Dutch baking

With fall making its entrance, and speculaas and fall spices popping up everywhere, I was looking for recipes for some nice seasonal treats. I'm a big fan of 'gevulde speculaas' (filled speculaas)as we call it, which is basically a spiced cookie, filled with almond paste, baked into a big slab of cookie that you cut into pieces after baking (you could compare it with a bar cookie I guess).
When browsing my books and the web for recipe, I stumbled onto a recipe for another Dutch treat as well, also using almond paste but without the spices. We call them 'gevulde koeken' which translates into 'filled cookies'. Both came out so well, I decided to post a full report with instructions and the recipe here.
I have to thank Chufi on Egullet, who described the proces and the recipe before. I have slightly altered it to our likes.

Let's start with the filled cookies. It really is a fairly easy process, just takes some time because the dough needs to be chilled and rolled/cut, but I promiss, if you're an almond lover, you will be glad you gave it a try.

This is the recipe and the directions:

300 g / 10.5 oz AP flour
200 g / 1 cup - 2TBS cold butter, cubed
150 g / 3/4 cup sugar
200 g / 7 oz almond paste
1egg

1 egg for egg wash, with a little milk added and beaten
blanched almond halves

Preheat oven to 350 F / 175 C.

In a stand mixer with paddle attachment, mix butter, flour and sugar to form a dough. You may need to add about 1 tsp - 1 TBS of cold milk or water for the dough to come together. Wrap in foil and refrigerate for about an hour (up to a few days)

Mix almond paste with egg.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface, until fairly thin. Cut out rounds with a fluted round cutter. I used a 2.5 inch cutter, which yielded 44 rounds for 22 cookies. Put half the rounds on a baking sheet, and place filling in the middle of each cookie. It's okay to make a mound.

Moisten edges with a little water, put pastry round on top and seal edges. Generously brush with egg wash and put an almond on top. Brush again with egg wash.

Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. I got them out of the oven twice to brush them with the egg wash again, to give them an extra lovely color. This is how they look right out of the oven:



Now to the filled speculaas, which is basically the same proces, but it's quicker because it is traditionally baked into a large slab and cut after baking. If you're into the cutting proces and like to make individual little tarts, you can follow the same procedure as described above.
The recipe and instructions:
To make these cookies the traditional Dutch spicemix (speculaaskruiden) is used. You can make your own, the spices that should be in there are: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, aniseed, coriander, cardamom, in a ratio: cinnamon 3 : cloves 2: nutmeg 2: ginger 1/2: aniseed 1/2: coriander 1/2: cardamom 1/2.

300 g / 10.5 oz of selfrising flour (or use AP flour with 1 tsp baking powder)
150 g / 11 TBS of cold, cubed unsalted butter
150 g / 1/2 cup + 1TBS brown sugar
1 to 2 TBS speculaas spices, to taste (I use 2)
pinch of salt
about 1 TBS milk

350 g / 12 oz almond paste
grated rind of half a lemon
1 egg

1 egg for eggwash, beaten with a little milk or cream
blanched almond halves or slivers

Preheat oven to 350 F / 175 C.

In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the forst 5 ingredients for the dough. You may have to add the milk to make it come together.

Divide into two parts, wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate for an hour, up to three days (it will stiffen the dough and help to develop the flavor).

Mix the almond paste with the lemon zest and the egg until you have a spreadable mixture.

On a floured counter, roll out one part of the dough into a rectangle (or any other shape you like). Put on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Spread the almond paste on top, leaving a 1 inch border. It will still be pretty stiff. Carefully spread it over the pastry with the back of a spoon, wetting it to keep the paste from sticking.

Roll out the other part of the dough and place on top. Press the edges to seal and trim all around with a knife to make a neatly shaped log.
Press the almond halves on top and genrously brush the log with the egg wash.

Bake for approximately 25 minutes. Let completely cool before cutting into pieces. This could also be made in a tin or as individual filled cookies.


The speculaas will keep pretty well and improve in flavor. Just store in an airtight tin. Enjoy!!

