TWD-Shrinking Dimply Plum Cake

I know, the name of this week's treat for TWD is simply Dimply Plum Cake. However, I found it appropriate to add shrinking to the title as each time I walk through the kitchen, the cake seems to get slightly smaller. I know, weird. I bought some plums at the Thursday farmers' market and evidently the fruit they grow around here is mutant. No, not like fish from the Simpson's with three eyes, its just twice as large as normal. I cut the plums into fourths and only ended up using two. If I had used four halved plums, they wouldn't have all fit in my 8x8. Yeah, they're huge, but red and juicy and sweet and contrast nicely with the crumbly brown sugar cake. I'd definitely make it again with whatever stone fruit I have on hand, as the batter comes together quickly and without fuss. The cake does not, however, have a very long shelf life, so I figure its probably best for this cake, and all involved, that its been quickly disappearing.

TWD-Chocolate Whopper Malted Drops

Earlier tonight, I was dropping the mounds onto the half sheets and tasting some batter as I went along. It was definitely sweet, chocolately, and not too bad at all. (I should probably state that tasting most dough or batter is standard. It always reminds me of baking in my mom's kitchen as a child where she never let me taste cake or cookie dough, cause you know children, along with the elderly are at a higher risk for Salmonella poisoning. I love my mumma. A lot.) Now that I've taken the last sheet out of the oven and the cookies are cooling on the racks, I'm not sure how crazy I am about these malted drops. This makes me sad, as you can imagine, because I love cookies (and sweets in general, um, make that food in general) and I was really looking forward to a new and interesting treat to add to my recipe arsenal. Okay, maybe arsenal is a little too scary a term to be used in reference to a group of recipes, but you get my point.

I followed the recipe (page 85 in Baking ) pretty closely using regular malted milk powder and chopped bittersweet chocolate, but at the market I go to they didn't have Whoppers. This was certainly not a problem as they did have large, espresso-flavored, malted milk balls in the bulk candy case-and we all know how great coffee and chocolate are together, sort of like "...lamb and tuna fish. What, you like spaghetti and meatball better? Is that better analogy for you?" (If anyone can guess the movie I'll give you a shiny nickel.) As I mentioned above, the batter was tasty and I thought the flavors were rich, but came together well. I'll give them another taste once they cool, as I figure after all we've been through (30 minutes in the kitchen) I owe these drop cookies at least a second shot. I bet they'd be good with milk, but since I don't drink milk and haven't in about 7 years I can't really tell you. Maybe when E gets home from poker he'll let me know.

In fairness to the cookies, maybe I'm just in a foul mood because the battery in the camera was dead and I tried to charge it quickly and take some pictures, but it kept dying on me and it kept taking bad pictures. Okay, maybe the bad pictures were not 100% the camera's fault, (I'd say 95% camera, plus or minus a few basis points), but the battery dying was. In addition to the three posted, there were lots of other photos taken, however they looked pyschedelic-a crazy blend of batter, chocolate and malt balls. Please try to vividly imagine a pyschedelic pattern that uses only shades of brown. Very cool. Oh wait, not cool at all.

Is this how you visualized the pychedelic batter photo?

If so, then one of the following is true:

A. you loved the 60's B. you currently enjoy mind ehancing drugs C. I have a gift for describing things

Tuesdays With Dorie #1

This was my first week baking for "Tuesdays with Dorie". Checking out the website and looking at members' blogs and photos, I determined some of the people in the online baking club are professional-no really, they have their own businesses in the food industry. So let's just say I felt like I had a lot to live up to. Not that this is a competition, I just didn't want to have "the ugly cookie". I also determined that I needed to add some photos to tell my cookie story. Well, things got a bit out of hand with the camera in the kitchen. I'm pretty sure I uploaded over 100 photos and felt kind of creepy as I sat in front of my computer oogling each one. But I've had an addiction to photos of food for awhile, sitting up late thumbing through cookbooks and I'm certainly not going to seek help for this problem now. Thankfully, for you, I've included just a few to go along with the cookie story.

I've had Baking for a couple months now. I got it for my mother as a gift and she said, "You have to get this book for yourself.", so being the good daughter that I am, I went about purchasing myself a copy. I've made a couple things already: the Yogurt Marmalade Cake I've been making for a couple years since it was featured in a Bon Appetit section Dorie did on desserts French women actually make at home and last month I tried out the jam filled Linzer Sables.

Saturday morning I set out to make the dough. Everything was going fine until I took the chocolate out to chop. I only had about half of the bittersweet chocolate I needed. I know-this wouldn't have been an issue if I had my mise-en-place, but since I'm not in culinary school, missing ingredients happens from time to time so I just supplemented with semi-sweet. No harm done. At least at that point I was hoping no harm would be done. I let the dough setup in the fridge overnight. The next morning it had definitely taken on a more golden color and I let it rest on the counter while the oven came up to temp.

My favorite disher, (for ice cream and cookie dough), is a 2 tablespoon scoop so that's what I used. I thought they were the perfect size. Maybe that's because I feel better eating 6 cookies rather than 3, regardless of their diameter.

I checked them for 15 minutes, but ended up leaving them in around 17 minutes. Maybe my oven's off temp since I don't currently have a thermometer in there, but they were golden brown on the inside and had a great texture once they cooled.

So I had one that was warm and I had one, (or two), when they cooled. I hear hey're good before bed and also good for breakfast, well brunch.

There was one casualty-an adventurous cookie tried to explore the world around the cooling rack-but it turned out to be just as tasty as its round little friends.

I'm excited to check out the other TWD blogs to see how everyone else fared and I'll keep my fingers crossed that I didn't have "the ugly cookie" in class.