Tuesdays With Dorie: Hungarian Shortbread

My first reaction to reading the recipe for this week was “Holy #$%^, that’s a lot of butter.” The recipe called for 1 lb of the stuff. I decided to only make 3/4 of the recipe since the proportions worked well when divided. And who needs all those cookies lying around? This was an EASY recipe. And easily adapted, I think. I think some lemon zest in the cookie dough would add some needed tartness, and the jam in the center can be changed according to your whim. I wasn’t in the mood to search for rhubarb to make the jam called for in the recipe, or to make something special for this, so I went into my pantry and found a jar of blackberry/raspberry preserves that I recieved in a jam exchange. Yes, I participated in a jam exchange last year.
I followed the suggestions of those who made the recipe before me and par-baked the bottom crust for 15 minutes. When I pulled it out of the oven butter had pooled in the nooks and crannies of the dough. I made a conscious decision to not think about that. I slathered on the jam, added the rest of the dough and put it back in the oven….conciously trying not to think about all the butter that was in there.

In the end, I cut the cookies up and put them into a tin and sent them to school with my daughter. They went into the faculty lounge, and I heard from several teachers that they were delicious. I loved the way the crust was crackly and covered in confectioners sugar….it reminded me of an Entenmann’s crumb cake! I haven’t had a bite of one of those in years. And that’s okay!

The book suggests cutting the cookies into 3 inch square cookies, or 1 1/2 by 3 inch rectangles. I couldn’t do that. I cut mine about 1 1/2 inches square. nobody needs to eat that much butter. I only kept two of these pictured cookies. One for me and one for David. I cut mine in half and ate it slowly, as the day progressed.

It was delicious. Sweet, but not overly so. The jam provided a nice fruity taste against all that butter. All. That. Butter.

The recipe for Hungarian Shortbread can be found on page 327 of the book. Our hosts for this week are Lynette of 1 Small Kitchen and Cher of The Not So Exciting Adventures of a Dabbler. You can find the recipe on their blogs. You can also visit Tuesdays With Dorie for the LYL (leave your link) post to see how the other bakers’ shortbreads came out. I’m sure there will be many delicious offerings!

better late than never: Kosher for Passover Brownies

It never ceases to amaze me that my friends love this recipe enough that they want me to make it even when its not Passover. I always think of Passover foods as reasonable facsimiles of the foods they are copying. But everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who tastes these brownies loves them. This year I made a batch and brought them to my cousin’s house in NJ for the 1st seder, and then made another for the 2nd seder. They always get gobbled up. They’re rich, fudgy and chocolatey–exactly what you want out of a (passover) brownie, I guess!

So, even though Passover ended a few weeks ago, I made them for this weekend. A friend opened up her house for a craft night, and we crafted, ate and talked….all night long.

Kosher For Passover Brownies
Good for Passover…..and all year round.

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup ( 2 sticks) unsalted butter or unsalted Passover margarine, melted and cooled
3 eggs
1 tablespoon brewed coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1/4 teaspoon salt (Omit if using salted butter)
1 scant cup matzoh cake meal
1/2 cup finely chopped toasted walnuts (optional)
approx 3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Line an 8 inch square baking pan with aluminum foil, you could butter the foil….but I always forget.

I’ve gotten this down to a one bowl recipe: melt the butter in the microwave in the bowl you indend to use, let it cool slightly

Add the sugars, coffee, cocoa, eggs and cake meal. Stir until combined, then add the chocolate chips and/or the walnuts.

Pour into the baking pan, smooth out the top and bake for about 25-30 minutes. Don’t overbake!

Tuesdays With Dorie: Lemon Loaf Cake

I love me a good lemon cake. I love lemon in just about anything. When I plan to make something lemony for dinner, David often asks me to tone down the lemon. But I can’t! I love it! I add the zest to pasta salad, and both zest and juice to a yummy pasta with feta cheese. But that’s not why were here today…. The other day I made the Lemon Loaf Cake from Baking With Julia. You can find the recipe on page 252 of the book, or at our hosts for this recipe Truc at Treats and Michelle at The Beauty of Life.

