TWD: Swedish Visiting Cake

I'm twenty months into (mostly) weekly baking and blogging, and, much as I enjoy it, it can get a little tiring at times. Every once in a while we just get sweeted out around here, plain and simple, and the thought of baking another cake seems outrageous. Giving the goodies away sounds good in theory, but unless you're friends with the high school swim team (know anyone, Kayte?), even my most enthusiastic sweets recipients experience dessert fatigue after a while. Plus, it seems like everyone is watching some combination of sugar/fat/calories/carbs, while I'm a big proponent of "everything in moderation" myself, I certainly don't want to be the evil temptress sabotaging anyone's dietary efforts by showing up at their door with a bundt cake. Then there is the blogging part -- while I suppose it's not technically necessary to come up with new ways to say "I liked the cookies!" every week, if one is inclined to do so, well, that gets difficult after a while. New adjectives really need to be invented to do Dorie's desserts justice, but until then, some of us will stare at the computer and think: "this tart was fabulous. No, I already said the crust was fabulous. Maybe, this tart was most excellent! No, too Wayne and Garth. This tart was superb?"

But one aspect of blogging with Tuesdays with Dorie that has never gotten tiring for me is getting to know many great people, including Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs, who chose this week's recipe. Nancy and I realized early on that we share an alma mater (wahoowa!!), we're both born and raised Northerners living in the Southeast, and we both have husbands who don't eat chocolate. Clearly we were destined to be blog friends. Nancy's blog is wonderful (fabulous? superb? -- All of the above). Her posts are consistently detailed, informative and fun, and her pictures are beautiful. And wow, can she ever pick recipes!

Nancy chose the Swedish Visiting Cake, which Dorie tells us was traditionally brought by Swedish women when they visited one another. The cake is supposedly so quick to make that you could start making it when you see guests coming up the road, and it will be done by the time they arrive at your door.

We were not expecting any Swedish visitors this month (other than a Hanna Andersson package or two), so I decided to try the cake out on a Missourian visitor, a North Carolinian visitor, and a couple of Alabamian visitors. Also, I kind of cheated and made the cake early in the day that I knew our visitors were coming, rather than waiting until I actually saw them coming up the road. So I didn't really test "up the road/cake ready" speed claim.

No doubt this is a fast cake to make, though. And it's all made in one bowl! Rub lemon zest into sugar (a great Dorie trick - really brings out the lemon flavor); whisk in eggs, salt and vanilla and almond extract. (As an aside, Dorie says that the extracts are optional, but I feel like the almond extract makes this cake, and I will definitely use it every time). Mix in the flour, then fold in a stick of melted and cooled butter. And that's it! Impossibly quick and easy! Bake it in a 9" cast iron skillet for 25 or 30 minutes.



The first time I made this, I was a little worried it was going to be too thin. There is no leavener in the cake, so it wasn't going to rise much. And it is a thin cake. But once I tasted it, all worries flew out the window. This is an AMAZING cake! It's sweet but not overwhelmingly so, with an irresistible almond flavor. I think the texture is almost a combination of a cake and a blondie. It has a little chew to it, kind of like a blondie, but it also has a softness and a moistness that is more cakeish. David (who also loved the cake) told me not once, not twice, but at least three times over the course of two of these cakes that the texture reminded him of cornbread. And as I told him, that kind of remark makes me reluctant to ask him what he thinks about these desserts ever again, because this is NOTHING like cornbread. Cornbread is dry and crumbly and this cake is neither. I THINK what he was trying to get at was the cake was dense like cornbread, as opposed to being a light and airy cake? In any event, we may not agree about how best to describe the texture, but we both agree that this cake is incredible. Our visitors seemed to love it as well.

This is one of my favorite TWD recipes yet. It's delicious; it works as a dessert or as a snack cake; and it is insanely quick and easy to make. I won't just say I'll make this again and again -- I already HAVE made this again and again (and I'll continue to). Our first visitors (Missouri and Missouri-via-North Carolina) liked this so much that I made it again for the second wave of visitors (Alabama). It's a safe bet that any regular visitors to this house will have this cake sooner or later. Thanks Nancy for the great pick!

TWD: Mocha Walnut Bundt Bunny Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Mocha Walnut Bundt cake. Since my special occasion dessert selections have a strange tendency to track the TWD calendar, I decided to make this cake for Easter. And seeing as I have this bunny pan, and a 7, 5 and 2 year old in the house, I opted to skip the bundt and go with the more whimsical bunny. This was my second bunny cake, but my first marble cake. How I've managed to go twenty months in TWD without marbling anything boggles my mind.

