Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is for Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars. I was so happy to see a cookie recipe show up in the rotation. Although many other recipes don’t take too long to make, I feel like cookies are always quicker to make. Maybe it’s because I make cookies all the time, who knows! I was envisioning that these were topped with brown sugar meringue, so I certainly didn’t read the title of the recipe very carefully. At any rate, make sure you check out the different offerings made by this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie bakers by visiting the TWD blog .

It took me two attempts to make these, and I have no one to blame but myself. I made the first ones and got them in the oven and set the temperature. I remembered that some of the bakers had said to bake them for less time. In changing the timer, I somehow turned off the oven. I noticed it and got the oven back on and figured it was ok with a little more time. Then I used mini chocolate chips, and of course they have additives so they won’t melt. Fine, you win. I’ll give it a second try.

The second time I made sure that I didn’t mess up the oven and used better quality chocolate for the topping. I had made the caramelized rice crispies, although mine didn’t get as caramelized as they could have. I let my bars chill in the refrigerator overnight, which made the chocolate super hard to cutting them was a challenge. I’m glad I gave these another try because I really like the flavors. The sweetness of the crust and the caramelized rice crispies pairs beautifully with the dark chocolate I used.  

Recipe from Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan, page 324

Lemon Madeleines

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is for lemon madeleines. I’ve made madeleines many times before, but they are always a little different. This is a pretty traditional recipe, but I wouldn’t expect anything different from a Dorie Greenspan recipe. The only unusual aspect of these cookies was the glaze, but I opted to not glaze these because I prefer my madeleines not too sweet. Make sure that you check out the Tuesdays with Dorie blog to see the links left by all of these week’s bakers.

Most madeleines have you rest and refrigerate the batter and some point. Sometimes you rest the batter then put it in the pan, other times you but the batter in the pan and then rest and refrigerate. This recipe does a little bit of both; I made the batter one day and refrigerated it overnight. Once you put the batter in the pan, you then rest and refrigerate for an hour. Not the recipe you want to make if you are in a hurry.

I didn’t use the mixer at all to make these, and I think that they turned out better. In the bowl from my mixer, even though I fold in the butter with a spatula, it never works quite right. My madeleines are nice and light and rose beautifully. As I said I didn’t glaze them, but they are really nice as is. I never can get a very good photograph of the madeleines I make, but don’t let that fool you, these are great!

Recipe from Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan, page 212

Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is for Browned Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake. That’s really a long title for what is a fairly simple cake. I had looked at making this cake a couple of weeks ago, when I realized that it requires ingredients that I already had on hand. I ended up making it over the weekend (how appropriate!) and I took it to work to help celebrate January birthdays at work. You can check out how the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers fared with this week’s recipe by visiting the Tuesdays with Dorie site. 

This cake is a simple butter cake, where you brown the butter before adding to the batter. I’ve browned butter a couple of times and it’s true, it is just a matter of seconds between browned butter and burnt butter. I learned the hard way before, so now I am very careful when browning butter. I did use a vanilla bean since I had one on hand. Somehow scraping the seeds out of a vanilla bean looks a lot easier on tv than it is in real life. 

This cake baked up very nicely, although it was just a touch under baked in the very center. It looked lovely. You almost got to see a picture of the lovely cake in the pan, because I just couldn’t get the cake out of the pan! I had buttered and floured the pan, but I guess not enough because it was thoroughly stuck to the bottom. I ended up cutting the cake in half, removing half of the cake and then I was able to get half of the cake out of the pan cleaning. Not a total loss. The flavors in this cake aren't extravagant, but I really like the cake. Next time, I will line the cake pan with parchment.

Recipe from Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan, page 6