Tuesdays With Dorie: Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies March 20, 2013

This weeks Tuesdays With Dorie is being hosted by Peggy of Galettista. She is hosting the recipe for Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies which is located on page 330 in Baking With Julia.

I know I have made cookies similar to these, so I was trying to be careful with regard to using espresso powder instead of instant coffee. There was also the optional addition of dried apricots to the dough, but since I didn’t have any on hand and I knew Mike probably wouldn’t appreciate the apricots, I left those out. I did use a combination of dark chocolate and white chocolate since I didn’t exactly have a pound of dark to go around. That would be because I baked Mike chocolate chip cookies a week or so ago using the NY Times Recipe.

I also baked up these pretty little Beurre de Sel Jammers courtesy of Dorie and Bon Appetit

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So we have had A LOT of cookies in our house as of late, and they have all tasted great. Mike really liked the Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies even with the addition of white chocolate. The only other change I made to the recipe was to only use 1 teaspoon of espresso powder that I sifted. I decided to sift the powder because we had an incident with chunks of coffee catching you off guard from another time that I made cookies.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Boca Negra February 19, 2013

This weeks Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is Boca Negra, which is located on page 253 in Baking With Julia.. This recipe is being hosted by Cathy of A Frederick Food Garden.

I actually made this recipe for my 31st Birthday, which just happens to be Valentine’s Day. The recipe calls to use Bourbon (cake and topping) and I was afraid that Mike wouldn’t appreciate it if I used the good stuff. So I used rum in the white chocolate cream, and Chambord in the cake. With the Chambord I was hoping for a raspberry flavor, which it did impart a hint. For the white chocolate cream, which was pretty much a ganache, I didn’t feel comfortable using alcohol since I am 7 months pregnant. I still wanted the flavor so I decided to boil the rum with the cream so that the alcohol could cook out. Once the cream had cooled it had thickened but not enough for my liking, so I poured the cream into a mixing bowl and whipped up the cream to stiff peaks. I preferred the cream this way and it photographed better.

For the cake, I baked it in an 8-inch pan instead of a 9-inch and baked it for 40 minutes (recipe calls for 30 minutes). I was afraid that I might not have baked the cake long enough, especially since it was in a smaller pan. I decided to wait a bit before flipping it out on a serving plate, just in case.

And….

I was right, the cake probably could have used 5 more minutes in the oven because one of the sides wasn’t completely set and when I turned it out onto a plate one side slide out just a little. Which actually made it the shape of the Star Trek Enterprise ship. The fact that I noticed that makes me a complete nerd.

Mike and I ate the cside that slide out and it tasted great, but it is very rich. It was like eating straight chocolate ganache, and the cream on top was nice and cut the richness a bit. Next time I make this I will probably only make half a recipe of the cake and a quarter recipe of the cream because a little of both goes a long way.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Basic Marbled Loaf Cake May 3, 2011

This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Carol from The Bake More.  She picked Dorie’s Basic Marbled Loaf Cake, which is located on pages 230-231 in Baking: From My Home to Yours.  For this recipe Dorie gives a few different flavor combinations to try.  I decided to go with Chocolate and While Chocolate as my two flavors since I had a bag of white chocolate on hand and 6 oz of bittersweet chocolate that needed to be used.

Dorie’s recipe calls for using 4 oz white chocolate and 4 oz bittersweet chocolate, but since I already had 6 oz of bittersweet chocolate melted I just decided to up the chocolate factor.  The batter for the loaf cake was very easy to put together, and it actually baked up in the allotted 1 hr 30 minute time frame.  Which usually doesn’t happen for me, so I was pleasantly surprised.  It baked up perfectly, and sliced up very nicely.  I decided to reserve the two end pieces for myself and Mike took the rest to work.  The verdict, well the plate was clean so I figured it went over well.  Mike’s comment was that the cake was very moist, which I second.  The flavor combination of the two was nice together, but I preferred the chocolate sections 🙂

Tuesdays With Dorie: White Chocolate Brownies June 1, 2010

This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Marthe of Culinary Delights.  She selected Dorie’s White Chocolate Brownies which are located on pages 110-111 in Baking: From My Home to Yours.

This would probably been one of the many things in the book that I look at the picture and go, “Pretty, I really want to make that.” But then I really never got around to it, so luck me that Marthe picked it this week 🙂

Okay first thing first, I know pretty much everyone was having issues with the brownies not baking all the way through.  At first when I starting making these, I was going to bake the batter for a bit and then add the meringue.  But as I continued to put the batter together I went through 2 more stages of thought, 1) I won’t do the meringue, and 2) Well, I have enough eggs lets see how this goes with the meringue and bake according to the directions.  I ended up going with number 2, obviously, and these little guys actually turned out right.  The only reason that I can come up with is that I used a 9 X 13 rectangular springform pan.  I have discovered that when I bake things in the 9 x 13 Pyrex dish and the 9 x 13 springform pan, that they bake differently.  I think that happens for two reasons, 1) Both pans are made from different materials, and 2) I find that the batter settles more evenly in the springform pan because the edges don’t round up, they are flat.

With regard for the batter, I did use blackberries instead of raspberries because I couldn’t find any for the life of me.  As for the baking time, I baked this for 40 minutes and then I let it rest until it was at room temperature before I removed the outside of the pan.  After it was cool, I lifted it off the bottom of the pan with the parchment paper and then gently sliced (serrated knife)  it into 40 pieces.

The flavor and texture of these brownies reminded me more of a moist cake, and Mike was hoping for them to be a little sweeter.  But other than that, I thought they were yummy and snagged two for myself when no one was looking 🙂

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Chunkers September 16, 2008

This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Claudia of Fool for Food and she chose Chocolate Chunkers on page 70 in Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  When I read this recipe all I could think was this is going to be expensive.  Then I thought, “Crap, I have no money.”  I gathered up the ingredients in my apartment and I could make a 1/2 batch.  That is what I set out to do with a few modifications.