From the category archives:
This weeks pick of Coconut Butter Thins is from Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch whose post for said cookies is the kind that makes you want to have kids. Unfortunately I didn’t have the lime or the macadamia nuts (for the cookies not the kids). I think they would have probably turned out way better if I had used the proper ingredients and technique. As it stands, I did the best I could with the provisions on hand and the results were….meh. Click to continue…
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One of these days I’m actually going to be on time. It’s going to happen. It’ll probably be the day a giant meteor hits the earth destroying all life on the planet before anyone gets to read it. Figures. This weeks selection is brought to you by Jessica of cookbookhabit. Click to continue…
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It is ironic that what appears to be the simplest of tasks turns into a laborious challenge. That was the big lesson I learned attempting January’s Daring Bakers Challenge.
This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.
They also supplied a recipe for savory tuiles from Thomas Keller from the French Laundry and his cookbook
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I just recently made my favorite jam thumbprint cookie recipe and scarfed them down in record time, I’m ashamed to say. So, I was looking forward to trying my hand at Dorie’s recipe for these Buttery Jam Cookies selected by Heather of Randomosity and the Girl. How could you go wrong…butter = yum, jam = yum in my taste equation primer. And yet, I guess my palate isn’t that refined because I just didn’t care for these as written in the book.
I baked the first half of the dough according to Dorie, but after being somewhat disappointed by the flavor I decided to make some alterations with the second half of the dough. Click to continue…
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Here we are again with another challenge from the Tuesdays With Dorie group. Sorry for not posting this on Tuesday, but I’ve been overcome by election mania and glued to the TV for the past two days.
As far as this weeks challenge goes, Grace from Piggy’s Cooking Journal’s pick of Rugelach was a real winner for me. I tried a couple of different fillings with one half of the dough in an effort to see what I liked. I did a combination of the apricot, nuts, (semi-sweet) chocolate and crasins since I couldn’t find currants. I did this version with cinnamon sugar and without. Then I took a lead from I♥cuppycakes! and tried Nutella, nuts and toffee bits. Lastly I did one with just nuts and chocolate. And the winner is…none of them – ha! Actually I found elements that I liked in all of them, but I discovered that what I really liked was apricot, nuts, and chocolate without crasins or cinnamon, so that’s what I made with the other half of my dough.
Also, I never used regular nuts. I had been looking through one of my old magazines filled with Christmas cookie recipes and came across a recipe for Sugared-Almond Truffle Triangles. I liked the idea of sugared nuts and cooked up some sugared pecans to use for the nut component. The unfortunate thing about these nuts is they are TOO GOOD and TOO EASY to make that I ended up gorging myself on some leftovers last night. If you’re the type of person who likes to get their sweet and salt fix at the same time, don’t make these because you’ll end up eating them 24-7. Nuts aside, Rugelach was a real treat and I really enjoyed every version I tried. Click to continue…
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Aren’t they pretty? Madeleines have to be one of, if not the prettiest cookies out there (although, that seems to be a topic of heated debate). So I’ve been bitten by the Madeleine bug. I have to tell you though, I think about 90% of my inclination to make dozens of them is just to use my new pan.
I mentioned in that I had come across a recipe for a lemon madeleine using brown butter. I got around to trying it out the other day and I managed to pull it off without dropping anything on the floor, but of course I still had some issues. Click to continue…
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*Squee* Sorry, I was really excited to become part of this group. So this Tuesday was the Lenox Almond Biscotti. Truth be told, I’ve never been a big fan of biscotti. My mouth always felt like a bunch of shrapnel ripped through it after I ate one. I was pleasantly surprised with this recipe because these are crisp, but not so much so that they damage your mouth.
The recipe was one of the easiest that I’ve tried. The only thing that caused some confusion (and not just for me, others were perplexed as well) was the step when you “…this time standing them up like a marching band…” – this suggested to me that I had to figure out how to stand these things up vertically. I read through those posts on the Tuesdays With Dorie blog and discovered that you just flip the cookies upside down so the bottoms can get crispy. Click to continue…
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Stop me if you’ve heard this one… But seriously, according to one tale a French baker and a Polish King would collaborate in bringing to the world one of the most beloved French confections … the Madeleine. There’s as many theories about the origins of the Madeleine as the origins of the Universe, though not as much fervent argument (I think. Uh-oh, maybe I was wrong). My favorite is still the one about the Polish King who became so enamored with the petite cake when he tasted it that he named it after Madeleine, the French servant who baked them. At least King Stanisław Leszczyński had some sweets to cheer him up when he was in exile from his country.
Of course the history of the Madeleine doesn’t just include Kings and Queens. You’ve got your literary references as well. Who can forget it was Proust who gave the Madeleine much acclaim in Remembrance of Things Past. Talk about being enamored, “…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence … I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal.” Now I’ve been known to drown my sorrows with sweets, but I don’t remember ever having one of those experiences. “I had ceased not to feel … mortal”!? Wow. Maybe I’m just not that type of a writer. I’d love to eat something that made me feel like a superhero.
You may remember from a previous post that I had been in search of a Madeleine Pan
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