I’m putting myself on a diet. And by diet, I do mean a change in my eating habits that I have no intention of making permanent. Beach Trip is in two weeks, and it’s time to buckle down. My normal eating and exercise habits keep me healthy and slim enough to feel good most of the time. But most of the time, I’m not wearing a bathing suit.

So, for two weeks, I’m eliminating dessert. Sigh. At least Tuesdays with Dorie gives me a bit of an escape clause. I’m required to bake for this group, right? And while I can give the treats away, I am most definitely not going to give away something I haven’t tried myself.

And so I did eat one square of blondie. One little square. One teeny, tiny square. And that one square of thick, chewy, peanut buttery, chocolately cookie will have to hold me over until next week’s TWD recipe. Beach Trip can’t get here soon enough.

Nicole chose this, and she has the recipe posted. For the mix-ins, I used 1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips, 1½ cups (8 ounces) miniature peanut butter cups, and 1 cup (5 ounces) peanuts. I also decreased the brown sugar from 1½ cups to 1 cup and used salted instead of unsalted butter.

One year ago: Dorie’s Vanilla Ice Cream
Two years ago: Summer Fruit Galette

Dorie calls this a cake, and I was determined to make it a cake and not bread. I baked it in a flat square with the intention of cutting the square in half to make a layered rectangular cake filled with frosting. Much later I realized that I’d confused the issue by forming a perfectly bread-shaped cake. Oops.

Not only that, but I don’t love the brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream I used. I think I would have enjoyed this more without the frosting, as something more similar to, well, banana bread. Oops.

Or you know what sounds really good, is mixing chocolate chips into the batter and then topping the cake (we’re back to cake and away from bread again) with chocolate ganache. Except I didn’t have any chocolate. Oops.

I’m sure there are lots of ways I could love this cake (or bread), and Kimberly, who chose the recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, has the original – a rum and coconut version – posted.

One year ago: Blancmanger
Two years ago: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler

Certain desserts remind me of specific people. Chocolate plus cream plus butter on a big cookie is the perfect dessert for my sister’s husband (although he might pass on the cookie part – and maybe the cream and butter), so I made it a priority to make the tart noire when I saw my family over the 4th of July weekend. He cut himself a slice during the fireworks, then had some for “breakfast dessert” the next morning (as did I).

If I had looked one Tuesdays with Dorie recipe further, I might have made these br(rrr)ownies over the holiday weekend as well. I associate York Peppermint Patties with my sister; she would have been the perfect person to foist brownies with peppermint patty pieces onto. Me, I’m more of a peanut butter cup kind of girl.

These brownies, though, they are perfect for a York Peppermint Patty lover. Or maybe a Junior Mint, with their higher ratio of chocolate to mint, lover. It seems that those pieces of peppermint saturated the whole pan of intensely-fudgy-from-lack-of-any-leavener brownies to make essentially a huge Junior Mint.

Come to think of it, based on her candy choice at the movies, my mom would have loved these too. I really missed my opportunity to get other people to eat these brownies. Ah well…I guess I’ll have to eat them myself then. If I must.

Karen chose these, and she has the recipe posted.  I’m not sure if this makes a significant difference on the outcome, but I mixed my chocolate chip-sized patty pieces into the flour before folding the whole mixture into the rest of the brownie batter.  Otherwise they were too sticky, and I didn’t think they’d disperse evenly into the brownies.

One year ago: Brioche Plum Tart
Two years ago: Chocolate Pudding

Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who didn’t like rich desserts. I think it would keep me from eating a lot of rich desserts.

But I am not. I’m prudent enough to cut myself only a modest slice, but not prudent enough to not cut myself another and another modest slice. Never mind that what I’m eating is nothing but a mixture of chocolate, cream, and butter spread over a big cookie.

On the plus side, at least I get to enjoy rich desserts. Because missing out on a mixture of chocolate, cream, and butter spread over a big cookie would be a shame.

