TWD: Cottage Cheese Pufflets

I find that participating in a weekly baking group is mostly a good thing, but one bad thing about it is that sometimes you bake for the wrong reasons. You might find yourself baking not because you feel like baking, or because you are going somewhere where it might be nice to bring a cake, or because you or anyone you live with or know actually wants what you're baking. No, sometimes you bake just to get the darn thing baked, because that's what you do. You get things baked.


But it's always great when you taste something that you baked for the sole purpose of getting it baked and find that you really really like it. Then it's all worth it. Such was the case with this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Cottage Cheese Pufflets, which were chosen by Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes. It's not that they didn't sound good to me -- they did. But I baked these in a hurry several weeks ago before heading out of town to visit my adorable new baby nephew, so I was kind of checking things off the ol' list left and right, and the pufflets were just another item on the list, along with "buy TSA-approved baggies" and "pick up monogrammed bib." Therefore, I remember very little about baking them. I don't think they gave me too much trouble, or I would have remembered. I know that some people found the dough to be hard to work with, but I don't recall having any particular issues with it. I know that I did a poor job sealing them, as the jam kind of oozed out while they were baking, as you can see in the picture.

I do know that we really liked these. The pufflets were more breakfast pastry-ish than dessert pastry-ish, in my opinion. The dough puffed as it was supposed to puff and was flaky, tender and not too sweet. It went well with strawberry jam, which I can see from the pictures that I used. I might have made a few with apricot jam as well. David?

I knew that David would be turned off by the name "cottage cheese" pufflets. As I handed him one, I thought for a split second about calling them "jam pufflets" or "pufflet pastries" or "jam pastry thingies," but I told it like it was -- "cottage cheese pufflets" -- and watched him grimace. But fortunately, the worst thing about these is their name, and after one bite hubs was a believer in the deliciousness of cottage cheese dough. Who knew?

Thank you Jacque for the great pick!

TWD: Flaky Apple Turnovers

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe for Flaky Apple Turnovers was chosen by Julie of Someone's in the Kitchen. For whatever reason I did not get my act together and make these over the weekend, when the timing and lighting conditions would have been more favorable. So I found myself scrambling to get these done and photographed on Tuesday, which (fair warning) will be obvious from the quality of the photos and the post.


Dorie calls the sour cream turnover pastry a "miracle," because it is rolled, chilled, and folded in a way that encourages it to gently puff. Sadly, I tend to be a miracle killer when it comes to pastry, but I was very intrigued by this dough and hoped for the best.

I read the recipe and saw that the dough calls for three (3) sticks of butter.

[QUIZ: How annoying is it to watch someone who voluntarily signed up for a weekly baking group act horrified by the quantity of butter that she is using on a weekly basis? ___ kinda ___ really ___ really really.]

I decided to quarter the recipe, because my family of five (and only three sure-bet turnover eaters) did not need 16 turnovers, and because somehow three ounces of butter seemed less menacing than three sticks, even though the per-turnover butter quantity would be exactly the same as if I went with the full three stick version. Nope, deep down, I wasn't fooled. But I used light sour cream because I had a fridge full of it, thanks to a 3 for $5 special at Western. I didn't need three 16 oz containers of light sour cream (who does?) but I couldn't afford not to buy it at that price. I wasn't sure how light sour cream would work in the recipe, but decided to have faith that all the butter would carry me home in the turnover fat department.

The dough is a simple mixture of sour cream, sugar, flour, salt and, of course, butter. The butter gets cut into the flour with a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingers. I do not have a pastry blender, and even one knife at a time is plenty dangerous for me, so I decided to follow Dorie's lead and use my fingers. Worked like a charm! I achieved that coarse meal consistency, although there were still a few large gobs of butter in there. Dorie's instructions suggested that that was preferable to over mixing, so I left them, and then added the sour cream/sugar mixture.

After a couple of rounds of chilling, rolling, and folding like a business letter, my turnovers were filled and ready to bake:



I didn't expect to see anything as dramatic as puff pastry, but I was hoping to get flaky dough with some decent puffage* (*probably not a word).

