TWD--Chocolate Cream Tart and Some "REAL" Good Cookies

Hi all!  Hope you've had a great week.  For Tuesday's With Dorie this week, we all made the Chocolate Cream Tart on pages 352-53 in Dorie Greenspan's great book, Baking From My Home to Yours.  You can find the recipe this week on Kim's amazing blog, Scrumptious Photography.  She is SO not kidding about the title of her blog.  Her photos are always just that--scrumptious!  Another thing I love about Kim's blog is that she always post the nutrition information about the things we bake at TWD, but it's hidden, so you don't have to look if you don't want to know, but I really like seeing it.  Thanks, Kim! 

So, about the tart--it was just okay for me.  And I really only had a bite, but it's the same thing every time.  I just don't think I love bittersweet chocolate.  I think I would have liked it more with regular ol' semi sweet, or even milk chocolate, but I made a 1/2 recipe in a six inch round cake pan and used a 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate.  I used 2% milk instead of whole milk.  I made the chocolate shortbread tart also.  It was not my favorite.  I REALLY wanted to make this again with the Sweet Tart Dough, but ended up not getting that done.  On what sounds like a real downer here, the tart was well received and eaten by some friend's of mine.  They all liked it.  Kevin later had a piece and said it was good, but definitely rich.  I'm also enjoying making these fillings and custards and the like in some of Dorie's recipes as I haven't made things from scratch like that until joining TWD.  It is so simple.  The filling/custard came together without a hitch and I love how easy it really is when it thickens on the stove.  I also committed a terrible "sin" here and just topped it with "the other white stuff" (Cool Whip).  Also because I thought it was too bittersweet, before the topping, I drizzled a little caramel ice cream topping over it. 

Bad lighting.

This is how I took it to some friends.

After bringing a little of it home and it sitting in the fridge covered for a day, I served some to Kevin and the boys and decided to snap a picture of a slice, but the "whip" had been mashed, so I smoothed it out.  Still, I thought it took a pretty good picture.

So really, I plan to make this again someday with the non-chocolate crust and not such a bittersweet chocolate.  Thanks, Dorie and thanks for the fun pick, Kim!  Thanks for stopping by my blog, especially all the fellow TWDers.  I really enjoy being a part of this great group!

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On a different note, but scrumptious to me, I made these cookies today that Anna at Cookie Madness posted.  They are a healthy cookie with raw cane sugar, oats and oat flour, banana and instead of soy milk, I used skim milk.  There are no eggs in the recipe and one little teaspoon of oil.  I knew that would mean cakey cookies, but that was okay.  These cookies also have a few mini chocolate chips in them, which makes them all the better.  I would call these muffin tops.  When you're purposely depriving yourself of super indulgent goodies, these kinds of cookies will do. 

They were good like this:

but EVEN BETTER in sandwich form with my favorite peanut butter  (Naturally More) in between, then chilled in the freezer for 10-20 minutes.  Yum!

That's what I'm talking about!

Great snack!