This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Clivia of Bubie’s Little Baker: translucent maple tuiles. Tuiles are delicate, super thin cookies – a French treat named for the tiles that line the rooftops of country homes. I’ve never made them before, but have admired them from afar. When done properly, they are stunning, but I assumed such fragile, delicate cookies would require some patience in the kitchen, of which I have little. When Clivia selected them this week, though, I decided it would be fun to give them a try even if it didn’t work out.
The dough for the tuiles is comprised of only 4 ingredients – butter, brown sugar, maple syrup and flour – making it super easy to mix together. I would recommend making sure your maple syrup is at room temperature, though, or else it’ll cause your butter to seize into ugly little clumps. A group of us baked these tuiles together on Twitter this week; it’s always fun because we benefit from little tips the other bakers provide. My favorite tip came from Nancy, who suggested baking each tuile on its own little square of parchment, which meant instead of trying to work quickly with a metal spatula to remove the tuile from the baking sheet, you could just lift up the square of parchment. Brilliant! I confess that I sat in front of my oven door with the light on watching the little balls of dough melt and transform into lacy cookies.
When the tuiles are removed from the oven they’re very pliable, it takes a minute or two for them to set up. In that time, you can form them into curved shapes (or whatever you’d like, really). I attempted to drape several over my rolling pin to give them the curved shape, but try as I might, mine never really set up. Even after an hour or more out of the oven they were still pliable and if removed from the rolling pin, simply flattened out. I experimented with different oven temperatures ranging from 350 F – 425 F, but no luck. Because they never set up properly, mine weren’t as crisp as I’d have liked, and they also remained fairly greasy. Not a new favorite flavor wise, but a really fun process and one I’m glad I finally tried!
Many thanks to Clivia for hosting this week! You can find the recipe on her blog here or on pages 173-175 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.
Lemon Bars
Glazed Grapefruit Cake
Orange Sherbet
Meyer Lemon Pound Cake
They look lovely…I will try the parchment trick next time.
Your tuiles are so pretty! Bummer that they didn’t set and that they weren’t a favorite in the flavor department either… but at least they didn’t use a large volume of many ingredients (yep, that’s a silver lining, it is!)
Sorry they’re not a new favorite, but they’re sure pretty!
Weren’t these a challenge? (Getting the grease off was a major challenge)!
They look stunning though on your platter – the whole presentation is modern and chic! Well done!
Wonder why they wouldn’t set up?? Was a good tip from Nancy. ‘
They look pretty and lacy.
I had a batch that didn’t set up. That’s when I accidentally doubled the brown sugar. It’s a tricky recipe, for sure. Your photographed tuiles look perfect. Thnks for baking along with me this week!
They look good..we can’t love them all huh!! I enjoyed making these!
Wow, they are so pretty! Great job this week Tracey.
Tia @ ButtercreamBarbie
Even without the curve, your tuiles look beautiful. I also sat down in front of the oven watching these bake, it happened so fast!
Those look so pretty like that…I think they would be great as a sort of Napoleon type layer with the ones that look like yours…very nice.
Your tuiles are gorgeous! You make this challenging cookie seem so straightforward. Thank you so much for baking.
I totally sat in front of my oven as well! We are such baking nerds.
Yum!
even if they weren’t as you intended- the lacing on them looks just beautiful
Well you certainly had better luck than I did, mine all melted into one giant one. Mine was very greasy, too, but they did turn quite crispy. Definitely not a fave here, but I’m always glad when I try something new.
Well they look pretty! I’m sure this was a fun one to try.
Well they may not have turned out exactly how you wanted but they look really pretty.
Lol. I sat in front of my oven looking through the window, too. =) (I did make these, just didn’t post.) Mine were baked at 400º, but I did increase the bake time a couple minutes. If I waited until I could just smell browned butter, they were done right. Maybe I’ll get my post up one of these days…
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