Tuesday, February 21, 2012

TWD: Baking with Julia - Chocolate Truffle Tart

Happy Fat Tuesday! Hope everyone is doing great, not too much going on in our little world... but here is the latest recipe recap for Baking with Julia!

I baked it over the weekend and shared it with Mikey's family! Hopefully they liked it!

It started with a chocolate crust, that I made by hand. It was pretty easy to make. I saw a trick on tv about rolling out the crust dough in between two pieces of saran wrap so that it would be really easy to transfer to the tart pan. The recipe called to make mini tarlets, but seeing how I don't own mini pans, I used a normal size tart pan and it seemed to work.




After baking the crust, I got the filling, aka tons of chocolate, all cooked and ready. Oh did you just ask how many types of chocolate were used? Well four... there was cocoa powder in the crust, and then semi sweet chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate in the tart. Doesn't that sound awesome!?! Well it was! Since I used a larger tart pan, I had to extend the cooking time a bit, but I think it worked out. It turned out a lot thicker than I expected it would be, I would almost describe it more as a brownie texture than a creamy texture. That could have been because I extended the cooking time, but I wanted to make sure the eggs got cooked. I think it tasted wonderful!




Well that's recipe number two! If you want to make some yourself or see other's results, which might be better than mine, you can check out the recipe at the host's blogs Spike or A Whisk and a Spoon or you could pick up the cookbook!

Monday, February 6, 2012

TWD:Baking with Julia - White Loaves

So, Happy Tuesday! This is the first of many posts for the baking group I joined! It is called Tuesday's with Dorie and we are using Dorie Greenspan's cookbook called Baking with Julia.


Over the weekend I gave my baking skills, or lack there of, a try! Everyone in the group started with the white loaf bread recipe. Here is my tale...



I used our mixer to mix the bread dough all together instead of kneading it for six days. It seemed to work for the most part, but I think our mixer isn't quite strong enough to mix bread dough for very long. I had to stop to let the mixer cool off a little and the faint smell of burning was a sign that I needed, not kneaded, to be done forcing our mixer to work so hard. Here are pictures of the mixer, aka the hero of the day, and the results of the first rise.









After the kneading was done I left the dough to rise and then separated it into two loaves and let them rise again. Good thing I didn't have any exciting plans to get to, because it took hours. I read some of the group's comments on their adventures and some of them said they tried to make a cinnamon swirl bread, and if you know me, you might know that I really like cinnamon, so I was in! Here are the pictures of the second rise.





Then after the second rise it was off to the oven with hopes that it would actually turn out ok! And it did! Here are my first white bread loaves I have ever made! The cinnamon turned out ok, but it could have used a lot more cinnamon than what I put in it... oh well, some how we managed to eat it!







Well there you have it! The first recipe has been completed, now we will just have to wait and see how I do at the next recipe! It is chocolate truffle tarts... oh my... hope Mikey is ready for some sugar! The host of this week's recipe was Jules and she had the privilege of posting the recipe, so feel free to check her post out. You can also check out everyone's post at Tuesdays With Dorie. Have a great Tuesday!