Caramel Pots de Crème

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Peggy from Peggy the Baker. She chose Caramel Pots de Crème, which is a caramel baked custard. Pots de Crème get their name from these fancy pots that you can get to make this particular dessert, but I just used some custard cups and some small coffee cups. There aren’t a lot of ingredients in this recipe, but they sure come together nicely. You can get the entire recipe on Peggy’s blog. And make sure that you check out the links from all the Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers.

This is a baked custard, which I am an expert at since joining Tuesdays with Dorie! This one has you caramelize some sugar first and then add the milk, cream and eggs on top of that. I made a half recipe and honestly was just a touch short of nearly every ingredient, but it turned out just fine. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make caramel with just ¼ cup sugar, but no problem at all. I whisked everything together and got it ready for the oven. My oven is being weird so it took longer for my oven to heat than to make the Pots de Crème!

I covered this with plastic wrap, put it in the oven and then went to relax. During the baking time I wandered over to the TWD site and was reading the comments about this recipe and someone mentioned that plastic wrap in the oven can be bad news. I had forgotten that from the last time I made Chocolate Pots de Crème! I went and checked and my plastic wrap had pretty much melted. Luckily none of it got on the Crèmes, so I was ok. I decided to top these with sugar and caramelize the top, since that would go well with the caramel custard. Adding the sugar on top really enhanced the caramel flavor so I was glad I did that. You know, these look fairly simple, but my husband and I really liked them. Certainly a winner!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 388-389

Almond Roca Cookies

Growing up, my dad worked very close to the Brown and Haley factory, where they make Almond Roca. Almond Roca is a classic candy for this area and I’ve been gifted it and given it many times. Around the holidays, Dad would sometimes stop and pick up candy at the factory store. I don’t remember him bring home Almond Roca, usually it was creams. I’m an ok fan of creams, but I really like Almond Roca. When I saw this recipe that replicated the flavors of Almond Roca in a cookie, I wanted to give it a try.

My one complaint with Almond Roca is that it can be too hard. And the chocolate/almond coating always breaks of when you take a bite. At first I expected these to be more chocolaty, but this just has a chocolate drizzle. The toffee flavor comes from toffee chips in the dough and then you roll the cookies in ground almonds for baking. If I had to envision Almond Roca as a cookie, I don’t think this is what would first come to mind. But it really works. These cookies are awesome.

The most frustrating part of these cookies is that they take forever to bake! 20 minutes at 300 degrees! I don’t know if a higher temperature would do something to the toffee bits or scorch the almonds, but I resisted the urge to raise the oven temperature. These spread out and are a thin, chewy cookie. I was having trouble getting my chocolate to cooperate, so some of the cookies were plain and some had chocolate. Either way, they are excellent. They have a great buttery, melt-in-your-mouth quality that makes them highly addictive. The chocolate makes them like Almond Roca, but feel free to omit it for a wonderful almond toffee cookie!

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1 package Toffee bits (1-1/4 cup)
1 cup coarsely ground almonds
3 ounces milk chocolate

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter, brown sugar and sugar, beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the flour mixture and once combined, stir in the toffee chips. Do not over mix. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape dough into walnut sized balls, and then roll in the ground almonds. Place on the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 20-22 minutes, until the cookies look set. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. Once the cookies are cool, melt the chocolate in a double boiler and drizzle over the cookies.

Recipe from Veggie by Season

Date and Mixed Nut Bars

So I know that dried fruit really lasts a long time and I don’t worry too much about having raisins, dried cranberries and the like in my cupboard. But still, eventually it’s time to use them up and rotate them out! While dates are a little bit different, I’ve had these dates in my refrigerator for quite a while and I figured it was high time to figure out how to use them! These are beautiful Blonde Dates from Shields Date Garden in Indio (near Palm Springs), California. We visited there a while back and have been buying their dates since.

So how do you use up dates? Date bars are the first thing that comes to mind, but I had made a traditional date bar already. Sticky toffee pudding uses dates, but not all that many of them. I was looking through my Christmas baking magazines and stumbled across this recipe which seemed like a cross between date bars and pecan pie. I don’t think of dates as being particularly Christmas-y, so I figured why not give them a shot? Besides, the weather here in the Seattle area reminds me more of fall than spring, so why not do some holiday-ish baking!