The vanilla cake batter that forms the basis of the entire cake includes ground walnuts. They add a little something something to the cake without making it overly nutty. A little less than half of the batter is added to a melted chocolate/coffee mixture to create the "mocha" portion.

I tried to marble:


I realize that "marble" in this context is a verb that suggests considerably more movement that what is seen here. I'll have to work on my marbling next time I'm making a cake that doesn't involve floppy ears and a cottontail.

I wasn't quite sure how long to bake the cake. I swear that the Joy of Baking site has conversions for every conceivable pan size except for three dimensional bunnies. I decided to start out at 30 minutes and go from there. The center (torso) was way underdone at 30 minutes. I kept adding 5 minute intervals and finally took the cake out after about 45 minutes.

Depanning went smoothly - whew!

I made Dorie's bittersweet ganache to hold the two bunny halves together. It worked, to my great relief (and was really delicious with the cake!)

As for decorating, the materials that came with the cake suggest three options:



Ding ding ding! Why yes, I went with door #3, the confectioners' sugar bunny. Unfortunately, although dusting always sounds easy in theory, I have a really hard time with it. I just don't know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em when it comes to powdered sugar dusting, which my sweet husband likened to an artist who just can't stop dabbing paint. Well, he had the "just can't stop" part right, anyway. So unfortunately, it looked a little bit like a snow-covered bunny:



I wasn't sure quite what to do when it came time to cut the cake. I was as intimidated as I am when facing a whole chicken. I decided that typical chocolate bunny rules (first ears, then face, etc.) did not apply to a bunny cake. I started with the tail and cut it in slices, as if it were a loaf cake. That worked fine and wasn't terribly messy. Then I got to the head, checked to make sure there were no children in the room, got on my Mr. McGregor and chopped off the bunny head. I then removed the ears for good measure.

For reasons that I still don't quite understand, I left the head (i.e., two head halves) and the ears (i.e., two separate floppy ears) on the serving plate. As I'm sure is self-evident to you bakers, the head is essentially a muffin that has been baked for 45 minutes, and the ears are mini muffins that have been baked for 45 minutes. So those suckers were inevitably going to be overbaked, and not just a little bit. Clearly I should have thrown them out, but subconsciously, I guess I figured it was the slices that looked most appealing, so people would just naturally grab the slices. So I was horrified to see one person walk by with a bunny head half on the plate, and then another, and then someone else walked by with a floppy ear, and then someone else passed by with the other ear. Four plates, four overdone bunny head parts. I wasn't sure what to do at that point -- I'm pretty sure Emily Post does not cover what to do when family members serve themselves well-done bunny head cake parts that you stupidly left on the serving platter at Easter dinner -- so I just decided to not say anything. Still, I was so angry at myself - I survived the mixing, the marbling, the baking, the getting-the-bunny-out-of-the-pan, the making-the-ganache-thick-enough-to-hold-the-bunny-halves-together; the bunny assembly, the confectioner's sugar, the installation of the edible grass; and the transportation of said cake on my lap across the neighborhood in one piece ONLY TO SERVE SECTIONS OF THE CAKE THAT WERE, AT A MINIMUM, 90% OVERDONE.


I served myself an actual slice of cake, so I feel like I have a pretty good sense about how the cake really tasted. I did not seek or receive additional feedback about the cake - possibly because it was a fun, busy day with lots of activity, and everyone quickly moved from dessert to the next fun thing, and possibly because people literally could not speak after choking down the dried out, seared bunny head pieces. But nobody is more critical about my desserts than I am, and I can say with confidence that the center of the bunny cake (i.e., the bunny torso) was delicious. Even these slices were a wee bit overdone though - I probably should have taken it out about 5 minutes sooner. So I can't even imagine how awful the head and ears must have been. (Let it go Cathy. Let it go.) But the flavor (of the torso) was wonderful, and the texture was dense, rich and moist. I will make this cake again. Not in a bunny pan, though.

Erin of When In Doubt, Leave it at 350 (great advice!) chose the Mocha Walnut Bundt cake. Thanks for the delicious pick, Erin!

TWD: Coconut Lime Tea Cake

I thought of myself as a coconut hater for so long that it is hard for me to remember that I'm now a (sometimes) coconut liker. My mind immediately defaults to its standard coconut setting (aversion, disinterest, lack of enthusiasm, Coppertone) when I see a coconut recipe, and this week's Tuesdays with Dorie selection, Coconut Tea Cake, was no exception. It wasn't until the neurotransmitters carried the "Coconut Butter Thins!" message to the "baking motivation" section of my brain that I was able to rally enough to make this cake.

