TWD French Strawberry Cake

I made this on Memorial Day and I'm still late to post!  Oh well.  Better late than never, I hope.  I was very nervous after reading this recipe.  Although I bake a fair amount, I only actually make cakes a few times a year.  When I do they're usually very simple ones.  It's very rare that I make a frosted cake, and I've never tried to decorate a cake before.  But that's one of the great things about this group, it makes me try new things.  

I thought I did an okay job making the genoise, but after it came out of the oven I was shocked by how thin it was.  I think even my careful folding must have deflated the eggs way too much.  Does anybody have tips on this?  I'm going to have to look into it.  Paul laughed when I told him I was supposed to slice this cake into three layers, so I waited until he was gone to make an attempt.  Somehow, I managed to do it.  The cake held together exceptionally well.  He couldn't believe it when I came home and told him I sliced it with a regular serrated knife.

While the genoise was in the oven, I prepared the strawberries.  I actually got to use the strawberries that Paul grew, which is great, but this was a bad year for pests and there were a lot of holes in the strawberries, so it took forever to get them ready.  After dinner (while still finishing my wine), I whipped the cream and started to layer and decorate the cake.  I found frosting it very challenging.  It just didn't seem like there was enough frosting.  I'm sure I just need practice, though, it was very hard to get it as thin as I wanted it to be.  I think I also might need a flexible spatula, I only had a butter knife.  By the time I was ready to pipe the roses it was 10 o'clock and we were ready for cake!  I thought about leaving the roses off entirely, but decided to practice.  I know I should have practiced them on the cutting board before I piped onto the cake, but I didn't have the patience.  I know they look a little silly, but I'm pleased with my first attempt, and glad there's a lot more practice in my future!

When we finally sat down to eat the cake, the flavors were excellent.  This is definitely something I'd make again, although I'll wait for a special occasion and be sure to leave myself some more time.  Visit the blogs of our hosts for the week, Sophia and Allison, to get the recipe, and go here to see what all of the other TWD bloggers thought of the cake.

FFWD Lime Honey Beet Salad

Paul absolutely loves beets - they may be his favorite vegetable.  I definitely like them, so we eat them fairly often.  I typically just roast, peel, and cut them into chunks.  I liked that this recipe was a slight variation, but also not much more time consuming than my usual.  This came together very easily on a Sunday night (while I was cooking some other things).  I let it marinate in the fridge, and we enjoyed it for dinner on Monday.  We had some nice french feta that needed to get used up, and I'm always looking for ways to use our lettuce, so I served it together as a salad.  I really enjoyed the combination.  I really like french feta (or goat cheese) with beets.  The beet salad itself was good, but not amazing.  Dill and beets are a classic combination, but I'm not sure how much I could really taste the lime juice.  I served the corn pancakes on the side, but that's for another post.  I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else thought of the recipe!

FFWD Olive Oil Ice Cream

On our trip to Portland last month we were wandering around on a gorgeous Monday afternoon and noticed a long line outside of an ice cream shop.  We were shocked to see someplace so crowded in the middle of a workday, so we decided we had to try it.  I was glad the line was so long, because it gave us a chance to read all of the incredible flavors at Salt and Straw.  By the time we got to the front of the line, I really wanted to try one of everything.  Luckily, one of the two we picked was Arbequina Olive Oil.  It was incredible.  It was rich and creamy, but the olive oil and salt managed to cut the richness and give it a very interesting flavor.  

I was very excited when I got back from the trip and saw olive oil ice cream on our list of recipes for the month.  I've been making ice cream for a couple of years now, but I don't think I made this one as well as I could have.  I'm still mad at myself over it, but trying to learn to let go (on this, and many other things that are entirely out of my control....).  I let it cook too long - it didn't seem thick enough - and the eggs started to curdle.  I think this gave it a somewhat grainy texture.  That, combined with the oil, made this taste a little bit like Tofutti to me.  Not bad, but definitely not nearly as good as the one from Salt and Straw.  I also thought that it might have had more egg yolks than theirs.  It tasted a little too custardy to me.  Paul insisted that I'm crazy, it's all in my head, and the ice cream was in fact very good.  I'm not sure.  I'm definitely going to try making this one again, but maybe cut back on the eggs, and definitely try to focus better.  The two of us ate it all in 5 days, though, so I guess it wasn't too bad!  I served it sprinkled with salt, and with a seaweed sable on the side.  I thought the two made a nice pair.

