Orange Berry Muffins with Crumb Topping

In my continuing quest to bake every recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours, this week I'm catching up with the orange berry muffins. Practically every time I pick up this cookbook looking for something quick and spontaneous to bake, I look at these muffins, see the blueberries and turn the page. I've written before about the reason for my blueberry aversion here, but the time was here to put on my big girl apron and do it.

To get around my lack of true love for the blueberry, I also added some raspberries I froze last year when they were plentiful at the farmers markets, I included walnuts AND I topped them with a crumb topping. They were spectacular, and I didn't even care that they had blueberries in them.

This is not what I'd call a fast recipe, and you will dirty a few bowls, measuring cups, etc., but it will be totally worth it. It's much easier if you have the crumb topping pre-made in your freezer.

Orange Berry Muffins with Crumb Topping - adapted from Dorie Greenspan
Printer-friendly recipe

Crumb topping:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 pound (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced

Muffins:
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
About 3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
3 Tablespoons honey

1/8 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia extract (from King Arthur Flour, optional)
1 stick (8 Tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup raspberries – fresh or frozen (not thawed)
1 cup blueberries – fresh or frozen (not thawed)

2/3 cup chopped walnuts

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Make the crumb topping:

Combine the flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, and the butter crumb topping ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the butter is the size of peas. Rub the mixture with your fingertips until it's in big crumbles, then set aside in the refrigerator, tightly covered, until ready to use.

Make the muffins:
Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup or a bowl and pour in enough buttermilk to make 1 cup. Whisk in the eggs, honey, melted butter and Fiori di Sicilia (if using).

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with a spatula until the sugar is moist. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy and bubbly, and that’s just the way it should be. Stir in the blueberries. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Sprinkle on the crumb mixture (you may have some leftover - just freeze if for another time).

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes (mine were done at 21 minutes). When fully baked, the crumb topping will be golden, the muffins springy to the touch and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins will come out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

Programming note: Check back tomorrow because I'm posting a cake that will amaze you and is a lot of fun to make. In a very tortured way that leads to a lot of dishes. 

Gingered Plum Raspberry Preserves

I almost skipped this week's Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe, and that would have been tragic. If it hadn't been picked by my one of my favorite bloggers, Margot of Effort to Deliciousness, I might have skipped it, but then I saw my dear friend Hanaa urging us not to skip it on the P&Q. I got three lovely plums in my CSA this week, which I paired with raspberries I froze when they were in season a month or so ago, plus lemons from my tree.

I added sliced ginger to give the fruit an additional depth of flavor, and it added complexity without being a dominant flavor. The flavor of the jam was so delicious that I burned the roof of my mouth testing it. It was worth it. If you'd like the recipe, Margot will have it for you here.

Thanks, Margot, for choosing this wonderful recipe. It was truly surprising and has become a favorite here.

NOTE: After reading Margot's post, I just realized I made the recipe wrong. I was supposed to add 2 cups of apples along with the plums and raspberries. It turned out so well that I wouldn't change a thing next time, though, so feel free to make it either with or without the apples. There was enough natural pectin in the fruit that I didn't have a jelling problem.

White Chocolate Brownies

Did you hear the collective sigh of relief the other day? The June Tuesdays with Dorie recipe picks were posted, and the much anticipated white chocolate brownies were selected by Marthe at Culinary Delights. This may be the single-most lobbied for dessert of all time. Clara didn't pick them when it was her turn, but she waited patiently (well, sort of) for someone else to pick them. Enter Marthe and our first pick for June.

I'm glad there was a photo of these in the book because I would have been crushed if I hadn't known what they were supposed to look like. For me the word "brownie" evokes feelings of anticipation for a treat like this

or these

Like, aren't brownies that don't have chocolate called blondies? I guess not. Because these have not a whisper of chocolate (that is, chocolate made from cacao) and Dorie still calls them brownies. I've learned to expect the unexpected from Dorie (as with the last recipe we made with white chocolate) so I did not add chocolate to this recipe. Somebody check on Kayte. She may have just fainted.

You may not be able to tell from my photo, but this is a layer of cake made with almond meal, which is topped with meringue before being baked.