Verdict?

Success!!! We LOVED these! They were puffingly* (*actual word) flaky:



The dough was wonderful - it is indeed miraculous; Dorie is not kidding. The texture was perfect, and it was not overly sweet, so it complemented the apple/sugar/cinnamon mixture very well. My hubs raved about these and said that they reminded him of a fried pie (that's a compliment) but without the grease. As expected, David, Caroline and I were the only ones who ate these. Someday, perhaps my older two children will look back with regret on those days when mom baked crazy delicious things multiple times a week, only to be rebuffed in favor of Transformers fruit snacks. Until then, more for the rest of us!



Thank you for this fabulous fall pick, Julie! And thank you Dorie for yet another incredible dessert.

TWD: French Pear Tart

This is a very special week for Tuesdays with Dorie, as the great Dorie Greenspan herself has chosen this week's recipe for a French Pear Tart from her amazing cookbook, Baking: From My Home To Yours:


I've gotten endless pleasure baking from this fabulous book, but even with baking from it weekly over the past five months, I haven't even begun to make a dent in it. There are seemingly endless decadent desserts in here, so to have the chance to make THE ONE picked by Dorie is truly exciting.

I had some important preliminary decisions to make. The crust calls for a 9" tart pan with a removable bottom. I did not have, and could not get in time, a 9" tart pan with a removable bottom, so I had to choose from the following: (1) an 11" tart pan with a removable bottom; (2) a 4 inch mini tart pan with a removable bottom; or (3) a 9" pie dish with straight sides but no removable bottom. I knew that I wanted to make a mini for sure. But I felt that for my first go-round I should go with the pan that was closest in size to the one called for in the recipe, and decided to go with the 9 inch pie dish and serve it from the dish. This way, I'd have an idea about what this thing was supposed to look like before I started winging it with a mini. And seeing as only my hubs and I would be eating it, there wasn't really anyone to impress with my tart de-panning prowess (not that I don't care about impressing you, David). But if all worked out according to plan, I'd still get the full out-of-pan tart experience with my mini.

Next, I had to pick pears -- fresh or canned? Dorie's narrative introducing the recipe suggests that canned pears are not only acceptable for this tart, but the most common choice among Parisian pastry chefs. When one of the world's most renowned bakers tells me it's okay to use canned fruit, I'm going to use canned fruit. That, plus the fresh pears at Publix weren't looking so hot.

Who knew?



I then made a double recipe of the sweet tart dough(without nuts), with the intention of using half of the dough for my 9" tart/pie/thing, and the rest of it for the mini tarts. This is the second Dorie pastry dough I've made -- the first was the Good For Anything Pie Dough. Dorie has the most wonderful and foolproof pastry crust recipes around, hands down. Her instructions explain not only what the dough should look like at various stages, but also note things like how the food processor will start to make funny sounds when the dough is almost ready. As usual, I talked out loud to myself the entire time I was making this. I always assumed that David learned to tune me out years ago. Well, I got to the part where you process until the dough "forms clumps and curds," assessed my dough, and said "hmmmm. I guess I think those look like cumps and clurds." At which point David looked up from whatever game he was watching and said "Whoa, careful now! If you have cumps and clurds, you might end up with a torte instead of a tart." Yup, no doubt about it -- you're definitely the one for me, honey.

Sweet Tart Dough, full of cumps and clurds:




And pressed into the mini-tart pans:



I had lunch with Amanda on Monday, and she said that you know that someone really loves you if they make you a tart, because pressing the dough all the way up the sides and into all those nooks and crannies in the pan is no joke. We agreed that we might have devoted more time than we usually would to these particular tarts, however, trying to make them look pretty for Dorie. Just in case.

I made the almond cream two ways. For my 9" tart, I used Meyer's dark rum instead of vanilla, and unblanched almonds instead of blanched almonds, because blanching them was way more tedious than ehow led me to believe it would be. For my mini tart, I cut the recipe in half and used vanilla and blanched almonds (I found them already blanched at the store -- score one for the lazy chick!)

