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So, this cake. I made this cake for my boss and his family. His wife is currently going through chemo treatment (they expect her to make a full recovery) and a bunch of us in the office decided to put together a care package of food for them after her latest round. Not only was I happy to do this for my wonderful boss, but it allowed me to do my favorite type of baking - bake and release, as Dorie Greenspan calls it.

The only instruction I was given was to make something apple. I did not really have any idea what I wanted to make, except that I knew I didn’t want to mess around with pie or anything that required rolling out dough. After a food blog search I found a recipe on Serious Eats that was a modified version of Dorie Greenspan’s Swedish Visiting Cake with apples. Perfect. I printed this recipe at work and left it on the printer. It did me a lot of good there.

Since I am sometimes super lazy about the dumbest things, I decided to just use Dorie’s recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours and add sliced apples, instead of searching and reprinting the recipe at home. Whatever. Don’t judge me.

Here is what Dorie has to say about this cake, because, who am I kidding here, I cannot say it better myself…

“This cake is thin and light with a golden sugar crust and an interior that is soft, chewy, moist and reminiscent of cakes made with almond paste. Although it is amply satisfying in its plainness, I upped the flavor just a little by adding vanilla and almond extract.”

Seriously, this cake could not have been easier to make. The batter comes together literally in minutes, in one bowl, no mixer needed, no waiting for things to come to room temperature. The makings of a recipe I like. Dorie calls for this to be baked in a 9 inch cast iron skillet. Problem: I do not own said 9 inch cast iron skillet. Solution: I own cake pans or I own 10 inch cast iron skillet.

I went with solution “I own cake pans", for no particular reason. Next time, I will try solution “I own 10 inch cast iron skillet". BECAUSE - this mother f’ing cake took FORever to bake. Okay, not forever, but like double the time the recipe called for. That becomes a problem when I am trying to fit this cake in after making dinner and before getting to the gym. I suspect part of the problem was that the cake pan I used was too small and maybe the addition of the sliced apples threw this cake for a loop. It just couldn’t handle being baked with apples, it didn’t know what to do with itself.

Truth be told, I made this cake twice. The first cake was a real hot mess. It was in the oven at 350F in an approx. 8.5 inch cake pan for an hour and was still totally raw in the middle. I had to abandon this cake and leave it in the good(?) hands of Nick while I went to the gym. My instructions were “take the cake out when it is not wet in the middle and don’t ruin it". Yeah. I came home to an undercooked cake which was sitting inside a turned off oven. Huh? Okay, let’s not even go there.

Let’s make a long story short and say that after some stomping, pouting, and removal of cake from pan and into garbage, a second cake was made.

This time I wised up and used a larger 9.5 inch cake pan. This worked out much better in that after an hour of baking, I had a cake that I could actually give to someone. A cake that was actually the consistency of cake and not cold lumpy gravy. Still, this second cake baked for double the 25-30 minutes Dorie calls for AND about 20 minute in when I saw it was not even close to done I turned the heat up to 375F. I am perplexed.

The silver lining in this Swedish cake saga is that at least I got to taste cake #1 a.k.a hot mess. There were some edge pieces that were acceptable to eat, and they were freaking delicious.

Cake #2 came out looking fabulous, way better than it’s deformed hot mess of a sister. It was totally cooked through and nicely golden brown (I loosely covered it with foil near the end). The top became a puffy sugary crust that sparkled with sugar but the inside was still all moist and cake like and the apples got nice and soft.

I will for sure be making this again for my own consumption. Maybe with apples or maybe not. I would like to try it without apples to see if they were the culprit of my baking time issues. The more I think about it, the more likely that seems.

The recipe that is posted after the jump is Dorie’s original recipe from the book. The cake that I baked was modified. This pretty much entailed not adding almonds, and adding sliced apples of the Pink Lady variety instead. I know, I’m a visionary, you don’t have to tell me.

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So a few weeks ago I posted about some yummy lemon blueberry muffins. This week I thought I would shake things up a bit and post about some orange blueberry muffins. I know, I’m crraaaazy. I like to live life in the fast lane.

