TWD Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart

Oh Tuesdays with Dorie, sometimes I have a love-hate relationship with you. For starters, it sucks when I do not have one of the appliances required to bake you. It also sucks when I spend too much time on my day off fretting over your completion. Yet you also challenge me to try new things and I am very grateful for that. And, in most cases, the final product is so yummy I tend to forget about the previously mentioned problems!

This week I have not forgotten about one of my problems though! The thing is, I need a food processor. This is just silly. I had to have my mum bring hers this weekend when she was visiting just so I could make the tart! I was going to wait for Christmas but since last week I made Caroline do the recipe for the same reason, I think it is time I suck it up and just buy one. Perhaps this one?

Anyways, on t0 the tart! Thanks to Carla of Chocolate Moosey for picking this weeks recipe. I love caramel and I thought this recipe looked great but of course due to the aforementioned food processor issue, I would not have chosen to do this one without a little nudge! I just had a piece and I must say, not bad for my first try! I think the crust got a little overcooked but it still tasted yummy and would make a nice dessert for a dinner party or something.

That’s all from me for this post! Happy baking:)

Chocolate chip cookies

I’m back! I had a great two weeks in the UK to celebrate finishing my internship and I am happy to say I returned to Canada a fully licensed pharmacist! It appears I have some catching up to do with all the baking Caroline has been doing so I figured I should get started. Even though the last thing I need to do is eat more sweets after two weeks of over-indulging:)

Part of my trip was spent with my friend Sarah who gave me a new cookbook for my birthday. The Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, is from a well-known bakery in London and though I didn’t make it there, Sarah says it is pretty yummy. So I figured what better way to start up the baking then to try a recipe from the book. The bf was working on Sunday and hadn’t been feeling well so I figured a batch of chocolate chip cookies might help to make him feel better!

fresh from the oven (sorry for the darkness, it was a little late)

These cookies were quick to make and made a lot of cookies! They are a thicker cookie compared to the AH chocolate chip cookies made in a previous post. Since I am a chewy cookie person I quite enjoyed these tasty morsels. The bf also enjoyed them and I sent them all home with him to avoid too much temptation.

The Hummingbird Bakery chocolate chip cookies

from The Humming Bakery Cookbook

225 g unsalted butter, at room temp
350 g light brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
400 g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking soda
225 g chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Put butter and sugar in stand mixer (or use handheld mixer) and cream until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mix well scraping sides of bowl after each addition. Lower speed to low speed and beat in vanilla.

Add flour, salt and baking soda and mix until a smooth dough is formed. Stir in chocolate chips. Arrange dough on baking tray, allowing enough space for spreading of the cookies. bake for about 10 minutes or until golden brown.

The new cookbook!

I am excited to try more recipes from this book but next recipe for me is Tuesdays with Dorie! See you Tuesday:)

Cottage Cheese Pufflets TWD

Pufflets, don’t you just love saying that. “I’m making pufflets” I don’t think you could have a bad time making pufflets even if you wanted to. I was doubly lucky because I made pufflets with my niece. We got to spend the evening together and since I had already made the dough, she was able to help with the cutting and the jamming. We may have lost a little in presentation but we had a blast making them.

These pufflets were pretty darn tasty. I am not the biggest pastry person, more of a cake kind of a girl but I dug these treats. I am thinking a little sweetened cream cheese in the middle would have been good too. For the recipe head over to Jacque’s blog Daisy Lane Cakes. You are all probably looking for a little change so don’t worry next week’s TWD will be courtesy of Claire, she is back from vacation and ready to bake!

Banana Bread instead of Flaky Apple Turnovers

Claire is off on vacation these days and my life has been a little wild. Thus, no TWD this week (Head on over to Someone’s in the Kitchen for apple turnovers). Here is some healthier banana bread instead.

I went to London to visit some friends over the Labour Day weekend. I wanted to bring some baking and since I had some banana’s lying around I decided to make banana bread. I like making loafs because they look so nice and  because I am never tempted to break into them (it would look pretty lame to show up with a loaf that was missing a few slices). That being said, since I didn’t make one for me,  I felt  a little bad when a friend and I stopped by my apartment and I had nothing for him. He complimented me on the smell and I told him to keep his paws off. Poor thing.

In talking to some of our readers  I realized that some of you would be interested in healthier choices, not something we really specialize in here at Bake with Us. I went over to Cooking Light and came up with this recipe for banana bread. I did get to try the bread and I can tell you it is pretty tasty, a nice addition to my banana repetoire. So this one is for those of you who are looking to eat a slightly healthier treat, enjoy!

Cornflake Crispies

This past weekend I had a date with my niece for our first auntie/niece baking event. We talked about it for a few weeks and although she was excited to come, she wouldn’t come with out her momma. This worked to our advantage though as it meant that we had our own personal photographer.

A baker in training, it's advisable to run before baking, allows you to eat more

I decided that our foray into baking should involve chocolate but it needed to be easy. I settled on cornflake crispies. These are a personal favorite of mine. I used to work down the street from a Scottish bakery, Rising Dough. Before going home for any family event I would stop off and load up on treats: cornflake crispies, empire cookies, pineapple creams, plain bread etc. These treats reminded us of Ireland and made us all happy. Since I don’t live near the bakery anymore, it was high time I made these myself and they seemed like a perfect treat to make with a 3 year old.

