honey-wheat cookies

02/23/2010 By

The problem with wheat germ cookies is that my mind focuses on the wheat germ part instead of the cookie part. So then these are healthy and therefore perfectly acceptable to eat with my tea – before breakfast. Wheat germ, people! Whole grains! Cookie schmookie.

Plus – they’re so good! No joke. I had my doubts too, especially after several weeks of baking delicious chocolate treats for Tuesdays with Dorie. Wheat germ in cookies? But the texture is so perfectly soft and chewy. The lemon was evident but somewhat subtle. The wheat germ added just a taste of bitterness. I was surprised to find that the honey was the strongest flavor, which I love because often the flavor of natural sugars gets lost in the oven.

Michelle chose these great cookies for TWD. She has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Devil’s Food White Out Cake

Filed Under: citrus, cookies, dessert, tuesdays with dorie, whole grains

dorie’s best chocolate chip cookies

02/16/2010 By

Before I joined Tuesdays with Dorie, I baked chocolate chip cookies a couple times a month. They were my standard weeknight dessert; I’d eat dinner early and then by the time I was ready to drink my evening tea, I was hungry for a dessert, and a cookie or two was just the right portion. When I saw Dave on the weekend (before we were married and living together), I’d give him whatever cookies I hadn’t eaten. He’d usually eat the rest of the batch in one evening.

That was before I was experimenting with chocolate chip cookie recipes, so I stuck with the Tollhouse recipe back then. I did find, however, that I liked the cookies better if I added an extra quarter cup of flour to the recipe, which made the cookies taller, drier (less greasy), and more cakey.

Dorie’s favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe goes in the opposite direction, reducing the flour from the Tollhouse recipe. I knew that wasn’t my preference, but I stayed true to the recipe anyway – I’m familiar with the results of the recipe with more flour, but I didn’t know precisely what the cookies would be like with Dorie’s exact recipe.

They were what I expected, but even flatter. I had frozen the balls of dough early in the week and then baked them straight from the freezer, which I thought would reduce the spreading and result in taller cookies, but they were nearly paper thin. I did like their texture – crisp at the edges with soft, slightly chewy centers.

Everyone has their own opinion of what the perfect chocolate chip cookie is. This was good, but it wasn’t quite what I look for in a chocolate chip cookie. If your ideal is closer to Dorie’s than mine is, Kait has the recipe posted.

Filed Under: chocolate, cookies, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

rick katz’s brownies for julia child

02/09/2010 By

You can laugh, based on years on my often-but-not-always-positive critiques of Dorie’s recipes, but I actually think I’m pretty open-minded about desserts. For example, I definitely already have a favorite brownie recipe. It’s evenly balanced between cakey and fudgy, which is exactly how I like my brownies. When one report after another started rolling in that these brownies were ultra gooey, I started to get the feeling that they wouldn’t be my style.

But you know what they would be? Brownies. And that is a very good thing.

I did reduce the butter a bit, not so much in an effort to change the texture of the brownies or to be healthier, but just because I happened to have 7 tablespoons (for a half recipe, which called for 8 tablespoons) handy when I was baking these.

I don’t know if it was the slightly reduced amount of butter or because I baked the half recipe for the same time Dorie recommends baking the full recipe, but these brownies ended up with my perfect brownie texture. They were nice and rich, but still firm enough to hold their shape like a brownie should. Once they were cut into near bite-sized squares, they were perfectly irresistible.

Tanya of Chocolatechic, appropriately enough, chose these brownies for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Floating Islands

Filed Under: chocolate, cookies, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

milk chocolate bundt cake

02/01/2010 By

It’s a lobster!!! Get your mind out of the gutter.

I’ve come full circle on milk chocolate. As a kid, like most of us I think, I didn’t like dark chocolate at all. Ew, too bitter! Recently, I’ve felt the opposite. Milk chocolate was too sweet – where’s the chocolate flavor?

But now milk chocolate just reminds me of the time I left a chocolate bunny on my windowsill right after Easter, and it melted and was suddenly ten times better than any milk chocolate I’d had before. It may just be that I’m buying higher quality milk chocolate these days; regardless, I like having another type of chocolate to enjoy.