Dharmagirl chose this tart for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies
Two years ago: Blueberry Pie

Someone brought a rum bundt cake into work last week, and oh my god, was it good. Tender, extremely moist, and intensely rummy, I could hardly resist grabbing one wedge after another. My officemate, who apparently has far better self-control than I, cut herself a piece and set it aside until the end of the day, six or seven hours later. She regretted the wait as soon as she bit into it and realized that, by then, the rest of the cake was gone. Clearly we needed to get the recipe.

It turns out that the recipe is a doctored cake mix, which just proves that of all the types of prepared, processed foods, cake mix is probably the best at imitating, and in some cases perhaps surpassing, the completely homemade version. And although I can hardly believe this cake I had could be improved upon, and I don’t think the chemicals in one boxed cake mix recipe is going to knock me dead, I’m still too stubborn to use a boxed mix.

A web search yielded nothing but that same recipe, cake mix and oil and rum, over and over. I started thinking of what cake recipe of mine I’d adapt to imitate the recipe I was finding, resigning myself to doing some experimenting.

It took me five days to make the connection that I was searching for a from-scratch rum cake, and I was planning to make rum-drenched vanilla cakes over the weekend. I’m not so smart.

My first impression was that Dorie’s cakes weren’t as moist or tender, although they were fluffy and light with plenty of rum flavor.  Two days later, the cake had ripened, and its texture was very similar to the one I’d eaten at work.  In the future, I might replace the melted butter in the cake with oil, which I think makes cakes moister, but other than that, I think I have my from-scratch rum bundt cake recipe, and I didn’t even have to experiment.

Wendy chose these cakes for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. I doubled the salt.

One year ago: Comparison of three white cake recipes
Two years ago: Apple Cheddar Scones

Most of us probably had the same first experience with plain yogurt. You think it’s going to be yogurt, but not quite so vanilla-ey! And then, ew, wtf, this tastes like sour cream. Force down a few bites; toss in trash. That was the end of my plain yogurt experience for several years.

And then I made an important connection – it tastes like sour cream, but it’s good for you! And now I use it everywhere – in sauce for fish tacos, on baked potatoes, on pancakes with jam, and now, in chocolate frosting. I held my breath waiting to see if it would curdle or if it would mix with melted chocolate to form a smooth icing, and I am pleased that it worked wonderfully. What a simple but luscious frosting recipe.

Low-fat Greek yogurt (my grocery store just started carrying Fage!) might not have been quite as good a replacement for sour cream in the cake itself. Fat in cake leads to moistness, and my cake seemed just a tad dry. A little cherry jam and chocolate yogurt frosting fixed that right up, and I’ve hardly been able to step away from this cake since, shaving dainty slivers off here and there throughout the day, hoping Dave doesn’t notice that half of the cake has disappeared.  But it’s okay, because I used yogurt, and not sour cream.

Amy chose this cake for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. Besides the yogurt substitutions discussed above, I doubled the salt in the cake.

One year ago: Mixed Berry Cobbler
Two years ago: Coconut Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

Dave has recently encountered an enviable problem. After starting to exercise a few months ago for the first time in years, he started losing weight too fast.

Losing weight. Too fast.

So now we’re trying to come up with ways to get him more healthy calories that don’t create much more work. Hard-boiled eggs, peanut butter, protein shakes, and bread. Making a loaf of bread every couple of weeks for him to eat at work does require more effort, but it isn’t work, because I like making bread.

I haven’t bought bread since moving to New Mexico last winter, and I haven’t made pure white bread since discovering I could adapt any recipe to be at least partially whole wheat with no detriment to flavor or texture. It worked just as well with this bread as it has in the past, giving me a light, tender loaf of bread made a little more special with a spiral of raisins and sugar and cocoa. Not that I got to eat more than a slice, since most of this loaf went to He Who is Super Annoying Because He Gets to Eat Twice as Much Food as Me.

