TWD - Cheating on my old pie crust with French Apple Tart

I've been merrily making the same pie crust for years.  My mom would tell me tales of new recipes and methods she had tried, but I would have no part of it.  I loved my tried and true crust.  But then this one came along and it may be time to ditch my old pie crust recipe.  This one is similar with both butter and shortening, but somehow it's butterier and flakier.  So this recipe is a keeper not just for the wonderful crust, but also the filling.  I loved the filling and was glad I had a little left over.  The book suggested it could be saved and eaten as an ice cream topping.  As if.  I couldn't wait that long and ate it with a spoon while I waited for the tart to bake.  And I love the French bakery look of this tart too.

 

 

TWD-Pizza with Onion Confit

 

 

I had such big plans for this post.  First I made this pizza with my mom, (we drove to Ohio for Christmas), so that made it a special post. And I got Photoshop for Christmas, so I had done some neato (but elementary) "photoshopping" of the pictures.  And then I was going to throw in a gratuitous snow picture because the day we made this at my mom's house in Ohio it snowed over 6 inches (which is a BIG deal when you live in Texas and your kids never get to see snow).  But alas my plans were dashed.  It seems Blogger is not working properly, so my pictures were taking forever to load and then the installation of Photoshop is making my dinasaur computer run slow, so this is it folks, one picture of the pizza with onion confit.  It was delicious and I would make it again.  For the kids we just did regular toppings, but the confit is a winner and makes for a nice change from the usual pizza toppings.  Plus my mom got a whole bag of onions for 49 cents, so you could go crazy making onion confit at that price.

TWD-Finnish Pulla

This will be short and sweet as I am in the midst of baking Christmas cookies.  I was anxious to try this recipe because it looked so pretty in the picture and I have never made braided bread before.  I made this in a hurry and found it fairly simple.  I would have liked to have had more time to do a tighter and more precise braid, but overall I really liked it.  I liked the sweet flavor of the bread and I thought that the book gave a good recipe tip not to over bake it because I could see this becoming dry quickly.  I did not spring for the cardamon as the night before I made this my car was towed costing me $218 to retrieve it.  So cardamon was part of the budget cuts so as not to fall off a Christmas fiscal cliff.

Happy Holidays to all and here's to baking in 2013!

TWD-Gingerbread Baby Cakes

On Saturday I am hosting our neighborhood ladies' Christmas brunch.  So it is crunch time to get the house clean and the decorations out and the food ready and the silver polished.  I almost didn't make this because I thought I should be doing brunch preparations and we had a repairman in the kitchen fixing our disposal.  But I looked at the recipe and had all the ingredients including some fresh ginger my husband had bought to make some ancient-Chinese-secret cold remedy. So I made them on a whim and boy am I glad I did.  My husband and I have been married for over 21 years and I have baked consistently for those 21 years.  So when my husband said "Wow, this is the best thing you have ever made," you know you have a winner.  I thought the fresh ginger would give it an unpleasant bite, but I was wrong.  It had a nice grownup taste, but even my daughter enjoyed it. Since "this is the best thing I ever made" I can see this becoming a holiday tradition.

TWD-Brownies

Whenever a recipe claims to be the "best ever," I think it sets itself up for failure.  So I didn't set my expectations too high for this recipe.  I always prefer a brownie made with cocoa powder (because I always have cocoa powder on hand and it's more economical) and I just like the more rounded taste of a brownie made with cocoa powder.  So this recipe had 2 strikes against it before I even started baking.  Then throw in bad recipe reading on my part (forgot to add the butter until the end) and this recipe seemed doomed.  But despite all that, these turned out good.  I probably wouldn't make them again because I already have a favorite brownie recipe and I rarely have both bittersweet chocolate and unsweetened chocolate in the pantry at the same time.  If I were to make them again, I would bake them longer than the 27 minutes that I baked them.  I thought the center was a little too ooey-gooey, but my family liked that part.  So if this were a movie rating, I would give this recipe 3 stars out of 4.

TWD- Bagels

This week was one of those "Yes! I made that" moments.  Bagels are something I had never attempted prior to this week and really thought it was over my skill level.  That's what's great about Tuesdays with Dorie; trying things you might never try otherwise.

I thought the instructions for this recipe were great.  I used all bread flour because that's what I had on hand and I wouldn't change it.  For the boiling part, I did 90 seconds first and then 60 seconds after the flip and again I thought that worked out great.  My topping was coarse sea salt and it gave the bagels a taste almost like a soft pretzel. 

Boiling them - 90 seconds, then 60 seconds

I finished these up around 5:30 pm.  I had no intention of using them for dinner, but when I saw how great they turned out, I called my husband and told him to stop at the store and get some roast beef and Havarti cheese.  We had bagel sandwiches for dinner and everyone loved them.

I can't wait to make these again, but try flavors like cinnamon raisin or asiago cheese.  You know all the flavors that are tempting at Panera and Einstein Bagels.








TWD - Cranberry Pecan Pumpkin Loaf

Today was a high of 82 degrees in Sugar Land, Texas.  Even after 21 years in Texas, my internal clock is ready for  some cooler weather than 82 on October 1st.  So it was nice that at least the house smelled like fall with this bread. 

I was surprised like many others that this was not a quick bread and wondered if all the time invested would be worth it for a pumpkin bread.  But this is no ordinary pumpkin bread.  This is a whole other level of pumpkin bread.  I started this bread on Sunday afternoon and was not prepared for the overnight rise, but luckily I work from home on Mondays, so I could accommodate the three risings.  And what a great workday treat to have fresh autumn-smelling bread coming out of the oven at 3 pm.  On most days at 3 pm I am reaching for the 94% fat free popcorn, so my taste buds were in a real treat when this bread came out of the oven.  I let it cool for about 30 minutes, slathered it with butter and inhaled it. And then I had another piece.  And maybe another. It was that good.

I can't wait to make this again.  But if I do, I will use craisins if cranberries are not at their peak of ripeness. My only regret was using fresh cranberries that weren't ripe enough and they gave a tart bite to the bread. 


After the third rising

Ready to eat (after I pick out all the overly tart cranberries)