Tuesdays with Dorie: Creme Brulee

Mari of Mevrouw Cupcake selected this week’s recipe: Crème Brulee. I can’t really remember what my first thought about this was. I love crème brulee, but to actually make it? I had received a crème brulee set a couple of years ago as a gift, so I had no excuse not to try it. I looked through the recipe and it didn’t look too bad.

This is definitely a recipe that is easier for two to create. My husband helped with the simultaneous whisking/pouring, which would have been a challenge to do by myself. It came together really easily and as my husband said “smells just like custard.” He’s quite the fan of custard, so I trust him on this. (He’s actually suggesting I try making it with Bird’s Instant Custard, just so I could make it quicker.)

Torching the sugar was quite fun! It maybe wasn’t as even as the crème brulees that I have ordered in a restaurant, but it was pretty close. My custard was a little runnier than I was used to, but I thought it turned out really well for my first try.

1-1/4 cups heavy cream

½ cup whole milk

3 large egg yolks

1/3 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

Additional sugar

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Put 6 small baking dishes on a cookie sheet lined with a silpat.

Mix the cream and milk in a saucepan and bring just to a boil.

In a 2 quart glass measuring bowl, whisk the yolks sugar and vanilla. While still whisking, stir in about one quarter of the hot cream/milk mixture, to temper the eggs. (You don’t want scrambled eggs.) Continue whisking, adding the rest of the cream/milk mixture. Rap the bowl against the counter to remove any bubbles. Strain the custard into the baking dishes.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until the centers are set. Let them cool to room temperature and then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least three hours. (I forgot to wrap them in plastic and they turned out ok.)

To caramelize, sprinkle the tops of the custards with about one tablespoon sugar. Using a kitchen blowtorch, brown the sugar until it bubbles.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Chocolate Hazelnut Tart

My favorite combination is chocolate and hazelnuts. When we visit my husband’s family in England, I am able to find all sorts of candy with this combination. Not so in the United States, where it is fairly rare to find anything using hazelnuts. I think this is strange since hazelnuts are commonly grown here in the Pacific Northwest. I can get hazelnuts (filberts) at the local farmer’s market.

I’m always on the lookout for recipes that combine the two. This recipe has been kicking around my email for over two years. I have made the tart before; it’s simple and doesn’t require any exotic ingredients. It’s basically a chocolate pecan pie with hazelnuts. I’ve got some other chocolate hazelnut creations in mind to make, plus I found a cookbook that contains many recipes. I’m hoping that Santa will bring that cookbook soon!

The original recipe calls for store made pie crust, but I made my own. I use the basic pie crust recipe from Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts, which comes together quickly in the food processor. The first time I tried it I thought that it was strange, but making it in the food processor makes you handle it a lot less. Pie crust can be finicky; if you’re having a bad day, it never seems to work! Feel free to use store made pie crust or use your own favorite recipe.

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

3 eggs, beaten

1 1/2 cups peeled, chopped, and toasted hazelnuts

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips (about 1 cup)

1 cup corn syrup

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

Pastry

1-1/4 cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon sugar

½ cup butter, cut in small pieces

1/8-1/4 cup ice water

First, make the pastry. Combine the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Process for a couple of seconds to combine. Add the pieces of butter. Process in 10 2-second pulses until the mixture comes together and looks like course meal. Add the ice water, ½ teaspoon at a time, while the food processor is running. Don’t process too much or the dough will be tough. Gather dough in a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Roll out the dough to fit your pan. I used a 10-inch tart pan, but a regular 9-inch pie pan would also work.

In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and the flour. Add the eggs, hazelnuts, chocolate chips, corn syrup, butter, vanilla, and salt. Stir well. Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Bake for 1 hour.

Cool the tart completely before serving.

Pie crust recipe from Martha Stewart’s Pies and Tarts. Tart recipe from Giada De Laurentiis, courtesy of the Food Network site, www.foodnetwork.com

Cookies on Friday: Triple Ginger Cookies

This is my favorite thing to make in the fall. They are the perfect cookie. I’ve been making these for years (the recipe is from a magazine from 1998) and I’ve always been happy with them. I can’t recall when I first started using the orange sanding sugar, but it makes a big difference. I ran out of the orange sugar one time when I was making them and they just looked so blah, so boring! While the orange sanding sugar is expensive, it gives the cookies their festive look.

