Baker's Theory

Lemon Tart

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Jim is always chiding me for not liking any dessert that doesn’t contain chocolate, and my only retort (no pun intended) is that I love lemon desserts. This lemon tart is beautifully bright in flavor and color! And while lemon is traditionally a summer flavor, I am just fine with it year round, especially when it comes in the form of a luscious, sweet and acidic pastry. I brought this tart to work this morning and it was gone within the hour! 

Ingredients

For the tart shell

10 tbsp softened salted butter
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
Water, as needed

For the lemon filling

Zest of 1 large lemon
Juice of 1 large lemon (without seeds)
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 egg yolks
Pinch of salt

Instructions

For the tart shell

In a medium bowl, combine butter, flour, and sugar by hand or with a hand mixer. It will be crumbly, but if you press it together with your fingers, it should start to stick together. Add a few drops of water if you need it to stick more. 

Press the dough into 9″ tart pan, poke a few holes in the bottom of it with a fork for ventilation, and bake at 350 F for 10 minutes. 

For the lemon filling

Vigorously whisk (by hand or with a hand mixer) zest, juice, sugar, and yolks. Add the zest directly to the yolks. Add a pinch of salt and mix once more. Then pour the filling into the baked tart shell. (It doesn’t have to be cooled.)

Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes. Cool completely before cutting or topping with powdered sugar, if desired. 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sheet Cake

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This cake is up there with the Matilda Cake for my favorite desserts. It’s a variation on the Pioneer Woman’s Texas sheet cake combined with my mom’s classic peanut butter frosting. It is dense, sweet, and very chocolatey, and on top of all that, it’s peanutty! Could it get any better?? 

The peanut butter frosting is very forgiving–it’s a 1:1 ratio of peanut butter to powdered sugar combined with a bit of whipped cream. 

The hashmark chocolate ganache tops it all off and is my mom’s signature design to this dessert, though she does it with much more flair than I do! That is just Baker’s semi-sweet chocolate with more whipping cream. For our next house, I need to get a tap for heavy whipping cream. 

As a general note, I have found in my research that it is best to add vanilla and chocolate to the “fats” of your dessert. This is because fats coat the tongue, so you want the prominent flavors to be in that coating. Therefore add your vanilla directly into the egg yolks and the chocolate into the butter! 

A helpful tip for getting your ganache (or any frosting) into a pastry or Ziploc bag is to shove the bag into a tall water glass and pull the edges over the rim. Then spoon or pour your ganache or frosting into the bag. This way keeps your bag upright and minimizes the mess!

 

Ingredients

For the cake
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup 2% milk plus 1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 sticks butter
1 cup hot water
2 tsp powdered coffee (optional)
1/2 cup Dutch processed cocoa

For the peanut butter frosting
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 cups creamy peanut butter
2 cups powdered sugar

For the chocolate ganache
4 oz Baker’s semi-sweet chocolate
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Instructions

For the cake
Combine flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda in a bowl and whisk together. Set aside. 
In a separate bowl combine milk, lemon juice, eggs, and vanilla. Set aside. 
In a medium sauce pan, melt butter and add water to it. Remove from heat and add in cocoa and coffee, if using. 

When combined, add the butter-cocoa mixture to the flour-sugar mixture. Then slowly add the milk mixture too. 

Whisk until combined. Pour batter into a jelly roll pan lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes. 

Allow to cool completely before frosting. 

For the peanut butter frosting
With a hand or stand mixer, whip cream until soft peaks begin to form. Add the peanut butter and continue whipping. Slowly add sugar until the consistency is mostly firm, but can drip still. You may not use all 2 cups. Spread over cooled cake.

For the chocolate ganache
Melt chocolate in microwave in 20-second intervals. After the first two rounds, add whipping cream and continue microwaving in 20-second intervals until you can easily stir the melted chocolate and it’s a rich, dark brown color. Do not burn! 

With a pastry or Zipbloc bag lining a water glass, pour ganache into bag and seal. Snip a corner and create first vertical and then diagonal lines with the chocolate over the peanut butter frosting. 

 

Note: You can serve it right away, but the cake cuts most easily after it has chilled for an hour or two! I’d recommend cutting it with a pancake flipper and wiping it off (aka, gobbling up the cake/frosting stuck to the knife) clean between each cut. 

This is different from the Pioneer Woman’s recipe in a couple of ways:

1. I don’t have buttermilk on hand. I just don’t. I probably should given how much I bake and cook, but I seem to get by just fine with slightly acid milk (milk+lemon). Maybe some time I will do a side-by-side comparison. 

