Monday, August 20, 2012

Tuesdays With Dorie : Popovers


Today's recipe is Popovers.. According to Wikipedia "The popover is an American version of Yorkshire pudding and similar batter puddings made in England since the 17th century,[2] though it has evolved considerably.[3]It is selected for this month to honor Marion Cunningham, who contributed this recipe to Baking With Julia and has died in July 2012.. I had never eaten or seen these crispy outside hollow inside eggy bread before trying this recipe.. That is why, I don't know whether mine ended up being a good one or not..

I like that the recipe is as easy as it gets with the ingredients one always has at home.. You mix all-purpose flour, melted butter, salt, milk and eggs in a blender (I used food processor) and pour the batter into muffin or custard cups.. Then, bake at high temperature until they are puffed, browned and crisp at the exterior, and decrease the temperature and bake a bit more to dry the interior.. And they are ready to eat as soon as they come out of the oven.. My only problem with the recipe was the baking times mentioned in the book.. Although I took them out of the oven before the mentioned baking time was finished, mine were still over baked.. If I bake these again I will decrease the baking times for both temperatures..

They do not have any particular flavour.. I enjoyed my popovers with feta and honey right after I took the above picture.. The exterior was very crispy and inside was empty with some stringy dough right under the crust.. I don't know if it was supposed to be like that or is it because mine were over baked.. The book says the inside should be custardy, mine definitely was not..

If you would like to try this very easy recipe, please visit the blogs' of this week's hosts: Vintage Kitchen Notes and Bake With Amy.. Or buy the book Baking With Julia..

Thanks for stopping by..

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Tuesdays With Dorie : Plum Galette

 

This time I am late posting my Tuesdays With Dorie (TWD) recipe.. We usually post these recipes on every other Tuesday and today is not one of those Tuesdays.. I have been eating a lot lately, and making a new dessert when there was no one else around to share it with me did not sound right prior to post date, so I postponed baking this beautiful galette when we were having guests for dinner.. And also, the original recipe is called Berry Galette and I replaced the berries with red plums because I love them and also because I had my eye on this gorgeous one made by Cafe Fernando - one of my favourite blogs - for a while.. So I combined 2 recipes, used the galette dough from Baking With Julia (BWJ) and used the filling part from Cafe Fernando.. The result was light and delicious.. Perfect summer dessert.. 

The galette dough is very easy to put together with the simplest of ingredients: all-purpose flour, cornmeal, butter, yoghurt (you can use sour cream or buttermilk instead), iced water, salt and sugar.. The tricky part is rolling out the dough.. Mine was very sticky although I chilled it overnight in the fridge, and it took me couple of rounds of freezer in/out to be able to continue rolling it to the size the book asked for.. Once it is rolled out to an 11 inch circle, I sprinkled the base with 1 tablespoon of sugar and I placed slices of plums in circles, trying to imitate the galette at Cafe Fernando's website.. I replaced the honey drizzled on top in BWJ recipe with 1 tablespoon sugar.. Folded the sides up.. Put pieces of butter (1tbsp total) on top as called in the original recipe and brushed the sides with water.. And baked until done around 35 minutes..

I was very happy with the result.. The crust is light, crunchy and tasty, and the filling is delicious plums sweetened just a a touch with only 2 tablespoons of sugar.. The end dessert is light and tasty, with a slight crunch from the corn meal - and also beautiful to look at.. I cut it with pizza cutter and served it with vanilla bean ice cream.. Everyone enjoyed it very much.. I will bake it again for sure, hoping that the dough will be nicer to me next time :)

If you would like to give this recipe a try, you can find it at the blogs of last week's hosts: Tomato Thymes in the Kitchen and Garden and The Kitchen Lioness.. Or refer to the book Baking With Julia..


Thanks for stopping by.. See you next week with Popovers..