This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was a special recipe, just for Thanksgiving. You can find the full recipe at La Casserole Carree or on pg. 321 of Dorie Greenspan’s famous cookbook, Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Unfortunately, I was so busy with other Thanksgiving prep that I did not take pictures of the pie as I was making it. It was easy to make with basic Thanksgiving pie ingredients.

Sorry for the crappy pictures. Unfortunately, this is as good as it gets this week!

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my mom’s house with my cousins. The food was good and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

My pie received mixed reviews. My cousin, Kelly, thought it was “strangely good”. And my mom ate it and thought it was fine. My piece was good, but I think I would have preferred to have plain pumpkin, like everyone else, who was afraid of my “special” pie.

This one probably won’t become a Thanksgiving staple at our house. But it was good and a different twist on classic Thanksgiving flavors.

Isabella of Les gourmandises d’Isa selected Arborio Rice Pudding as this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. The full recipe can be found on Isabella’s site (in French) or by purchasing Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Before I talk about the recipe a big shout out to Rachel of Raspberry Chip! Rachel’s son, LG is the same age as Bo and I’ve been following her blog since shortly after their birth. She is an phenomenal Mom and was kind enough to run to her local Whole Foods, buy me some Arborio rice and mail it to me! Thanks again, Rachel! I love the blogosphere!

While this recipe did take some time to prepare, it was probably one of the simplest recipes Dorie has ever written (and I somehow managed to screw it up??!!). The first step was to parboil the rice.

After the rice cooked I brought the milk and sugar to boil. Then I added in the rice and let it simmer. While the mixture was simmering I chopped my chocolate. I decided to make both vanilla and chocolate so that I could try both versions of the pudding.

I used two large bowls and added vanilla to one, and chocolate to the other.

Then I spooned the pudding into fancy serving dishes.

Unfortunately, even after sitting in the refrigerator overnight, the pudding did not thicken. It tasted good — but it was like eating milk with sugar and rice, not pudding like. Did anyone else have this issue? My mom and I both love rice pudding but she said this wasn’t one of her favorites. I think I may try it again and add a bit of cornstarch. Thoughts?

Next week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is a pie for Thanksgiving. Since I will be making this for our Thanksgiving meal I will not post my recipe until next Friday! So I guess it will be a Friday with Dorie next week.

Yolanda of The All-purpose Girl selected this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe — Kugelhopf. You can find the full recipe on Yolanda’s site or on pg. 61 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

I’ll be honest, from the name and the picture this was immediately not a recipe I had a lot of interest in. But then I opened the cookbook to read more about it and found that it is from Alsace (now France, use to be Germany) and this is the area where my ancestors originated. The recipe looked fairly simple, so I decided to give it a whirl.

The first step was to mix the yeast with milk and then add the dry ingredients, eggs, and butter. It has to beat for quite awhile to form a dough. Definitely one of those recipes you really want your KitchenAid for!

I used golden raisins in mine. I had some left from a previous Dorie experiment.
I let the dough do its unique rise and fall for an entire evening and then left the dough to rest in the fridge overnight. In the morning, I buttered a bundt pan and allowed the dough to rise again.

This is what it looked like 3 hours later, right before I put it in the oven.
I baked it and it came out with a nice crisp crust.

I soaked it with butter and sprinkled with sugar.

And then I cut the bread to serve.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but after starting this bread 18 hours earlier, I guess I just expected more. It was fine. But definitely not wow worthy. Even, dare I say, bland?? Mom and Mike both tasted it and they both said this wasn’t a keeper. Sorry Dorie!

However, I am really excited about next week’s recipe – Arborio Rice Pudding! However, I can’t seem to find any of the star ingredient, Arborio rice!! The only place I have found it is Amazon and it is $10 for a box and then $15 shipping. If anyone has found some and is willing to mail me the 1/4 cup needed for this recipe there will be a reward involved!!

Yep, I’m bailing on Tuesdays with Dorie this week. I couldn’t find any dried currants. And, those cookies just look a bit strange to me. I’m anxious to see everyone elses results. Head over to TWD if you’re interested in a recipe that contains dried currants.

I decided to take a different route this week. Despite the fact that we had about 175 Trick or Treaters, we did have some candy leftover. And some of those candies just happened to be Kit-Kat bars. I’d already bought the cream cheese for this weeks TWD recipe so when I saw this recipe Saturday morning on Recipegirl.com, I decided it was time for a change of plans. Even better, I had everything I needed for this recipe on hand.

I started by unwrapping the 14 snack size Kit-Kat bars. Doesn’t my pile of wrappers make me look quite pig-like?
Then, I threw the Kit-Kats into the food processer to make a crumb crust.

And I pressed the Kit-Kat crumbs into the bottom of a greased 8×8 pan. I baked the crust for 5 minutes.

Then I mixed up the filling and spread it over the top. Yum. Lemony, creamy cheesey goodness.

Finally, I mixed up the topping and popped it in the oven. Viola! Lemon Bars with a Kit-Kat crust.

My official tasters (Mike and my mom) both liked these a lot. Mom liked the Kit-Kat crust but Mike felt that it would have been better with a regular graham cracker crust. I don’t think the Kit-Kats added much to the recipe. While my mom said she could taste the chocolate, I really couldn’t because of all of the lemon.

The filling and topping were great but if I were to make this again (when I don’t have leftover Halloween candy) I’d just use graham crackers for the crust.

***Instead of more political propaganda, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you to go vote!! :)***