For this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie, Marthe of Culinary Delights selected White Chocolate Brownies on pages 110 and 111 of  Dorie Greenspan’s book  Baking: From My Home to Yours.  These brownies are layers of white chocolate base batter sprinkled with fresh raspberries and then topped with a meringue.  For my version, I used blueberries and as always reduced the sugar from 1 cup (for the batter) to 1/4 cup.  I probably could have gotten away with even less than that since the white chocolate I used is already ultra sweet.  The recipe also called for part all purpose flour and some part ground almonds.  I used 1 cup ground almonds to replace all that and it turned out yummy! The original recipe called for baking time of 30- 35 minutes at 325F or until meringue is golden brown and crackling. My brownies took way longer than that to even get closer to very light brown!  At the 35 minute time, it was still wiggling.  I put it back and  had it in the oven close to an hour! Must be my oven.  So if you want to try this recipe, watch the baking time.

White Chocolate Brownies with Blueberries

Ingredients:

• 1 cup ground almonds (or almond flour)
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• zest of 1 orange
• 1 stick butter
• 4 oz white chocolate, chopped
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

For meringue:

• 3 egg whites, room temperature
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325F.  Prepare a baking dish by lining with parchment paper, smearing with butter and sprinkling with 1 tbs flour. Set aside.  Alternatively, you can use a silicon baking dish (square) as is.
2. Melt butter and white chocolate in a bowl over boiling water.  Remove from heat.  To prepare the batter, combine ground almonds and salt and set aside.  In an electric bowl using a paddle attachment, mix sugar, orange zest and eggs.  Beat until foamy, about 3 minutes.  Add white chocolate mixture and vanilla. Continue beating.  Slowly add dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Pour over baking dish. Sprinkle fresh blueberries evenly over batter.
3. To prepare meringue, whip egg whites until foamy and opaque.  Slowly add sugar and continue whipping until stiff peaks form.  Spread over batter. Bake until meringue is light brown and crackling.
4. Cool in wire rack to room temperature. Remove from dish and cut into squares.

Notes: Because of the meringue, this dish cannot be frozen. You can, however, freeze it up to 2 months if you do not add the meringue. Otherwise, it can sit at room temperature overnight before serving.

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

I almost missed the deadline for this month’s challenge. It was only this morning when I realized I had to make this and post today! I am glad the parts of this seemingly complicated dessert was easy to make.  It is the assembling that was challenging for me.  Because I didn’t have much time, I stuck to the recipe given and kept it simple:   the required pate a choux, an espresso flavored Crème Patissiere and chocolate glaze to hold the puffs together (nope, no toothpicks or cones for me–LOL).  My first batch of Pate a Choux was a flop. It did not rise and looked like funny coils of something. By the third batch, I finally learned not to open the oven door the first 10 minutes of the browning at high temp.  The pastries looked nicely puffed after that!!  Assembling was a mess but it was a fun mess. I wasn’t quite sure if they will all stick but they did long enough for me to take a couple of shots. Here is the recipe provided by the host should you be brave enough to try it.

Ingredients:

Pate a Choux (Yield: About 28)
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt ( I did not use egg wash in mine)

Pre-heat oven to 425â—¦F/220â—¦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:

Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely. Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.  Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny. As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes. It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.

Piping:

Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide. Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top. Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:

Bake the choux at 425â—¦F/220â—¦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350â—¦F/180â—¦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

Can be stored in a airtight box overnight.

For the Vanilla Crème Patissiere (Half Batch) (I used Espresso flavored by adding 1 1/2 tsp of instant espresso powder dissolved in the milk)
1 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
6 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. (30 g.) unsalted butter
1 Tsp. Vanilla

Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat. Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook. Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.

Filling:
When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze.

Use one of these to top your choux and assemble your piece montée.

Chocolate Glaze:
8 ounces/200 g. finely chopped chocolate (use the finest quality you can afford as the taste will be quite pronounced; I recommend semi-sweet)

Melt chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford. Use immediately.

Hard Caramel Glaze:
1 cup (225 g.) sugar
½ teaspoon lemon juice

I made this pie last week thinking it was the recipe for the week for TWD.  Not that it got wasted (I just missed posting the correct recipe–LOL!) since we had it for dessert when our grandkids were over for a BBQ.  This recipe was chosen by Spike of spike.bakes and can be found on page 350 of Dorie’s book Baking From My Home to Yours. The coconut crust was heavenly and the banana flavor mixed in the ice cream truly made this a wonderful dessert with a hint of tropical flavor.  I tweaked the recipe to add ground almonds in the crust. I also used neapolitan ice cream since we couldn’t decide what flavor we want.  I wanted to layer them with the banana flavor mixed with the chocolate but in the end, we just mixed the strawberry, vanilla and chocolate and enjoyed it that way.  We also ran out of fresh bananas to put on top (somebody kept on snacking on the banana slices!) so only a part of our pie was nicely decorated.

Ingredients:

Almond Coconut Crust

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1 cup shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)
• 1 cup ground almonds (or you can use any ground nuts) Dorie’s recipe used butter cookies crushed into crumbs
• 1 ripe banana

Filling

• 2 ripe bananas mashed
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1 pint ice cream (your choice of flavor, just keep in mind the the bananas will color our ice cream if you use vanilla or any light-colored flavor)

Topping

• 1 ripe banana, sliced
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:

1. To make crust, melt butter in pan and toast shredded coconut until light brown.  Remove from pan and add ground almonds. Mix and press on a greased 9-inch pie plate.  Freeze for 30 minutes. When ready to bake, line crust with sliced banana.
2. To make filling, combine bananas, lemon juice and lemon zest in a food processor. Process until smooth. Add ice cream and pulse until combined.  Do not process too long or ice cream will melt.
3. Scrape ice cream onto prepared pie crust, smoothing the top.   Cover with plastic and freeze for at least 4 hours.  When ready to serve, toss lemon juice and banana slices and layer on top of pie.