You know it’s summer in the South when the churches start advertising that they’re “prayer conditioned.” The rest of the year, they call you to the Lord’s bosom. But summer is about escaping Satan’s armpit.
Here, keeping cool is a science, an art and a priority. When I was a kid, my parents had a wall-unit air conditioner in their bedroom. On those days when it was so hot you wanted to peel off your skin and sit around in your bones – when popsicles and bare feet weren’t cutting it – they’d let me and my sister run into that bedroom, close the door, flop on the bed and stay in there long enough to “let the sweat dry.” Pure luxury.
So, when I saw that the heat index was going to stay in the hundreds, I knew it was the right time to take on this Tuesdays with Dorie pick, a Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise that requires several indoor hours of indoor work – whipping, folding, baking, melting, chilling, slicing, roasting, toasting, assembling and refrigerating. That’s a lot of quality time spent avoiding sweat. And the result is worth the effort. Crispy discs of nut meringue layered with a creamy white chocolate ganache and roasted pineapple slices that are sweet and still juicy. Surrounded with toasted coconut. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself scraping the dish and contemplating another slice, because all of those tropical flavors make this dacquoise seem surprisingly light. If you have people you need to impress this summer, or you want to look productive while you’re staying inside for a “Facts of Life” marathon, you really can’t go wrong with this dessert. Especially if your idea of heaven once included popsicles.
Some dads play golf. Some fish. When my dad needs to relax, he drives. Windows down, radio on. And not just around the block or around town. Once he drove all the way to New Orleans. He’d offer to take us out to eat after church, and three hours later, we’d wind up at Lambert’s Café in Sikeston, Missouri, reaching up for those “throwed rolls” like they were manna from heaven. But one of the benefits of Daddy’s extensive travels was that right as we started threatening to kill ourselves or each other if we didn’t get out of the van, he’d find a dairy dip. Some standing room-only shack that smelled like little burgers and fries and soft-serve ice cream. Daddy bought a lot of goodwill with that 99-cent cone.
I’d been planning on making my own ice cream this summer, so I was excited that this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was Honey-Peach Ice Cream. What’s a baking group doing making ice cream? Who cares? Orange blossom honey. Georgia peaches. Whole milk, cream, sugar. I expected it to be good, but even the smallest bite blooms with the flavor of ripe peaches and cold, sweet cream. It’d be worth a three-hour drive, but it’s so much nicer to just walk to the freezer.
So, I haven’t posted in more than a week, because we were vacationing with family in Arizona, home of the Grand Canyon and an IKEA. One of them was so vast and beautiful, I had to step back and catch my breath. The other was the Grand Canyon. Kidding! But can you buy a lovely blue bowl at the canyon forless than $3? I think not.
Anyway, the great thing is that you don’t have to choose between those particular wonders, you can enjoy them both. The same holds true for these Chipster-Topped Brownies, this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. A brownie layer topped with a chocolate-chip cookie layer. What could be better, except maybe an IKEA inside the Grand Canyon?
In a previous life, I made tiramisu almost every day. A rich, creamy, boozy, fully-caffeinated tiramisu. One whiff, and you’d be awake for three days. It was a heavyweight. So, I was looking forward to trying Dorie Greenspan’s Tiramisu Cake, this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, to see if you could get that tiramisu flavor in a lighter version, one without the hassles of soaking and balancing individual ladyfingers on their ends. Because creating that ring of vertical ladyfingers encircling the tiramisu, with exactly three ladyfingers per slice, was once the bane of my existence. They break. They shift. Swing low, sweet chariot.
On the other hand, Dorie’s Tiramisu Cake is made of two layers of light, buttery cake brushed with an espresso-Kahlua syrup and filled with a creamy mixture of mascarpone, whipped cream and a little espresso. There’s also a layer of finely chopped chocolate in the middle, mainly for color. The assembly is quick, and the cake is much lighter than the original dessert – both in flavor and in the fact that you can actually stand up after eating a slice. Coffee-lovers will probably want to double the syrup to truly soak the cake and amp up that coffee-and-Kahlua flavor. Also … I think it needs the ladyfingers. Next time I try this recipe, I’ll replace the top cake with a layer of delicious, delicate, Kahlua-carrying ladyfingers. Because we go way back.
I have a soft spot for wax museums. They’re overpriced and kitschy and when they’re not maintained, the wax guests quickly turn into a collection of has-beens, like a party at Elton John’s. Wax museums are on my mind right now, because the Hollywood Wax Museum is auctioning about 200 figures – from the good to the confusing to the completely unrecognizable. I mean, look what they did to Dolly Parton. She’s a MAN, Baby! A man!
With wax museums, quantity does not equal quality.
The same holds true for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, an insanely rich Chocolate Cream Tart, featuring a chocolate shortbread crust, chocolate cream filling and whipped cream sprinkled with chocolate shavings. If you try to wolf down a wedge, the experience will diminish to Robin Williams as “Popeye” territory. Too much. Way too much. But if you can limit yourself to a few bites, maybe even a small sliver, you’ll have a peak experience, like I did when I saw these hideous figures of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Ohmagah.
***So, here’s The Most Important Question Ever: If you HAD to have a wax figure in your house, who would it be, and where would you put it? I’m thinking I could turn Mr. T in the world’s most awesome toilet paper holder, but Travolta is equally tempting.***
When it comes to making bread pudding, I’ve always used any leftover bread I had on hand. French. Italian. A couple of stale doughnuts. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me with this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie pick: Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding. The recipe is straightforward enough – soak a tray of dried bread chunks in chocolate custard, and bake it in a water bath – but I substituted leftover French bread for Dorie’s suggested challah or brioche and lived to regret it. I ended up with a very bready bread pudding that had a really weak chocolate flavor, probably because the bread I used lacked the sweet, buttery richness that would have accompanied a nice hunk of brioche.
I knew my brain was tired when I misread kola nuts as “koala nuts” a few days ago. I was reading a line of food trivia about their caffeine content. And then I read it again. And then I sat there wondering why koalas have caffeine in their nuts and how it got there. Was it there naturally? Too much Red Bull? And then I read that bit of trivia one more time. KOLA. Kola nuts.
I’m telling you this so that you won’t feel bad when I now tell you about my Epic Flash of Greatness, this Peanut Butter and Banana Cream Pie, the bastard child of this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe (Banana Cream Pie) and this month’s You Want Pies With That? challenge. Yesssssss! It’s like writing one term paper and turning it in to two different professors. Huzzah!
We could have loved this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie pick, Chocolate Armagnac Cake. It’s packed with bittersweet chocolate. It requires dousing fruit with alcohol and lighting it on fire. What’s NOT to love, right?
Prunes, Baby.
A lot of this cake’s moisture comes courtesy of 12 chopped prunes. If you always wondered what would happen if a Nestle Chunky bar with raisins was rescued from life on the streets by Richard Gere, now you know. Because Chocolate Armagnac Cake tastes like a very rich, slightly liquored up Chunky. It’s a lady on the plate, but a freak with the flavah.
You might ask, “Rebecca, how DO you hang on to a bounty such as Jeff?” And I would answer in three little words. Sometimes those three little words are Heath Toffee Bits. So, I was excited about this week’s Tuesday with Dorie pick: Caramel Crunch Bars.
The bars have three layers: a shortbread base topped with melted chocolate chips and a lethal smattering of toffee bits. Can’t miss, right? Well, like a newborn baby, these bars are far more appealing a few days out of the oven. They need the extra time for the flavors to meld and the shortbread to solidify so that you don’t have a crumbly mess. Although, the crumbly mess IS good on ice cream.
