La Palette Strawberry Tart

Several months ago, when I was in California, I came across some great strawberries.  I snapped them up and immediately baked up Dorie Greenspan's La Palette's Strawberry Tart from Baking From My Home to Yours.  The recipe has only three elements: tart crust, strawberry jam, and macerated fresh strawberries, and  I knew that each element had to shine.  The berries were amazing (so much so that I didn't even macerate), and I know that Dorie's tart crust is perfection.  To match the quality of the first two elements, I splurged on some beautiful French strawberry jam. 

I baked up some little tartlet shells, assembled and photographed them.  I was months ahead of the June posting date! (I'm baking the recipes I missed from the first 7 months of the original Tuesdays With Dorie baking group, and posting on the corresponding date 4 years later.)

But then in May my MacBook hard drive (just over a year old) went to hard drive heaven and took my strawberry tart photos with it.  They were cute photos, too, darn it!

I knew I had to re-bake the tarts, and that finally happened this week.  The photos are from the new tartlets, which we enjoyed every bit as much as the first ones.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Dorie herself posted the recipe in her column for Serious Eats.

-  The first time I baked the tart, I used Dorie's tart crust, which I've made many times before, and love!  The filling was French strawberry jam, and I used the fresh strawberries by themselves.  I didn't add sugar or liquor to them, and forgot the black pepper.

-  The second time I baked the tart, I make gluten-free tart shells using Alice Medrich's shortbread base found in her cookie book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies.  For the crust's sweetnener, I used golden palm sugar rather than plain white sugar, which gave it a golden color and a caramelized flavor.  This time I was home in Georgia and the French jam was still in California.  Rather than buy more strawberry jam I decided to make small batch Strawberry Honey Thyme Jam.  The jam was easy to make and delicious in flavor.  I again left the strawberries plain, and again I forgot the black pepper (darn!)

-  The recipe is interesting because all of the elements are kept separate until the time that the tart is served.  When one big tart is made, the shell is sliced, then spread with the jam and the strawberries are piled on top.

-  I usually find that making mini tarts adversely changes the recipe's proportion of crust to filling but in this case, the tart is assembled after the crust is fully baked, and the jam and berries can be increased or decreased to taste.  In fact, the berries are supposed to spill over the crust.

the verdict:

The recipe sounds so unassuming, a few simple elements, no big deal, but let me tell you: This was a sleeper of a recipe! We loved these tarts. (Both versions!)  The juicy fresh strawberries played off of the sweet strawberry preserves, all in the context of a buttery, almost cookie-like crust.  It's a perfect summer make-ahead dessert, and can be varied with whatever berries happen to be in season.

{TWD} Ginger Fig Cream Cheese Torte

I jumped aboard the Tuesdays With Dorie train in its 30th week, and have baked every weekly choice since that time. While I have managed to keep current with the recipes chosen for the group, I have not made much progress in baking the recipes that I missed in the early weeks of the group. This week, however, the TWD bakers have a built-in catch-up day: we are free to bake any past recipe of our choosing.

Perusing the first 29 recipes on the "Completed Recipes" page of the TWD website quickly led me to the Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte: a slim cheesecake with a layer of jam or preserves between the crust and the cream cheese filling.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This torte was chosen in the third week of the group. You can find the recipe on this post of our TWD founder Laurie of the blog Slush.

- An 8" springform pan is perfect for making 3/4 recipe.

- This recipe is fairly easy to put together; first you make the crust in the food processor, then use the food processor to make the filling from cream cheese and cottage cheese. It ends up beautifully smooth, and much more pourable than regular cheesecake filling.

- I have jams for nearly every occasion, so it took me a while figure out which type to select for the torte. It finally occurred to me to use some fig preserves, as I'd recently stocked up on them, not realizing I already had some in the pantry. The biggest glitch in my plan is that my husband has a spotty relationship with figs. He generally dislikes the taste of figs, but he has been known to enjoy some dishes that contain fig preserves.

- I spiced up the preserves by adding powdered ginger, nutmeg, cloves and black pepper. Both Laurie and my buddy Leslie mentioned that the amount of jam in the original recipe was barel perceptible in the finished torte, so I increased the jam layer, adding probably 3 times as much as the recipe called for. Fig is fairly subtle and I wanted to make sure it was noticeable. Oh, and from an aesthetic perspective, a different flavor/color of jam would have been more attractive; the color of the fig preserves blended with the color of the crust.

