I often pick on my husband because he has a “texture” thing. As in he doesn’t eat certain foods because he doesn’t like the texture…ie, he doesn’t eat soup or beans of any kind. I used to think it was odd(I still do a little) until I made this weeks Tuesday’s With Dorie pick….Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake. And I realized, I don’t like the texture of polenta in cake. Cornmeal doesn’t bother me in cornbread, so I find it weird that I don’t like it in cake. But I don’t…it’s a texture thing.
Since I am not a fan of polenta cakes I knew I would be giving it away, I decided to use dried blueberries instead of figs, as the person they were going to is not a fig fan. It didn’t call for it, but I made a lemon glaze to go over the top of it. I made 4 mini ones that were well received by people who did not have texture issues.
Make sure to go and see Caitlin of Engineer Baker, for she picked this recipe so I bet she has a good one. And if you have even more time you can see all of the different ones through the Tuesday’s With Dorie website.
So is there anything you have a texture issue with?

Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake

 
1/2 cup dried blueberries

1 c. medium-grain polenta or yellow cornmeal

½ c. all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 c. ricotta

1/3 c. tepid water

¾ c. sugar

½ c. unsalted butter

¾ c. honey (if you¢â¬â„¢re a real honey lover, use a full-flavored honey such as chestnut, pine, or buckwheat)

Grated zest of 1 lemon

2 large eggs

 
Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 10 ½-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom and put it on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat.

Toss blueberries into a small pan of boiling water and steep for a minute, then drain and pat dry.

Whisk the polenta, flour, baking powder, and salt together.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the ricotta and water together on low speed until very smooth. With the mixer at medium speed, add the sugar, honey, and lemon zest and beat until light. Beat in the melted butter, then add the eggs one at a time, beating until the mixture is smooth. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are fully incorporated. You¢â¬â„¢ll have a sleek, smooth, pourable batter.

Pour about one third of the batter into the pan and scatter over the blueberries. Pour in the rest of the batter, smooth the top with a rubber spatula, if necessary, and dot the batter evenly with the chilled bits of butter.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. The cake should be honey brown and pulling away just a little from the sides of the pan, and the butter will have left light-colored circles in the top. Transfer the cake to a rack and remove the sides of the pan after about 5 minutes. Cool to warm, or cool completely.

Source: Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Well, this was a Daring Baker first for me. No, it’s not that I haven’t made this before, it’s that I have never waited until the day it was due to do the challenge! AHHHHH. I thought I had more time, guess not.

This month’s challenge comes from Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell. They selected Cheesecake Pops from one of my newer cookbooks, Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey. These fell into the messy category as the dipping in the chocolate and the flying sprinkles everywhere got a little messy. Then again, I was in a bit of a hurry.

These fun little pops would be a great thing to make with your kids or to serve at one of their parties. They can be formed into many shapes. If I had a little more time to be creative, I would have gone that route. Even if you are not a kid, these are certainly tasty…I mean it’s cheesecake on a stick…covered in chocolate!

Cheesecake Pops

Makes 30 ¢â¬â€œ 40 Pops

5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature

2 cups sugar

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

5 large eggs

2 egg yolks

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

¼ cup heavy cream

Boiling water as needed

Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks

1 pound chocolate, finely chopped ¢â¬â€œ you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white (Alternately, you can use 1 pound of flavored coatings, also known as summer coating, confectionary coating or wafer chocolate ¢â¬â€œ candy supply stores carry colors, as well as the three kinds of chocolate.)

2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

(Note: White chocolate is harder to use this way, but not impossible)
Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees) – Optional

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 ¢â¬â€œ 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it¢â¬â„¢s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

Source: Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O¢â¬â„¢Connor

So on our “camping” trip to Portland we ate a place that I found on Chowhound. It had lots of positive comments and it was only about 3 blocks from our hotel, um I mean campsite. I wont go into a review of the restaurant as I will have that up on my other blog in about a month. Other blog? Yep, crazy Peabody will have yet another food blog starting June 1st. Now I will give you many more details in an upcoming post(I’m having a giveaway) but it is called Northwest Noshings. It is all things Northwest food. From restaurant reviews to Northwest cooking…and there will be no baking on it. Enough of that for now.
So the restaurant specializes in comfort food and the minute I saw the menu I spied the word Key Lime Pie and was a happy girl. For key lime(as long time readers know) is one of my all time favorites. It was completely old school, graham cracker crust with tangy key lime filling and whipped cream pilled sky high. It was heavenly. I craved it the rest of the weekend. That craving never went away and so I decided the best thing to do would be to make it. I needed to see if the bad ju-ju was gone anyway.
For my version though I did not go old school. My crust has coconut and pecans in it and my key lime filling has mascarpone cheese in it which produces a lighter texture. It has made for a wonderful breakfast, lunch and mid-afternoon snack so far today.
You will all be happy to know that my ju-ju has swung back towards the good end. I had no problems with this concoction as it did cooperate all around.