Fall is here!

It's fall. The leaves are changing colors, the days are getting shorter, and there's that fall like smell in the air, makes you want to cuddle up inside with candles lit, a hot cup of tea and a nice piece of something sweet. Now what to make? The apples are so beautiful right now, that I just couldn't resist buying them, so I went looking for a nice apple-y cake. I remember making an apple cake from the Lisa Yockelson book 'Baking by flavor'. I haven't tried much out of the book yet, but this recipe had a 5-star rating in the book (added by me ;o)) so I figured it was worth making again.
The recipe calls for 3 large apples, grated, and lots of spices that make me long for december and speculaas (the typical dutch cookie that basically has gingerbread-like spice combinations). So apart from the cinnamon in the recipe, I subbed everything else for a healthy amount of speculaas spices and for an extra kick, I subbed the vanilla extract for cinnamon liqueur I happened to have. When the cake was baking, I wished that there were people in the house for a showing (our house is still for sale) because *I* would buy a house that smelled like ours did at that point in a heartbeat.

M. couldn't wait to try the cake just 2 hours after it was baked and swooned over it, but when we shared a piece for breakfast this morning, it was even better. It's moist, apple-y, spicey and fall-like all at once. I'm sure I'll be making this again and again.

Lemon whoopie pies

Yesterday was a baking day. My mom needed something for an event, and asked for simple and flavorful, and I thought we couldnt' stay behind empty-handed after the effort ourselves. So I made an orange butter cake for mom (sorry, no picture but I will have to post the recipe sometimes because it's fabulous) and for us I made cookies.
I went back to 'big, fat, cookies' and looked for something exciting and ended up at 'lemon whoopie pies'. After the first sandwich cookie I tried, we decided we both loved the concept, and I as had lemons on the kitchen counter, the choice was easily made.


For the cookies, you make a cake-like batter, you put heaped tablespoons onto parchment paper and bake them on cookie sheets. They spread a lot, but bake into nicely puffed sofr cookie saucers with a nice hint of lemon from the lemon rind. But the best part is definately the filling. Lemon juice, lemon rind, cream cheese, butter and sugar. I was sceptical because to me the recipe is 'american frosting', butter beaten with powdered sugar into a gritty mess, but this was nothing like it. There was a very nice balance between the sugar and the tangy lemon (and cream cheese) and just a perfect companion for the cookies. The filling is somewhat runny, and eating the cookie messy, but, after the first bite we didn't seem to care. Definately another winner from this book!


I'm editing this post to add the recipe, per RuthAnn's request :o).
For the Cookies:
1 1/2 cups AP flour
1/2 ts baking powder
1/4 ts baking soda
1/4 ts salt
6 TBS unsalted butter, at room temp.
1 cup sugar
1 ts finely grated lemon zest
1 large egg
1 TBS fresh lemon juice
1 ts vanilla extract
1/2 cupe buttermilk (any fat content)

Filling:
6 TBS unsalted butter, at room temp.
6 oz cream cheese, at room temp.
1 ts vanilla extract
1 ts finely grated lemon zest
2 TBS fresh lemon juice
2 3/4 cups powdered sugar.

Make filling first, because it gets runny and needs to firm up in the fridge a little. With an electric mixer on low speed, beat butter, cream cheese, vanilla, lemon zest and juice until thoroughly blended and smooth, about 1 minute. Add sugar and mix until smooth, about 1 minute. Put in the refrigerator until it is firmer, about 30 minutes.