- Dorie calls for some cinnamon and nutmeg in the cheese filling and I added a pinch of ginger as well.

- Leslie also passed on some baking hints, so I tented my torte with aluminum foil for the entire time that it was in the oven, and it turned out creamy and perfectly baked.


the verdict:

I was in a bit of a rush to get the torte photographed while it was still daylight, so I cut it before it had full cooled. The jam layer was just a bit oozy After taking pictures I then - of course - had to taste the torte while it was still slightly warm. I loved the flavors and textures of this torte: the spicy jam with a lush creamy filling and sweet crunch of a cookie-like crust. I later found that the torte was also good chilled And at room temperature, for that matter.

Despite my efforts to spice up the fig preserves, this torte fell squarely in my husband's "dislike" camp; the fig flavor ruined it for him. I was left with an entire torte and without my trusty sweets-consumer to help me. I forced fed offered the pie to friends of my daughter. They were very polite; each tasting a tiny sliver, and murmering their approval. One even said that she doesn't like cheesecake and liked this.

The ginger I added to the jam and the filling turned out to be quite popular with my tasters. My daughter said it tasted like "pie spices" - exactly! What do you expect when you bake a torte in Thanksgiving week?

{TWD} Thumbprint Jam Cookies

I really wanted to bake these Thumbprints for Us Big Guys cookies at Christmas, but I ran out of time. I love jam, and any recipe that lets me use jam - better yet, lets me choose my own flavor of jam - has a head start to being on my "favorites" list. The fact that the cookies are a snap to bake just endears them to me even more.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- This recipe was chosen by Mike of Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude, and you can find the recipe on his blog, or, better yet, buy the book ( Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan) for this and hundreds of other fabulous recipes.

- I baked 1/2 recipe.

- Rather than blanching and grinding my own hazelnuts, I was very happy to pull out the package of Bob's Red Mill hazelnut meal/flour, which had been sitting in my cupboard patiently waiting to be used for a recipe. This is essentially finely ground hazelnuts, but since the nuts aren't blanched, you can see dark flecks from the nut skins in my finished cookies.

- My first cookie sheet had cookies that were 15 g each. They spread a lot during cooking, and cracked distressingly. During baking the indentations got much shallower, so when I pulled the cookies out fo the oven I made new "thumbprints" in the hot cookies.

- For the second cookie sheet I used 10 g of cookie dough per cookie. These baked up in 10 minutes flat.

- After a bit of deliberation, I chose two kinds of jam: rhubarb/raspberry, and also three-citrus marmalade, I wanted to use jam that wasn't super sweet because I figured it would be a good foil for the sweet cookie base. At the last minute I dug in the fridge and pulled out a jar of orange-ginger curd with a few spoonfuls left, and used that for some of the cookies.

- To make the filling, the recipe specifies heating the jam in a microwave or on the stove top. It gets quite runny when hot, but as it cools it thickens up and becomes perfect filling. I'd recommend waiting to fill the cookies until the jam has cooled somewhat. The thin hot jam wants to seep into the cracks in the cookies. The curd does not need to get heated.


the verdict:

These cookies were very well received by my tasters. The marmalade was bitter rather than tart, which is great on toast but not quite perfect for this recipe. On the other hand the raspberry-rhubarb jam was nicely tart in flavor and paired well with the sweet, nutty cookies. The very best cookies, however, were the ones with the curd (that was a great jar of curd; thank you, Marshalls!) - the butter nut cookie was the perfect platform (so to speak) to let the bright tartness of the curd take the glory.

Twelfth Night Jam Tart

In western Christian tradition, today, January 6, is the Twelfth (and final) Day of Christmas. It is the feast of the Epiphany, the commemoration of the Three Kings, who followed a star to the Infant Jesus.

There are a few desserts that developed to celebrate the holiday. The most familiar is the Epiphany Cake, or Three Kings Cake, which can have a prize or tiny figure of the baby Jesus baked into it. When I taught Sunday School, I used to bring Epiphany cupcakes to class, and hide jelly candies inside three of the cupcakes. The children who ended up with those cupcake became "kings" for the class, and the rest of us were the followers. We made and decorated crowns and had a royally good time.

