DORIE GREENSPAN

Baking with Dorie: Banana Cake Big and Small

Here's this week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats: It's my friend Ellen Einstein's classic banana cake, cut in half and baked in muffin tins.  Normally made as a sturdy Bundt cake, the recipe calls for four ripe bananas, but since I had only two and it was the day I was leaving for Paris, I just cut the recipe in half and went for a dozen minis.  (When you click over, you'll find instructions for converting the minis back to full-size.)

I also went for some chocolate - I chopped up some dark chocolate (although milk chocolate would be just as good, if not better - milk chocolate and bananas are naturals together) and folded it into the batter at the last minute. 

When I baked these, they rose and worked themselves over the top of the muffin cups and onto the tin, which I thought was great because that way, one part of the cake, the over-the-top part, was just a little crispy around the edges.  I was using a nonstick pan, so it wasn't a problem to unmold the wide tops, but if your pan is "normal," you should butter or spray the area around the muffin cups.

I'm in Paris now and just went banana shopping.  Who knows, by the time I've got to pack and leave, I might be making banana cakelets here, too.

A word about Ellen Einstein:  I met Ellen ten years ago when I was on a book tour (which book? I can't remember) and doing a television show in Nashville and Ellen was the talented food stylist.  We kept in touch after that and have seen one another many times in New York and Paris.  Then, a few years ago, Ellen and her husband, Dan, opened Sweet Sixteenth, the kind of bakery/cafe everyone wants in their neighborhood.  If you're in the neighborhood, GO!  My husband travels to Nashville often and always makes Sweet Sixteenth his first stop - lucky guy.

Baking with Dorie: Gingerbread Baby Cakes

Soon it will be spring - but it's so not spring now!  Minutes ago the weatherman said it was 14 degrees F and that we could expect another 3 inches of snow.  A report like that just confirms that it's still gingerbread weather.

This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for spicy gingerbread baby cakes.  The recipe comes from Johanne Killeen, who, with her husband, George Germon, is chef-owner of  the legendary Rhode Island restaurant, Al Forno.

Johanne is an inspired baker and she made this gingerbread cake and other mini sweets when she came to Cambridge to work with us on Baking with Julia. 

If you're in a place as cold as my corner of Connecticut, I'd suggest you rush to your oven, bake these cakes and stir up some hot chocolate as a sip-along.  If you're lucky enough to be someplace warm, bake the cakes anyway - they're too good to pass up - and top them with ice cream.

Baking with Dorie: Creamy Lemon and Raspberry Tart

Please, don't let the fact that I don't have a picture for you stop you from making this week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats.  The recipe for a whole-lemon tart comes from The Cafe Boulud Cookbook, the book I wrote with the amazing chef, Daniel Boulud, and it's one that I know you'll try, love and make over and over again.

When I say whole-lemon, I mean it.  The filling for the tart is made with every bit of the lemon, except the pith and pits,  so you get an intense shot of lemon flavor - this is not a tart for those with timid tastebuds.  In this version of the tart, raspberries are scattered across the bottom of a pre-baked crust before the (made-in-a-blender) lemon filling is poured in.  The recipe is super-easy and super-super good.  A sunshine-filled tart for winter.  Hope you enjoy it.

Baking with Dorie: Gourmandise

This week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats is both gorgeous and delicious - no surprise when you know that it comes from Pierre Herme (from the book, Desserts by Pierre Herme).  It's called Gourmandise and it has three components, each delicous on its own and spectacular when combined with its dessertmates. 

From the bottom up, you've got:  tapioca cooked in coconut milk; fresh pineapple tossed with lime and marmalade; and oven-dried pineapple slices. 

Everything can be made ahead - I love that; and each of the parts is easy to make - I love that, too.

Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Dipped Linzer Hearts

Getting into the full swing of Valentine's Day, this week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats is for Chocolate-Dipped Linzer Hearts.

