Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Tuesdays with Dorie - Cottage Cheese Pufflets

This week's recipe, chosen by Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes was Cottage Cheese Pufflets. I must admit when I first saw the name of the recipe I thought they were going to be some kind of dinner roll. I never would have imagined cookies made with cottage cheese. I read through the recipe and thought "Why not".
So, I gathered all my ingredients together and got started. I read the forum about all the problems with the dough being soft and requiring a lot of chill time. I actually made my dough the night before I was to make the cookies. I even split it into three small portions to be sure each chilled sufficiently before trying to roll it out. Thought that might help out and maybe I wouldn't have any of the issues others seems to be having. Hah!

I had nothing but problems. The dough stuck to my rolling pin, stuck to the piece of  marble I use for rolling out pastry dough, stuck to my fingers, stuck to everything! I tried flour, I tried putting it in the freezer, thinking that would help. It did, for about 2 minutes. Then it was soft and unmanageable again. I stuck everything back in the freezer and reread the forum. Found a tip about using a ziplock bag.
That actually worked like a charm. The dough rolled out beautifully and after I cut the bag away from the dough I was ready to begin filling my little squares of goodness.I still had to work quickly because the dough softens up so fast. I decided to fill my pufflets with a combination of blackberry jam, Nutella, and chopped toasted hazelnuts. The combination of the three was delicious. The flavors meshed  together perfectly. The cookies, once they were put together and baked were really good. Soft, tender, a slight tang to the cookie to offset the sweetness of the jam and Nutella. I really liked them, as did my hubby. But, would I make them again? I don't think so. They were just so frustrating to work with. It took a lot of the fun out of baking them for me. They were good, I'll give them that. But, just too much trouble. Maybe the other TWD folks had an easier time with them than I did.

13 comments:

  1. Your pufflets are adorable! I had a difficult time with the dough as well, I only managed to scrap together 4 mutant pieces. But they were so delicious. :)

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  2. Yum to your flavor combo. I think your puffs look great. And nope, I'll probably not make these again either. Little too much work with the soft dough. BUT it was tasty! I thought of Nutella, but didn't do it. Yum! Thanks for stopping by my blog!

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  3. Hey Susan, Glad the ziplock bag helped. I would never have thought of the combination you used for the filling. Please forward a few of your leftovers. :-) Would like to try it but not sure I'm up to making that dough again any time soon.

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  4. You would never know that you had trouble with the dough! Your pufflets look perfect!

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  5. They look really nice, and your filling sounds delicious. I wish I would have used the bag for rolling.

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  6. I feel exactly the same way, the fickleness of the dough took the fun out of baking them. Your filling combo sounds delicious and your pufflets are just perfect.

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  7. Ahh! Another Nutella lover - perfect!

    These were just such a pain in the behind to make, they canceled out my joy of the Nutella.

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  8. I liked these enough where I'll probably make them again. But there will be plenty of grumbling on my part about the dough being so sticky and difficult to work with!

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  9. Im glad you liked them. The dough was sure fussy and a pain to work with! Yours look wonderful and tasty!

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  10. Yeah, this was a hard recipe to love. I'm glad you ended up finding a method that worked. Yours look fantastic!

    Thanks for baking along this week :)

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  11. I agree - totally frustrating to work with, but tasty. I used the same method that you did - the bag - but I had to freeze it and then cut it out.

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  12. so sad that everyone seemed to have trouble with them! They look great though

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  13. You found the perfect combination of flavors! I had forgotten the ziploc bag tip, and had fun struggling with mine. Yours look perfect!

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Please feel free to comment. I love hearing from others.