And (how predictable is this?) I'm so glad I did! I decided to make the coconut lime version of the cake, since I've enjoyed that combo before. The cake came together easily. I did make one mistake though - I was supposed to beat together the eggs and the sugar until "pale, thick and almost doubled in volume." Instead, I just beat the eggs until pale, thick and almost doubled in volume, and then had to go back and add the sugar (and lime zest) later and beat for another few minutes. Those poor eggs. Believe it or not, I actually have to read things carefully for a living. Apparently when I'm not on the clock I prefer to read every third word.

The dry ingredients, coconut (I toasted mine), vanilla and dark rum get added to the eggs eggs and sugar, along with a melted butter/coconut milk mixture. I don't think I've ever used regular, full-fat coconut milk before. I've used light coconut milk in various Thai recipes. Dorie warns that you need to stir the coconut milk first, and it states clearly on the can that coconut milk naturally hardens and separates, but even so, I wasn't ready for this:

Mmmmmmm, can't wait for that coconut tea cake!

I poured the batter into my kugelhopf pan, and an hour later, D and I were eating and reviewing the cake:

D: It's really really good. It's kind of dry, but not in a bad way.
C: Exactly! That's just how Dorie's friend who grew up eating Austrian desserts likes it.
D: Um, yeah. I mean it's really good. It's not what I'd call a decadent cake.
C: Okay good, I nailed it then. I'd be worried if you thought this was decadent. Dorie specifically says that it is more of a well-mannered cake.
C: Good with coffee or tea.
C: Refined.
C: Perfect for cutting slice after slice every time you walk by it.
D: OH COME ON, that was a WALK!!!

(My taster got distracted by the end of the Tennessee/Michigan State game.)



One thing we both agreed on: the coconut flavor was VERY mild. If you are coconut-ambivalent, this is the perfect coconut cake for you. Honestly, if it weren't for the occasional coconut flake (more of a texture issue there), I'm not sure I would even identify this as a coconut cake. David said that he wouldn't go quite THAT far, but he agreed that the coconut was subtle. Either way, we loved the flavor and thoroughly enjoyed the cake.

Carmen of Carmen Cooks chose this week's recipes. Fabulous pick, Carmen!

TWD: Dulce de Leche Duos

We recently replaced our ten year old tube TV with an LCD flat screen. Then just weeks later, after listening to our ancient desktop grind and sputter whenever we tried to switch between applications, we bought a laptop and got wireless in the house. After the cable guys left after installing the wireless, I could barely resist the urge to carry the laptop around the house and email my husband from each room: "Works in J's room!" "Emailing you from the garage." "Just thought I'd say a quick hello from the deck." Later that night, as we sat on the couch, David patted my back and said that we had finally arrived in late 2006.

But having the technology in the house does not mean that I understand any of it or can troubleshoot when things go wrong. None of this is intuitive to me, and to make matters worse, I find it a little boring, so I have a hard time paying attention when someone tries to explain it to me. Basically, I can turn the TV on and off, and change channels, and after much studying, I learned to switch between the TV and the Wii. But if one of the kids presses the wrong button and the screen goes to static? Well, there's just nothing to be done about that until David gets home.

Same with computer stuff. I can handle the most basic functions as long as nothing goes wrong, but as soon as it does, I wave the white flag. And that is why the only picture I can post of this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Dulce de Leche Duos, is this lone, sad "bottom of the cookie jar" shot:


I took other pictures of these cookies. I tried to make them look pretty and stack them up and take them outside in good light and everything. And I can see the thumbnails of these dulce de leche cookie pictures in the folder on my (old, since the dulce de leche pix pre-date our new) computer. The thumbnails are plainly dulce de leche duos. But bizarrely, when I double click on the pictures and/or upload them to Blogger, the dulce de leche duo pictures freakishly turn into pictures of my husband opening presents on his birthday.

Wait, that's not a Dulce de Leche Duo! It's David, opening the Star Wars Wii game, given to him by our seven year old, who just happens to have an interest in Star Wars Wii games himself:


Here's another one of my dulce de lecho duo thumbnails that, when double clicked, turns into a picture of David opening a pair of argyle socks:


Does this kind of thing even happen to other people? I can't even begin to find the right words for a google search to help me solve this problem. I'm just hoping that it's not a chronic situation and it goes away on its own.

