TWD: Caramel Crunch Bars

This Tuesday with Dorie we made the Caramel Crunch Bars; sooooo-weee, these are good! Crunchy and sweet and buttery = YUM.

.

This fairly simple recipe came together pretty quickly (I am slow as molasses in the kitchen, so "quickly" is a relative term), sat in my oven for about 18 minutes and then got some chocolate chips poured on top to be melted for the top layer. Ah, how to say this, THEY NEVER MELTED...those bars probably spent a total of another 30 minutes in the oven as I put them in, took them out, tried unsuccessfully to swirl the luscious should-have-been-but-wasn't melted chocolate into one luscious layer...instead the spoon sort of skipped around digging the non melted chips into the shortbread base...this process was repeated at least 3 times before I decided that now that they were sufficiently ugly I would quit, knowing at least they would taste good. Ooo, I was frustrated. I have heard that chocolate chips are engineered to hold their shape when warm, but I didn't realize they just will never melt...Annoying things. Should have just chopped up bar chocolate like Dorie said...you haven't always followed Dorie's instructions to the letter; don't judge me!! >:[

In any case these were delicious. I took the majority to work and people were so gracious and just cleaned them right up. One taster declared they were 4-star worthy...then later decided they were just "ok" and I needed to practice my technique 2 or 3 more times and let her evaluate the results :)

I'm glad these were yummy, especially since this is my first TWD assignment completed in a long time...my kitchen has turned into a mad science lab with parts and pieces of previous Dorie recipes laying around...the cake layers from the last assigment are done, just not iced...the dry ingredients for the ginger chocolate cake were mixed...and not another thing was done for that recipe. It feels good to actually finish something. Ahh, commitment.

Whitney of What's Left on the Table picked these yummy bars and has posted the recipe. You should make these!

TWD: Berry Surprise Cake

Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen laid down the berry gauntlet ("berried" the gauntlet??) for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie assignment, and we had to answer. We fought long and we fought hard, and I hear that a bunch of our cakes sunk, but we bakers are nothing if not resourceful and thankfully we had a decadent cream cheese filling with which to disguise any disappointing cake foundations.

The base of this recipe is a fairly simple mixture of the usual suspects of flour, eggs, sugar and a couple sidekicks, but oh the fuss that had to be made over those eggs! Dorie actually encourages the baker to treat the eggs "like the divas they are", and she is not exaggerating. First there was the warming of the eggs and sugar over simmering water, then the mixing for a very long time and sifting and folding in some things and then melting and folding in other things...it was a good thing I started the whole process the day before I actually meant to serve the cake.


You see here my short, bronzed cake. I don't have the 8 inch pan called for, only a 9 inch pan, and I forgot to cut down the cooking time to accommodate for the thinner final product. As a result the cake was a tad dry, but the syrup brushed over it, the cream cheese filling piled into it and the whipped cream topping slathered on the outside made up for all that. My cake did sink some and the top layer was really just the top ring of the outer 2 inches of cake that were tall enough to cut. I was able to cut out 1/4 inch or so depth of the inside of the cake to make the well for the fililngs.

I used Grand Marnier as I couldn't get my hands on any of the other liquers suggested in time and it worked just fine. I used frozen berries, so by the next morning there were little pink tear drop trails running here and there down the sides.

Hello, breakfast. The light sweetness of the filling and the topping was tempered by a tart zing of raspberry every now and then, and the spongy texture of the cake set off the creamy filling very nicely. It was quite tasty!

It was SO much work that unless I knew of someone who was wild about berries I'm not sure I would want to do it all again. The cake recipe was the most tedious to make of all the parts, and I could see myself using the filling for something else...homemade danish or some other filled cake perhaps...or just in my bowl. I'm glad I went through the whole process at least once.

TWD: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

Note 3:14 pm, 1/13/09: Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake picked the corn muffins for this week and has the recipe on her post.

This Tuesday we made Dorie's Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins. I do not like spicy foods, so I was scared of these for the 1.5 teaspoons of chile powder and the entire jalapeno pepper they had in them. But I soldiered on and, boy, am I glad I did.


