Oasis Naan

Twice a month the Tuesdays with Dorie crowd bakes from Baking with Julia.  This week the recipe is Oasis Naan, a flat bread made of a very plain dough, seasoned with coarse salt, scallions, and cumin before it goes into the oven.  It's supposed to be a FLAT bread.  To make it flat, you roll it out and prick it determinedly with a fork.  Actually, you're supposed to use a special tool.  Perhaps the tool really is important, because mine were rather poofy.
Or maybe too much yeast.  Or maybe mine was determined to be poofy -- take a look at the bubble that formed when the dough was rising:

I chose to let the bread dough rise overnight in the fridge.
It rose beautifully and grew an impressive bubble!

I divided the dough into 8 more or less equal parts and let them come to room temperature.

Rolled them out, dribbled on water, pricked them, sprinkled on salt, scallions and cumin.
Into the oven on the pizza stone.

They came out poofy.  Here they are, cooling off.

Served warm with hummus, olives, carrot, celery and red pepper sticks,
stuffed grape leaves, mushroom & tomato bruschetta with parmesan . . .  

. . . an assortment of cheese and a bottle of wine!

A delightful dinner!

Hungarian Shortbread and Gooey Chocolate Cakes

It's not that I haven't been baking, it's just that I haven't been posting.  Somehow without the regular once a week deadline that I had when I was baking through Dorie Greenspan's Baking from my Home to Yours, I have fallen out of the rhythm of posting every week!  Then, too, to be honest, baking through Dorie's own recipes was much more exciting/interesting/wonderful than baking through a collection of other folks' recipes.

Today I'm catching up a bit.

I baked the Hungarian Shortbread in Baking with Julia and brought it to a potluck brunch with friends.  Highly complimented, not too sweet, pretty, easy to serve.  The technique was interesting in that you make the dough, chill it, then grate it.  I froze the dough and grated in the Cuisinarte which worked great and I used some delicious blackberry preserves which were given to us by house guests.  I think I could make this again--especially if I remember to make the dough ahead of time.

I am still playing catch-up with the last few recipes in Dorie's BFMHTY.  So last week I made her Gooey Chocolate Cakes which are made in muffin tins.  They are supposed to be served warm because they are gooey inside.  Dorie suggests using disposable aluminum tins which seem to be just the right size.  I made these to serve to a small group of people coming to our house for a meeting.  Anticipating that they would be really rich, I cut them in half, added a scoop of ice cream and a fresh blackberry.  Quite tasty!  Very chocolatey!  Really needed an ice cream friend on the plate!  

I now have just 10 recipes to bake from Baking from my Home to Yours.

This looks like a small portion, but actually it was just right.  Very satisfying chocolate, lovely ice cream, and a berry to finish it off!

Lemon Loaf Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie  treat was a lovely lemon loaf cake.  You can find the recipe in Baking with Julia or on the blogs of the hosts this week:  Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life. 

This is a pound cake that is wonderfully lemony on its own without having to dress it up with a glaze (although that would have been good, too!).  Delightfully simple:

The zest of three lemons.

One lovely loaf.

Pizza Rustica

When I saw the title of this week's choice for the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers I was really excited.  We have been conducting weekly pizza experiments in our house--thin crusts, preheating the pizza stone to 500 degrees, lovely toppings--oh, my mouth was watering.  And then I looked at it and saw that it was more quiche-like than pizza-like.  I must admit to momentary disappointment.

Despite the name tease, this was really delicious.  The crust rolled out like a dream, and while not flaky after all that beating, it was perfect.  The filling of eggs, ricotta, and prosciutto was just right.  And it was fun to do a diagonal lattice that wasn't woven but looked quite pretty.

I made this exactly according to the recipe in Baking with Julia but I can easily imagine variations:  mushrooms, bacon, spinach would all be good.  

We ate it warm and then had it cold the next day.  They were equally yummy!  My husband has mentioned about 5 times that I can make it again any time and I'm sure that I will.

Irish Soda Bread and Unbelievably Good Chocolate Blueberry Blueberry Ice Cream for the First day of Spring

I've always been underwhelmed by Irish Soda Bread.  I guess it's because I expect something called BREAD will either taste yeasty like a nice, crusty loaf  or it will be  moist and flavorful like banana bread.

