk yogurt for the sour cream with no problem.

Finally, a healthy dose of poppyseeds gives these muffins that teensy bit of crunch to keep things interesting.

In the book, Dorie also suggests a jam-filled variation (I did a raspberry version here), which kinda reminds me of a jelly donut in muffin form.  Personally, I prefer the jam-less version as I think it makes the muffins a bit too sweet. 

So, what are you waiting for?  Go make these delicious Lemon Poppyseed Muffins today — your tummy will thank you!

I’ve been looking forward to making this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Not-Just-For-Thanksgiving Cranberry Shortbread Cake for a couple of reasons:

- Cranberries!  I’m a cranberry sauce junkie (don’t tell anyone, but I love the jellied cranberry sauce that comes in a can), and I love baking with those tart, ruby red berries.

- Shortbread Cake?  The recipe had me a little puzzled – it is categorized as a cake, but the instructions read like a bar cookie. 

The recipe is pretty straightfoward - a quick homemade orange-scented cranberry jam is sandwiched between two layers of shortbread dough.   This would not be your usual crunchy sandy shortbread, as leavener is added to the dough. 

Instead of using a 9″ springform pan, I insteaded opted to use an 8″x8″ square pan lined with parchment paper.  Once baked and cooled, it was ready to be served.

So, is it a cake…or is it a cookie?  For me, it definitely reminded me a bar cookie.  The shortbread portion is wonderfully buttery without being overly greasy, and is wonderfully soft and chewy.   The cranberry middle was so yummy – tart, but not too much, and it helped to balance the richness of the shortbread.     Cake, cookie – it doesn’t matter to me.  This dessert was fantastic and is definitely repeatable!  I’m looking forward to trying this with different fillings, and perhaps adding some spice to the shortbread dough.

Thank you Jessica of A Singleton in the Kitchen for a great selection this week!  Please visit Jessica’s blog for the recipe.

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Peanuttiest Blondies is for all of you peanut butter fanatics.  If you’ve been reading my blog long enough, you know that I’m not a big fan of peanut butter desserts.  Still, I’ve been keeping an open mind (and palate) and trying out these recipes.

Nicole of Bakeologie is our hostess this week, and you can find the complete recipe at her blog.  Here are my recipe notes:

- I didn’t have a 9×9 pan, so instead used an 8×8 square pan, which resulted with some very thick bars.

- I hand chopped milk chocolate in lieu of the chocolate chips.   Trader Joe’s delicious Pound Plus Milk Chocolate came in handy here.

- There were no salted peanuts in my pantry, so instead added some more chopped milk chocolate.   Leftover Halloween candy could be another great substitution.

- Using the smaller pan,  my blondies required an additional 10-15 minutes to the recommended baking time.  

My hubs took the blondies to his workplace, and these treats were devoured in minutes.    The consensus at my hubs work -  a resounding YUM!   

I reserved a couple of pieces for myself.  Dorie shares that these blondies are oustanding with ice cream, so I did as she recommended.   Thick and chewy, these blondies are way tastier than your average peanut butter cookie.

Finally, my first post for French Fridays with Dorie!   Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you seen the 700+ people on the blogosphere cooking and baking their way through Dorie Greenspan’s gorgeous new cookbook Around My French Table.    I’m particularly excited about embarking with the new group, as I’ll have an opportunity to work on more savory dishes — after all, my hubs and I can’t survive on desserts alone!

 For the month of October, the recipes were selected by Dorie herself.  Although the group will not be posting the recipes,  Dorie was kind enough to publish the October recipes here.  The savory recipes sound super delicious…I have some serious catching up to do. 

Go figure – my first recipe is a dessert!

This recipe for Marie-Helene’s Apple Cake is for all of you apple lovers.  It’s essentially a bounty of chopped apples with a little cake batter stirred in.  The cake has a little kick with a shot of dark rum.  Ridiculously easy to make, the cake can be prepped and in the oven in minutes.   The recipe calls for an 8 inch springform pan.  Argh — I have every size springform, except for the 8 inch.  I ended up using a 7 inch pan and a 4 inch pan. 

The mini made for a perfectly portioned cake for one!

After slicing into the larger cake, I was treated to a beautiful mosaic of apples.  This is definitely more fruit than cake!

I thoroughly enjoyed this cake — super moist, chock full of apple-y, rum-y goodness!   

I know what I’m having with my coffee in the am.

As promised, we’re continuing where we left off from last week’s Tuesdays With Dorie with the autumn pie theme.  Dorie is quite modest when introducing her recipe for All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie, only saying that her pie is PDG (pretty darn good), and asking that we make the recipe and judge for ourselves.   Our hostess this week is Emily of Sandmuffin, and you can find the complete recipe on her blog.