So I had been baking these all along and had been happy with the recipe. My husband and I often shop at Trader Joe’s and we picked up some of their miniature triple ginger cookies. They’re very good, but my husband said that my ginger cookies were better. He suggested that I alter my recipe and make it a triple ginger cookie. So I took the recipe and added candied ginger and gingerroot. It was a success. I took them to work and my coworker said that they were better than the ones from Trader Joe’s. What a compliment!

This recipe makes a lot of cookies (6 dozen or so) but you could either half the recipe or make really big cookies. The original recipe called for 3 tablespoons of dough for each cookie, with the recipe making only 25 cookies. I think that’s too big for a cookie, others would disagree. Also, for this recipe you MUST use shortening or they won’t be soft and chewy. I’m usually a butter girl all the way, this is one of the few places where I don’t even think of making a substitution.

4-1/2 cups flour

4 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons baking soda

1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon salt

1-1/2 cups shortening

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

½ cup molasses

¼ cup candied ginger, finely diced

1 teaspoon gingerroot, grated on a microplane

¾ cup orange sanding sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt.
In the bowl of a mixer, mix the shortening until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until fluffy. Add the eggs and the molasses, mixing until combined.

Stir in about half of the flour mixture and then mix in the candied ginger and the gingerroot. Add the rest of the flour mixture. You will probably need to mix in the last bit of flour by hand, as the dough is too much for most mixers (even my Kitchenaid!).

From the dough into 1 inch balls. Roll in the orange sanding sugar. Bake for 11-12 minutes. Cookies will be puffy and perhaps look slightly undone. Cool 2 minutes on the baking sheet before removing to a wire rack to cool.

Adapted from Sunset Magazine’s Giant Ginger Cookies (November 1998)

Plum Cobbler

Another plum creation…

I had a lot of extra plums, since the Dimply Plum Cake only used 2. My plums were on the ripe side so I really needed to use them up quickly. I did a quick search on the web and came across the Fresh Fruit Cobbler on allrecipes.com. It called for a mixture of fruits, but I figured that it would work with just plums.

I have to say that I’m more familiar with cobblers with biscuit-like topping. I’d call this more of a kuchen, where it bakes together into a cake, but whatever you call it, it was great. I took this to work the day after it was baked (ignoring the serve warm instructions) and it was very popular. I had the empty (and cleaned) baking dish back on my desk by about 3 o’clock. I guess everyone liked it!

This was the easiest think ever to make and it turned out so well. I had all of the ingredients on hand (even if you don’t have a really well-stocked kitchen) and took just minutes to put together.

4 cups sliced plums

1 egg

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup milk

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 2 quart baking dish (I used a gratin pan).

Slice the plums and place in the bottom of the baking dish. In a mixer bowl, mix the egg, sugar, and milk until smooth. In a separate bowl mix flour, baking powder and salt. Add this to the egg mixture and stir until just combined. Stir in the vanilla and melted butter. Pour the batter over the fruit.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until bubbly and lightly browned. Serve warm. (Or serve the next day, just heat up the pieces as you go.)

Adapted from allrecipes.com (Fresh Fruit Cobbler)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Dimply Plum Cake

Note to self, don’t buy fruit at Costco if you are looking for “petite” fruit. I read through this recipe and couldn’t figure out how I could fit 8 plums in an 8-inch square pan, but I figured I would see how it would work. The plums I got were huge and I ended up only using 2 plums, which I quartered.

I had cardamom in the cupboard, so I decided to include it. The last time I had used cardamom, quite some time ago, I really disliked whatever I had made. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember what I had made! I’m glad I gave it another try, because it was a nice addition.

The cake had a great flavor and the plums, despite being huge, were sweet and very ripe. I didn’t bake the cake nearly long enough, and when I took the cake out of the pan it was really undercooked in the center. We ate the edges of the cake, and really enjoyed it. Next time I will make I make it with much smaller plums and bake it longer.

1-1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon cardamom

5 tablespoons butter

¾ cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1/3 cup canola oil

Zest of 1 orange

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla

8 plums, halved (I had huge plums and only needed 2, which I quartered)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour an 8-inch square baking pan.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and cardamom. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter until soft and creamy. Add the brown sugar and beat for 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating for a minute after each addition. Beat in the oil, orange zest, and vanilla. Batter will be smooth.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Top the batter with the plums, cut side up. Press the plums into the batter a bit.

Bake for 40 minutes (or longer if you have huge plums like I did) until the top is browned and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes before removing from the pan.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan