Dorie's Favorite Pecan Pie

For Thanksgiving, I baked Dorie Greenspan's Favorite Pecan Pie, one of the last of the recipes in her great book, Baking from My Home to Yours.   In her comments, Dorie says that she has thought that most pecan pies are too sweet and so she kept experimenting until she figured out  how to make a non-sweet pecan pie.  The secret is to add bittersweet chocolate and 2 teaspoons of espresso powder.

People loved this pie!

I was disappointed in the shrinking crust, but I knew it would taste great.

Mixing up the filling

Adding in the pecans

Covering the already browned crust rim

The end result!  Puffy and yummy!

With my traditional apple pie and its crumb topping.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Bittersweet Brownies and Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte

As I close in on the last couple of dozen recipes in Dorie Greenspan's fabulous book, Baking from My Home to Yours, I am trying to bake the choices of the Tuesdays with Dorie gang and also catch up by baking some recipes that were chosen before I joined the group.

This week, I baked Bittersweet Brownies (one of the TWD selections) and Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte (my catch-up recipe).  First off, I got out lots of butter and eggs and allowed them to come to room temperature.

Getting ready with eggs and BUTTER

The brownies are easy to make with butter, sugar, melted bittersweet chocolate and just a little flour.  There are no nuts in this recipe, but the texture of the finished product is so wonderfully fudgy that I didn't miss the nuts.  I cut them in gorgeous pieces . . . .but you'll just have to take my word for it because I neglected to get a picture before they were consumed by the attendees of our contra dance planning committee!

The Torte has a lovely pre-baked crust which is supposed to go up the sides of a spring form pan.  It's chilled, then partially baked while lined with form-fitting foil and pie weights.  What happened to my crust, however, was that the sides squished down so I couldn't pour in as much of the filling as I wanted to.  There is a layer of cherry preserves on the crust, then the cream cheese/eggs/cottage cheese/vanilla filling.

Baking the crust

It was super tasty, although my "hidden" berries snuck up to the top.

A little bit of cherry preserves sneaking out

A lovely week of baking!  Next time, I'll try to remember to keep my camera handy.

Far Breton

Two great advantages of baking through Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking from My Home to Yours, are learning some new techniques (it's so much fun to set something on fire!), and baking creations that are beloved in other parts of the world but previously unknown to me.  Such is the case with this week's pick, a Far Breton.  It's a lovely pudding-y cake with prunes that have been soaked in Armagnac.  It was so much fun to light the cognac and watch the lovely blue flames burn away the alcohol, leaving only the amazing taste behind.

I took this to my weekly brunch and the gentlemen were particularly pleased with it.

Going into the oven

Coming out of the oven

Ready to serve

A Fig Cake for Fall

I'm only a day late this week but I am determined to keep up with the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers as we are in the home stretch of baking through Dorie Greenspan's Baking from my home to Yours.  


This week's pick was A Fig Cake for Fall chosen by Ursala of Cookie Rookie.

I've never baked with figs.  Actually, I've never eaten figs before (unless you count Fig Newtons which I'm sure does not count!)  The recipe calls for softening the figs in a mixture of Ruby Port and honey.  So I sent my husband off to buy the port and realized that we now have quite a collection of bottles of various alcoholic beverages used only for baking, thanks to Dorie!

The batter is a very small amount of sugar, lots of butter and 3 eggs which you beat for a long time.  It looks curdled, but as she promises, it eventually improves.  The dry ingredients include cornmeal and flour, and I feared that the cake would be a bit gritty.

The cake actually turned out to be quite pretty and, as I've come to expect from Dorie's recipes, very tasty.  A good first try with figs.

Curdles galore

Keep beating--it will turn out all right!

Stirring in the dry incredients

The beautiful Fig Cake for Fall

With the rubyport/honey sauce.

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!