TWD: Black and more black Banana Loaf

It's been a busy couple of weeks and I'm just now getting around to posting my last 2 TWD's. Please forgive me, I'm a slacker and my mom was visiting, and well, I was lazy too.

I made the Black and White Banana Loaf (selected by Ashley of A Year in the Kitchen, one of my favorite food blogs) a couple weekends ago and as you can see from the pic, it wasn't so much Black AND White, as it was Black and then a little more Black! Apparently I got a little over zealous with the swirling part and I mixed the two batters a little too much. I intended to make this again and not swirl it so much, but time got away from me and all I have is this one sad little picture of a black banana loaf.

Many TWD's reported problems of the batter being very runny and thin, and I have to agree, the batter was extremely runny and when I was attempting to create the swirl, it just sort of mixed all together. Despite not looking very pretty, it tasted great and the chocolate and banana combo was really nice. I do want to make this again, 1. so I can redeem myself and prove that I can marble without overmixing, and 2. so I can eat more of it since it was so tasty.

Even with runny batter and not so great marbling, this was still a great recipe. I have yet to make anything from Dorie's book that wasn't great!! Buy the book if you haven't already, trust me, it's spectacular.

TWD: Summer Fruit Galette

This week's TWD recipe was selected by Michelle in Colorado Springs.

I must admit, when I saw that this week's recipe was yet another fruit dessert, I wasn't very excited. I'm more of a cookie, cake, chocolate chocolate chocolate kind of girl. But then I remembered how amazing the Double Crusted Blueberry Pie was, and how delicious Dorie's pie crust is, and my mouth started watering a bit.

For this dessert, I ended up using peaches, apricots and plums as part of Dorie's recipe called for; I skipped the nectarines and rhubarb. My original idea for this recipe was to make it tropical and use pineapple, mango, papaya and kiwi. I wasn't sure how kiwi would bake though and my husband said he doesn't like tropical fruits, so that plan got tossed out the window. I might try it sometime though because it sounds really good in theory, so if you've ever baked with kiwi before and it worked out well, please leave me a comment and let me know.

I used peach preserves on the bottom of the crust before adding the fruit. Dorie suggests ginger preserves, but I already had peach on hand and just used that. I also completely forgot to add the graham cracker crumbs on the bottom, which I think definitely would have helped since my fruit did seem particularly juicy. Dorie says that adding graham cracker crumbs helps to soak up some of the juice, and that's a tip that I am going to try to remember next time.

But I was so happy with how the Galette turned out, it was lip-smacking good with a dollop of whipped cream on top. We had dinner with some friends on Saturday night and I took this over for dessert and everyone raved about it. I will definitely make this recipe again.

My husband continually called my beautiful Galette a "Fruit Pizza" so I had to pinch him a few times and correct his error. Then he decided to call it a "gillette" as in the razor blades. Men!

TWD: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler

This week's TWD recipe was selected by Amanda from Like Spinkles on a Cupcake. You can find the recipe here on her blog.

I'm not going to lie...I hate rhubarb. My grandmother always used to make strawberry rhubarb pies and when we were kids she would tell us it was just strawberry pie. Then you'd bite into a big chunk of rhubarb and...blech!! Thanks Grannie!

So there I stood in the grocery store with rhubarb in hand ready to face my fears and just make this cobbler, rhubarb and all. I had secretly hoped that the grocery store wouldn't even have rhubarb in stock because it's close to being out of season in this area...but darn them, there it was! So step by step through the produce section I kept saying to myself...you can do it, you can do it...but that little girl inside who always spit out the rhubarb chunks from Grannie's "Strawberry Pie" said...hold up! There's no way I'm eating rhubarb!

So I put the rhubarb back and grabbed some granny smith apples. And the little girl inside smiled and said...suck it, rhubarb! :)



This cobbler recipe was very good. I thought the addition of the ground ginger gave it a very fresh taste and the topping was very tender and soft inside and crumbly and crunchy on the outside. My husband even enjoyed it quite a bit, and he's not much of a fruit fan. With a couple scoops of vanilla bean ice cream, this was a perfect hot summer evening dessert.

Peanut Butter Torte, a TWD rewind

This recipe from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking From My Home to Yours, has been calling my name everytime I walk past the kitchen for weeks now. It looked so delish I just had to find a reason to make it. I think a boring Saturday afternoon home alone while my husband played golf was the perfect reason! :)

And anyone reading this from the state of Ohio where I live....this tastes like a giant buckeye (except for the crust of course) so it would make for a great dessert at your next OSU football party.

The consistency is like a very light cheesecake. The actual recipe called for adding peanuts to the mix and sprinkling some on top. I decided to leave out the peanuts, and instead I added mini chocolate chips to the mix.

This is a great recipe, and actually a pretty simple one too. The crust is just oreos and butter and only needed to bake for 10 minutes. All the rest was just whipped, mixed and tossed into the crust. It was soooo good straight out of the fridge nice and cold with a tall glass of milk. mmmm.

TWD: Peppermint Cream Puff Ring, minus the Peppermint

My first official TWD creation and post! This week's recipe, the Peppermint Cream Puff Ring, was chosen by Caroline of A Consuming Passion.

I was very excited to make this recipe, as it is something I have never done before. This type of pastry dough, called pate a choux, sounded simple enough, but I'm not going to lie...I was a bit intimidated. The recipe and Dorie's instructions were fool-proof though, and the dough came together very nicely. The only problem that I had was that I did not have quite a large enough pastry bag tip to pipe out the dough, so rather than doing 2 rings on the bottom and one on top connecting them as the recipe instructed, I made several rings on the bottom and several on top connecting to get the entire ring to the thickness I thought it needed to be. When baking, this made for quite an uneven rise, but in the end I "made it work" as Tim Gunn would say, and I was happy with the result.

I decided to skip the peppermint flavor in the cream filling because I wasn't feeling in a very pepperminty mood, but I would like to try it sometime. The cream was amazingly good. I think I will make homemade whipped cream like this for many other desserts from now on...it certainly beats the stuff in the spray can and tub! I would also like to try this recipe again with a pastry cream filling, I think it would be very good.

When making the chocolate glaze for the top of the ring, I needed to use a little more heavy cream than the recipe called for. Following the recipe, I thought that the glaze was a little too thick and syrupy, so I added in a dash more heavy cream at a time until I thought it was a nice consistency. One other small change I would make next time is to use semisweet or milk chocolate instead of bittersweet chocolate. I'm not much of a bittersweet chocolate fan, but I wanted to stick as close to the original recipe as possible, and since I had already eliminated the peppermint from the cream, I didn't want to go making any more changes to Dorie's amazing recipe.



Just another note: It was recently decided that TWD members will not be posting the full recipe each week, and only the person who chose the recipe will post the entire recipe on their blog. You can find the full recipe on Caroline's blog here.

I plan on making a few of the past TWD recipes in the coming weeks, so when you see those posts, if you would like the recipe or more information, you can email me at 2cupsofsalt@gmail.com.