Peachy Apricot Hand Tarts with Brown Butter Crust for #baketogether

Peachy Apricot Hand Tarts in a Brown Butter Pastry

Every time I bake with browned butter, I ask myself, “Why don’t I do this more often?” The kitchen smells warm and enticing for hours, and the resulting baked goods have that pronounced buttery flavor.

I am so excited about this pastry dough that Abby Dodge created for the hand tarts in September's #baketogether. For one, it’s full of flavor, the browned butter and brown sugar lending a butterscotch note that is the perfect match for the jammy peach apricot filling I used.

The texture veers close to cookie domain, tender instead of flaky, but not quite as crumbly as a cookie. If you are a baker for who finds flaky pastry somewhat elusive, you might like to try this recipe.

What makes it easy is that, instead of working with freezer-cold chunks of butter, you start with the melted browned butter and from there add the rest of the ingredients. Again, more like a cookie dough than the usual pie crust techniques. (I like this dough so much that I already have ideas for how to use it in other recipes. Stay tuned.)

TWD: Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down Cake

Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down Cake from Baking with Julia

Upside down cakes have always been a favorite. I love how the fruit slumps and softens under the weight of cake batter, growing sweeter and more luscious as it bakes in butter and sugar.

I was intrigued by this Baking with Julia recipe for Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down  Cake because it involves a pillowy soft chiffon cake as opposed to the sturdier butter cake that is more commonly seen. It also features a ripple of almond streusel, a very tasty one, I might add, because I’m not generally a streusel fan. This streusel recipe might replace all others in future dishes.

While the recipe calls for a lemon scented cake batter, I used orange juice instead, along with a little bit of pure orange extract. The sweet orange flavor complements the cooked nectarines, buttery brown sugar and cinnamon streusel.

Ideally, this cake should not fall in the middle. As you can see in the photo, mine fell. I fear this was from a too-moist batter caused by too many eggs. Somewhere along the way, I lost track of how many eggs I used and may have accidentally used one more than necessary. It would be easier to keep track of how many eggs are used if I didn’t keep stashing the used eggshells back in the carton. True confessions.

Looks aside, the cake tasted very good, if a tad too sweet, but that’s a personal preference. I might cut back on some of the brown sugar in the fruit layer next time. Still, it’s a delicate and dressed up dessert, perfect to bridge late summer fruit on the way to autumn spices.
 
Every two weeks, a group of bloggers cook from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. Today’s Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down Cake recipe is hosted by Marlise at Double Trouble and by Susan of The Little French Bakery. Visit their sites to get the recipes. To find links to all the participating bloggers, visit Tuesdays with Dorie.

Savory Panna Cotta for #Baketogether

Goat Cheese and Green Chile Panna Cotta with Tomato-Peach Sauce

If you read blogs with any frequency, you might get the mistaken — very mistaken — idea that cooks who blog never make mistakes and every meal must be extraordinary. And I admit that since starting this blog a little more than one year ago, I’ve only presented the successes.

There’ve been plenty of failures but I didn’t think they were worth photographing much less writing about. You never saw the rye crust pizza that was leaden heavy on the pan and in our stomachs, nor the endless stream of whole grain, low-sugar chocolate chip cookies that I still call works in progress because I’m not ready to call it quits. There’ve been plenty of Experiments and abject failures.

So, yes, there was some reluctance about presenting this #Baketogether recipe because it did not turn out as I had envisioned. But the point of this monthly baking group led by Abby Dodge is not to showcase kitchen prowess. Rather, it has grown into a community where we develop our skills, share ideas, be creative and encourage each other. Participating has been one of the most enjoyable parts of my blogging life. Returning to the working world means I have less time for baking and blogging and I miss this little corner of cyberspace.

And now about the recipe. Abby’s August feature is a gorgeous Ricotta Panna Cotta with Colorful “Brezza Fresca,” (a spritsy sauce of ginned raspberries). Just the notion of gin with raspberries is excitement enough.

I thought a lot about what how I would approach Abby’s recipe and all of those recipes were most definitely sweet. Then one day my mind got stuck on a savory path when I saw a load of Hatch chiles at the supermarket. Roasted chiles, goat cheese and ricotta would form the base. For color and contrasting flavor, a fresh tomato-peach sauce with a little white wine. I know; it sounds fabulous and is pure summertime.

The result was a bit “meh.” I think something other than ricotta would have been better — mascarpone, cream cheese, half and half. More salt. As for texture, mine did not set up well, and part of that is because I used agar-agar, a vegetarian alternative to gelatin. I followed directions which said to treat agar-agar as you would gelatin. I think maybe I should not have used that 1/4 cup of water in the recipe. Or may I should have used gelatin and not tried to experiment.

The tomato-peach sauce I whipped up very quickly, basically using equal quantities of both fruits, salting to taste and splashing in a fruity white wine for dimension. The color of the sauce was what bothered me. All I had were white peaches and they dulled the sauce. Regular peachy peaches would have made a prettier color.

If you’ve never had tomatoes and peaches together, I urge you to try them and check out my Tomato-Peach Jam from last summer.

So, no, I wasn’t crazy about the result of my experiment, but I didn’t let it go to waste. Instead of serving this as an appetizer, which had been my plan, I placed it alongside our supper of scrambled eggs, refried beans and corn tortillas.

My husband asked “What is this?” as he took a bite.

“Oh, just something I made for my blog,” I mumbled, “but it didn’t really turn out.”