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Coming soon!

We’re working on new and exciting things here at Confectiona’s Realm — things that involve actual sugar! Stay tuned for further developments!

Soon. I promise.

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Tuesdays With Dorie: Honey-Wheat Cookies

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been missing in action (well, out of action, really) for the past three Tuesdays With Dorie. (And last week I could have posted, because I’ve made the cookies before and even photographed them!) Three of the four of us are trying to lose weight, and one of us has cut his carb consumption down to nearly zero. On top of that, I’ve been working eight to ten hours a day six or seven days a week for well over a month. So no baking.

But enough is enough! I decided to bake these cookies this afternoon despite not being quite finished with the project I’m working on (later this week for sure!). But I didn’t make them exactly as they are in the book.

I may have changed one or two minor details.

I used almond meal in place of the flour.

Raw sugar in place of the granulated sugar.

No lemon zest.

A teaspoon of vanilla and half a teaspoon of almond extract.

Oh, and a grating of nutmeg.

And, um, I rolled half of them in almond meal instead of wheat germ.

But other than that …

So, the dough was great. I may perhaps have eaten a bit more of it than would be advisable for someone trying to lose weight.
The cookies are pretty good, although not as good as the dough. (Why does that happen so often?)

Everyone here liked them, although no one raved (except Ben, and he raves about almost everything). They’re just a nice afternoon snack cookie, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Pictures to come as soon as there’s daylight, so I can shoot them.

And go check out all the other Tuesdays With Dorie blogs and see how the other bakers may have modified these — this seems like a recipe that will get all sorts of variations. And if you want to try them yourself, buy Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or visit Flour Child, where Michelle (who chose the recipe for us this week) will have helpfully typed it up for you.

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Tuesdays With Dorie: Low and Lush Chocolate Cheesecake

Looks like cheesecakes are becoming a December TWD tradition, and I still don’t like them. But I made the Tall and Creamy Cheesecake last year, and I made this one too. My family loves cheesecake.

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I made this cheesecake as one of two desserts (the other being apple cider doughnuts, which I must post about one of these days) at our family Chanukah party a couple of weeks ago. It was easy to put together and to bake, and it looked lovely on the plate.

And everyone loved it. What else is there to say? It was smooth and creamy and cheesecake-like. Sorry I can’t wax poetic about it, and that this is such a lame post. I’ll do better when I write about the apple cider doughnuts!

Oh, and I apologize for the photos. By the time I remembered I had to shoot the cheesecake, the fleeting winter light was long gone. I really need a lightbox.

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Go check out the other Tuesdays With Dorie bloggers; I’m sure many of them wrote much better posts than this. And if you’re one of those people who like cheesecake, you can find the recipe at Tea and Scones. Enjoy!

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Tuesdays With Dorie: Café Volcanos

I made these — I swear. I made them the same day I made the sablés, and I liked them a lot (although my family wasn’t so sure). But I didn’t write about them, and I can’t now; I’m on deadline. Really soon, though. I promise!

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Non-Food-Related Post

#1 Son got into Duke! Yay!!!!!!

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Tuesdays With Dorie: I Fail Yet Again

I did not make the Cottage Cheese Pufflets. I wanted to, but it was Rosh Hashanah, and I was making a holiday dinner that seemed to require an apple-based dessert. And the dessert I chose was amazing. But it wasn’t Cottage Cheese Pufflets.

So go check out everyone else’s Cottage Cheese Pufflets, which are sure to come in a huge range of variations. And come back a little later today and read about the very yummy dinner and amazing dessert we had for the holiday.

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Tuesdays With Dorie: Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

This sounded great, even with the pineapple. I really wanted to make it. But I also had to make this month’s Daring Bakers challenge this week, and there was just no way to justify both. Go read about hundreds of versions of the Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise on hundreds of other blogs, and come back Saturday for the Daring Bakers unveiling!

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Tuesdays With Dorie: Parisian Apple Tartlet

I forgot to buy puff pastry at the good grocery store. They didn’t have any at the bad grocery store. We didn’t have any yummy Parisian Apple Tartlets.

But I guarantee you that there will be some amazing ones at the other TWD blogs, and Jessica of My Baking Heart will have the recipe.

I’ll try to do better next week, although the scheduled recipe calls for peaches and they’re not in season here yet, so I’m not hopeful!

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No Tuesdays With Dorie: Chocolate Bread Pudding

Sorry — too much work, too much running around. No time or energy for the yummy bread pudding. Go read about everyone else’s bread pudding, and look at their lovely photographs. Stop back next week, when there will be (I hope!) a nice chocolate cream tart in this space.

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Tuesdays With Dorie: Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

I have an oven again! My amazing father-in-law came to stay overnight (to attend #1 Son’s Civil Air Patrol promotion ceremony), and he fixed it right up for me.

This week’s TWD recipe was for sugar cookies, and I was up in the air about whether or not to make them. I like my cookies a bit more interesting than plain old sugar cookies, and I knew I wasn’t going to do the whole rolling-cutting-decorating thing. So I raised the issue with the family, and as usual, they were goofing around:

Me: They’re just plain sugar cookies. What could we have with them?
#2 Son: Ganache!
Husband: Vanilla ganache!
#2 Son: Coffee ganache!

(I won’t transcribe #1 Son’s contribution. Sufficeth to say, it was unappetizing.)

They were playing off each other, and nothing constructive ever gets done when they do that.

But I made the cookies. And I made the ganache.

The dough came together easily, like all of Dorie’s doughs so far. I doubled the recipe, because it’s always good to have some cookie dough in the freezer; I made two disks for rolling and two logs for slicing. No additions to the recipe, because I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing with the cookies themselves. (As it turns out, #2 Son and a friend are going to roll them out and decorate them, so I have to soften up those two logs and reshape them into disks!)

The dough rolled out easily. It cut easily. It baked in exactly the amount of time the recipe indicated. And the cookies were fine. They were sugar cookies.

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I guess my problem is that sugar cookies are ubiquitous. There’s nothing special about them; they’re just those cookies that are always around. These were good sugar cookies, certainly. And with some emendation — some chocolate or cinnamon or coconut (or a combo!) added to the dough, or something on top — I bet they’d have been really good. But alone, they were kind of plain. (Which is not their fault, certainly. It just muted my enjoyment.)

The family agreed, so I won’t bother quoting them all individually.

I made four kinds of ganache, in deference to the whims of my family and my indecisiveness: vanilla, coffee, chocolate, and mocha. For vanilla and coffee, I used Ghirardelli white chocolate chips and cream (with some vanilla paste and a shot of espresso in the appropriate bowls). For the chocolate, Ghirardelli bittersweet chips and cream. And for the mocha, Trader Joe’s Belgian milk chocolate (chopped but not terribly finely) and cream and espresso.

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Lessons learned:

  1. Chocolate chips, especially white chocolate chips, melt terribly.
  2. 2 ounces of chocolate to 1 ounce of cream is not enough to make a thick ganache; there will be spoons involved.
  3. I really need a light box.

The ganache was yummy, if runny, and it worked well with the cookies. (The mocha was the best.)

All in all, it was a nice dessert. Just nothing to write home about.

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I know there will be some amazing variations among the other TWD bakers; check them out. And if you want the recipe, head on over to Küchenlatein, where Ulrike (who chose these for us this week) will lay it out for you. (And you can practice your German! We’re so multilingual lately!)