Tuesdays with Dorie – Summer Fruit Galette

This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Summer Fruit Galette, was chosen by Michelle in Colorado Springs. This was a great choice for me as it challenged me to try something I’d never made before and also have me the opportunity to get over the… fuzziness of certain fruits. *shudder*

The idea of this galette is layering sliced fruit over some marmalade (or plum jelly in my case) and then covering it all with a custard. Very simple and very elegant looking.

My original plan was to go with plums since it’s one of the only stone fruits I’ll touch but for some reason I was feeling a little wild while grocery shopping and picked peaches instead. I must admit, they’re much less intimidating when you boil and peel the skin off.

Overall this was a good dessert. I think it definitely would’ve been better with plums, but the peaches weren’t awful. I’m not sure I’ll make the galette again but I will say that I almost cried when the kid dropped half of it on the floor.

Michelle has the full recipe on her blog and make sure you check out the blogroll.

Tuesdays with Dorie – Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler.

Guess what ya’ll! It was my turn to choose the Tuesdays with Dorie recipe! I had a lot of trouble deciding on one and finally settled on Dorie’s Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler since I’ve recently become obsessed with rhubarb.

I had these great fantasies of having a gorgeous picture of this cobbler and making everything perfect since it was my week and all. Yeah, didn’t quite work out for me. The cobbler was delicious (even the rhubarb hater that I call husband liked it) but it just didn’t turn out pretty for me.

I adored the topping of this one. The whole wheat flour gave it a totally different texture from the usual cobbler toppings and really enhanced the whole thing. The rhubarb was amazing. The cherries were fabulous. I’m not a fruit person but I loved this cobbler. I even made some rhubarb ice cream to go along with it. (It melted very quickly…)

Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler
Baking:From My Home to Yours

Filling:
1 pound cherries, pitted & halved
12 ounces rhubarb, trimmed, peeled & cut into 1 inch pieces
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon ground ginger

Topping:
¾ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons (packed) brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
3 ounces butter, cut into 18 pieces
½ cup milk

Make the filling:
In a small bowl stir together the sugar, cornflour and ginger until well mixed.
Place the cherries and rhubarb into a large bowl, sprinkle over with the mixed dry ingredients and stir well. While making the topping, stir from time to time.

Make the topping:
Put the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt and ginger into a food processor. Pulse to blend. Sprinkle the butter pieces over the top, then continue to pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Drizzle in the milk and continue to pulse until it forms moist clumps.
Turn out onto a very lightly floured board.
Cut into 20 pieces and shape each into a ball.

Assemble the dish:
Place the fruit and any juices that have been released into the baking dish. Spread it out evenly. Top with the prepared dough balls.

Bake at 375 for 35-45 minutes or until the topping is golden and fruit bubbling.
Cool the cobbler for at least 20 minutes.

Tuesdays with Dorie – Chocolate Pudding

No TWD for me this week. Unfortunately we are neither chocolate nor pudding people. But make sure out the blogroll to see the bloggers who made the pudding. If you’d like the recipe, visit It’s Melissa’s Kitchen.

I’ll be back next week!

Lemonade Iced Tea Sorbet.

My mom was nice enough to buy me an ice cream maker a few weeks ago. I had bought her the same one back at Christmas and she loved it so much that she thought I should have one too. I can’t even tell you how excited I was to get it. I’ve been pulling ice cream recipes out of magazines for months hoping that I would get one eventually.

I came home that night, washed everything out, cranked the freezer up as high as it would go, and hoped that inner piece would freeze quickly. I ended up staying awake most of the night waiting for my first batch of sorbet but it was so worth it. I just wish I would’ve remembered to turn the freezer back down. The container my sorbet went into eventually cracked. Poo.

The Lemonade Iced Tea Sorbet was lovely though. Being from Alabama, I’m a sweet tea kind of girl. No lemon, please. But I really enjoyed this sorbet. It was tart but still sweet. It’s definitely a keeper, even if the husband refused to even try it.

