Living the Life

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...