Waaay back on March 16th, Rachelle of Mommy? I'm Hungry! chose Dorie's soft chocolate and raspberry tart. Now normally I tend not to bake an entire tart. Why? Because I certainly don't need to EAT an entire tart! But as luck would have it, my fabulous mom came to visit that weekend, so I had someone to share it with :)
I only have an 11 inch tart pan (for some reason I couldn't find a 9 inch pan back when I needed one to bake the chocolate crunched caramel tart) so my tart is a little thinner than some. But overall it was delicious! I love chocolate and raspberry together - this was almost like chocolate mousse with raspberries... but it a light flaky tart crust. Yum!
I whipped up some homemade whipped cream and mom and I were set. Be sure to check Rachelle's blog for the recipe... and the TWD blogroll for how the other bakers did!
It's a good thing I don't blog for a living like some of my fave bloggers out there.... for starters, I don't know how they come up with so many things to say! But I am also quite the delinquent blogger these days... and its not even that I haven't been baking! I just haven't been posting. So I'm playing catch up this weekend.
This week's TWD (which I baked last weekend, for the record) was sweet cream biscuits. And they were delicious. I love biscuits because they are good with so many things... I made them last Sunday to go with the sausages and veggies we grilled out on our new grill and then ate the rest with butter and jam for breakfast all week!
The biscuits were definitely best right out of the oven - super light and flaky - but they were good re-heated in the microwave, too. My biscuits didn't rise nearly as much as some of the other TWD bakers (I always seem to have that problem - over mixing maybe?) but they were still wonderful. And the best part was how simple they were. No carefully mixing in cold butter like most other biscuit recipes - just flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, & cream! I'll definitely be making these again!
The 15th of the month always seems to sneak up on me. I was so excited to see these cupcakes as the April pick for MSC - thanks to Jen from Cookbook Habit! These cupcakes remind me of the classic Hostess cupcakes of my youth. I've seen variations of them on many blogs and always wanted to try them.
The cupcakes themselves weren't super chocolately... but I thought they were a nice compliment to the marshmallow filling. This was my first attempt at filling cupcakes - after the first couple I got the hang of it and it was pretty simple. Martha tells you to cut the cone shaped hole from the bottom - I've also seen it done from the top, which I think would be even easier. I added a simple chocolate ganache to make these more like the Hostess variety. The one thing I would change would be to use a regular buttercream or royal icing for the classic swirl on top. I used the marshmallow filling as suggested. They looked cute for about 10 minutes... then the marshmallow melted into a big blob on top of the cupcakes! Oh well, they still tasted good! I thought they were good chilled as well.
It's basically a walnut cake vanilla and mocha swirled layers. I used almonds instead of walnuts, and it turned out wonderfully. I didn't quite get the 'gingko leaf' pattern Dorie mentions...but oh well. Regular old swirl worked for me!
The cake was light and moist and the mocha swirl added just the right amount of richness. Almost like an almond pound cake but lighter. It stayed fresh for most of the week and was delicious with coffee. I left it plain, but this would have been great with a vanilla or mocha glaze. Or a scoop of ice cream! I was concerned my bundt pan was going to overflow (this makes a LOT of batter) so I made one jumbo muffin/cupcake - it was delicious that way, too!
