Ginger Jazzed Brownies plus two catch-up cookies!

This week's Tuesday's with Dorie pick was Ginger Jazzed Brownies, chosen by Hildy of Bubie's Little Baker.  Although I had baked these in the past, I was delighted to bake them again.

The brownies are super ginger-y because they include 2 Tbsp. of fresh ginger as well as some ground ginger.  I baked these to take to the contra dance, and they were a big hit.  So much so that some dancers followed me into the kitchen in search of crumbs from the carrying box!  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture--of the brownies or the hungry dancers!

In my effort to catch up with the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers, and to bring enough snacks to the dance, I also made two cookie recipes that I had not yet baked:  Coconut Butter Cookies and Traditional Madeleines.

The dough for the Coconut Butter Cookies was delicious!  It had to be the lime zest, the coconut, and the ground macadamia nuts.  The dough is put into a gallon zip lock bag and then rolled out, then refrigerated.  I love this technique!  And it is so easy to slit the bag and cut the cookie dough into nice, even squares.  They spread a bit in baking, but they were delicious and much admired.

Coconut Butter Cookies

Next I baked Dorie's Traditional Madeleines.  It was great to be able to make the batter a day ahead; I did as she suggested and poured the batter into the molds and let them rest in the refrigerator overnight.  I have a silicone madeleine pan and have only used it a couple of times.  The results were interesting.  Notice that brown stripe down the center?  A little like a chipmunk!  I don't think the cookies bake evenly in the silicone pan but they are oh so fun to pop out of their molds!

Traditional Madeleines baked in a silicone pan

Madeleines close up

After baking three things with butter and eggs, it dawned on me that my son-in-law who would be playing fiddle at the dance, is experimenting with vegan eating this month.  He wouldn't be able to eat any of the goodies!  So I made a very easy Vegan cookie recipe--these, too, were devoured.  In my mind, they don't measure up to any of Dorie's recipes, but they tasted pretty good for having no butter, eggs, sugar, or flour.

Vegan oatmeal cookies
No dairy, no wheat, no sugar, but tasted fine.

Vegan Oatmeal Cookies

(Dairy, gluten, and sugar free)

Mash three ripe bananas.

Stir into the bananas:

     2 cups rolled oats

     1 cup raisins or chopped dates

     1/3 cup vegetable oil

     1 teaspoon vanilla

Allow batter to rest for 15 minutes.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Squish together the dough with your fingers, as needed.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, or until lightly brown.

Tarte Noire and French Yogurt Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick is Dorie's wonderful Basic Biscuits chosen by Jennifer of Cooking for Comfort.  It's a great recipe and I was all set to bake the biscuits last night to go with soup that I planned to make for dinner.  But here's what happened: my husband arrived home early and hungry.  Amazingly, we had leftovers in the fridge which we heated up for a quick dinner instead of soup and biscuits.  I thought I'd bake those biscuits today.  But here's what happened:  we were going to have a meeting at our house tonight and I wanted to bake Dorie's Tarte Noire which requires the same amount of cream as the Basic Biscuits.  Cream for biscuits or cream for a tarte?  The tarte won!

The Tarte Noire is a simple Shortbread Tart Dough with a luscious chocolate ganache made from good chocolate, cream and a little bit of butter.  It mixed up wonderfully well, and behaved just as I'd hoped it would, setting up in the shell, holding it's shape, and wonderfully smooth.  I drizzled a bit of caramel sauce on top, just for fun.

The French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze was a lovely pound cake, easy to make and the lemon marmalade glaze on top was just the right touch.  Two beautiful desserts in one day!

.

And now a word about the biscuits:  I've made them many times.  And oh boy are they delicious!  And easy to make.  So head on over to Jennifer's blog for the recipe, or better still, run right out and by Dorie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours

Apple Muffin Nut Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is a lovely cake that is more like a muffin.  With apples and  pecans, it made a wonderful addition to the brunch table.  Check out Katrina's blog, Baking with the Boys, for the recipe.

Part of the end-of-summer brunch table

My contribution:  Apple Cake!

