dessert

Baking Chez Moi – Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake

~ Teresa ~ 17 Comments

Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake

There are many reasons why I love to bake, but eating what I bake isn’t at the top of my list. Don’t misunderstand me, I love baked goods and I think homemade ones are the best. But sharing what I bake rates higher for me, as does the act of baking itself. There’s something calming about the methodical nature of baking and something satisfying about the progression of a baking project. And though tasting is the final step in this progression, it’s the aroma of something delicious in the oven that’s really the sensory payoff for me.

This is especially true of this week’s Baking Chez Moi assignment. From the moment I started scraping the pulp from the vanilla pod, my home smelled wonderful. After the butter browned, the aroma was heady. By the time the loaf came out of the oven, it was intoxicating. I felt it was very unfair that I’d read Dorie’s comment that the loaf improves after a day’s rest, because I really wanted to slice into that cake immediately. Actually, I wanted to set it in front of me on my desk. Who needs a bouquet when you can have the scent of this loaf perfuming your space, instead?

Well, wait I did and the cake rewarded me with a tender, sponge-like crumb and a gentle crispness at the edges. There is no need to spread butter on this loaf cake – browned butter is present in every bite. It would be good used as shortcake might be, covered in macerated berries and cream. Stale, it might be perfect in a parfait. Right now, though, I like it just as it is, eaten out of hand. I’m looking forward to trying it toasted in a day or two, as well. Then, I might break out just a little more butter.

You can find the rest of the Tuesdays with Dorie crew’s entries on this recipe here: Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake.

Baking Chez Moi – Bûche de Noël

~ Teresa ~ 16 Comments

buche de noel

My mother’s sister, Lorraine, always brought a bûche de Noël to Christmas dinner. They were traditional chocolate logs from a bakery, but I remember them as being rich, delicious, and perfect. She died when I was an adolescent and bûche de Noël was only an occasional part of our holiday celebrations thereafter, but they’ve been a symbol of the season for me ever since.

I’ve always wanted to make one, so I was happy that one of the recipes chosen for our second month of baking through Baking Chez Moi was Dorie’s Gingerbread Bûche de Noël.

There are a lot of steps in making this dish, but some of the most intimidating parts of the process are also surprisingly easy. The pecan praline wasn’t at all difficult, the cream cheese filling was a snap to whip together, and the marshmallow icing was quite straightforward, once I’d braced myself for the task of pouring hot liquid sugar into the bowl of a running mixer.

My particular Waterloo on this dessert was the making of the sponge. I can’t seem to get sponge cakes quite right. This one didn’t turn out horribly and was quite tasty, but as you can see in the photo below, the cake is about half the height it should be. The batter deflated a lot more than it should have when I folded the butter mixture in. I guess it’s just a matter of getting some more practice, but I admit I was disappointed.

Slice

Luckily, the filling and icing made the bûche look beautiful, even with the imperfections in the cake. I’m going to try again with sponge cake and I think one of my few resolutions for 2015 will be to conquer the roulade. Next year’s bûche will be looking much prettier, I swear.

You can find the rest of the Tuesdays with Dorie crew’s entries on this recipe here: Bûche de Noël. And you can find more Tuesdays with Dorie catch up posts at this link.

Baking Chez Moi – Cranberry Crackle Tart

~ Teresa ~ 33 Comments

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Our second Baking Chez Moi recipe is deceptively intricate looking. It’s a simple meringue tart on a pâte sablée base. It’s easy to put together, but the results are sophisticated in look and flavour. I made a gluten-free version of Dorie’s sweet tart dough for this one and as I’ve told you before, my gluten-free conversion of this dough needs a little refinement. The tender crust crumbled as I cut it, but it didn’t matter, because it tasted delicious. If I had been serving it for guests, I suppose I could have called it a cranberry meringue on sable cookie dirt and gotten bonus points for cheffiness. (Those of you who know me know I’d be too busy parsing my mistakes.)

I’ve got a disk of regular sweet tart dough in the freezer, so I’m going to make this again for the rest of my family during the holidays this year. In the meantime, Kevin and I are going to enjoy the leftovers of this one. The contrast between the tart cranberries and the sweet, melting meringue is wonderful, especially with the shards of cookie-ish crust.

If you’d like to try this tart for yourself, you can find the recipe on Dorie’s website. It’s a perfect, pretty dessert for the holiday table.