These Orange Berry Muffins are the very first recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. I don’t really know why that is relevant, but, something has got to be first and this is it.

They top the list of favorite muffins that I have made in recent times. I absolutely loved the orange blueberry combo and the orange flavor was a nice change up from the standard lemon zest that I usually add to a berry muffin.

These muffins were really tender and moist, with a great crumb. Not surprising since this is a Dorie recipe. They were on the lower end of sweet, which to my surprise I enjoyed. There is only 1/3 cup of sugar in the batter. The rest of the sweetness comes from some honey and fresh orange juice.

For this recipe I used the zest of 2 oranges but the juice of only 1 orange (about 1/4 cup). This created a lovely orange flavor that was not overpowering.

I used 6 oz of blueberries which is a standard small container. I think these could stand to have a bit more berries, a full 8 ounces would probably be perfect.

If you are looking for a way to use up your bounty of blueberries, this is a great recipe to try. I just scored blueberries for 99 cents per pint, so you can bet your ass I will be making these again really soon.

Full recipe after the jump.

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No Brioche Plum Tart here today. I usually have to give the majority of my Tuesday with Dorie baked goods away, and I wasn’t about to go through the effort of brioche making just to give it all away to some coworkers.

Instead, I give you blueberry lemon muffins a la Dorie. I make muffins pretty much on a weekly basis so that we can always grab one out of the freezer for breakfast in the morning. So I like to experiment and try different muffins. However, blueberry muffins are one of both of our favorites. So whenever I see blueberries on sale I pick up an extra container for muffins.

This is a super easy lemon blueberry muffin, which is pretty much the same recipe that I used for my lemon poppy seed muffins. The original lemon poppy seed muffin recipe came from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, which I just adapted to a lower in saturated fat version. I actually liked this version with the blueberries better.

I used some fresh blueberries and I love how bountiful they look here. They really pop against the yellow muffin, not to mention that they are also absolutely delicious.

Make these. Trust.

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So I was in the mood for a milkshake. I ended up making a smoothie instead (on Nick’s suggestion). The smoothie was delicious, but I still want that milkshake.

Perhaps that is what I will do with some of the leftover Apricot Honey Ice Cream.

However, this smoothie did hit the spot while we were waiting for the Vegetable Cheese Strata to bake on Sunday morning.

It was refreshingly cold and fruity, and I felt good about drinking it. I like food that makes me feel good after eating it.

Raspberry Smoothie
by Nick & Sara at imafoodblog.com
makes 2 cups (16 ounces)

• 1 6 oz container raspberries
• 1/2 cup non fat milk
• 1 6 oz container non fat Greek yogurt or plain yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons agave nectar or honey
• 2 cups ice

1. Combine all ingredients in the blender and process until smooth

Of course, you could make this with any fruit you wanted, frozen or fresh.

I also made a smoothie a few days later that was similar to this with a frozen banana and some PB. Yum!

I give you Apricot Honey Ice Cream.

This was a really yummy treat. Thanks to Tommi of Brown Interior for picking this wonderful recipe for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie. It can be found on page 437 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

I used apricots instead of peaches, because the peaches I bought turned out to be rotten. It is always nice when you go to start making something and realize that your main ingredient literally belongs in the trash. I could actually cut through the peach pits!

I read the playing around that Dorie provides and she said that you could also use nectarines or apricots. I like both of these more than peaches. Excellent!

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Puff pastry and bacon are cut from the same cloth. The cloth of whatever you are making if you add some bacon or puff pastry, it will automatically be ten times more delicious. That is a fact, not an opinion.

In short, this tart was flaky buttery goodness. Apples, butter, brown sugar, puff pastry (I added some cinnamon at the end, mainly for color). Nick and I split one of the little tarts, and the rest were removed from the premises post haste. I have been doing a good job lately of working out and not being a pig in general, so I didn’t want to derail my work by keeping these evil temptresses in the house. Oh, but they were good!