I took a shortcut and made the base for these bars in the food processor. It’s tough to cut in a lot of butter by hand. That seemed to work with no problem and it was less messy. Pitting and chopping the dates was a messy, sticky task, so I was all about keeping the kitchen clean. (Buy chopped dates if you don’t have dates on hand: way easier.) The filling is very close to pecan pie: brown sugar, corn syrup, eggs, nuts and dates. If corn syrup isn’t your thing, feel free to substitute honey or golden syrup. These look a lot like pecan pie when they are baked. I let mine sit overnight since I didn’t want to risk cutting them while warm. They are sticky as it is! These are so, so good. The dates, corn syrup and brown sugar melt together into this sweet filling which is set off by the crunch of the nuts and the buttery cookie base. Wow, why did I wait so long to make these?

2 cups flour
½ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup butter
I cup brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
4 eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup butter, melted
8 ounces chopped dates
11 ounces unsalted mixed nuts, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” baking pan with foil and spray the foil with cooking spray.

In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut the ¾ cup butter into small cubes and add it to the mixture. Process, using second-long pulses, until the mixture is crumbly. Press the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until light brown.

In a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, corn syrup, and eggs. Add the ½ cup melted butter and whisk again to combine. Stir in the dates, nuts, and vanilla. Pour evenly over the baked crust. Bake for 33-35 minutes, or until the center is set. Cool completely on a wire rack. Using the foil, lift the bars to a cutting board; peel away the foil and cut into bars.

Recipe from Paula Deen’s Holiday Baking

Oatmeal Apple Nutmeg Scones

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Patricia from Life With a Whisk. She chose Oatmeal Nutmeg Scones, which are a delightful little scone scented with nutmeg. They’re quite a simple thing, which is the way scones should be. You can get the complete recipe for these scones on Patricia’s blog. Since this is a recipe that lends itself well to variation, you’ll want to check out all the links for this week’s recipe on the Tuesdays with Dorie site.

I like nutmeg, but I wanted to add something to these scones. I had some currants in the cupboard and that was my first thought. I was talking about this with my husband and he thought about adding apple pie filling or something like that since apple, oat, and nutmeg seems like a natural combination. I knew that this dough was super sticky, based on the comments from other bakers, so I thought that might be too gooey. I had some dried apples so I decided to chop those up and add them to the dough. They’re pretty soft so I thought that they might be fairly close to apple pie filling.

I halved the batch but still used a whole egg, so mine were perhaps even softer than the full recipe. The dough is so sticky and I used quite a bit of flour to be able to shape the dough at all. Mine baked quickly and since I had over baked last week’s biscuits, I set the timer at 15 minutes and then baked about 2 minutes more. They were a nice golden brown, but they didn’t keep their shape that well. They’re sort of still shaped like triangles, but not so much. No matter, they are quite good. They aren’t sweet and I’m glad I added the bits of dried apple since they add some sweetness. They'd really be missing something without the dried apple! I can’t taste the nutmeg very much, but other than that I really like these. The oats add a bit of texture and the apples are a nice addition.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 30.

Honey Spice Cookies

I made these cookies for a tea that we were hosting at work. I always volunteer to make cookies whenever we are having special events. So now, not only people I work with in the library know about my baking, the word is starting to spread around the campus. It’s nice that people appreciate the things that I make, as I really enjoy making them.

For the tea I made a couple of varieties of cookies (which I will eventually post!) and I try to do a little more planning if I am bringing multiple items. Plus, it was a tea so I wanted something appropriate. Gooey brownies are tasty, but not what I first think of when having tea! I ended up wanting to make something chocolaty, something with citrus and this cookie with honey. I searched around the web for something with honey and settled on this one, which is like a sugar cookie with honey and spice.

You make these in a saucepan, which is highly unusual for cookies. The dough is super soft and is different from any other dough I have ever worked with. You use just a tiny bit of dough for each cookie as the dough spreads quite a bit while baking. It makes these picture-perfect round cookies, which my colleague actually thought were store bought since they were so perfectly round! They taste a lot like sugar cookies, but I think the honey adds a nice twist in flavor. So if you’re looking for the perfect cookie to serve with tea, this is it.

