squeeee! Australian linens by Dandi (shameless plug)

squeeeeEEEEEEE!  

So today I'm sitting in my office, in my jammies, eating Frosted Flakes and thinking about work, when my mail carrier bangs on the door to deliver a package.  In it was a stash of goodies that quite possibly made my year, certainly my week--my table linens and apron from the lovely ladies at Dandi!

Clockwise from left: rick-rack table runner, rick-rack placemats, 8-seater tablecloth, halter pini apron, paper napkins.

Dandi is an Australian homewares company that mostly does kitchen and dining linens and other pretty decorative things.  They are probably (I think?) best known for their adorable halter pini, of which I am now a proud owner (I already had a skirt pini).  It's run by four fabulous-sounding young women, who respond to emails and orders personally, and who even personally pack your order:

A handwritten thank-you note, complimentary pretty paper napkins AND a guide on creative ways to fold them AND a recipe for sugar plums!  What else can a girl ask for?

I love their things because in addition to being high quality, they are just straight up pretty, no chaser, no gimmicks, no trying to be "like" anything else, not trying to be retro or anything.  (For instance, I love both Sex and the City and Mad Men, and I love to look at the pretty clothes and styling in each show, but a QUICK way to turn me off of your product and ensure my money stays in my pocket is to advertise it to me as being "so very Mad Men!!!"  That's just CRASS.)  They are made of good quality cotton that feels good and is sturdy--a friend spilled red wine on my white and blue tablecloth last week, and after much soaking and washing in hot water, the stain is completely gone and the cloth is just as good as new.  They have a great blog full of fun ideas and inspirations, and sometimes you can catch products on sale at 1/2 off. 

I am not at all a "house stuff" enthusiast, but Dandi linens are my one big indulgence, and they provide such superb and friendly customer service I can't help but want to support them as much as I can.  Yeah, they're a bit pricey, and shipping to the States is no joke, but you should try them.  You WON'T be sorry, and hey!  you also won't have the same Crate and Barrel/Williams Sonoma/Pottery Barn set of linens all your buddies have.

Whew!  I can't WAIT to have people over again so I can break out my pretty new table things!  Thanks Dandi ladies for making my day.  The rest of you, what are you waiting for?  Get over there NOW!

TWD: Cran-Apple Crisp

So, um, I guess Tuesdays with Dorie became Thursdays With Dorie for me this week.  Sorry people!  Normally I do my TWD baking over the weekend, but this weekend an old friend and I went on a spur of the moment trip north of the border to Toronto!

 the CN tower, our one concession to tourist shenanigans

It was the first visit for both of us and we had a lot of fun shopping, eating, walking, and even going salsa dancing.  It was nice to be back in a city again.  I don't think I realized how much I needed a trip until after I got back from this one. 

I twisted my ankle on the way back, so I've been off my feet and haven't been able to bake until today, but this week's recipe, chosen by Em, is crazy easy to put together.  Flour, sugar, oats, coconut, butter.  Blitz.  Craisins, cranberries, apples, sugar. Stir and dump. Crumble topping.  Throw in oven and forget for a while.  The most time-consuming bit was peeling and chopping the apples.  I made a 1/2 recipe and still had too much for my ramekins, so I baked the whole thing in a souffle dish.

I took it out at 50 minutes, thinking it looked done, and let it cool before cutting into it.

Now here, dear reader, is where I take a moment to wax philosophical about the awesomeness of this TWD project.  It forces me to try things I would not otherwise.  You see, I have never eaten, much less baked, a "Crisp" before.  I have heard of them. No one I knew ever made them (down south we bake cobblers) and they never looked particularly appealing, as I really don't even like fruit desserts.  Also, I've never baked with cranberries.  This is not a recipe I would have ever chosen on my own, but I can tell you it's very yummy.  The topping is nice and crunchy like granola, and the fruit is sweet (almost a tad too sweet;  I may cut the sugar to 1/4 cup next time).  It's a keeper.  Fast, unfussy, inexpensive, tasty, and you can even pretend that it's healthy!  What's not to like? 