Make cookies: Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. With an electric mixer, blend butter, sugar and zest until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add egg, lemon juice and vanilla, mixing until blended, about 1 minute. The batter may look curdled. On low speed, add half of the flour mixture, mixing just to incorporate. Mix in buttermilk, followed by other half of flour mixture until it is incorporated and batter looks smooth again.
Drop heaping tablespoons of batter onto buttered parchment paper on cookie sheets (I used silicone mats, unbuttered). Space cookies 3 inches apart, and bake at 350 for about 12 minutes. Tops will feel firm and a toothpick will come out clean. With the exception of a thin line or their edges, cookies will not brown. Cool cookies on baking sheets for 10 mintes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Sandwich cookies, using 1/4 cupe of filling for each pair. Wrap cookies separately in saran wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour. Serve cold.
Makes 8 sandwich cookies.
(Adapted from 'Big, fat cookies' by Elinor Klivans)

Nutella truffles

It was my sister's birthday last Tuesday, and of course I had to make something for her. She's a true chocolate lover, and always tells me 'the bitterer the better', so I was looking for something fabulous and chocolatey for her to enjoy. I browsed all kinds of brownie recipes, flourless chocolate cakes and whatnot, and then all plans for elaborate things somehow ended up in truffles when I ran out of time. I searched Carole Bloom's book (truffles, candies and confections) and when I reached the recipe for Nutella truffles I knew I didn't have to search any further. Even if our tastes have developed into 'more sophisticated things' both my sister and I cannot seem to shake our preference for Nutella, so I forgot about sophistication and just went ahead.

The recipe couldn't be anu easier. A cup of Nutella to half an lb of bittersweet chocolate. Melt chocolate, stir in Nutella, let set intil pipeable in the fridge, pipe into mounds. The trouble was in the piping. I had to remelt the whole thing twice because I couldn't get it to uniformely stiffen into a consistency that was easy to pipe. Running out of time, I worked with what I had and they didn't come out very nicely shaped, but, the taste was there :o). I rolled half of them in cocoa powder and the other half in chopped hazelnuts, for an extra flavour and texture boost. She enjoyed them (as did I), but I think the Nutella taste got left a little, and next time I'd add less chocolate which might make the whole piping thing easier as well.

Dimply plum cake

With all the plums at the market, the 'plum talk' over at Fine Cooking and most importantly, after my first succes with the NYT plum torte, I decided to give Dorie Greenspan's dimply plum cake a try.

I bought Mrs. Greenspan's book online, even though I never bought a book from this author before and hadn't tried any of her recipes before (at least that I remember). But when you don't have access to fine bookstores with loads and loads of the last cooking and baking books you could ever wish for, that make you think you'd like nothing better than spend the rest of your week doing nothing but inhaling those books, you get desperate. And you let your best intentions of not buying a book that you're not sure you'll definately like and use a lot (and even the tiniest bit of certainty will do) just fly out the window. Just like that.
I started out strong and just read about the book ('Baking, from my home to yours') thinking it would not be anything I need. Neeeeeed need. Not. But the rave reviews kept coming. And then those rave reviews became really mean to me when people started adding pictures. And more rave reviews. And more people telling the world no baker would ever be the same after baking from this book. It was a given, this book should grace the shelves of every self-respecting baker. And I am. And I caved.

I loved it. I loved the pictures, I loved how many recipes it had, and loved the author's writing style. So I started baking after wading through 8 zillion posts about which goods were definately out of this world great. I baked a cake. It was toothachingly sweet to me. I baked cookies. They were toothachingly sweet as well. I maked something else I can't even remember and didn't like it one bit. And I yelled at myself for buying something unseen again. And everybody still thought the recipes weren't overly sweet at all.

I mentioned the plum talk before, and it included the recipe for Dimply plum cake from this book. And I gave it another go. It was dead easy to make. I only tweaked a little, out of necessity. I didn't have an orange to zest, so I subbed the vanilla extract with Grand Marnier in the hope of bringing some orange flavor in (which I love). I decreased the sugar by 20%, just to be careful. And I added some streusel because I loved that with the last experiment too. Okay, now having written that down, it seems more tweaking than I thought, but, it really wasn't awful ;o). And this is the result:



It looks great. The house smelled divine. I did not like it :o(. I thought the cake texture wasn't as light as the NYT torte, which was feathery. This wasn't. There was no orange taste (my bad, I admit), but what I did taste was the sugar. Again, too much for my likes. So I think I've got to give up on this book. I only need to find someone who will appreciate it, because lots of people do and I'm obviously in the minority. And I will definately have to make a new resolution and keep it this time when it comes to ordering books on the internet...

