Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Eclairs

I've been looking forward to making this recipe, for sure.  My mother made cream puffs often (but only very, very rarely filled them).  As kids, we were convinced that the plain, unfilled shells were the best snack. We also thought that uncooked pasta straight from the box was really good too.

I don't think I've ever made choux pastries.   When I see them made on Great British Bake Off, the batter always seems more liquid than the dense ball that my mother would make (and I think Dorie was describing in the recipe).  I love the fact that all of the ingredients are simple pantry staples.  I made a full recipe of pastry cream and eclair shells.   Since it was a fairly small amount of batter for the eclairs, I decided to incorporate the eggs by hand.  I thought it looked as Dorie described but my eclairs didn't expand as much as I expected.  Cutting one open, the interior looked good--not dense and with the expected air pockets.  Possibly my piping opening was too small or just my expectations were wrong.  The baked shells were about the size of larger hot dogs.  I'll need to retry soon (using the standup mixer) and see if I get larger shells.

Despite any expectations on size, the glaze, shells and pastry cream were all delicious.  My husband said they were something he'd hope to get in an upscale restaurant and my son the chocoholic enjoyed them too.  I didn't have time to pipe the pastry cream but the tasters didn't mind.  Please forgive the late night photo.  

To see the successes of my fellow Tuesdays with Dorie bakers, see the Tuesdays with Dorie LYL posts for links.  To try this great classic recipe, check out Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Biscuits Rose

In her book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple, Dorie tells us that these cookies have been made since the seventeenth century, starting in France's Champagne region. She describes that the recipe is successful due to various "drying" processes such as adding sugar to egg whites and yolks and, also, by baking them twice like biscotti (once traditionally and secondly by leaving them to dehydrate in the cooling oven after baking). Traditionally, these are a rosy pink but I did not add food coloring. 

This week's recipe was a little intimidating, although I'm not sure why. I read through the recipe several times and prepped the different components and the piping bag. Given the small quantity of ingredients, it probably would have been more effective to use a smaller bowl and a handheld mixer but I only have a standing mixer so I made it work. Once I had folded the egg whites with the egg yolks and started adding the dry ingredients, it was interesting how the batter kept changing in texture, from fluffy to sticky to lumpy to a bit gluey. By the time the ingredients were combined, it reminded me of something between choux pastry and spaetzle batter. I didn't expect it to be thin enough to run out of the pastry bag but I made it work, using the one inch marks on the parchment paper. The piping was a little inexact, but the powdered sugar covered many of my sins. 

By the time I put the cookies in the oven, I was concerned that they would not puff up. They looked very deflated and thin on the cookie sheet. When I turned the cookies at the halfway point, I felt more confident that I would get something fairly close to Dorie's photos. Like Mardi, I got 15 cookies from this recipe. 

The finished cookies have a really unique and interesting texture (in a good way), sort of crunchy and airy but not hard like some biscotti can be. I liked the crispness of the narrower cookies but the wider ones were slightly bready.  Overall, I enjoyed their simplicity and vanilla flavor.

 

To see the successes of my fellow Tuesdays with Dorie bakers, see the Tuesdays with Dorie LYL posts for links.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Marbled Cheesecake

 I am away for spring break this week so I will make my post brief.

This week, I made the marbled cheesecake recipe.  Cheesecake has been one of my signature desserts, so I was curious to try a different recipe.  Since there are just three of us and we would be traveling, I made a 6" cake with a half recipe of batter.

I was surprised to see that there was espresso powder in the crust and the chocolate portion of the batter.  I usually eyeball the butter to crumbs ratio for the crust but it was much more sensible to follow Dorie's proportions. I was also glad to see her note that there is always water that creeps into the foil sleeve.  I thought it was just me.

I looked at other recipes to decide whether to adjust the baking time for the smaller cake. I decided to take it out 10 minutes early but, when I checked it at that point, it was still underbaked.  I baked the half recipe for the amount specified for the full cake and it was perfectly done.

I cut the cake into 8 small slices and it was perfect for each of us to get a few bites here and there with the smaller slices.  The espresso flavor came through and added a nice complexity to the chocolate batter.

Give this one a try from the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Brioche Sandwich Buns (and bonus Chocolate Babka)

In our house, we are always at a loss when it comes to "what's for dinner"?  We can get a rut. For this week, I planned the sandwich buns to line up with my husband's plan to try to make smashburgers at home. Luckily, his plan was to make these outside and not make a splattery mess in the kitchen.

I've made challah before but never brioche.  I read others' posts about their experience with this recipe.  I must have been using small bits of butter because incorporating it into the dough took almost 20 minutes rather than 10 that Dorie describes. After the dough was finished and had proofed, I got caught up on late night tv waiting for each of the "flips".  I must have skimmed over that part when I read the recipe.  :-)

The dough was much more dense than the other bread dough recipes I've made but it had no trouble rising after I'd shaped the buns.  I thought I'd shaped them into smooth rolls but they had quite a bit of character from the baking process.  I used half of the dough to make 6 buns.  Dorie's instructions said to bake for 23-28 minutes.  I checked the temperature of mine at the 20 minute mark and they were 200 degrees exactly.  I wondered if the deep golden brown color meant that I'd overbaked them but they were perfectly soft and tasty.  We sized the burgers to the buns and had a delicious dinner.  Our teenaged son (the smashburger connoisseur) approved.

