Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2017 – )

[RWood]

Plum Pistachio Galette for dinner at my cousins house tonight. Plums could have been more ripe, but it’s a tasty combo. 

Edited Friday at 12:56 PM by RWood (log)

[TdeV]

17 hours ago, RWood said:

Plum Pistachio Galette for dinner at my cousins house tonight. Plums could have been more ripe, but it’s a tasty combo. 

 

 

Gorgeous! Do you have some cream or some paste under the plums?

[RWood]

9 minutes ago, TdeV said:

 

 

Gorgeous! Do you have some cream or some paste under the plums?

Yes, it has pistachio frangipane with orange zest.

[Jim D.]

On 5/11/2025 at 10:25 AM, Pete Fred said:

@Jim D. I'm not gonna pretend that my opinion is worth a bag o' beans. I simply follow this advice from Ottolenghi. I recently found the magic words hulled, toasted and Ethiopia on this stuff at Amazon France, took a punt, and was pleasantly surprised...

 

 

Right consistency, nice deep colour, and I could eat it straight from the jar, which makes a change from the pale, claggy stuff that's the only thing available in shops within 200km of me.

 

I see that Al Arz is available at Amazon US, but I've never tried it. Cortas is also a brand I've happily used before. In the UK I used to buy Al Nakhil which was also good.

 

Good luck in your quest!

 

I looked more at the Al Arz entry on Amazon, and it seems the product comes from Israel.  When you mentioned looking for tahini with Ethiopian sesame seeds, did you mean a particular type of seed, not necessarily that the tahini should come from Ethiopia?  No tahini that I looked at online mentioned the source of the seeds.

[Pete Fred]

@Jim D. I was only going by what Ottolenghi said in the article about Ethiopian humera sesame. Given he sells Al Arz in his shops, I think it's safe to assume that fits the bill. I did look at multiple labels on Amazon and there was no mention of the source of the seeds, except for the brand that I eventually tried. It might be that all 'decent' brands use sesame seeds from that general region, irrespective of where the tahini is actually manufactured.

 

Edit: Just checked and my stuff was made in Turkey...

 

 

 

Edited 23 hours ago by Pete Fred (log)

[ElsieD]

I made a Blueberry Coffee Cake yesterday and we had some this morning with our tea/coffee.  We both found it too "wet" although it tested clean with a toothpick.  After the suggested baking time it needed more time in the oven and it tested clean  after I baked it longer. The recipe called for melted butter to be mixed in with sugar.  I thought that odd as I am used to creaming butter with sugar for cakes.  Could using melted butter rather than creamed be the culprit here?  What happens if I make this again using the creaming vs the melting process for the butter?  The taste was great so I'd like to make it again.

[gulfporter]

Blueberry Breakfast Cake

 

 

[rotuts]

@gulfporter

 

looks tasty.

 

Id like to hear more about it ,  possibly an Rx ?thank you

[gulfporter]

@rotuts  Here's a link to recipe.  It's a really stiff dough but I do it all by hand and I have 3 non-working fingers.  It's coffee-cake in texture.   I like that its density allows it to be cut into little pieces for a snack.  

 

https://amandascookin.com/blueberry-breakfast-cake/

[OlyveOyl]

Chocolate banana muffins, very chocolatey, with cocoa and mini chips.  This muffin is light in texture in spite of all the chocolate.  It’s a 5 muffin, 1 banana recipe  from Baking Misfits, it was adapted for the smaller amount from Smitten Kitchen’s chocolate banana loaf. It’s perfect for a mini batch of muffins when you have one banana to use up! I added some freeze dried pulverized banana to the confectionery sugar on top although , in this context, it’s difficult to identify the banana element.

[Katie Meadow]

10 hours ago, Jim D. said:

 

I looked more at the Al Arz entry on Amazon, and it seems the product comes from Israel.  When you mentioned looking for tahini with Ethiopian sesame seeds, did you mean a particular type of seed, not necessarily that the tahini should come from Ethiopia?  No tahini that I looked at online mentioned the source of the seeds.

Both Al Arz and Soom are made in Israel from Ethiopian grown sesame seeds. I haven't tried Al Arz, but Soom is delicious. And it is never hard to stir.

[blue_dolphin]

22 hours ago, Jim D. said:

I looked more at the Al Arz entry on Amazon, and it seems the product comes from Israel.  When you mentioned looking for tahini with Ethiopian sesame seeds, did you mean a particular type of seed, not necessarily that the tahini should come from Ethiopia?  No tahini that I looked at online mentioned the source of the seeds.

I’ve used Al Arz and it was good but I have to admit my favorite thing was that the jar was oversized- packed only about 2/3 x3/4 full so there was ample room to stir without sloshing oil everywhere.  
Speaking of oil, my best tip for getting a good, toasty sesame flavor is to add a small amount of a good quality toasted sesame oil.  I like the Kadoya brand from Japan.  I add 1/4 tsp toasted sesame oil to the tahini cookies in Ottolenghi's book, ‘Jerusalem.’