Pretty! Note: there should be flecks of red in there, too, but my grocery store didn't have any red bell peppers, so I got a green one. These would be quite festive with the red, green and yellow (corn kernels) flecks. Mine were only moderately festive.


I worried in vain. These were so good...SO GOOD. I ate 4 of them...maybe 5. Mine were slightly crisp on the outside and soft and tender on the inside. I like a sweeter corn bread but the peppers and corn in here made these more than just corn bread, and I didn't miss the extra sweetness I usually need.
-

I paired these with Kim Bensen's Bean Chili. It's healthy and so easy to throw together quickly; fairly inexpensive, too. Its also forgiving as it sat 40 minutes or so instead of 20 while it waited on me to make the muffins. Hubs commented that it was quite tasty which he didn't expect of something that came together so quickly and largely from cans.
-

Make these muffins! They are easy and yummy!

Special Report: Man Invades Tuesdays with Dorie

Please welcome hubs, my guest poster today. You can find the recipe for these Buttery Jam Cookies over at Heather's blog Randomosity and the Girl. Enjoy!
~Kimberly

Yes…I said it. I am over six foot tall, over two-hundred pounds, can tear phone books in half and lift small cars…..but today my task was no feat of strength or bravery. It was a simple request to help my wife by baking a pan of Buttery Jam Cookies following the detailed directions from Baking: From My Home to Yours. While my sweet wifey….who dominates the kitchen…was narrating the Christmas cantata for the elderly in our church, I was navigating the rough flour dusted waters of cookie making.

-

I started by pulling out the hand mixer and briefly considered how I could speed up the process by inserting the beater into my power drill (yes, it has happened before during a bet involving organic peanut butter). After mixing the butter that wifey left out for me, I added the sugar and egg. I got a little lost on the word “satiny” that Dorie used. I don’t know that my mixture was “satiny,” but I did want to use it as a moisturizer and then lick off any leftover residue.

-

After adding the dry ingredients and more beating I found that the cookie making process wasn’t as hard as I thought. Indeed, reading directions and following them has been my downfall and the downfall of my gender, but in this case things were going well. The only difficulty I had was spooning out teaspoon sized balls of dough onto the cookie sheet. I’m sure that my “spooning process” was no different than most, but it was a sticky mess that took 25 minutes.

-

The only change I made to the recipe was to use blackberry jam as that was the first jam I could find. The blackberry jam was very good, but did result in purple cookies which I find unnatural.

-

I did enjoy my morning in the kitchen baking, but I know that it would be best if I stuck with tearing phone books.

TWD: Grandma's All Occasion Sugar Cookies

Update: 12/16/08

I actually did get up early last Wednesday morning 12/10 and bake up a batch of the cookies. I just fell asleep right after that and just now woke up...in time to post pictures of the results! There they are up there all sliced up. I cut that first batch too thin, so you'll notice some brown edges in the next photo. This batch was definitely a bit crispy for my taste. They weren't burnt, but definitely crisp.

Ah, but the second batch. I cut them wider and they were just delightful. They didn't smack you in the face with a "Wow! These taste amazing!" yet they were completely irresistible. I seriously ate the majority of both batches...if only my goal was to gain weight, how successful I would feel right now. Even the uncooked dough was just so YUMMY!

Ahh, yeah...show me a little bit of that right there (Viewer discretion advised).

Good stuff. Make these cookies. And then eat a bunch to make me feel better.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This week in Tuesdays With Dorie we are making Grandma's All Occasion Sugar Cookies. You can find the recipe and Ulrike who actually chose this week's recipe over at Kuchenlatein; you might have to scroll to the very bottom of the page like I did to see the picture and the link to the recipe.

So far this has been a simple and straight forward recipe.

Creamed butter: check

Sugar and eggs added: check

-

Some vanilla, flour, salt and baking powder finished off the dough. Dorie cautions against over working the dough, so I tried hard to stop mixing before I wanted to and get it shaped and in the fridge as quickly as possible. These could be rolled out and cut using cookie cutters or shaped into a log for slice-and-bake cookies. I chose the slice-and-bake because that sounded like the quickest and easiest way that these cookies could get done and find their way into my mouth. This was still a bit tricky as the dough was very soft and slightly sticky. I'm a trooper though and didn't give up. Let that be a lesson to you. Whichever method is chosen the dough has to chill for at least 2 hours before being baked.

