Roasted Rhubarb with Bitters - Tuesdays with Dorie

This was a delicious variation of a simple recipe for rhubarb roasted with sugar. The Angostura bitters's flavour wasn't as strong as its fragrance but it added complexity and complemented the rhubarb beautifully.

It made a lovely dessert served as suggested with almond cake. 

Recipes for the roasted rhubarb and plain almond cake are from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking Chez Moi. Visit the TWD blogroll here.

Pistachio and Raspberry Financiers - Tuesdays with Dorie

We've made financiers for TWD before, those little French cakes that are rich in browned butter and sugar and include ground nuts and egg whites. This month's variation was made with ground pistachios and included a lone raspberry in each cake.

The fruit was definitely the star with the cake providing buttery sweetness and chewy texture. The only hint that they were made with pistachios was their colour and that was amped up by the addition of (optional) matcha. They went over very well with tasters.

The recipe is from the book Baking Chez Moi, by Dorie Greenspan. Visit here to see what everyone else baked this week.

Brioche Ice Cream Sandwiches - Tuesdays with Dorie

One of this month's TWD picks from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking Chez Moi, was a recipe inspired by, as Dorie described it, "a bite of chocolate tucked between two pieces of buttered bread.....the taste of childhood". It comprised brioche, chocolate ice cream and salted caramel sauce and it could be as simple or as complicated as you wished with the use of either store-bought or homemade components. I went with homemade.

I made the book's recipe for brioche, baked it in regular loaf pans and used biscuit cutters to create the discs from slices. For a family that loves chocolate, surprisingly, no one cares for it as an ice cream flavour so I made the only one everyone agrees on - vanilla - for the filling.

Quite a bit of time and effort went into making and assembling this dessert and for me it was just OK. I do think my use of vanilla ice cream defeated the entire purpose of this dish; a little chocolate would have been welcome. Regardless, my family enjoyed it.

Visit here for the TWD blogroll.

Cookies-and-Cream Tart(lets) - Tuesdays with Dorie

You really can't go wrong with Dorie Greenspan's foolproof cookie-like tart crust filled with rich, silky chocolate ganache. That's what formed the basis of this tart so I knew it would be good. Chopped Biscoff cookies mixed into the filling (yay, some local grocery stores finally carry them!) and a schmear of Biscoff cookie spread on the bottom (sadly, I had to use a different brand) provided new twists on this classic.

This recipe was supposed to be made as tartlets but I didn't have small tart pans and used a rectangular pan instead. Based on volume calculations, I needed only two-thirds of the filling but it didn't look like enough when it was in the tart shell. I made another one-third recipe of ganache (without cookies) and poured it on the top. I forgot the salt in both batches so that was sprinkled on at the end.

I thought the flavours and textures came together so well in this tart; there was extra crunch from the cookies and the cookies and cookie spread added subtle spice. It was delicious.

Check out TWD to see what everyone else thought of this recipe from Baking Chez Moi.