Next week we have COOKIES! I am too excited.  I LOVE cookies!   OMGsies!  Can. not. wait.  I might make these over the weekend!

TWD: Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake

Lesson of the week 1:  I don't like chestnuts.

Lesson of the week 2:  This cake is so good, it doesn't even matter.  Chestnut schmesnut!

Lesson of the week 3:  E and J VS brandy is VILE stuff.

This week's TWD assignment (yes, I'm gonna try to follow the calendar) is easily the most expensive thing I've made in awhile.  In addition to a full pound of butter and then some, a jar of cinnamon sticks, a quart of cream and 20 ounces of chocolate, this little 9-inch package also required seeking out and purchasing a jar of peeled chestnuts and a can of creme de marrons, an ingredient that is apparently ubiquitous in France but hard as aych to find in the U. S.   Fellow TWD blogger Katya--the selector of this week's recipe--was kind enough to mail moi a can of the stuff from her megametropolis home, but since we had so little time between the announcement of the week's selection and the time I needed to make it, I ordered a can online to the tune of $13. I don't even wanna total up the rest.

That said, it was fun and tasty.  I wasn't sold on the creme de marrons as is, but it works in the cake. The cake is a caramel chestnut layer, soaked with brandy syrup, torted and filled with a caramel milk chocolate ganached and enrobed in chocolate glaze. The layers are supposed to be sprinkled with chopped chestnuts but I only remembered to do that on one layer. I made the ganache on Thursday night and chilled it, baked the cake Friday morning, filled and chilled and then glazed Friday night and took it out of the fridge on Saturday morning to serve at a late luncheon Saturday.  It was a big hit with my guests.

The recipe made a lot of batter.  You really do need a pan that is a full 2" high.  Even with the proper sized pan, I had to let mine bake an extra 15 minutes to cook in the middle.  The top edges got a bit dry, but the syrup later cured that.

It's MUCH easier to level and torte cold cake. After letting it cool off completely in the pan, I wrapped the cake within an inch of its life in Saran Wrap and stashed it in the fridge for the day.

Torted cake!  My cake fell a bit in the middle--a consequence of opening the oven door before it was done in the middle--so I had to do some trimming of the top layer, as you can see in the lefthand corner.

So I didn't have any brandy about the house, right--just some minibottles of cognac.  In the interest of not being pretentious, I went out and got a bottle of E&J and for some reason decided to taste test it against some Remy VSOP cognac.  Um yeah.  I don't know WTF I was thinking.  THAT STUFF WILL KILL YOU.  It was like drinking motor oil spiked with shards of glass.  No WAY I could pass that on to my guests.  A little Remy it is, then. 

Along the lines of "not thinking,"  I somehow did not have the common flipping cake sense to take the ganache out of the fridge long before I was going to use it, so there were interminable waits for it to soften up enough to spread on the cognac-soaked cake.

I had never had chestnuts before making this cake. They simply Are Not Done in the South--we are pecan and walnut enthusiasts, especially at holiday time.  So I was totally! psyched! to finally try this seasonal item that shows up in all the Christmas carols and whatnot.  And...I have to say I was thoroughly unimpressed.  Johnny Mathis, WTF?  I hated the soft, crumbly texture (nuts should be crisp, darnit!) and the taste wasn't anything to write home about either.  I had consulted a colleague, a fellow native Southerner who has been up in this part of the country for a much longer time, and his summation was "they're...alright, I guess.  I wouldn't give up my pecans for them." This is entirely accurate.

I forgot to put the chestnuts on the bottom layer, but it was just as well.

 

I was also less than impressed with the glaze recipe.  It took forever for it to thicken up, and then it went from "too thin" to "spread" in mere seconds.  Instead of a nice shiny glaze I got icing, icing that was too chocolately to smooth effectively and that didn't really shine.  I have a better glaze recipe that I've been using for sometime;  that's probably what I'd go with next time.  I did have fun dusting my chestnuts--at least something is shiny.