I actually read the instructions fully before making the recipe, and knew immediately that flipping a meringue-topped dessert onto any surface and then re-flipping it was a guaranteed fail for your klutzy friend (me). So I used a large piece of parchment to line the pan.

My one mistake was to use pasteurized egg whites instead of cracking three eggs and separating them. We eat a ton of egg white omelettes and I always have a surplus of yolks. The pasteurized whites didn't beat up as nicely as I would have liked even though my bowl and beaters were scrupulously clean and grease-free.

OK, so maybe there was one other tiny mistake. I didn't want to buy premium white chocolate so I used the last of a bag of Choc-au-Lait chips (yeah, yeah, I know they don't melt as well but it worked out in the end). They finished in first place in the Cook's Illustrated white baking chip taste test so I figured they'd be good. Plus they were already in my pantry.

The P&Qs showed that these babies needed more time in the oven to bake completely, so I baked them for 48 minutes. The parchment liner made it hard to tell if the brownies were pulling away from the sides of the pan, but the meringue topping was crackly.

These were tasty but just not my thing. They lasted a good long time at work, which is pretty unusual. Still, I'm glad these finally were picked as I know lots of my fellow TWD bakers loved them. You can find them all here.

Thanks, Marthe, for hosting us this week and making Clara happy with your pick! If you'd like the recipe, Marthe will have it posted for you.

Quick Classic Berry Tart Version 2.0

One night last week, when we were both working a lot and under insane amounts of pressure, we ate this for dinner:

Let me back up. Last Wednesday a great dessert was discovered. We came home at about the same time.

"How was your day?"

"Crazy.  We discovered two errors totaling $7 million. People in my office, both phone lines ringing. You know. How about yours?"

"I did an international wire online that the bank turned into a completely different amount.  I was on the phone with customer service for hours and then I had to go to the bank to fix it. At least, I hope it's fixed."

You've heard of breakfast for dinner. At our house last Wednesday, it was dessert for dinner. And I owe it all to my fellow bloggers. Cristine at Cooking with Cristine chose Dorie's Quick Classic Berry Tart for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. And my blogging friend Nancy has influenced me so much that I had both a mini tart shell and chocolate ganache in the freezer. And for an even more satisfying tart, I made this with organic berries from my CSA box:

Good

Better

Great

I had baked the tart shell the night before, so it only took 5 minutes to assemble the tart. 90 seconds in the microwave to melt the ganache, wash and slice a few berries, and assemble. Brushing it with jam was only for show. If I wasn't posting it, I would have skipped that.

We split it for dinner, and both felt much better. We each still had problems to deal with at work, but I think Cristine's pick made an awful day end on a very happy note. Thanks, Cristine! This is definitely in our top 5 Dorie desserts.

TWD - Soft Chocolate and Raspberry Tartlet

Tuesdays with Dorie is a wonderful group of bakers who are baking and blogging their way through Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours. Each week, one of the group hosts and that means she or he gets to pick the recipe that hundreds of us make and write about. Pretty cool, huh?

This week was Rachelle's turn. Rachelle's blog is Mommy? I'm Hungry! She writes about cooking, baking, does product reviews and has an astonishing number of giveaways. If I had to go to the post office (my least favorite place to go, less than the DMV) as often as she does, I would have already lost my mind.

But you're not here to read about my dislike of the post office (unless you're a professional and can offer advice). You're here for my adorable if badly executed soft chocolate tart. And with "chocolate" in the name of the recipe, you'd think I would have knocked this one out when the recipes were first announced. Not at all. Late last night, I turned off the TV and got to work. I had a mini tart shell in the freezer (not Dorie's recipe nor nut-based, but ready to go). I made a quarter of the recipe for the filling in 2 small dishes in the microwave, one for melting the chocolate and one for heating the cream and butter. All went well until the last two seconds of heating the butter/cream mixture when it went blurp in the microwave. Some of my best cleaning happens during these late night baking mishaps.

Since I was making a tartlet, I couldn't scatter the raspberries in the shell and pour the ganache over them, they would just be too tall. So I embraced their stature and stood them up in the ganache. My tartlet was done after about 25 minutes at convection bake 275. Letting it cool was torturous because it was late, I was tired and I wanted to sample it. Would it be soft? Would my decision to go bittersweet or go home pay off? Would the graininess of the sugar be less noticeable than it was when I licked the bowl? Would I be able to get a decent photo in the dead of night?

