TWD Two-Fer – Rum Drenched Vanilla Cakes and Tarte Noire

Paying catch up is always fun 🙂

Rum Drenched Vanilla Cakes
Chosen by Wendy of Pink Stripes, head HERE for the recipe.

These were a breeze to make and smelled divine! I was FINALLY able to use my small heart cakelette pan. I halved the recipe and it was the perfect amount for 6 small cakes. Perfectly adorable and easily sharable. Although I did halve the cake recipe, I didn’t halve the rum syrup. They came out moist and boozy with a tight crumb and a delightful vanilla aroma and flavor. Did I mention boozy? Dorie would be proud 😉

Check out all the other boozy creations HERE.

Tarte Noire
Chosen by Dharmagirl of bliss: towards a delicious life. Click HERE for the recipe, you’ll want it x10!

I can’t do this tarte enough justice. I can sit here and wax poetic how Dorie’s ganache tartes are JUST AMAZING, but it just wouldn’t really come out and grab you.

So instead I’ll tell you that this is quite literally the closest you’ll get to nirvana. To heaven. To a Parisian terrace without the plane ride. To pure, unadultered bliss. Its ALL of it. Wrapped into one lovely, glossy, addictive tarte.

Seriously, proceed with caution. This tarte comes with its own disclaimer. Crumbly buttery chocolate shortbread crust filled with a creamy dreamy bittersweet chocolate ganache? Someone call the gluttony police. Wait, do they even exist? They probably should…

I went for the Chocolate shortbread tarte crust to keep with the ‘noire’ theme. I didn’t save a bit of the dough to patch and cracks (the ONE AND ONLY TIME I didn’t, ugh) and OF COURSE my crust looked like an earthquake ravaged by oven. But thanks to my genius of a fiancé, he suggested that I just melt some chocolate and spread a thin layer over the crust to seal the holes and just freeze it before pouring in the ganache. GENIUS!! Problem: deliciously fixed! I melted, slathered, froze, poured and chilled. It sounds like a lot… but this tarte was seriously a total of mayyybe 10 mins hands-on time.

You’ll get more hands-to-mouth time that’ll make you forget aaaall about those measly 10 mins of prep time. Pah, 10 mins is NOTHING when you get this as a reward for all your efforts.

Next time I might substitute some Kahlua for the heavy cream. Cus it’s good. And I’m boozy like that.

Did I ever mention that ‘boozy’ is one of my all time favorite words to say? Boozy. Say it with the best British accent you can muster. I’ll wait….

Fun, N’est pas?!

Up next week: Brrrr-ownies. These are goooooood. So good.

Advertisement

SMS – Pecan Shortbread Cookies (no sweet potato bread)

Better (waaaay) late than never, right?

I don’t know how it happened but I managed to forget to post about these. I baked them and photographed them on time… I just didn’t remember to blog about them. Woopsy! I must have been hella busy because baking and my assignments are usually on my mind.

Anyway, these were good. Not GREAT but good. I had to dunk the cookies in powdered sugar THREE times to make sure that I didn’t end up with another case of the missing powdered sugar.

I much prefer my go-to pecan sandies over these.

Speaking of powdered sugar… I never quite know what to call it. Powdered sugar? Confectioners sugar? They are the same thing but I noticed that I flip flop between the two. What do you call it?

Thank you to Lara of The Lab for choosing this recipe. Click here for the recipe and here to see the other SMS bakers and their lovely renditions of these cookies.

Up next week: Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler Pie (which, I’ll have you know, I’ve already made and photographed! Now to blog it, before I forget again)

TWD – Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart

Oh boy, do I love food porn.

Fellow foodies know EXACTLY what I’m talking about, but for those of you raising your eyebrow and shielding your eyes…. “food porn” isn’t something sexually explicit. It’s simply wonderfully photographed pictures of food that are drool inspiring. Food that is shot so up close and personal that it gives you that Neanderthal reflex to want to grab it from the screen and run home with it, sharing with no one!

Food can be sexy, glamorous, supple… and any true food photographer knows that, and will abuse it to make you swoon. Or blush 😉

What does this have to do with this week’s post, you ask? This tart is a PERFECT example of an ideal pupil for a food porn shot.

The crumbly, buttery-sweet shortbread tart dough laying beneath a salty, nutty-crunchy, amber caramel topped with soft, velvety smooth, rich, dark chocolate ganache that gives way to the mere pressure of the fork that begs to violate its perfection. See what I mean?

Sleek and seductive.

This tart was easy to throw together (minus the fact that I burned the heavy cream the first time, oops). The crust came together in a snap and is DELIGHTFUL (I’m a crust gal so that was my favorite part). I let the caramel reach a DEEP amber color and I used chopped almonds instead of the suggested honey roasted peanuts (I skipped toasting them with honey to save time, but I’ll try this next time) and the ganache couldn’t have been simpler. I left it in the fridge overnight and its still amazing!! This is definitely a show-stopper.

Thank you Carla for choosing this great tart!! Visit Carla at Chocolate Moosey for the recipe.