Living the Life

This weeks recipe was picked by Heather of Randomodity and the Girl . The recipe can be found on her blog or in Dorie Greenspans Baking book. I was looking forward to another round of cookies, these were drop cookies so pretty simple to do, no rolling, no cutting, just spoon them on the baking sheet and that's it. They sounded great, butter, jam, what's not to like? Well they were very, very bland, they lacked taste. It wasn't crunchy, but also not really soft, it tried to be a lot of things, but didn't shine. We all agreed here that this was the recipe we liked least so far. Oh well, there is always butterscotch pudding next week, butter, booze, what's not to like ;-)

This weeks TWD recipe was picked by Ulrike from Küchenlatein , if you want to make it yourself you can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan's: Baking, From My House To Yours or on Ulrike's Blog. The cookies were very simple to make, I didn't do anything fancy with them, just wanted to see how they would taste without any additions. I went the slice and bake way, but I think I cut them a little too thick. The taste was still great, but next time I will do them a little thinner, probably roll them out and use cookie cutters. Thanks for picking this one Ulrike! We all loved them.

Made it back safely after a fabulous cruise! Our luggage decided to stay away a day longer but apart from that everything was great. This week's Tuesday With Dorie recipe was picked by me! The first guy who joined the group finally got his pick :-) I choose the Linzer Sablés, so far I've enjoyed the European style recipes more than the American, maybe because I'm European and my tastebuds are more used to those treats? Anyway, I love the way they look with the jam peeking out of the little hole. I made mine with raspberry jam which I passed through a sieve, after heating it up, to get rid of the seeds. They were very easy to make and the taste of the cookies comes close to " speculaas ", must be the cloves. I'm pleased with my choice, it's not my favorite recipe but I would make it again. Here is the recipe: When I was a kid, the main street in our neighborhood boasted a bakery every two blocks. We always had freshly made bread from the baker closest to o...

No TWD for me this week and the next few weeks, I'm traveling. Our trip started last Friday when we left for Rome. For us (H. and I) it was the our first visit, K. had been here before. We have visited a lot of the city's high lights, like Galleria Boghese , Sistene Chapel , Pantheon Colosseum , Trevi Fountian, the Spanish Steps etc. But also left a few for a future visit. For H. and me both the Galleria Boghese was the most beautiful thing we visited, loved the statues by Bernini there! Trevi Fountain And than there was the food of course, great pastas, pizzas and desserts, wow, we really have to come back. Tomorrow we will leave by train to Civitaveccchia, where we will board the Carnival Splendor for our 16 day Rome to Ft. Lauderdale cruise. On the way we will visit Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Malaga, Funchal (Madeira) and St. Maarten. If I have access to the internet I'll keep you up to date!

Gretchen of Canela & Comino picked this weeks Tuesday with Dorie recipe, she picked Lenox Almond Biscuits which made me very exited. I know biscotti from my visits to Starbucks when on vacation in the US. I love them and always wanted to give them a try. They weren't hard to make, although I had to double the time for the first bake. I expected that the logs would spread quite a bit, my sheet pan isn't very wide so I bought an extra one. Glad I did because I could never had fit 2 logs on the one sheet pan I have. On one sheet pan I put the biscotti's cut side down, on the other I stood them up as Dorie suggested, it didn't make much of a difference taste wise. I used polenta instead of cornmeal, cornmeal isn't very common on this side of the pond. I'll try to get some next time I make this recipe again. It left a bit of gritty texture. Apart from that I think this is my favorite Dorie recipe so far. Great flavor, nice and crisp, love the almond flavor! Nex...

Tammy of Wee Treats By Tammy was the lucky one this week and could choose a recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My House To Yours . She picked the Caramel Peanut Topped Brownie Cake. The recipe can be found in on Tammy's blog and of course in the book. The cake was easy to make, I don't have a 8" spring form so I used a 9" one. The caramel with cream was a first but wasn't too hard in the end, it did take way more time though than Dorie stated in the recipe. What did we think of the cake, most of the trusty tasters liked it, but we all agreed it was a little on the dry side. Maybe because I used the larger springform? I don't know, but a layer of jam or cream would have lifted it a lot. It wasn't gooey like a brownie that's for sure. Want to know how the other Tuesdays With Dorie bakers did? Go and visit the TWD site. Want to join us? Hurry up, there is only until the end of this month left to do so!

