There are I few “easy” pastry skills that I have yet to master. Marbling is one of them. I’m not mad at the way my Coconut-Milk-Chocolate Marble Cake looks, but you can see on the inside that it is more chunked than marbled. I guess that just means I get nice big pops of each flavor.

This loaf has one yellow cake batter taken two different ways: a chocolate way and a coconut way. I did a little tinkering with each to boost the flavors. I replaced a couple of tablespoons of butter in the cake batter with coconut oil. I mixed dark chocolate instead of milk into the chocolate half. I dripped some coconut extract into the other half and toasted the shredded coconut. I scooped alternating bloops of each flavor into my loaf pan and marbled (but not really, apparently) the whole thing. This is a nice moist cake with a favorite flavor combo.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

Biscotti are a favorite to have in my cookie tin. A recipe makes lots, but they keep forever and are perfect with the last few sips of morning coffee. If I didn’t know about the cornmeal in these Cocoa-Cornmeal Biscotti, I probably would never have guessed it’s in the mix. They taste chocolatey, not corny. But since I do know about the cornmeal, I’ll say it gives the biscotti a little extra crunch and craggle. I added a splash of almond extract to go along with the sliced almonds that stud the cookies.

Any other time of year, I would take Dorie up on her suggestion to dip or drizzle these in chocolate. It’s way too hot in my kitchen in the summer for that– even tempered chocolate would wind up a melty mess. I sprinkled my biscotti log with turbinado before baking as a consolation prize.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. We are almost done with the book, but don’t let that stop you. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

The final tart from BWD!! Sometimes the last one to be picked turns out to be a surprise superstar, like me on the elementary school kickball team, or like this Candied Almond Tart. This was pretty easy to make– a sweet, cinnamon-scented crust with a simple filling of sliced almonds coated in a quick caramel sauce. Once baked, the crust gets crisp and the filling gets pleasantly chewy. It made me think of a PAYDAY candy bar, with almonds instead of peanuts. I sprinkled a little flaky salt on top. The tart slices super nicely, and we found it’s best to just pick up your slice and eat it by hand…not the best manners, but cleaner and easier than using a fork. Last but not least, this was really good and it kept well for a few days.

This recipe is in Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

I assume that Corn Toasties are a riff on Thomas’ Corn Toast-R-Cakes, which I admit I’ve never had, but have always appealed to me all the same. Just tall enough to split in half and slather with butter, these cute little golden cornbreads are baked in a jumbo muffin tin. They’re a little sweet, not too crumbly, and truly are anytime cakes. They’re good for breakfast, good with a bowl of chili, and Dorie says they even make fine berry shortcakes and tomato sandwiches. I froze what we didn’t eat right after baking, and they reheat very well– in the toaster, of course!

If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

Mary Dodd, Dorie’s recipe tester and right-hand lady, has brilliantly taken a plate of chocolate chip pancakes with a side of bacon and a river of maple syrup and turned it into a cookie. Her Maple-Bacon Chocolate Chip cookies remind me of being in high school and grabbing a booth at IHOP with my friends.

I don’t eat pork, so I used (gasp) turkey bacon for the bacon bits. I had to replace the bacon fat in the dough with extra butter, since turkey bacon doesn’t really render much of anything, and I used smoked flaky salt to finish my baked cookies to bump up the smoky flavor that may have been missing with my swaps. I scooped the cookies a bit smaller than the recipe says (maybe 3 tablespoons instead of 1/4 cup), but they still baked up thin, wrinkly and bendy, just as Dorie describes, and they were still pretty big.

If you like sweet and salty, then these are for you. A cup of coffee is a natural go-with here.

We’re baking from the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

When we made our Meringue Snackers a couple of months ago, I piped some of the meringue into disks so I could assemble a couple of Little Marvels, a recipe I’d skipped when it came around last June. Little Marvels, aka Merveilleux, are light and delicate meringue and whipped cream sandwich cakes. There’s a famous French shop called Aux Merveilleux de Fred specializing in these treats with locations here in NYC, so I have had them a few times.

I know from my visits to Fred that, while chocolate shavings are the traditional Marveilleux coating, you can get pretty creative with the flavorings. I spread each meringue disk with a smear of dulce de leche, flavored my cream with some coconut extract and coated the Marvels in coconut chips. I had to be quite gentle when assembling these, but I didn’t find them too hard to make. They are indeed quite marvellous and a bit fancy.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

These Chocolate-Tipped Cream-Puff Pocky Sticks are a fun homemade take on the favorite Japanese sweet snack. Thin lengths of piped choux pastry make the sticks, which are baked and then coated in chocolate glaze. While I did actually measure my piping tip, I clearly piped my Pocky a bit on the thick side. In fact, some wise guy asked me if they were breadsticks. I tipped them with the matcha white chocolate coating and sprinkled on some tiny sugar pears. While my chubby Pocky didn’t fully dry out in the oven, the exterior was crisp. They retained a bit of that cream puff softness in the middle, but they were really good anyway.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

A yogurt cake is a classic French home dessert, so it’s no wonder that, as a part-time Parisian, Dorie has made it a classic dessert of hers as well. Mixed by hand and infinitely adaptable in terms of flavor, it’s a true anytime cake. I think we’ve made at least a few versions by this point in our bake-alongs, but this one– a Berry Yogurt Cake– is particularly suited for summer, when fresh berries are at their peak.

In the cake, I used a combo of the sweet local strawberries that are at the farmers’ markets here now, and the always-in-season frozen blueberries I keep around for my post-workout smoothies. I have a packet of raspberry juice powder that I used to make a fruity, pink glaze. The batter has almond and vanilla extracts plus rose water for an intriguing background flavor. Greek yogurt, oil, and of course those juicy berries keep it moist for days, even if you have to store it in the fridge.

If you don’t have the book Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every third Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!

Dorie has lots of good ideas up her sleeves for madeleines, and these Tea and Honey Madeleines are another creative twist on the classic shell-shaped cookie-cakes. Of course we think of dipping our madeleines into tea, but these have the tea built right in. The melted butter in the batter is both browned and infused with Earl Grey tea leaves. A bit of zest further amps up the citrusy notes, and I happened to have some bergamot zest in the freezer (once in a while my little local fancy grocery gets a box of them in), so I used a pinch of that.

When I pulled my mads out of the oven, I was pleased to see the signature humps popping out of the pan, but then my smugness immediately tuned to worry that they were too dark on the shell side. The ups and downs of baking, am I right? In fact, they are perfectly soft, rich and cakey inside, so maybe it was just all that browned tea-butter making them so golden. They are very fragrant and flecked with bits of tea leaf…there’s only one left, so I probably should have made a full batch.

If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!