Whatever the reason, I really enjoyed this milk chocolate cake. After three weeks of banana cream pie, I was in the mood for something dark and rich.  I was still interested in the milk chocolate idea, so I just replaced the nuts in the swirl with more milk chocolate. Ooh yeah, there’s a nice chocolate kick.

Even more exciting than chocolate-glazed chocolate cake with a cocoa-chocolate swirl is that it’s lobster shaped! Yay, lobster shaped cake!

Kristin chose this for TWD and has the recipe posted. The glaze, a simple mixture of melted chocolate and corn syrup, didn’t work for anyone. I added milk until it smoothed out and was quite happy with the result.

One year ago: World Peace Cookies

Filed Under: cake, chocolate, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

coco-nana muffins

01/25/2010 By

I made these, oh, a year and a half ago. And the file’s just been sitting around waiting for someone to choose them for Tuesdays with Dorie. Actually, it was the first recipe I ever made from Dorie Greenspan that was not specifically for TWD. I had told myself that I would only bake from the book with the group, but I realized that was stupid when I wanted to make muffins and happened to have all the ingredients for these.

Obviously they’re not fresh in my mind, plus I usually just eat one muffin per batch. I freeze the rest and Dave takes one to work everyday. I do remember liking these though, and indeed, my notes say “good; great texture; mostly chocolate, hint of banana.” Sounds perfect to me.

Steph has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

Filed Under: bread, breakfast, chocolate, fruit, quick bread, tuesdays with dorie

chocolate oatmeal almost-candy bars

01/19/2010 By

The worst part of not loving the Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for the week is having to tell everyone about it. Not only do I feel like a Negative Nellie, but the flood of “sorry you didn’t like it!” comments starts, and, honestly, it isn’t such a big deal. There are many worse things in life than not getting excited about a dessert.

Plus, I’m not really involved with TWD to eat desserts; I’m in it for the learning experience of baking the desserts. I find out about different baking tricks, and I get to compare my results with everyone else, and I get an excuse to bake every week, and I get to make things I might not ordinarily choose for myself, and I get to interact with other bloggers.

Plus, when you’re making the entire book of recipes, of course there will be a few that aren’t your favorites. I had a feeling about this one from the beginning – I don’t really crave candy bars, so the “almost candy bars” title didn’t bode well.

Plus, it’s all relative. It isn’t like I had to spit it out because it was so bad or anything; it’s just that I found myself eating around the chocolate filling to get to the cookie parts. Mm, cookies.

Besides, everyone else liked it. And I had fun baking it, and I didn’t hate it or anything, and I liked the cookie portion quite a bit. It’s really just an oatmeal cookie base with a chocolate-sweetened condensed milk feeling; if that sounds better to you than it did to me, Lillian has posted the recipe.

One year ago: Berry Surprise Cake

Filed Under: candy, chocolate, cookies, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

mrs. vogel’s scherben

01/13/2010 By

Michael Pollan made a suggestion that I thought was great: Eat all the fried food you want, as long as you fry it yourself. His hypothesis is that most people wouldn’t want to bother with the hassle more than once in a great while, so fried food wouldn’t be the norm in anyone’s diet.

The members of Tuesdays with Dorie seem to agree, because not many people were excited about the prospect of frying this week. People brought up grease fires, spilled oil, kitchens that smelled for days afterward. Caitlin went so far as to spearhead a bake-the-sherben movement.

Can it be that easy? Can we skip the pot of oil and just throw the sherben in the oven? That would make these cookies downright healthy too, for a dessert at least, since there’s only a pittance of fat in the dough itself.

I tried it. I baked a few sherben dry, a few brushed with oil on one side, and a few brushed with oil on both sides. I fried the remaining dough, and then Dave and I compared.


left to right: oil on two sides, oil on one side, no oil

About the dough baked without any oil, Dave said, “It’s like a breadstick covered in powdered sugar.”  The cookies that had been brushed with oil on one side and on two sides were virtually identical and were just slightly better than the dry dough – a little less chewy and a little more puffy.

But the fried dough, that’s where it’s at. Actually, where it’s at is in my belly, because I couldn’t resist them – light and crisp and coated in powdered sugar. And while there were no fires and no odors, Pollan is right – cleaning up the pot of oil is hassle enough to keep me from frying often. But these cookies were worth it.

