Sweet Cream Biscuits

Sweet Cream Biscuits are this week's pick. Quick and easy to make, they were delightful with our home made soup. But I can also see that if I made them larger, sliced them in half, and spooned on strawberries, they would be equally delightful.

Dorie suggests a 2" biscuit cutter. I have a set of three round cutters and I always use the middle one which it turns out is almost 3". The smallest one is actually 2" and I think the biscuits were just the right size--it was easy to convince myself to have more than one since they were so small!

Bourbon Bread Pudding

This month's Book Club selection was Reading the Man by Elizabeth Brown Pryor. It is a wonderful book about Robert E. Lee based on his personal letters. It really helped me look at the South from a different perspective.

As hostess, I made Bourbon Bread Pudding, which was as close as I could come to a Southern-style dessert! It was easy to make, smelled delicious, and had a nice homey taste and texture. Rich thinks that it would benefit from more bourbon, but I was quite happy with it.

Swedish Visiting Cake

This cake is wonderful! It is quick and easy to make, looks beautiful, and is moist in the center but crispy on the top. I took this to Tom's for brunch and it was very much enjoyed.

Bittersweet Brownies

I made these a couple of weeks ago and they were super moist. Rich says they are excellent with a fine Bordeaux wine!

Mocha Walnut Marbled Bundt Cake

I made this a couple of months ago but it was so yummy that it was not a hardship to make it again this week as the Tuesdays with Dorie pick.! As it happens, I volunteered to bring refreshments to the local contra dance last night and I planned to bring a variety of goodies. I had Dorie's Walnut Glazed Tea Cakes in the freezer as well as some of the Dulce de Leche Duos. The Bundt Cake was a perfect addition.

I put the chocolate batter on top and did a very minimal amount of swirling which resulted in a heart-shaped chocolate center. As I was preparing to take it to the dance, my son Pete looked rather plaintively at the cake and then at me so I cut a slice for him and was able to get the picture.

All the treats--including two plates of orange slices--were consumed by the hungry dancers. I didn't even get a taste of the Bundt cake this time.

Coconut Tea Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is a lovely, light, coconut bundt cake. We just had a slice and it was really happy-making cake. We are, however, fantasizing about drizzling a bit of Dorie's chocolate sauce over it and I just happen to have some in the fridge!

Dulce de Leche Duos

I very nearly had to skip this week's Tuesdays with Dorie goodie because I have been wrestling with bronchitis for the past week. Who would want to eat anything made by somebody who is coughing and hacking? Just to be ready, though, I made the dulce de leche by the super easy method recommended by Laurie: I put two unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk in a crockpot, covered then with water and cooked on low overnight. What a terrific result!

So back to the Dulce de Leche Duos. They are in the oven now and are coming out pretty well. I did make an error in following the recipe which I didn't catch until I was rereading it to make sure I didn't leave anything out. Somehow I misread the amount of sugar and put in 3/4 cup of white sugar instead of 1/2 cup. I tried pulling some of it out, but had already dumped the dulce de leche into the bowl so extracting the extra sugar was pretty much a lost cause. Maybe the bronchitis fog is thicker in my brain than I think.

Later: The cookies are tasty but rather sweet. (Could it possibly be the extra quarter cup of sugar?!!) Dorie says you'll end up with 30 sandwiches--I have half again that many so either I made them too small or that extra sugar greatly expanded the batter!