I did happen to post one dulce de leche duo picture on Flickr, so if you are interested, you can find it here. But if I were you, I'd know that I could probably find a thousand better pictures of dulce de leche duos in other places.

I made these cookies over a month ago (around David's birthday, in fact) so I don't remember much about making them. I had a can of dulce de leche that I was excited to use. I loved the texture of the cookies -- soft and chewy and maybe a little cakey -- but I think opinions about the flavor of these cookies will come down to whether you like the taste of the dulce de leche that you use in the recipe. In the end, I wasn't a huge fan of the canned stuff that I used, and that affected my overall impression of the cookies. I know that several other people made their own dulce de leche for this recipe, and I'll probably give that a try next time. David, on the other hand, LOVED these cookies -- I would say he was as enthusiastic about these as he's been about any cookie I've made with TWD. The kids preferred the singletons over the duos - I guess for them a little canned dulce de leche goes a long way.

I will probably make these again because my hubs was such a big fan of them. I'll attempt my own dulce de leche next time and see how that goes. Jodie of Beansy Loves Cake picked the dulce de leche duos. These were fun to make - thanks for the pick, Jodie!

TWD: Soft Chocolate and Raspberry Tart

I love this tart.


This tart is a perfect example of why I don't bother to order dessert in restaurants anymore. Even excellent restaurants. [Exceptions: the bread pudding souffle at Commander's Palace. And the chocolate souffle at Hot & Hot. Then there's the apple cake at Chez Fon Fon. Oh, and let's not forget the profiteroles at Highlands! Er, nevermind, I guess I do still bother to order dessert in restaurants. My husband told me in our early dating days that he wasn't attracted to salad-eating women, and I'm just doing my part to keep the fire burning.]

But if I wasn't bothering to order desserts in restaurants anymore, it would be because I can make THIS myself:



Dorie's recipes are delicious from top to bottom, but I think her tarts in particular are truly fabulous. After TWD is over and I look back and think about the experience and why it's been so valuable, one reason will be desserts like this one. I never would have even attempted a dessert like this pre-TWD. I would have assumed it was the kind of thing that real bakers make, not hacks like me. But Dorie has demystified the process and broken it down into manageable components, bringing these special, elegant desserts within the reach of the casual home baker.

The tart starts with Dorie's sweet tart dough, fully baked. I've made this dough numerous times, and every time I make it I'm afraid I'm handling it too much or somehow overworking it. And every time, it's delicious anyway. Delicious + forgiving = keeper.

Fill the tart shells with fresh raspberries. I know they're not in season, but mine were beautiful and really delicious.



I made two minis. Should have made the full recipe with this one - I wanted to sneak off for a good cry when this was gone.

It seems like Dorie has a hundred different recipes for ganache, and somehow one is better than the next. The ganache for this tart is made with a combination of milk chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, sugar, cream, butter and eggs. Dorie describes the texture of the finished product as "seductively slithery," which sounds rather snake-like to me. It is certainly seductive, though -- my intended "one bite" turned into a second, then a third, then a fourth, and then I started to think about rescinding that offer of half a tart that I had just extended to my dad. This tart turned me into a monster, a greedy monster, I tell you. Something about that slithery chocolate with the tart raspberries and the buttery shortbread crust - yup, this was pretty much heaven on a plate.

Nom nom nom . . .




Rachelle of Mommy, I'm Hungry! picked this week's most excellent recipe. Great pick, Rachelle!

TWD: Thumbprints for Us Big Guys

The name of this week's TWD recipe, Thumbprints for Us Big Guys, makes more sense if you own the cookbook (which you REALLY should!), where it follows the "Kids' Thumbprints." The Kids' Thumbprints are peanut butter cookies (or maybe more accurately, peanut butter and jelly cookies), whereas the Big Guy Thumbprints are more of a buttery nutty shortbread cookie. And, as with many things associated with being a Big Guy, making these may involve the kind of minor hassle that you just don't have to deal with when you're a kid; namely, that of tracking down hazelnuts (Dorie's nut of choice for this recipe), which I never even knew were all that exotic until the mainstream Big Guy grocery store in my medium-sized city did not carry them, at least not in any of the normal places where you would expect nuts to be found, like the nut aisle, the baking aisle, and the bulk specialty foods aisle. I eventually asked, and was alternatively sent to the Asian food aisle (?) and told that it was a seasonal item (?). I was not to be deterred, though -- I've had my eyes on these Big Guys for over a year, so if I had to drive to Nashville or Atlanta or even New York itself (or the Whole Foods on 280), I WOULD find the hazelnuts I needed for this recipe. Then I heard that Kayte and Tracey were using almonds, which I had in the house and love, and suddenly NOT running around town on a nut quest seemed like the sane thing to do. And for once, I did the sane thing.

