Pear Tart with Crunchy Almond Topping

It's apple and pear season and so this week the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers baked another apple-y/pear-y dessert.   Last fall, I baked the Pear Tart with Crunchy Almond Topping recipe, but the pears I had on hand were brown and icky on the inside when I cut them up so I ended up using mostly apples.  It was delicious, but this year, I was luckier in my pear selection.

The tart is Dorie's basic sweet tart dough for a base, with a filling of diced pears that have been sautéed in butter with a little sugar added to caramelize them and a little brandy to add some kick.  The tart is topped with a very simple topping of sliced almonds, egg whites and confectioner's sugar.

One of the many reasons that I am a fan of Dorie Greenspan and her cookbooks is that the fun she has when baking is apparent in the way she writes her recipes.  She tells you, for example, that the best tool for mixing the topping is to use your fingers.  How wonderfully satisfying it is to play with food!

Everything went together well and we enjoyed this delicious tart with a little scoop of ice cream.

Check out the blogs of other Tuesday with Dorie bakers here.

And one last thing:  I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention that yesterday UPS delivered my copy of Dorie's Cookies!  I am absolutely grinning with excitement as I anticipate baking all of the wonderful recipes in her new book.  Yayyyy!!!

Custardy Apple Squares

The local apples are just coming in and they seem especially delicious this year.  Or maybe I'm forgetting that here in upstate New York we have absolutely terrific apples.  At any rate, I'm happy to be baking with them.

This week I made Dorie Greenspan's Custardy Apple Squares.  It's sort of a cake however there is very little cake batter and lots of thinly sliced apples.  The only tricky part is slicing the apples but this time I used a madeleine so it wasn't tricky at all.

Here are the ingredients, all assembled.

(I did add rum, which didn't make it into the photo!)

And the final product, out of the oven and ready to serve.

My husband was hosting a meeting at our house last night and this was perfect:  seasonal, not too heavy, pretty to look at, and went well with tea.  

Apple Tarte Flambé

The apples are just beginning to show up at the farm markets and I am reminded how much I enjoy them.  This week I had the chance to bake something new from Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi: Apple Tarte Flambé.

It's a yeast dough rolled very thin, topped with a mixture of cream cheese, yogurt, cream, and sugar, with a layer of thinly sliced apples and a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar.  An apple pizza!

Along with apple season, we also get cooler weather.  It was hard to find a warm place for the dough to rise but my son told me a trick he uses when baking bread.  On his advice, I heated a mug of water in the microwave. I left the hot water in the microwave and put my bowl of dough in, too.  Without turning the microwave on, I just left the dough in there for a couple of hours.  Actually, it was more than a couple of hours, but the dough had risen perfectly by the time I was ready to roll it out.

Dorie suggests that both the baker and the dough need to relax.  So I rolled, covered it up, rested, rolled again.  I probably did that three times, getting it as thin as I could.  I slid it into a hot oven onto the baking stone and baked for one minute.  Dorie suggests heating the oven as high as it will go which for me was about 500 degrees.  Hotter is probably better.

Here are the only pictures I took:

The apples sliced paper thin.

Filling spread on the crust.  A layer of apples were added next.

The finished tarte, ready to eat!

I chose to sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top and this is how it turned out!  It was delicious!

Check out what other Tuesday with Dorie bakers baked this week!

Edouard's Chocolate Chip Cookies

It has been a while since I posted with the Tuesday's With Dorie group, even though I've been baking regularly.  True, I have been away for a month during the summer (once to Massachusetts and another  time to Seattle/Portland/Chicago), but part of the reason I didn't bake from the book and post about some of the summer choices has been because our season here in upstate New York is late so when everyone else had strawberries, then blueberries and peaches, we were still anxiously anticipating these lovely fruits.

