TwD: Foccaccia

As of this post, I officially move my Dorie posts back over to Cookbook Immersion Project, rather than My Mandatory Fun. Since I decided to restart my cookbook blog, it makes more sense to keep all the cookbook-related posts together. If you're at all interested in keeping up with my Italian adventure, please keep reading about it on the other site.

I'm fairly confident that I will once again be in the minority when I say that this week's recipe from Baking with Julia didn't work for me. I wanted the focaccia to succeed so badly. I let my dough sit in the refrigerator (aka my spare bedroom. It gets cold in these uninsulated Italian concrete houses!) for the full 36 hours. I very gently flattened the balls of dough and tugged them into a semi-rectangular shape.

I guess I wasn't gentle enough. These babies didn't poof in the oven. At all.

Bummer.

They were crispy in the center, which was the thinnest part. At first I thought maybe I messed it up by using a knife to slash the dough instead of the specified razor, but that wasn't the case. I didn't slash the third ball at all, and it looked exactly the same when it was done baking as the previous two.

I'm sorry, folks. I think I'm finished with Baking with Julia. I haven't loved any of the dozen recipes I've made. My favorite was the white bread, but it murdered my KitchenAid, so I won't be repeating that mistake. For whatever reason, these recipes just don't seem to work for me. They work for other Doristas, so it may well be my fault. Perhaps I'm too distracted by my toddler to execute the recipes properly. Perhaps I'm too rough with the dough. I don't know, but I'm tired of being disappointed in the product. I'd much rather concentrate my baking time on Dorie's Baking, which I want to bake through, but was too late to the party to join Tuesdays with Dorie in time for it (or Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet or The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion). I'll see the Tuesdays with Dorie crew in a few years, when hopefully Dorie will have published another book of her own wonderful (and more forgiving) recipes for us to bake together!

TwD: Blueberry Nectarine Pie, minus the pie.

I wasn't sure that I was going to participate in this week's Tuesdays with Dorie. The recipe, Blueberry Nectarine Pie, sounded deeelicious, except for one very important thing. The nectarines and peaches in my mother's supermarket are awful. 100% inedible. Horrid. Especially after coming from Texas, where they sold small, just-picked, juice-running-to-your-elbow peaches at the farmer's market.

My mother bought a crate of peaches at Cosco for $9. Their insides were dry cotton. Disgusting. We thought they'd improve a little with time, but they only molded over.

Every time I went food shopping, I bought one nectarine. Finally, I found an edible batch. Not great--a little hard, not a lot of flavor, but at least there was some juice. I went back to the store and bought a few more. The recipe has you boil the berries, nectarines, sugar, and lemon zest for a bit on the stovetop, which helped improve the fruit. That's as much of the recipe as I followed.

See, my mom shops at Cosco regularly. She lives alone, so it takes her a long time to get through the food. She asked me if I knew of any recipes that use goat cheese. I looked in her refrigerator drawer. She had one long 10 oz bar of goat cheese, and several 5 ounce bars. It's a lot of goat cheese. My thoughts instantly turned to the Tourteau de Chevre in Dorie's Around My French Table, which calls for 9 ounces of goat cheese. Perfect! An extra ounce of goat cheese never hurt anything. I served the fruit from the pie recipe alongside the tourteau, and it was absolutely delicious. (What's the difference between a tourteau and a tart? Beats me. Tourteau sounds snootier.)

My only minor complaint is that the fruit was a tad too sweet for me. I'd cut back on the sugar next time. Loved the nectarine/blueberry combo, though. YUM.

The hosts for this week are Hilary of Manchego's Kitchen  and Liz of That Skinny Chick Can Bake. Check out their blogs for the full pie recipe.

TwD: Almond Biscotti

Technically, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was for Hazelnut Biscotti, but my mom had a big, heaping bag of almonds in the fridge, so I used those, and swapped Disarrono for the Frangelico.

This was a trouble-free recipe. I always worry when I'm cooking in someone else's kitchen that I won't have everything I need, but in this case, I was actually better off baking at Mom's than I would have been at home. The instructions say to bake the sliced biscotti on wire racks, rather than baking sheets. The only racks I have at home are coated in black--I guess they're nonstick??--and there's no chance I'd put them in the oven.

I've made other biscotti recipes before, and none of them ever seem to work quite right. This recipe, on the other hand, did exactly what it was supposed to. The dough sliced easily into nice, thin slabs, without everything falling apart. They baked up crispy, and looked perfect.

And then I tasted one.

I MUST have used the wrong measuring spoon for the baking soda. It was all that I could taste. My mom says she doesn't know what I'm talking about, and that the biscotti are delicious. It's possible that my taste buds are just oversensitive to baking soda flavor, but I don't know how she can not taste it, and I truly think I added too much. I remember thinking, "Wow, those puffed up a lot" when I pulled the loaves out of the oven. None of the biscotti recipes I've made previously seemed to rise much in the oven. Part of me is kind of hoping that one other Dorista had the same experience, so that I feel less crazy.