2. The reason buttermilk or acidic milk is called out in the recipe is to create a reaction with the baking soda. If you ever made a volcano in science class, you might remember that adding an acid (buttermilk) to a base (baking soda) will cause a pretty quick and fizzy reaction. This reaction is the release of carbon dioxide, or air bubbles. These bubbles are what lift the cake up so its fluffy and tall (well, tall-ish. It is a sheet cake!) I don’t want this reaction to happen until the cake is in the oven and beginning to warm up and rise! That is why I don’t combine the baking soda with the acidic milk until just before we pour the batter into the pan, whereas the Pioneer Woman recipe says to do it at the beginning. Who knows if it makes a difference? I’m probably just proud of my volcano experiment. 

3. I add coffee powder to the cake. It does not have a distinctive coffee flavor; the coffee just enhances the chocolate-y-ness of the cake!

4. The frosting recipe is my mom’s! 

Caramelized Mushroom and Onion Tart

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I think my fascination with tarts is coming to a close soon. I’m sure it’ll make a resurgence after I’ve had some caloric recovery time from the holidays! I can only eat so much creamed cheese before the new pants I got last week won’t fit anymore. 

Anyway, the gist of it is this: 

First, the crust is more ground up pretzels (I think stores need to start selling bags of those) with grated parmesan, flour, cream, and butter. 

The filling is creme fresh, brie cheese, and yes, more parmesan. 

The topping is caramelized onions and mushrooms cooked in butter, garlic, and Worcestershire sauce. 

Savory, creamy, sweet, salty, and yummy! I like this flavor combo! 

Ingredients

For the crust

1 cup ground pretzel

2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

2 tbsp flour

1/2 cup softened butter

1 1/2 tbsp heavy cream

For the filling

5 oz creme fresh (2.5 oz sour cream + 2.5 oz cream cheese is an okay substitute)

4 oz brie cheese, rind removed

3 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

Truffle salt or oil (optional)

For the topping

1 medium yellow onion

2 tbsp butter, divided

8 oz portobello mushrooms, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

 

Instructions

For the crust

Combine all ingredients by hand until dough is soft and malleable. Press into an 8″ tart or springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes at 375F. Cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes. 

For the filling

Using a hand mixer, mix the creme fresh, brie, and parmesan together until well blended. Add your desired amount of truffle if using. Spread over slightly cooled crust. 

For the topping

Caramelize onions by slow cooking them in 1 tbsp butter in a heavy bottomed pan on low heat for about an hour. Stir often enough so onions do not burn, but not so often that they don’t brown. 

Arrange caramelized onions over the filling. 

In the same pan, melt the remaining butter. When hot, add the portobello mushrooms and garlic, stirring until mushrooms are shrunken and golden. Add Worcestershire sauce and continue stirring for another 2-3 minutes. 

Spoon the mushrooms over the caramelized onions. 

Remove tart pan wall and serve. 

 

Matilda Cake

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I made this cake for Jim and his twin brother for what we have now officially dubbed Cake Break: an afternoon snack time for cake. It’s my go-to chocolate cake recipe because it’s fast—just one bowl, and requires zero putzing with folding in whipped egg whites and similar nonsense. (Who has time for that?? Can you imagine the number of dishes afterwards…?) This cake can be frosted with chocolate frosting or dusted with powdered sugar. It’s honestly good enough to eat without any flourishing. Definitely grab some ice-cold milk, though!

It is very fudgy and moist. In the picture above, I used a chocolate whipped cream filling that tasted a bit like chocolate mousse!

Ingredients

1 ¾ cup self-rising flour* 

2 cups sugar

¾ cup Dutch process cocoa

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp instant coffee powder

1 cup sour cream

2 eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup hot water or coffee

 

*If you only have all-purpose flour, just add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1 1/2 tsp baking soda to 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour.

1.     Preheat oven to 350 F.

2.     In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients with a whisk, getting rid of any lumps.

3.     Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add sour cream, eggs, vegetable oil, and vanilla. Continue mixing with whisk until just combined.

4.     Slowly pour in hot water or coffee and finish mixing. Batter will be thin.

5.     Distribute batter evenly between two 9” round baking pans lined with parchment paper. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

6.     Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the pan before removing to cool on a wire rack. Cool completely before decorating.

Mini Boston Cream Pies

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These are fun little cakes, easy enough to serve at a party for finger food or to pack in your lunch for a little something sweet.

