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Hello again my Tuesdays with Dories friends!

July was a rather anxious and busy month for us here in England. We welcomed our newest cook in the kitchen, Emily Ruth and have been busy resting and taking care of her as well as enjoying our time together as a family so I haven’t been keeping up with our baking and posting as I would have liked, so we are showcasing our baking successes all at once!

I will start with the semolina bread.

We found it a bit salty, although delicious and thinly sliced – it would make the perfect loaf of rustic sandwich bread. We certainly have enjoyed this one and will be making good use of the bag of semolina flour that we bought and added to our growing collection of flours.

The blueberry nectarine pie was baked in time for a going-away dinner for friends and was quickly gobbled up by children and adults alike! With a touch of fresh whipped cream, this pie was perfectly blended so it wasn’t too sweet and not at all tart with a buttery, flaky crust in a wonderful deep-dish cake pan and will certainly be added to our summer pie rotation. The only thing that we would change is to peel the nectarines and chop up the fruit into a bit smaller pieces, other than that – it was one of our favorite recipes from this cookbook so far!

Now onto Berry galettes!

We had difficulty getting this one made for some reason. We seemed to be racing against the clock to get dinner fixed for a few days and had no time in between to even get the dough made! When we finally managed that, it took nearly another four days before it was cool enough for us to bother turning on the oven and baking this quick treat! It turned out to be a great dessert and while it was easy and quick to make, we didnt love the texture of the dough, so we wouldn’t make it again with the galette dough but we loved using the fresh fruit from our recent trip to a pick your own berry farm in these treats!

The day we went berry picking, it was pretty warm, but not hot enough to keep us sweating while we were out in the middle of the fields and Mei had a great time! The rows of raspberry bushes were full of luscious, sun-ripened berries but the trick was finding them at Mei’s level so she could pick them and slowly (very, very slowly) fill her little basket.

After awhile she probably ate half as many berries as she picked, continuing a time-honored tradition while picking berries at other farms like this in my own childhood. By the time we got to the strawberries, they were the last of the season and rather stuck on staying with their bushes. They required quite a bit of effort to pick – so much so that Mei would get a handle on one, then pull and pull and eventually the berry would relent and Mei would fall on her bum and proclaim “I DID IT!!” Then merrily walk along the row, eating her prized and hard-earned berry while we encouraged her to find another berry to pick and put in her basket. They were really delicious and this is certainly something we want to do with the girls each summer, no matter where in the world we are!

The gallettes housed our raspberries, strawberries and blueberries and they were simply the best tasting berries and couldn’t have been better suited than a fresh, free-form berry tart!

Let’s talk about the Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake!

We managed to find some nectarines that were marked down for being a bit too ripe – which we found entertaining since they were still quite firm to the touch but we were happy to take them home and bake them into this fluffy delight.

I have another upside-down cake recipe that I really love and have made a few times – although it isn’t a chiffon cake and requires you to make a caramel on the stove to press the fruit into before you should mix the batter and pour it over the fruit. I was quite excited to see how this chiffon version would stack up my stand-by upside down cake recipe.

Firstly, both of the recipes ask you to make just a bit too much caramel so this is easily something that I would take the opportunity to make two cakes with rather than cutting the recipe in half and just double the batter recipe.

However, the chiffon cake should be baked in a springform pan which I neglected to notice until after I had poured half of the batter over the caramelly nectarines in a 9 inch cake pan so we buttered a second cake pan, put down a buttered parchment layer and poured the rest of the batter in and baked off both layers.

Once they were both baked and cooled, they slipped out of the pans quite easily – the parchment paper slipped off easily as well and we cut equal portions of cake and sandwiched the nectarine cake layer with the naked chiffon layer with some fresh whipped cream. It was perfectly moist and fruity on top, creamy and light in the middle and ended with a fluffy bite of angel food cake-like cake. This is not going on my list of cakes to bake again, but the chiffon cake part certainly is! We have considered just eating the naked chiffon layer with some cream and fresh fruit for breakfast … and I can’t say it didn’t happen.

If you would like the recipe for the Semolina Bread, please visit our hosts - Renee of The Way to my Family’s Heart and Anna of Keep it Luce.

If you would like the recipe for the Blueberry Nectarine Pie, please visit our hosts - Hilary of Manchego’s Kitchen and Liz of That Skinny Chick Can Bake.

If you would like the recipe for the Berry Galettes, please visit our hosts - Lisa of Tomato Thymes in the Kitchen and Andrea of The Kitchen Lioness.

If you would like the recipe for the Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake, please visit our hosts - Marlise of The Double Trouble Kitchen and Susan of The Little French Bakery.

Would you like to join our group?? Pick up a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking with Julia” and click here! All you have to do is bake and write about your experience! It’s  a perfectly delightful and delicious hobby!

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