2-1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup honey
Additional sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and nutmeg. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and then cool. Add the sugar and beat well. Add egg and blend well. Stir in honey and dry ingredients, mix until just blended. The dough may be quite soft.

Put additional sugar in a small bowl. Drop the cookie dough by teaspoonfuls into the sugar. Coat the small dough balls in sugar. Place the coated balls on the prepared cookie sheet. The cookies spread a bit, so don’t put them too close together. Bake until lightly golden, 7-8 minutes. Cool on the cookie sheet for several minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Inside the Kaganof Kitchen

Marshmallow Fudge Bars

I think for the first time in my life, I have used up an entire bag of mini marshmallows before they went stale! I have a handful of cookie recipes that call for marshmallows, but usually the recipe calls for about half a bag. I dutifully close them up and stick them in the cupboard, but by the time I think to use them in another recipe, they are as hard as rocks. This time I was successful! I had some on hand and I must have really closed them up well after my last use because I checked on the ingredients to make this recipe and I was good to go. Victory!

I had bookmarked this recipe when I first saw it. For whatever reason I kept putting off making this. I thought it might be a little too gooey and sweet to make, but I guess I don’t really worry about that too much. I decided that this was the time. I actually put the query to a couple of friends at work and while this wasn’t the top choice, it was the closest compromise. I knew I had the ingredients on hand so I figured I’d make them and then have one less item bookmarked in my “Things to Bake” bookmark folder.

These have a couple of steps so they do take a little while to assemble. The base comes together fast and bakes quickly. I love baking marshmallows, even for just a few minutes, because they puff up so much. The frosting is probably the oddest one I’ve ever made. After you’ve mixed in the powdered sugar, it looks like a lumpy mess and you may think that it will never be smooth, but it does get there. I’m so glad that the original recipe warned about this! My frosting was still very soft after a couple of hours, so you may want to refrigerate them to hurry the setting process. These are a chocolaty, gooey treat and I wish I wouldn’t have waited so long to make these.

1 stick butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2/3 cup flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped pecans
About 2 cups mini marshmallows

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
¼ cup hot water
4 tablespoons room temperature butter, cut up
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
2-6 tablespoons room temperature heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” pan with foil and spray foil with cooking spray and dust with cocoa.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter until creamy. Gradually add sugar and beat for 3 or 4 minutes or until very light. Beat in the vanilla, and then beat in the eggs.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to the batter, stirring with a spatula until incorporated. Stir in the pecans. Spoon the batter all over the bottom of the foil-lined pan, and then gently smooth the batter so that you have a very thin layer of batter covering the pan. Bake cake for 13-15 minutes, until set. Sprinkle the base with the marshmallows and return to oven and bake for 3 minutes. Pull from oven and let cool completely.

To make the frosting, combine the sugar, chocolate and hot water in a saucepan and bring to a gentle boil over medium heat. When mixture starts to boil, stir constantly for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add the butter. Stir until butter melts, then add the vanilla. Let cool to room temperature. When cool, beat in the powdered sugar. It will be thick and clumpy! Beat in the heavy cream one tablespoon at a time until the icing becomes glossy and fairly pourable.

Pour/spoon the frosting over the marshmallows and use a small spatula to completely cover the marshmallows. Let the frosting set at least an hour. Lift foil from pan, set on a cutting board, cut into squares or bars.

Recipe from Cookie Madness

Maple Cornmeal Biscuits

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Lindsay from A Little Something… Sweet. She chose Maple Cornmeal Biscuits, which are a quick little drop biscuit sweetened with a little maple syrup. You can get the complete recipe on Lindsay’s blog. I’m sure that the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers exercised their creativity this week and mixed up the recipe a bit. You can see all of their posts linked off of the Tuesdays with Dorie site.

The past weekend, when I typically bake my Tuesdays with Dorie recipes, was super busy as I had my ballet recital plus ballet photos. Luckily, these biscuits take virtually no time to make, maybe 5 minutes to stir together the dough and then 15 minutes to bake them. I decided to cut the recipe in half and I made 8 biscuits, so I guess mine are a little on the smaller side. I made mine early in the weekend, before the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers posted that these bake quickly and to watch the time. Oops, I baked mine for the full time and they got a little scorched along the edges. I should know better to watch!

