Category Archives: Baking
French Fridays with Dorie: apple-gorgonzola quiche
Is it Friday, again, already? I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about making this week’s recipe for French Fridays with Dorie: Apple-Gorgonzola Quiche. I like the ingredients, individually. In fact, I had all the ingredients on hand. I just couldn’t imagine how the final product might taste, which I typically like to be able to do. The bonne idée for Quiche Lorraine seemed more appealing, but it would involve shopping, and so I went with the assignment straight up.
To add to my ambivalence, my husband doesn’t do fruit in his dinner, so a quiche with apples wasn’t going to get eaten by him. I wasn’t up for eating it alone, but the perfect opportunity for sharing came up. The local football team, the New England Patriots, is one of the contenders in this weekend’s Super Bowl. We organized an office potluck yesterday, and my contribution was the French Friday quiche. Not exactly macho football food, but it got eaten.
The flavors in this seemingly odd quiche really worked, much to my surprise. I was afraid it might be sweet, but it was quite savory. I’m not even sure I would have known the apple was there if I hadn’t cooked it myself. (I think I could even have tricked Howard, or just neglected to tell him the full list of ingredients.) The onions and gorgonzola were the primary flavors. I threw in a handful of toasted walnuts, which added an earthy note.
I really do love quiche. While I’m not sure that I’d make this version again, I’m glad this recipe reminded me that I should make it more often.
If you want to see what the other bloggers thought of this week’s recipe, check out their links over at French Fridays with Dorie. If you want the recipe, you can find it in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table
Next week is another recipe that I’m unsure about: Nutella Tartine, but I’ll give it a go and maybe have another pleasant surprise.
french fridays with dorie: quatre-quarts
A perfect cake! It’s easy, it’s elegant, and it’s delicious. This is a perfect cake for snacking on over tea with friends on a lazy afternoon. A sliver of this cake is a perfect end to a breakfast that was missing “something”. A wedge of this cake is the perfect to send home in a doggie bag with an expected dinner guest. This cake is also a perfect excuse to use my cake dome.
Dorie says this is the sort of cake that’s common on most French homes. I wish I were French. I was trying to remember if there was a go-to cake that my mother always had around when I was growing up. I think the go-to baked snacks at our house trended more towards brownies (always from a mix) and Toll House cookies.
Mom in 2002
My mom did make a signature cake, a chocolate chip cake. It wasn’t a fancy cake. She served it from its 13×9 metal baking pan, merely sprinkled with powdered sugar. But, we only had it for special occasions. The funny thing is that one reason I think she only made it for special occasions was that you had to separate the eggs, beat the whites separately and fold them in, just like in this everyday French cake. Maybe our cake was French after all.
Even with the step to beat the egg whites, this was a snap to put together. The only advice I have is to break the egg whites over a separate bowl one at a time and then transferring the white to the bigger bowl. Normally, I do this. I don’t know why I didn’t the day I made this. Unfortunately, the third egg yolk broken (which never happens to me), ruining my bowl of whites, so I had to start over with new eggs. (That means I have two extra egg yolks in the fridge. Any suggestions on what to use them for?)
I used dark rum in my cake, and I loved the extra zing it gave over the more pedestrian vanilla. The friends who came over to tea suggested trying other liqueurs for the rum, maybe kirsch for some subtle cherry flavor. That sounds interesting. I sprinkled the top with the granulated brown sugar left over from the crème brulees. As in that recipe, the sugar didn’t melt as expected, so I’ll try turbinado, which melted better on my custards, the next time I make this cake.
This cake might be simplicity itself, but I know the other bloggers for French Fridays with Dorie are bound to put their own twist on things. For more ideas, check out their posts on the FFwD site.
A Plateful of Happiness 