This week's Tuesday's with Dorie pick was Irish Soda Bread.  Carla of Chocolate Moosey and Cathy of My Culinary Mission are the hosts and the recipe is available on their blogs.

Quick and easy to make, this bread is tender and flavorful due to the buttermilk. I thought I had enough buttermilk for the recipe, butI didn't have quite as much buttermilk as was needed so I used some milk and yogurt.  The texture was soft and the bread tasty.  It was rather like a big biscuit!  We ate the first slices with cherry preserves for brunch and had the rest for dinner with soup.  I don't know whether or not it was good the next day because there was none left!

The dry ingredients.

Ready to go into the oven.

The last few slices to accompany our soup.

For me, a more certain sign of spring than the Irish Soda Bread was Dorie's Unbelievably Good Chocolate Blueberry Ice Cream from Baking from My Home to Yours.  

When my kids were small, we started a tradition of  having ice cream sundaes for breakfast on the first day of spring.  My boys thought this was an absolutely amazing tradition!  Now that they're grown, I still have a little dish of ice cream for breakfast on the first day of spring.  This year I made Dorie's Unbelievably Good Chocolate Blueberry Ice Cream--and it was!  Happy Spring!

Chilling the custard

Stirring in the blueberry preserves

My little ice cream sundae with blooming daffodils!  We are having a very early spring!

Rugelach

The new Tuesdays with Dorie project is to bake through Baking with Julia.  I'm still not officially finished with Baking from My Home to Yours, although I only have 13 left to bake.

This new group is just getting started and because these recipes tend to be a bit more complex and show-offy, we're doing two a month instead of one every week.  On the one hand, that doesn't seem like enough baking, and on the other hand, it gives me an opportunity to re-bake some of my favorites from Baking.


This  week's recipe was Rugelach and you can find the complete recipe at  Jessica of My Baking Heart or  Margaret of The Urban Hiker. 


I can't help but compare it to Dorie's Rugelach recipe in Baking:

BWJ:   butter and cream cheese dough that needed chilling

BFMHTY:  butter and cream cheese dough that needed chilling

BWJ:   cylinder shape, then cut into 1" pieces
BFMHTY:  triangles rolled into crescents

BWJ:   homemade apricot lekvar (easy and fun to make ...and very tasty)

BFMHTY:  apricot (or raspberry) preserves (also very tasty)

BWJ:   lovely variety of nuts

BFMHTY:  mostly pecans, because that's my favorite nut

BWJ:   options for dried fruit

BFMHTY:  options for dried fruit and encouragement to add chocolate!

BWJ:   egg wash then roll the rugelach in nut/sugar coating which conceals oozing of filling

BFMHTY:  egg wash and endeavor to keep filling from oozing out

BWJ:  large portion!

BFMHTY:  small portion to tempt you to eat more than one

BWJ:   delicious!

BFMHTY:  delicious!

A lovely assortment of nuts

Rolling this up might be a problem!

Not all that neat, but I didn't think it would matter.

Ready to bake.  

Just out of the oven with a little ooze.

Apricot preserves on the dough for the BFMHTY recipe

Filling

The crescent-shaped rugelach from BFMHTY

Two happy little rugelach.

The cheesecake, the rugelach to the right, and Dorie's Chocolate Walnut Teacakes in front.

Coconut-roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

Well.  This was a project!  But each piece can be made ahead which is always a welcome feature in a fancy, multi-step dessert.

Dorie says that a dacquoise is typically two round meringue discs which sandwich something yummy.  This has three layers of rectangular meringues--the meringues have coconut and ground almonds in them--which sandwich layers of white chocolate whipped cream, and roasted fresh pineapple.  The whole thing is spread with the whipped cream and then the sides are decorated with toasted coconut.  Gorgeous!  And delicious!

Getting ready to spread the meringue on the parchment paper.

Meringues ready to go into the oven:  3 hours at 225 degrees.

The chopped white chocolate, ready for the 3 cups of boiling heavy cream.

Pineapple!

Cutting up the pineapple.  (A few pieces missing--eaten by the baker.)

Building the dacquoise--this is the second layer.

A side view of the finished dacquoise.