Since I over baked mine, they did dry out quite quickly but they weren’t too bad right out of the oven. It’s amazing, I use a fairly fine-ground cornmeal, but these were still quite crunchy. I thought that the maple flavor was subtle, just a bit of background sweetness. I think that you could sweeten these up and serve them with butter and jam, or they would pair well with a soup for a more savory application. I had mine just plain, which was pretty good, too. Next time, I will watch the oven more carefully, but baking accidents happen from time to time.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 24

Iced Oatmeal Cookies

I saw this post from fellow blogger Stephanie on the chat list that I follow and I immediately knew that I had to make these. It’s interesting; I can’t always say what it is that draws me to a recipe. I guess most of the time it’s the photo, sometimes it’s a certain ingredient and other times it is the story that goes along with the recipe. Some of my online friends say that they don’t care about the story attached to the recipe, they just want the recipe. I do like a good story, and sometimes that will completely win me over.

Stephanie said that these cookies were just like the cookies she’d had as a kid, and in her description I knew exactly what she was talking about. On the west coast, they were packaged as Mother’s Iced Oatmeal Cookies and I loved them! There’s something about the crunchiness of the cookies and the subtle sweetness of the icing. Mother’s went out of business but thankfully another company took over some of their lines so they are not gone forever.

These aren’t as thin as the store bought ones, but that’s one thing that you can’t really replicate at home. It’s like the recipes you see for faux Oreos. They’re never quite right since they’re not as crunchy. It was funny making these, because they didn’t look quite like the cookies I remembered. Then I started glazing them and they looked just right. The glaze quickly hardens and they are a really close replica. Thanks Stephanie, for bringing back some good childhood memories.

4 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup cinnamon applesauce
1 1/2 cup rolled old-fashioned oats
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.
In a large mixer bowl, combine the melted butter, brown sugar and sugar, stirring until well combined. Add in the egg and applesauce, beating well. Stir in the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix well.

Drop by tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets. Bake until golden, 11-13 minutes. Allow to set on the cookie sheet at least 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

To make the glaze, in a small bowl combine together the powdered sugar, vanilla, and water. Add more water until the glaze is fluid. With a pastry brush, brush the glaze onto the cooled cookies. Allow the icing to harden at room temperature, then store in an airtight container.

Recipe from Stephanie Cooks

Honey Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

After frosting the Brown Sugar Hazelnut Bundt cake, I realized that I had a huge quantity of Nutella frosting left over. I figured that I would just bake something else to use it up. It’s a bit of a vicious circle, kind of like when I made things to use up ingredients that I have in the cupboard. I usually have to buy other ingredients to make whatever recipe I pick, so I don’t think I ever really get ahead. I wanted to find a recipe that would avoid that problem.

I thought about what flavors would go with Nutella, and I decided that honey would work well. I went out to search for a honey cupcake recipe and many of them were quite complex, with roasted peanuts, or peanut butter and honey or some other combination. This was actually the first recipe that I came across and it was perfectly simple. Since we’re such big fans of honey in our household, I knew that I had honey and all of the other ingredients were staples so I was set!

The cupcakes came together with no problem, but the batter is mixed more in the manner of making cookie dough than cake batter. I seemed to work and they baked up perfectly. Sometimes with honey you have to be careful and make sure it doesn’t burn, but no worries here. I had made the frosting already and just needed to bring it to room temperature. This frosting recipe makes a ton so you certainly want to make half (or less) of a batch. It’s weird to make, where you mix all the dry elements before adding any liquid. I was concerned I was going to burn out the motor of my mixer so I added some heavy cream earlier in the mixing process. I added quite a lot of heavy cream to get the right texture, so just go with what feels right. This frosting is just about the best thing I’ve ever tasted and is a nice complement to the honey cupcakes. This combination is a winner!

1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened
1 13-ounce jar of Nutella
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 pounds powdered sugar, sifted
6-12 tablespoons heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake papers.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in honey, eggs, buttermilk and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Mix into the batter until just blended. Scoop the batter into the cups evenly.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly pressed. Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes and then remove to cool on a wire rack.

Make the icing: In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter and Nutella until well combined. Slowly add in the powdered sugar, and continue creaming until well blended. You may need to add some cream to the mixture to lessen the stress on your mixer.