Nevertheless, my friends and I each had big hunks of cake after lunch, and they took big swaths of it home.  The cake is really fantastic.  It's fluffy and cakey, which is what I like.  Nice and simple and comforting yet sort of elegant.  I wouldn't make it all that frequently because of cost, but I definitely would look into making it again, especially for get-togethers.  Being able to do components ahead of time really helps. 

yum!

TWD: Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte

Well.  Today's TWD Challenge was the first of the recipes that I would look at and think, "gee, that looks fun, I'd sure like to try it, but I'll never eat it, so meh."  Fortunately, I had a dinner gathering to attend on Saturday so I could dispose of the cake.  What you are looking at is a thick, dense, fudgy, malevolently dark brownie studded with cherries and bittersweet chocolate, covered with a layer of cream-cheese scented mascarpone mousse.  Yep.

This was also the first recipe that had me running all over NorthEastern Town and its environs looking for ingredients.  The fancypants grocery was out of mascarpone, but the dusty old one near me had it.  Dried cherries came in a wide variety of prices and were found in the randomest sections of the stores.

The batter was pretty straightforward.  It called for ground pepper!  I wasn't sure how the pepper would work with amaretto-soaked cherries instead of Kirsch-soaked ones, but I was intrigued by the idea of using pepper, so I only used 1 teaspoon. I'd do more next time--you couldn't even taste it. 

None of the liquor stores had any Kirsch, so I had to sub amaretto to flambe my cherries.  Flambe-ing was easy and fun.  I enjoy fire!

These cherries are totally on fire.  You just can't see it here.

Timing the cake was a bit hard.  I let it stay in an extra 5 minutes, but I'm not sure that was a great idea.  It didn't burn, but the sides seemed very hard to me.  It looked lovely though, nice and even and shiny. I put it in the fridge for a day before topping.

I whipped up the topping in a few minutes.  Mine was spreadable, not pourable, so I smoothed it out.  It was nice and light and fluffy and ever so faintly cheesy.  The cake is very, very dense and fudgy and very, very rich. It was a big hit at the women's group I went to, even though I --ahem--broke one of my hostess's knives trying to cut through the tough sides.  Em BARR ass ING.  I really have to figure out what went wrong there.  I was so aghast I forgot to take a photo of the cut cake.  I thought it was mighty tasty, but just too rich for me--I like my cakes, well, cakey.   And if I had to do it over again I'd personally leave out the extra chocolate chunks--they were just too much.  It gave me a headache.  Everyone else raved.

Overall:  it was fun and pretty convenient (time-wise) to make.  A good sophisticated crowd pleaser.  Good to keep in the arsenal for dinner parties, not something I'd make for myself at home. 

Next week's cake is a doozy of a shopping expedition, and centers around an ingredient I've always heard of but have never had.  We'll see how this goes!  I also have a hankering for sugar cookies, so there might be some cookie shenanigans coming up, too.

ahem.

I haven't neglected the blog.  I've spent the past three days at a conference, so I haven't been doing much that is blogworthy.  Never fear--posting will resume on Tuesday with this week's TWD selection.

TWD: Sweet Potato Biscuits

So I haven't yet been officially added as a Tuesdays With Dorie participant, but I am so amped to do it, I'm gonna go ahead and to the post this week.  I hope I'm not gonna get blackballed!

The Tuesdays with Dorie challenge is simple:  it's a group of bloggers who all own the same cookbook, Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  Each week, someone chooses a recipe from the book that everyone is to try, and they blog about their adventures in pastry on Tuesday.  I've had this cookbook for about 2 years now, and though I use it very regularly (those of you who know me have probably eaten something from it at some point) there are still tons of recipes in there that I have not tried.

This week's selection,  is Sweet Potato Biscuits.  I love a good sweet potato biscuit, especially with ham.  However, despite my Southern origins, I have no aptitude for biscuit making, like, AT ALL.  None.  I can make scones, but not biscuits.  Muffins?  Sure.  Shortcake?  You betcha.  Yeast cinnamon rolls?  No problem.  Biscuits, though, give me fits.