This pie starts with Dorie’s beautiful, flaky and buttery pie crust recipe.  Since discovering it via TWD a couple years ago, it is hands down my favorite pie crust recipe.  A couple weeks ago I was a crust making maniac, and now have 10 discs of beautiful pie dough in the freezer ready for any and all holiday pie requests.  Just pull a frozen disc or two to defrost in the fridge, and I’m ready to make pie!  Besides, if I make multiple batches of pie dough all at once, I only have to clean the food processor components once.  I love my food processor, but boy o boy it is a royal pain in the rear to wash. 

Now for the filling…

I made another mini-pie this week, and totally improvised the amount of ingredients needed for the filling.  It was definitely a “pinch of this, dash of that” kind of exercise.   I’m glad that pies can be forgiving in that way.  

Dorie’s pie making recommendations include:

- Spreading a layer of bread crumbs or graham cracker crumbs to minimize soggy crust syndrome.  I’ve followed her method for other double crust pies, and it seems to do the trick.

- Using quick cooking tapioca as the thickener.   It’s a matter of preference.   I like tapioca, but I think cornstarch or flour would also work just fine.

Once you pile on the apple filling, cover with the second disc of pie dough, and brush the dough with heavy cream, this pie is ready for the oven.

The pie smelled fantastic baking away in the oven.  

I don’t know if this is an issue, but after cutting into the pie, I noticed that there is a huge gap between the top crust and the filling, resulting from the apples cooking and settling.  Did any of you experience this with your pies?

With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I’m  ready to dig in.

YUMMY!   Dorie was too modest, as the pie is more than PDG.  The pie crust is buttery and flaky, and the fruit filling is perfectly cooked.  I like that the filling isn’t overwhelmed by too many spices, as it let’s the apple flavor shine.

This pie will definitely be making an appearance at our Thanksgiving dinner!

BTW, Dorie celebrated her birthday this past Sunday while on the road for her book tour.  Some of us thought it would be fun to surprise Dorie with a virtual French dinner.  I made crepes to mark the occasion, and you can check out the full dinner spread here.

Happy Birthday Dorie Greenspan!!!   Recently, Dorie has been a jetsetting maven promoting her gorgeous new cookbook, Around My French Table.  I hope that she was able to take a breather from the book tour to celebrate her special day at home with her family.   

I couldn’t believe that that Dorie’s book tour didn’t include Los Angeles as a stop (hello, a major market —- hint, hint book publisher), as I would have loved to meet my baking idol and wish her a happy birthday in person!   You see, my blog and I owe a lot to Dorie.   Baking: From My Home To Yours  and Tuesdays With Dorie were catalysts to start my blog two and a half years ago.   Little did I know that my weekly baking rituals for the blog would ignite my passion for all things pastry. 

A few of the dedicated TWD and FFwD bloggers wanted to wish Dorie all the best on her special day.  Since we couldn’t physically get together to celebrate, the next best thing was to put together a surprise birthday dinner.  This virtual dinner has a French twist, as all of the dishes are from Around My French Table.  You can check out the full birthday spread here.    A special shout out to Holly at Phemomenon, who was the mastermind behind this fantastic dinner.

I was being a little predictable when I volunteered to make dessert, so I wanted to challenge myself with a recipe that I would have never imagined making at home – crepes!  

As an FYI, the recipes will not be published on the blogs, as we’re encouraging all of you to go out and buy the book. This crepe recipe can be found on pages 411-413.   

I {heart} crepes!  I’m lucky to live a reasonable walking distance from The Original Farmer’s Market (3rd & Fairfax), where they have a delicious assortment of food stalls.  On Sunday mornings, armed with our morning reading materials, my hubs and I make a beeline to The French Crepe Company.  We love their crepes – a savory egg and cheese crepe for the hubs, a sweet fruit crepe for me.   With this yummy food stall so close to home, I never thought about making crepes at home.  Besides, I’ll admit that I’ve been intimidated by those impossibly thin pancakes — delicious to eat, but seemingly a royal pain to make.

With the gauntlet thrown for myself, I went out and purchased a crepe pan and set out to make crepes at home.  BTW, I purchased my crepe pan at CostPlus World Market for less than 10 bucks - now that’s a deal!  

The batter is super easy to make with pantry accessible ingredients, as well as a naughty twist with rum and grand marinier.   Once the batter rests in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, we’re ready to make crepes.  My first couple of attempts were pretty disasterous (sorry, no photos as they were not appetizing).  By crepe #3, I finally got the hang of it, and was able to crank out the crepes in no time.