Blueberries, fresh from the field

Yesterday we went blueberry picking. It was the first day of the season, so it was a little like a treasure hunt to find the berries. Still, though, we came home with just over 3lbs of beautiful blueberries. it was really a perfect day. not too hot, a nice breeze, and the berry bushes still had dew on them, so when you walked in between the rows of plants, you got a little shower! I’m sorry I didn’t have my camera with me to take pictures. Adam didn’t contribute a single berry to the ‘pot’ they all went directly into his mouth. he’d say, “I got a berry” and deposit it directly into his tummy.

Today, I went to publix with dorothy for some stuff, and she asked me if she could have little bites, and she had to explain what they were to me. Once I understood what it was that she wanted, I told her no, but we could make our own blueberry muffins. We could even make them tiny, if she wanted.

I’m not 100% sure that tiny muffins really work here, since the blueberries are so big, and the muffin cups are so small. If you go the ‘tiny’ route, don’t do what I did. I overfilled them. big mistake.

once the cups were full….I took the batter that was left and fished out the berries, and added them to the already full cups. Don’t do that. I should have baked what I had, and then done another few muffins. But I didn’t. Don’t be like me.

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS 
my mother found this recipe in the New York Times Magazine a long time ago….I think I was still in college. Its been with us ever since

½ cup unsalted butter
2 tsp. grated lemon zest
1 cup plus 1 Tbs. sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups flour (I replaced 2/3 cup AP with 2/3 cup white whole wheat flour. Can’t taste the difference)
2 tsp. baking powder
1½ tsp. kosher salt (omit if using salted butter)
1½ cups fresh blueberries (I often use frozen. DO NOT DEFROST BEFORE USING)
½ cup milk

Preheat oven to 375. Using an electric mixer combine the butter and lemon zest.  Add one cup of sugar and beat until light.  Mix in the egg and then the vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Place the blueberries in a bowl and toss with ¼ cup of the flour mixture.  Add the remaining flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the milk, mixing just to combine.  Gently fold in the blueberries.

Line a muffin pan with paper muffin cups.  Spoon the batter into the cups, filling them about ¾ full.  Sprinkle the tops with the remaining sugar.  Bake until muffins are lightly browned and spring back when touched in the center, about 30 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving. Makes about  11 regular sized muffins, and about 30 minis

**If you don’t have field fresh blueberries….just use frozen. Keep in mind, though, the batter will get very stiff when you mix them in, since you’re effectively re-freezing the butter. And you’ll need a little extra cooking time. But they’ll be just as good. I promise.

Possibly the ugliest rugelach ever. Baking with Julia/Tuesdays with Dorie

The first assignment for March was to make rugelach, which can be found on page 325-327 in the book. This is a serious buttery pastry–with 3 sticks of butter and 12 ounces of cream cheese (I used neufchatel) and only 3 cups of flour, and a tiny amount of sugar. TINY, I tell you. I had concerns about how it would roll out.

I made the filling early in the week, apricot and prune lekvar. and it was easy and TASTY. Hard to not eat it by the spoonful. But, since the goal here is to not gain weight, I held myself back from devouring the filling. I didn’t use the apricot–I’m saving that for hamantashen baking later this week.

I made the dough on Wednesday–unfortunately I didn’t take a single picture of the process.

On thursday I mixed up the nuts/cinnamon/sugar for the additional filling, and the brown sugar/white sugar/cinnamon for the topping. and then rolled it all together.

this made a lot of the cinnamon/nut/sugar mixture. so much so, that I have probably about 1 1/2 cups left over. I think I’ll make ‘angela’s sour cream coffee cake’ soon. don’t worry, I’ll share the recipe. I promise.

after mixing all of that together, it was time to get the dough rolling. I was concerned that since its starting to get hot here that I’d have serious problems with the dough. I turned on the AC, closed the windows and put a sheet pan filled with ice on my counter where I planned to do the work. it might have been overkill, but I was totally okay with that.

my marble chilled down, and held the cold well.