-

I've got my plastic-wrapped cookie dough logs chilling in the fridge and in a perfect world I will get up and bake a couple dozen to take into work. We'll see if I wake up in a perfect world tomorow.

Beaters, spatula and any other dough covered surface I can find for a late night snack: CHECK!
-

I'll post a picture of my cookies before work. Because I'm going to wake up early enough to not only slice and bake these babies, but to finish out a witty and informative post, too. Goals, people! Always set goals!

TWD: Arborio Rice Pudding

Update 11/21/08, 11:36 am: This is the most updated post ever. Abby committed to holding her back feet up with absolutely no part touching the floor until the pudding thickened. She's got the strongest abs ever, I think.

-----------------------------

Update 11/19/08, 6:17 pm: Breakfast was GOOOOD this morning! Hubs and I split the chocolate bowl, and both agreed it was a very good thing. The pudding was just on the soft side of set up in my opinion, but it certainly wasn't chocolate rice soup. I tend to like to have something to chew on, so the rice added just the right note for me to really enjoy the pudding.

I snuck a bit of the vanilla batch just now, and it was quite yummy, too: milky, sweet, just right. It seemed a little less set up which is weird. Breakfast tomorrow morning will be GOOOOD, too :)

Next time I will probably use a little less milk and have the mixture simmer somewhere nearer medium heat than low for the entire 50 minutes. I think that'll give me a bit more of the set pudding I'm looking for.

------------------------------------

Update 11/19/08, 1:36 am: Answer: it takes milk a long time to boil. But boil it finally did, so I got the parboiled rice in there and set it to simmer for a while. By the way, my Wal-Mart is obviously stuck in non-foodie land because I could find no evidence of arborio rice among the scads of rice items. I got a bag of basmati (which I found was a reasonable substitute when making risotto, so I figured I'd try to make it work for pudding), but when I got home happily discovered about half a cup of arborio left in the pantry from my last Whole Foods run.

Now, one advantage of my complete slackness in regards to my TWD duties this week is that I got to learn from my fellow (responsible) bakers' mistakes as well as Dorie's own tip concerning the cooking time. I used closer to 1/3 cup of rice and set my timer for 50 minutes. At the end of 50 minutes I had this:

This just was not enough for me so I let it go for 10 more minutes at least twice, if not 3 times until I got this:


I figured I shouldn't push my luck (I've nicely burnt caramel with TWD; I'd like to keep milk off the list) so I poured it up into two bowls. Of course I had to do this to one of them:

These babies are now chilling in the fridge and if the lick I snuck off the stirring spoon is any indication, tomorrow's breakfast should be quite a treat.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Update 11/18/08, 11:22 pm: Good grief, how long does it take the milk to boil??

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWD: Don't kick me off yet! I have been slack in the last few weeks, I know, but I'm back, honest I am! I bought the rice last night and everything!

When I got home I got in a funk because the house is all messy and it was 9 pm before we got home (1st job ran long, 2nd job just added to the fun) and there wasn't time to do all I wanted to do (clean, blog, cook, shop, buy, wrap, snuggle, watch Dancing With The Stars, get to bed on time) so I went and got in bed and put the covers over my head. Best-hubs-ever came and hugged me and rubbed my back and told me I wasn't a complete slacker bum like I said I was. I really meant to get up and play the laundry relay he suggested we do (tackling mountains of clothing is much easier when there's a game involved) and get that pudding boiled and in the fridge, but I just wanted to pout a few more minutes...and the next thing I knew I woke up and it was midnight...sigh...

But today I'm making that pudding! And I'll post about it! And then tomorrow I'll eat some of it and post about it!! Promise!!!!

TWD: Pumpkin muffins

Note: You only have until October 31 to join the baking odyssey! Buy the book, go sign up and show us your food!

I was coming off a TWD slump and needed something to get me back in the swing...enter: Pumpkin Muffins. Simple, quick, yummy. Thank you, Dorie!

Things started pretty normally, but then the batter got weirdly grainy once the eggs were added in.

