TWD: Cheese&Tomato (and Asparagus) Galette

Cheese and Tomato are fine, but asparagus is (still) in season and during this time of the year I could live from just asparagus and strawberries! So I made some changes and turned this galette into a cheese-tomato-aparagus galette.

Honestly, I did not only make some small changes but many bigger ones. But I think it still counts as a TWD-baking :o]

First, I made mini-galettes. I ended up with 5 pieces. Then I left out the Monterey Jack and spread the galettes with some buffallo ricotta I had left. Instead of fresh tomatos I used dried ones (the soft version), gave some leek and aparagus in small pieces on the dough, spiced it with lemon pepper and tarragon, and finished them with a thin aspargus head.
But hey - that's still a galette with cheese and tomato!!

I liked the dough already very much when we made the berry galette because it's a bit like a tart without tart-problems (like a dough getting to burnt or not enough brown). Here I used polenta, what is more or less the same as cornmeal in the end, but chrunchier.

The taste was just great, even the next day when I brought them to office and me and my colleagues nibbled them away. And I really like recipes that allow a lot of variations.

Try this recipe! It's fast, easy and tasty!

TWD: Savarin

Oh my, I'm definitely loosing track with the group. I'm a bad team-member. In the last weeks I either was on holiday, forgot to bake, forgot to take pics, forgot to blog (or to publish the text...) - or forgot to leave my link. But here we are - hooray!

The Savarin is relatively simple and done quickly. Just two short rising periods. Nevertheless I don't become good friends with this cake. I had to read and re-read and read again how it is assembled. Can it be you more or less just put the "filling" beside the cake? - Yes, it can.

Making the batter is also a bit unconventional for me, as you do not cream butter and sugar at first, but put in the butter last.

I had no ring-mold so I made some improvisation and used a usual spring form and put a small soufflée-form in the middle. That worked pretty well. But the dough did rise quite abit during baking and so I ended up with a too high cake. I split it in the middle, but that neither didn't look right. So I brought the two halves together again, spreading some orange jam inbetween the 'layers' to make them stick together. I am pretty convinced that my cake does not look like a Savarin at all.

The taste is ok, but not special and it was ok to try it, but next time I would prefer to do the Babas, which sound much more interesting! But what do I know. And I am sure the other bakers found wonderful ways to dress this cake up a bit more and turn it into something special!

For the recipe have a look at Dorie Greenspan's book at pp 415-416.

 

TWD: Rhubarb Upside Down Babycakes

To make it short: It's not that I didn't bake in the last weeks. I just either had no time to post or forgot to take pictures. But here we are with 12 very small babycakes and an individual sized cake without the caramel. Both versions turned out great as the cake is very very moisty (I like!) and rhubarb is always a winner when it is in season.

I am just at the airpor, waiting for my flight to NYC, so writing is a bit of a horror, so I leave you with some pics.

TWD: Rustic Potato Loaves

Pfew, long time no blog...

During Lenten Season I eat no sweets and unfortunately I am not able to bake and NOT taste it, so I had to stay away from following the club for some weeks... but I missed almost nothing as I catched up with the cookies (see below).

As I am a bit out of routine, it is alreday Wednesday where I live (in Vienna, Austria) - but in some parts of the US it is still Tuesday (at least in Hawaii ;o]), so it counts, I say. :o]

The Rustic Potato Loaves are great. For a yeasted bread, they are very quick in the making (only to relatively short rising periods) and really easy. I made them with sweet potatos (I know, that's not the original meaning of "rustic" but I had them at home) and half the batch with dried tomatos and some italian spices. I was wondering if the sweet potatos and the italian version match, but it turned out fine.

I like both versions really a lot and will for sure make this recipe again, with some other variations!

For the recipe, head over to the blog of Dawn: Simply Sweet, who is our host for this week. Or have a look in the book by Dorie Greenspan on p. pg 138.

PS.: Can you see the hidden animal in the left picture? Is it a snale? Or a hen? Or am I the only one who sees it??


PPS.: I catched up with the Mocha Cjocolate Chip Cookies. They turned out great with a mix of bittersweet, bitter and white chocolate and were a great hit at the office. Chocolate cookies are always hard to picture, in my view, so I let you with the image in your head of wonderful, overly rich chocolate cookies :o]

TWD: Boca Negra

Beware of this "cake"! Once you taste it, you will never be able to stop from taking another piece, unless everything is eaten. I'm really not sure if the name "cake" is even allowed for this delight, as it is more or less nothing else than chocolate, butter and sugar. Chocolate-in-cake-shape is maybe a more appropriate term. (but I doubt this name will make it's way ;o])

The Boca Negra is a wonderful chocolate creation. I used about 400g mixed chocolate (200g 75% chocolate, 100g 80% chocolate, 70g Dolfin coffee-chocolate (great chocolate!!) and 30g couverture - just what  had at hand). I found it very exhausting to stir in the butter, as the chocolate-alcohol mix is only slightly warm and cooles fast. After the second piece I was tires, and eight more waited to be included. I put the pot on my induction stove on the lowest level and that helped a little. Still, it takes long time until all the butter dissappears in the chocolate.



Baking time was a bit longer, but my cake-form is also slightly bigger than the recipe asks for, so I used a bit more of everything and the longer baking time did not come as a surprise.

Because I had leftovers, I decorated the Boca Negra with white chocolate flakes. In my view, the cake needs some decoration because the top itself  is not very pretty.

The result is a moist chocolate-"cake". I let it wait in the refrigerator until the next day and similar to chocolate-heavy brownies the texture changes slightly to more fudgy. Great!

The white-chocolate-cream was very good, but I had to beat it after it was could so it gets the consistence as in the picture in the book. Next time, I would use less chocolate because the cream is very, very sweet, alsmost too sweet for my taste, and the cake is sweet enougb for itself.

After all, this was an easy but time-consuming recipe, worth any effort, highly appraised from everybody at the office, a winner, a riskless cake for any occassion, birthday, new years eve, whatsoever. Go to grab the recipe at Cathys blog 'A Frederick Food Garden', who is our host this week, or buy the book by Dorie Greenspan and have a look at pp. 253/254.