This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Petite Apple Croustades.
These adorable little packages comprise strips of phyllo pastry, buttered and sugared, then laid out to line a muffin tin hole, filled with caramelised apple, then twisted closed to conceal the gems of apple within:
These are like a delicate, more refined version of an apple turnover, and are so delicious - the perfect dessert for one. The crisp, caramelised, flaky pastry gives way under your fork, and when combined with the luscious cooked apple, is just devine.
To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
Recently, Bill retired after working with our business for nearly 35 years. Bill was a friendly face around the office who was always up for a pleasant chat.
A few people organised an office morning tea for Bill to wish him all the best in his retirement. I could not attend the morning tea, but I wanted to make Bill a cake for the morning tea to thank him and to wish him well.
I saw a mud cake on Instagram from Adelaide Bakes, which I though would be the perfect cake for Bill. You can find the recipe online here. I made my cake in a 22cm cake tin, so it is not as tall as the one on the source website.
I covered the cake with ganache (using Dorie Greenspan's recommended one is to one ratio of chocolate and cream), and decorated it with fondant shapes made by pressing fondant into silicone moulds. The plant and leaves allude to the fact that one of Bill's presents was a plant, while the tea pot, cups and cupcakes represent the morning tea.
Here is Bill cutting his cake, with his plant in the foreground:
Fifty or so people attended Bill's morning tea, which shows what a treasure he is. We wish you all the best in your retirement Bill, and you will be missed around the office.
One of the loveliest cakes I have eaten in a while was a Vanilla, Ricotta and Almond Cake with Poached Fruit, a recent Queen Baking Club challenge. You can find the recipe online here.
This wonderful cake contains ricotta, which makes it smooth and moist; it contains almond meal, to give it a little nuttiness and texture; and lush berries, to give it sweetness and additional moistness. The underlying cake is complemented by the poached fruit (in my case, pears) and berries on top, which make the cake decorative and add additional flavour.
This is one of those cakes you have to walk away from so that you don't eat the whole thing. It is such a moist and luscious cake that it is difficult to stop at just one piece.
This cake would be lovely served with cream, crème fraiche or icecream. However, I served it just with a drizzle of the pear poaching syrup as suggested by Queen (but be warned, it is very sweet).
If you like fruity cakes, I highly recommend making this one.
This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Parmesan Galettes. These savoury biscuits comprise a simple dough of flour, butter and grated parmesan, blitzed in a food processor into a dough, then rolled into a log and the biscuits are sliced from the log.
You could bake them in a muffin tin so they don't spread and stay round, but I couldn't be bothered and baked them free form. The biscuits did not stay neatly round, but they still tasted good - a very strong parmesan flavour, as you can imagine.
To see what the other Dorie bakers made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
A friend of mine recently had a Lemon Macadamia Shortbread Cake at a work morning tea. Everyone seemed to like it, and someone asked for the recipe. The recipe was then passed on to me as a suggestion for something to bake.
This recipe was out of someone's home recipe file, so it didn't contain a lot of the niceties that one finds in a modern cookbook for the instructions, nor was there a photo so that I had an idea of what the cake would look like. However, I have been baking for long enough that I was happy to give this recipe a go.
I was expecting a cookie cake from the name of the cake, but this is what it actually looks like (which I am told is an accurate representation of the original):
This is a lovely cake with a soft, buttery base that you press into the tin, topped with a thin layer of lemon curd, then topped with the same dough as the base but crumbled instead of pressed on. The whole thing is then topped with macadamia nuts for crunch:
It really is a lovely cake that is easy to make. If you would like to try it, you will need:
Base
2 cups self-raising flour
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
125g butter, softened
(Double the recipe if you'd like a try bake.
Filling
1/2 cup lemon juice
grated zest of one lemon
2 eggs, slightly beaten
125g butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup macadamia nuts, chopped
(Triple the recipe for a tray bake.)
Grease and line a 20cm springform tin (mine was 22cm and it was fine.) Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
For the base, sift the flour and sugar into a bowl. Rub the butter in with your finger tips (I recommend grating the butter to help with this), to form crumbs. Add the eggs, and mix until combined but the dough is still slightly crumbly.
Press two thirds of the base mixture into the springform tin, and set the rest aside.
For the filling, melt the butter and the sugar in a small saucepan (do not allow to boil). Remove the mixture from the heat, then mix in the lemon juice and zest.
Whisk in the beaten eggs, then return the saucepan to the heat and stir constantly until the mixture thickens (it will coat the back of a spoon). Don't panic if some of your egg scrambles in the mixture - just strain it out once the curd has cooked.
Pour the curd over the base in the springform tin. Top with the reserved base dough, sprinkling it over in little blobs to cover the curd. Finally, sprinkle over the macadamia nuts.
Bake the cake for 40 minutes until golden on top, then remove it from the oven and cool it in the tin on a wire rack.
Release the cooled cake from the springform tin, and dust with icing sugar to serve, if desired.
This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets. At first, I was a little skeptical as to what this recipe would be like, especially as it included a toasted bread topping (which seemed a little weird to me).
I needn't have worried - these little tarts were good. I quartered the dough and topping recipe and halved the filling recipe (after realising that I could get two tart shells out of my dough instead of just one), and ended up with two tartlets.
These little tarts are pretty and elegant. The easiest tartlet tins for me to find were some heart-shaped ones that someone gave to me recently (I don't often use tartlet tins), which explains the shape (ie no deliberate decision to make heart-shaped tartlets).
I was worried that the filling would not set as only a miniscule amount of gelatine was involved as the setting agent, but the tartlets set beautifully.
The filling of these tarts is smooth and silky, and the topping on top adds a nice contrast crunch.
To see what everyone else made this week and what they though of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
For Tuesday with Dorie this week, the recipe is for White Chocolate and Poppy Seed Cookies.
These cookies take Dorie's basic good for almost anything cookie dough, and combine it with white chocolate chunks and poppy seeds. After baking, the cookies are topped with more white chocolate and poppy seeds.
These are rather attractive cookies which taste quite good. Perfect for the white chocolate or poppy seed lover.
To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
