Tuesdays With Dorie: Best Ever Brownies

For this entry of Tuesdays With Dorie, we made Best Ever Brownies. Pretty straightforward recipe, fairly straightforward brownie. All in all, I have a go-to brownie recipe already, so I can't imagine that I'm going to revisit the recipe from Baking With Julia. (I'd also like to mention that if you want a great brownie-esque recipe, try the Essense of Chocolate Squares from Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor.)

Tuesdays With Dorie: Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

Today's foray for Tuesdays With Dorie was Buttermilk Crumb Muffins. After October, where we had two yeasted adventures (one of which I still haven't done yet), it was a relief to have something simple like muffins for today. The batter is relatively simple to assemble: Shortening is blended into brown sugar and flour (I used butter instead of shortening here), and a portion of that mixture is reserved for the crumb topping. After spices and leavening are added to the remaining dry ingredients, eggs and buttermilk go in, and that's pretty much it.

I did half of the batter plain and half with dried cranberries. The dried-cranberry batter is in the photo above.

I ended up with two dozen muffins. I tried one while they were still warm, and while I liked the gentle flavor from the spices, I can't say that I loved this recipe. The muffins are kind of meh. The crumb topping is unimpressive, and the muffins feel somewhat insubstantial. I wasn't surprised that they didn't rise with a nice domed top (they don't look that way in the photo in the book, either), but to me, the flat top makes them look unappealing. Since I have scads of other muffin recipes that I really like, I don't know that I'll revisit this one.

For the recipe (and to see how a nice batch of these muffins turned out), visit Easier Than Pie.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Berry Galettes and Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Loaves

Here's my catch-up post for Tuesdays With Dorie. It takes me out of arrears for two of the three recipes I've missed. Fortunately for these two, no insane ingredients! (Although I'm tempted to say that fresh cranberries are a borderline insane ingredient as they were shy of coming into season when I made the bread, it was easy enough to use dried cranberries instead.)

Berry Galette (top photo). Loved it. I'd make this again, for sure. While I made a blueberry batch, I am tempted to say that the raspberry galette is one of the most beautiful things I've ever made. So simple, but so alluring.

Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Loaves (bottom photo). Not worth the effort, if you ask me. Plus, they are ridiculously tiny. If I were to revisit this recipe, I'd made one big loaf of bread. A side note: The tiny loaves would be great sliced, toasted in the oven, and used as base for some sort of holiday appetizer.

One thing I've discovered this far into TWD is that I really enjoy making bread. I'd forgotten that. A loaf of bread feels like a real accomplishment.

I'm looking at making a batch of bagels some time during Thanksgiving weekend.