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You can find the rest of the Tuesdays with Dorie crew’s entries on this week’s recipe here: Cranberry Crackle Tart.

Almond-Orange Tuiles – A French Fridays Fail

~ Teresa ~ 19 Comments

Tuiles

You won’t find any evidence of it on my blog, but I did make Citrus-Berry Terrine way back in July, 2011 when it was assigned. I didn’t realize that there was pineapple juice mixed into the juice I used for it and it refused to set. Worse, it spilled as I removed it from the refrigerator and that part of it set very well on the corrugated shelf. A good deal of scrubbing later, I was reluctant to try the recipe again.

I haven’t had too many failures during my French Fridays run. Some things haven’t turned out as beautifully as I’d hoped, but they weren’t a failure in anything but my artistic ability (of which I have none). And if there was a failure, I usually corrected my mistakes and had a better version to post about by deadline.

This week, though, I decided to tackle what I thought would be a quick catch up, since I had no time at all to go to the butcher for duck or to source kumquats. Unfortunately, I had a Canadian moment when I was reviewing the recipe and read 1/2 a stick as 1/2 a cup. I realized this after I mixed everything and with twice the butter and no more almonds in the house, I adjusted the recipe as best I could, put the dough in the fridge and hoped for the best.

You’re probably thinking that the cookies up top don’t look that bad, right? Well, I have another photo to share with you.

Fail

In one of the few instances where there can be too much butter, the top two tuiles were the only ones that made it to the plate looking like, well, tuiles. And they are a little greasy, I have to admit. I’m going to try these again some time, because the flavour combination is terrific, but that may or may not make it to the blog.

So my lesson this week (one I thought I’d learned by age eight) is to read the recipe carefully before beginning. Thanks to Adriana for the inspiration to keep it real.

Find out what these tuiles are supposed to look like here: Almond-Orange Tuiles.

Everyone else made duck this week and you can find those links here: Pan-Seared Duck Breasts with Kumquats

Happy Birthday, Dorie! A French Fridays Celebration

~ Teresa ~ 47 Comments

Happy Birthday

Today’s French Fridays with Dorie assignment has been set aside for a celebration. Not only are we wishing Dorie Greenspan the happiest of birthdays, but we’re also baking from her soon-to-be-released cookbook, Baking Chez Moi. This celebration has been orchestrated by two of our fabulous French Fridays collaborators, Liz and Susan, who gave us four recipes from the new book to choose from.

I chose two, but the good news is that I’ll be baking through the entire book with Tuesdays with Dorie, starting in November – and you can, too. All the details are in this post on the TwD site.

Paletes de Dames, Lille Style

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These little cookies manage to be elegant and homey all at once. The cookies themselves are flavoured with vanilla and have a cake-like quality, while the icing has a few drops of lemon juice and sets in that shiny, smooth, pastry shop way. They can be dressed up with tinted icing or some sanding sugar, but really I think they’re perfect just as they are.

Brown Butter-Peach Tourte

Peach Tourte

One of the things I love about French baking (well, besides all the butter) is that a good number of the desserts are far less complicated than the results would suggest. This tourte, with its free-standing crust and its sparkling surface, looks like it requires effort and expertise to carry off. The truth is that once you’ve mastered pâte sablée, the rest is easy. And if you have Dorie’s instructions for pâte sablée (or sweet tart dough), that part’s easy, too.

I used some of the last of this year’s peaches to make this tart, but I think it would work equally well with any juicy tree fruit. In fact, I think I might try it again with mango this winter. I think it made an admirable stand in for a birthday cake and might be even more welcome than cake at the height of peach season.

Sliced

It’s been an amazing four years cooking and baking with French Fridays and I’m looking forward to the last six months or so of working through Around My French Table. I’m also starting to get excited about getting my hands on Baking Chez Moi and working through it with the Tuesdays with Dorie brigade.

So, again, happy birthday to you, Dorie. I’ve learned so much more about cooking and baking in these last few years, thanks to your work. I deeply admire your love and enthusiasm for food and the community it creates – you write about it beautifully.

Below you’ll find the full line up of posts for this French Fridays celebration. (Click on the name of the dish to find the recipe, so you can join in on the fun, too.)

Mini Cannelés

Chocolate Cream Puffs with Mascarpone Filling

Paletes de Dames, Lille Style

Brown Butter-Peach Tourte

From Soup to Nuts – A French Fridays Catch Up

~ Teresa ~ 14 Comments

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I wandered down the Drive this evening, armed with an umbrella and a needlessly puffy raincoat, taking one final look to see if Jerusalem artichokes had shown up in the market.