I need to improve on my dough-rolling skills. my edges were very ragged and not good at all. my rugelach varied greatly in size because in some places it was wider than others, so some had a better roll than others. I think I need to be more precise in how I get the dough into the fridge. I can’t haparzadly put the dough into a ‘rectangle’ it needs to be squared off and evenly flattened out. Must practice this.

I filled and rolled and bathed them in an eggwash. Then I sliced the ‘log’ into individual pastries, and tossed them into a brown sugar/cinnamon/sugar mixture. yum! I did that four times and I got approximately 4 dozen pastries, just as the recipe said I would.

And then they got baked. Here’s the finished product:

They surely weren’t the beautiful bakery rugelach that I grew up with, but those rugelach never tasted quite as good as these! I gave a few to Dorothy’s kindergarden teacher on friday morning, and she was very excited about them. And I brought about 2 dozen to a pot-luck Shabbat dinner at my synaogue on friday evening. Everyone who had one said they were amazing. We still have a few left at home that I might put into the freezer–or I might be tempted to eat them all myself!

This week’s recipe has two hosts: Margaret, of the Urban Hiker and Jessica, of My Baking Heart, and both of them will past the recipe. You can also see the hundreds–yes, hundreds–of other bakers’ work at Tuesdays With Dorie. There will be a LYL (leave your link) post for the Rugelach, and we will all post a link to our blogs there.

Stay tuned, my next TWD/BWJ assignment is Irish Soda Bread, which is something that I’ve never eaten before. and also my own hamantashen baking for Purim this week.

Since my last TWD/BWJ post I’ve run 21 miles

Chocolate Truffle Tartlets–Baking with Julia

This weeks assignment was to bake Chocolate Truffle Tartlets from ‘the book.’ They sound amazing. A chocolate crust and a bittersweet chocolate filling studded with bits of ameretti cookies, milk and white chocolate pieces. How bad could it be? I made my dough on Sunday and the rest of the dessert on Monday so I could serve it on Monday evening to my bunco group. Instead of making several small tartlets, I made one big tart–I don’t own tartlet pans, and I don’t see myself making tartlets very often, so I didn’t buy any.

The recipe for the dough can be found on page 372, and the tart filling on page 382. none of it is particularly difficult, but there are several steps. I also made ‘chocolate waves’ (though they came out flat) and you can find the directions for that on page 450

I wanted to take pictures of making the dough, but I ended up completely covered in the cocoa and butter mixture, and even though its a waterproof camera, I decided not to.

I rolled out the dough using a technique that I learned in a one day cooking class at Peter Kump’s cooking school in NY a long time ago. you roll the dough between two pieces of saran wrap and then it NEVER sticks to the counter! yippee!

the technique worked perfectly. There is nothing I enjoy less than picking pieces of pie crust off my counter.

here’s the crust all baked and ready for the filling

it didn’t shrink, or fall down the sides (too much). I had some extra dough because I rolled it too big, so I just tapped it into the bottom of the crust. Waste not, want not, right?

Melting the butter and bittersweet chocolate was easy:

and even though I had it completely melted when I realized I’d never get the thing baked and out of the oven before picking up dorothy, it worked out fine. I popped it in the fridge and re-melted it when we got home.

those are the ‘chunks’ for the filling. I had never tasted an Ameretti cookie before. they’re pretty tasty.

and cute:

here it is, all baked up and ready for my friends to devour it!

This is what our plates looked like:

if you want to see other peoples tarts, go to the Tuesdays with Dorie page and check out all the beautiful tarts and tartlets. This recipe has several hosts Steph, Spike, Jaime, and Jessica

I’ve run 25 miles since my last post