Lemon Tart

French Fridays with Dorie: Marie Helene's Apple Cake

 
This is my ideal apple cake and officially the only recipe I'll need from now on for a moist, fruit filled snack cake that screams AUTUMN! It's chock full of apples with just enough batter to hold it together and it comes together in one bowl in minutes. You'll find no cinnamon in this, after all its a French cake and the French aren't real fans of cinnamon, like we are, (sometimes I think we are too much of a fan, just sayin') and with but a whisper of sugary sweetness it feels just as much at home for breakfast with a dollop of full flavoured vanilla yogurt (or as I did yogurt  with a  spoonful of caramel sauce stirred in) as it is with tea or a late night snack. But of course I can never leave well enough alone and that jar of salted butter caramel sauce in my fridge was just the thing to slather over this. After all whenever there's caramel sauce around everything in sight is a potential platform : a slice of apple, cake, ice cream, yogurt...finger... spoon... tongue... I'm blaming it on my Mom who made a mean butterscotch sauce and kept it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge. I'd catch her sneaking a squeeze straight into her mouth on more than one occasion. Caramel addiction is therefore genetic and not my fault.

This is the perfect time of year to make this cake because while you'll be able to make this at any time of year, this month is perhaps when I'm most excited about apples. They are fresh from the tree and they actually smell like an apple, truly, perfuming the entire outdoor market. They haven't been sitting in a storage house, waxed, or sadly mounded on supermarket shelves being completely taken for granted, grabbed out of habit and then eaten with duty and no enjoyment. No these market fresh apples are at their peak and since I haven't really eaten an apple since May, after all who in their right mind would eat apples when there's strawberries and peaches  around, I'm consuming plenty of these a day to keep quite a few Dr's a way I hope.

Daring Bakers: Doughnuts!

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious. 

Until recently I had it in my head that one should have a deep fryer in order to make deep fried foods. I kept rationalizing why I shouldn't even consider getting one, even when offered to me for free from someone in my family who actually has an "extra" one around. I feared having an appliance that served one purpose, and a kinda fun one at that, would mean I'd be deep drying everything in site and my already not too skinny body type would take a beating from just having it close by. Whatever small appliance company instilled that in my brain I'll never know, because that's just deep fried non sense! Those cannoli sure were a breeze to make in my humble stock pot with the aid of a thermometer and a strainer. And so were these doughnuts. Perhaps this is just as dangerous of a discovery as my fear of owning a deep fat fryer.

Truth be told, deep fried foods aren't something I feel I need more of, but every once in awhile there is a dessert that requires this technique and I do debate whether its worth the unpleasant smell and the vat of boiling oil. Doughnuts are certainly worth any small negatives and I tell you these little pillowly bites got my giddy on!

  I've had Claudia Flemmings excellent dessert book, The Last Course, for years now and it remains just outside of my Desert Island Cookbook list. I'm not sure when exactly I spied these sugar and spice dusted doughnuts but when I learned of Octobers Daring Bakers challenge it  didn't take me long to choose these for the challenge.

While there are indeed cake and yeast doughnuts, I tend to go for the yeasty kind. I think they have more flavour and seem more authentic, although I'm certain you could debate both sides. This dough was a simple egg and butter enriched sweet dough with a hearty dose of Orange Flower Water and tossed in a Cardamom and cinnamon sugar, making them definitely Middle East inspired. Next time having these alongside a rosewater pannacotta would not be a bad idea. The dough was quick and very basic in its technique with an important long overnight rest int he fridge to develop flavour. I loved the idea of cutting them into unconventional squares. While we all love the rings shape or the doughnut hole, the square made for almost no waste and no re rolled dough which always make for a tougher end product. They puff up so much that they still retain a doughnut whole appearance.

French Fridays with Dorie: Hachis Parmentier

 
I remember the first time I fell in love with cookbook extraordinaire, part time Parisian and all around Baking sweetheart, Dorie Greenspan. I received her phenomenal book, and still one of my all time favourites, Paris Sweets, for a Christmas present. I spent most of that Christmas afternoon pouring over each and every recipe. The first recipe I made were the soon to be world famous " Korova Cookies". They were a revelation of a cookie and a star was born in this house, both the cookie and the woman responsible for bringing me the recipe. While this wasn't an original recipe of Dorie's she's the one that shared them with us because of her upstanding relationships with some of the greatest pastry chefs in Paris, in this case pastry king, Pierre Herme.

I worked my way fairly quickly through that book, trying every manner of sumptuous treat, each one better than the rest. Her prose before each recipe lured me into each one as if she were in my kitchen measuring flour with me, and the helpful little hints at the end of each one makes every recipe she writes become endless in possibilities. She is quite simply one of the the worlds best recipe writers and I have seeked out many of her books. Her Baking: From My Home to Yours book is a classic in my household and is frequently my go to baking book for everything from a great birthday cake to speciality recipes like Chestnut Scones , Far Breton and the amazing orange cream tart. Yes, I am gushing, but I'm not the only one who feels this way about this pixie-like wonder of the dessert world. To those of us who have baked our way through her books and read her always engaging posts on her blog, she also represerents someone living a life many of us dream of, while at the same time appearing down to earth and incredibly humble. And while I do not know her, I'd like to think of her as someone I could be friends with, or at least spend an afternoon making apple tarts and drinking tea.

All of her books until now have focused on the sweet part of the food world, so last month when her first non-dessert book came out it was at my door within days. Around My French Table, as its invitingly titled, is a collection of French home cooking recipes, from years of living in France and becoming thoroughly acquainted with its people  and cuisine. After only a short time of having it in my possession I have earmarked half the book and am certain that this not unsubstantial book will stand proudly beside Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Anne Willan's Country Cooking of France.

Shortly before the book was published an online group was formed as a way of cooking through this much anticipated book. The rules were simple : cook along with other fans as often as you want, a different recipe chosen each week and post about it on Friday. The beauty of this group is that it gets me cooking. Ad deadline always helps that.  I was away for the first 3 weeks and had missed out on the beginning of French Fridays with Dorie, but was excited to get in on things as soon as I was back.

My first participating recipe was this homey, French Shepherds Pie, Hachis Parmentier. Having never eaten a Shepherds pie in my life that left any sort of memory with me, or certainly not a good one, I was interested to give this a try. While meat and potatoes as a food group are not the sort of dishes that excite me as a rule, I am developing a carnivores taste more and more these days,  and the autumn chill in the air and the threat of grey, wet, west coast months ahead certainly call for this sort of hearty fare.