But once the dry ingredients/raisins (I used dark raisins, by the way)/walnuts were added in things got back to normal.

And turned into these!

My only teensy weensy complaint would be that they seemed a tad dry even though I checked them a couple minutes before the lowest cooking time Dorie listed. My oven must run hot or something...I'll just have to check sooner in the future.

Dorie knows what she's talking about (imagine that) when she says to split, toast and add marmalade...very niiiice.

Go make these muffins! They're like little chunks of fall!

Just cuz, take a look at that turtle with her legs stretched out...have you ever seen such?

TWD: Caramel Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake

Caramel, peanuts, cakes that are brownie-like: heaven!! My experience with it all: not heaven :( I had such high hopes for this cake. The picture in the book was gorgeous, and I couldn't wait for that first piece.

It was all so promising in the beginning what with the buttered and floured pan...

And the sugar and eggs...

And look how creamy and luscious it is with all those dry bits mixed in. Wait...crap! I mixed it out of order!! Forgot to mix in the chocolate first! This means that the dry ingredients will be mixed too much! Shoot!!!

It sure is pretty though. Ah, well we'll hope for the best.

In the meantime let's tackle this caramel business. 5 minutes came and went...10 minutes came and went...15 minutes came and went...and then 15 minutes 30 seconds came, and I happened to sit down for approximately 10 seconds to eat a sandwich for goodness sakes and suddenly the caramel was all, "Oh, well you've missed your chance my friend. I am now officially much too amber".

I was worried...but I decided to go ahead with it just in case the combo of the pretty but mixed out of order cake and the possibly burnt caramel would turn into magic.

Ooo-whee! That's a pretty cake! My cake did sink in the middle as it cooled, but Dorie warned us of that, so I was not alarmed.

Upon tasting I was a tad disappointed. The cake was a bit dry which I was sure was due to my mixing error, but I did read that some of you other TWD-ers also ended up with dry cake. And to me that caramel does taste a bit on the toasty side, though it's not a hardship to eat it with the cake. I really want to take another crack at this cake and do everything just right because I believe this could be one of the most delicious cakes I've ever had.

Meanwhile, Abby did her glamour thing in the sunshine...tell me turtles don't smile.

What a ham...

TWD: Crème Brulée

Its Tuesday again and Dorie's here! Crème Brulée is up to bat, so let's get started.

Abby thought some calisthenics were in order in preparation for all the working out she's going to have to do to burn off the heavy cream.


This recipe said it yielded 6 servings so I tried to pour equal amounts of the base in 6 ramekins.

Took a hair over 60 minutes before I thought these seemed firm enough to take out of the oven, but here they are.

Chilled over night and then torched! My husband Walt actually brought the little torch you see right there to our relationship. Somewhere around our fourth or fifth date he packed a picnic that we enjoyed next to a little pond (this man knew what he was doing). When we got back to his house he busted out this torch to finish off the crème brulées he had made! Can you even imagine how impressed I was!! Well, I married him :)

The creme was a bit melty, but I could have popped it in the fridge for a few minutes like I saw several of you mention on the TWD crème brulée post; I'll probably try that tonight when we take down two of the four ramekins left. Yum.

I was very pleased with this experience. It was easy and the results are pretty impressive.

TWD: Dimply Plum Cake=YUM

Happy Tuesday once again, one and all. Today we have the Dimply Plum Cake. Which I ALMOST DIDN'T MAKE. After last week's debacle I didn't know if I had another challenge in me and for some reason "Dimply Plum Cake" sounded like "Darn this'll be Plum hard to make Cake" or something. So glad I persevered! This is DELICIOUS. Seriously people, I will be making this again.


First, please allow me to wax poetic over my butter picture. I am so proud of this picture. That top chunk there just happened to fall and land on its point just as you see it here. What luck! It brought a little bit of beauty to an otherwise ordinary day. (And now I'll wane with all the poetry)



A bit of the finished cake. It was SO pretty...and it smelled SO good...and I was SO pleased.



Andy as "Dimply Plum Turtle". He wanted me to point out how his shell is just peeking above the water just like those little plums...what, you say you got it? I told him you would, but he insisted.

