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.

Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet

I have been out of the blogging loop because I have been alternately out of town and staying in town to spend time with a dear friend in hospice.  When my friend Chris was only eating liquid food two weeks ago, she said she had been told she could have ice cream.  I told her I would make her some chocolate sorbet.  She was only able to have the smallest taste.

Singing together
Chris is standing, the third from the left

Cream Scones & Mixed Berry Cobbler

I didn't bake or post last week.  I feel badly about missing a week, but I spent last Tuesday with my husband at the dentist's office and then at the Urgent Care facility.  He was on an extension ladder when it slipped and he plunged about 8 feet, hitting the hard wood floor.  No body parts were broken, although 2  of his teeth were pushed out of place.  The ladder crashed into the 20 gallon aquarium and punched a hole near the top--about 5 gallons of water spurted out all over the place.  As he put it, we had "way too much excitement" that day.

I almost didn't bake this morning but couldn't resist mixing up Dorie Greenspan's Cream Scones which is this week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick.  They are so easy and Dorie suggests that it's possible to freeze the dough, which I did.  (Ok, well I admit that I just baked one little scone for me.)

Scone dough ready to pop into the freezer

My one delicious scone

The day before the furious fall last week, I  baked Dorie's Mixed Berry Cobbler  with blueberries, mulberries from the CSA, raspberries from my neighbor, and strawberries from the farm market.  Wonderful!

Mixed Berry Cobbler

With ice cream!

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookies

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie is the lovely Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookies.  I baked them up this morning for a meeting tonight.  The recipe made a lot of cookies!  The meeting is over, the cookies much enjoyed and I piled the remaining cookies onto a plate for this picture:

Rewind! La Palette Strawberry Tarte, Oatmeal Breakfast Bread, Caramel Pumpkin Pie, and a variation on Vanilla Ice Cream

Company this week meant lots of opportunities to bake--so many, in fact, that I didn't get around to baking this week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick, Date Nut Loaf, chosen by Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet.  She has great pictures and a terrific write-up.  When I baked it, I remember that it had great taste and a lovely texture.

With the first strawberries of the season, I baked Dorie's La Palette's Strawberry Tart, an absolutely delicious dessert for.  A simple nut-crust-sweet-tart base, smeared with strawberry preserves, piled with fresh strawberries, and topped with a splash of creme fraiche.  It was amazing!

La Palette's Strawberry Tart

 Then I made the Oatmeal Breakfast Bread (for people who claimed not to like oatmeal) and was barely able to snap this picture before it entirely disappeared.

Last bit of Oatmeal Breakfast Bread

 We celebrated the  birthday of a young woman who loves pumpkin pie so I baked Dorie's Caramel Pumpkin pie.  Almost forgot to snap that picture, too, and didn't manage to get one with the whipped cream on top.

Caramel pumpkin pie

We received fresh mint with our CSA share this week and so I played around with Dorie's vanilla ice cream recipe, infused some cream and made mint ice cream with some shaved chocolate on top.  Wow!

Mint ice cream with chocolate shavings

Chocolate Biscotti

We invited friends over to contra dance in our living room and I wanted to provide some appropriate snacks.  I cut up oranges (for juicy sweetness) and made Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate Biscotti (for not-too-crunchy chocolate).  Wonderful!

Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes chose Chocolate Biscotti for the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers to bake this week.  What a great choice!

Sifted dry ingrediants

Chopped chocolate and almonds

Baked the first time

All lined up and baked the second time

It was an easy but satisfying recipe to put together:  it made a fairly stiff dough after I stirred in the chopped chocolate and almonds.  Then there was the pleasure of forming the logs of dough and patting them down.  Once the logs had baked and cooled for 20 minutes, I sliced them on the diagonal, stood them up in rows and baked for another 10 minutes.  They were perfect!

Blueberry Plain Cake and Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

We walked to the farm market on Sunday and found a single vendor who had the first strawberries of the season and some lovely rhubarb so I decided to make Dorie's Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp and skip the Blueberry Plain Cake.  But then went to Wegman's and saw blueberries from North Carolina had come in so I made both!  The first taste of summer!

Check out Cindy's blog, Everyday Insanity for the recipe for the blueberry cake and then see what the rest of the Tuesday with Dorie bakers did this week.

 

Blueberry Plain Cake

The last of the Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp and the Blueberry Plain Cake