This is a simple recipe. Mix up the dough (a combination of flour and ground nuts, butter, sugar, salt and vanilla and almond extract). No dough chilling required. Then make thumbprints (pinky prints if you want to get technical) in the dough to make room for the jam. Bake. After they come out of the oven, a quick once-over with the trusty pinky may be necessary.

Once they cool, heat up some jam and fill the indentations. I used some raspberry and some strawberry. I had a helper.



She turned five a couple of months ago, and suddenly she can fill thumbprints as neatly as I can. Quit that growing up too fast, kids.

The verdict? Everybody enjoyed these. I baked the full recipe (which yielded 50 cookies) on Saturday afternoon, and here it is Monday night and they're already gone. I knew I could count on David to eat most of these, and he did not disappoint me. His dad and my dad helped him out - thanks, menfolk. I liked the crumbly texture of these. They teetered on the "dry" line, but not in an unpleasant way. If I make them again, I might do a 3/4 flour to 1/4 ground nut ratio rather than 50/50, but that's just quibbling for quibbling's sake - I thought the cookies were great. I think the stronger flavor of the raspberry jam worked better than the milder strawberry. All in all, this recipe is a keeper and I'll make these again. They'll probably show up again at Christmas.

Mike of Ugly Food Dude chose this week's recipe. Nice pick, Mike!

TWD: Coconut Cream Tart

There are few desserts that just don't sound all that good to me, but coconut cream anything is one of them. I'm not a huge fan of coconut except in unusual circumstances. And while I'll never say no to a spoon dessert that is set in front of me, I generally don't get hit with those intense "must . . . have . . . custard . . ." cravings the way I regularly do with, say, brownies, or chocolate chip cookies. And that's just from the "eating" perspective. From the "making" perspective, there are few things I enjoy making less than custard. Caramel would be one of them, but that's only because of the devastation it tends to unleash in my kitchen. Even though caramel is more dangerous, I'd still rather make it than custard, because if by fluke the caramel works, I have caramel! But if the custard works, I just have custard. Did anyone follow that?

I'm trying not to eat sweets much over the next six weeks, however, so this week's TWD selection, Coconut Cream Tart, sounded like the perfect dessert to me. I could make it without being remotely tempted by it, and then pass it over to my husband, who doesn't have the coconut cream issues that I do. I would take one bite, purely for journalistic purposes.

Having thus hatched the perfect plan, I started with Dorie's sweet tart dough, which I've made several times and love. I made a full recipe of the tart dough, even though I knew I'd be scaling back the filling, because I planned to use some of the dough for this tart, and save some for the upcoming chocolate raspberry tart. I've got to tell you, every time I make the sweet tart dough and get to the part of the recipe where Dorie gives you the heads up that the food processor will start making a different noise when the dough is almost ready, I'm reminded of why Baking is such a truly fabulous cookbook.

Random photo of toasted coconut inserted into middle of post to break up the monotony of the long-winded prose
I made a half recipe of the custard, and it came off without a hitch. I think cornstarch really helps me in that regard -- thanks, Argo. I added the full (half recipe) amount of toasted coconut to the custard. And to make the tart even more resistible to me, I added the full (half) amount of dark rum called for in the recipe (both in the custard and in the topping). I'm not a big liquor girl (now wine is a different story), unless the drink is fruity and has a name that ends with the diminuitive "-ini," (e.g., "Sweet Tartini"), and I tend to have a real aversion to boozy desserts. But I knew I could count on my husband to take one for the team and review the recipe exactly as written.

I made poor David eat this when he was one his way out the door to take Jacob somewhere. ("What?! You're leaving now?! But Dorie says this is best right after it's assembled. You can't go now -- you need to eat this first. What? Well yeah, I knew it started at 3:15, but I had to assemble it now or it would be too dark for pictures later. Eat it. EAT IT!!!") Fortunately, he really enjoyed this. He said that even though this is not a dessert he'd ever pick on his own, he thought this was about as good as coconut cream pie (tart) could be.

I agree with that assessment. I thought this was delicious. While the rum was definitely noticeable, I did not think that it was at all overpowering, and it complemented the other flavors nicely. Leave it to Dorie to come up with a version of this dessert good enough to convert a coconut cream hater. Beryl of Cinemon Girl picked this week's tart - thanks for the great pick, Beryl!