The Art of Two Tarts » TWD

TWD: Perfect Party Cake

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:47:00 +0000

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Carol of mix, mix… stir, stir: Perfect Party Cake. This cake consists of a light and fluffy lemon cake filled with a lemon buttercream and raspberry preserve. Dorie gives you the option of personalizing it to your own taste. If you aren’t crazy about buttercream you can just use sweetened whipped cream instead. If you don’t like raspberries you can use any other type of berry preserve you’d prefer or even add fresh fruit.

We’re not fans of buttercream, but we decided just to follow Dorie’s recipe to the T! This cake was pretty simple to make. The cake turned out wonderful! Fluffy, moist and had just the perfect hint of lemon to it. The buttercream was pretty simple to make. Overall, we were happy with this cake and thought it was really good, but next time we would just use sweetened whipped cream. Even though the buttercream was good, it wasn’t great and we just don’t think it’s worth the 3 sticks of butter! Yes 3 sticks!!

You can find the recipe here!

Enjoy!

TWD: Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:41:00 +0000

Do you guys like our new blog design?! We are so excited to have it up and couldn’t be happier thanks to Samantha at Temptation Designs. She was so great to work with and was concerned about how we wanted our blog to look! We definitely would reccomend working with her. Shes great!

This week’s TWD recipe, Coconut Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise, was chosen by Andrea. You can find the recipe on her blog, Andrea’s Kitchen. This is 3 meringue layers filled with white chocolate ganache whipped cream with broiled carmelized pineapples on top!

The picture for this recipe always stood out to us whenever we looked through Dorie’s book. Everything seemed to be going well with this recipe! The meringue turned out great, we had no promblems with the white chocolate ganache whipped cream, but then everything quickly turned into a disaster!! After baking the meringues for 3 hours we took them out of the oven only to find that they were stuck to the pan!! With help from the TWD bloggers we realized that we used wax paper instead of the recommended parchment paper…. The wax paper melted into the merinigue and the pan…. So all we could think to do was to salvage as much as we could and make a trifle layer with the broken pieces of the meringue.

So how did it taste?? Well we were so dissapointed with what happened that we were to frustrated to taste anything. We went straight to bed. We checked on it this morning and 3\4 of it was gone. We guess somebody really liked it!

We did try each individual layer as we were making everything and on their own everything tasted really good! Especially the white chocolate ganache whipped cream! Oh well! We don’t think we would make this again. We look foward to next weeks Perfect Party Cake!

Stay tuned!

TWD: Honey Peach Ice Cream

admin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:15:00 +0000

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Tommi of Brown Interior: Honey-Peach Ice Cream. It’s peachy, creamy, and the honey gives it a smoothness and flavor that totally set it apart from all other ice creams.

This was very easy to make! You just boil your milk mixture and your honey/peach mixture, then blend it all together in a blender and wait for it to chill. Then you put it in the ice cream maker for and hour and then it’s ready!

This is our favorite honey! It’s imported from Italy. We find it to be less sweet than the average honey you find in the grocery stores.

The recipe tells you to not puree half of the peaches and save some chunks of peaches to toss in the ice cream mixer at the last minute, but we personally didn’t want frozen peach bits in our ice cream, so we just pureed all the peaches.

If you would like the recipe, you can find it here. Make sure you visit the TWD Blogroll to see what everyone else thought about this cool, summery treat.

TWD: Parisian Apple Tartlet

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:46:00 +0000

The Tuesdays with Dorie pick for this week was Parisian Apple Tartlet chosen by Jessica of My Baking Heart. This was recipe was so simple and only four ingredients were needed to make it!

Don’t you just love recipes like that?! Dorie suggested that you use an all butter puff pastry dough. In the past, we’ve only used Pepperidge Farm’s frozen puff pastry dough. We learned about Dufour puff pastry dough. We found some at Whole Foods. It’s quite expensive. $11.99 per container! We were excited to work with this dough. It got rave reviews online!

The only thing we changed from this recipe was its shape. We couldn’t find any of our round cookie cutters. Actually, we were just to lazy to look for them! =) We just made them into rectangles.

We made two versions: some with apples and some with peaches and blueberries. Lisa’s boyfriend, Rinaldo, made his own apple version along with a cherry and blueberry one. He’s a pretty good cook but he can’t compete with our baking!

Sorry that the photos aren’t too great! Maria was out yesterday so I, Lisa, had to take the pictures and of course Maria had the camera in her car! I had to use to regular camera and it’s not the greatest! =( Oh well!

We liked this recipe a lot! We really recommend the Dufour puff pastry dough, but we just wish is was cheaper! You can find the recipe here!

TWD: Cinnamon Squares

admin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:55:00 +0000

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection are the Cinnamon Squares. They were chosen by Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures. These squares have a thin layer of cinnamon, sugar, chocolate and espresso powder in the middle of a cinnamon cake that’s topped with a bittersweet chocolate frosting. We weren’t really sure what to expect from this recipe. We like cinnamon, chocolate and espresso, just never had them all together.

The only changes we made to this recipe was that we baked the cake in a 9″ round springform pan, rather than the 8″ square dish.

Overall, we thought these squares were pretty good. Some members in our household enjoyed them a lot and said they were really good, but we thought they were so so. We would rate them a 3.5 out of 5. Maybe if we made them next time we would take out the espresso powder.

