Tuesdays with Dorie: Loafing Around Edition

I'm a bit late on our latest Tuesdays with Dorie adventures. Between work deadlines, obnoxious weather, and a cold/bronchitis that I'm still battling a bit, not much was getting done in the way of food, especially because while I was on meds for bronchitis, everything tasted as if I were licking the inside of a can.

Anyway, getting back to normal and getting caught up with late tasks. First, I made the Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake. It didn't wow me tremendously, but it's something I'd consider making again as the base for fresh berries, as in a shortcake. For the amount of effort put into the whole process of manually combining the vanilla seeds with the sugar, I was expecting a bit more pow from the vanilla.

Then there's the Marquise au Chocolat. Easy to prepare and lovely to consume. This is something I'll definitely make again. It's a frozen dessert, but it requires a few minutes at room temperature to reach its best texture when you're ready to eat it. Otherwise, it's a bit crumbly. Also, it is rich enough that it needs a counterpoint of some sort. I used freshly whipped cream and raspberries, but I suppose a creme anglaise or berry coulis would also be nice.

I was able to get pasteurized eggs for this dessert, but I whipped them over the water bath anyway, to warm up the mixture to dissolve the sugar in an effort to minimize the risk of a grainy dessert. It was a bit of extra effort, but I figured it would be worth it.

Sour Cream Milk-Chocolate Chip Pound Cake

I got back from vacation just in time for a work birthday. Because I was still in the midst of post-vacation frenzies, I needed a reliable recipe that would make a big cake that would assemble quickly and still allow me time to mow the lawn. Driving home Monday night, I decided to make the Deep Chocolate Pound Cake my friend Ryan had had for his birthday. It’s a recipe from Lisa Yockelson’s Chocolate Chocolate.

Unfortunately, when I got home and pulled out the recipe, I discovered that it called for milk. I had no whole milk in the house, and I didn’t feel like going out to buy any. Trusting Lisa, I turned through pages of pound-cake recipes until I found one that had ingredients I actually had in the house. I landed on Sour Cream Milk-Chocolate Chip Pound Cake (because I did have sour cream and milk chocolate chips at hand).

All in all, this cake was enormously pleasing. It’s dense, and the milk-chocolate chips give the cake a mellow, candyish flavor. Not all milk chocolate is bad. Just bad milk chocolate is bad.