Baking with Julia: Blueberry Nectarine Pie

I've totally been slacking off on Baking with Julia, but I did manage to bake one recipe this month. The last recipe for the month is this Blueberry Nectarine Pie. I'm so glad I made it because it was so incredibly good and a great use for all the fresh fruit available right now.

First of all the pie dough is the best I've made in terms of ease of making, flakiness, and taste. In the book there are several ways listed to make the dough; in a food processor, by hand, or by stand mixer. My food processor is too small so usually I make pie dough by hand, which is a pain. However, since this dough gave stand mixer directions I decided to try it and it was so much easier. The dough recipe uses both butter and shortening which I think is the best of both worlds, you get the taste from the butter and the flakiness from the shortening. Plus this recipe made two (double crusted) pies worth of dough so I had enough to freeze for a second pie. 

The filling was (obviously) blueberry and nectarine. You took half the fruit and cooked it with sugar, lemon zest, and flour and then added it to the remaining uncooked fruit. I really liked this method, there were still crisp pieces of nectarine in the filling which I thought was a nice touch.I do think in the future I would have added some breadcrumbs (a la Dorie Greenspan) to the bottom of the crust before adding the filling to soak up some of the juice but other than that I really loved this recipe.

Go visit the hosts for this recipe! 

Manchego's Kitchen

That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Baking with Julia: French Strawberry Cake

This is the part where normally I would show you a photo of a cake, a French Strawberry Cake. Unfortunately, to see that you'll have to go to the blogs of the other bakers in BWJ. Apparently I am just not able to make a genoise cake without screwing it up. I had a similar problem with the batter when we made the Berry Surprise Cake from the Dorie "Baking" book. Somewhere between adding the flour and the butter I made a grievous mistake and deflated the batter. It all seemed fine until it came out of the oven and was about 1/2" inch thick.

Ugh. There was no way it was going to be sliced into three layers. I let and cool and tasted a piece just for posterity's sake and it was just awful. Hard and rubbery. A total waste of eggs, butter, sugar, and flour. Did I mention I was making this for dessert later that night? Instead I tossed the genoise fail, utilized the strawberries, made sweet cream biscuits for shortcakes, and used the heavy cream to make whipped cream. I think my cooking mojo was totally off on Saturday period because I was not happy with the shortcakes either. Dinner was not my best work. I owe my friends who came over a do-over with a better menu. 

Anyway, to go see what this cake should have looked like visit Sophia's Sweets or Think, Love, Sleep, Dine - they hosted this week's recipe and have very nice cakes to see!

Baking with Julia: Lemon Loaf Cake

I skipped the other selection this month but hope to make it soon because it sounded really good. The second selection for this month is Lemon Loaf Cake, hosted by Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life.

Now I'm made a lot of lemon cakes so I'm extra picky. That being said I appreciated the different way this cake was put together but I wasn't a huge fan of the cake myself. It was good, but not my favorite lemon cake. My favorite lemon cake is still this one from Ina Garten. I still enjoyed baking it but I can't say it'll be added to my regular rotation. 

Baking with Julia: Rugelach

This was not my first time making rugelach, waaay back in 2008 the TWD group made rugelach, but the recipe in Julia's book is slightly different. The cream cheese dough is essentially the same: cream cheese, butter, flour, salt, and sugar. After the dough was roughly patted out, it chilled for a few hours before being rolled out and filled.

Julia has recipes in the book for prune or apricot levkar, which I am sure would have been delicious, but I went the cheater route and used apricot pastry filling from the grocery store. The filling was spread on the dough, that was more of a square than a rectangle (I still can't quite get my dough-rolling skills right). On top of that went a mixture of sugar, brown sugar and cinnamon, followed by a layer of coarsely chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts, a few hazelnuts, & pistachios) and topped off with dried cranberries, Mission figs and golden raisins. Unlike the rugelach in Dorie's book, Julia's rugelach recipe calls for you to roll the dough up like a jelly-roll, which was moderately difficult for a dough packed with filling. After the rolling, the dough chilled again, this time overnight (I think you can do as little as four hours or overnight).

The next day I gave the rolls in egg wash, sliced them, dipped the slices into a cinnamon sugar-nut mixture and into the oven they went. I love the finished product, the dough is flaky, the fruit remains moist and the caramelized sugar is delicious. A time-consuming but delicious cookie!  

This week's recipe is hosted by:
The Urban Hiker
My Baking Heart

Baking with Julia: Chocolate Truffle Tart(lets)

I almost didn't bake this one because it felt like it would take a hundred steps (I'm being dramatic) but a) it didn't take that long and b) I'm so glad I made it because it was delicious. 

This recipe is hosted by:

spike.does.stuff

Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats

cookbookhabit

a whisk and a spoon

I just hate making pie and tart dough because I don't have a food processor and I have to do it all by hand. I pressed on though and made the chocolate tart dough. You know something is going to be good when even the dough smells good.

The dough was put together and rested while I did other things. After a 30 minute chill period, I rolled out the dough and lined the tart pan (I made one big tart instead of smaller tarts). There was another chill period for the lined tart pan and then it got to go into the oven.

The filling was actually simple to make, it was kind of like making ganache. There are 8 egg yolks in the filling, which is a lot, but it didn't taste 'eggy' the way some things with lots of eggs do. My only misstep was I forgot biscotti at the store and did not feel like going back out for it. Instead I roughly chopped up a few leftover cookies I had made earlier in the week. I might have baked it a couple of minutes longer than called for just because undercooked yolks in the filling concerned me a little.

The final product was so very good, the texture of the filling is hard to describe appropriately, it's like an airier, pudding but with a crackly, brownie-like top. Definitely worth making the tart dough.

Baking with Julia: White Loaves

It's the first week of Baking with Julia! I'm happy to be back in the groove of semi-weekly baking (BWJ will bake twice a month). I'm also excited to try new techniques and bake things I've never baked before. This week was White Loaves and it was hosted by Laurie and Jules. 

I've made yeasted bread before but I can't recall rolling it out, I think the last recipe I did with yeasted bread was more a 'throw it in the pan' kind of thing. Anyway, I started making this in the early afternoon so I could use the end results for dinner. The beginning was yeast + warm water + sugar and you waited until the mixture got foamy. Then you started adding the seven and a half (yes, seven) cups of flour. My Kitchen-Aid hadn't gotten that much usage in long time. It made some scary noises but hung in there and gave me a beautiful ball of dough. The hardest part, for me at least, was getting the butter all incorporated, I had to do a little manual work for that. I sat the bowl of dough on top of a warm oven for the first rise and it worked really well. When it came time to roll out the dough for the pan, mine was not so professional looking, it was a little lumpy. The second rise was just as good as the first but afterwards I realized that one loaf pan had more dough than the other.

After 35 minutes in the oven, the loaves came out golden brown and very nice looking. The larger loaf was less photogenic than the smaller one but they both tasted great. I used the bread to make BST (bacon, spinach, tomato) sandwiches for dinner. Doug loooved the bread and I was super happy with the results too.