Wee bit sinister, no?

As you can see I bought black plums because they looked prettier for some reason than the red plums, and I didn't see any Italian Prune Plums, though I was looking on Sunday and Monday was the OFFICIAL first day of fall, so I was probably jumping the gun. Italian Prune Plums are known for their punctuality (is that a word): neither early nor late.

There was some debate as to how many plums one could stuff on top of this cake. As you can see I got 12 halves in there in comparison to the 16 Dorie says she usually uses. Though I do want to point out that the picture in the book looks suspiciously like there are only 3 plum halves in a row. Anyway, I wanted a plum for breakfast so I am making the excuse that I could only fit in 12 halves.

I followed the original recipe as written. I did include the cardamom (man, that stuff is expensive! I'll be looking for excuses to put cardamom in everything just so I can get my (x-number) dollars worth out of it (sorry for the censorship...hubs might be reading this...babe, seriously just don't ask how much it cost...its better this way)).

And now for the gory facts of life: all good things must come to an end. My small group and I set upon this pretty little number before it knew what happened. They were SO impressed with how pretty it was, and they all seemed to find it tasty. There was a suggestion that I take the skin off the plums before cooking next time as they were difficult to cut with just our forks.

Make this cake. It is simple; it makes an impressive presentation; it smells delicious; it tastes even better; it is great for breakfast. If you are so unhealthy as to eat cake for breakfast. No further comment.

TWD: Chocolate Chunkers!

Tuesday again! Hi there, Dorie! We're back!

This week we tackled the "Chocolate Chunkers". One look at the picture in her book, and I knew these would be good.


Do you get the same feeling when you look at my picture? Ha! Really you should get the feeling that these are the lonely specimens of baked dough that came out of the oven actually looking sort of like cookies. These were not the breeze that last week's Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops were.

Wait, what I meant to say was: I decided cookies shaped foods were passe this week and found Dorie's suggestion that these be crumbled over ice cream much more compelling, so I just skipped right to that part: crumbles.




First off: the chocolate roster. If I remember correctly there were at least 19 ounces of chocolate in this dough: 6 ounces of semisweet plus 1 ounce unsweetened melted first thing; 6 more ounces of semisweet, 6 ounces of milk or white and come cocoa powder added in later...dang! Dorie basically took a chocolate bar, threw some raisins and peanuts in there and melted it all together. Why I didn't think to do that before...

In which we meet the beginnings of a luscious cookie dough...

And somehow the luscious factor is cranked up even more...

So since I ate all that dough in the previous picture, do you think I could just make little piles of the mix-ins on the cookie sheet and come up with something yummy still??

OK, I'm just kiddin! That dough was in fact under all those mix-ins. A girl can dream though, right? Dorie says that once the chunky bits are in there will be more of them than there is dough. To say the least, dear readers.

At this point there was a hitch in our thus-far flawless plan. I had to be somewhere and there was no time to bake the cookies. No matter; Dorie assured me that the dough could sit in the fridge for up to 3 days. Several hours later I came back home, turned on the oven and pulled a rock-hard chunk of cookie stuff out of the fridge. 19 ounces of chocolate, remember. I basically had a giant Chunky bar (remember those?)...this did not bode well for me ending up with cookies. I decided to leave the dough out and bake the cookies the next day.

At the appointed time the dough was still not feeling like behaving, so I basically took a pile of dough crumbs and mix-ins and mashed them together as tightly as I could into cookie-type shapes and quickly put them on the cookie sheets before they could fall apart...or at least just before they fell apart in the oven.

The turtles knew something was wrong...

Andy wouldn't come near me...(he's hiding behind his plastic island with the plastic palm tree)

Abby gave me the turtle evil eye if there ever was one.

(Am I starting a tradition with these turtle pics...is that annoying?)

Here we have a nice pile of Chocolate Chunker dough that has been warmed slightly and left to lie where it may. Oh, I was so frustrated...while this stuff tasted good, the few cookies I did end up with were ugly as could be. Wonder what I should have done after chilling the dough to end up with actual cookies that stayed together? Next time I'll plan for a time I can bake the dough right away.

In the meantime, where's that ice cream?