Cottage Cheese Pufflets

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was hosted by Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes. These cookies are made with a cottage cheese-based dough, and filled with a jam of your choice. I used blackberry preserves for mine, giving a bright purple color when you bite into them. Light, tasty, and not overly-sweet, these are a great snack or dessert.

The dough doesn't use eggs in it, so you can snack on it before cooking. Not something I'd really suggest, though. Eating raw cookie dough is usually a hidden treat for me - if nobody's looking, I can grab a spoonful and shove it in my mouth, swallowing before anyone sees. Usually it's delicious...in this case? Not so much. These cookies are definitely better cooked than they are raw.

I rolled these about 1/4 of an inch instead of 1/8-inch, giving the cookies a thicker texture. Even so, they gave me problems when I tried to fold them over and shape them, so a refrigerator/freezer is definitely your friend when working with this thin dough. If you make them thicker, add about 7 minutes to the cooking time, or until they're lightly golden on top.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 148-149

Espresso Cheesecake Brownies

This is one of my delayed Tuesdays with Dorie posts. The dessert was initially to be posted September 1st, hosted by Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell. It's a brownie-bottomed dessert, with espresso cheesecake on top, marbled with some of the brownie dough. Covered with a thin layer of sweetened sour cream, this dessert was a quick hit.

The individual portions are pretty easy to make, so putting the brownie together with cheesecake was a great idea; the finished product looks complex, but it's simple (though time-consuming). It tastes delicious, and goes great as an afternoon treat or a decadent dessert served along with some coffee.

After cutting into Dorie's suggested 16 portions, I tasted how rich they were, and decided to cut each portion into another half, making a total of 32 small bars. They were still devoured quickly at work, so I'm not sure how many people were just taking two anyways, but the slices still stood up to the cutting process after a quick chill in the refrigerator.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 104-105

Posting Hiatus

I know I haven't been posting lately - I've been traveling a ton! This is just a quick post to let you all know that, yes, I'm alive and kicking. I'll be heading out to Florida this week, and then I'm busy for the next couple weeks after. But worry not - I'll be back and posting (frequently, hopefully) soon enough!

Blackberry Spice Bars

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Karen of Something Sweet by Karen. Technically, the recipe is called Applesauce Spice Bars, but realizing I had just finished off my applesauce before making the recipe, and being too lazy to go to the store, I substituted some blackberries and Chambord.

When they came out of the oven, they looked perfectly fine without a glaze or icing, so I skipped out. Had they needed something though, I was considering a thin layer of chocolate to pair with the blackberry and raspberry flavor - maybe next time? I was worried when I started pouring the batter that this wouldn't rise properly. It seemed a bit too wet, but I went ahead with it and baked away. I was pleasantly surprised when it raised nicely enough to cover the blackberries, and the inserted knife came out cleanly. The raspberries with the mix of spices play on each other nicely, giving these bars a great overall taste.

Unfortunately, my computer recently broke, so the quality of pictures are pretty low-quality. Only 5 years old, and it's already beyond repair...time to get a new one, I suppose.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 117-118

Brownie Buttons

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen. The recipe was for these mini-sized brownie buttons - a perfect bite-sized dessert. Optionally added is orange zest (something I skipped on, wanting to savor the chocolate) and a simple icing (something I skipped on, being lazy).

These follow closely to a basic brownie recipe, except when they are baked, teaspoon-fulls are scooped into mini-sized muffin tins. These allow them to rise slightly to gain a short mini-muffin shape, yet keep their brownie flavor in full. You could expand the recipe easily from 18 of the buttons to an even dozen, and make your buttons a bit more texturally exciting if you wanted to add some chocolate chips or nuts - something I think I'll do next time, finding this recipe a little bit on the plain side.

I also need to take a bit more care from now on when heating the butter/chocolate mixture. After the chocolate and butter had melted, I continued heating it, wanting all the brown sugar granules to dissolve into solution. I think I ended up actually separating my chocolate mixture with too much heat, because when I pulled these out of the oven there was oil bubbling on the tops. After cooling down, everything looked normal, but the taste was just slightly off. Did anyone else have problems with their brown sugar melting?

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 106-107

Vanilla Custard Ice Cream

I've been a bad, bad, Tuesdays with Dorie blogger. My month-long hiatus is finally up, but I left without any explanation. After going months without missing a single recipe, I suddenly went a full 4 weeks without updating! I just got so lost in a busy schedule that I didn't even think about it. But on the plus side, I've been very busy in a great way - took a roadtrip to San Francisco, got certified to SCUBA dive, had a lot of great nights with friends, a lot of weddings to go to.... Anyways, this very delayed Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu.

Dorie's actual recipe simply calls it Vanilla Ice Cream, but the flavor distinctly held onto the flavor of eggs to me, so I threw custard in there as well. It's a great ice cream, perfect for a vanilla lover like me! Throwing gobs of chocolate or strawberries, or any other sort of flavor into a simple dish like this is a good way to ruin it quickly.

I wasn't in my own kitchen to make this, so I didn't have my handy stand mixer ice cream attachment, so I had to just stick it in the freezer and stir it every couple hours until it began to get hard. This lent to larger ice crystal formation, so the mouth-feel of the ice cream isn't as soft as it could be, but the flavor is all packed in there nicely.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan pp. 428-429

Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Lisa of Surviving Oz. It's a moist and dense brownie, with walnut pieces, chocolate chips, and a bit of coffee. It's fast to put together (all done in one bowl), and quick to bake up. Including preparation time, these brownies are out of the oven within an hour.

These brownies use very little flour (only 1/2 of a cup for the whole batch), a secret that Katherine Hepburn supposedly told to her friends. This makes the batch a bit thinner than usual, but guarantees they stay moist inside.

I added quite a bit more salt than the recipe called for, and was happy with the result. Ever since the Tuesdays with Dorie group baked World Peace Cookies, I've been wanting to add extra salt to something particularly chocolaty - and this was a perfect time to do so. I feel it adds more depth to the brownies, and enhances the flavors better. The coworkers were happy with this batch, and couldn't quite put their finger on what made them so good. I'm convinced it's the salt.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 96-97
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