Cornflake Crispies (from How to be a Domestic Goddess)

100 g milk chocolate
25 g butter
1 tsp golden syrup
50 g cornflakes

Melt the chocolate and the butter, using a double boiler or the microwave. Stir in the golden syrup (you can use corn syrup if you don’t have any Lyle’s) and then mix in the cornflakes. Spoon them into a mini-muffin tins and place in fridge set. If you want to make adult sized crispies, double the recipe and put them into regular sized muffin tins.

The princess needed to take a break, good thing she had a lady in waiting.

Chocolate Souffle TWD

Let me just start by saying that I had an amazing Labour Day weekend. It was filled with long visits with friends, baking, and family time. There was an unexpected sleep over and lots of great conversation, what more could a girl ask for?

So let’s get down to business, the chocolate souffle. The thing with this recipe is that when you tell people you are making a souffle they respond with “oh isn’t that hard?” This annoys me because I find if I go into something thinking it will be hard, then it will be. I find if I am a little more positive it won’t be so bad. I decided I wasn’t going to get into a flap about this and if it bombed (like the floating islands did) then I would learn something and move on.

I made the souffle in London with Lisa (of the recently married fame). She is game for anything so she agreed to join in the fun. After an emergency run to the grocery store, we were off to the races. All in all it really wasn’t that big of a deal. I was confused about the folding in of the egg whites. It seemed to me they took a bit of beating during the mixing in process. We also ran  into some trouble with Lisa’s oven. She hasn’t lived in her apartment for too long and apparently her oven runs a bit hot. So hot in fact that the souffle was “well done.” Never ones to let chocolate go to waste we dug in anyways.

So here is the deal with the photos. I left my memory card in London so Lisa’s husband emailed me a couple. I had one that didn’t feature the “well done-ness” of the souffle and I thought I would be able to hide the truth from you. However, he didn’t send that one, thus, here you have our, truth be told, burnt souffle (ducking head in embarrassment).  Why oh why didn’t I add the icing sugar?

Evidence of Burnt Souffle (It did taste ok though, trust)

Despite being burn, the souffle didn’t flop when we took it out of the oven and we ate a lovely light fluffy, albeit, somewhat “well done” dessert. I think it would have been nice with caramel sauce, but I want to add caramel to everything.

Thanks to Susan of She’s Becoming DoughMessTic for selecting this recipe and getting me on the souffle bandwagon. I am not afraid, I will try this again!

Lily Grace checking out the recipe

Armenian Orange Cake

Remember how I shared with you the lemon tarts I made up in Smithers? Well here is another yummy treat I made while I was there.  I somehow managed to mangle this recipe completely.  I think it was the pressure, once people know I have a baking blog I seem to choke a little, ugg. So I messed up the sugar and I didn’t read the instructions and added the nuts in the cake rather than on top. I actually prefer the integrated nuts (as opposed to putting them on top of the cake) and highly recommend it. I made one without nuts and it was delicious as well (let’s face it I am not a nut person so when I can avoid them I do).

What I dig about this cake is the fact that you get two different textures out of one mixture. It is like making a square but in a cake format without having to bake two layers. Basically you use part of the recipe to make a crumb base and then you add more wet ingredients to get the cake bit. Go check it out and if you have any other recipes similar to this let me know.

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Armenian Orange Cake

This is another Best of Bridge recipe and it is available on their website. I have a Best of Bridge cookbook but haven’t used it for a while. I am inspired to peruse mine after these two great successes.

Espresso Cheesecake brownies TWD

So those of you who follow our little blog regularly would know that Claire usually always makes the brownies. This has never been done purposely but that’s the way it has worked out. I decided it was high time that I take on a Dorie brownie and seriously, chocolate, cream cheese and coffee, what’s not to love about this?

I made some September resolutions. (I work in a college so to me the beginning of the year is actually September, plus it seems like maybe it’s easier to keep September resolutions as compared to New Year’s ones).  These include making my coffee at home (cheaper and tastier), making more dinners (cheaper and tastier) and baking my TWD any day other than Tuesday night (perhaps cheaper and tastier, certainly less rushed). So this weekend I was in Waterloo, hanging with the girls and (and Chris) and I figured it was the perfect chance to start my resolutions.

 

Espresso Cheesecake Brownie in Pam's backyard

These brownies were a resounding success. We had a “no-coffee” drinker and a “not a big sweets” guy and they both dug these brownies.  I loved them, I think cream cheese brownies are my favorite and the mocha flavor rocked. We decided not to put the sour cream glaze on because a) Kristin does not like sour cream and b) we just wanted to eat them ASAP. Thanks so much to Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell for picking this recipe. Head on over to her blog to get the recipe and to drool over her amazing looking treats. To see how other TWD bakers rocked out the brownies go Tuesdays With Dorie, no doubt you will find a new blog to follow.