Berry Galette

Do you have a dessert that you make regularly? Or do you flit from one recipe to the next? I do a bit of both but more often I make something for a while, then completely forget about it. This galette is a good example of that. I've been making it since Baking with Julia was published in 1996, but these days I am always trying something new and it got pushed aside. What a shame, as this is a beautiful dough to work with, even if you are not fond of making and rolling out pastry. It comes together quickly in the food processor and stays soft enough to roll easily, even right out of the fridge. Fill it with any sort of berries you like (except strawberries--too watery), stone fruit or even pineapple chunks. 

Galette Dough

From Baking with Julia, contributing baker Flo Braker

Makes 2 large or 8 small

3 tablespoons yogurt/buttermilk/sour cream

about ⅓ cup ice water

1 cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup cornmeal

1 teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

7 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 6 to 8 pieces

1. Stir the yogurt and ice water together and set aside. Put the flour, cornmeal sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the butter and pulse 8 to 10 times, or until the mixture is speckled with butter pieces. With the machine running, add the yogurt mixture and process just until the dough forms soft, moist curds.
2. Divide the dough into 2 or 6 pieces and press each into a disc. Wrap and chill for at least 2 hours. It can also be frozen and thawed in the fridge.

Berry Galette

½ recipe galette dough

1½ cups mixed fresh berries (I used raspberries, blackberries and blueberries)

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon cold unsalted butter (I usually omit this, preferring to serve it with scads of whipped cream)

1. Preheat oven to 400℉/200℃. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Roll the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is about ¹⁄₈"/0.3cm thick. The dough is soft and easy to roll, but lift and turn it and add more flour if necessary so that it doesn't stick. Transfer to the parchment lined baking sheet.
3. Place the berries on top and sprinkle with the 1 tablespoon sugar. Fold the uncovered border of dough up over the edge of the berries, allowing it to pleat. Dip a pastry brush in water and coat the edge lightly, then sprinkle with sugar (I used a mixture of coarse decorating sugar and chopped pistachios).
4. Bake the large galette for 35-40 minutes, and the smaller ones for about 25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and crisp and the berry juices are starting to run. Place the baking sheet on a cooling rack and cool for about 10 minutes before sliding it off the parchment to continue cooling.
5. Serve warm or at room temperature. This is best the day it is made.

See you on the 14th for my Daring Cooks' Challenge reveal! 

Maple Cornmeal Biscuits

A very late TWD post today: I got home from a rough day at work yesterday with a terrible sore throat and sinuses, fell asleep and woke up ... 12 hours later, still wearing my scarf! Feeling a lot better, though, but had to run out the door again. Today was a much better day. It really depends which school you go to as a substitute teacher, and there's not so much work that we can be choosy. 

Anyway, I couldn't believe it when the May recipes for Tuesdays with Dorie were posted. I thought I had broken up with cornmeal pretty definitively after the cornmeal shortbread, but here it was again. Never one to hold a grudge, I thought I'd give it one more chance. Dorie even recommended using the dreaded stone-ground for this recipe. I used half stone-ground and half regular cornmeal, and I have to admit that these were very tasty right out of the oven. I did eat them very gingerly, as I had fears of cracking (another) filling. I liked the taste, and ate a couple plain, but I didn't care for them the next morning. I couldn't really taste the maple, but I did like the cornmeal flavour, and will be taking the finely ground stuff for another spin soon. Lindsay over at A Little Something...Sweet has the recipe for you, and it's an easy one. As always, check out the TWD site for all the variations. 

Cornmeal shortbread cookies

Dear Stone-ground cornmeal,
We need to talk. I've tried really hard to make it work with you, but you just won't soften up, even when I slather you with jam. I'm afraid I can't take it any more. Last time we met, I thought you cracked a filling. You didn't, quite, but I'm afraid it's over between us in the sweet kitchen. I'll be turning to your slick and smooth younger brother, finely ground cornmeal, for my future baking needs. So, I know this is awkward, Stone-ground, but it's not me, it's you. Sorry. I'll still be calling you when polenta is on the menu, if that's okay?
Regards,
Mary

As you might have gathered, these weren't very successful cookies. They looked cute and the flavour and shortbread texture were amazing, but the cornmeal was too coarsely ground to soften up, even after being sandwiched with raspberry jam and left overnight. It's my own fault, as I keep going back to the fancy cornmeal I bought. Luckily it's all gone now, so I can try these again another time with finer cornmeal. The sunshiny colour was perfect for a spring day.

This recipe was selected by Valerie of Une Gamine dans la Cuisine. She was one of the first bloggers to visit me after I started this blog, and she still comes back sometimes! There was no way I would miss her recipe. Her site is beautiful, and she uses a point and shoot camera, like me, but her photos are amazing. Go and check it out.

I decided to use my cookie press to make spritz cookies because chilling the dough in a zipper bag and then cutting the bag off and throwing it out just seemed wasteful. I also wanted to make small cookies, and I got an awful lot of tiny cookies from a half batch. I sandwiched most of them together with homemade raspberry jam. The ones I didn't sandwich got dunked in tea and coffee. See what the other TWD bakers came up with here.

Corniest corn muffins

I love the sunny yellow colour of cornmeal, but I find it ... gritty. I want to like it, so I buy nice stone-ground, organic cornmeal and keep it in my freezer, I save cornmeal recipes, and every once in a while I bake something with it. I never love what I make, but I never hate it either. Then I wait a few months and try again. I like cornmeal best when it has softened up a bit, like in polenta. I love polenta. These muffins? Not so much. They just didn't work for me. I found them quite sweet, so I didn't want to eat them with anything savoury. I thought about putting jam on them, but there were corn kernels and black pepper so that did not appeal. What to do? The usual--I put them in the freezer and have been eating them plain on the mornings when I haven't got time to make a proper breakfast. They're not bad, but it'll be a few months before I bake with cornmeal again. Thanks to Jill of My Next Life for choosing this recipe--she'll have it posted on her site. See all the corn muffins over at Tuesdays with Dorie. Oh, and if you've got a surefire cornmeal recipe, send it my way, please!

Blueberry great grains muffins

These muffins were the perfect way to jump back into the routine of Tuesdays with Dorie. I can hardly believe I missed 5 weeks, but I am glad to be back. I am finally feeling better and I definitely have my sweet tooth back, and it's making up for lost time! These muffins were actually not too sweet, and didn't taste like cake masquerading as a muffin. That's a good thing, in my book. I like to keep breakfast and dessert somewhat separate. 

The recipe called for prunes, which I love, but only to snack on. There's something about rehydrated dried fruit that's weird. It's not dried, but it's still not fresh. Weird. So, I used fresh blueberries and some candied orange peel to flavour these. I also used more whole wheat flour and less white flour than the recipe called for, and these were not dense or tough at all. They definitely had texture, as I used a stoneground polenta and coarsely ground whole wheat flour. Oh, and I used some butter and some canola oil instead of all butter, because the butter was frozen. Everything is frozen here, actually. 

:)

The first muffin I ate plain, hot from the oven: delicious. The second I ate at room temperature with butter: delicious. The rest? I froze them before they disappeared too. Actually, I only baked 6, and froze the rest of the batter in my new muffin tin with a lid (finally!). So, I'll be able to pull that out and bake these fresh another day. I'll let you know how that turns out.

This week's recipe was selected by Christine at HappyTummy, so if you'd like to make these, head over there for the recipe. Thanks for a great pick, Christine--I'll be snacking on these for a while! As always, check out the LYL (leave your link) post on the Tuesdays with Dorie page to see who else made these, and how they changed them up.