Quiche

Just to prove that not only sweet things come out of my oven, here's a report of tonights dinner: quiche.
We both love quiche and we have a couple of tried and true recipes that we keep falling back on. One is on epicurious.com, a spinach quiche that we've altered a little after making it several times. Another favorite comes from a co-workers wife, and calls for broccoli and salmon. This time we wanted to try something new. After browsing our Fine Cooking magazine collection the savory tarts in issue 41 caught our eye. There were several variations in the magazine, and we picked the 'cabbage, leek and bacon tart'.

As usual, our planning left a bit to desire. We had figured out this morning that the dough needed to rest in the fridge, so at least we had done that. We missed that it had to rest in the freezer for at least half an hour after rolling it out though, so dinner was late as usual on Sundays :o).
The dough was very easy to handle. It fit my beautiful Emile Henry dish (that I don't use often enough) perfectly, didn't tear and baked up beautifully flaky:

The filling needed some fussing too: the cabbage needed to be cooked, than cut. The bacon had to be cooked, then the leek, and after that the cabbage was added and THEN the whole thing was supposed to cool completely. Well, that didn't happen. After patiently waiting for 5 whole minutes (heh) we caved, threw everything together and hoped for the best.
We weren't disappointed. The tart looked exactly like the one in the magazine, sliced very well and let's just say one of us ate a *lot*. I personally thought the crust could have tasted better, and secretly longed for the beloved spinach quiche. But like I said, one of us declared it a winner and thoroughly enjoyed the experience :o)

The disappearing plum torte

On Fine Cooking's message board 'cooks talk', the ladies were talking about this plum torte they had tried. Some had tried several recipes and compared them, among them Dorie Greenspan's 'dimply plum cake' and the following recipe from the NYT that was somewhat similar:

Plum Torte (from the NYT - Burros & Levine)
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar, PLUS 2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup unbleached flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 pinch salt
24 halves Italian plums (prune or purple), pitted
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Arrange a rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Cream the butter and the 3/4 c. sugar. Add the flour, baking powder, eggs, and salt and beat to mix well. Spoon the batter into an ungreased 9 or 10-inch springform pan. Cover the top with the plums, skin sides down. Mix the cinnamon with the 2 T. sugar and sprinkle over the top.
Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool; refrigerate or freeze if desired.
To serve, let the torte return to room temperature and reheat at 300 until warm. if desired. Serve plain or with vanilla ice cream.

Now judging on different results, I thought this torte would fit our likes very well, and seeing I had plums in the fridge that needed to be used up ASAP, I gave it a try.
I think it took me no more than 15 minutes before I had prepared the batter, cut the plums in half and greased the pan (as some reported some problems with sticking) and put the whole thing together. It was dead easy. While putting the butter back in the fridge, I noticed this container with streusel topping I had prepared for a fruit crisp that never saw the light of day the week before, so I decided I'd just sprinkle some of that on as well. And so I did, bravely venturing from the recipe as written, ha!
After exactly 50 mintes, the torte looked done, toothpick came out clean and the house smelled fantastic. To be honest, this is not a dessert you make when you want to have people 'ooh' and 'aah' over your great looking desserts, because mine looked rather errrr, rustic ;o). The topping seemed okay, even if it had weighed down the cake batter a bit, but still, everything was fine.

I couldn't get my husband to wait until the next day (when almost any cake is better tasting in my experience). It was still warm when he ate the first piece. After that, he had it for breakfast the next day, as a snack at noon, and after a quick visit from mom and BIL, the thing had miraculously disappeared before I had even had a chance to think of taking a picture.
Well, that can only mean I'll have to make it again I guess. No arm-twisting needed ;o). It truly was delicious. Sweet cake, tangy plum, and a little extra added crunch from the topping, what else can you ask for?