Peabody’s Camping Key Lime Pie with Coconut-Pecan Graham Cracker Crust

1/2 cup key lime juice, fresh if possible
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup Mascarpone cheese, room temperature
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 to 2 teaspoons finely grated lime or key lime zest, divided
5 egg yolks
whipped cream, for garnish
1 coconut-pecan graham cracker pie shell(recipe follows)

Whisk sweetened condensed milk with the egg yolks. Whisk in Mascarpone cheese. Stir in whipping cream and lime juice. Stir in 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons lime zest. Pour into a prepared graham cracker crust and bake at 325° for 15 to 20 minutes.

Coconut-Pecan Graham Cracker Crust

1 ¾ cups crushed graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup sweetened coconut flakes
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup pecans
7-8 TBSP melted butter

In a food processor, blend together graham cracker crumbs, coconut, sugar and pecans. You want to make sure that none of the coconut is visible. Add about 7 TBSP melted butter. Pulse a few times. If it seems like it needs more butter add the remaining TBSP. Pour contents into a pie pan and press to form a shell. I used 4 mini pie shells.
Bake crust for 10 minutes at 400F. If you are using the mini pie pans, prebaking is not necessary.

I served my pie with whipped cream, a little leftover lime zest and plated with some of Fran’s Raspberry Sauce.

So one of my Un-Midas victims was this carrot cake that we were making for Tuesday’s With Dorie. Now you are looking at it and saying, doesn’t look that bad. Well let me tell you, I went through a lot of cake just to get a semi-decent looking cut out. Every time I went to level it out, I seemed to make it worse…until I just gave up.
I deviated quite a bit this time. I only used 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour and used almond flour to give it a more dense, torte like texture. Taste wise I was loving the cake, even though aesthetic wise it didn’t want to work with me. I changed the cream cheese frosting to a honey crème fraiche cream cheese frosting that goes very well with carrot cake. Oh and I made a peach-apricot sorbet. The last time I had carrot cake at restaurant it was served with an apricot sorbet and it went so very nicely with the cake that I wanted to make it at home. I only had a few frozen apricots so I had to go out and buy some peaches. You can make it with fresh if you can find them in your parts.
Speaking of the sorbet. Again, it turned out but that darn stuff would not stay still. Even though the plate had been frozen the sorbet thought it was suppose to ice skate all over the plate. Seriously, ran all over the place. It sucked big time to try and get photos of it.
A lot of people ditched the coconut in this recipe but I really liked it and I think it helped add to the moisture. I don’t think it really gives it an coconut flavor so if you are on the fence about coconut, I would throw it in there. I also didn’t add nuts since I used almond flour. I didn’t want to conflict my nuts…I hate when that happens.
So thanks to Amanda of Slow Like Honey for picking a tasty cake. To see most likely a more traditional take on the cake go to the Tuesday’s With Dorie site for all the TWD participants.

 Bill’s Big Carrot Cake
Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

 
Yields 10 servings
 
Ingredients:
 
For the cake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup almond flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon salt
3 cups grated carrots (about 9 carrots, you can grate them in food processor fitted w/ a shredding a blade or use a box grater)
1 cup shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)
½ cup moist, plump golden raisins
2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
4 large eggs

Getting ready:
Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter three 9-x-2-inch round cake pans, flour the insides, and tap out the excess. Put the two pans on one baking sheet and one on another.
 
To make the cake:
Whisk the flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. In another bowl, stir together the carrots, chopped nuts, coconut, and raisins.
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the sugar and oil together on a medium speed until smooth. Add the eggs one by one and continue to beat until the batter is even smoother. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture, mixing only until the dry ingredients disappear. Gently mix the chunky ingredients. Divide the batter among the baking pans.
Bake for 40-50 minutes, rotating the pans from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point, until a thin knife inserted into the centers comes out clean. The cakes will have just started to come away from the sides of the pans. Transfer the cakes to cooling racks and cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the cakes and unmold them. Invert and cool to room temperature right side up.
The cakes can be wrapped airtight and kept at room temperature overnight or frozen for up to 2 months.

Honey Creme Fraiche Cream Cheese Frosting

12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
8 ounces creme fraiche(if you can’t find use greek yogurt, such as Fage)
3 TBSP honey
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar(you may use more depending on your sweet tooth)

Cream together cream cheese and creme fraiche. Mix together for about 3 minutes. Add honey and mix until incorporated. Add powdered sugar a 1/2 cup at a time until you reach desired sweetness level.

Peach-Apricot Sorbet

3 cups frozen sliced peaches
1 cup frozen sliced apricots
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 TBSP fresh lemon juice

Defrost peaches and apricots(preferably in fridge over night).
Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until thick and smooth.
Freeze peach mixture in ice cream maker according to manufacturer instructions.
Sorbet should be thickened in about 25 minutes; Scoop sorbet into a freezer-safe container and freeze for a few hours.