Tuesdays With Dorie: Boca Negra

For our second Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for February, we made Boca Negra, a basically boozy, almost flourless chocolate cake. The cake assembles pretty easily, except for one small problem incorporating softened butter into a melted chocolate-whiskey sugar syrup. Apparently, there is supposed to be enough residual heat to melt the butter enough for it to blend into the chocolate-syrup mixture. I ended up having to do that over a double boiler.

Other than that, everything about this cake was smooth. I opted out of the boozy white chocolate cream recommended as an accompaniment for the cake, thinking that it might be too much for the 17-year-old. Instead, I served it with lightly sweetened mashed raspberries and whipped cream. Definitely a hit.

For another story about Boca Negra and the recipe, visit this week's host at A Frederick Food Garden.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Focaccia

Due to both the cold weather and the recent U.S. figure-skating championships, I was pretty much indoors a couple of weekends ago. Since I was inside anyway and had the computer in the kitchen anyway (for streaming video of all the skating stuff that wasn't being shown on TV), I decided to tackle the two February Tuesdays With Dorie projects in one day.

My plan was to make focaccia dough, then bake the bread and serve it with pasta for Sunday dinner. Unfortunately, I merely scanned the recipe and didn't read it thoroughly, which meant that I was out of luck as I started the focaccia on Sunday at noontime. I missed that whole thing about letting the dough rise in the refrigerator for 24 to 36 hours.

Nonetheless, I had the dough under way and decided I'd just finish it off a day later, which freed us to have dinner at Panera. Ha.

I wasn't sure we'd be up for eating three focaccias, so after I separated the dough into three portions, I froze two of them and baked off one. Although the process was a bit time-consuming, I think everyone in the house was thrilled with how the focaccia turned out. I made the focaccia with olive oil, kosher salt, and chopped rosemary.

For this week's recipe, visit Sharmini at Wandering Through ...

Tuesdays With Dorie: French Apple Tart

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie adventure was French Apple Tart. Lots of little steps for this one, but I spread it over a couple of days, which made the process manageable. I started off by making the roasted-apple filling, then refrigerating it for a day. I was pretty happy with how the filling turned out, but was skeptical about how it would fare as tart filling. Meanwhile, rather than use the pie dough recipe in Baking With Julia, I turned to my standby vodka crust from Cook's Illustrated. In addition to being easier to put together and handle, it also makes a single crust.

As I was gearing up to start putting things together, I pulled out my tart pans and discovered I have three 9-in. tart pans with removable bottoms. Only one of them, however, has the bottom ring. Good grief. 

Anyway, after I blind-baked the crust, I filled it and put sliced apples on top. In hindsight, I know I needed more apples on top as they shrunk a bit while baking. I ended up having enough leftover pie dough and filling for a mini-tart, so I made one of those as well.

Again, when it came out of the oven, the apples on top had shrunk. Even though I baked the tart 15 minutes longer than the recommended time, I didn't get the slightly blackened edges to the apples either, or much of a caramelized glaze from the sugar sprinkled on top. However, I thought it ended up looking pretty terrific.

Just out of the oven

The tart was out of the oven and cooled just in time for Downton Abbey. Couldn't have worked out any better than that!

This is a recipe I'd revisit in a heartbeat. It might be fun to make the roasted apples with some raspberries or maybe cranberries, too, to play around with the filling.

For the recipe, visit this week's host, Laws of the Kitchen.

Citrus Cupcakes

I made a couple of batches of this Key lime cupcake recipe, one with regular limes, one with lemons. I filled both batches with lime curd, using this recipe. The curd recipe is so easy and seems relatively foolproof. For the frosting, I used the recipe that accompanied the cupcake recipe. However, I split the extract amount so that it was half vanilla and half coconut. For half of the cupcakes, I sprinkled coconut on top. With this project, I used the remainder of the limes I'd purchased for holiday baking in December. Now I have a few lemons to convert into something tasty.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Pizza with Onion Confit

This week for Tuesdays With Dorie, we got to make pizza with onion confit. While cooking the onions, I couldn't help but think of a joke we used to share when I was in cooking school: "How do you make a duck confit? Give him warm slippers, a cozy jacket, a comfy chair ..." OK, OK, it certainly cracked us up at the time. All in all, I really essentially liked this recipe. I liked that there was enough dough for two pizzas, which allowed me to start with one plain pizza:

Then I made the pie with the onion confit:

While I liked the onion confit, I'm not sure I liked it as a pizza topping, which is odd because I like caramelized onions as a pizza topping. Maybe I used too much of the confit on the pizza. I do think it would be kind of excellent on a grilled cheese, though. The combination of a very hot oven, a sprinkling of cornmeal, and a heated pizza stone provided for an excellent crust on this pizza. I almost couldn't believe it was homemade, except for the fact that my crust-shaping skills are uninspiring.

Bottom line: I think it's likely that this crust recipe will be revisited, and soon. I don't know if I'll redo the confit as a topping, but I would definitely make pizza at home again.

For the recipe, visit this week's host, Paul, at The Boy Can Bake.

No insane ingredients this week, but over the holidays, I managed to use up the bag of semolina flour I'd purchased for the semolina bread we made last year. I found a terrific biscotti recipe at the King Art website, then made many batches of biscotti.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Finnish Pulla

So this week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is Finnish Pulla. I loved how this bread turned out, although my braiding technique is sketchy. Also, I didn't have enough dough left over to create a bow to finish the wreath. Regardless of all that, the bread is great. Very happy with this recipe and how it turned out.

(Alert: Change of tone ahead.)

I hope you'll pardon me for this, but I want to share a Facebook status update from my local library:

<< Have you been wondering what you can do to help Newtown? Maryellen DeJong and Darlene Garrison, two library staff members, are coordinating a drive to collect donations of classroom supplies. Many teachers spend their own money to decorate their bulletin boards and walls and we thought it would be helpful to gather materials together to make it easier for them when they move in to their new school. If you would like to help, drop off items (bulletin board decorations, pencils, markers, stickers, glue sticks, etc.) in the box by the check out desk OR some people who are not able to come to the library are purchasing gift cards online and having them mailed to the library - Att: Maryellen DeJong, Danbury Library. 170 Main Street, Danbury, CT 06810. (suggestions for stores have been Staples, Parent - Teacher store in Newtown, Target, etc.). Several library employees live in Newtown so this effort is particularly heartfelt for them. If anyone has any questions, give the Community Relations office a call at 203-304-1405. >>

I'm grateful that the library folks are undertaking this project. Since Friday, I've been looking for a noninvasive way to do something supportive for the Newtown community; this seems like a worthwhile effort. Obviously, I don't know if anyone out there is looking to reach out in some way, but if so, here's an option. -- Chris

Tuesdays With Dorie: Gingerbread Baby Cakes

Not much to say yet about this week's Tuesdays With Dorie adventure, Gingerbread Baby Cakes, except for the fact that I made them and they turned out looking great. I made them as mini-Bundts as I didn't have the suggested bakeware for the recipe. I'm tempted to say that they almost didn't smell great while baking, largely, I think, due to the amount of espresso powder in the batter. As they were just finishing baking, I kept thinking, "Is something burning?"

If you want to see the recipe to see just how much espresso powder is in these babies, check out Karen's blog here.