Cranberry Crackle Tart

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is for the Cranberry Crackle Tart. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from this pie and the picture looked interesting. This pie is basically pie pastry filled with cranberry-studded meringue. My friends kept asking me if the pie was cranberry, topped with meringue. No the meringue is the filling for the pie. Interesting! was the verdict. I loved that the recipe was fairly straight-forward and required few ingredients. Make sure you check out what the other TWD bakers thought of this week’s recipes at the Tuesdays with Dorie website.

I used some pie dough that I already had on hand, basically galette dough. I love Dorie’s press in the pan pastry, but I figured I should just use what I already had. You top the pastry with a thin layer of jam; I used some raspberry preserves that a friend at work had made. I’m glad I had read what the other TWD bakers had experienced in making the meringue. They suggested using a hand mixer to make the meringue, since it was a fairly small volume and sometimes the big mixer doesn’t do the best job with small projects.

I mixed my meringue but I’m not sure that I whipped it enough. It seemed a little soft, but I folded in the cranberries and put it in the oven to bake. Mine puffed and cracked a bit, and it’s a very pretty pie. It seems like it shrank a little as it cooled. I think that my pastry got over baked throughout this process, but I had rolled it fairly thin, so maybe that was it. My husband and I tried this and it’s…interesting. Some bites I really liked it, other bites I thought that there were too many cranberries. I liked the meringue combined with the jam, so maybe there is some recipe idea there. This isn’t going to be my favorite pie, but I’m really glad I tried it.

Recipe from Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan, pages 135-137

Yugoslavian Christmas Cookies

12 Days of Christmas Cookies Day 2! These bar cookies interested me from the first time I saw them. A butter cookie base topped with jam and then a walnut meringue. Somehow that makes them Yugoslavian, or Slovak or something as Yugoslavia no longer exists. I almost always use pecans in my baking in place of walnuts, but this time I decided that I would stick to the recipes. Of course, I now have a giant bag of walnuts from Costco so you will see me using those up!

The original recipe used blackberry jam, I used apricot ginger jam and you could use anything you want. I thought apricot ginger jam sounded festive. I had bought the jam this summer at the local farmer’s market and knew it would be great. I wondered if I should mix the apricot jam with the lemon extract, but it was just fine. If you don’t have lemon extract, you could substitute vanilla, but that would lend a different flavor.

With the meringue on top of these bars makes them quite messy. I started to cut them and thought that they would just crumble to bits. I almost gave up. I cut them into big bars and then smaller rectangles. They are fairly crumbly on top, but you just kind of have to work with that. Some pieces may just crumble too much, and just eat those and no one will ever know. The flavor of these is great, and the bars have a complex mix of textures: crumbly meringue top, smooth jam layer, and chewy cookie base. Yes, these aren’t the most beautiful cookies (and certainly don’t make them on a day when you are frustrated!) but I ended up liking them more than I expected.

Yugoslavian Christmas Cookies 

1/2 pound butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups flour

1 cup jam of your choice

4 egg whites

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup ground walnuts

1 teaspoon lemon extract

1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Have a 9” x 13” pan ready. You don’t have to butter the pan.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter and ½ cup sugar; add egg yolk and salt and stir to combine.  Add flour and mix until the dough comes together. Press the dough into the bottom of the 9” x 13” pan. Spread the jam over the dough.

In a clean mixer bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff. Gradually add 1 cup sugar while the mixer is running. Continue beating until the mixture is shiny and becomes meringue. Gently fold in the ground walnuts and lemon extract.

Spread the meringue over the jam and sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

Bake for 40 minutes, the meringue will be lightly browned. Cool before cutting into bars.

Recipe from Gonna Want Seconds

Cocoa Almond Meringues

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Mike of Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude. He chose Cocoa Almond Meringues. These meringues contain ground almonds, cocoa, and chopped chocolate (or mini chips). I had bought meringues at the store before and had liked them, but I had never made them at home. I don’t know why because they are really good! You can get the complete recipe on Mike’s blog and you can also check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see the links from all the bakers.

Meringues aren’t really the best cookie to make in the summer, since you have to leave the oven on for a fairly long time. Our summer in Seattle has been fairly bad, and while the last week has been nice, it’s still only the mid-70s here. This summer, having the oven on has been no problem at all, so I’ve been happy. I’m not really much for warm weather anyway. Anyway, these bake for a couple of minutes at a “normal” temperature and then bake for an hour in a 200 degree oven.

I made a half batch, but still got about 20 cookies, so I think my meringues were on the small side. It’s hard to tell when these are done, and I didn’t want to open the oven too much to check since I figured that may adversely change the oven’s temperature. I baked mine exactly as the recipe specified and my meringues were perfect. The day they were baked they were crispy on the outside and just a tiny bit chewy in the middle. They got chewier the next day. These have a nice chocolate flavor, sweet but still light. I really enjoyed these and I think I will try making some other meringues soon!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 155