I really like Magnolia’s vanilla cake recipe, and I think it is a perfect variation for this Boston cream pie which traditionally uses a yellow cake, but use whatever cake recipe you like!

Boston cream pie also uses pastry cream, but I like vanilla pudding instead. I think it’s more fluid.

I used mini muffin tins (tapered) and mini cheesecake tins (straight) to make these little pies. 

I think they look a little like mini hamburgers, but in a cute way. 

Ingredients

Mini Vanilla Cakes (See Magnolia’s Vanilla Cake Recipe)

For the Vanilla Pudding

2 tbsp flour
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
2 cups whole milk
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the chocolate ganache

4 oz (one whole bar) Semi sweet Baker’s chocolate
2 1/2 tbsp heavy whipping cream

Instructions

Cool the mini cakes and then cut them in half horizontally. Arrange them on wax paper for assembly.

For the vanilla pudding

Combine flour, sugar, cornstarch, and milk in a microwave safe bowl and whisk until the dry ingredients are dissolved. 

Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Remove from microwave and stir. Return to microwave for another 2 minutes on high. 

Remove from microwave and stir. It will be very thick. 

Slowly whisk in the egg yolks, careful to not scramble them. 

Last, add the butter and vanilla, giving it a final whisk to incorporate. 

Allow to cool and transfer to a pastry bag or gallon-sized Ziploc bag. Snip the tip of the bag and pipe onto the bottom mini cake. 

For the chocolate ganache

In a microwave safe bowl, arrange chocolate and cream. Microwave in 20 second intervals, stirring until chocolate is a melted syrup. 

Spoon the chocolate over the pudding and place the cake tops on top of it, completing the sandwich. Drizzle more chocolate over the top of the cakes. 

Serve and enjoy!

How to Make Butter

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Butter makes a wonderful gift for the holidays, and it couldn’t be easier to make. All you need is some heavy whipping cream and a standing mixer. I also recommend a fine mesh strainer. 

You can also flavor your butter with garlic, chive, plain salt, or cinnamon and brown sugar! 

Another fun idea is to use butter tins or presses to make fun shapes. We have had our butter in the shape of a lamb for Easter or a tree for Christmas!

This will make about a pound of butter (which is the same as four sticks). 

Ingredients

1 quart heavy whipping cream

1 tsp sea salt

 

Optional flavorings

Garlic and chive

Cinnamon brown sugar

Red chili flake

Honey lavender

 

Instructions

Pour heavy whipping cream into a standing mixer bowl. Add sea salt. Mix on medium-low speed using the whisk attachment. Allow to mix for about 30 minutes. 

*The mixture will go through several changes. You will first have the initial heavy cream liquid getting whisked. As it aerates, it will become whipped cream. As you continue to whip the whipped cream, the solution “breaks,” and becomes a viscous mixture of liquid and solid. As it continues whisking, the solid will harden and become yellow. The liquid is buttermilk and can be used to make batters for pancakes, waffles, or chicken. 

Once the butter has formed, remove it from the bowl and place it in a fine mesh strainer. You can either reserve the buttermilk for other recipes or discard it. Gently press the butter with a sheet of wax paper to drain it of excess buttermilk trapped inside air pockets. 

Then remove from strainer and wrap the butter in wax paper, placing it in a bowl to chill for at least an hour. (You can use it immediately if you desire!)

*If flavoring butter, you may add your flavorings after the solution breaks and proceed as usual. 

How to Roast Tomatoes

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There is a special flavor to roasted tomatoes and it is NOT HARD at all to accomplish it. Really, the tomatoes do most of the work. And the oven. 

Once you learn to roast your own tomatoes, the possibilities are endless for what you can do with them. A summer tomato mozzarella salad. Roasted tomato soup. Roasted tomato sauce. Roasted tomato salsa. Roasted BLTs. A margherita pizza! I recently made a roasted tomato and brie tart which (ended up looking like a pizza but) had that punch of tomato flavor that slays. 

You probably already have all of the ingredients you need: roma tomatoes, minced garlic, olive oil, balsamic (or apple cider, or red wine) vinegar, sugar, and salt. You’ve got this!