This is what I found:

  • Fresh, fragrant chestnuts, hazelnuts, and walnuts;
  • Persimmons, fresh figs, quince, and softball-sized Okanagan apples;
  • Cauliflower in white, orange, and purple, carrots in a rainbow of colours, beets across the red spectrum, and mounds of homely, dun-coloured celery root.

Not a sunchoke in sight.

So instead, I’m giving you a triple-barrelled catch up post.

Provençal Vegetable Soup

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Waaaay back in July, our lovely administrators Betsy and Mary allowed four of us to pick the recipes for that month. I chose this quintessentially summer soup. But before I could make it and post about it, I developed a flu and a sinus infection that kept me out of the kitchen for quite a while.

So finally, here it is, end-of-summer soupe au pistou presented to you when it’s cold and dark and rainy. My soup included some of the last of the beans, tomatoes, and zucchini from my garden and I had just enough basil left to make the pesto (but not enough for a garnish). I skipped the pasta and added extra potato instead. I also threw in a can of mixed Italian beans along with the chickpeas for extra heartiness. I kept it vegan for Kevin, so no pesto for him. My bowl had a healthy dollop of pesto and more than a pinch of Parmesan, which immediately melted into the hot soup. My soup wasn’t as clear as a traditional soupe au pistou because of all that extra potato, but it was awfully delicious all the same.

I don’t think it’s entirely inappropriate to be showing you this in October, actually. Like Smitten Kitchen’s Fall-toush Salad, this soup can be adapted for colder weather. At the end of every summer, I’ve always got a stock of frozen homemade pesto in the freezer – this year it’s mostly radish leaf pesto, because my basil harvest was unusually stingy. I think a swirl of summer in a bowlful of fall or winter vegetables sounds like a very good idea.

You can find the rest of the Doristas’ seasonally appropriate takes on this recipe here: Provençal Vegetable Soup

Rice Pudding and Caramel Apples

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Now, for something you’d expect to see in October.

I love rice pudding, but it’s something I’m used to making when I’ve got leftover rice to use up. This rice pudding is doubly different from my usual practice – it’s made fresh on the stovetop and it uses arborio rice. The pudding is creamy with whole milk and from the rice itself. It’s flavoured only with vanilla, which plays beautifully against the caramel apples with their hint of lemon.

My caramel was a little thin, so next time I think I’ll do as Liz did and pull the apples out when they’re tender so that I can cook the caramel until it’s thick. We still loved it, though. The layers of caramel, apples, and pudding were so satisfying and the whipped cream added just the right taste and texture to make this dessert elegant and comforting all at once.

You can find the recipe on Epicurious and you can see everyone else’s posts here: Rice Pudding and Caramel Apples

Caramel-Almond Custard Tart

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And finally, a dessert that made me very popular at our housing co-op’s general meeting this week. I made Dorie’s pâte sablée, or sweet tart dough, for the first time in a very long time recently. I’d forgotten just how good it is, so when we had a gap in food provision at the meeting this week (our co-op is so big on feeding its members that we wrote it into our Mission, Vision, and Values statements), I decided to catch up on this tart. It’s a good thing I waited until now to make it, because it’s so easy I’d have been popping it into the oven on a far too regular basis.

Who knew that par-baking a tart crust, toasting a few almonds, making a creamy caramel, and whisking up a custard could add up to something that (almost) looks like it came from a pastry chef? I think this is the recipe I’m going to pull out next time I really need to get someone on board with something.

Here’s the link to more posts about this beautiful tart: Caramel-Almond Custard Tart

There will be plenty of roasting vegetables in the oven this weekend – the markets are full of root vegetables, brassicas, and squash. But, I’m not exactly sure when sunchokes will show up here. The grocers I’ve asked so far can’t remember exactly when they start coming in, either. Whenever they do, I’ll be making this week’s dish, along with the Jerusalem artichoke soup that’s coming up in the rotation in the next month or two. Catch ups are my thing, apparently.

Now, if you’re curious about what the rest of the French Fridays crew got up to this week, you’ll have to look here: Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes with Garlic

FFWD – Roasted Red Peppers & Gâteau Basque à la mode

~ Teresa ~ 21 Comments

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Hello French Fridays, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’ve missed you, but I got hit with a nasty sinus infection last month that took away much of my sense of taste and smell, along with almost all of my cooking mojo. I’m coming back on an easy one, so I added in a couple of catch ups, too.