But chocolate is always available so this week I made Edouard's Chocolate Chip Cookies found on page 298 of Dorie's Baking Chez Moi.  I once did a series of tests about chocolate chip cookies, baking two batches a week for about 15-20 weeks in a row.  I served them to guests and asked them to rate and describe the cookies.  What I discovered was that everyone has a personal notion of the "perfect" chocolate chip cookie.  Some folks like soft and others like crisp.  Some like semi-sweet chocolate and others prefer bittersweet or even milk chocolate.  Some people think the cookie can't be perfect unless it has pecans and others think that nuts of any kind ruin their chocolate chip cookies.

Edouard's cookies have ground almonds which give them a bit of heft and a lovely flavor.  When I served them to my guests at a recent music party, they were completely consumed, even though there were home-made Swedish cinnamon rolls, zucchini bread, and a healthy assortment of veggies from which to choose.   People begged for the recipe and told me that these cookies were so good that it was impossible to stop eating them.

Even thought I'm one of those people who prefers pecans in her chocolate chip cookies, I very much enjoyed this version of a standard American favorite.  To see what other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers made this week, look here.

Tarte Tropézienne

While this tarte appears amazingly sophisticated, it is actually not all that hard to bake.  Just a tremendous exercise in patience, planning, and allowing plenty of time.  Maybe I had extra confidence in my ability to bake this because when Dorie Greenspan was on a book tour in September 2014 with Baking Chez Moi, I was lucky enough to see her in Seattle.  And this was one of the wonderful samples that we were able to taste!

Dorie speaking in Seattle

My sample Tarte Tropézienne with the book that Dorie later autographed.

I didn't take many pictures when I baked this time, but here is the beautiful brioche dough, the lovely--albeit not perfectly round-- cake out of the oven, and the finished product.  I loved using the pearl sugar which somehow made this look unusually special.

Interestingly, not long after I baked this I was in a fancy local bakery and saw tiny slivers of Tarte Tropézienne being sold for $4.50!  They looked good, but I found myself feeling quite satisfied that I had baked this lovely dessert myself.

To see what other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers had to say about this recipe, check out the Tuesdays with Dorie web page.

Betty's Chocoholic Cake

Who wouldn't want to bake (and eat!) a beautiful chocolate cake from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking Chez Moi?  This cake has lots and lots of chocolate and lots and lots of butter.  It is therefore intensely chocolate-y . . . and much enjoyed by my guests.

Dorie suggests decorating the cake with white chocolate curls.  I am never completely pleased with the result of my chocolate curls.   I use a vegetable peeler that is sharp and I try to warm the chocolate a bit before attempting to cut the curls, but the result seems to resemble shavings rather than curls.  Any suggestions?

Melting butter and chocolate.

Beating the egg yolks.

I love the technique for making the ganache:  pour  boiled cream over chocolate, let sit for 30 seconds, then gently stir in concentric circles.  Baking is so much fun!

Beautiful ganache.

Working on spreading the ganache.

Cleaned up plate and white chocolate curls added.

Two of the folks at our dinner.  I managed to get a photo before the cake was entirely consumed!

For more examples of this lovely cake, check out the blogs of other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers.

Cocoa Crunch Meringue Cookies

Sometimes I think that I like Dorie Greenspan's cookies the best.  At least I think that until I make a lovely tart, or cake, or scones, or muffins.  This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers chose between the Jammer Galette and Cocoa Crunch Meringue Cookies.  I just finished baking the cookies and my husband, the always-willing taste tester, says:  "I REALLY like these cookies!"

They are lovely gems--two cocoa, crunchy meringues sandwiching a delightful chocolate ganache.  The recipe only makes 8 sandwiches, which is just as well because we would have eaten as many as there were available.

Whipping up the meringue

Cocoa mixture and chopped almonds, ready to add

The circles I drew to serve as a guide for the cookies.

The ganache, coming to room temperature to be spread on the cookies.

The meringues out of the oven (minus two "rejects" which were eaten before they could be spread with ganache.)

The finished sandwiches!