TWD Oasis Naan

On Memorial Day weekend, Paul and I spent Saturday and Sunday camping at the beach.  It was a great trip.  The water wasn't warm enough to swim yet, but the weather was gorgeous, and we had lots of fun reading, sleeping, and walking on the beach.  We came back early Monday morning so we could meet some friends for brunch.  This meant that when we got home Monday afternoon the house was a mess, we had a million things to put away from our camping trip, and I hadn't started on any of my usual weekend chores.  It was also over 90 degrees and extremely humid.  So, I decided this was a great time to ignore the cleaning and chores and sit down, plan our meals for the week, and make a grocery list.  

This is how I ended up at home at 3:30 - after a trip to the grocery store - ready to bake Oasis Naan and a French Strawberry Cake, roast rhubarb and broccoli, and make lentil salad and vegetable pot au feu.  Luckily, the naan recipe is very hands off.  I mixed and kneaded the dough, and left it to rise while I worked on the cake.

After about 2 hours (it was a little over because I wanted to get the cake in the oven), the dough had risen over the bowl and I was ready to shape the bread.

I did a terrible job of making it anywhere close to circular, but I had other cooking to do and was too hot to care about anything other than finishing my baking and getting out of the kitchen, so I put the scallions, cumin seed, and salt on top and baked these off.  Mine came out very puffy, and didn't taste very much like the naan I've had at restaurants.  I did substitute half whole grain flour for white flour, though, so that might have affected the texture.  Either way, they were very good on their own (as long as I didn't try to think of them as naan).  I really liked the flavor the cumin seeds and scallions added.  It went surprisingly well with some cheese I had, but was also definitely great on its own.  

I served this with vegetable pot au feu - another catch-up recipe for FFWD.  I really enjoyed all of the fresh vegetables, and absolutely love poached eggs.  I thought the herb sauce was pretty crucial, it added a lot of flavor.  This was a very nice dinner after a weekend of grilling at our campsite.

Our hosts for the week are Maggie and Phyl.  Go to their sites to get the recipe, and go here to see what the other bloggers thought of the naan.

FFWD Lentil, Lemon, and Tuna Salad

I'm very behind on everything in my life - and really want to use what free time I have this weekend to catch up on reading everyone else's posts - so this will be a short one.  I've always really like tuna salad - all kinds of it.  Rachel Ray has a great "everything but the kitchen sink" version with olives, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, herbs, lemon juice, olive oil, etc., but I also like the simple version with mayonnaise (and relish), and my mom makes a great pasta salad with tuna.  I don't make it that often, though, because I can't keep straight the latest information about mercury and whether the potential health benefits outweigh the risks.  When I do buy canned tuna I usually go for the one packed in olive oil and labeled as low mercury, and just really enjoy it.

This salad was very easy to put together.  I made it the night before while I had a million other things going on (making oasis naan, strawberry cake, vegetable pot au feu, roasted rhubarb, etc.), so I really appreciated that it took about 5 minutes of time, and is about impossible to mess up.  I made the lentils following Dorie's instructions to boil, strain, and boil again, but I couldn't tell a difference at all from my usual method of just bringing them to a boil and simmering.  Did anyone else notice a difference?  I think I'll just skip this step next time.  I couldn't bear to buy - or make - tapenade for just two teaspoons, so I just finely chopped some oil cured blacked olives and added those along with the rest of the ingredients.  I made my own preserved lemons when I accidentally bought way too many meyer lemons this winter, so it was great to have another place to use them.  I served the salad with some green salad - still using up lettuce from the garden - topped with dressing made with milk and the lyonnaise cheese from last week.  All in all, it was a good, quick weeknight dinner.  Definitely something I'd make again when I needed some quick and easy protein for a meal. 

