Rugelach = Disaster

Well, in case you didn't pick up on it from the title of this post, my rugelach turned out, well, awful. My human garbage disposal of a husband wouldn't even eat them and they look so bad I'm not even posting a picture.

I'm 99.9% sure it was my fault. I doubled the recipe but forgot that when I divided up the dough and only made two disks. Once I started rolling out the dough (which I really liked by the way and will be using that again), which I am less than adept at I realized this so thought I would compensate by rolling them really long and then rolling them up similar to a pinwheel. This probably would have worked out okay if I would have trimmed the long strips in half. But, at the time, I didn't think of that and ran them the whole way up.

I also had some cajeta (goat's milk dulce de leche basically) that I've been wanting to use so I smeared some of that on with pecans and bittersweet chocolate. All sounds great, right? How could anything with those ingredients turn out badly? I still don't really know, but it did.

Oh well, I did save one disk of dough so maybe I'll try something else using that.

Ideas anyone?

Lenox Almond Biscotti

Well, to start out is has been a fun food hospitality day. My aunt and uncle came over for supper tonight and I thought I would do something simple so I told them I was making Quesadillas. Well you probably don't know me but to give you some sense of myself, my simple meal of quesadillas turned into all of these seperate varieties: cheese (the only kind my 4-y-o Mitchell will eat), pork, steak, shrimp, surf & turf, carmelized onion and mushroom. Oh yeah, I ended up making nachos with all of the leftovers as well and they were super flavorful and good. Everyone had plenty and commented how good they were.

So then it was on to the Lenox Almond Biscotti. This is my first ever attempt at biscotti and I have to say I think they turned out fine, maybe even good. I will say I am not 100% sure if I put in the correct amount of sugar, I may have added an extra 1/2 cup. I was distracted while adding the sugar and know I only put in one scoop full but got to thinking I used the 1/2 cup measurement. So I tasted the white residue on the inside of my measuring cup and it tasted like sugar in the 1/2 cup so I added another. I'm probably going to make these for my friends coming over for our yard sale on Saturday so I'll have something to compare it to a little later in the week.

Regardless, I was a little leary about almond being the only flavoring. I'm not crazy about the smell of almond extract. I love almonds but usually like them much better with chocolate. You may notice in my ingredients photo that there is a little bit of Lindt Dark Chocolate in there. I was planning on chopping it up and adding it, I decided at the last minute to just go by the book this time.

I'm glad I did. These are wonderful. Loved the cornmeal in them. I'm thinking it strange even as I write this but that just made them. I was having visions of super sweet cornbread cookies. Shows you how much I know. Thanks so much to Gretchen of Canela & Camino for choosing this great recipe. And thanks all my new friends who also spend their Tuesdays with Dorie!

All best everyone! I'm packing these up to take to work with me tomorrow to earn some brownie... uh... biscotti points!

This COLD won't let go of me so I'm not messing with food for a bit.

Sucks because I went and got all the ingredients for this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie baking experiment. Maybe later in the week. I just feel like I have the word "CARRIER" tattooed to my forehead. Since we give the major portion of these Tuesday creations with friends and family, I think they wouldn't mind skipping on a piece of wonderful cake due to the side of cold germs bound to come along with it.

Check back next week!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Snickery Squares, Er, Triangles

Well, I chickened out on the Creme Brulee and decided to take the alternate option. I let Dave pick what he thought he would like. Big shocker that he went with the Snickery Squares. Can't say that I was dissappointed though.

Oh and how in love am I with Dulce de Leche? How have I not tried this before now? I see this being a baking staple in our house from now on.

One thing I don't think I did quite right was candy-ing the nuts. First off, I accidentally grabbed honey roasted instead of the salted as called for in the recipe but I figured since I was going to toffee coat them anyway it wasn't a big deal. Not sure if that was right or not. I felt like the nuts were burning a bit when I was trying to get the past the "white" stage so I probably took them out a bit too soon. When I laid them out on my parchment paper about half were opaque and half transparent. I think they tasted fine.

Also, I couldn't find an 8x8" pan in my house to save myself. I know I have one but instead of wasting a lot of time I decided I would use my 9" springform pan. I will say, a pie slice of this dessert is a bit too rich for the faint of heart. Luckily I am not faint-hearted.

To appease the lap-band gods, pieces of this pie will be going out to friends, family and some neighbors. It was absolutely wonderful but the sooner it's out of my house, the better! Plus it's good kharma, right?

Tuesdays with Dorie

Aaack! I didn't get my edition of Baking from My Home to Yours until tonight so I'll be starting my Tuesdays with Dorie next week. With Creme Brulee of all things! Wish me luck.

Of course, never having had creme brulee before I guess I won't know if it is bad or not.