What I'm Not Showing You (TWD)

This is a first for me in my short life as a blogger with TWD. I'm going photo-less for a post. Yup, I made the lemon yogurt cake. But no, I didn't like it. I didn't even like it enough to take its picture! Isn't that terrible? Am I a bad, bad baker girl now? Go on, you can tell me the truth.

Baked creations are not like children or pets, people. You don't have to love them just because they're yours. Or because they took up some of your time, your money and space in the kitchen. It's okay to say "feh". So there, my response to French lemon yogurt cake: feh. I mean no disrespect, really. And I know I am officially now a blogger hypocrite because I don't like it when other food bloggers totally dis a whole category of foods or one particular ingredient. The whole "if you can't say anything nice" thing and all that. But, so be it. I decided that in this case, a negative post was better than none. It's good to break your own rules once in a while.

My homely lemon yogurt loaf cake looked so sad, with its sunken top and its overly browned sides. Ugly is okay if it tastes good. But ugly combined with a rubbery, bland texture just isn't getting its picture taken.

Determined to triumph despite the little flop, I tried another version. I just finished reading "A Homemade Life" by Molly Wizenberg of Orangette. Oh, you must read it! It's terrific. I cried, I laughed, I couldn't wait to read more and I was sorry when it was over. Molly also has a recipe for French Lemon Yogurt Cake. It's very close to Dorie's, almost identical in fact, except she uses one more egg, bakes it in a 9" round pan and makes two simple icings to coat it. I don't know if it was the extra egg, or a lighter touch with my folding, or the shape of the pan, but this second cake was much better than the first. And possibly even worthy of photography. But it's late now and the light is gone and I just don't have the get-up-and-go to shoot it, because a cake like this would still require some food styling to give it any photo-worthiness. And, I still don't love it. I don't know - maybe I need butter in my cakes. Or maybe I should have tried harder to find full-fat Greek yogurt instead of 2%. Or maybe I should admit I don't like lemon desserts all that much. Who knows but I daresay that's my last French yogurt cake. I gave it a good shot, I baked two in two days and I tried really, really hard to like both of them. Honest, I did.

Just because I didn't love this cake shouldn't stop you from trying it. For you, it might be just perfect. You can find recipe on Liliana's blog, My Cookbook Addiction. And you can check out the other TWD bakers' reports by heading over to the blogroll.

Clafoutis Craving Foiled

Bummer. I tried the cherry clafoutis recipe from Elizabeth Prueitt's Tartine cookbook and it was a disaster. I should have known not to trust it when it didn't say to strain the creme anglaise mixture - not that that was the error but it's a sign of bad recipe writing. One mistake I may have made was to add a few extra cherries - probably too many created too much liquid in the batter.

Her suggestion to top with tons of sugar (1/4 cup!) and then caramelize in 500 degree oven didn't work at all for me. Maybe that works in a professional convection oven or under a salamander but not in my household maytag. I kept waiting for it to caramelize and probably overcooked it. Anyway, the inside came out like warm creamy scrambled eggs with overly sweet cherries. Not the silky smooth custard I had in mind. I hate when this happens, especially when I waste a whole pint of perfect farmer's market cherries.

I'm so mad at the damn thing I'm not showing you any pictures, so there!

I was so craving clafoutis and now I have to try another version at some point to figure out what I should have done to make it work. I think next time I'll try Sweet Melissa's version since she never steers me wrong.

This was my first recipe from "Tartine" and I was soooo looking forward to it. Sigh.

Anyone out there have a good clafoutis recipe for me?