I made my 9" tart first. Assembling this thing kind of stumped me. There is not a picture of this tart accompanying the recipe in the cookbook, and the P&Q wasn't up yet, so I had a hard time understanding what I was supposed to do with the pears. The instruction reads: "Thinly slice each pear half crosswise. Lift each half on a spatula, press down on the pear to fan it slightly and place it over the almond cream, wide end towards the end of the crust. The 6 halves will form spokes." Now that I know what the tart is supposed to look like, those instructions are as clear as day, but at the time, I just couldn't quite visualize it. It was the same experience I have when I read about the current financial crisis being rooted in "credit default swaps on mortgage backed securities." Even though I read the words over and over again, I just don't quite get it.

And therefore, I did this with my pears:



I suspected that wasn't right because I only used up 3 pear halves rather than the 6 the recipe called for. When I checked the P&Q later, I followed a link to a picture of what the pears were supposed to look like, and I was able to do it the proper way the next day with my mini tart:



I've mentioned before that I've been warned by standardized testers that I should never, ever trust my own instincts regarding spatial relations. Here's why:



I initially eyeballed my mini tart and thought I could fit two pear halves side by side next to each other. No. Not by a long shot. I had to dig out that off-centered pear (which had been intended to be part of a pair of pears) and move it over a couple of inches to become the lone, centered pear.

When I waited tables after college, André, the head chef at the restaurant where I worked, would often stop me in the kitchen on a busy Saturday night and say: "I should have been a pastry chef, Cat. That's where all the glory is." I didn't understand what he meant at the time, because the blackened chicken sandwiches we were churning out seemed plenty glorious to me compared to what I had been getting in the school cafeteria. But now I get it. Glory will come to those who can make a French Pear Tart (I'm still waiting, but any day now, I just know it!) Needless to say, I was completely blown away by these tarts. I've made some amazing desserts with Tuesdays With Dorie, but this tart has now set the new standard against which all other TWD recipes will be measured.



I preferred my mini tart (with the vanilla in the almond cream) to the larger tart (with the rum in the almond cream), but that could have been because there was a much higher pear-per-bite ratio in my mini-tart because I assembled that one the right way, whereas I accidentally skimped on the pears in the big one. Therefore, I thought the dominant flavor in the 9" tart was rum, and if I've learned anything through TWD, it's that I don't like a strong liquor taste in my desserts. David loved them both. Oh, and I thought the sweet tart crust was absolutely phenomenal. If I couldn't have the pear tart, I'd be happy with a dessert of crust crusted crust. I'm thrilled that I still have three mini crusts in my freezer. Now that I have my first tart under my belt, I can't wait to fill the rest of them up! Thank you, Dorie, for your amazing cookbook, for your support of this group, and for choosing this fabulous French Pear Tart for us this week!

TWD: Rugelach

One of my favorite insults ever was recently directed at me by my friend Julie, a fellow TWD-er. Julie and I work together in real life, and have been working together on a notsofun project that involves spending most of the day on the phone with lots of justifiably irate people. One day, there was a lot going on with this project, and I kept calling Julie, emailing her, and stopping by her office. I finally must have bugged her one time too many, because when I knocked on her door, she looked up at me and said "You again! I like you better online." Ah, Jules. Right back atcha, babe. I sure wish that "online Julie" made more regular appearances (although I get MORE than my fill of real life Julie, trust me).

Well, in contrast to the way that Julie feels about me, I could not get enough of this rugelach. So thank you, Piggy of Piggy's Cooking Journal, for picking this special treat. It's the kind of cookie (pastry?) that makes me feel like a real baker! I didn't want to disappoint Dorie, Dorie's mother-in-law, or Mrs. Strauss, so I made it a few different ways.

This is my kind of dough -- four ingredients that can be whipped together in no time. I was a little bit worried about overmixing, and I thought that I might have gone a few seconds too long with my first batch:




but it baked up just right. I felt more confident with my second batch and knew when to stop processing. My first batch sat in the fridge for days before I got around to topping it, and was a little bit easier to work with than my second batch, which was only refrigerated for a few hours.

