TWD: Mixed Berry Cobbler

June 24, 2008 at 8:05 am · Filed under Tuesdays with Dorie, blueberries, dessert

I don’t think I went in to this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Mixed Berry Cobbler, with an open mind. The recipe had so many negative reviews from other members that I was expecting the worst. What I got was a perfectly acceptable dessert. It wasn’t mind blowing, it didn’t wow, but John and his brother gobbled it up pretty quickly. I think we’ve all come to expect perfection from every single recipe in Baking, but the reality is that there are a couple of recipes that are just plain ho hum, and this is one of them.

Mixed Berry Cobbler

The problem is, I really wanted this one to be a star. My freezer is constantly full of half empty bags of frozen berries, and this recipe is a great way to use them before they get freezer burned beyond recognition. It’s also a great summery dessert that can be made in the dead of winter, and goodness knows I need that. So even though this one was a bit of a disappointment, I’ll probably keep making variations of it until I get it right. I’m envisioning blueberries and raspberries with vanilla sugar in the crust and the filling for next time.

You can find the recipe posted by Beth of Our Sweet Life or in Baking: From My Home to Yours, which is currently on a sweet sale at Amazon.

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Boston Baked Beans

June 21, 2008 at 5:40 pm · Filed under dinner

While I believe that the price of gas right now is actually a good thing in the long run – I fully expect that my next vehicle will get a hundred miles to the gallon, maybe more -, it sucks right now. Due to the fact that gas costs a million dollars, and also that we have visited home more weekends than not for what feels like months, we did not see John’s father for Father’s Day. Which was sad, but also delightful because, seriously, we have not spent enough time just hanging out around the house on a Sunday afternoon recently. Since it was a rainy, gloomy, chill Sunday afternoon I decided it would be nice to have something soothing cooking. I considered soup, due to my romantic notions about pots of soup simmering away on a rainy day. But instead I decided to celebrate John’s dad, even if we weren’t actually with him, with one of his specialities: Boston baked beans.

Boston Baked Beans

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TWD: La Palette’s Strawberry Tart

June 10, 2008 at 10:21 am · Filed under Tuesdays with Dorie, dessert, strawberries

Around here, we’re still about a week away from local strawberries. Instead, we’re still rocking the ugly, bulbous, traveled 3,000 miles to get here California strawberries. I am fairly certain that California has some sort of berry conspiracy going on. Californians are always bragging about their amazing berries. But somehow all the California berries that make it all the way to New Hampshire suffer from under-ripeness, mold, blandness or some combination of the above. Ironically, the closer we get to strawberry season, the worse those California strawberries look. Perhaps the Californians are trying to force us to shop local and in season by sending us their cast offs?

So I wasn’t completely thrilled with this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, La Palette’s Strawberry Tart (chosen by Marie of A Year From Oak Cottage), knowing that I would have to make it with disappointing strawberries. Not only that, but I had to throw away more of the berries than I was able to use! But once I took a bite of this tart, it was worth the headache. I will DEFINITELY be making this tart again once we reach the peak of NH strawberry season. It was so good! And I think the crust and the jam must have rubbed off on the berries, because they somehow transformed from bland to amazing!

Strawberry TartStrawberry Tart
Strawberry TartEmpty Plate

I have to gush a little about the crust in particular. It was the easiest crust I’ve ever made. Seriously, I was baking this crust on the hottest day of this very hot week that we are experiencing. My kitchen was easily 95 degrees while I was making it, and it didn’t give me the slightest bit of trouble. It came together perfectly, and you press this crust into the pan instead of rolling it out, so there was no headache there either. Plus, it tastes so good (both baked and raw) that I may never use another recipe again. All morning I’ve been making excuses to go into the kitchen just to cut off a sliver to eat plain.

We will no longer be posting the recipes for TWD treats, but this recipe is on page 374 of Baking. If you don’t already own a copy, use this as an excuse to go buy the book!

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TWD: French Chocolate Brownies

June 3, 2008 at 6:00 am · Filed under Tuesdays with Dorie, chocolate, dessert

If I told you I ate nothing but brownies for dinner Sunday night, would you judge me? Yes? Well then, forget I said anything…

French Chocolate Brownies

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is French Chocolate Brownies, chosen by Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook. That would be brownies with raisins in them. Now, I have to say that when I first saw the recipe, I cringed a little. I have a difficult enough time coming to terms with common additions like nuts, and now Dorie wants me to put raisins in my brownies? I probably would have skipped them, but I was starting to feel bad about swapping out the raisins in every Baking recipe I’ve made so far. So I decided to trust Dorie about the raisins this time.

As usual, I had nothing to worry about. These brownies rocked. I underbaked them just a little bit, and they were amazing. So very chocolatey, and the raisins were actually a great addition. They added a juicy bite and a natural sweetness that took these brownies over the top. That doesn’t mean I’m not schemeing up substitutions for next time (dried cherries? Yes, please!) but it does mean I might start trusting Dorie’s raisin judgement in the future.

Continue reading for the recipe.

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TWD: Florida Pie

May 27, 2008 at 8:47 am · Filed under Tuesdays with Dorie, dessert

I mentioned once or twice on this blog that this semester was a little…rough. That was sort of the understatement of the year. But now it’s over and I’m back to having time to eat and sleep again! Not to mention cooking and baking. Hooray! There was a moment last week when I realized that I had eaten an egg in a hole (regionally known as an egg in a basket, toad in a hole, etc) nine days straight. Mostly for non-breakfast meals. Yikes! This was supposed to be for last week, until I woke up Tuesday morning wondering why everyone was posting so early. Not only had I not yet made my madeline alternative (the previous week’s Florida Pie), I hadn’t even bought the ingredients or, to be honest, read over the recipe.

Not the prettiest picture of my Florida Pie

I ended up holding off a few days and making the Florida Pie for my future sister-in-law’s graduation party. As it turns out, John’s whole family loves key lime pie, so it was a big hit. Even John, who is usually completely disinterested in dessert, ate a huge slice. I was slightly less enamored with the pie. It was tasty, but I had some problems with the coconut. I felt like the flavor was too weak and the texture was a little overbearing. Perhaps better coconut would help with the flavor problems; I was just using Hannaford brand coconut. The key lime part of this pie, however, was really good. I can’t remember ever having key lime pie before, and I can see what all the hype is about. I might make this again as a plain key lime pie, or I might try it again with better quality coconut. Either way, this pie was really good!

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