TWD - French Strawberry Cake

I have always been intrigued by genoise cakes, but never made one.  But I think this might be a cake where practice makes perfect and I need to revisit this recipe and try it again because my cake did not rise enough.
I beat the eggs and sugar for 5 minutes and found I had to go about 90 seconds more to pass the 10 second ribbon rule.

Things were going well until I added the third batch of flour.  I could not get it all to fold in and with each stroke I could see my batter deflating.  I since learned from the comments on the TWD site that perhaps it was the bump in the Kitchen Aid bowl.  The next time I try this I am going to put the batter in another bowl to fold in the flour.

Finally all the flour was in and I baked the cake.  It was not very tall and I knew there was no way I was going to successfully slice it into 3 layers even though I have a nifty saw type cutter for cutting cakes.  I could not set the setting low enough to slice the layers that thin.  So I made do with 2 layers.

I sliced it and decorated it with the whipped cream.  One thing I loved about this recipe was the addition of the sour cream to the whipped cream.  I think it helped stablize the whip cream so it didn't droop when decorating.  I used the wrong size pastry tip to decorate it, so I had to improvise and just piled strawberries on top for the finished look.

(See the pretty table runner?  My daughter spent a week with my mom and dad and they made this together!

My husband and I really liked the taste of this cake.  It seemed very French.  I like how sturdy the cake was to hold all the juicy strawberries.  I will try this cake again and see if I can get it to rise more so I can cut three layers.

TWD - Oasis Naan

The other day on the radio I heard an interesting study.  They polled women and asked what they thought men wanted for Father's Day.  Women said they thought men wanted tickets to a sporting event and power tools.  But when they polled men, what they really wanted was a smart phone/ipad type device.  And the second thing they wanted was A HOME COOKED MEAL!  I am guessing if you are participating in TWD, a home cooked meal for the father in your life is not a big deal. But I think that says a lot about today's society that a home cooked meal ranks above sporting tickets and power tools for men.  I would venture to say that study shows not many men are getting a home cooked meal.  So what does all that have to do with Oasis Naan?  I think it's a shame how many people are missing out on something so easy, yet satisfying like this bread.  This bread was so easy and with so few ingredients, yet when I finished with it I felt like a rock star baker.  It was so good, especially with some hummus.  So I am so grateful for this group that keeps my love of baking and cooking alive and shows me new recipes like Oasis Naan that I probably would have never tried without this group.

The Persian Naan dough, fully risen

The dough rolled out and with seasoning.  I don't own a pizza stone and used the back side of a jelly roll pan to bake them on.  What a slick trick!  I didn't know you could do that.

Ready to eat with some hummus!  My whole family loved it.  What an easy party food this would make!

TWD - Pecan Sticky Buns

You've heard of the five stages of grief?  Well, at the risk of sounding a tad bit like a baking drama queen, that's what I went through with these sticky buns.

Denial - "I did not just use 5 sticks of butter to make these sticky buns.  I did not just spend 12 hours making these sticky buns."

Anger - "I used 5 sticks of butter and spent 12 hours making these sticky buns and they are no better than this?!  They have so much butter, it's running down my childrens' faces as they eat the sticky buns.  This is not buttered corn on the cob, these are sticky buns!"

Bargaining - "If I could somehow just suck some of the butter out of these rolls, they would be good. If only I had trusted my instinct that 3-1/2 cups of flour cannot support 5 sticks of butter..."

Depression - "I thought I was a better baker than this; but these aren't any good.  They have an oily taste with all that butter.  I gave some of these buns to my neighbors.  They will think I have jumped the shark with these sticky buns.  My baking life is over."

Acceptance - (next morning when I was really hungry and the butter had soaked into much of the brioche).  "These sticky buns are not that bad. I do love the layers that are reminiscent of puff pastry. I did learn something about laminating and making a sponge.  I bet if I were to try these again and cut out about half of the butter, these would be good. That's why I joined TWD, to learn new stuff and challenge myself."

So far so good.  This was a wonderful brioche dough and I found it easy to work with.