Susan chose this bread for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. I mixed 2 cups (9.6 ounces) of whole wheat flour with ¾ cup of the milk and ½ teaspoon of the salt and let it sit overnight before combining it with the rest of the ingredients. And for whatever reason, 1 cup of raisins was way too much for me and they all fell out when I cut into the bread. But no one else had this problem, so apparently I’m just a weirdo. Still, next time, ½ cup of raisins.

One year ago: Honey Peach Ice Cream
Two years ago: Cappuccino Cream Puff Rings

Dave and I ate dessert first this weekend, but not in the fun-loving, live life to its fullest, carefree kind of way. More in the ‘it’s too hot outside to grill dinner until the sun goes down’ kind of way. 110 degrees, people. I told you I live in the desert.

But whatever, I got to eat strawberry shortcake for dinner, so I’m not complaining. With a tender biscuit, sweet berries, and silky whipped cream, what is there to complain about? Especially since we have air conditioning. Otherwise I have a feeling I’d be doing a lot of complaining, shortcakes for dinner or not.

Cathy chose this recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has it posted. I used cake flour for half of the flour and doubled the salt.

One year ago: Parisian Strawberry Tartlets
Two years ago: Strawberry Tart

I see a pattern here…

With the pace of life picking up as it has been lately, I haven’t had many opportunities to bake desserts. Nearly all of my baking lately has been associated with Tuesdays with Dorie. Making a dessert that someone else chooses for you is fine when it’s one recipe in many, but when it’s all that you ever get to bake…well, it’s tempting to tweak the recipe to something that’s more fun for you, whether the fun is in the eating or the making.

For these white chocolate brownies, it meant skipping the meringue, raspberries, orange zest, and ground almonds for various reasons, most having to do with laziness. It certainly sounds like I was trying to make these as bland as possible, doesn’t it? To play up the mild sweet flavor of white chocolate, I used vanilla sugar instead of regular sugar. I also used cake flour instead of regular, thinking that the lower gluten content of cake flour would mimic the combination of higher gluten all-purpose flour and no-gluten ground almonds.

After baking, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to present this as a cake or as brownies. The white chocolate flavor is subtle, although you can find it if you’re looking. The texture is light and fluffy and moist, just like a perfect vanilla cake. In the end, I defaulted to laziness again. Brownies don’t require any additional topping like a cake would, so these are brownies. Good brownies, in a light fluffy cakey kind of way. Plus, if I ever need a white chocolate cake recipe, I’m good to go!

Marthe chose this recipe, and she has it posted. Other than the changes listed above, I doubled the salt. A lot of TWD members had problems with their brownies coming out of the oven undercooked after the recommended baking time, but since I skipped the meringue and made a quarter of the recipe, the baking time in the book wasn’t relevant to me anyway.

One year ago: Cappuccino Muffins
Two years ago: French Chocolate Brownies

Seasonal fruit – I like it. I eat the strawberries in the spring and the blueberries in the summer and the apples in the fall and the apples, still, in the winter. I do not eat the apples in the spring. And apparently I shouldn’t eat the cherries in the spring either, because these were the most terrible, tasteless, watery cherries I’ve ever had.

I was vaguely hoping that baking them would concentrate their flavor enough so that they, you know, had some, but no, that just gave me cooked terrible cherries. Poor bread pudding, ruined by bad cherries. I guess I should have gone for the apples after all.

Now the bread pudding part, that I certainly enjoyed. It’s bread, it’s custard – it’s French toast! I’ll make it with the apples in the fall to enjoy this recipe in all its glory.

Elizabeth chose this recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has it posted. I used 1 cup (terrible!) cherries, pitted and halved, in place of the caramelized apples, cherry jam instead of apple butter, and all whole milk rather than a mixture of milk and heavy cream. And I forgot to add a dash of salt to the custard, which I regretted.

One year ago: Mango Bread
Two years ago: Traditional Madeleines