It was indeed soft, and delicious still warm from the oven. My tartlet didn't have a silky texture, which I missed, but it was still good.

If you'd like the recipe, Rachelle has it here. And you can find the other TWD bakers here.

No TWD, but Raspberry Tart with Chocolate Shortbread Crust

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers are making Katya's (of Second Dinner) pick, Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake. I was days away from leaving on vacation when the November picks were announced. If this one had been cookies, brownies, muffins or something like these, I could have fit them in. Katya has great taste so her pick was going to require more time than I had. Visit her to see what her beautiful cake looks like.

Those of you who stop by regularly know I don't always come from a rational place. Exhibit A:

Five days before going on vacation, I spotted beautiful raspberries at Costco. Costco, the land of excess, sells them in boxes of 6 clamshell containers. Even though I'm going on vacation in 5 days, I buy them.

Driving home, I wondered what was I thinking??? How was I going to eat six containers of raspberries on my own? Later, I commiserated with a friend, and decide to make my own IQF (individually quick frozen) raspberries. But lining them up on sheet pans to freeze seems exceedingly tedious, so I decided to make a raspberry tart. By this time, two of the containers were gone, but I figured making a 9" tart would leave me with leftover berries, so I made a 10", plus four 4" chocolate tart shells. Then I made pastry cream. Does anyone else enjoy the irony of watching "The Biggest Loser" while making pastry cream? Finally, I assembled the fruit tart before leaving for work the next morning.

I based my pastry cream on Dorie Greenspan's from Baking From My Home to Yours. I cooked it a little too long, based on her instructions to boil the custard for 1-2 minutes. When it started thickening, my instincts shouted "DANGER!" but I ignored them since it had only been 30 seconds. So my custard ended up very stiff. No worries. When this happens, I always whip some cream and whisk it into the pastry cream to lighten it (I'm talking texture, not calories, because this recipe is pretty much a train wreck for your diet).

I used Dorie's chocolate shortbread crust also from BFMHTY, and it was deliciously chocolaty. Once I assembled the 10" tart, I realized I hardly had enough berries for it, with practically none left over for the 4" minis. Instead of stressing about this, I served the tart at work with the minis, thinking someone would snap them up. And they did, before the tart was even half gone.

Even with a new kitchen, I still run out of space

Don't laugh, but this is a quick, easy recipe for a knockout tart. The chocolate shortbread crust recipe can be found in Baking From My Home to Yours. Here is my version of Dorie's pastry cream.

Pastry Cream, adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours.

Makes about 4 cups

3 cups whole milk (I only had 1%, so I used 2 1/2 cups 1% and 1/2 cup whipping cream)

1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

9 large egg yolks at room temperature

3/4 cup of sugar

1/2 cup cornstarch, sifted

5 tablespoons butter, room temperature, cut into butter pat-sized pieces

3/4 cup (or more or less, to taste) whipping cream (optional)

I like the softer texture that adding whipped cream gives. If you like a sturdier pastry cream, skip the whipped cream.

Bring the milk to a boil in a small saucepan; add the vanilla bean and its scrapings, cover and let sit off the heat for 30 minutes. Bring the milk back to a gentle boil.

Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch in a large bowl or measuring cup and add the hot milk in a very thin stream, whisking constantly. Once a third of the milk has been added, you can pour the rest in without danger of cooking the yolks.

Pour the custard through a strainer into a medium saucepan and cook the mixture over medium heat, whisking constantly, until it thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Set it aside for 5 minutes, then add the pats of butter and whisk them in completely. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to prevent formation of a skin and refrigerate.

Before assembling your tarts, check the consistency of your pastry cream. If it's too firm for you, whip the cream in a clean, dry bowl, and whip it into the pastry cream. I always eyeball this. This time, since I made so much pastry cream, I added another dose of whipped cream.

Because you've added whipped cream, this pastry cream (which technically is more like a Bavarian cream) is not stable for long periods at room temperature.

I'm sorry, Katya, that couldn't tackle your pick before I left on vacation. It looks scrumptious and I hope to fit it in once I settle back in.