The dough for the nut-and-spice cookie, which isn't very sweet, is great to work with.  It rolls out easily, cuts cleanly and can be re-rolled without toughening if you follow my instructions for "pre-rolling" the dough right after it's made and then re-rolling the gathered scraps between plastic wrap or wax paper.  (The pre-rolling is a neat trick that you'll be able to use with other recipes.)

The cookies are also exceptionally play-aroundable.  In Baking From My Home to Yours, you'll see them as scallop-edged round sandwiches: half the cookies are cut with peek-a-boo holes and two cookies are sandwiched together with Valentine-red rasberry jam.  Of course, you could sandwich these heart-shaped cookies.  And, you could dip the sandwiches in chocolate.  After all, they're for Valentine's Day, a good day for making special things extra special.

Puddings of The Times

The food page in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine was entitled Lovin' Spoonfools and it was a piece by Sara Dickerman about the pleasures of puddings, soft and creamy, traditional and not so traditional. 

For Sara - and for many of us, I'm sure - the sweetness of pudding begins even before the first spoonful because there's something serene, sensuous and satisfying in the act ofjust making pudding.  Sara, who is a terrific writer (you can find some of her work on Slate, including Down with Gloves, for which she won a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award), describes the peaceful process of stirring a pudding on the top of the stove and coming to that almost magical moment when the pudding starts to thicken. 

Then, just when she has us imagining the hypnotic zen-like action of quietly stirring our puddings into a silken state, she admits that she - like me, actually because of me - uses the food processor to make pudding.  As she says: [it's] a little mechanical voodoo to ward off lumps and aerate the final mixture.  I love that description!  Using the food processor is clearly a compromise, but Sara's worked out the difference between what she gets and what she has to give up.  The noise of the whizzing machine might disturb the calm of my stovetop reverie, but the satin texture makes the disruption worthwhile, she writes.

The article includes recipes for five puddings that couldn't be more different one from the other.  There's the author's Rice Pudding with Chai Spices and Saffron Apricots (how good does that sound!) as well as her Hasty Pudding; a Mango Pudding from Sherry Yard's excellent new book, Desserts by the Yard; a Baked Corn Pudding made with John Cope's Sweet Dried Corn, which I'm dying to try; and the Gianduja Pudding, pictured above (the photo, by Tony Cenicola, is from The New York Times).

The Gianduja Pudding is adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours and I think it's a terrific riff on my Chocolate Pudding.  Gianduja always means there'll be chocolate and hazelnuts and Sara uses hazelnuts to infuse the pudding's milk and Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur, to deepen the nuts' flavor. 

If you want to go straight with the chocolate pudding, here's the recipe

CHOCOLATE PUDDING, From Baking From My Home To Yours

Makes 6 servings

2 1/4 cups whole milk

6 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

2 large egg yolks

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and still warm

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Getting Ready: Have six ramekins or pudding cups, each holding 4 to 6 ounces (1/2 to 3/4 cup), at hand.

Bring 2 cups of the milk and 3 tablespoons of the sugar to a boil in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan.

While the milk is heating, put the cocoa, cornstarch and salt into a food processor and whir to blend.  Turn them out onto a piece of wax paper, put the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar, the egg and egg yolks into the processor and blend for 1 minute.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the remaining 1/4 cup milk and pulse just to mix, then add the dry ingredients and pulse a few times to blend.

With the machine running, very slowly pour in the hot milk mixture.  Process for a few seconds, then put everything back into the saucepan.  Whisk without stopping over medium heat - making sure to get into the edges of the pan - until the pudding thickens and a couple of bubbles burble up to the surface and pop (about 2 minutes).  You want the pudding to thicken, but you don't want it to boil, so lower the heat if necessary.

Scrape the pudding back into the processor (if there's a scorched spot, avoid it as you scrape) and pulse a couple of times.  Add the chocolate, butter and vanilla and pulse until everything is evenly blended.

