TWD- Chocolate Cream Tart

Kim of Scrumptious Photography decided on Chocolate Cream Tart, for this weeks TWD.   The recipe can be found on pages 352 and 353 of Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

This is a simple chocolate custard/pastry cream topped with just enough cream to cut the intensity of the chocolate.  Dorie called for a chocolate crust but I had some good for everything pie crust just waiting in the freezer so I couldn’t turn that down.  I didn’t sweeten the cream at all and was well pleased.

The chocolate cream is very rich.  I was looking in the pantry for some morello cherries but I must have used them all when I tackled Heston Blumenthals Black Forest Cake.  Ah well, next time.

This is nice but uber rich.  Glad I made it in the mini form.

Now go and check out the TWD blogroll for the other sweet treats out there.

Daring Bakers- Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.  You can find the recipe at Jenny’s blog.

The challenge was to take a basic cheesecake recipe and make it your own.  I had some Darwin limes  (similar to Key limes- they become yellow when ripe and the trees have so many thorns) on the bench and I ended up baking on ANZAC day (a day we remember our soldiers in Australia) so I made my crust using the tradtional ingredients for an ANZAC biscuit.

ANZAC biscuits are made with coconut, oats and golden syrup.  I added that to crushed granita biscuits (a wholemeal biscuit closest to a graham cracker).  I thought about pre baking the crust but just ran with the recipe to see how it went.

I made some minis and had a bit of cheesecake mixture left over so I popped them in silicone muffin cups.  I ate one of them just cooled from the oven and to be honest I prefered that one to the very dense product that it morphed into overnight.

Not sure why I didn’t feel the cheesecake love.  The lime flavour was great.  The toasted coconut gave some texture to what became quite a soggy base, it just became too dense, even in my mini format.  That said I enjoyed the playing around with flavours.

Now the Daring Bakers blogroll is a bit of a work in progress at the moment.  They have updated their site and created a new group called the Daring Cooks.  If you want to get in at the ground floor now is your big chance.

TWD- Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding

For this weeks TWD Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle selected Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding,  on pages 410 and 411 of Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Given Dorie loves to take classics and tweak the edges this is a classic bread and butter pudding (though amazingly given the butter content of most other recipes this one has no butter- but don’t fear there is a cup of cream!) with dark chocolate melted through.

Matt was excited to hear I was making a bread pudding but when he saw the bit about adding chocolate his quote was “why would you do that for?”.  Consequently I made 2 puddings.  One was the straight custard and then I melted the chocolate in the other half.  Happiness all round.

I had a few home made hot cross buns left over from Easter and some bostock (almond cream and brioche) rolls from the weekend.  Both great candidates for the pudding.

This is a nice pudding.  The chocolate works well. Matt is still sold on the ‘plain’ version.

I have made a similar version of this recipe that has chunks of dark chocolate (and comes complete with a whiskey sauce).

So now it is time to go and check out the other bread puddings by the happy Dorie Bakers.

TWD-15 Minute Magic: Chocolate Amaretti Torte

April 14- Holly of Phe/MOM/enon picked 15 Minute Magic: Chocolate Amaretti Torte, pages 276 and 277.  My pick is coming up soon and this was on the short list so I was pleased to give this a go.

This was indeed quick and easy to make.  Like many others who made comments on the TWD site I wish that a little more information had been given on the weight of the amaretti (my 18 weighed in at 65g).  I am metric obsessed anyway, and my American cookbooks are covered in pencil with metric conversions.

I skipped the chocolate glaze and just ran with the almond scented whipped cream.  This is a lovely rich sliver of cake to share after dinner.  Matt said it was just a posh brownie…

So now go check out the other tortes from the TWD crew.

TWD- Banana Cream Pie

For this weeks TWD Amy of Sing for Your Supper chose Banana Creme Pie, pages 342 and 343 of Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

This is classic pie given a couple of tweaks.  The custard filling is spiked with spice and brown sugar to give it a caramel feel.  The whipped cream topping is cut with a touch of sour cream.

Instead of the show stopping 9 inch-er I made 6x 4 inch individual serves.  This meant I could have fresh banana cream pie three days in a row!

I have considered adding a little dark rum to this.  I think I am a custard purist but this is nice.

Now go and check out the TWD blogroll and see what other creations our clever group of bakers came up with.

TWD- Coconut Butter Thins

For this weeks TWD Jayne of The Barefoot Kitchen Witch- chose Coconut Butter Thins on page 145 of Baking From My Home To Yours By Dorie Greenspan.

I meant to post this on Tuesday but then I went out for a night with my brothers sans children and ended up playing Singstar until 2am.  This meant Wednesday (needing to start work at 7am) I was ready for bed at 8pm (beating the children to slumber land) and so it brings us to Thursday – at least it is still a T (Thursdays With Dorie just doesn’t have the same ring to it).

Anyway enough of my non baking activities (hick!)

These Coconut Butter Thins are a very short shortbread spiked with lime zest, ground coriander, coconut and for me cashews chopped finely.  I was out of mac nuts and in my fridge which doubles as a larder in 32C+ weather year round there was a bag of cashews that must have been hiding since Matt would have definetly eaten them if he knew of their existance.

These are yummy and moreish and go so well with a coffee.

Now go check the TWD blogroll if you haven’t already.