Rolling out the dough was a bit stressful for me, since it required that I use judgment. I can no more reliably eyeball "10 or 11 inches" than I can solve Fermat's Last Theorem. So I used a ruler.


I realize that the shape that I rolled does not even remotely resemble a circle. What can I tell you? I'm just not very good at this.

I remember taking a standardized test in high school that measured your aptitude in various subject areas, and then based on your score, provided a narrative analysis of careers that may be suited to your academic strengths. In addition to the usual math and reading, there was a section on "spatial relations," which tested how well you perceive sizes and shapes. I scored abysmally on the spatial relations section, and my narrative said something like: "Whatever you do, we beg you, please don't be an architect." And as you can see based on my efforts to cut my dough into 1/16ths, this analysis was spot-on.

Big Daddy rugelach and teeny tiny rugelach:




Filling the rugelach was the fun part. The sky's the limit in terms of what you can put in these. I liked Dorie's classic combos and figured that they would serve as a good starting point.


I made some with raspberry jam and some with apricot jam. Half of my raspberry ones had chocolate (I used semisweet rather than bittersweet), the other half did not, only because I love my husband. For the apricot ones, I used pecans, golden raisins and white chocolate chips.

Four-ish ounces of chocolate, give or take, according to my flimsy, antique and not-very-accurate kitchen scale:




Dear Santa Claus,

I have been a really, really good girl this year. I did not fight with my sister, and I have tried extra hard to watch my language. All I want for Christmas is this digital kitchen scale, which was recommended to me by my blogger friend Nancy. Can your elves make that? If not, I'm told that the website that I linked for you is THE PLACE for all of your weighing and measuring needs. Thank you, Santa. We'll have lots and lots (and lots) of cookies for you if you stop by our house this year. And tell Rudolph that we'll save him a carrot!

Your friend,
Cathy

After topping and cutting these, it's time to roll them. I was prepared for things to go very poorly for me at this stage of the game. But to my relief, they rolled up fairly easily. The longer the dough sits out, the harder they are to roll. Incidentally, just a couple of days before I made this rugelach, my son gave me this for my birthday:



I had no earthly idea what it was -- I thought that the "other part" of it was in a different gift bag, and when I put the two pieces together it would all make sense. But no, David said that he let our 6 year old loose in Williams-Sonoma and told him to pick out a gadget for me, and that's what he picked. I just held it up and said "it's a metal thing! I LOVE it, honey!!" Well, imagine my delight when I sniffed around a bit on the WS website a few days later and realized that it was a pastry scraper, perfect for this:



It really did make the rolling easier, especially after the dough had been sitting out for a while.

Well, what can I say? We just loved this rugelach. I loved the rugelach. David loved the rugelach. David's parents were in town and they loved the rugelach. I am a gusher, you know that I'm a gusher, and I'm sure that my gushing rings hollow by now -- but these are definitely some of the best cookies (pastries?) that I've ever had. Dorie makes a passing reference to buying rugelach in a German bakery, and since David lived in Germany for several years as a small child, I was eager to ask him how this rugelach compared to the rugelach of his childhood. He said that he remembers being chased through the apartment building by a 10 foot tall St. Bernard, and remembers having the bejeezus scared out of him when he had to ride a log down into the salt mines on a trip to Salzburg -- but has no recollection whatsoever of rugelach. Okay, so that wasn't helpful. But he did love these! As for whether I preferred the raspberry or the apricot, well, that's sort of like the eternal "George Clooney or Brad Pitt?" question. Personally, I'm a George woman myself, but I'm not going to kick Brad out of bed for eating crackers. The raspberry and chocolate combo was pretty close to cookie nirvana as far as I'm concerned, but the apricot was awfully good too. And there are several other combos that I've got in mind that I am dying to try, such as apple jelly with walnuts, and orange marmalade with dried cranberries, and I can't even imagine the abundance of additional brilliant ideas that I'll collect from my fellow TWD bakers. In fact, all of this yapping about rugelach is cutting into my rugelach-making time. Gotta run! Thanks again, Piggy, for a great pick!

