Rewind! Brioche Raisin Snails and Summer Fruit Galette

I joined Tuesdays with Dorie in January 2010--about 20 months ago.  The group had already been going strong, baking through Dorie Greenspan's fabulous book, Baking from my Home to Yours.  I had been baking through the book in a rather random way, but Tuesdays with Dorie helped me focus in on a particular recipe each week--plus there was the fun of knowing that lots of other folks were baking the same thing!  The Tuesdays with Dorie bakers expect to finish baking all of the recipes by the end of the year!  I'm hopeful I'll cross the finish line with them, although I do have 35 recipes to complete instead of 13!

This week, I baked two absolutely wonderful recipes.

First off, I used the brioche dough from last week to make Brioche Raisin Snails.  Wow!  Was that ever fun!  I loved soaking the raisins in boiling water for 4 minutes, then dumping in some rum, and lighting it!  Playing with fire in the kitchen!  The interesting thing about the rummy raisins is that the rum flavor wasn't really detectable--they just tasted delicious.

The second recipe I made was a Summer Fruit Galette.  I made this for my birthday and used fresh peaches.  Beautiful, wonderful, and delicious!  I followed Dorie's suggestion and spread the dough with ginger preserves and while I wouldn't have thought it possible, the preserves improved the taste of the already splendid peaches.

Golden Brioche Loaf + some catching up

I've been traveling the past month and so have been unable to post every week.  Every time I've been home, however, I've been baking!

The Golden Brioche Loaves that are this week's Tuesdays with Dorie choice, need to be started a day in advance.  The batter is fun to make, though time consuming.  The most amazing part was to beat in 3 cubes of butter, a little at a time.  The sticky dough turned into a smooth batter--isn't butter wonderful?

After the batter rose in the refrigerator, I got it out this morning and rolled four little logs which I placed into the loaf pan.  Dorie says it takes up to an hour an a half to rise, depending on the warmth of the kitchen.  My kitchen was downright cool today so after five hours I declared the dough risen enough and baked it up.  It just came out of the oven and smells heavenly.  I think it will taste great, but it certainly didn't rise as much as I thought.

Golden Brioche Loaf

With the second half of the dough I plan to make Dorie's Brioche raisin snails tomorrow.  The raisins have been rum-i-fied, and the pastry cream made.

And now for the catching up:
I made the Dimply Plum Cake but used peaches instead of plums.  During peach season, I gorge myself on peaches!  It was wonderful with Dorie's lemon zest and fresh basil variation and folks who ate it at brunch last week pronounced it wonderful.

Dimply PEACH cake

I also made Carrot Spice Muffins, which were August 9th's TWD choice.  I've baked them in the past, but last week I made them as mini muffins because they were to be served at a pot luck where there were lots of choices.  They were tasty as mini muffins, but I think I prefer the concentration of flavor in the regular size.

Carrot Spice Muffins

Tropical Crumble

I have been away for most of the past month.  We arrived home last night, I went to the store and bought butter this morning, so I'm ready to bake!

Usually I bake Dorie's recipes as written.  However, it is PEACH season and for two or three weeks, I intend to gorge myself on peaches.  Instead of a "tropical" crumble, I made a summertime crumble, with fresh peaches instead of mangoes.

Yummy!  But as others found, I think there is too much butter in the crumble.  Probably could cut it in half.