There is another Epiphany dessert, a tart with pastry strips forming a star shape (to recall the star that the kings followed to find the infant) and filled with different flavors of jam; one flavor per segment of pastry. The final effect is like a stained glass window, only edible. As soon as I learned of this tart (in my Williams-Sonoma Holiday Favorites cookbook) I knew that I would have to make it; I love tarts and I have an extensive jam selection just begging to be used. Luckily I had the perfect occasion.

Every year our book group has an annual Christmas dinner on a Saturday towards the end of the Twelve Days, so our dinner is often Epiphany-themed. How could I not make this tart for the group?

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can read more about both of Epiphany desserts on The Old Foodie's post.

- The tart is quite simple: prepare a tart crust dough, shape a star from the dough, prebake the crust then fill the tart with various kind of jam and bake for an additional 5 minutes, until the jam is set.

crust:

- For the pastry I used Dorie Greenspan's sweet tart dough. I made the nut variation, substituting hazelnut meal for some of the flour. You can find the basic sweet tart dough recipe by clicking here and scrolling down. Dorie's tart crust is perfect: easy to work with and delicious as well.

- I used all purpose flour I received from King Arthur Flour back in the summer. King Arthur gave small bags of flour away with the request that it be used in a baked good to give or share with others. When the flour arrived in the mail we were in the middle of some construction work on the house, and I had limited access to my kitchen. So I put the flour aside and after that it was out of sight out of mind. When I came across the flour in December I decided that it would be perfect for this celebration dessert to be shared with a special group of close friends.

- My tart was on the petite side; I baked it in a 7.5 inch tart mold. I made a double batch of tart dough, and used two thirds of it for this Epiphany Tart and the other third for the Tarte Tatin.

- First I lined the tart mold with dough by pressing it lightly along the bottom and up the sides. I rolled the remaining dough between two sheets of plastic wrap to a thickness of about 1/4". I cut the dough into strips about 1/2" wide, then positioned them inside the tart shell to make a star shape, pinching to join them at the seams.

- I baked the crust until lightly golden. About halfway through the baking time, I used the handle of a silicone scraper to gently shape and fix the walls of the star, which had spread and sagged a bit in the oven.

filling:

- Apparently it was a point of pride and/or a good omen in Victorian times to use as many different jams as possible in the Epiphany Tart. I used a different flavor jam for each of the 13 sections of the tart. The jams I used were:

cloudberry
marion blackberry
raspberry
peach
apricot
pink grapefruit
black cherry
gooseberry
strawberry
three citrus marmalade
rhubarb raspberry
fig orange
huckleberry

(I actually took a photo of all of the jam jars I used, but since I'm writing this on an airplane and the photos are on my home computer, I can't show you. Just imagine 13 different sizes and types of jam, and you pretty much have the scene!)

- I spooned jam in each of the sections. Some of the sections were very small, so I only used a teaspoon or so of jam. At that rate I'd need to make a whole batch of tarts to make a dent in my jam supply! I made a diagram of the tart and labeled each type of jam and where it was located. The red raspberry was the one that I could instantly recognize, so that's what I used to orient the chart at serving time.

- After filling the tart, I returned it to the oven for 5 minutes to set the jam.

the verdict:

This tart was a fun addition to the dessert buffet at the book group's Christmas/Epiphany dinner. The distinctive star shape sparked a lot of discussion and everyone was pretty amused at the diagram explicating the locations of the different flavors of jam. When it came time to serve the tart there were a few requests of jams to include and avoid.

I had halfway expected that the primary appeal of the tart would be its novelty and symbolism, so I was surprised at how much people liked this tart. The crust is quite cookie-like and the jam wonderfully jammy. It was reminiscent of a large star-shaped thumbprint cookie. The next time I will make the tart bigger, so that the jam parts are bigger and the jam-to-crust ratio will be higher.

One of the group members, JT, tasted his tart first and really liked it. He offered the following advice, which became our guideline for serving and enjoying the tart: "Make sure your piece of tart has at least 3 different kinds of jam, then mix the flavors in your mouth." In his opinion, the tart would even make a good breakfast. And why not? It's got jam!

I'm glad that I had the opportunity to bake this intriguing, historical, and pretty dessert. It was perfect for our Epiphany party!

