with a capital D

I figured that I was going to need to (once again) apologize for being so inconsistent with participating in the bake-n-blog but when I looked at the date of my last post and realized it was in January of this year...I figured that is about as good as I am going to get and felt pretty darn proud of myself that the date was Jan 2019 and not Jan 2018, and I said to myself "girl stop apologizing and just move on".... and I am going to listen to myself.

Moving on.

This month one of the bakes is the Double Chocolate Marble Cake. I think it is suppose to be a pound cake but it is super dense. I mean dense with a capital D. 

Dense. 

Perhaps this is how the French do their pound cakes and I am just use to light fluffy pound cakes. And in general I would swear that French people are superior to us in almost all ways (wine, child care, french fries) but not this time. I just did not dig how dense it was.

My kid, however, loves it and it makes a great snack to pack for his school day because this little cake is not crumbling to a mess in his backpack. So there is a plus.

Check out what others baked at Tuesdays with Dorie.

Get the recipe for Dorie Greenspan’s Double Chocolate Marble Cake on p. 34 of Baking Chez Moi

Saint-Pierre Poppy Seed Cake

January always finds me back in the kitchen. Baking is the one thing that I hold onto long after the Christmas tree is plunked on the curb and the presents have all been played with. The call to start baking begins the end of November and keeps calling until early Spring, which is about when the fever to bake is replaced with the fever to run around outside like a school kid on a Friday afternoon.

There are two bakes this month a poppy seed loaf cake and a chocolate coconut tart. The boys in my house (both big and small) do not like poppy seeds but they really..really...really do not like coconut so the poppy seed loaf cake got made.

It is super simple. One large bowl, one whisk, one spatula and bake.

Saint Pierre Poppy Seed Cake. Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. You can find other bakers on the blogroll

Honey Yogurt Mousse

This is a really simple recipe with step one being to strain a cup of yogurt in the fridge for a couple of hours....which of course means that I put the yogurt in the fridge to strainer and promptly forgot about it for a couple of days. A Couple of hours...a couple of days....what is the difference!

For me the mousse was way too sweet however that is probably because my honey is way too sweet. It is local honey that comes in bulk at Whole Foods. At the store it is in a dispenser that keeps it warm and flowing but at home in my glass container it cools an thickens right up. I imagine being trapped inside the honey would feel a lot like being a bug trapped inside the amber before it sets hard.

Anyways back to the mousse. Easy to make (if you do not forget it in the fridge). Tasty (unless you have super sweet honey but even then little loved it).


Get the recipe for Dorie Greenspan’s honey-yoghurt mousse on p 353 of Baking Chez Moi. 

Granola Cake

First let me just say "I AM BACK"! And while I have been baking (secretly...without a purpose....alone and without fellow bloggers) it is not the same as baking along with others. Now on to the cake.

This week the group is baking granola cake. I make granola fairly regularly since it is something we all like to eat and as luck would have it I had just made a batch. As unluck would have it (is this even a saying) my granola had raisins in it.

I would officially like to apologize to my mother for all the years that I made her pick the raisins out of my raisin toast because raisin picking is a real pain.

Raisin free granola gets mixed with coconut and chopped chocolate, then mixed with a bunch of cake type ingredients and then baked.

It is delicious. Not fancy but delicious. And since it has granola in it I do believe it qualifies as a breakfast food!

Get the recipe for Dorie Greenspan’s granola cake here or on p 54 of Baking Chez Moi

Chocolate Cherry Brownies

I have a confession to make. I am a lover of "fluffy books" the fluffier the better. The only thing I like better than fluffy books is fluffy books that are also culinary themed mysteries. It was in one of these types of books that years ago I read about chocolate cherry brownies. It was really just a passing sentence, a filler, not integral to the plot and certainly not meriting a recipe at the end of the book. But for some reason that one mention of cherry brownies was enough for me...and I became obsessed. Since reading that book I almost always add cherries to my brownies. Sometimes I chop them, sometimes I leave them whole, sometimes I can not find them so I use cherry flavored cranberries (I do not recommend this last one). And while they have all been good (well not the one with the cherry flavored cranberries...that one was weird) they were never as good, as gooey, and cherry-chocolately delicious as these.

The main ingredient in these seems to be chocolate. 10 ounces of chocolate and only 1/3 cup flour. The second main ingredient is cherries. Plumped up cherries.

Hello there good looking. I have been waiting for you to walk your little chocolate legs into my life for a long...long...time.

Rhubarb Upside Down Brown Sugar Cake

When I was a little girl we lived in a big rambling house in a small coastal town in Nova Scotia. Lilacs made a hedge down one side of the yard and to a small girl they seemed almost as tall as the house. There was a big weeping willow tree. There was a garden in the back corner where my Mom grew vegetables, and there were raspberry bushes and a great big rhubarb patch. I am not sure if my Mom planted the rhubarb patch when we moved in or if the house came with the rhubarb patch we just left it there because my Dad adored rhubarb so it would be unthinkable to cut it down. 

I on the other hand did not like rhubarb. It was bitter, it stained your clothes, and it look suspiciously like celery. So in all the years that we lived in the house with a rhubarb bush in the backyard I never touched the stuff. 

But I am all grown up and I can see that I was wrong, plain old wrong. I had spent my youth bad-mouthing, defaming, muckracking rhubarb and I am here to say I am sorry...I was rhubarb. Do you hear that Dad...YOU WERE RIGHT AND I WAS WRONG because I now know just how awesome rhubarb is.

I think the problem is that often rhubarb does not have enough sugar mixed in with it leaving it super tart or it was too much sugar in it leaving it sickeningly sweet. But this cake hits just the right spot right in the middle of tart and sweet. 

And I am really glad that I did not wait for it too cool before I sliced a little piece off because it is amazing warm.

And because we had to marinate the rhubarb in sugar and then strain off the juice I now have a little container of beautifully pink syrup waiting to be added to a cocktail!

Nutella Buttons

It is a fact (and if it is not a fact then it should be made a fact) that tiny things are better.

Itty bitty dogs = adorableness
Little cars = fun
Tiny houses = more to love
Petite little top hats perch on fluffy white kittens = cuteness that literally hurts

It is also a fact (and this one is indeed a fact) that I have an unhealthy obsession with tiny baked goods. Wee little cupcakes, miniature brownies, petite loafs pans. I (heart) them all. But sadly because I live in an oh so tiny house I have had to limit my kitchen toys gadgets tools and thus I have never owned a pan to make wee cupcakes.

Until now!

After all if Dorie Greenspan says to use a mini cupcake pan then darn it I am using a mini cupcake pan. And if Dorie Greenspan says to make wee vanilla cupcakes filled with Nutella then darn it I am making wee little vanilla cupcakes filled with Nutella.

Sadly I wish I could say that the reason I immediately ate 3 of these tiny little buttons of goodness a few minutes after they came out of the oven was because Dorie Greenspan said for me to...but alas that is not true it is simply because I am weak when it comes to tiny little cupcakes (especially when filled with Nutella).

Small print: Nutella Buttons, Baking Chez Moi, page 188