As a bonus, I decided to use the other half of the dough recipe to make the chocolate babka.  I read through others' posts from December 2022 to get a few tips.  I was looking for a prominent chocolate flavor so I planned to follow Dorie's advice to add chopped chocolate with the filling ... and then I promptly forgot until the dough was rolled and filled.  I increased the cocoa to 2 tablespoons, though.  I chilled the filled roll for almost an hour then sliced and braided it.  What a dramatic pattern!  I couldn't wait to see what it looked like as it proofed. 

 

In the meantime, I made the streusel topping.  I double-checked my measurements because it seemed as if I had too much dry ingredients to incorporate into the butter.  I added the streusel to the proofed loaf, following Dorie's suggestion to press it into clumps.  Once baked, I really liked the texture that her ratio provided--less hard and crunchy, super-sugary pieces and instead a more delicate crunch and pleasantly sweet topping. 

The baked loaf was as dramatic as I'd hoped.  It is a very impressive looking bread with an amazing texture.  Next time I'll add the chopped chocolate or maybe add some hazelnut spread to amp up the chocolate flavor.  I took the babka to a gathering and it was a crowd-pleaser!

Check out these classic recipes in Dorie's book, Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Brown-Sugar Oat Squares

This week's recipe came together so quickly and easily.  I was wishing I'd known about this recipe in the days when it was more often than I needed a last minute takealong snack for a small group.  All of the ingredients can be found in your pantry.  It doesn't even need an egg.  The whole recipe comes together fast in the bowl of your food processor.

My family loves anything with oats.  Add in some butter, sugar, and spices and these were delicious.  The caramelized flavor of the brown sugar, combined with the allspice and cinnamon was delicate and well-balanced.  

As others mentioned, the only tricky part was inverting the warm bars, slicing then returning them to the pan.  I will take their lead in the future and use a parchment sling.  To make things a bit more challenging, I got distracted after taking these out of the oven and didn't do those steps until the bars were barely warm.  I lost quite a few of the oats on top but sprinkled them over the baked and cut bars anyway.  I cut mine into triangles to get a few more pieces because I planned to take them to a meeting.  They were gone in no time!

Next time you need a quick and tasty treat, follow the Brown-Sugar Oat Squares recipe from Baking with Dorie:  Sweet, Salty & Simple.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Coffee Shortbread from Baking with Dorie

 My bake for this week was coffee shortbread.  This recipe went together quickly with a few simple ingredients.

After reading Dorie's instructions not to overmix, I was concerned that maybe I had undermixed when I tried to press the crumbly mix into the prepared pan.  Pressing a fork in to create marks for the wedges only pulled up the crumbs so I followed others' input and didn't even try to mark the dough until after baking.  It still seemed quite crumbly so I used a tart pan bottom pressed to the baked circle before inverting.  I had my doubts that it would hold together but it did.  

I made a quick, simple glaze after the wedges cooled and sprinkled it with espresso powder.

Cardamom is not a flavor that I use frequently but I followed the recipe as written.  When my husband and I shared a piece of the shortbread, we both found it to have complex flavor.  The lemon zest, espresso, cardamom and the sea salt all came through to make a really delicious shortbread with a soft and crumbly texture.  I plan to take the rest to a gathering on Friday and I'm looking forward to seeing how the flavors and texture bloom.  I will definitely make this one again in the future.

The next time you need a simple recipe for tasty shortbread, try this one from Baking with Dorie:  Sweet, Salty & Simple.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Tender Biscuits from Baking with Dorie

For the first post of January, I chose Tender Biscuits.  I really enjoy biscuits, but I've probably only made them once.  They are so decadent; I try to limit eating them at restaurants that really do them well so that it keeps it to an infrequent calorie splurge.

I had plans to meet a friend who grew up in the south so it seemed like a good idea to time the baking with our art museum day.  

I mixed the yogurt and milk plus the dry ingredients the night before so I could get these mixed and baked early.  I used a pastry blender to incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients, as I always do with pastry crust.  When I added the wet ingredients, I was pretty sure I'd have a challenge bringing the dough together, as Dorie mentions.  I added additional milk gradually (adding a total of 3 tablespoons) so that I could mostly incorporate all of the ingredients.  I also added another teaspoon of sugar (for a total of one tablespoon) since I knew I'd be using these as sweet versus savory biscuits.  Once the dough was together, I cut four 2.5" round biscuits and put those in to bake.  I cut the rest plus the reshaped scraps into 2" round biscuits that would go into the freezer unbaked.

I suspect that I may have needed to add more liquid for one of two reasons.  Either the premixed liquids evaporated a bit in the refrigerator or that I should have cut the butter into smaller pieces than I typically do for pastry crust so the moisture in the more "flaked" butter could have helped to absorb more dry ingredients.

Regardless of the initial issue, the biscuits were really tasty.  They didn't need the additional teaspoon of sugar in order to make them seem like a sweet treat with a little bit of butter.  I'm looking forward to hearing my friend's report on how she liked the biscuits I gave her.  :-)  I told her not to hold me to her granny's standard.