Lemon Poppyseed Jam Sandwich Cookies

Last December for Tuesdays With Dorie, we baked Dorie Greenspan's Linzer Sable Cookies. I used a bunch of cookie cutters that I had on hand, but soon after I bought a Christmas linzer cookie cutter set. It comes with one spiffy spring assisted round scallop cutter and several small interchangeable holiday-shaped dies that lock into place to make cut-outs in the middle of the circle cookies.

When I was paging through cookbooks and magazines, planning for this year's Christmas cookie baking, I knew that I wanted to find a recipe that I could bake with my special cookie cutters - and also use up a bit of my extensive jam collection. I bookmarked a few recipes that were ground-nut-based, like last year's Linzer Sables. And one that was a plain cut out shortbread.

But then one morning, the Washington Post Food Section (@WaPoFood) sent a link to these Lemon Poppy Seed Sandwich Cookies out on Twitter, and I knew these were the jam cookies for me!


n.o.e.'s notes:

- This recipe is from pastry chef Tiffany MacIsaac, who is a major cookie afficionado, so I had high hopes that it would be delicous.

- The great thing about this kind of cookie: you can mix the dough one day then pop it in the fridge. Then roll it out in a ziploc and pop it back in the fridge for a couple of hours or a couple of days. Then you can cut and bake the cookies, and put the baked cookies in the freezer them until you are finally ready to fill, sandwich, and serve them. That's pretty much how I baked these cookies.

- Although the recipe provides a delicious-sounding cranberry filling that is made from fresh cranberries, and I have a bountiful supply of fresh cranberries in my fridge, I was determined to use some of my extensive jam holdings for these cookies. I chose raspberry jam, partly as a nod to the traditional Linzer flavor, partly because I wanted a red jam for the picture, and partly because I thought it would be good with the lemon flavor of the cookies. Plus, I already had a jar of raspberry open and in the fridge.

- Because I was in a hurry I just spead jam from the jar onto the cookies before assembling them. I have a lot of the unassembled baked cookies in the freezer, and the next time I assemble some I think that I'll cook the jam so it is thicker, as we did with the Linzer Sables last year.


the verdict:

When I tasted the dough right after I mixed it, I had doubts whether the lemon flavor was going to be noticeable in the finished cookie. I'm happy to report, however, that the cookies had a nice taste of lemon in a tender shortbread form, which paired beautifully with the raspberry filling.

I loved these delicious and unusual cookies, and can't wait to put them on the Christmas cookie platter; I'm guessing they will be a huge hit!

{TWD} Cottage Cheese Choose-Your-Jam Pufflets

There are plenty of fads and trends in baking (eg. the molten chocolate cake back in the 90's), but what really makes my ears perk up is when someone talks about a favorite recipe from many years ago, especially one that is homey and simple. So I had high hopes when I first saw this week's Tuesdays With Dorie choice, Cottage Cheese Pufflets. Dorie says that these are from her "first kitchen scrapbook", which made me take notice, partly because I've never had a kitchen scrapbook and it sounds so fabulous. Note to self: find a suitable scrapbook for the kitchen.

And then there's the title ingredient: cottage cheese. Who bakes with cottage cheese? As of this week, all of us TWD-types! Last week we put sour cream in our pastry, this week it's cottage cheese. If that doesn't sound homey, I don't what would.

On further study, I realized that the recipe isn't exactly fall-off-a-log easy - there's chilling and rolling pins and cutting and folding involved - but I tried to keep an open mind. The part I looked forward to most was using a bit of my jam supply - I'm a huge fan of jammy things!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This is one of those recipes that is best eaten the day it is baked. I ran out of time to make these for last week's book group, so the cookies ended up being a Sunday evening dessert-with-ice-cream for us. Six cookies seemed reasonable for two people, so I made 1/8 recipe. Here’s the math in case anyone else is similarly inclined:

1 oz butter,

4g/1tsp sugar,

bit o salt,

1 oz cottage cheese,

1/8 tsp vanilla,

25g 7/8oz or scant 4T flour.

- The recipe requires two different 2-minute sessions of pulsing in a food processor. I tried my mini-prep and my stick blender, but neither worked on the tiny amount of butter and cottage cheese I was using. I ended up mixing it by hand.

