Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

You might remember this cake from the chocolate spelt pound cake. Originally, I had wanted to do the kamut version, but couldn’t find any kamut flour. During a weekend trip to Portland, OR, though, I stumbled upon some in Whole Foods. When life hands you kamut flour, you have to take it, right? So that little bag came back home with me.

I had the batter whipped up in no time, and man, was it good. It had a toasty, nutty taste, kind of like cornmeal, but without the grittiness. Like the chocolate spelt version, this one was a bit dry, so I toasted a slice and ate it with some homemade rhubarb, apple and orange jam. I’m really intrigued by the kamut flour and plan to try it in some biscuits soon. But back to that jam I just mentioned. See, right next to the Whole Foods in Portland is Powell’s Bookstore, one of the largest bookstores in the country.

Can you see where this is going?

I might have spent some time in Powell’s browsing their huge selection of cookbooks. And some of those cookbooks might have jumped into my basket and come home with me. And one of them is all about jams and jellies. More on that later.

This is the last recipe out of Pure Dessert, and I’m sad to come to the end of it. Like Medrich’s other books, this book was full of hits and only a few misses. The caramels and the almond cake have earned a spot on my list of favorite recipes and with hotter weather coming (and no air conditioning), I’ll be making that grapefruit granita regularly.

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

I grew up on burnt chocolate pudding that came out of a box. Back before there was instant chocolate pudding, there was the chocolate pudding that you actually had to cook on the stovetop. I remember my mom standing in front of the stove, stirring away, muttering. See, she had a habit of burning the pudding. It was a real godsend when the instant stuff came out that required no heat.

This recipe is mostly straightforward. You cook eggs, sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and milk, add in some vanilla and chopped bittersweet chocolate and then whiz everything for a few seconds in a food processor. I thought that last step was a bit fiddley, and I’d probably leave it out next time.

The pudding was good and chocolatey, but I’d call this more of a soup then a pudding. Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely. It just didn’t set. At all. You pretty much could bypass the spoon and drink it. I’m guessing I didn’t leave it on the stovetop long enough. This pudding could easily be adapted to include all sorts of other flavors, such as mint, mocha or even orange. It’s a good basic recipe.

I hadn’t planned on making these muffins, but every time I flipped through Pure Dessert, I kept stopping on this recipe. Muffins just didn’t seem exotic enough to try. But they have raspberries. And chocolate. Really, it was only a matter of time before I caved.

The batter came together really easily using just a wooden spoon (no mixer required). The recipes calls for all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour. I didn’t have any whole wheat flour, so I used all all-purpose flour. At the end, frozen raspberries and chocolate chips or chunks are stirred into the batter. Keeping the berries frozen means that they don’t turn the batter purple or get squished during mixing.

The muffins smelled divine as they were cooking. They rose well and had nicely rounded tops. The batter itself is pretty neutral and makes a good background for the raspberries and chocolate. Because I like to tinker, I want to try substituting some sour cream or buttermilk for part of the milk to give the muffins a bit more tang. This is a good basic fruit muffin recipe. I’d imagine that just about any fruit would work here, as long as it can stand up to the mixing.

This is actually two recipes in one. First, you make a batch of Desire’s Brioche dough. But instead of making traditional brioche loaves, you roll the dough out and spread a filling of muscovado sugar and cinnamon on it, then roll the dough up and cut it like cinnamon rolls. Then you toss the sliced dough into the pan and bake it. What you end up with is sort of a cross between monkeybread and cinnamon-swirl bread.

The main feature of brioche is that is contains a lot of butter, and you have to slowly beat chilled butter into the dough. I haven’t made brioche before, but Medrich’s instructions were pretty clear. She warns that this dough is very wet, sticky and elastic. She wasn’t kidding.

My dough seemed too wet and almost mushy. Even though I beat it for the amount of time Medrich said to, it didn’t pull together like I expected. It felt and looked more like a cake batter than a bread dough. But I went ahead and beat in the butter and then let the dough rest, overnight, in the fridge.

The next morning, I rolled the chilled dough out. It was much easier to handle, cold, but it still seemed mushy. I was unable to find muscovado sugar, so I used dark brown sugar in the filling. Once assembled and in the pan, the dough didn’t rise very much, but it did get a good oven spring. I might have overcooked the babka, as it was a bit dry, and I felt like it needed more filling. Even after baking it, though, it still didn’t have the mouthfeel of a traditional bread. It was more like a cake.

This is probably the only recipe out of Pure Dessert that I felt really didn’t work, and that might have been more my fault then the recipe’s fault.

Linzer tortes are a favorite Austrian or German holiday pastry. In it’s classic configuration, a buttery, almond-based dough sandwiches raspberry jam. I haven’t tried many linzer tortes (there are also cookie variations), so I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. It had two things I don’t like very much: cloves and raspberry jam.

I generally find the flavor of cloves to be overwhelming, even in small amounts, and I’m prejudiced when it comes to baking with raspberry jam. I like my raspberry jam on toast, and that’s about it (actually, that goes for all jams or jellies, not just raspberry). Baking with jams and/or jellies seems like cheating to me (yeah, I’m weird. I know).

So, back to Medrich’s recipe. The dough came together pretty easily, using a food processor. I would have liked more descriptions on what the dough is supposed to look and feel like. Her directions say to pulse just until the almonds, flour, sugar, egg yolk and butter are blended. When I did that, though, the dough was still extremely crumbly. I continued pulsing until the dough came together in a ball. At that point, it was too soft to manipulate, so I let it sit in the fridge for about 30 minutes, to firm up, even though Medrich’s directions don’t say that.