Add salt, vanilla, and more heavy cream. Blend on low until moistened. Add additional heavy cream until you reach the desired consistency. Beat at high speed until frosting is smooth and fluffy. Frost the cupcakes or pipe the frosting on the cooled cupcakes.

Cupcake recipe from White House pastry chef Bill Yosses via Oprah.com
Frosting recipe from My Baking Addiction

Brown Sugar Hazelnut Bundt Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Peggy from Pantry Revisited. She chose the Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, which sadly is the last Bundt cake remaining in Baking from My Home to Yours. I love making Bundt cakes and always look forward to making them! This cake is heavy on the brown sugar and originally called for prunes and pears. I opted to make the all nut variation and used ground and chopped hazelnuts and hazelnut extract in the batter. Yum! I love hazelnuts! If you would like the complete recipe for this Bundt cake, visit Peggy’s blog.

I had recently purchased some of the great hazelnuts that I like, the ones from Holmquist Hazelnuts. They’re local and just taste that much better I think. Mine were already roasted, too, so that adds extra flavor. I mixed the cake up and the beauty of the Bundt cake is that they are so quick. The cake was ready to go and I was waiting for the oven to come to temperature. It baked up just fine and it smelled heavenly while baking. You could really smell the nuts roasting and the brown sugar gave a nice caramel smell.

Unfortunately, I didn’t butter the Bundt pan adequately, so the top of my cake stuck. At first I was just going to cut the one piece that looked whole and go with that, but my husband suggested that I frost it and make it in to something quite different. He had found a Nutella frosting, and we both agreed that would be great with the brown sugar hazelnut cake. So I basically took this nice simple cake that would be great with tea or coffee and made it into a more decadent treat.

I trimmed the top of my cake to make it even, which was tricky. (Also, don’t do this when you are already frustrated, since it will likely just make you more so.) Frosted, the cake looked ok. My husband wanted to try his hand at piping frosting so he piped the rosettes on the top. They look pretty good! This cake, especially frosted, is wonderful. The cake is a beautiful caramel hazelnut flavor and then the Nutella frosting adds some extra sweetness. While this cake is good on its own, it’s even better with the frosting. I've posted the frosting recipe, if you are interested!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 179

Mini Cinnamon Roll Cookies

As my search for (non-imitation) maple extract was a failure this week, I decided to make these fun little cookies. Who couldn’t love a cookie that looks like a cinnamon roll? I have seen other cookies that resemble cinnamon rolls, but they are often a slice and bake cookie. These are shaped quite differently, where you roll the dough into ropes and then make little spirals.

Looking at the dough for these, you could actually call these an alternatively-shaped snickerdoodle. And I love snickerdoodles so that’s ok in my book! The dough contains cream of tartar, which I think gives snickerdoodles their distinctive taste. Here the spirals have the cinnamon sugar woven throughout the cookie. You’re also supposed to sprinkle the shaped cookies with cinnamon sugar before baking, but I forgot to read that step so I didn’t do it.

The original recipe called for white chocolate glaze, but I wanted to make these more authentically cinnamon roll-like and opted for a cream cheese glaze. This was a bit dicey as I only had a scant ½ cup of powdered sugar in the cupboard but I just made it. I also added a little cinnamon to the glaze. These cookies puff up beautifully and just look great. They smell just like snickerdoodles but are a little closer to a thin sugar cookie in texture. The cream cheese in the glaze gives them a slightly different flavor than snickerdoodles, but they are excellent!

1 cup butter, softened
1-1/4 cups sugar
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
2-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
Cinnamon sugar (1/2 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon cinnamon)

2 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Dash of cinnamon
1-2 teaspoons milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, honey and vanilla and stir until combined. In a small bowl combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and cream of tartar. Gradually add the flour mixture to the mixer bowl and stir until the flour is completely incorporated. You may need to mix the last bit by hand.

Shape a tablespoonful of dough into a 6-inch long rope. Roll the rope in the cinnamon sugar. Loosely coil the rope into a spiral shape and place on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the cookies are set. (They don’t brown that much.) Allow to cool on a wire rack before glazing the cookies.

