Twd: X cookies

Yes tuesday again and today we made X cookies. It's based on an old Italian favorite (the original recipe came from Sicily) and it's quite a bit adapted to this cookie.

It contains almost no sugar in the cookie itself, only a little bit in the dough. That's because of the sweet filling. The filling contains figs, candied orange peel, apricots, almonds, cinnamon and dark rum.
That combination means it only can be very tasty.

Though it seems like a difficult recipe when I looked at the picture, it's quite easy though. You can make the cookies, if you've got all the ingredients in about 1 hour at most.

And then the taste. After you bake them you sprinkle powdered sugar on top. The powdered sugar melt at your tongue when you bite. Then it gets a crispy bite and the sweetness of the fig melange.

Yes this was a really nice cookie. I think this would be great during Christmas with all those flavours and I probably going to make it around that time again.

The recipe is on page 318 in the book Baking with Julia from Dorie Greenspan. If you would like to know what the others made of it you can take a look at:
http://tuesdayswithdorie.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/lyl-x-cookies/#comments

4Pure: Tuesdays with Dorie X cookies

French fridays with Dorie: rice pudding and caramel apples

Today it's Friday and it's time again for: French fridays with Dorie. The recipe chosen for today was: rice pudding and caramel apples.
Rice pudding is a dish I ate when I was very small with my grandmother. I don't think I ate it since. Both my mom and my hubbies mom were here and the remembered the rice pudding from the times they were really small. They ate it with brown sugar and it was a real treat in those times. It was fun to reinvent it today in a new form.

Rice pudding isn't that difficult to make, you only need arborio rice. I just didn't hear of that before today. But then you've got google and it was risotto rice. That's something that is easily available around here. The rice is cooked in sweet milk. Vanilla essence is added at taste.
For the apples sugar is caramelised and the apples are baked in a liquid containing the caramalised sugar and applejuice (the recipe stated apple cider, but I only had apple juice so I exchanged it). Then you add cream to the sauce and everything is done.

When you serve it in nice layers, then you've got a delicious dessert. For sure in this season, where the apples are fresh.

We don't quote the recipe at the French Friday with Dorie group, if you want to read it: it's in the book French fridays with Dorie from Dorie Greenspan. If you want to know what the rest of the group made of it look at: www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com.

And the end result: 

4Pure: french fridays with dorie: rice pudding and caramel apples

Tuesdays with Dorie: Blueberry muffins

As written yesterday our recipe schedule from Tuesdays with Dorie let us choose between a fougasse and a blueberry muffin. I couldn't choose and wanted to bake them both.

Yesterday I blogged my experience with the fougasse. Today I'm going to blog about the muffin. The ingredients were quite the usual that goes into a muffin, except for the sour cream and cream the tartar. And of course the blueberries.
But it's not a very difficult recipe and I think it can't go wrong. That's also the great thing about muffins. They always come out well. So is this one with the blueberries. Its fluffy, not to sweet and the addition of the blueberries is a real nice touch.
And because of the blueberries, as the fruit. I thought it would be an ideal breakfast. And I can tell you it is. It tastes great.

The only thing was the schedule. I didn't got any blueberries anymore. The season is over around here.
But that's a minor.

So for the picture: Here is my breakfast!

4Pure: blueberry muffins

tuesdays with dorie: Fougasse

On Tuesdays, two times a month, we bake with a group from the book Baking with Julia (Dorie Greenspan). This time we could choose out of two recipes: sweet berry fougasse or the blueberry muffins. Neither recipe was very difficult, so I thought lets make them both. Today the first recipe: the fougasse. Tomorrow the second: the muffins.
The base of the fougasse was a ciabatta dough. On the cibatta dough you spread the fruit and you top it with a crumble.  On top the original recipe described berries, but in the sidebar with great options Dorie described that you could use plumbs instead. And because it's plumbseason and the berries were harvested already I choose to go for the plumbs.
The end result was: this ain't going to be my favourite recipe. I didn't like the ciabatta/fruit combination. I like both separate, but not as a combo. The crumble with the fruit was nice but not great. So this ain't a recipe I'm going to make more often.

But maybe the others think different about it. You can find their posts on: http://tuesdayswithdorie.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/lyl-blueberry-muffins/. Tomorrow I'll post the result of the muffins.

One positive point though was that it looked great:

4pure: Tuesdays with Dorie: Fougasse