Barefoot Bloggers: Apple Turnovers

This week's "bonus" Barefoot Bloggers recipe for Apple Turnovers was selected by one of my favorite food bloggers, Anne Strawberry. I had no doubt that Anne would choose a great one for us, and oh my, did she ever!

The recipe says to start with frozen puff pastry. I was not familiar with "frozen puff pastry," because I usually make my own puff pastry from scratch [insert canned laugh track here]. I could not find frozen puff pastry at Publix. I tried to flit back and forth between the refrigerated dough section and the frozen dough section to search for it, but it is hard to "flit" when you are pushing around one of these behemoths:
I finally decided that I must have been confused, and maybe what I really needed was frozen pie crusts, like the kind I used to buy before becoming an online baker and discovering Dorie Greenspan's superb pie crust recipe.

Anyway, I finally gave up on the frozen puff pastry and returned home with frozen pie crusts, but then did what I should have done to begin with and sat down at the computer and googled "frozen puff pastry," and voila! I found exactly what I needed, with an accompanying picture, no less. Going to the grocery store more than once a day makes me cranky, and you know what they say: "if mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy," so I sent David back to Publix, armed with a photograph of Pepperidge Farm Frozen Puff Pastry Sheets. My favorite hunter/gatherer returned shortly with the aforementioned frozen puff pastry sheets.

And that was the hardest part of making these turnovers.

Other than that, it was just a matter of mixing together a few cut up apples, some orange juice and grated orange rind, dried cherries, and a few spices. I left out the nutmeg, because I never regret the nutmeg I don't use, but I sometimes regret the nutmeg I do use. Unroll the puff pastry, scoop in some of the fruit mixture, brush edges of pastry with egg, fold into triangle, and brush the top of the pastry with egg. Sprinkle the top with sugar (I added a little cinnamon too). And stick it in the oven. That's it. It would have taken me longer to find the Oreos behind all the cereal boxes in my pantry.

Ready to go into the oven:


The result is a superb dessert, special enough to serve to your fancy friends, yet homey enough (and easy enough) to make for your nearest and dearest on any old weeknight. I served this with vanilla ice cream, as that somehow seemed like a necessity. David and I both loved it (and David liked it cold the next day, too). The kids didn't like it, of course, but then their idea of a great dessert is gummy bears on chocolate ice cream, so I tend to discount what they think.

The finished product:


NOTE TO MY REAL LIFE FAMILY AND FRIENDS: The question is not "whether" I will serve you these apple turnovers, it is: will I serve them so often that you start saying "No, wait, let me guess! Apple turnovers for dessert?" as soon as you arrive on our doorstep? I hope you don't get sick of them, but I doubt you will. Thank you, Anne, for picking a dessert that I will make over and over (and over) again!

APPLE TURNOVERS

1 teaspoon grated orange zest
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
1 1/4 pounds tart apples, such as Empire or Granny Smith (3 apples)
3 tablespoons dried cherries
3 tablespoons sugar, plus extra to sprinkle on top
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Pinch kosher salt
1 package (17.3 ounces, 2 sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Combine the orange zest and orange juice in a bowl. Peel, quarter, and core the apples and then cut them in 3/4-inch dice. Immediately toss the apples with the zest and juice to prevent them from turning brown. Add the cherries, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

Flour a board and lightly roll each sheet of puff pastry to a 12 by 12-inch square. Cut each sheet into 4 smaller squares and keep chilled until ready to use.

Brush the edges of each square with the egg wash and neatly place about 1/3 cup of the apple mixture on half of the square. Fold the pastry diagonally over the apple mixture and seal by pressing the edges with a fork. Transfer to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Brush the top with egg wash, sprinkle with sugar, make 2 small slits, and bake for 20 minutes, until browned and puffed. Serve warm or at room temperature.