Tuesdays with Dorie ~ Tarte Tatin

*apples soaking in pinapple juice while waiting to be cooked

Laurie from Slush hosted Jan. 5th's Tuesdays with Dorie. (Yes, I'm painfully late. But better late than never right?)

It was a choice between two recipes and I chose to do the Tarte Tatin. It's sort of Dorie's take on a rustic farmhouse apple tart. It was so easy and sooo good. She says that if you make it once you will never need a recipe to make it again and I can see that that is true.

The only changes I made were using my own puff pastry for the crust and sprinkling the apples with a bit of cinnamon while cooking on the stovetop.

It did get a bit messy on me when I flipped it upside down after baking per the recipe. So I probably should have let the apples cook longer before baking. But it turned out soooooo delicious. I didn't expect to love this recipe as much as I did. This will definitely get made again. My husband loved it too. But maybe next time, I'll forgo the whole flip-it-upside-down part. I think it's pretty as can be straight out of the oven.

Creamiest Lime Cream Pie

This week's TWD was picked by Linda at Tender Crumb. I tweaked a few things in this recipe to make it more to our liking. First of all, I cut the amount of butter used. The recipe called for 2 1/2 sticks of butter to go in the cream. Holy. Cow. I remember just how buttery the buttercream frosting tasted in the Perfect Party Cake and I didn't want to repeat that. So I used 1 1/2 sticks of butter instead. It tasted just fine with that and, truth be told, I could have gotten away with just one stick.

I also supplemented the fresh squeezed lime juice with bottled because my 3 limes only gave half the amount needed. No biggie. Instead of using a regular pie crust or a graham cracker one, I made my own from pecan sandies. Have you ever had a pie with a pecan sandie crust? Oh my you must try it. Those little cookies translate perfectly into a cookie crumb crust.

Very pretty.

I also didn't do the meringue. I'm not a fan. So I just topped it with Cool Whip instead.

This was a good pie and got the thumbs up around here, but it was a little more labor intensive than I had thought, what with all the whisking for such a long time while making the cream. I have another recipe for a "Creamy Lemon Pie" that I've been making for years that tastes very similar to this one and is a breeze to make. Considering the flavors are so similar and the work involved is so drastically different, I think I'll stick with my old favorite. :-)

Classic Banana Bundt Cake -- with a twist

This week's submission was pretty much a straight forward banana bundt cake. But since a friend had gifted me with a large bag of zucchini, I decided to use half zucchini and half bananas. This turned out to be perfect because while I like banana cakes and breads, I'm not too fond of an overly strong banana flavor. This cut the banana flavor a bit and made for one very moist cake. I used 2 cups total of banana/zucchini mixture.

There was no need for icing or glaze because it was so moist and had a good flavor all on it's own.

This week's host is Mary at the Food Librarian. She has the recipe posted on her blog if you want to give it a try. ~~~

TWD - Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies

I actually made these brownies twice. The first time I followed the recipe to the T with the exception of the nuts. I left them out because we have someone here who is allergic. The first batch...well, quite honestly we are not big fans of coffee flavoring in our chocolate. Chocolate? We love it. Coffee? We love that too. We just don't like it together.

Also, that first batch turned out rather runny. I'm not sure why. I know they were supposed to be rich and gooey, but this was just waaaay more gooey than anyone could have intended them.

So, I made a second batch. I made a few changes and made them in a more traditional way. I left out the coffee and the cinnamon and I used semi-sweet chocolate.

And you know what? They were wonderful. They were thin, ooey gooey and rich just like others have said.

Batch #1 - no so good

Batch #2 - Yum ~~~~~

Head on over to this week's host blog, Surviving Oz, if you want the recipe.

Perfect Party Cake ~ TWD, 2 days late ~~

I'm excited to be making my first TWD post! Granted, it's two days late but as I said earlier, I had to wait for my cookbook to arrive. This is a gorgeous book and if you love to bake I would definitely say it's going to be one to add to your collection. (Because don't all people who love to cook have a huge cookbook collection? I think so.)

This weeks' TWD recipe was the "Perfect Party Cake" and it was hosted by Carol of mix, mix... stir, stir. I was glad to see that this was the first recipe for me to participate in ~ because who doesn't love a party cake?? Fun!

But I knew right away that for my family I was going to have to make a few adjustments or "play around" with the recipe as Dorie calls it. The very first thing I knew I needed to change was the use of raspberry filling. I know alot of people love various jams and such in their layer cakes but we do not. I knew that if I had used any type of jam between my layers no one in this house would eat this cake. And I definitely wanted this cake to be eaten and enjoyed! So I just used the butter cream frosting between all the layers. (And I do mean BUTTER cream. Paula Dean would be proud of this recipe y'all.)

The other change was the coconut on the outside of the cake. Now, if had been for just me I would soooo have put that coconut on there! I luuuuuvv me some coconut on the outside of my cakes! (Love, love, love) But my daughter does not and again I knew that a coconut laden cake would render it inedible to those under my roof so I left it out to keep all invovled happy and full of cake. :-)

This cake was pretty easy to make and I didn't have any problems with it.

My layers didn't rise up as high as I wanted, but that didn't upset me too much. It doesn't effect the taste any. But next time, I would be tempted to double the recipe to 4 layers thus getting a really tall cake.

I did like this cake and the frosting. But to be honest that butter cream was a bit toooo buttercream for me. If I made this frosting again I would cut the amount of butter used. But overall I liked the lemon flavor. It was just enough lemon to be good but not so much that it knocks you over.

If you want this recipe, head over to mix, mix... stir, stir and Carol has it listed there.

"Tuesdays With Dorie"

I just wanted to post that I am soooo happy to be participating in Tuesdays With Dorie. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, but membership was never open when I would check. But recently, membership was opened up and I emailed in to participate. Shortly after that, open membership was instated for the summer. I do not think that my blog link has made it into the sidebar at TWD yet, but nevertheless I'm in! Yahooo!

Right now, I am awaiting delivery of my cookbook from Amazon. Just as soon as it arrives, I'll starting baking and posting with the TWD bloggers.