Grandma's Kitchen Table

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking Chez Moi - Cranberry Crackle Tart

       The second recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie is Cranberry Crackle Tart, found on pages 135-137 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi book.  Dorie has also published this recipe on her website, so you can click here to get this week's recipe from her.  

       Ingredient list:  for the sweet tart dough (flour, powdered sugar, salt, unsalted butter, and egg yolk), for the filling (jam, egg white, salt, sugar, cranberries), for the optional topping (powdered sugar). 

       There are just two of us here now that the boys are off at college and such, so I have been learning the art of making "mini" or smaller portions of desserts.  I first started experimenting with this when I was doing the first round of TWD Baking From My Home To Yours and found that Dorie's recipes have always worked for me when I reduced them by halves or thirds or even fourths.  I manage to get good results every time, which is not always the case with reducing recipes. So, kudos to Dorie for that. 

       For this recipe, I chose to make it in a 6" tart pan (for which I used a third of the dough recipe and a half of the filling recipe).  This half-size baked in the oven for about the same amount of time, about 10 minutes less than stated in the recipe. 

       The recipe was easy to follow and execute and the results were delicious (a nice tart/sweet sensation with the unsweetened cranberries and the sugar in the recipe).  It was also very pretty, always a plus in my book...I'm all about the cute in food. The cranberries make it perfect for Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Would I make this recipe again?  Absolutely, definitely a keeper.

       Check around with the other bakers this week and see how they did with the recipe this week.  The blogroll can be found here.  

        Come and bake with us from Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi cookbook:  the December assignments are as follows.  December 9  - The Rugelach That Won Over France, page 30, and December 23 - Gingerbread Buche de Noel, page 86.  Since there is an extra Tuesday in December, the group will use that Tuesday (December 30) to Rewind (the opportunity to make up a missed recipe) or bake another recipe from another of Dorie's baking books or just take the week off.  The Tuesdays with Dorie group information for joining the group, recipe selection, and general information can be found here.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking Chez Moi - Palets de Dames Lille Style

       When I started baking with the original Tuesdays with Dorie group in 2008, my intention was to learn how to bake for my family as the most I could manage on my own over the years had been boxed brownies or cake and a half dozen cookie recipes from scratch, that was it.  Over the course of those four years I learned how to bake things I never thought I would ever learn how to bake.  I learned more than I can ever recount.  I also made baking friends who remain friends to this day...those weekly baking sessions saw us through birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, children's births, deaths, graduations, holidays, vacations, some scary times, some growing times, but most all happy wonderful times that we all shared with one another in the course of baking together week after week for four years.  We became a baking family.  So, without further reminiscing, I will just say, "We're BACK!!"  Not all of us, and some are new friends to meet and come to know, but I can't describe how happy I am to be baking with old friends gathered around Dorie's latest baking book, Baking Chez Moi:  Recipes from My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere.  I can't help wondering what the next years of baking together will bring for all of us...I have missed everyone dearly, it's good to be back.

       The first recipe for this round of Tuesdays with Dorie is Palets de Dames Lille Style, found on pages 272-274 of the Baking Chez Moi book.   Ingredient list:  butter, sugar, salt, eggs, vanilla, flour, confectioner's sugar, milk, and lemon juice.  You probably have all these in your pantry at any given moment. 

       The recipe goes together very easily and the dough is wonderful to work with...that said I had a mixed batch of results with this recipe.  The taste and texture were wonderful but I had a bit of a difficult time with the baking process.  Some of my cookies spread out into an unsightly mess (yes, I chilled the dough), some were not spreading at all, and some were the proverbial "just right."  I chose some of those to photo.  The others were happily eaten with nary a complaint, all tasted buttery and sugary with a bit of lemon in the icing.  What's not to love about all that in a cookie? 

       Will this particular recipe be a repeat?  Possibly yes from flavor standpoint, but I do need to figure out the inconsistencies I had in baking...in all fairness I am operating with a new-to-me oven and that could possibly be the culprit.  Check around with the other bakers this week and see how they did.  The blogroll can be found here.  

        Come and bake with us, the next assignment:  November 25  - Cranberry Crackle Tart, pages 135-137.    The Tuesdays with Dorie group information for joining the group, recipe selection, and general information can be found here.