- On a tip from Sarah of Blue Ridge Baker, I drained my cottage cheese before measuring it. My dough was soft but not impossibly sticky.

- I rolled the dough inside of a zippered sandwich bag, then chilled before cutting into 6 (uneven) squares. I chilled it again before dabbing with jam and forming into cookies.

- For my 6 pufflets, I used half-teaspoon each of 6 kinds of jam: marionberry, raspberry, cloudberry, strawberry, strawberry, and orange/fig.

- The recipe says to fold the squares of dough triangularly, but since I just did that with last week's turnovers, I decided to fold up each corner of the square and see how the cookies turned out. Actually, they look pretty pathetic, but a bit of powdered sugar and a silver tray helps a little bit, doesn't it?

- The cookies didn't really puff during baking, which didn't help endear them to me.

the verdict:

I had the fig and cloudberry cookies and gave my husband the other 4 berry-jam ones. He liked the raspberry ones the best. I agree that the dough needed a strong jam flavor - the fig/orange was better than the cloudberry. Although I really wanted to love these cookies, in truth I wasn't bowled over by the flavor of the dough. My husband's view was much more favorable, however: "These are good. You should make them for book group."

They were above-average in fussiness for just-average flavor, so it's unlikely that I'd choose them again over other jam-related baked goods. In fact, when I looked at my cookies, they reminded me of the rugelach we'd made, and then I missed rugelach!

Thanks to Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes for selecting this recipe for us to bake this week - it's exactly the kind of recipe I'd choose! You can find the recipe for these cookies on Jacque's post or on pages 148-149 of Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home to Yours.

{TWD} Butter Jam Cookies

[I'm currently away from home, and am posting this automatically. I will try to catch up with reading and commenting about everyone's baking when I return next week. Hmm, or after Christmas!]

At several points in recent weeks, TWD has obliged me to delve into jam. More specifically, into my jam collection. (see the Linzer cookie post, or scroll down for another angle of my jam assemblage)

As an aside on ingredient accumulations, I've previously displayed part of my tea assortment, and at some point I'm sure I'll divulge the details of my sugar stash and flour drawer, both of which have grown exponentially as a result of my recent baking activities. It's come to my attention, however, that I'm woefully lacking in the Pam spray department. I have but one half-empty can of original Pam, whereas it is possible, as Cathy of The Tortefeasor has proven, to have a well-stocked selection of Pam varieties. I'll need to get on that at some point! But for now, it's back to jam.

And after I took this photo I found four more jars of new jam in a drawer! Not to mention the two jars of cider jelly I made for Thanksgiving.

For the rugelach and the linzer sables I had to substitute for the apricot and raspberry jam that I somehow do not own. But for this week's recipe, the Butter Jam Cookies, Dorie has given us free rein to use jam of our choosing.

How to pick a jam? Find one that tastes great and has approximately 1/4 cup remaining! The winner:

The sign of a successful week of baking: an empty jam jar!

cook's notes:

- because my jam was thick, there were a few little clumps of jam after the dough was mixed. These became bits of jam surprise in the cookies.

- I used a small disher that I found in J.D.E.'s baking drawer. I also used her pastry bag tips, bench scraper, and silpat mat. Hmm, the Dorie book that I bake from is hers as well. Thanks, kid! I'm not sure which number disher it is, but I leveled the dough and got exactly 45 cookies. The dough was a little thick and sticky.

- I meant to put the last cookie sheet-full in the fridge before baking, to see if baking chilled cookies would keep them more spherical, but I forgot.


the verdict:

Straight from the oven, they were pillow-y little balls of buttery goodness, reminiscent of snowball cookies, but with a jammy edge instead of a nutty one. I bet they'd be nice dusted with powdered sugar. They were also good at room temperature and after being frozen (and thawed!).

They're not a "sexy" cookie, but appealing and attractive in their own right. Every time I put them out they just disappeared from the plate. There are the cookies you date and the ones you bring home to Mother. These would pass the Mom test!

{TWD} Linzer Sablé Cookies

The TWD bakers have received a wonderful Christmas gift: three of the five December recipes are cookies, and fairly straightforward ones at that. I mean, when the hottest issue in the week's P&Q is how many cookies the recipe yields, and how thin to roll the dough, you know it's a breeze! Thanks to Dennis from Living The Life for choosing this festive and delicious (and easy!) recipe.

