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...

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...

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!

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

Florida Pie was this weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie and was picked by Dianne of Dianne's Dishes , thanks for picking one of my favorite American desserts! I've been to Florida quite a few times, the first time was about 25 years ago and that was when I first ate Key lime Pie. Whenever I see it on the menu I have to try it and I made it a few times here at home too. I never did the meringue on top though, so that was the new thing for me. I left the coconut out because I couldn't find any sweetened coconut flakes here in the village and didn't feel like driving 10 miles for just the one ingredient. The pie was very easy to make, I used digestive biscuits instead of graham crackers which aren't for sale in this part of the world but taste almost the same as a base for the pie. Dorie uses more crumbs for the base than my old recipe but it was way better, so this one is a keeper. The filling is pretty straight forward too. For the meringue I made sure there was a...

This weeks recipe, peanut butter torte, was picked by Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food . Here in the Netherlands we really like peanut butter, we don't put jelly on it, but just put it on a slice of bread with some butter. The major brand is Calve which is made less than 20 km from my home, they have been making peanut butter for almost 125 years now. This is the stuff I grew up on! So instead of buying a jar of Jif at the import section of the supermarket I used my favorite local brand, which tastes better also of course ;-) I didn't have enough oreo crumbs to get up the full 2 inch, but the result was that you get a nice layering if you see it from the side. It was my niece's 12th birthday last week so I made this torte to go with the coffee. Everybody liked it, but we all thought that it was very rich, which makes a lot of sense if you look at the ingredients. (I cut a slice of torte for the picture when the chocolate ganache wasn't fully set, that's why it isn't ...

Another Tuesday another recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, this week selected by Leigh of Lemon Tartlet . She choose the Gooey Chocolate Cakes and what a good choice it was, we all loved them here! They were very simple to make, I also made the creme anglaise to go with it. The cakes and the creme anglaise complement each other nicely, as Dorie says, these cakes aren't meant to be served alone. As a lot of other members of the TWD group, I didn't have any chocolate oozing out, but it was close, they were very , very gooey. Ingredients: 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, 4 ounces coarsely chopped, 1 ounce very finely chopped 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces 2 large eggs, at room temperature 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature 6 tablespoons sugar Preparations: Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter (or spray - it's easier) 6...

I was very pleased with Steph's (of A Whisk and a Spoon ) choice for this weeks Tuesdays With Dorie . I love flan and made it before . This one went pretty smooth too. I only used the wrong knife to cut the flan loose from the mold which resulted in "debris" on top of my flan. The looks didn't interfere with the taste! Which was fabulous, just like the ones I ate in Spain and Mexico. I got mixed reviews from my trusty tasters, but that wasn't the flan's fault. One thought it was eggy, but it was the first time he ate it and trust me, it tasted like it should. Others didn't care to much for it, but they had the same reaction with my other flans :-) Ingredients: For the Caramel 1/3 cup sugar 3 tbsp water squirt of fresh lemon juice For the Flan 1-1/2 cups heavy cream 1-1/4 cups whole milk 3 large eggs 2 large egg yolks 1/2 cup sugar 1 tsp pure vanilla extract Preparation: Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line ...