I had everything on hand except the potatoes.  The recipe calls for canned sweet potatoes.  Um...really? What?

I have a very faint, very long-ago recollection of such an item, but my southern mind thinks "why?  why on this green earth would anyone need sweet potatoes to be in a can?  They're everywhere, and they are cheap!"  But then I went to my local grocery store and found to my surprise that sweet potatoes are apparently not that common (read: not abundant, not appealing, and not cheap) in my new Northeastern location, even in October.  (Also noted:  canned white potatoes are VERY popular.  The store was about clean out of them, and they weren't even on sale!  What do you do with those?) Well well.  So canned potatoes it is.  I still don't trust 'em, though. hmph.

The recipe's pretty straightforward biscuity madness.  Mix up dry stuff.  I used BOTH cinnamon and nutmeg. I'm boss like that.

Cut in butter.

I used Dorie's method of doing it by hand--literally.  Though I HATE having butter and flour all over my fingers (so unseemly), it works.

I stuck the bowl in the fridge while I drained and mashed the taters.  Into the flour and butter they go
and on to be cut.  The dough was pretty, all yellow with orange bits of potato.

I think I used a smaller cutter than intended, but whatever, they look cute!

Most of them are going to be frozen for later use.  Dorie's scones freeze beautifully, so I expected these would too.  They did.

I baked a few straight from the freezer.  They puffed and rounded a bit, but didn't really rise much.  No matter.  They're quite tasty.  Very sweet potatoey but not cloyingly sweet, nice and tender.   FABULOUS with bacon.  And so easy and fast!  Definitely adding to the rotation. They'll be great with ham for the next potluck I go to. Inhabitants of Northeastern Town: consider yourself warned.

OMG!Brownies!

Tonight I realized I had no dessert about the house, and since I had a pretty early dinner (for me) I figured I needed something to distract me from cutting my wrists or kicking the TV while watching all the female characters on Mad Men wander around angrily doing nothing in pretty dresses.  I had a couple apples, but needed to save those for work.  I made chocolate lava cakes this weekend, but in each instance they left me wired for hours.  And I do need to be in at a reasonable time tomorrow.

What to do?  Make brownies, that's what!

I don't understand why on earth more people don't make their own brownies.   I'm not gonna lie, I grew up on brownies from a box too, but really, homemade brownies are really just about the fastest, easiest, most forgiving baked dessert there is.  Really.  I promise.  It's really hard to screw them up.  You have to work at ruining brownies.  They don't care about ingredient temperatures or mixing time.  They can be as simple or as fancy as you want, and chances are that if you ever bake at all, you have everything you'd need to make a pan in your kitchen right now.  You don't even need a mixer, just one bowl and a spoon.  And they are genuinely waaaaay better.  I decided to try making my own on a whim one day, and have never gone back.

I like my brownies simple.  My favorite recipe is adapted from the 1950 Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook, (which I LOVE).  These brownies are chewy rather than squidgy, more cakey than fudgy, but that's what I like best (which is why I hate most bakery brownies, everyone does those heavy fudgy things).

First, you want to melt your butter (1/3 cup) and chocolate (2 oz) together.  My recipe calls for unsweetened chocolate, which I never have about the house, so I substitute 3/8 c cocoa and either 2 T butter or oil. Melt (double boiler or microwave, it doesn't matter) and mix together.

Then dump in a cup of sugar and two eggs.  Stir it all up.

At this point you can add flavoring if you want.  Or not.  I love vanilla, so I usually add a splash, and today I'm also including about 1/2 tsp of espresso powder for extra chocolate taste.  That's totally optional, though.

Now add in 3/4 c flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt.  You're supposed to sift them in, but these are brownies.  It does not really matter unless you have super lumpy flour, and if your flour is that lumpy...well, I can't help you there.  Stir.

I think brownies require walnuts, so I add about 1/2 cup or howevermuch looks right.  Spread your batter in a nicely greased 8 inch pan and bake for about 30 minutes on 350.

Cool.  Cut.  Apply to face.