Finally a new Tuesdays with Dorie , this time picked by Mevrouw Cupcake (I'm probably one of the few in the group that can pronounce that correctly :-)) and what a great pick it was. She choose Creme Brulee, one of my all time favorite desserts. You can find the full recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My House To Yours, or Mari's blog . I halved the recipe since there are only three people here at the moment. The custard was easy to make and I 'm getting much more comfortable with making those after making a few different ice cream recipes, flan and my own creme brulee recipe a couple of times. When I make my own recipe I use a vanilla bean that I steep in the warmed up cream and milk, Dorie's recipe uses vanila extract. I used the vanilla extract that I brought home from Mexico last April, this is the reason my custard is so dark! (egg yolks, sugar and vanilla extract) Since I have the new oven, I still discover new things, one of those tings was that the low...

It's been quiet a while since I posted here on my blog, I didn't fell of the face of the planet, but thanks to all who asked about my where abouts! The reason I didn't post anything was that I was remoddelling the kitchen together with my brother. It was some thing that needed to be done for a long time, the old one was probably from the 60's, the stove at least 25 years old. We started a little sooner than expected so I didn't have the time nor energy to post during the process. We took everything out, did new electricity, drains, tiles, ceiling etc. The washing machine was moved to the summer kitchen to free up space for our new 3 foot wide stove. The counter is 9 foot. We put in a dishwasher. Apart from the gas, it was all done by us. And the roof of the summer kitchen and the warm water/central heating unit is replaced too. But I'm back in business, just in time for tomorrow's Tuesdays With Dorie, picked by Mevrouw Cupcake who lives here in the Netherla...

This weeks recipe was picked by Ashlee of A Year In The Kitchen , you can find the recipe in Dorie's Baking and on Ashlee's blog. To be honest I wasn't impressed with this one, nor were my taste testers. We found it to dense it had too little banana and chocolate taste. Oh well there is always next week's ice cream to make!

No Tuesday with Dorie entry for me this week, I'm out of town, but I will be back for next weeks recipe. In the mean time have a look at what all the other TWD bakers made this week at the TWD blogroll.

Another cobbler this week for Tuesdays with Dorie , this time a Cherry Rhubarb one, picked by Amanda from Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake . The recipe for this cobbler can be found in Dorie's Baking or on Amanda's blog. I had never worked with rhubarb before although we have it in abundance at the moment. Cherries is a different story, we all love them! I pitted them with a chopstick, a trick I read about in the Question and Problem section on the TWD site. It worked great so no need to buy a cherry pitter for this cobbler. The top differs from the mixed berry cobler, which has a rolled top, this one has little biscuits floating around in the fruit mixture. How did we like this one? Well to be short we didn't, the biscuit was the best part, the fruit we didn't care for, the rhubarb was overpowering and the taste of the cherries was lost. I think we just stick to fresh cherries next time. I might try this one with different fruit in the future, apples could be nice.

This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was picked by Melissa from It's Melissa's Kitchen and was right up my alley! Here is Holland we eat pudding after dinner, most of the time a more runny variation we call " vla ", we have it in vanilla, chocolate, coffee (Hopjes, after the coffee candies from The Hague), lemon, raspberry, banana etc. Then there are thicker variaties, bavarois and all kinds of yoghurts. Pies and such we eat when we serve coffee later in the evening, or during daytime coffee, not like in the States right after dinner. This pudding was more work than a boxed version, but it was really, really worth it. It was nice and smooth and the taste, WOW! Like a deflated chocolate mousse! I think I'll make smaller portions next time since it was very rich and not everybody was able to finish a portion. The recipe can be found in Dorie's Baking: From My House To Yours or on Melissa's blog.