Lemonade Iced Tea Sorbet
from: Cooking Light

2 cups boiling water
4 regular-sized English Breakfast tea bags
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 4 lemons)
1 cup ice water

1. Combine 2 cups boiling water and tea bags in a large bowl; steep 5 minutes. Discard tea bags. Add sugar to tea mixture, stirring until sugar dissolves. Cool completely. Stir in juice and 1 cup ice water; chill 1 hour.

2. Pour tea mixture into the freezer can of an ice-cream freezer; freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. Spoon sorbet into a freezer-safe container. Cover and freeze 1 hour or until firm.

Apple Blondies with Brown Sugar Frosting.

Gah. I’m so behind. I made these over a month ago and I’m just now getting around to posting them. Someone tell me to get my butt in gear please. Thanks.

Waaaay back when I made these I had a bunch of apples on hand that weren’t getting eaten. I tend to buy apples because I know I should eat them but I just don’t like them so they usually go bad. My mom does the same thing with bananas so I guess I learned from her. So I went searching for apple recipes and found these little things.

They were so much better than I expected. Like I said, I’m not an apple fan but I did enjoy them. I will say that I don’t think the cream cheese frosting is really needed. It was good but it made them really sweet. So sweet that I actually ended up throwing the majority of them away. If I ever find myself with too many apples again, I’ll probably make the blondies but forget about the frosting.

Apple Blondies with Brown Sugar Frosting
from: Cooking the Books

Blondies:
2/3 cup butter, softened
2 cups brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch salt
1 cup peeled chopped apples
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Brown Sugar Frosting:
4 oz ½ cup butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
¼ cup milk
2 cups icing (confectioner’s) sugar, sifted

Blondies:

Line a 13 x 9 inch baking tin with baking parchment. Set oven to 350.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla until thick and smooth, about 3 minutes. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture on low speed, mixing until blended. Stir in apples and nuts, mixing well. Spread evenly in the prepared tin and bake until set and golden, 25-30 minutes. Let cool completely in pan on rack.

Brown Sugar Frosting:

In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar and milk. Bring mixture just to a boil then remove from heat and let cool to lukewarm. Sift in the confectioner’s sugar, mixing until smooth. Spread evenly over bar. Let stand until frosting is firm enough to cut. Cut into bars or squares.

Tuedays with Dorie – Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe came from Amy of South in your Mouth. Amy chose Dorie’s double crusted blueberry pie which made the husband VERY happy. He loves all fruit pies but especially blueberry.

I had a couple issues with this pie. The recipe tells you to mix the blueberries with a ton of flour and sugar and when I dumped the blueberries into the pie shell I ended up with flour and sugar on top. Now this is my fault but I assumed that it would kind of melt into the pie once the heat got to it. Not so. It made a weird crust on top that you can kind of see in the picture. I ended up pulling the pie out halfway through and scraping off what I could but a good bit of it was still there. I also found the end result kind of gritty. You could definitely feel the sugar/flour mixture on the blueberries.

But I’m not going to lie. I had a piece of pie for breakfast two days in a row. The whole pie was gone by the end of the third day. I think with a little tweaking this could be a really good pie.

PS. This was my very first lattice top pie. Yay!

For the full recipe go check out South in your Mouth and to see how the rest of the group did visit the blogroll.

Tuscan Roasted Chicken and Vegetables.

Awhile back I bought The Food You Crave when I was on a health kick and then I was very disappointed so I only made one thing. I started feeling guilty about buying it and not using it so last week I decided I needed to try another recipe.

I went for her Tuscan Roasted Chicken with Vegetables because you know, you can’t really go wrong with roasted chicken, right? Especially when it’s got rosemary sprinkled on top.

This turned out great. The husband’s first response was “I have to eat vegetables?!” but he got over it quickly once he tried the chicken. He even ate some of the zucchini. I did learn that neither of us are fennel fans which is probably a good thing since it’s $5.99 a pound around here.

Tuscan Roasted Chicken and Vegetables
from: The Food You Crave

6 toma tomatoes (I used cherry because of all the scary talk about romas)
3 medium zucchini
1 bulb fennel
3 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoons salt
4 bone-in chicken breasts halves, skin removed
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried, crumbled

Preheat oven to 375.

