Mocha Brownie Cake - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 53rd installment. The recipe is Mocha Brownie Cake.

We all needed a chocolate fix, to help combat the feeling of endless winter (why was it still in the teens today?!), and this was just the thing.  It is very rich and densely chocolatey.  Everything went according to the recipe - I did bake it closer to the shorter time listed, to keep it more moist and brownie like.  It puffed up, and then collapsed a bit after cooling:

Puffed up right out of the oven...

Collapsed as it cooled

Interior surface after cutting the layers

It has a lot of chocolate - 12 oz. in the ganache alone.  This recipe needs a lot of time, with chilling the cake, cooling the ganache until it is the right consistency, and then chilling the assembled cake.  It's a good thing the directions call for the cake to chill before you cut it - it was challenging to cut in three equal layers, but the chilling firms it up and makes that easier.  It really was like a brownie in texture. The ganache could maybe be a bit stronger in coffee flavor to make it truly mocha.

Buttermilk Scones - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 52nd installment. The recipe is Buttermilk Scones.

Check out my Union Jack tea cosy...

These were delicious!  I would definitely turn to this recipe again in the future - the recipe was easy, and they turned out great.  I loved the slightly airy quality of the baked scones - they were not at all dry or dense.

I followed the recipe (more or less) and made half of the scones as triangles, and half as a filled roll.  I mixed raspberry jam with dried blueberries for the filling, and then sprinkled sliced almonds on some of the spirals before baking.    The roll was kind of difficult to roll - it was more like a fold rather than a roll (maybe I should have patted it out more thinly?).  I've made many scones over the year, and this recipe is definitely on the rich side, so more of a special occasion than an every day scone.

Before baking

Berrry scones after baking

Chocolate Mascarpone Cheesecake - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 51st installment. The recipe is Chocolate Mascarpone Cheesecake.

Wow!  This was amazingly good, and not very difficult at all.  The family raved about it - we had it for our Valentine's Day dessert.  Talk about rich...cream cheese, sour cream, mascarpone cheese (why do we all seem to pronounce it 'marscapone'? :-)

After baking, before cooling

I followed the directions and it all went as described. I baked it in the evening, let it cool overnight, and then took it out of the pan in the morning.  I was glad I read ahead to see that it needed to cool completely and then chill completely after unmolding - it needs plenty of time for all that before serving.
It was interesting that the recipe has you bake the cake without any crust, flip over the unmolded cake, press the cookie crumbs onto the bottom, and then flip that onto the plate.  I used chocolate wafer crumbs.  The bottom was very loose because it was just crumbs, rather than a crumb crust.  We ended up liking that, and it kept it simple.  I always think of cheesecake as a big deal to bake, but this has me thinking I might make it more often in the future.   This is definitely a recipe I will make again.

Onion Bialys - TWD: Baking with Julia

 Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 50th installment. The recipe is Onion Bialys.

  

 

This recipe was very straightforward, and we liked the results a lot.  I was happy that I could start it in the early morning and still have it ready before noon - often breakfast yeast breads create a scenario where you're mixing them up the night before. We split and ate them with smoked salmon, cream cheese, capers and onions (yum!)

I used bread flour, and my pizza stone for baking - great crust.  The second batch baked quite quickly - the stone seems to get hotter as time goes on.

 With all that yeast in the dough, it had no problem rising.

These are the onion-topped rounds before baking - I am still wondering if they would be better if given a chance to rise before baking.  It would also be good if the recipe provided direction on what size circles to make - I think I may have stretched mine a bit thinner than was ideal. 





I sliced and froze the leftovers at the end of the day, as suggested by the recipe. We have since then pulled out a couple of them and toasted them in the toaster - they were quite good that way too!

(Someday I will become more proficient at layout of the photos in these blog entries ;-)

Vanilla Chiffon Roll - TWD: Baking with Julia

 Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 49th installment. The recipe is Vanilla Chiffon Roll.

Chocolate walnut mousse!  Candied walnuts!  Soggy cake (?!?).  

This recipe seemed straightforward, and I think I followed it correctly...but something was definitely wrong with the cake.    I thought it was done, and got it out of the pan, spread on the mousse,

and then rolled it up. When I had rolled it up, and then trimmed off the ends, I noticed how dense and soggy it seemed to be.  It was wet, or maybe greasy, rather than cakey.  Possible explanations I came up with: 

1. I took it out of the oven too soon.
2. The layer of non-stick cooking spray (per the recipe) was too heavy and greasy, and it had a bad effect on the cake.

Boo hoo...although the mousse filling was fantastic, and I really liked the candied walnut topping, I actually disliked the cake so much that I threw the leftovers away after we all tried it.   Very disappointing.  Looking foward to seeing how others in the TWD group managed with this....

Country Bread - TWD: Baking with Julia

 Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 48th installment. The recipe is Country Bread.

This bread is great!  It took all day (6 hours for the sponge, and then two rising periods) but we really liked it.  I baked it on the pizza stone, and the crust had a great texture.  The inclusion of some rye in the sponge and whole wheat in both the sponge and the dough give it a good flavor.  The directions were clear and easy to follow.  I did wonder if it needed to rise in a flour-covered towel inside a colander, but it did make the loaf a nice round shape.

The salt-free dough

This recipe had so much potential, I made it twice, in an effort to get it right. The first time around, I forgot to include the tablespoon of salt that goes into the dough when you mix flour into the sponge.  I never knew how essential salt is to the taste of bread - it was tasteless.   I really wondered why the dough exploded out of the bowl when it rose, but I have read that salt counterbalances the yeast, keeping the yeast growth under control, so maybe that's the explanation.  The loaf rose and baked just fine, but alas, needed a thick layer of salted butter in order to make it taste like anything.  Even without the salt, the texture and crust of the loaf was quite good - it looked amazing, but just didn't have any taste. 

 

 

I refused to be defeated, and tried again, and was glad I did, because it's definitely a recipe I will prepare again.

The salt-free loaf

Gingersnaps - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 47th installment. The recipe is Gingersnaps.

Mmmm...ginger...something to cut through the fog of holiday preparations and food overload.  I had made these once before, because I had notes in my cookbook about the dough being soft and rather fragile, but I have no recollection of actually cooking them! (got to start putting dates on these notes...)

I'm glad I reviewed the advice on Tuesdays with Dorie from people who had already prepared this recipe, and increased the spices - I quadrupled the ginger and doubled the cinnamon.  These cookies are very tasty, although the dough was not easy to work with - I used a lot of flour on the board, and still some of the cutouts wouldn't really come up without getting smushed.  The dough didn't firm up much despite a couple of hours in the refrigerator.  I put the scraps of dough back into the fridge to see if prolonged chilling will help with this.  I was interested that the recipe included water - not usually a cookie ingredient.

The recipe was simple, and easy to mix up. As stated in the recipe, they didn't spread much on the cookie sheet, which is nice because I could bake many at once and they kept their shape:

I'm not sure about the molasses glaze - maybe it's not necessary. I will try the later batch without it to see if I notice any flavor difference.