Last week I wasn't able to do my Dorie bake but this week I made the Double Crusted Blueberry Pie picked by Amy from South in Your Mouth , You can find the recipe for this pie in Dorie's fabulous Baking: From My House To Yours or at Amy's site. With the prices of blueberries here being 2.99 euro for 125 grams, I figured out I needed about $20 in blueberries for this pie, now I like to stick to the recipe, but that was a little too much for me. So I used some more of the frozen berries that I also used for the mixed berry cobbler we baked 2 weeks ago. Shortening is also a thing that is hard to come by on this side of the pond so I used the cheapest hardest margarine I could find as a substitute, which worked out fine. I used my food processor to mix all the ingredients which made life so much easier. The pie came together very easy. The only thing I forgot was to sprinkle it with sugar but I don't think that that made a lot of difference. The taste was great, the crust ...

Time really flies at the moment, it's Tuesday again and I still had to make the Tuesday With Dorie bake for this week so I made it tonight for dessert, just in time to post it while it's still Tuesday. This weeks recipe was picked by Beth of Our Sweet Life , she picked the Mixed Berry Cobbler, you can find the recipe in Baking: From My House To Yours and on Beth's Blog. One thing I learned from last week's bake is to check the Problem and Question section on the TWD site. A lot of bakers that made the recipe complaint that the dough was a bit bland, so I exchanged the sugar for turbinado sugar, added a bit of cinnamon and some vanilla extract. I also halved the recipe since it was a little too big for just the four of us. The whole thing was pretty easy to make, I used frozen berries from the supermarket, which contained rasberries, blueberries, blackberries, some strawberries and cranberries. The cranberries were very tart so the next time I make this (yes, there wil...

This weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie was picked by Caroline of A Consuming Passion , she picked a recipe with choux pastry. I always wanted to try that and I have a couple of recipes laying around but never got to it. Instead of reading the Problems and Question section on the TWD site , or looking at some of my other recipes, I just made it straight from the book, big mistake! I had hardly any puff in my pastry, there were some small air pockets but not the big fluffy ones you normally see in puff pastry. I just have to try this another time with the lessons learned from this bake. Which lessons did I learn,? Well, don't add the eggs to the dough straight from the fire, let it cool down a bit first. Another lesson, after the pastry comes out of the oven (this is for puffs) make a small incision with a paring knife, to release steam, and put them back in the turned of oven so they can dry out a bit more. Despite the dense structure it still tasted like puff pastry, I filled ...

Marie from A Year From Oak Cottage choose this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: La Palette's Strawberry Tart. I don't care much for strawberries on their own, but when they are ingredients in cakes, tarts, pies etc. I love them, add to that the fact that our local strawberries are in season and widely available in the shops and you'll get a tart that I looked forward to making! I didn't want to make the whole tart because there aren't enough people around at the moment to finish it right away, so I ended up making four 4.5" tarts. The dough was very easy to make, one of the things that can ruin a dough like this is using too warm butter, so I put the butter in the freezer a couple of hours before I needed it. The recipe calls for freezing the dough when you've put it in the tart tin, an unusual step but it worked great. I filled the baked tart shells with a store bought jam, since I ran out of my homemade jam. I think it would be even better with my...

One of the blogs that I enjoy a lot is Bakerella , I discovered her site a long time ago when I was looking into red velvet cake, she had a recipe on her blog for Red Velvet Cake Balls which looked so different that I added her to my rss reader and follow her posts all the time. One of those posts was a recipe for Oreo Truffles, which uses ingredients that are a little more over the counter here in Holland. except for the white chocolate bark that my friend in the US sent to me, thanks K.!!! I made only half a recipe, with all the TWD recipes and good food aound here, 36 Oreo Truffles isn't a thing I want to have in the fridge, calling my name every time I open the door :-) The recipe is fairly easy, the tricky thing is to get a nice coating of bark on the balls, which I got the hang of in the end. The truffles are very rich, I might make them smaller next time, I would also experiment a bit with them, like adding a splash of Cointreau orange liquor to the oreo/creamcheese mixture...