Roasted Red Peppers

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I’ve never been a fan of commercial roasted bell peppers – they’re usually a little slimy and the best part of the flavour is in the oil they’re packed in. Homemade roasted peppers, though, are an entirely different matter. Dorie’s recipe has you roasting the peppers in the oven, making it easy to cook them until they blacken and collapse. Once they’ve cooled down enough to peel, it’s just a matter of layering them with seasonings and marinating them in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. I made mine last night and they were wonderful as an appetizer. Unlike the ones out of a jar, they weren’t without texture and they certainly weren’t slimy. Instead, they had a light coating of good olive oil and they were covered in garlic and herbs. I also took a quarter cup of the oil and a slice of pepper, as Dorie suggests in her bonne idée, and made a vinaigrette. I used balsamic instead of sherry vinegar and it was a perfect dressing for salad this evening. Even better, there are still plenty of peppers in the fridge for me to work my way through Mary’s list of roasted pepper ideas.

Gâteau Basque

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There has been some disagreement amongst my fellow Doristas as to whether this dessert is a cake or a giant cookie. I don’t really care, because it’s delicious. I used my mother’s homemade cherry jam to fill the gâteau, which isn’t really traditional, but it was wonderful all the same. It’s quick and uncomplicated to make, as long as you leave yourself enough time to chill the dough. I enjoyed this as a summer treat, but I think it will be even better in the wintertime, when a jam-filled treat will bring welcome reminders of the sun.

Olive Oil Ice Cream

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Now, I’m not the kind of person that would throw out a cake just because it was made a couple of days ago, but they do tend to get a little drier over time. Since I still had some leftover Gâteau Basque today, I thought a little ice cream might be just the thing to freshen it up. I didn’t have an ice cream maker when the group made Olive Oil Ice Cream, so I decided to tackle one more catch up this week. I was skeptical, I have to say, about olive oil in my ice cream. But this recipe produces a very adult vanilla flavour. The oil cuts the sweetness and enhances the vanilla, while adding a layer of savoury fruitiness all its own. It paired really well with the gâteau, but I would have been just as happy to have it alone, or with some summer fruit.

So, I think I’ve managed a fairly respectable return, don’t you? Once I catch up on the rest of July’s recipes, I’ll be almost on track again. I have to say it’s been good to see you, French Fridays. We shouldn’t wait so long again.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about their Roasted Peppers

You can find links to everyone else’s thoughts about cherry-jam-filled-goodness here: Gâteau Basque

And here’s where you can find the verdict on Olive Oil Ice Cream

A French Fridays Catch Up: Bœuf à la Ficelle and Paris-Brest

~ Teresa ~ 15 Comments

Paris-Brest

I haven’t got any beautiful food to share with you today, but I do have some delicious dishes to write about. I’m not in synch with the French Fridays crowd this week; they’re all writing about their adventures in Garbure. Kevin and I are eating vegetarian this weekend, so the luxurious-sounding bean, duck, and sausage stew will have to wait. Instead, I’m doing a catch up for a couple of recipes I missed about a month ago.

First, bœuf à la ficelle, or in my case, la viande d’orignal à la ficelle. I used moose tenderloin in place of beef. This recipe uses a technique that many of us were skeptical about – poach an expensive cut of meat in beef broth? Madness! In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The gentle bath of beef broth makes the tenderloin perfectly seasoned and perfectly medium-rare. I cheated, opting not to make the oxtail stock, instead infusing beef broth with the aromatics called for in Dorie’s recipe. I think this is a fair trade off, as long as you use a good brand of stock. The moose tenderloins I used were much smaller than beef tenderloin, which surprised me. I only poached them for about seven or eight minutes to get them to rare. Covered with foil, they cooked a little more and were nicely medium-rare when I served them.

I served the moose and vegetables with this Garlic and Fennel Purée from Food and Wine. The garlic and fennel flavour was wonderful, but I prefer a heartier purée, like Dorie’s celery root purée. I think I’d rather use that recipe as a template for fennel purée, but keep the mountain of garlic from Food and Wine‘s version.

Even though I loved the dish, I think the best part of this recipe is the left-over broth. I left it with my mother, who first poached some chicken in it, and then the next day, warmed up some ham. I can’t imagine how much more flavour she’d infused in the broth by the time she used the last of it in a pot of soup. That broth is secret ingredient material.