In hindsight (and after watching the BWJ video), this is where my trouble started.  My pieces of butter are too big which caused big chunks of butter to melt into the buns as they baked.

Can you hear the menacing music?  Trouble ahead!  The butter pieces are too big!

Out of the oven.  Little do I know of the trouble that lies in the bottom of the pan - the butter bath!

Ready to eat.  For me these were better the next day, when the butter had a chance to seep into the brioche dough and wasn't as overwhelming.

TWD- Hungarian Shortbread

Those Hungarians.  So clever.  Who would have thought to use a cheese grater to make a dessert?  Makes you wonder if there was once a shortage of cheese in Hungary and a housewife felt bad about the cheese grater her kids had given her for Christmas that never got used, so she decided to grate some shortbread dough into a pan? Whatever the reason, I loved this recipe.  I mean really, really loved it, can't wait to make it again, loved it.

I was excited from the beginning when I saw the recipe had rhubarb.  Growing up in Ohio, rhubarb was a rite of spring.  But living in Texas, I never see it.  Luckily a fancy super market sells it frozen in one pound bags.  I was skeptical of how thick the shortbread looked in the picture, but once I tasted it, thickness was not an issue.  It just meant more of the yummy buttery flavor to sandwich the tart rhubarb.

TWD- Lemon Loaf Cake

Before I spent the 11 bucks on a microplane lemon zester, this was the kind of recipe I would have loathed.  I used to hate zesting lemons and this recipe with the zest of 3 large lemons would have killed me without my zester wizard.  If you don't have one of these, run, don't walk, to get one.  You will take on recipes with lemon zest with a smile.

This recipe was easy and straight forward, but I did have some baking issues.  I made a bonehead move of not lowering the temp on my oven to 325 since I was using a dark pan. As a result, the outsides baked faster than the inside and I had to bake the cake 70 minutes to get the cake done on the inside.  This of course resulted in a somewhat dry cake.  But that hasn't stopped me from eating it.  Since I had 1/2 cup of cream leftover, I used it to make the ice cream from BWJ on page 411 (minus the cinnamon).  That was very tasty.

I forgot to bring my eggs to room temp - so I put them in a glass of lukewarm water for a quick solution. Notice my hero - the microplane lemon zester!

Out of the oven!

With some homemade ice cream. That helped to moisten my dry cake.

TWD - Pizza Rustica

When I saw the names of the April recipes posted on the TWD blog, I was excited about Pizza Rustica, mainly because it meant one less dinner to plan for the week. I think that is one of a mother's greatest challenges - coming up with different dinner ideas that kids like. So I was a tad disappointed when I pulled out my BWJ cookbook to find that this did not appear to be a kid friendly recipe. My husband and I liked this; it was nice with a green salad and a glass of wine, similar to having quiche for dinner. My son took one bite and then headed to the freezer to see what frozen food he could have instead (taquitos). My 9 year old daughter was a good sport about it and ate half a slice.

Overall I give this recipe a thumbs up. It was easy to put together and the dough was easy to manage. I like to make crock pot spinach lasagna and always end up with half a container of ricotta; so I could see myself making this again in a 6 inch pan and halving all the ingredients. That would be the perfect size for my husband and me, while the kids forage for more frozen food.

Weighing the dough so I can split it 2/3 and 1/3.

the pizza rustica before it goes in the oven - notice the emphasis on "rustic" in the rustica, not my best lattice work

Out of the oven - I baked mine for 45 min

Ready to eat!

BTW, Mom made the lovely placemants!

TWD- Irish Soda Bread

This was a nice easy recipe after the all-day affair with rugelach.  I have always liked Irish soda bread and am always a little puzzled how this can be such a great bread despite its lack of yeast.  On Mondays I work from home, so I didn't even start on this bread until lunch time on Monday.  I even had to go to the store to get buttermilk and still had time to make the bread during my lunch hour.  That worked out well because about the time it came out of the oven I had the mid afternoon munchies.  I couldn't wait till it cooled completely as instructed in the book, but I thought it was mighty good still warm.  When I saw the caution that this would be hard as a rock the next day, I felt free to eat quite a few pieces to spare the bread a death in the trash can.