Teanna has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins, Caramel-Topped Flan

Filed Under: cookies, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

cocoa-buttermilk birthday cake

01/05/2010 By

I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t have high altitude problems with my baking now that I live at just over 3000 feet. It’s right at the margin of where some cookbooks recommend making adjustments. I conducted one little test, comparing chocolate chip cookies made at sea level with the same recipe made at 3000 feet, and the results were identical, so at this point I’m hopeful.

But it does leave a kernel of doubt in my mind when I’m unhappy with how a recipe turns out. Is the recipe or the altitude at fault? Fortunately, if I made the recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, I have several hundred other bakers to compare the results to.

In this case, my cake was a little dry. Not terrible – it was still chocolate cake, and it was covered in cream cheese frosting – just not as good as other chocolate cakes I’ve made. I’ll have to read what others have said to see if those results were typical. I’m kind of hoping we all had dry cake this week, because having to constantly adjust recipes for my altitude sounds like such a pain in the butt.

This cake (along with Tarte Tatin, which I didn’t get a chance to make this week) was chosen by vote (sort of). Laurie, the founder of TWD, has posted the recipe.

One year ago: French Pear Tart

Filed Under: cake, chocolate, dessert, tuesdays with dorie

pecan pie

12/29/2009 By

Conversations from this Christmas:

  • Me: I was thinking we could all go to the botanical garden’s light show like we did a couple years ago.
  • My sister: Oh yeah, we did that last year too, so it’s a new tradition.

  • 4-year old, after opening a present: A truck! Vroom vroom! Can I open another present now?
  • His mom: No, the tradition is that we all take turns, so you need to wait until Aunt Bridget and Grandma each open a present; then it will be your turn again.

  • My brother: Are we really going to go look at the luminarias across town? It’s already after 10pm, and it’s 15 degrees out.
  • The rest of us: Of course we are! It’s tradition!

We take tradition seriously in my family, and that extends to the holiday meal. It’s turkey and fixings, and variations are not appreciated. Complaints will be lodged if the cranberry sauce has too much orange zest, the stuffing has too much sausage, or, worst of all, pumpkin cheesecake replaces the pie.

So I waffled on what to do with Dorie’s pecan pie recipe – I liked the idea of adding bitter ingredients like chocolate and espresso to cut the sweetness of regular pecan pie, but I didn’t want to make something so different that my mom would have to make her standard pecan pie recipe as soon as I went home to satisfy her craving. I ended up reducing the chocolate from 3 to 2 ounces, skipping the cinnamon because I didn’t really want it, and skipping the espresso because I didn’t have any available.

And it was great! I’ve tried a number of pecan pie recipes, and this is the only one that I’ve really enjoyed. The small amount of chocolate was a nice treat, but mostly it was the brown sugar and the balance of corn syrup to pecans that made this pie so good. In fact, everyone liked it – even those of us who don’t traditionally even eat the pecan pie.

Beth chose this pie for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Tall and Creamy Cheesecake

Filed Under: chocolate, dessert, nuts, pie, tuesdays with dorie, winter/holidays

low and lush chocolate cheesecake

12/22/2009 By

Back when my brother was the family cheesecake-maker, we didn’t eat a lot of chocolate cheesecakes. He didn’t like them. I always thought, what is there not to like? It’s chocolate, and it’s cheesecake. Seems like a good match.

But now I see his point. I like both chocolate and cheesecake, but the flavors don’t seem to compliment each other like other pairings do. Chocolate and peanut butter; cheesecake and pumpkin; chocolate and mint; cheesecake with berries – the individual flavors all improve their partners.

But cheesecake mixed with chocolate, somehow, the flavors seem to oppose instead of enhance each other. There’s the bitterness of the chocolate and the tang of the cheesecake, but there isn’t any middle ground where they mesh together to create something new.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. After all, there is still distinctive cheesecake and chocolate flavors, and that’s enough to make me happy.

This was chosen for Tuesdays with Dorie by the Tea Lady, who has posted the recipe.

One year ago: Butterscotch Pudding

Filed Under: cake, cheese, chocolate, dessert, tuesdays with dorie
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