Nick has made puff pastry a few times, like real deal puff pastry that takes hours and multiple turns. However, we were fresh out so I did buy the all butter Dufour puff pastry. This cost me $10.49, which is why my tarts are square and not round. Sorry Dorie, I am not wasting perfectly good puff pastry just so I can have a circular tart. We did not like the Dufour as much as Nick’s homemade puff pastry. The flavor was better on the homemade which we attributed to the salt content and the Straus butter he used. That said, I would certainly not throw this Dufour puff pastry out of bed and I can’t wait to use it up on more tasty treats.

The bottom line is that this is really easy and delicious and the filling can be adapted to pretty much any fruit that you like.

This wonderfully delicious and easy Apple Tartlet was chosen for Tuesdays with Dorie by Jessica of My Baking Heart. Great pick Jessica!

Well, this is a quasi Tuesdays with Dorie post this week. This week’s recipe was mango bread and was chosen by Kelly of Baking with the Boys. I was going to be a trooper and make this mango bread, even though Nick and I are not fans of the mango. Then I thought to myself, just change out the mango for some strawberry. Yes, you are a genius Sara. You have been wanting to make strawberry bread and now is your chance.

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The one request I get most from Nick of what he wants me to make is pie. It is always “where’s the pie, where’s the pie"? So for his birthday, which was a few weeks ago, I had to make him a pie. No, I wanted to make him a pie, because I love him.

I decided on peach for no particular reason other than peach pie is delicious. I had to use frozen peaches since I did not have time to get to Whole Foods and the Safeway by my office did not have any fresh peaches. So, the filling ended up being good, but nothing spectacular. I followed a recipe from our good friend Joe Pastry. (We mention Mr. Pastry quite often on this blog, and for good reason. If you have not read through his blog, you should do yourself a favor and do that soon.)

The crust of this pie, however, is another story entirely. It is the flakiest most delicious crust I have ever produced and probably ever eaten period. It is probably the closest you can get to making a laminated dough pastry without actually making a laminated dough. I read about and followed the instructions, here, from Joe Pastry. However, the technique originally belongs to Rose Levy Berenbaum, so you know it’s quality.

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This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie is Tartest Lemon Tart and was chosen by Babette of Babette Feasts. This recipe is on page 336 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Being a lemon dessert lover, this was an awesome pick in my opinion. In fact, I had already made this tart and posted about it here. I really loved the filling the first time, so I was excited to make it again. This time I wanted to try to make it into lemon bars instead of a tart. This proved to be successful, and I studded the bars with fresh blueberries after it had cooled. This gave a nice burst of sweetness amid the tarty lemon filling.

My filling was actually a little too bitter this time, I think my lemons must have had more pith than the ones I used before. I am sure my fellow bakers came up with some great ideas on how to reduce the bitterness. I will be on the look out for tips for next time. The only change I made to the recipe was that I used evaporated milk instead of heavy cream in the filling because I did not have any cream in the fridge. Perhaps the richness of the cream would have helped cut some of the bitter taste (or not, because I totally just made that up). However, I still loved these and will definitely make them again. The filling is so thick and luxurious and bursts with gorgeous bright lemon flavor. I would be interested in making this filling with other citrus, maybe a grapefruit next time.

I have said before that Nick and I do not enjoy shortbread crusts, so I made a Pasta Frolla. If you are not a shortbread lover, this is a great alternative for your tart crusts. It seems to stay more tender even after the long baking times and we enjoy the texture over a shortbread.

Overall, this tart is a winner. I can’t wait to see what my fellow bakers thought about it.

That’s about all I could muster up tonight. It’s 11:30 PM and I am writing this through tired bleary eyes. I’m out.

I made this cake for Passover Seder at my parent’s house. It had to be flourless, ya know, the whole Passover thing.

Nick was the one who suggested the flourless chocolate cake and volunteered us to make it. He then went to pastry guru Joe Pastry to see what he had to say about such cakes. Mr. Pastry suggests using this recipe from Epicurious.

So, the night before our Seder, 11PM rolls around and there is no flourless chocolate cake. There is only me watching TV and Nick drinking scotch and playing online poker. Guess who ended up making this cake all by her lonesome, after having to harass Nick just to print out the recipe.

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