Linzer tortes are typically made with raspberries, and they're really delicious. I was excited about making these. So I marshaled my collection of jams:

Hard to believe, there was not a jar of red raspberry anywhere in the lot. Dorie says apricot is an alternative, but I have no apricot jam either, a fact which led me to use grapefruit marmalade in the rugelach a few weeks ago. (By the way, see S-dog in the background? Doesn't he look like he's up to no good?)

Lacking Dorie's preferred jam varieties, I chose three substitute jams for my cookies: Seedless Black Raspberry, Cloudberry (a distant cousin of raspberry apparently)[edit: I bought the Cloudberry Preserves at IKEA], and a little bit of Four Fruit that was left in the jar when I finished making the Buttery Jam Cookies (which will be the subject of a TWD post coming in a week or two. Yes, it was a little confusing making, photographing, and taking notes on two kinds of jam-related cookies at the same time.)

These vintage aspic and hors d'oeuvres cutters are from the 50's or 60's, when people ate aspic regularly, and I guess cut it into tiny decorative pieces.

I had visions of using these mini-cutters for decorative windows in the middles of plain circular cookies. But my 1980's biscuit cutter set (from my early matrimony days) is missing the 2" cutter. So instead I used a 2" star cutter and a slightly larger scallop cutter.


I also used my 2.5" biscuit cutter and tiny angel and star cutters for the windows (those cookies are the ones at the beginning of this post).

cook's notes

- the dough warms up very fast. Especially if you forget to cut out the middles until your cookies are already in the oven.

- I rolled the dough slightly thicker than 1/8". After rerolling the scraps, I ended up with 20 or 21 sandwiches and the little cut out middles as tiny cookies.

- My cookies were done around 7 minutes.

- You can successfully cut window in the cookies right after you take them out of the oven, in case you forgot one.

- The longer you boil your jam, the thicker it will end up when cooled (even 30 more seconds in the microwave will make a huge difference.)

the verdict:

These cookies are really delicious. The almond-y dough is perfect with jam. A.L.E. and I enjoyed sampling the various jam and shape combinations. They're all quite good, I'm happy to report! The rest are going into the freezer for Christmas uses.

The tiny cutout cookies were perfect for a doll's tea party. I thought I'd treat Mr. Teddy, who always sits patiently in the room next to the kitchen.

I'll bet you can guess what happened right after I took this photo! Luckily, Mr. Teddy didn't mind sharing his cookies with S-dog.

If you want to bake these for youself, you can find the recipe on Dennis' post, or on page 134 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours. For further baking fun, check out the Tuesdays With Dorie blogroll and click on the blogs of 359 other bakers to see what they're baking up.

{Note: I'm celebrating my first 100 blog posts with a cookbook giveaway - to enter, go here and leave a comment before December 3}

{TWD} Mix and Match Rugelach

To me, rugelach is a perfect TWD choice. I've never made it before, and it's a slightly more involved recipe than I would choose on my own. At the same time it is a classic baked good, and and interesting one that's nice to have in the arsenal. Dorie tells a lovely story about how she learned the recipe from her mother-in-law, although she has significantly changed the filling ingredients. Dorie's version sounded quite appealing.

I wasn't too sure about the chocolate in these, however. I DO LOVE chocolate, but not really mixed in with dried fruit and nuts (which is part of the problem I had with all those cookies we baked a month or two ago). But I really do like fruit and nuts. I figured it would be easy enough to bake some with and some without the chocolate since it's just sprinkled on at the end.

cook's notes:

- I used 4.7 oz to equal 1 cup flour

- filling variations
I made half a batch following Dorie's recipe pretty closely. For half of these, I used chocolate and the other half I used a second kind of dried fruit.
1. grapefruit marmalade with cinnamon sugar and also with
--- pecans
--- dried sour cherries
--- and mini semisweet chips or currants

For the other half batch, I used wonderful fig preserves that were left from my daughter J.D.E.:
2. orange fig spread with walnuts with a tiny sprinkling of brown sugar and also
--- with and without currants

- I usually roll out dough on top of a silicone mat. I did that with the first disc, then realized that I was going to be cutting with a sharp knife. Uh oh, I have a slit in my other mat from a previous bout with a knife, and didn't want to slice this mat. I cut really carefully, and the mat was fine. With the second disc, I just rolled on the counter.