Cut the tomatoes lengthwise into quarters and remove seeds. Trim the zucchini and cut it in half crosswise. Then cut each piece in half lengthwise if the piece is thin and three times if it is thicker, so that the pieces are relatively uniform.

Remove the outermost later of the fennel bulb and discard. Cut the bulb in half so that each half retains part of the stem end. Cut each half into 8 thin wedges so that each wedge is held together by a little piece of stem.

Put the vegetables in a large baking dish. Toss with 2 tablespoons of the oil and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Arrange the chicken pieces in the pan with the vegetables.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining tablespoon oil and 1/2 teaspoon salt, the garlic, and lemon zest and juice. Rub the mixture into the chicken in the pan. Season with a few turns of pepper. Roast for 3 minutes, then give the vegetables a stir and add the rosemary. Return to the oven and roast until the chicken is just cooked all the way through and the vegetables are tender and beginning to brown, 20 to 30 minutes more.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have bread.

Oh no bread machine. You can’t keep me down.

I’m blaming yesterday’s disaster on the book that came with the bread machine. Never again will I follow one of those recipes.

This morning I went with a recipe for tomato basil bread that I’ve had bookmarked for awhile in hopes that I’d eventually get a bread machine. It turned out beautifully and the husband gave it two thumbs up. I haven’t tried it yet but it smells really good.

Tomato Basil Bread
adapted from: Taste of Home

1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1/4 cup warm milk
2 tablespoons olive
1 tablespoon sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1-1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon dried thyme
3 cups all-purpose flour
1-3/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

In bread machine pan, place all ingredients in the order suggested by manufacturer. Select basic bread setting. Choose crust color and loaf size according to bread machine directions (check dough after 5 minutes of mixing; add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water or flour if needed).

Yield: 1 loaf (about 1-1/2 pounds).

Umm… bread?

I make a lot of bread. I make almost all the bread that’s consumed in my household. If you’ve been reading for awhile you may remember that I even did a decent job with Julia Child’s fourteen page French bread. I’d say I’m a pretty good bread maker. So can someone tell me why my first attempt at using a bread machine resulted in this:

Black and White Cookies.

A few weeks ago I was talking to my friend Pam about Martha Stewart’s cookie book. Pam has it and loves it but I’m not a huge Martha fan so I was skeptical. I decided to try out a recipe from Martha’s website before buying the book.

(Please excuse the picture. I took it in my bed because that’s where I ate every single one of these cookies. I have no shame.)

I went with Martha’s black and white cookies because when I was pregnant and working at Starbucks I ate one of these everyday. My co-workers joked that they always knew when I was there because they would find the remains (the dark chocolate part. bleh) on the desk in the back. I just loved how soft they were with the hard white chocolate on top. Mmm.

These cookies were exactly like my beloved Starbucks cookies. Well I used milk chocolate instead of dark, but that only made them better. They were soft and lemony and perfect.

I still haven’t bought Martha’s book. It’s on my list right after about 30 other things. I definitely want to pick it up eventually. I’m officially sold on Martha.

Black and White Cookies
from Martha Stewart

1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cake flour, not self-rising
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup milk
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon pure lemon extract
2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons light corn syrup, plus more if needed
1 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flours, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk eggs and sugar until smooth. Add milk, and whisk to combine. Whisk in melted butter and extracts. Add flour mixture, and stir to form a smooth dough. Cover, and chill for 1 hour.
2. Line baking pans with Silpat nonstick baking mats. Using a 2-ounce scoop, drop five cookies per pan, 3 inches apart. Bake until edges are light brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack set over parchment paper to cool.
3. In a small bowl, combine confectioners’ sugar, 3 tablespoons hot water, and corn syrup. Whisk until smooth. Using a small offset spatula, ice half of each cookie. Return cookies to rack to drip, if necessary.
4. Add chocolate to remaining icing. Stir until smooth. Add additional corn syrup to thin to desired consistency, if necessary. Spread chocolate icing over second half of each cookie. Allow cookies to set, about 10 minutes.