TWD: Chipster-Topped Brownies

admin — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:39:00 +0000

We know, we know! We’re a day late with this post. We’ve just been really busy, but we will try to get back to posting on Tuesdays! We almost skipped this recipe but then we thought, how could we skip on this recipe!!

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Beth of Supplicious: Chipster-Topped Brownies. You can find the recipe here!

These turned out really yummy! We don’t know how no one thought of this recipe before. Brownies AND Chocolate chip cookies! What more could you want. =)

We cooked these for 10 minutes longer and keep them covered for half of the time.

The brownie layer was moist and chocolatey and the cookie layer was golden brown and crunchy. We used bittersweet chocolate for the brownies because we couldn’t find unsweeted chocolate! We definietley would make these again, but next time just bake them a little longer because the very middle of the pan was a little undercooked!

Make sure you visit the TWD Blogroll to see what everyone else thought about this weeks recipe!

* Recipes notes:

- We used 9 oz of bittersweet chocolate in place of the 6 oz bittersweet and 3 oz of unsweetened chocolate.

- We omitted the walnuts from the brownie layer.

- We placed a foil tent over the brownies for half of the cooking time,

TWD: Fresh Mango Bread

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:52:00 +0000

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Kelly of Baking with the Boys: Fresh Mango Bread. We love mangoes and were very excited to see how this recipe would turn out. We have never baked with mangoes before!

This recipe was very easy to make. It’s just like any banana bread recipe. The smell of this bread as it was baking was AMAZING! It took an hour and a half to cook fully and we couldn’t wait till it was done so we could dig in! We weren’t really sure what to expect, but this bread tasted very similar to banana bread. The mango flavor wasn’t too strong. Our brother who hates mangoes ate this bread (not knowing there were mangoes in it) and he liked it a lot too!

Thanks Kelly, for choosing this recipe. If you would like the recipe, you can find it here. Make sure you visit the TWD Blogroll to see what everyone else thought about this recipe.

TWD: Tartest Lemon Tart

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Ok we’re back on track with Tuesday’s with Dorie (TWD). We missed a few weeks in a row… Between Maria’s wedding and both of us fixing up our new homes, it leaves little time for baking. This weeks recipe was this lemon tart. When we first read the recipe we were kind of worried… the recipe included one and a half lemons… the ENTIRE lemons! Without the seeds of course. We don’t know about you, but we have always read that you should never use the white part in lemons because it’s very bitter…

We still followed the exact recipe because we wanted to see what would happen. So what did we think?…

At first bite, it tasted just like any other lemon bars. Then once you swallowed that bite and let it flavors set in, you could taste it… the bitterness.. It was just a little bit though. Maria tasted it more.

Our mom tried it and thought it was really good! She loves anything lemon. She didn’t know that the recipe called for the enitire lemons so maybe that’s why? Who knows!

The recipe was chosen by this blog, Babette Feasts.

We would make this again, but as many members did, just use the inside of lemon and the skin. This recipe was super easy and fast to make! =)

TWD: Chocolate Amaretti Torte

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:52:00 +0000

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Holly of Phe.MOM.enon: 15 Minute Magic: Chocolate Amaretti Torte. Aside from ground almonds, one of the main ingredients in this torte are amaretti cookies. We LOVE amaretti cookies. We have a cake that we have made several times and everybpdy always loves it. Its a cake with almonds and amaretti. We tried to recreate the cake after we had it in Italy at our Aunt’s house. Took a few tries, but we got it down!

We were excited to try this recipe, but we are sad to say that we weren’t crazy about this cake. We weren’t crazy about the texture. It just wasn’t anything special and did not meet our expectations. Oh well! Better luck next time.

You can find the recipe here!

TWD: Banana Cream Pie

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:49:00 +0000

This weeks Tuesday’s with Dorie’s (TWD) recipe was chosen by Amy of Sing for your Supper. Amy chose Banana Cream pie as you can see! This was our 3rd TWD recipe and we’ve liked all of them so far. We’ve had Banana Cream pie in the past, but we’ve never made it on our own. We’ve made many different kinds of pie, but never Banana. We made this on Friday after work and we couldn’t eat it until Sunday early morning. You see, we gave up sweets for lent… and the only day we can have sweets in on Sunday… We’ve been suprised on how well we’ve been doing! We never thought we could bake stuff and half to wait 1-2 days to eat it!! The pie was delicious! Everyone in the house liked it. Our brother Carmine LOVED it and said “I’ve never had banana cream pie this good!”

We suggest that you buy Dorie’s book if you don’t already have it. Trust us when we say, you’ll LOVE it!

You can find the recipe on Amy’s blog here.

The recipe was really simple to make. I think it took us less than 2 hours to do everything! It’s a basic pastry cream, made with brown sugar instead of white sugar, with just a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg in it. Once you have the crust and filling ready all you do is bake the crust and let it cool, then layer it with pastry cream and bananas, and then top with fresh whipped cream. Dorie adds a touch of sour cream to the whipped cream and we thought that was a great idea! We liked the flavor a lot! We couldn’t get any decent pictures of a pie slice… so sorry! We’re working on perfecting our picture and blog layout! hang in there with us! =)

This weekend was crazy for us because on top of this pie we had to bake TWO birthday cakes! Here are some pictures.

This was for our niece Priscilla’s 3rd birthday. She wanted a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake!

It was a chocolate cake with a nutella and mascarpone whipped cream! YUMMY!

The second was for our Brother Dominic. We kept it pretty simple.

This was a lemon chiffon cake with a lemon curd filling.