Roasted Tomatoes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Course Appetizer, Breakfast, Main Course, Salad, Side Dish
Cuisine Mediterranean

Ingredients
  

  • 20 oz Tomatoes (about 5 medium) sliced
  • 1 tsp Kosher salt
  • 1/2 tsp Garlic powder
  • 1/3 cup Balsamic vinegar
  • 1/4 cup Extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tbsp Sugar

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 450°F / 230°C.
  • Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
  • Arrange sliced tomatoes in rows on the parchment paper.
  • Sprinkle tomatoes with salt, garlic powder, and sugar. Drizzle vinegar and oil over the tomatoes.
  • Bake 30 minutes, or until the skins of the tomatoes start to blister.

Notes

I do not generally measure the spices and liquids. I usually just eyeball them. Ideally you want each tomato slice lightly covered with vinegar, oil, salt, garlic, and sugar. 
Keyword Roasted tomatoes

Cranberry Orange Tart

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It’s been a busy week of baking and cooking! Christmas was very generous to Baker’s Theory and there are lots of new kitchen toys to play with, one of which is a set of new tart pans! 

Cranberry and orange are very nicely matched flavors of bitter, sour, and sweet. They are also classic winter flavors. So even though Christmas is over, whip this up all winter long. A close friend of mine makes a version of this called “Cranberries in the Snow,” and it is a stunning dish.  

Now this doesn’t take long and you’ll have a lovely, New-Years-resolution-friendly dessert. 

The fruit compote/jam is composed of a 12-oz pack of fresh cranberries, a Valencia orange, and three peeled persimmons plus a juiced lemon and a pinch of cornstarch. Citrus fruits (especially peels) such as oranges and lemons have a high pectin content and pectin is a natural gelatin. Adding them to a jam is what makes them gel! 

The crust is made from ground up honey wheat pretzels (Trader Joe’s has good ones, although, Ritz crackers work well too!), 3/4 cup of butter, and 1/3 cup white sugar. It is perfectly buttery with a touch of sweetness. 

The filling is a block of cream cheese, 1/2 cup of white sugar, and a splash of vanilla extract, but you can make it with an orange liqueur instead! 

It’s wonderfully balanced between sweet, salty, creamy, and tart. Everyone will love it! 

Ingredients

For the compote

1/2 orange, sliced
6 oz fresh cranberries
2 persimmons, peeled
Juice of 1 lemon
A pinch of cornstarch
1 cup white sugar

For the crust

1 1/2 cup finely ground honey wheat pretzels
1/2 cup finely ground walnuts (almond flour is an acceptable substitute!)
1/3 cup white sugar
3/4 cup softened butter

For the filling

8 oz block of cream cheese
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (or Gran Marnier)

Instructions

For the compote (can be made up to a week before)

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan, mash orange, cranberries, persimmons. Juice lemon over the mash and add 1/4 tsp cornstarch and sugar. Continue mashing until most cranberries are broken open and the juice is released from the fruit. Put on high heat until it boils for a full minute. Transfer to a heat-safe bowl and chill for at least an hour in refrigerator. 

For the crust

Combine ground up pretzels with ground up walnuts, sugar, and butter. Mix with either a standing mixer or your hands until it sticks together. Press it into a 9″ tart pan or springform pan. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes or until golden on the edges. Cool on a wire rack.

For the filling

Combine cream cheese with sugar and extract using a standing or hand mixer until whipped and fluffy. Spread over cooled crust. 

Last, add the chilled compote on top of the cream cheese filling and serve. 

 

Flattened Egg Bake

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I think I’ve found my favorite egg recipe yet and I am going to share it with you just in time for the holidays. 

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with homemade pastries. I made some homemade puff pastry–more on that later–and now all I do every day is think up all the different ways I can prepare puff pastry. (Jim and I are developing a dessert I have proudly dubbed the cozy puff. It’s chocolate and pastry cream sandwiched between two discs of puff pastry, but it’s still in the beta phase, so stay tuned!)

I don’t think I’ve come across a breakfast dish like this before. Sure, there are breakfast pizzas, but they don’t use puff pastry, they use a heavier, yeasty dough. This recipe is like having creamy eggs laying on a flat bed of thin, buttery sheets of croissant. 

I will warn you, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to make this dish, so I’d save it for a special holiday breakfast or for sharing with someone who will appreciate the work it takes to make it. BUT IT’S SO TASTY. Maybe just make it for yourself and don’t share it with anyone. 