Now, the fun part — the fillings!  I decided to go all out with a generous schmear of nutella,

a few sliced bananas,

a generous amount of sliced strawberries,

and top the whole thing with powdered sugar and whipped cream! 

Wait, one more thing….

make a wish Dorie!  Happy Birthday!!!!

We’ve diving headfirst into the holiday baking season with this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Caramel Pumpkin Pie!  Janell of Mortenson Family Memoirs is our hostess this week and you can find the recipe for this pie on her blog. 

Dorie Greenspan takes your traditional pumpkin pie recipe and elevates it with a homemade caramel sauce.  She encourages that we cook our sugar to the brink of no return.  You will be rewarded for that act of bravery,  as the end product has a gorgeous dark amber color.    This intense caramel was a key ingredient for another TWD recipe, Burnt Sugar Ice Cream, and I have step-by-step photos of the sugar cooking and with a bit of cream at the end transforming into this: 

As my hubs and I can’t restrain ourselves around pumpkin pie, I downsized and made a small 6 inch baby pie (which is a perfect pie for two).    I only needed a 1/3 portion of Dorie’s scrumptious, no-fail pie crust recipe and 1/2 portion of the filling.  In the spirit of tweaking the traditional pumpkin pie, I decided to go along with Dorie’s “playing around” suggestion and top the pie with streusel. 

Once the pie baked and cooled, it was time to dig in.  A dollop of slightly sweetened whipped cream was all that this pie needed.

This was definitely not your run-of-the-mill pumpkin pie.   A lot of people equate caramel with toothy sweetness, but  that was not the case here.    The dark caramel infused the filling with a smoky, slightly sweet flavor.    The unexpected yummy surprise was the streusel topping.  It provided a nice crunchy, nutty complement to the filling.    If you looking for a pumpkin pie recipe with a little umph, look no further…this pie will deliver!

If you’ve got pie on the brain (like me), make sure to check in next week…more holiday pies are on deck!  In the meantime, check out the TWD blogroll for more beautiful pies.

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Fold-Over Pear Torte was a bit of a mystery to me.  Even after reading through the recipe, I had no idea what this recipe would look like or taste like. 

As the torte starts with Dorie Greenspan’s fool-proof pie dough recipe and is layered with fruit and nuts, I first thought that it would be similar to a fruit crostada.  So, why did I to line the pastry dough in a springform pan?

My original assumptions went out the window once the vanilla and rum scented custard is poured into the pan.  Now, I know how essential it is to use a springform pan to support the sides of the torte:

As the pie baked, the custard set and browned along with the crust.   My torte took  a bit longer (15 minutes) more that the 60-70 minutes detailed in the recipe, and the longer time in the oven browned the custard portion a bit too much.

I would have liked to leave you with the above as a final image of this torte.  After slicing through the torte, I wasn’t too thrilled by the way the filling looked:

The pears took on a grey-ish hue, and I think it was the combination of  the fruit being sliced thinly (as my pears were not very ripe) and having it sit for a few hours in the fridge before it was put into use. 

Don’t judge a book by its cover, as torte was quite tasty.   I really enjoyed the fruit filling, and the vanilla and rum scented custard was a delicious surprise. 

I’m definitely going to try making this torte again sometime soon, and hopefully next time it will look as good as it tastes.  For the complete recipe, head on over to Laws of the Kitchen.  To see what a proper torte should look like, make sure to peruse the TWD blogroll.

(Last week’s giveaway winner is announced at the end of this post…)

I actually baked and photographed these cookies back in September, but I dropped the ball and didn’t get this Tuesdays With Dorie post up in time.  Better late than never, I say! 

 Selected by Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine,  this recipe for Peanut Butter Crisscrosses is Dorie Greenspan’s take on your classic peanut butter cookie (check out Jasmine’s blog for the complete recipe).   I’m one of those wierdos that like peanut butter on sandwiches and straight out of the jar but don’t enjoy PB desserts, so I’m going to have to defer to those who are PB aficianados to give these cookies a grade.

This recipe was easy to whip up, and my only change to Ms. Greenspan’s original recipe was to substitute mini chocolate chips for the chopped nuts.  The cookies were packed up and taken to the hubs workplace, where I heard they were devoured in minutes.    Now, that’s a testament to the yumminess of these cookies!

Finally, the winner of the the kitchen scale, mini cake pans, and mini measuring tools is lucky #13 —-  Kathy of The Sugar Queen Bakes!  Congratuations Kathy!