Paul's rhubarb plant was finely ready to pick this weekend, so I made some of Dorie's roasted rhubarb.  I love roasted rhubarb - I make it often - but I really liked Dorie's recommended addition of orange zest.  It was excellent.  So good that I forgot to take the picture until most of it was gone and the rest was packed up to eat on top of yogurt for breakfast!

FFWD Lyonnaise Garlic and Herb Cheese

I feel like I've been babbling a lot on the blog recently, but I have surprisingly little to say about this recipe.  I've never had Boursin cheese and I was definitely curious to try the recipe, but I wouldn't say it was a very memorable one.  It was very easy to put together, but quite expensive.  (My store only had one brand of fromage blanc and it was a fortune!  It probably would have been cheaper if I had just used ricotta, but I did like that fromage blanc is naturally fat free.)  It definitely tasted good, but not amazing, and probably isn't something that I would make again.

I made the cheese the night before, and stuffed some of it into some piquillo peppers that I happened to have around.  I served the rest of it with sliced vegetables, some defrosted left-over fougasse, and a bean salad.  

The salad was probably the most exciting part of the meal.  I bought some garlic scapes on impulse at the farmer's market last weekend and decided to make them into a garlic scape pesto, even though I had no plans for the pesto.  I also wanted to make a salad with these beans.  I was about to roast some garlic to combine with the beans and some roasted cherry tomatoes I had in the freezer (per the suggestion), but luckily I thought to just use the pesto instead.  I tossed everything together, and it made a quick and flavorful salad. 

As part of my continuing attempts to catch-up (my goal is to be caught-up by my one year blogging anniversary in October), I also made gougeres this weekend.  I bought a really good cheese at the farmer's market (I can't remember the name, but it was similar to a parmesan) and combined that with some cheddar that I had at home.  I'm trying to eat more whole grains, so I used about 3/4 multigrain flour mix (I use Kim Boyce's recipe from Good to the Grain) and the rest white flour.  I've made gougeres a bunch of times, and all of the recipes I've tried have been about the same, but they do always taste great!  Paul didn't even notice that it wasn't all white flour (he often complains).  He just said that they were excellent.  I'll definitely be making them again.  

FFWD Double Chocolate and Banana Tart

I love the combination of chocolate and banana, for many years my favorite ice cream was Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey and one of my favorite cakes was banana cake with chocolate frosting, and this tart was another winner.  It felt a bit silly to serve it for two people on a weeknight (we'll be eating this for days...), but this would be great for company.

It seems to be becoming a theme around here, but I split this one over multiple nights.  On Monday I made the dough for the shortbread.  On Tuesday I baked it off.  Wednesday night I made the caramelized bananas - I think I cut mine way too thinly, they turned into mush - and the ganache.  I know Dorie said not to fill the tart until you were ready to serve, but I was in a lazy mood so I filled the crust with the bananas and ganache, wrapped it well in saran and foil, and left it in the fridge over night.

I decided to keep dinner light on Thursday - a good excuse to eat more tart! - so I made one of my favorite salads (Sara Moulton's Chopped Salad) with some lettuce from the garden (I think it's growing faster than we can eat it!).  After dinner, I finished up the pie.  I totally forgot to put apricot jam on my shopping list this week (and didn't happen to have any extra in the house).  I briefly debated going back to the store to get some, but decided to improvise instead.  I finished the pie with a drizzle of honey and some flaky sea salt. 

My only complaint about this tart is that I could definitely taste the lemon juice on the bananas.  Did anybody else have this problem?  I tried to only use a very small amount and shake it off before putting the bananas on the tart, but I guess I still used too much.  Also, I used three bananas and still only made two rows on the outside of the tart pan.  Did other people manage to cover the tart?  Maybe my pan is too big.  Slight lemon taste aside, I loved this tart.  I love chocolate and the bittersweet ganache was outstanding, and I loved the surprise of the caramelized bananas inside.