Combine the cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter, vanilla and cinnamon to a small bowl. Beat until smooth. Add milk as required until the glaze is thin enough to drizzle. Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cookies. Allow to set.

Cookie recipe from Taste of Home. Glaze recipe adapted from Epicurious.

Chocolate Peppermint Marbled Loaf Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Carol from The Bake More. She chose the Basic Marbled Loaf Cake, which is exactly like is sounds. The beauty here is that Dorie provides a list of possible variations, so I’m really looking forward to all the different ways the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers made this recipe. To get the complete recipe, visit Carol’s blog and let your imagination take hold!

When I first read through the recipe, I had decided to make the chocolate orange variation. I have a good friend who loves chocolate and orange together, so I’m always on the lookout for those flavors when they are paired together. After reading the comments from the other bakers, so many people were excited to try to chocolate peppermint variation. That sounded good, too, and since I had peppermint extract already, I decided to make that instead.

This cake was simple to make but I sure messed up a lot of dishes making it! Melting bittersweet and white chocolate, making the batter, then dividing the batter, too a lot of different bowls. I don’t think I quite divided the batter evenly, as it sure seemed like I had a lot more chocolate batter than the peppermint batter. I layered the batters in the pan, swirled it a bit and hoped it would make a nice marbled loaf. My loaf baked up really tall, but didn’t overflow the pan. When I cut the loaf the swirl was nice, kind of like a smile! The peppermint is unexpected in a cake like this, but it’s very nice. I think I would like to try this as an all chocolate with peppermint cake. That would be really great for the holidays.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 230 and 231

Hot Cross Buns

I had never made Hot Cross Buns and this Easter I decided that it was finally time to give them a try. I’ve had store bought ones before, but I hadn’t had those all that often. My husband was very happy that I wanted to make them, since they are a traditionally British Easter treat. Wanting to be authentic, I looked at the British cookbooks we have at home and on British websites. I decided to make this recipe from the BBC Food website, which often has some pretty tasty looking things.

The measurements here are in weights, since I often have to do some calculating when I use British recipes. The original recipe called for “strong” flour, which I am assuming means bread flour. I didn’t have any so I just used all-purpose flour. It also called for golden syrup where I used honey. I swear we had golden syrup but I couldn’t find it in the cupboard. Oh well.

These do take a while to put together, but none of the steps are very difficult. For me, the hardest part was kneading in the dried fruit, as every time in kneaded the dough, pieces of dried fruit would try to go flying across the counter! These don’t have a frosting cross, which is what I am used to seeing in the American grocery stores. You pipe a cross with a flour paste, but that didn’t make much of a cross on mine. Also, these were huge! I think I prefer them a little smaller but the flavor was good. I loved the mix of dried fruits and the spice. I was glad to try these but I think I will experiment with different recipes next Easter.

1.3 pounds flour, plus extra for dusting
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground allspice
1.5 ounces butter, cut into cubes
3 ounces sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
1½ teaspoons fast-action yeast
1 egg
10 fluid ounces warm milk
4 ounces mixed dried fruit (raisins, dried cranberries, etc.)

2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons water

1 tablespoon honey, gently heated, for glazing

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt and allspice, then rub in the butter using your fingertips. Make a well in the mixture and add the sugar, lemon zest and yeast. Beat the egg and combine it with the warm milk and then add to the flour mixture. Mix together to form a soft dough.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Carefully work the mixed dried fruit into the dough until well combined. Knead lightly for 5 minutes, or until smooth and elastic.

Grease a large, warm mixing bowl. Shape the dough into a ball and place it into the prepared bowl. Cover with a clean towel and set aside in a warm place for one hour to rise.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knock back the dough. Shape it into a ball and return it to the bowl, covering with a towel. Let rise for an additional 30 minutes.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and divide it into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and flatten slightly into a bun shape using the palms of your hands. Cover the buns again with a towel and set aside to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Grease a baking sheet with butter and transfer the buns to the tray. Cover the baking sheet with waxed paper and then cover with plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm place for 40 minutes to rise.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. In a small bowl combine the flour and the water to form a paste. Once the buns have risen, spoon the flour mixture into a piping bag and pipe a cross on each bun. Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. As soon as you remove the buns from the oven, brush them with the honey, and set aside to cool on a wire rack.

Recipe from BBC Food