Grapefruit marmalade + pecans + dried cherries. With chocolate mini chips on the left and currants on the right.

- My rolled dough wasn't very circular, but it didn't affect the cookies since the wedges were so narrow. Some them were a little fatter rolled up than the others.

- After choosing the prettiest 6 to bake (1 of each variation and 2 extra), I labeled and wrapped the rest of the cookies, and put them in the freezer.

- I was so excited to have rolled my rugelach successfully that I pulled the cookie sheets out of the fridge and popped them right into the oven. Then I sat down to read the P&Q and saw Amanda's comment about decorating sugar. Oops! I had totally forgotten the egg wash and the sugar (although I had it all ready on the counter...) So I had to dig the carefully packed rugelach out of the freezer, pull out 4 more, prepare and bake them properly. All the while keeping track of the different flavors.

- Since I only baked off a few, I didn't want to waste a whole egg for the glaze. I poured a small quantity of Eggbeaters in a ramekin and mixed with a few drops of water. Some rugelach recipes call for a milk wash.

With and without the egg wash + sugar. It made a huge difference in the appearance and the taste of the cookies.

- I sprinkled the tops with demarara cane sugar.

the verdict

My, my, these cookies are beautiful, in a "did I really make that?" way. And SO GOOD! I baked them in the evening, but waited until the morning to photograph. I finally got to taste them for breakfast. I saved the rest for my husband (who also thought they were great). Boy am I glad I only baked a few! I plan to bake the remaining cookies for book club on Thursday evening.

The crust was light and flaky, and the egg wash + sugar added a crunchy finishing touch. I love that they're not too sweet; in fact our favorite is the grapefruit/pecan/cherry/currant. The ones with the tiny bit of chocolate were also good - the semisweet chocolate mellowed the bitterness of the grapefruit. And, actually, the fig ones were tasty. The fig spread was plenty sweet, and I'm glad I didn't add much sugar to them. The ones with the nuts only should have had more nuts - the filling was a little sparse.

A big thanks to Piggy of Piggy’s Cooking Journal for such a fabulous choice this week. The rugelach recipe can be found on pages 150-151 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours, or in Piggy's blog post. Visit the Tuesdays With Dorie blogroll to see how more than 300 TWD bakers baked this recipe!

My schedule for the next 2 weeks is bordering on the crazy, so I'm not sure I'll be able to bake the kugelhopf. If not, I plan to bake it closer to Thanksgiving, and will post it then.

TWD Updates

Just in case you don't obsessively check all of my past TWD posts looking for updates, here's the current status of some of my former TWD efforts:

Pumpkin Muffins
The muffins wore their best game face to the Pumpkin Muffin Taste Challenge at our book group, but were roundly beaten by the darker, denser, oil-based muffins. Of the two variations on Dorie's muffins, the ones with currants were preferred to the plain ones. I forgot to take photos of the big show-down.

Galettes
I made these as minis and froze some of them unbaked for later. My husband loved them, and enjoyed the final one on Sunday. (I had a chocolate cupcake!) I'm sad to see the end of the galettes, but I now know that they do freeze extremely well. Whenever we were ready for a special dessert, I popped one into the oven - still frozen - and added a few minutes to the bake time.

Dimply Plum Cake
This is still my favorite TWD recipe. I've made this cake 8 or 9 times, but never the full recipe. Most often I bake a 2/3 recipe, which serves us for a few breakfasts and a weeknight dessert or two. My favorite combination is pluot/lime zest/cardamom. I've adapted the recipe to make it healthier (but just as delicious), and my final recommendations can be found at the end of this update post. The weirdest thing is that the fruit only got "jammy" - as Dorie describes it - once, and boy, was that delicious.

Chocolate Chocolate cupcakes.
After baking and photographing these, I sampled one and put the rest immediately into the freezer. Last Thursday I pulled them out and brought them to book club, where they made a big hit. They went from very good to amazing! The fine, dense crumb got softer and very deeply chocolate in flavor, and the ganache was firm and fudgey. I have to say the mocha filling was a really good complement.

Biscotti
I finished the last of the cherry biscotti yesterday. I love that these cookies aren't fazed by staleness.