Where in the World is Tuesdays with Dorie?

Tuesdays with Dorie, a fixture of my life for over two years, is fast winding down. Although I’ve nearly stopped blogging TWD recipes, and clearly don’t adhere to a Tuesday baking schedule, I still feel a certain regular resonance from that big dirty cookbook with the melted cover. This resonance takes the form of a kind of proprietary fondness, a connection to the tome that goes beyond following printed instructions toward a goal of dessert.

As the good bloggers hurtle their way to the finish line, I remind myself that it’s the journey that makes things interesting. In the interest of making up somewhat for the last few months, a brief overview of the unphotographed portions of the journey. Many were missed, but along the way…

Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet: Very soft, and popular. I found it overly sweet but a good companion to other ice creams of the moment, especially passion fruit and black pepper.

Salt and Pepper Shortbread: I make these all the time, they’re a popular Valentines Day cookie in my house, as well as being the go-to choice when out of eggs. It may say something about me that even when out of eggs I’m well stocked with cocoa.

Flip-Over Plum Cake: Buttery crisp-edged, very sweet. Lives somewhere between crisp and clafoutis. Ate it at all hours with a spoon.

Basic Biscuits: Basic. Excellent. Any excuse to make biscuits is warmly welcomed.

Bittersweet Brownies: Whipped up this November recipe quickly the other night. The only alteration I made was to sub in about ¼ cup of Bustelo grounds for the instant espresso powder. This made a big difference in the taste and seemed to leave the texture unaffected. Matt, who should be pretty jaded on the subject of late night desserts by this time, got misty-eyed on being told that hot brownies were available at 11pm, a condition that he described as ‘one of the best things that could happen.’ The morning-afters went to Jill, who had them for breakfast.

The TWD group is continuing the fight in the coming year with an earlier Dorie Greenspan collaboration--Baking With Julia. A companion volume to the PBS show of same name, this book contains contributions from a variety of American cooks and pastry chefs. While the writing will remain Dorie's, I'm looking forward to changing it up with this eclectic collection.

I've been very remiss, obviously, on the photo-taking front, but while you imagine all the the desserts mentioned above, you can admire this shot that my sister dug out of the archives from our 2008 trip to Uganda.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Lingonberry Shortbread Cake

You know what makes great cranberry sauce? Lingonberries. Ikea lingonberry jam is a great cranberry substitute in almost all conditions. Worked like a charm in this jammy little cake, with crumbly shortbread crust. Just the way we like it. You can find the recipe here.

Photo by Matt.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Coconut Butter Thins

Dorie Greenspan, or her cookbook at least, has a split cookie personality. On the one hand are what she calls 'cookie jar cookies,' big American-style cookies with chunks of things in them, often sporting silly names like 'granola grabbers.' On the other hand, and in fact in another section, are what she refers to as 'side of the saucer cookies,' elegant, buttery, grown-up cookies. These are the ones I love. Some of them, however, don't really have names that attract me, and while I've had the salt and pepper shortbread bookmarked for years, I had never considered making the Coconut Butter Thins.

This is not a mistake that I will be repeating. These are some of the most elegant, subtly unusual, and irresistible cookies I've ever made. I would make these for fancy catering jobs. I would make these for intimate dinners. I would make them every day, except where would that leave us and my main home taster doesn't do coconut. But I repeat, these are really impressive little cookies.

The best part is that it's not only the end result that's fun. The method is also simple, elegant, and entertaining.You mix up a shortbread-like base, your butter, your sugar, your flour, etc.
Then you add in shredded coconut and nuts (Dorie recommends macadamia, I preferred pistachio for both looks and taste). I made two other substitutions--lemon and grapefruit zest replaced lime, and instead of a dash of coriander (an interesting spice recommendation that Dorie offers without comment), I added a dash of a curry powder blend, which gave the final project a warm savory overtone to balance the sweetness. Next time I may try coriander straight up, I didn't have any in the house this time.

Now the fun part: When the dough is done, you put it into a large plastic freezer bag and allow the bag to help you roll it out into a very thin rectangle.It was just so satisfactorily neat and precise. I'm not normally a fan of precision but this was like the perfect dance step, the neatest turn, the easiest cruise on a bike...I'm not getting this, but be assured, it gave more pleasure than you'd think rolling out a rectangle of dough could. When the dough has chilled, in my case overnight, you slip it out of the bag and cut it into squares. Dorie offers the most un-Dorie-like instruction that you use a ruler, which kind of nudges the recipe into the Martha camp, but I understand, it comes naturally from the pleasure of rolling it into the bag so neatly. After that, it's just bake and watch people's faces go quiet and thoughtful when they taste it, watch them cover the box up with a scarf during rehearsal because otherwise the smell is too distractingly delicious, watch a box of these vanish in a very few minutes. And plan the next attack. The coconut really does something I wouldn't have suspected to the texture, the pistachios added perfect color notes, and I bet there's a wide range of spices that would enhance. The recipe can be found here. It just begs to be, in Dorie's words, 'played around' with. And it just begs to be made. Make it. Now.