Additionally, I don't think the amaretto added enough almond flavor. Next time I try this--and I will try it again, because I am so befuddled about that baking soda--I'll add some extract.

The texture was right. The workability of the dough was right. The ease of throwing it together was right. The look was right. The only thing wrong was the damn baking soda. Bummer. Hey, at least Mom likes them.

For the full recipe, check out our hosts for this week: Jodi of Homemade and Wholesome and Katrina of Baking and Boys

TwD: French Strawberry Cake

I was cautiously optimistic about the French Strawberry Cake that was selected this week for Tuesdays with Dorie. I love strawberry shortcake, but I hate--HATE--wedding cake. All wedding cake. I didn't even like my own. I just ordered the one that everyone else seemed to like best. The cake part itself usually seems to be a flavorless vehicle to get toppings to your mouth, and it's usually covered in some element that makes it wet. Pudding, fruit, whatever. I don't like it, texturally. My wedding cake fears sprang to the forefront when I read through the recipe for this strawberry cake and realized that the genoise (cake) is supposed to be sliced into thirds, layered with macerated strawberries and whipped cream, then left to set in the fridge for a while. Sounds wet to me.

First problem, right out of the gate, was in slicing the cake. This was not a thick, forgiving cake to cut. It might have been an inch thick. I can't even slice a bagel evenly. I decided to halve it. The conversation with my husband went a little something like this:

Me: I'm supposed to cut this into thirds.
Matt: That?
Me: Yeah.
Matt: Never gonna happen.
Me: I think I'll halve it.
Matt: You can try, but you won't be able to do it.
Me: What are you suggesting?
Matt: Just leave it whole and pile the strawberries and cream on top of it.
Me: I'm not going to do that.
Matt: (Snort.) Good luck.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, bud. I mean, he was right--I made a huge mess of it, but still. haha. Fortunately, whipped cream masks all manner of kitchen disasters.

If anyone out there was able to slice this into thirds, I'm very impressed by you. I want you to know that.

I should be a food stylist.

I didn't really enjoy this cake. I didn't hate it, but I found myself picking the strawberries and cream off and leaving the cake behind. The cake, itself, didn't contribute anything delicious to the whole. I served it at a going-away party for two friends who are moving to Japan, and for myself (On Saturday, I'll begin my trek East, spending a month with fam in NY and DE before moving to Italy in August). A house full of people ate less than half of this cake. I've seen this group of friends clear tables of feasts, so if it was a dessert that they really loved, believe me, it would have been gone in two seconds.

I will say that I LOVED the addition of sour cream to the whipped cream. It gave it a nice tang. I'll definitely use that idea in the future.

If you want to see what this cake looks like when people actually take pretty pictures of it, check out what Sophia and Allison, our hosts for this week, did with it. The full recipe can be found on their blogs.

TwD: Oasis Naan

It doesn't take much to prompt me to cook Indian food these days, so from the moment that I read that this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe from Baking With Julia was Oasis Naan, all I could think about was a big pot of saag to go along with it. The saag was delicious (thank you Madhur Jaffrey!), but my naan was not-so-great. I haven't decided yet whether I bungled the recipe, or if the outcome was not supposed to be similar to restaurant naan, and so my expectations ruined my experience of it.

As I hand-kneaded the dough, I thought to myself that I was being too generous with the instruction to "add more flour as necessary." The dough was extremely wet and sticky, had glued itself to my lightly floured countertop, and had gloved my hands. It took a lot of flour to get it to a consistency that I could knead. It's highly probable that this is the root of my problem. My finished product was a cross between pizza dough and pita. It baked into stiff, dense breads, with none of that lovely stretchy chewiness that I associate with naan. Oh well. I hope everyone else had a better experience! Now, who's ready for some French Strawberry Cake? I am! I am!

I can't find my camera cord anywhere. I'll upload a pic later, if/when it turns up. 

You can find the full recipe on either Maggie's blog, Always Add More Butter, or Phyl's blog, Of Cabbages and King Cakes.

TwD: Hungarian Shortbread

When I first tasted the Hungarian Shortbread (pg 237-238 of Baking with Julia) that we baked up this week for Tuesdays with Dorie, I thought it was okay, but nothing special. However, with each day that passed, it became more and more compulsively eatable. I only made half a batch, which was plenty.

This recipe employs a neat technique of freezing and then grating the dough directly into the pan. With the help of my trusty food processor, this was simple as could be. I couldn't find any rhubarb at the supermarket, so I couldn't make the recommended jam from it. I used a jar of tart lemon curd that I had in the fridge. It offset the sweet, buttery dough nicely. Too nicely. Nom nom nom!

Yep. Definitely glad I only baked half a batch.

I'm so glad that I read people's advice to bake the bottom layer for a while before adding the jam and top layer. I baked it for 15 minutes, and the end result still gave the effect of raw dough. I wish I left it in longer, because the best bits were the browned edges.