Flip Over Plum Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick is an absolutely fabulous Flip Over Plum Cake.   The thing is, you don't flip the cake over, the batter flips itself over!

I have been baking a great deal lately and I thought I'd cleverly make this cake a couple of weeks ahead of time when I had a bunch of plums on hand.  I decided to cut the recipe in half because I didn't have a lot of plums, I'm not crazy about plums, and I have been baking lots and lots of recipes from Dorie's book this month.

You melt butter in a pan, make a really simple batter and pour it over the butter, then drop in plums that have been tossed with sugar.  Couldn't be simpler and what a wonderful result!

This was so delicious that I bought more plums and made the full recipe!  No picture of that, however, because we ate it all up before I remembered to get out my camera!  

Rewind! Brioche Plum Tart and Linzer Sables

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie bakers caked Cocoa Salt and Pepper Shortbread.  Having made those in the past, I decided to skip them this week and instead bake two other recipes from the book to continue to try to catch up.  My intention is to systematically bake through the 30 remaining recipes in Dorie Greenspan's fabulous book, Baking from My Home to Yours in an effort to finish the book along with the TWD bakers (who started baking through the book before I did).

This week I baked Dorie's Linzer Sables.  They are lovely cookies with ground almonds and are typically sandwiched with jam.  Well.  Dorie does suggest in her "Playing Around" note that a chocolate ganache works quite well so that's what I did.  The only problem I had was that I loaned out my scalloped cookie cutter and so my cookies were simple circles.  Quite yummy, however.





I also baked the Plum Brioche Tart.  This was really, really fun to make.  The brioche dough is made a day ahead, rises once in a warm spot and then is deflated and put into the refrigerator where it's deflated every half  hour until it gives up and just rests.  The next day, the dough is easily spread into a pie plate.  Dorie suggests spreading on plum preserves, but I chose to use port-pear preserves instead.  An inspired choice!

Brioche dough with port-pear preserves

 I cut up plums, piled them high, and sprinkled on a mixture of sugar, chopped nuts.  The result was lovely to look at and a delicious addition to the brunch table.

Classic Brownies + Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

I love brownies.  Well, let me clarify that statement.  I love all of Dorie's brownies.  We were recently traveling in and around Denver and stopped at a bakery/deli.  There was a request for chocolate raspberry bread pudding (this was good, but I kept thinking how Dorie's Apple Apple Bread Pudding is not just good, it's fabulous).  There was also a request for a brownie.  This brownie was a real disappointment and I think it was, as my husband put it, "the fat is off".  I'm quite sure that if they used butter, they didn't use all butter.  It did not satisfy.

Classic Brownies

So it was with great pleasure that I had an excuse to bake Dorie Greenspan's Classic Brownies along with the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers.  Delicious!  Not too cakey and not too gooey.  In other words, just right.











This week I pulled out of the freezer the Double Crusted Blueberry Pie that I made before we left for Denver.  What a lucky stroke that was, as blueberry season is just over here and yet we are extending the season by enjoying this delightful pie.

Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

Chocolate Spice Quickies

I made these quite a long time ago and nearly decided to skip this recipe since we were going to be traveling.  But the "Quickie" in the title and the desire (obsession?) to bake along with the Tuesdays with Dorie crowd was enough incentive to whip up the logs, freeze them, and bake just a few before we left for the weekend.

This time, I actually took the time to blanch the almonds.  It's not a hard task, and it is surprisingly satisfying to pop off the almond skins, but it added a bit of time to the quickiness of the recipe.  I must say, however, that I'm glad I did.  I'd read that there is tanin in almond skins that provides a slightly bitter taste which is not always appreciated when baking.  I think for these cookies, there is a noticeable difference with blanched v. unblanched almonds and I much prefer using blanched almonds.

The cookies were great--not brownies, but they aren't advertised as such.  They were a little too fragile to survive traveling in a plastic bag in a purse on an airplane, but it didn't matter because we happily shared the crumbs during a layover at an airport and it was a great little chocolate fix.

This picture is just for show.  The cookies (most of them anyway)
 traveled with us by plane and were a happy little snack
 at the airport.