Pour the pudding into ramekins.  If you don't want a skin to form (some people think the skin is the best part), press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of each pudding to create an airtight seal.  Refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Amaretti Heartbreakers

I've posted a pre-pre-Valentine's-Day recipe this week on Baking with Dorie at Serious Eats.  It's for heart-shaped waffles made with lots of chocolate and crushed amaretti, those wonderful little almond-meringue cookies that come in the beautiful red tins and boxes (pictured). I make these waffles in a five-of-hearts waffler, but you can use any kind of waffle iron and then, if you'd like, cut the waffles into hearts for your sweetie. 

The idea to make chocolate-amaretti waffles (which can be dried and turned into cookies; see the recipe) came from wanting to pump-up a waffle with the flavors I love in my Fifteen-Minute Magic Cake, a chocolate amaretti torte (page 276 in Baking From My Home to Yours, for those of you who have it).  It's a truly great flavor combo and I think it's a kick that it translates to waffles.

You can serve the waffles whole, giving everyone (or just your Valentine) five connected hearts topped with ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream (why not? it's a holiday), or you can separate the hearts and use them to make ice-cream sandwiches.  If you want to go all out with the sandwiches, have a bowl of hot fudge sauce on the table so you can dip and double dip.

Baking with Dorie: Boca Negra

This week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats is for a chocolate cake that really lives up to its name, Boca Negra, or black mouth - it's chocolaty, chocolaty, chocolaty.

The recipe, created by the talented Lora Brody, comes from Baking with Julia, the book I wrote for the PBS series of the same name.  I love this recipe for its simplicity: it can be made in seconds in a food processor; it can be dressed up with ice cream, whipped cream or Lora's bourbony white-chocolate cream (the recipe's included); and it can be frozen and kept for that rainy day.  Actually, because the cake is so fudgy and has so much bourbon in it (as you'll see when you read the comments at Serious Eats, coffee can be subbed for the hootch), it doesn't really get so hard that you can't nibble a little slice straight from the freezer.  Can you tell I'm speaking from experience?

(Photo by Gentl & Hyers)

Michael Laiskonis: Ace Pastry Chef/New Blogger

Yesterday, my friend Michael Laiskonis, the extraordinarily talented pastry chef of Le Bernardin restaurant in New York, wrote to tell me that he's launched his blog.  It's exciting to have a new neighbor in cyberspace, especially one who is so smart and has so much to tell us and to teach us.

For his first post, Michael muses on "The Egg" and gives a recipe - pictured above - for an eggshell filled with milk chocolate creme brulee, caramel sauce and caramel foam and topped with a drizzle of maple syrup and a few flakes of Maldon sea salt.  It's a showstopping restaurant dessert that can be accomplished chez you with patience and two pieces of fancy, fun equipment - an egg-topper and a whipped cream siphon.  I think  it could also be made in teensy espresso cups (and I hope Michael doesn't mind my suggesting this for us homebakers).

Whether you make the egg or not, you'll find interesting thoughts about eggs, the recipe's roots (as soon as I saw it and the words "maple syrup," I thought of Alain Passard in Paris and, indeed, Michael acknowledges Passard as a source of inspiration here) and Michael's way of working.

I'm really happy to have another friend in the ether - I think you'll be, too.

Baking with Dorie: Daniel Boulud's Coffee-Cardamom Pots de Creme

Leave it to Daniel Boulud, one of the country's most exciting chefs, to come up with a fresh take on classic pots de creme - baked custard to many of us. 

Here, in a recipe from the Cafe Boulud Cookbook, Daniel caramelizes coffee beans and cardamom pods to intensify their flavor, then he uses them to infuse the custard's milk.    The inspiration was Middle Eastern coffee; the result is an exotic reading of what is essentially a comfort-food favorite.

The recipe is this week's Baking with Dorie column at Serious Eats.  (And the photograph, taken from the book, is the work of Gentl & Hyers, the same photographers who did the pictures for Baking with Julia.)

A note to those of you who jump to the recipe and don't read the intro (I know you're out there): if you don't want to cover the pan with plastic wrap, that's okay - you can use aluminum foil.