Tuesdays With Dorie: Coconut Tapioca April 28, 2015

This weeks Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is Coconut Tapioca which is located on page 382 in Baking Chez Moi. I actually made this last week because I knew I would forget about the overnight soak time and be screwed for posting on time.  Of course, I should have taken my picture before now but I am glad that I waited because the strawberry in the picture makes it look so much better. 

The only changed two things in the recipe: I used almond milk instead of whole milk so that the recipe would be vegan, and I used small tapioca pearls because I couldn’t find large.  Everything actually turned out great.  I really liked the flavor of the tapioca and Maureen asked for a bit and declared it to be “Tasty.” 

   

Tuesdays With Dorie: Sweet Ricotta Pie and Limoncello Cupcakes April 14, 2015

Slacker here.

Well not completely because as usual I did the recipes on time but I just “forget” to post.

Last weeks Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was for Sweet Ricotta Pie, which is located on page 376 in Baking With Julia. The traditional flavor with this pie was suppose to be anise, which I love but I was on the fence if anyone else would be helping me eat the pie.  I ended up swaping out the anise for vanilla extract and freshly grated orange zest. To bring out the flavor of the orange zest (1Tbsp) I combined it with the sugar and rubbed them together until the sugar was moist and fragrant.  The pie actually turned out great, but the lattice was a pain in the butt. The pie was not too sweet and I happened to also eat it for breakfast, opps.

 

This Tuesday recipe is for the Limoncello Cupcakes located on page 194 in Baking Chez Moi. Since I was happily reminded about this recipe when I opened my email this morning and saw the post for Leave Your Link (LYL). I incidently didn’t have some of the ingredients on had, most notibly Limoncello and Greek Yogurt.  I didn’t have time to drag two kids to the liquor store, so I opted to use Cointreau in its place along with orange zest. 

There seems to be an orange theme.  I did have lemons, but oh well.  My orange zest was in the freezer because I have taken to zesting any citrus that I am going to peel or juice and store it in the freezer. So, I actually didn’t have any oranges which we will get to juice for the frosting in a bit. For the Greek Yogurt, I subtituted sour cream and it worked fine. When I got to the icing I noticed that Dorie previously stated that the recipe makes a bit for each cupcake. I like a bit more than just a dollop, so I made 1.5 recipes with some modifications. Just realized that I might have been a bit butter happy because I used a bit more than I was suppose to: 1 stick plus 3 Tbsp butter, 3 cups confectioner’s sugar, 2 Tbsp Cointreau, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 1 Tbsp water or milk, 4 drops orange oil.

I guess part of me was trying to double it and the other part didn’t want to waste the sugar 🙂 

I did use the sugar syrup and just substituted Cointreau for the Limoncello, but I did not put the filling of orange or lemon marmalade.  Which, I kind of wish I would have because the cupcakes were a bit dry.  Nothing that drinking tea wouldn’t fix or milk in my husband’s case. Everyone loved the cupcakes. All day I was asked when they could have them.  Emma ate the icing off hers and the Maureen ate the cake.