French Strawberry Cake-TWD Baking with Julia

How could I resist this recipe ? Anything that has the word strawberry in it goes straight to the top of my list.  Especially this time of year when strawberries are showing up at the farmer's markets and look so pretty in their little green baskets.  I discovered the Hood River variety of strawberries on a recent jaunt to the Portland State University Farmer's Market-sad to say I have not been able to find them locally so far (too fragile to transport) , I continue to look.

 I purchased Albion strawberries this weekend from the West Seattle Market-they are very sweet, but still nothing comes close to the Hood River berries I covet.  I'm also in search of Shuksan strawberries,another one with a short shelf life and difficult to transport.  I think I have convinced J that a road trip to Portland is in the cards to search for my beloved Hood River Strawberries! If and when I find either variety you can count on my buying several flats and then it will be strawberrypalooza at our house for a while.

This recipe is a basic genoise with whipped cream and strawberries.  A genoise is a whole egg sponge cake that instead of using leavening,it uses air suspended in the batter to give volume to the cake. You handle the egg batter very gently as you are whisking so that you create enough volume but not too much.  And again a gentle touch  is needed when folding in the dry ingredients. If you are gentle and follow directions and keep an eye on the oven you should easily succeed with your genoise.  I made a few little changes to the basic recipe-I used my rhubarb simple syrup that I had on hand instead of creating the one called for in the recipe.  I also used  the home made mascarpone I brought back from my cheese making workshop at Quillisascut Farm in place of the cream cheese in the recipe.

Thanks to Sophia at Sophia's Sweets  and Allison at Think,Love,Sleep,Dine for hosting this delicious recipe. You can find the recipe on Sophia's blog or even more fun,buy the book: Baking with Julia and join the group, Tuesdays with Dorie. Head over to our TWD blog to see how everyone's cakes turned out.

Pecan Sticky Buns-TWD Baking with Julia

The Baking with Julia cookbook says: "These bear no resemblance to anything store-bought."  That is nothing short of an understatement.  I knew that starting with the brioche dough these were going to be excellent.  Take into account that it took 16 hours to complete the sticky buns .  That was 16 hours spread over 3 days and well worth the effort. The contributing baker for this recipe was Nancy Silverton, and you should know that anything coming from her will be and is absolute perfection. She trained at Le Cordon Bleu in London and at the Ecole Le Nortre in Plaiser, France.  She is the owner and head baker at La Brea Bakery as well as the co-owner and head pastry chef  at Campanile Restaurant.

Nancy was the James Beard Foundation Best Pastry Chef of the Year, 1990 along with a page full of other awards that you can see here.  After eating one of these sticky buns you will understand why she has won so many awards. I would like to nominate her for the best sticky buns ever !


Warning: not only are these incredibly delicious,they have enough butter to put Paula Deen to shame and the preparation is not for the faint of heart. You really need to allow 3 days to prepare these.

 The beautiful brioche dough on it's first rise

 Rolled, frozen and then sliced prior to the final 2 hour rise

 2 hour rise prior to baking

Almost ready for the oven

Are they worth the effort-oh yea baby. Thank goodness I can immediately send them out of the house with J to his office , because there is not enough time in the day to run on the treadmill in order to burn off the calories from  these sticky buns.

They really should come with a health warning. Like everything - moderation is the key here. But just try and have one bite ; that leads to another; then you rationalize well ,I'll just eat one third of one; then that turns into a half; and before you know it there is nothing left but the sweet sticky syrup and maybe a pecan or two. Of course you make those tiny remnants disappear faster than anything Houdini could do !

Feel like a challenge with incredibly delicious rewards at the end ?  Try the recipe. Check out our hostesses for this recipe , Lynn at Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat or Nicole at Cookies on Friday. Then head over to here to see what my fellow bakers did with this recipe.

Or buy the book-Baking with Julia  and join the fun . You can sign up here.  Me ? I'm finishing off the last brown sugar caramel coated pecan on my plate and heading for a long long walk on the treadmill. Bon Appetit.

Hungarian Shortbread-TWD Baking with Julia

Hungarian Shortbread-that sounded interesting,especially to me with my mixed European Heritage.  Honestly I can't say which countries my relatives came from. My one grandfather had altered his name and told us he was from a small village in Lithuania and yet what little of his documents we could locate, showed St. Petersburg , Russia !  The other grandfather fled the Yugoslavian army,changed his name and we think stowed away on one of the ships out of Belgium. It's all a mystery as anyone who might have known something about either of my grandfathers is long gone. So I chuckled when I saw this recipe.  I thought immediately-shortbread,ahh those lovely buttery cookies. But what a surprise as I read the directions and ingredients, I thought hmm,pastry masquerading itself as shortbread-was it hiding from something like my grandfathers?  I wasn't sure about it,especially the "freeze the dough and grate it " part !  But let me tell you, this dough was so buttery and tasty, I'm thinking of trying shortbread cookie dough ice cream.  I'm not usually a raw dough fan but I had to hurry and put this in the oven before I taste tested all of the dough .

According to About.com "Hungarian shortbread or omlos teasutemeny (oom-loosh TAY-ahsh-soo-teh-men-ee), where omlos means short pastry and teasutemeny means biscuit in the cookie sense, has a thin layer of jam between two layers of buttery dough."  I used my best and sweetest butter, Kerrygold Irish Butter, for this.Whenever I make shortbread I always try to use Kerrygold-it gives a much richer and sweeter taste.But, I made a huge error as I was setting up my mise en place. The recipe calls for 4 cups of all purpose flour- I only had 1 cup left-how could that happen ? So I improvised, I added 2 cups of all purpose bread flour and 1 cup of cake flour-hoping the low gluten content in the cake flour would balance out the high gluten in the bread flour. And it did. I was worried that the shortbread would be too doughy and tough from the bread flour but the baking gods were with me and it turned out perfectly.

This is very rich, and I think it would be just as rich regardless of the type of butter used.  It's delicious,buttery and sweet.  I didn't make my own jam but instead used my favorite Bonne Maman Cherry Preserves. The tart cherries set off the buttery dough to perfection. You can see what my fellow bakers did with this recipe by clicking here.

And thanks to Lynette from 1Small Kitchen and Cher from The not so exciting adventures of a dabbler for hosting this week. Now go buy the book and start baking with us .