This week in Tuesdays with Dorie , French Chocolate Brownies, a recipe picked by Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook . Up till now I have only made one other brownie recipe, Sacher Brownies , but I did ate them a few times when I was in the States and I really like them. This recipe is great! Great taste, nice consistency, the occasional rum raisin, the odd top, just great!! Nothing much was new in this recipe, the flambeeing I did already for the raisin snails, all the other stuff was pretty straight forward. The only scary moment was when I wanted to check if the cake was done and I inserted a small knife, part of the top collapsed, later when I checked the Problem and Question section at the TWD site I found out that happened to all of the other bakers too. My trusty tasters loved this one too, H. thinks this is the best Dorie recipe so far! Next week's recipe will be La Palette's Strawberry Tart, choosen by Marie of A Year From Oak Cottage . French Chocolate Brownies - makes 16...

Last week's recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie were the Traditional Madeleines , but the next recipe in the book is Earl Grey Madeleines. I love Earl Grey tea and not the artificial stuff but the higher quality loose tea leaves. I normally steep it for three minutes and add a splash of milk, how English :-) So I made Dorie's recipe to see if they would be a nice match with my tea. For me they didn't disappoint, my trusty taster liked the traditional ones better, but she's not to crazy about the tea either. I really liked the subtle flavor of the tea coming through, I will definitely make these again!! Earl Grey Madeleines (from Baking: From My House To Yours ): Ingredients: 5 tbsp unsalted butter 2 tbsp Earl Grey tea leaves 3/4 cup flour 1/2 tsp baking powder pinch of salt 1/3 cup sugar grated zest of 1/2 lemon 2 large eggs, 2 tbsp honey 2 tsp vanilla extract powder sugar for dusting Preparation: Melt the butter and add the tea leaves. Stir to combine and allow the tea to...

This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was picked by Madam Chow of Madam Chow's Kitchen . When I read the recipe and saw that it uses the same brioche dough as we made for the Brioche Raisin Snails I was thrilled and scared at the same time, the dough is fabulous, but if you don't have a Kitchen Aid but just a cheap hand mixer it's quite a challenge. I decided to make the dough this time by hand because I think my mixer wouldn't survive another round with the brioche dough. The dough came together by hand a lot easier than I expected, I had to use some elbow grease but I would do it again this way. You need only half of the brioche recipe, I used the other half for more Brioche Raisin Snails because my brother keeps asking me to bake some more. I made seven buns, the rest I froze for a later date. We all thought that these buns were nice but way too sweet for our taste. When I make the remaining ones I won't use the pecan honey glaze but drizzle over the glaze that...

Today is WSM Smoke Day IV, it's an event, hosted by the virtual weber bullet , where over 400 Weber Smokey Mountain owners worldwide make real barbecue. I lit my coals at noon, when the WSM was at the right temperature I put in 6 racks of ribs. Two hours before the ribs were done I added some brats and BBQ beans. After five hours the ribs were done, I used a new sauce I made from the Jack Daniels Barbecue book. It was ok for me, the others liked it a lot. For me it lacked depth so I'll have to make a batch of my regular sauce before the next barbecue. I served rosemary garlic potato wedges on the side.

Another Tuesday, another Tuesdays with Dorie , this weeks recipe, Traditional Madeleines, was picked by Tara of Smells Like Home . When I got Baking, this was one of the recipes I put high on my list, but since I didn't have a Madeleine tin I never got to it. So when Tara picked it for this week I had an excuse to get the tin for these classics little cakes. I made the batter a day in advance and let it rest in the fridge. When I baked them I got a nice hump on all of them, I also buttered and floured the tin well and had no problem with the Madeleines sticking to the tin. The verdict on these cakes? I love them, they are moist and lemony. Now that I have the tin I will try some of the others in the book too, the Earl Grey Madeleine just moved up a couple of spots on my "to bake" list. Ingredients: 2/3 cup all-purpose flour ¾ teaspoon baking powder Pinch of salt ½ cup sugar Grated zest of 1 lemon 2 large eggs, at room temperature 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract ...