Pretty Girl Bakery

This week’s recipe Twofer Pie was chosen by Vibi of La casserole carrée, and can be found on page 321 of Baking:  From My Home to Yours. It’s the love child of pumpkin and pecan pie and I personally would rather call it Pumpcan Pie. I thought this was delicious.  I don’t think I’d substitute it in for pumpkin pie and you’d be hard pressed to find me making a pecan pie on my own accord, but this was snazzy. I made little tartlets using my cupcake pan.  And I’ll admit I just used a storebought crust.  Things here have been crazy and I just didn’t want to mess with crust. I used a three inch circle cutter to cut out the dough and then I pressed it in, filled and put them in the oven.  I did 10 minutes at 450 and then 20 at 300.  It could have used another 10 minutes at 300 because the filling is very wet and not firm but I don’t really think anyone can tell. hah! And now I am very tired from a long week so I’m calling it quits.  Enjoy the picture and I hope you enjoyed your pie!  HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

On page 21 of Baking: From my home to yours, Dorie has a recipe for a Basic Biscuit and how manipulate the recipe for buttermilk biscuits.  I had buttermilk left over from the Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes. These were amazing and smelled especially great while in the oven.  I did freeze most of them and when baked they didn’t puff up quite a bit as the fresh ones but still had a great taste and texture to them.

buttermilk biscuits

The holiday baking season is here, along with some November birthdays.  J went to LA for the weekend to take care of some business and my best friend is turning 25 on Saturday so I whipped up a batch of the Chocolate Chunkers.  I’ve been dying to make them since it was one of the first recipes I witnessed in the making when I was deciding if I should participate in the group or not.  I don’t have too much to say about making these.  I didn’t use nuts or fruit, just bittersweet chunks and white chocolate.  I think next time I’ll pull back on the white chocolate, or use peanut butter or butterscotch chips.  I ate one warm and it was delicious.  They’re also damn good straight from the freezer:-)

This week’s TWD is the Black and White Arborio Rice Puddings and it’s being hosted by Isabelle. I did not particpate this week.  I do love rice pudding, however, I don’t know anyone else in this city who likes it and while I certainly can eat it all by myself it’s not so good for the figure. At the moment my figure is described as sack of potatoes… certainly I don’t need to be sack of rice and potatoes.

Things around here have been crazy which is why I haven’t posted since the Rugelach.  I’ve definitely been in the kitchen and have stuff to post, but I haven’t been around on the weekends to get to it.  Last weekend J and I were in Florida for the Space Shuttle Launch which was really amazing, and then we went to the Magic Kingdom on Saturday.  We had an early early flight home on Sunday and I still feel exhausted from it all.  This weekend though I hope to spend the majority of it in the kitchen.  I’m definitely making next week’s recipe, and I need to start making cookie dough so I can freeze it and bring it out when Christmas gets closer.  I really want to do cookie baskets as gifts.  Speaking of on Serious Eats this morning I saw a discussion about Mailable Holiday Food Gifts.  I thought the list was pretty good.  Also someone suggested using marshmallows as padding for anything that’s not tightly packed and breakable.

This week’s TWD is hosted by Grace over at Piggy’s Cooking Journal. She picked rugelach and wow, this was just entirely delightful to make. After a little wikipedia search I found that this is a Jewish dessert usually made with pareve to make it kosher, instead of cream cheese and butter.  I certainly don’t have any pareve and I can attest that the rested raw dough was really yummy, especially if you accidentally dropped some of it in the cinnamon sugar repeatedly while putting the cookies together.  I have the tiniest food processor ever and it was a cheap-o purchase so I was a little concerned about the dough.  I don’t think I overworked it.  It rolled out smooth and tasty.  Much to my dismay Target did not have any apricot preserves and I’d already done my shopping at Publix so raspberry it was.  I spread the jam, chopped up some bittersweet chips and sprinkled chop pecans all over it. My pizza wheel was a real jem although a few times it got caught on a nut or a chip and ripped the dough slightly while I was trying to cut through it.  Then I rolled them up, put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and placed them in the freezer.  My apartment gets unbelievably warm when I turn my gas oven on.  And it was already 10pm last night and I was exhausted so they are in the freezer and I will bake up a few tonight, and save the rest for those nights when I’ve popped dinner in the oven and can add a little snack to go with.  I’m still timid about the pecans because I don’t really like nuts but the bits of ingredients I was getting on my fingers were delightful… and yes, I licked the pizza wheel.  I will definitely make these again.  These seem like such a good holiday cookie.  For Christmas I’m thinking about a nutella spread with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips. There are so many things you could do with this dough including using it as a base for meat or vegetable hors d’oeuvres.

ready for their close up!

About three weeks ago J’s mom was in town and J was making pad thai for dinner.  I wanted to make a nice dessert to go along with it and I had all of the ingredients since my caramel peanut brownie disaster, and thought that this would be nice after a spicy peanutty dish. I adored the picture of the tart of page 356 and I had just bought a 9 inch tart pan at IKEA a few weeks back so when I got home early that day I broke out my bake box and got started.  Dorie recommends using the Sweet Tart Dough of page 444 and it was buttery and delicious. If you make this you need to make sure to definitely bake it until it’s done. I think mine took about 40-45 to bake and get the edges slightly crisp.  In her recipe for the caramel she says to add the butter after the caramel comes to a deep amber color but I found that by the time mine got to that point it already tasted a little bitter and I still needed to cook it longer to add the butter and the cream. I should have added the butter and cream when the caramel reached a warm amber color.  I found the caramel tasted like those Werther’s candies at that stage.  My other suggestion for making this is to not add the peanuts to the caramel but rather spread the caramel and then sprinkle the peanuts on top before pouring the ganache.  It makes it very easy to spread instead of getting the spatula hung up on clumps of peanuts.  The next time I make this I’d use semi-sweet instead of bittersweet chocolate, and add macadamia nuts instead of the peanuts.