Grandma’s Kitchen Table

           The third recipe I made with the Tuesdays with Dorie:  Dorie’s Anytime Cakes group is Baked-in-a-Skillet Gingerbread and can be found in Dorie Greenspan’s newest cookbook, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes on page 41.            Ingredients:  all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, sugar, brown sugar, butter, oil, egg, molasses, apple butter, buttermilk, crystalized ginger, turbinado sugar, and Swedish pearl sugar.        The recipe for this cake had the option of baking it in a cast-iron skillet or a in springform pan. I don’t like baking sweet things in my cast-iron skillets because I always think I can taste the savory things that I usually use my cast-iron skillets for despite a skillet being very clean, probably just the idea of it, but still. So I opted for a cake pan version. Since I was making only half a recipe and didn’t have an 8” ...

       The 72nd recipe I made with the  Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Dorie  group is Custardy Apple and Kale Cake and can be found in the  Baking with Dorie  cookbook on page 334.           Ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt, black pepper, olive oil, onion, kale, eggs, milk, apples, and cheese.        This is not what you would think of when you hear the word “cake,” but it looks like what you think of when you hear the word “cake,” so I was eager to make this and see what it was all about…turns out it was all about being savory and delicious.         I’m not sure I’ve had a “savory cake” before, definitely not one that tasted like this as it kind of reminded me of a quiche with a different texture and no traditional quiche crust, maybe like a crustless quiche actually.  The combination of ingredients reminded me of an apple/kale/cheese/onion salad that ...

         The second recipe I made with the Tuesdays with Dorie:  Dorie’s Anytime Cakes group is Fall Harvest Cake and can be found in Dorie Greenspan’s newest cookbook, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes on page 169.            Ingredients:  sugar, lemon, pear, flour, baking powder, salt, almond flour, eggs, yogurt, vanilla, almond extract, olive oil, dried fruit (apricots for us), seedless grapes (green ones for us), almonds, and jam (apricot for us).      The cake came together nicely with ingredients I always have on hand, the only time-consuming part is gathering up and preparing the fruity parts. While not difficult, it is a little more  time-consuming than a regular cake so give yourself some early prep work to do that or just settle in for a nice bit of baking all at once and enjoy knowing that the end result is going to be wonderful. My oven was right on the mark for the time specified for baking, after l...

        The 71st recipe I made with the  Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Dorie  group is My Favorite Pumpkin Pie and can be found in the  Baking with Dorie  cookbook on page 272.         Ingredients: pumpkin puree, heavy cream, sour cream, eggs, brown sugar, honey, ground ginger, star anise powder (I left this out), fine sea salt, dark rum, vanilla, and whipped cream for serving.        While it seemed a bit early to be making pumpkin pie, it also seemed like a good idea to try this recipe with thoughts of taking it for Thanksgiving, perhaps it would even be our favorite pumpkin pie as well as Dorie’s favorite pumpkin pie, and it could be that this new version would supplant the older one that I’ve been making for years and years.         The ingredient list is a bit long, and very rich, which made for a delicious pumpkin pie, perfect for a holiday celebration. I followed the r...

          The 70th recipe I made with the  Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Dorie  group is The Daily Bread: White Bread Edition and can be found in the  Baking with Dorie  cookbook on page 11.            Ingredients: butter, flour, powdered milk, sugar, salt, yeast, egg, and milk.        Homemade bread, I would say, is one of my favorites to make. Through the years I’ve made countless loaves and I always enjoy baking all kinds of bread, it is relaxing and soothing, and especially rewarding when everyone happily devours it, sometimes straight out of the oven as was the case when the boys were home growing up…homemade bread never lasted long.          This is a nice recipe, it comes together easily, and bakes well. It baked for a bit more (actually 20 minutes more in my oven) than the time specified, all ovens bake differently. The taste is rich (butter, milk, egg, suga...

      The 69th recipe I made with the  Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Dorie  group is Double-Pear Picnic Pie and can be found in the  Baking with Dorie  cookbook on page 266.         Ingredients: Sour Cream Pie Dough (page 350), fresh pears, dried pears (I used dried apricots), candied ginger, apricot jam, sugar, lemon zest and juice, cream, and turbinado sugar.        This pie was meant to be a sort of “slab style” pie but since I bake for Mark, he thought he would rather have it just as a regular pie, so that’s how I styled it.  I made a  7” size instead of a 9x12” size as that seemed a better option with just the two of us here. For this size, I used half of all the ingredients listed and it worked out perfectly. The recipe gave various options for fruit, dried fruit, jam, etc. so one could really adapt it to whatever you have on hand or enjoy eating. The only thing I changed was using dried ...