Rolling the dough for the lattice was an exercise in patience. Even though I had chilled the dough, it was still extremely tender and sticky. Per Medrich’s instructions, I made sure to grease the fluted tart pan really well. As the torte baked, it smelled amazing and turned out looking quite pretty. Despite the careful greasing, it did stick a bit in the pan. I also ended up with a pool of butter underneath the torte.

Surprisingly, I mostly liked the torte, especially the edges where the dough carmalized a bit. The spices in the dough give it an almost peppery bite that goes nicely with the raspberry jam. Both Bryan and I thought there was too much jam in the center and that it made the torte too sweet. If I try the torte again, I’ll cut down on the amount of jam. I might also considering doing a version with something like nutella or maybe even lemon curd.

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich

In the headnotes to this recipe, Medrich warns that these bars are tangy, and boy, is she right! These aren’t for those people who just want a hint of lemony sweetness.

At first, I was skeptical about whether or not I’d like these bars. I tasted the lemon filling before I baked it and it didn’t seem all that lemony to me. In fact, I thought it was almost overwhelmingly sweet. Instead of adding more lemon juice, I decided to go ahead and bake the bars as they were, trusting Medrich. She was right.

The recipe called for an 8×8 square pan, but I used a 9×9 square pan instead. My lemon bars ended up on the slim side, but they still packed a lemony wallop. The only other change I made to the recipes was to use the juice of two lemons and a lime, along with the zest, instead of all lemons or limes. In the finished product, I couldn’t really taste the lime. 

The bars sliced cleanly, even though I didn’t take the time to refrigerate them. I’d imagine that after a day or so, the crust might begin to soften, but I can’t say for sure. They didn’t last that long.

This recipe is a version of Medrich’s Kamut Pound Cake. I originally wanted to try the version with kamut flour, but I couldn’t find any. And since I still had a bag of spelt flour from the grains cookbook, I decided to go in that direction. Besides, this version had chocolate!

The cake almost didn’t make it into the oven; I was eating the batter by the spoonful. Unfortunately, the cake came out a bit on the dry side, but I find most pound cakes to be a bit dry. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m betting this is fantastic toasted and would be perfect with tea or coffee.

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

This cake is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. And, more importantly, Bryan agrees. Since the man has a compulsive need to disagree with me over everything (snort), the fact that he agreed means this cake is truly something special.

I made the cake the day before going to visit Bryan’s mother, and I had planned to bring her at least half of it. Unfortunately, every time either of us walked by the counter where it was sitting, we had to cut off another slice. The next day, there were only crumbs left. Yes, Bryan and I ate the entire thing in less than a day.

The cake is stupidly easy to make, and the entire thing is done in the food processor. Instead of flour, the basic structure comes from ground almonds. This gives the cake an extremely moist, dense texture. It was almost chewy in a very, very good way. The best part of the cake is the side and bottom crusts. You smear the cake pan with butter, press sliced almond all around it and sprinkle it with sugar. In the oven, the sugar carmalizes slightly and toasts the almonds. I underbaked the cake slightly, so I suspect that a few more minutes in the oven would have resulted in an even browner crust on the bottom. I also had a rough time getting it out of the pan. I think I ended up with three or so chunks, but that just meant it was easier to sneak pieces without Bryan being able to tell. 

We ate pieces of the cake plain, but also with some strawberries. Both were divine. The next time I make this cake, I’m going to try adding in some lemon or orange zest. Not much, as the cake is perfectly fine without it, but I’d like to see what that hint of citrus does to the flavor.

Note: I had an opportunity to make this cake again, a few days later. The second time, I added about a teaspoon of lemon zest. Funny enough, I actually preferred the cake without the lemon zest as even that small amount overpowered the almond flavor.

I pride myself on my caramel skills. Every year around Christmas, I start making caramels. Chocolate caramels, cinnamon caramels, coffee caramels, mocha caramels, orange caramels, and on and on. Depending on how generous I’m feeling (and how many I can hide from Bryan), some of those caramels might find their way into peoples’ christmas stockings. My standard caramel recipe isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes more than an hour of constant stirring, not to mention cooling and wrapping time.

Then along comes this recipe. It calls for fewer ingredients and less cooking time, but results in a purer, darker caramel flavor. If they weren’t so good, I’d be a little annoyed. 

As is standard with me, I went with one of Medrich’s variations, the nutmeg and vanilla bean caramels, except I used vanilla extract, not a vanilla bean. The nutmeg flavor was sort of lost in the finished product. It’s there, very faintly, but not enough that most people would be able to pick it out. Next time, more nutmeg. I’m also planning to try some of my other favorite variations, such as chocolate or mocha.

Instead of leaving the caramels all plain, I decided to dip half of them in chocolate. Judging from the look on Bryan’s face when he ate one, this was a good decision. A very good decision.

PS. I’m currently taking bribes for next year’s Christmas list . . .

“Oh my.”

That was pretty much all I could think of when I bit into a square of these deep, dark chocolatey brownies. The texture was some where between cakey and fudgey, moist but not dense and crunchy from cacoa nibs. They were so good that Bryan and I had to get them out of the house before we ate them all.

In the recipe, Medrich specifically calls for a 70 percent chocolate. I only had about half the amount needed, so I made up the rest with a slightly sweeter chocolate (about 60 percent, I believe). I was worried that the brownies would be too sweet, since I was using sweeter chocolate, but it didn’t affect the final product. Now, that being said, I’m definitely going to make these again using all 70 percent chocolate.

Really, the only issue I had with the recipe was that I had to bake my brownies for a bit longer. I ended up baking them for about 45 minutes where as the recipe calls for 25-30 minutes. Minor. I’m also really loving the cacoa nibs. They add a nut-like texture, but without the nuts. The nibs, themselves, don’t seem to add much flavor. These are perfect for those who can’t eat nuts but want some of that texture in their baked goods.