Pfefferneusse

It's marathon cooking baking today as I promised to supply ten dozen cookies to an open house of a local conservatory tomorrow night!  How lucky that I have Dorie Greenspan's new book, Dorie's Cookies.   

One of the recipes I am making is Pfefferneusse, cute little rounded spicy cookies that are dipped in some slinky chocolate.

Here are three of them by the gingerbread house I made this year.

Caramel Tart

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers baked non-chocolate goodies.  I baked the Caramel Tart which seemed very easy to me, until I realized that the ease in baking is all because of Dorie.  Having baked through her Baking from my Home to Yours, and halfway through Baking Chez Moi, I've learned a great many techniques.

This tart has a lovely sweet tart crust which I chose to pat in rather than roll.  It did make it a bit thick, but it is so tasty that no one complained.  I found the flavor of the caramel filling to be wonderful:  not overly sweet, not overly delicate, in other words it was just right.

Looking at what other bakers said last week, I carefully skimmed off the foam (which I ate and it was tasty!).  The tart was lovely on its own, however I decided to add just a little chocolate sauce.  How long can I go without chocolate?  Not very long apparently.

Peanut Butter Change-ups

I like peanut butter cookies and so of course I liked this new version by Dorie Greenspan.  The dough was lovely and soft and I took her advice and used my cookie scoop to form the cookies.  This made a lot of cookies, but they didn't last long!

I think when I make them again, I might try drizzling a bit of chocolate on top, or going whole hog and dipping them in chocolate.  Maybe with some crushed peanuts on top of the chocolate.  Yummy!

Apple Speculoos Crumble

I love Dorie's Speculoos recipe and so the thought of having crumbled cinnamon cookies on top of baked apples seemed like such a great idea.

I made the Speculoo dough and weighed it out, baking only what I needed.  No surprise, the cookie dough weighs more than the baked cookies, but I had figured that in when I was deciding how many cookies to bake.

Dorie says to break up the cookies with your fingers and to be careful so that they don't turn into teeny, tiny crumbs.  I had the opposite result:  mine were rather chunky.  I debated whether or not to roll them out a bit, but finally decided to go with chunks--I mean, what's the problem with eating cookie chunks in your apple crumble?

My apples are Northern Spy, the best variety, in my opinion, for pies and crisps.  They have fantastic flavor and they soften up when baked but they don't turn mushy.

The result was yummy and my husband's opinion is that he prefers the speculoo cookie topping over my more traditional brown sugar/oats/flour/butter topping.  I'm sure I'll be baking this again!

To see the results of other Tuesday with Dorie Bakers, check out this link.

Speculoos in the bowl

Mixing--sort of--the chunky speculoos and butter.

Northern Spy apples

Out of the oven

With ice cream

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

I am so very excited to be baking cookies out of Dorie Greenspan's new book, Dorie's Cookies!  I baked three different recipes within days of when the book arrived and they are each unique and wonderful.  I'm so used to baking recipes from her other books, that I usually only need to look at the ingredients because I have internalized the instructions.  But what a pleasure to read and try these new recipes!

One of the first batches of cookies I baked was Chocolate Sandwich Cookies.  The dough is very easy to work with chocolate dough, made with cocoa.  Dorie had some great hints about rolling out the dough but since I haven't bought spacers yet, I just rolled it out as evenly as possible, stuck it in the freezer and cut the rounds when I was ready to bake.

They baked up perfectly--I was surprised at how well they held their shape.

The filling is simple, spreads well, tasted great and was just the right amount.

I took these to a potluck pig roast and they were much enjoyed by all.  One woman asked about them before she tried them and took just one.  Soon she was back for another ...and another ...and another!  I think I'll be making these again and I look forward to "playing around" with them.

We're off to a good start with Dorie's Cookies!  Check here to see what the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers baked this week.

Mixing the butter and confectioner's sugar

The dry ingredients:  cocoa from Mexico, flour, etc.

An artistically stacked pile of cookies

Easy to eat three at time

Pear Tart with Crunchy Almond Topping

It's apple and pear season and so this week the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers baked another apple-y/pear-y dessert.   Last fall, I baked the Pear Tart with Crunchy Almond Topping recipe, but the pears I had on hand were brown and icky on the inside when I cut them up so I ended up using mostly apples.  It was delicious, but this year, I was luckier in my pear selection.

The tart is Dorie's basic sweet tart dough for a base, with a filling of diced pears that have been sautéed in butter with a little sugar added to caramelize them and a little brandy to add some kick.  The tart is topped with a very simple topping of sliced almonds, egg whites and confectioner's sugar.

One of the many reasons that I am a fan of Dorie Greenspan and her cookbooks is that the fun she has when baking is apparent in the way she writes her recipes.  She tells you, for example, that the best tool for mixing the topping is to use your fingers.  How wonderfully satisfying it is to play with food!

Everything went together well and we enjoyed this delicious tart with a little scoop of ice cream.

Check out the blogs of other Tuesday with Dorie bakers here.

And one last thing:  I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention that yesterday UPS delivered my copy of Dorie's Cookies!  I am absolutely grinning with excitement as I anticipate baking all of the wonderful recipes in her new book.  Yayyyy!!!

Custardy Apple Squares

The local apples are just coming in and they seem especially delicious this year.  Or maybe I'm forgetting that here in upstate New York we have absolutely terrific apples.  At any rate, I'm happy to be baking with them.

This week I made Dorie Greenspan's Custardy Apple Squares.  It's sort of a cake however there is very little cake batter and lots of thinly sliced apples.  The only tricky part is slicing the apples but this time I used a madeleine so it wasn't tricky at all.

Here are the ingredients, all assembled.

(I did add rum, which didn't make it into the photo!)

And the final product, out of the oven and ready to serve.

My husband was hosting a meeting at our house last night and this was perfect:  seasonal, not too heavy, pretty to look at, and went well with tea.