Well, I did it. It took 6 years but I baked my way through Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking Chez Moi, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Here's a summary in pictures by chapter:
Simple Cakes
Fancy Cakes
Tarts and Galettes
Baby Cakes and Petite Pastries
Cookies and Bars
Fruit, Creams, Frozen Desserts and Candies
We're ending our bake through of the book, Baking Chez Moi, with an absolutely fantastic cake: chocolate cake layers filled with chocolate cream, bathed in chocolate glaze and finished with crunchy, salty chocolate shards. It's rich and decadent and a chocolate lover's dream.
Visit TWD to see everyone's rendition of this cake.
For this recipe, one starts with baked cookies even the author admits have little flavour, the cookie portion of those fancy French sandwich cookies, macarons. The cookies are dipped in melted butter and baked again. This is not a cookie I would have chosen to make but it's one of the recipes to be covered in Baking Chez Moi so I saved the misshapen meringue shells from the Parisian macaron recipe and forged ahead.
As it happens, these were quite good according to my tasters: they were a lovely caramel colour, had incredible crunch and tasted of browned butter.
Visit TWD to see the other bakes this week.
I've made macarons a few times and each time, though they had smooth tops and good feet, they also had hollow interiors so I was very happy that they turned out as they should this time.
I decided I wanted yellow shells to go with my lemon-lime filling (Italian meringue buttercream flavoured with lemon-lime curd) and used powdered food colouring to make this pretty pale lemon shade. The tart filling with the sweet cookie was a delicious combination.
Only 2 recipes to go! Visit TWD to see what everyone else made from the book, Baking Chez Moi.
The name of these cookies says it all; they're made with olive oil and sweet white wine (and a few of the more usual cookie ingredients of flour, sugar, vanilla.....).
They were quite sweet and crunchy but apart from being very rich tasting, didn't seem to have a great deal of flavour. The author mentions pairing them with drinks or a fruit salad. I went with the latter and enjoyed the combination.
This recipe was our latest baking project from the book, Baking Chez Moi, by Dorie Greenspan. Visit here to see what everyone else at TWD made.
