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.

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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!

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Clowns.

Watermelon.

Nickelback.

The films of Kevin Costner.

Burnt Sienna.

“CSI: Miami.”

Today’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze.

Can you guess what these things have in common?

P.S. For the recipe, visit Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction, or pick up a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home to Yours.”

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.

So, Chocolate Armagnac Cake wasn’t our thing, but perhaps you’re intrigued? For the recipe, visit LyB at And then I do the dishes, or check out Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home to Yours.”

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.

For the recipe, visit Whitney of What’s left on the table?

It’s taken more than a year, but this week Tuesdays with Dorie is finally tackling the Devil’s Food White-Out Cake. The black-and-white beauty on the cover of “Baking: From My Home to Yours.” The cake of inspiration.

What, you didn’t recognize it?

A few weeks ago, Jeff’s dad, Dan, was joking about wanting a birthday cake topped with a jeep – one like his white Jeep Cherokee. He told his wife, Tina, who told Jeff, who told me that this idea needed to be on like “Donkey Kong.” So, I used this week’s Dorie recipe to make the cake, a crumbly devil’s food with a marshmallowy filling, and a batch of Rice Krispies Treats® for sculpting the jeep and rocks. Jeff sculpted, I added the fondant, and he painted the details. He had never worked with fondant. Remember how my first fondant experience looked? No? EXACTLY. It was born for the landfill. But if you peek through Jeff’s tinted windows, you can see Dan laughing at the wheel while Tina screams. The only unrealistic thing is that the rock hill should be much, much steeper.

If you’re looking for an easy cake that looks (and tastes) impressive, Dorie’s Devil’s Food White-Out Cake could be your pick. The cake is covered in its own filling and crumbs, so you don’t even need a spatula to decorate it. A keeper! For the recipe, visit Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater.

Remember the part in “Groundhog Day” when Phil talks Rita into having a drink with him, and she says, “I always drink to world peace”? We snacked to world peace this week with Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies. And a whole lotta milk.

These cookies, originally created by Pierre Hermés and known as Korova Cookies, are intense. There’s no pesky milk or eggs to get in the way of your chocolate experience. No, no, no. The raw material is all cocoa powder and chocolate chips held together by butter, two sugars, flour and magic. The magic comes from a good pinch of fine sea salt, which helps these cookies transcend the ranks of your typical, cloyingly sweet, chocolate-chocolate chip cookies to become sandy, crumbly, sablés – dark-as-midnight chocolate cookies with a salty kick. Even better, they’re as easy to make as any slice-and-bake cookie. The ease of Pillsbury with the sophistication of Hermés. Oui.

Of course, we lowered the sophistication level of our batch with Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips. As Coco Chanel always said, “An ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure.” Read More…

Last week, I went to one baby shower, made cupcakes for another, and found out another friend is pregnant. We can’t be certain of the cause, but you’re going to want to protect yourself accordingly. Kidding! I love this time of year, because it seems like every time you turn around, there’s a reason to celebrate – a holiday or a big event or some good news. And if there’s a reason to celebrate, there’s a reason to make Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect Party Cake.

Sandy from Eat Real suggested this recipe to me, and it’s a keeper. Where most homemade white cakes taste a little eggy, this one has just enough lemon zest to give it a light lemony flavor without changing the color. Also, it manages to be light and fluffy but still sturdy enough to split without crumbling. You probably have the ingredients in your pantry right now, which means you are a party waiting to happen. The accompanying buttercream is a breeze, and the finishing touch – a little shredded coconut – makes any frosting job look polished. It’s a very, very, very forgiving cake.

One final thing: each cake layer gets a coating of jam, and that flavor comes through, so choose wisely. Don’t go for the bargain jam unless you absolutely love it. This would be the time to break out Aunt Jean’s preserves, but if you’re out, go for something high-quality, like the Sarabeth’s you can get on sale at TJ Maxx or your favorite flavor of Bonne Maman. Yes, I’m advocating the fancy preserves. Good times deserve good jelly.

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I’d never seen Mom in a tiara, a flashing sash and Mardi Gras beads, waving a magic wand, until last weekend, right before the medics strapped her to a gurney and rolled the poor dear off.

OK, so not this year.

This year, Mom’s friends threw her a surprise birthday party that was supposed to last until 4:30 p.m., but there was green champagne punch and gifts of questionable taste and friends who’d be flying out of state the next day and good times to be had. So, they kept the party going.

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Every Christmas, Aunt Jean sends my mom a big box of homemade jams, jellies and preserves, so my plan was to put off making a batch of Buttery Jam Cookies, one of this month’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipes, until the box came in. I love finding out what flavor combinations Jean’s come up with from year to year, like orange-champagne, tangerine, strawberry-kiwi, pear. And they’re so good, I’ve even eaten the blueberry-lime, even though blueberries make me feel like I’ve swallowed a chainsaw. That’s how much I love Jean’s jams.

So, I waited for the box. And waited. And Mom never mentioned it.

But on Christmas morning, when we all sat down to breakfast, there were the jams, jewel-like, next to a pile of homemade biscuits.

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