No one but me ate more than one piece of it, so this won't become one of my go-to recipes. In fact, I threw out what was left last night, because I didn't want to finish it all by my lonesome. I would have sent it to work with my husband, but he forgot to bring it on Monday, and today he flew off to a symposium in DC. Ah, well.

The hosts for this week's recipe are Lynette and Cher. You can find the full recipe on either of their blogs.

FFwD: Coconut Friands

I have no specific problem with coconut, except that, given a list of flavors, it would likely be my last pick. I don't mind it as a background ingredient, but I don't like it when it coats the outside of a cake (in the same way that I don't like nuts in my ice cream. It interferes with the texture in a way that other add-ins do not), or when it's the primary flavor of something, because it usually is TOO coconutty for my taste.

That said, this week's French Fridays with Dorie pick of Coconut Friands (little cakes baked in mini muffin tins) was perfectly timed. I was having a lousy Wednesday (fourth anniversary since my dad died) and a little baking therapy was just what I needed. This recipe made me happy because I had all the ingredients already, it used up my coconut and four egg whites that I had in the freezer (trying to eat through the contents of my pantry before I move this summer), and it was easy as can be. I wasn't in a mind-space to do much besides stir ingredients together, so it was perfect.

All that was left by the time I remembered to snap a photo. Don't judge me. haha

I was delighted at how much I liked these little cakes. Especially when they were fresh from the oven, the edges and sides were a little crisp, almost like they'd caramelized. That effect was gone by the next day, but it was lovely while it lasted. They certainly tasted of coconut, but the flavor seemed mild because it was so well balanced by vanilla. I think that the use of unsweetened coconut was crucial to keeping the flavor in check. Hot, they tasted of whipped cream, somehow. I can't explain that.

Needless to say, therapy baking turned into therapy eating. Oh well, it was just for a day. Charlie liked these too, much to my surprise. Maybe I've just been baking the wrong flavored treats for his palate. He ate one and then ran to the kitchen and was stretching to reach another off the counter. Eat up, lad, eat up. Please, don't make me eat them all myself.

Conclusion: Loved them.

Also, consider this a public service announcement. I made the Basic White Loaf from Baking with Julia that was previously covered by Tuesdays with Dorie. The bread was easy and delicious, but the damn dough broke my Kitchenaid mixer. Online searches have revealed to me that you are not supposed to turn the Kitchenaid mixer on higher than level "2" when using the bread hook or it will burn out the motor, so when the recipe instructed me to raise the speed to medium, things went wrong. I had no idea, and I'm guessing some of you don't know either. I have to take her apart this weekend to check out her innards, because the interwebs tell me that the most common problem can be fixed with a $25 replacement part--some failsafe piece that it designed to break before the motor is actually damaged. Fingers crossed!

How can I stay mad at a face like that?

Let me just tell you, kneading butter into a stiff dough by hand is no fun. No fun at all.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Lemon Loaf Cake

I held out against the siren song of Tuesdays with Dorie for as long as I could. I wanted to join them back when they were baking through Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking, but the group was closed to newcomers by the time I found out about them. They finished Baking a few months ago, and have moved on to a book that Dorie wrote with Julia Child, called Baking with Julia. I refrained, thinking that I didn't need baked goods around the house every week. I read posts of folks who participate in both TwD and FFwD, and everything they were making from Baking with Julia looked so, so good. And, contrary to my expectations, it wasn't all sweet. About a week ago, it clicked in my head that they weren't posting on a weekly basis. I ran to check Tuesdays with Dorie's website, and realized that yes, it's a bi-weekly group. Twice a month sounds much friendlier on my waistline than four times a month. Yeah, boyeeee! I ordered my book and skipped off to a vacation in New Orleans.

My enthusiasm to get started immediately upon my return from the trip contributed to the mediocrity of my Lemon Loaf Cake (pg 252, or recipe can be found on our hosts' posts, here or here.) I in no way blame the recipe, and I want to try it again, properly. See, my book hadn't arrived yet on Sunday when I went to the supermarket, so I bought ingredients that I thought could be in it, hoping the book would arrive on Monday so that I could bake it by Tuesday. I did not anticipate cake flour or heavy cream, and my loaf pan was the wrong size. I ran to CVS in a monsoon yesterday, certain that they would have heavy cream, but all I could find was half and half. My toddler and I were already drenched, so I grabbed the half and half and crossed my fingers that it would work.

The loaf came together easily and smelled wonderful while it was baking. It has a nice lemon flavor (though I think a lemon glaze icing on top would be perfect), but the texture was definitely wrong. No doubt about it, this tough, chewy crumb was not as it should be. Oh, well. Note to self: half and half is not a valid replacement for heavy cream. Ha! My husband took the cake to work (Navy), so he could put it out in the USO. Sailors always wander through there looking for treats, and I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

I'm super-excited to be part of the group and baking along with this remarkable, intimidating book. There are some complicated recipes in there! Holy moly. I'm especially excited about all the breads. I'm in bread mode these days. Should be fun!