If you decide to make your own puff pastry (which I don’t necessarily recommend because it is an extra layer of work and waiting and a lot can go wrong) my advice to you is this: use regular butter, not the fancy stuff. The ideal puff pastry is flakey and has hundreds of thin layers of dough stacked on top of each other. It gets those hundreds of layers from the water in butter boiling in the oven and producing steam, which is a gas and lifts the dough as it evaporates into thin layers. (I read in a book that it’s 740 layers, but I have no idea how accurate that is or who would bother counting the layers in puff pastry.) The fancy butter has a much higher fat content and not as much water, but you need that water to lift the dough layers! Okay. End rant. 

Well, one more thing. If you make your own puff pastry, freeze your butter. Okay, I’m done. Now, back to the recipe…

I would also like to briefly plug for breakfast salads. I don’t know why we have to box salads in as only a lunch or dinner item. I love greens any time of day. The arugula here has a spicy bitterness that nicely contrasts the creamy savoriness of the egg bake. A simple lemon vinaigrette does the trick. 

I have trouble ending breakfast without some sort of sweet and sour flavor. I am a sucker for juices, but I know they’re chock-full of sugar, so regular orange slices hit the spot for me. It fully fleshes out the flavor wheel for this dish, too. Sweet, sour, salty, savory, bitter, spicy. Check!

I would highly recommend this for a Christmas brunch…nudge, nudge. Plus, it has broccoli in it! It’s healthy! 

Flattened Egg Bake Recipe

Ingredients

1 sheet puff pastry

1 tbsp butter

1 leek

1 shallot

6 cloves garlic

1/8-1/4 tsp sea salt

8 oz frozen broccoli (1 cup)

8 oz frozen spinach (1 cup)

6 eggs plus 2 egg whites

3 tbsp heavy whipping cream

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

2 tbsp Parmesan cheese 

Serves 8

275 calories per serving

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease a jelly roll pan with butter or a cooking spray. 

2. Roll out the puff pastry with a floured rolling pin on a floured surface so it is about the same size as the jelly roll pan. Then transfer puff pastry to jelly roll pan. Set aside. 

3. Chop leek and shallot and mince garlic. Sautee in a pan on medium heat with butter. Sprinkle with between 1/8 – 1/4 tsp sea salt. Continue sauteeing until garlic is golden. When done, remove from heat and spread over puff pastry. 

4. Boil salted water in a medium, uncovered pot. Add broccoli and spinach, and cook for 3-5 minutes so that they are cooked but not overdone. Drain and shock with ice water. (Squeeze the water out of the spinach so your pastry doesn’t get soggy.) Arrange the broccoli and spinach over the puff pastry. 

5. Whisk together eggs, egg whites, whipping cream, and 1/2 tsp sea salt. Pour over the puff pastry. 

6. Evenly sprinkle the feta and parmesan cheese over the egg mixture and greens. 

7. Bake for 30 minutes. Cut into large squares and serve with a bright arugula salad and citrus!

Porcini Lentil Soup

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You haven’t ever had soup like this before. It’s rich, fiber-packed, and hearty, and at 200 calories per serving, you can feel good about eating it. The biggest flavor lender is the hot water that the dried porcini mushrooms rehydrate in. Wow, that has a ton of good flavor! 

You’ll have enough protein from the lentils, but the mushrooms provide a fantastic meaty texture and flavor. 

Something important to remember about lentils is that acid–not salt–is the enemy of legumes. Try cooking lentils in the presence of any strong acids (lemon juice, wine, vinegar) and those little beans will stay shut. But salt is safe!

Porcini Lentil Soup Recipe

Ingredients

1 oz dried porcini mushrooms
2 cups boiling water
4 oz pancetta or bacon
3 tbsp butter
3/4 tsp salt, divided
1 leek, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
4 small-medium potatoes, cut in 1/2″ cubes
1 cup dry green lentils
3 cups chicken broth
Chives for garnish

Instructions

1. Rehydrate the mushrooms with boiling water in a glass bowl. Soak in water for 15 minutes. Reserve water. 

2. In a dutch oven on medium heat, fry the pancetta until crisp. You don’t need oil because there is fat in the pancetta. Once cooked, set aside in a bowl.

3. Heat butter in the dutch oven. Add leek, shallot, and garlic to the dutch oven with the pancetta scrapings still in it. Add half the salt. Stir until the leek and garlic are golden. 

4. Add potatoes and remaining salt to the pot and pour chicken broth over them. Add the lentils as well and stir. 

5. Add rehydrated mushrooms and the liquid they were rehydrated in to the pot. Cover and turn to low heat/simmer. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

6. Add pancetta back into pot and stir to incorporate. 

7. Top with chives and serve with a crusty buttered bread.