Category Archives: Baking
tuesdays with dorie / baking with julia: hungarian shortbread
Have I mentioned how much I love my cake dome? Along with that comes the enjoyment of making anything that I can store, prettily, on my counter, in the cake dome. This week’s selection for Tuesdays with Dorie / Baking with Julia, the new bi-weekly baking group I’m taking part in, fit that bill. Enter, the lovely Hungarian Shortbread.
I’m a huge fan of the more traditional Scottish shortbread, simple yet rich, tasting purely of its short list of ingredients. I wasn’t sure how this recipe would stack up.
Hungarian shortbread was a completely different animal than what I’ve had before. In addition to the usual butter, flour, and sugar, the recipe called for egg yolks and baking powder. This changed the texture completely. It was more like a dense cake than a cookie.
The technique was unusual as well. The dough was frozen briefly to firm it up. Then you grate it into the pan. This makes for a fluffier crumb.
Two layers of dough sandwich a tart jam in the middle. The recipe in the book included instructions for a homemade rhubarb spread, but I found a jar of rhubarb-raspberry fruit spread in the pantry, from Austria, no less. That seemed perfect to fill my Hungarian shortbread.
I’ll mention that I had a mental block to making a single pan of something that used a full pound of butter. I compromised by making a half recipe in an 8-inch square pan. No less rich, but less of it to eat. Surprisingly, I still needed to bake the smaller pan for the full 40 minutes to bring to golden brown.
I loved the look of the oodles of powdered sugar on top. Some melted, which gave it the look of a crumb cake, and I added an extra dose for fun when the cake cooled.
The suggested size for the finished cookies was 3 inch squares, which, besides not working out evenly for an 8-inch pan, seemed huge to me. I started with 2-inch squares, which I served when my friend April came over for tea. I ended up cutting the rest diagonally into triangles, which seemed like the perfect-size to me.
While these won’t take the place of Scottish shortbread in my heart, but I did like this fancy treat. I’ll definitely make it again. As an added bonus, it’s the right sort of recipe for using up the assorted jars of jam and jelly on my pantry shelves.
If you’d like the recipe, please visit this week’s hosts: the multi-talented and very funny Cher (a fellow Dorista from the Friday group) at The not so excited adventures of a dabbler… and Lynette at 1smallkitchen.
french fridays with dorie: coconut friands (by jane)
OK, I’ll admit it. I’m a wimp. For all my willingness to try new things, I have to draw the line sometimes. Shredded coconut is just not my friend. I can’t stand it. Neither can my husband Howard. Nor my good friend Laury. My usual tasters. I’m too frugal to make something, and then have to search out willing tasters. So, when Coconut Friands was picked this week for French Fridays with Dorie, I knew I was in trouble.
Lucky for me, my sisters share my love of cooking. My middle (and coconut-loving) sister Jane volunteered for the challenge, and she’ll substitute for me this week to tell you how it went. (You can also see an earlier post by Jane on some delicious holiday desserts here.)
We don’t post the recipes, but you can find it in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table. You can see how the other bloggers thought of the coconut friands here.
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What an honor to be a guest blogger again! And my family was thrilled to be the guinea pigs for the coconut friands recipe. I don’t know what a “friand” actually is but this recipe was a winner in my household. I’d call it a cupcake. The recipe was simple and quick and the results turned out sweet but not oversweet, moist and delicious.
I would recommend this dessert to go with coffee even for a brunch or luncheon. It mixed up all in one bowl so it will be easy cleanup for you. But not so for me as I thought it would be a great opportunity to use my latest gadget purchase – a batter dispenser that I’d used only for pancake batter. The dispenser has a handle that dispenses as much batter as you want simply. It’s a dream for pancakes and muffins. Unfortunately, the friand batter was too thick to dispense this way so I ended up with a second bowl to wash anyway.
Next time I would top the friand with a raspberry as Dorie recommended or maybe with a dried cherry because the color of the friand was so pale that they didn’t look nearly as good as they tasted. I think if I had left them in the oven a little longer, the browner toasted top would be a sacrifice in exchange for my moist cupcakes. I’m interested to hear about other bloggers’ final results to see how else I might combat this issue. The recipe made nearly 2 dozen mini cupcakes and I kept them in my refrigerator for about a week. I warmed them for about 30 seconds in the microwave and they were still tasty a week later!
Everyone in my picky family enjoyed this recipe. Thanks to Aunt Betsy for having a coconut adverse household! See you next time.
–Betsy’s Sister Jane
My Sisters and Me. left to right, Jennifer (youngest), Betsy (oldest), Jane (middle)
A Plateful of Happiness 