Unfortunately, my presentation doesn’t do the dish justice. I need a food styling tutor, I think.

Beefy

You can find Dorie’s recipe for Bœuf à la Ficelle here.

You can read about the rest of the Doristas’ experiences with this dish here.

For dessert, there was Paris-Brest, filled with a vanilla and candied almond pastry cream, along with cream puffs filled with leftover Meyer lemon curd from last week’s crêpes. I only wish our assignment had been cream puffs, because those turned out beautifully. Unfortunately, I didn’t pipe the dough for the Paris-Brest into wide enough rings, so it’s not as impressive as it’s intended to be. I also managed to break the top when I was assembling it, so that added to the imperfection. No matter, because it was delicious. Definitely worth brushing up on my pastry piping skills.

To see how the rest of the French Fridays Crew fared with Paris-Brest, head here: Paris-Brest

I’ll be making both these recipes again, even if my presentation skills don’t show them to their best advantage. They may be homely versions of elegant dishes, but that’s easily forgotten once the eating begins.

FFWD: Butter and Rum Crêpes, Plain and Fancy

~ Teresa ~ 41 Comments

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In the early years of my parents’ marriage, my mother went on a quest to find the perfect lemon meringue pie recipe. It was my father’s favourite dessert and he told her he hadn’t had a good slice since he’d moved away from home. He’d never found any that could measure up to his mother’s recipe.

We were living in Winnipeg at the time, surrounded by my mother’s family, and she thought he should have a taste of home, too. So, she asked all the nurses she worked with at the hospital. Some of them brought in pie for my father to try and others passed on their recipes to my mother. Each time he was presented with a new version, Dad said, “It’s good, but it’s not like Mom’s.” Then, she went to her aunts, famously prolific scratch cooks, for their recipes. He thought their lemon meringue pies were pretty good, but they still didn’t measure up to his mother’s.

Finally, my grandparents came out to visit and my mother took my grandmother aside to ask her for her recipe. She told her how many different recipes she’d tried, without success. Grandma replied,”Oh well, dear. I just use Shirriff’s.” That possibility hadn’t occurred to my mother.

So, shortly after that visit, there was one more pie for my father to try. He tried it and said delightedly,”This is it! This is just like Mom’s.” My mother pulled out the box to show him and that was the end of scratch lemon filling in their household for many years to come.

Until now. I’ve made Dorie’s lemon curd before, but not for my parents. One of the options that Dorie presents for this week’s assignment is a lemon curd filling. The crêpes themselves are flavoured with lemon and orange zest, along with rum and orange liqueur (I used Triple Sec). There’s also a buttery orange and lemon sauce that goes on top, so I thought, why not go the distance? It was a good choice. My crêpe-making technique needs a little work – thank goodness for folding, it hides a multitude of less-than-perfectly-round sins. The texture of the crêpes was spot-on, though, and the make-ahead filling and sauce make them the sort of dessert you can “just throw together” to impress.

This dessert was a big hit with my parents. My Dad even said the filling was just as good as Shirriff’s.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this FFWD recipe here: Butter and Rum Crêpes, Plain and Fancy

FFWD – Baked Apples Filled With Fruit and Nuts

~ Teresa ~ 34 Comments

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Pink Lady Apples filled with honeyed dates and cashews. A nice, simple recipe that needs only a little garnish to bring it to perfection. In my mind, Greek yogurt mixed with brown sugar sounded like a great accompaniment.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying enough attention at the grocery store and picked up a tub of zero-fat vanilla Greek yogurt instead of the plain, full-fat variety. The taste and texture weren’t what I was looking for, but the apples were delicious enough to make up for it.

A small rant: Manufacturers, please stop messing with things that are perfect as they are. Regular Greek yogurt might not be diet fodder and grab-and-go eaters might
be put off by its plainness, but it really is a perfect ingredient. Savory dishes or sweet, sauces or baked goods, all can benefit from the use of Greek yogurt. Why mess it up by pulling the richness and replacing it with artificial flavours?

Rant aside, this is a recipe I’ll be making again. I think it would be lovely alongside a bread pudding for a warm winter dessert, or with some ice cream for some temperature contrast. Or with Greek yogurt, if you’ve checked the label before you left the store.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this FFWD recipe here: Baked Apples Filled with Fruit and Nuts