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