Cranberry Love

Let's call cranberries the bookend fruit of 2013. I started the year with a cranberry buckle, and I think I'm going to end it perfecting the bars below.

On Thanksgiving day, along with the perfectly jelled cranberry sauce from a can, we had some homemade sauce. Some years I dress it up with citrus and rosemary, but this year I kept it simple : cranberries, sugar and water. Either way, I love it!

With our small gathering {and their even smaller appetite for cranberry sauce}, we had plenty of extra for playing with. I added a layer to our cheese plate's bucheron ::

And a cup of the leftover sauce was used to make these Cranberry-Nut Streusel Bars ::

They were delicious, but just like my photographs, with a little experimenting, we can do better! The recipe asks you to use the same crumbly streusel topping for the top and bottom of the bars. It made them very crumbly and almost impossible to pick up {but delicious}. I was excited to make them because they reminded me of a raspberry bar in our local coffee shop, but that bar as a more substantial cookie/shortbread type bottom, which should be easy to make with a bit of experimenting. I'll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime, we figured out that these are just perfect crumbled over a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

The fate of the late summer peaches ~

Winter 2013 Food

Oh, there's all sorts of catching up to do here, but the semester started, and January is pulling us along faster than I'd like! This is our last winter of calm, and I wouldn't mind if it slowed down. just. a. little. bit.

I'll catch up with the Christmas gifts that were sewn, crocheted, and knitted, but until then, here's a little bit about the food that's fueling our fire. After a couple of years in a row, I'm realizing that it has become a tradition to center my January and February around the collection of cook and craft books that I arrive under every Christmas tree.

This year I'm digging into Rust Fruit Desserts and returning to a gift from last year, Tagines & Couscous.

We arrived home last week to two bags of cranberries that I bought before the holidays and never used. Flipping to the "Winter" section of Rustic Fruits, I found a recipe for Cranberry Buckle, and the January bake-fest started. I baked the recipe without modifications, and the pan was emptied in just a couple of days.

From the Tagine cookbook, I'm finally getting around to preserving my own lemons {an ingredient that's called for in many of the book's recipes}. They recommend Meyer lemons, which we only find in the grocery stores around this time of year. It will take a couple of weeks for the lemons to be ready, giving me plenty of time to decide whether our first tagine dish will be chicken or lamb.

This weeks menu? We have a lot of buttermilk to use up from the holiday baking, so I'm putting it into a loaf of Irish soda bread with raisins and caraway seeds.

Friday Links

Finally, the switch was flipped, and we're excited to start cooking up some fall dishes.

Sarah baked a wheat-free sweet potato pie {link soon to be added!}.

Guests were coming for breakfast on Tuesday, so we baked this almond poppy seed bread {the recipe makes two, so you can give away or freeze one!}, and this apple buckle. Have you ever baked a buckle? They are like a fruit-filled coffee cake. Perfectly moist with a crumbly, nutty topping. So easy to bake the night before and have ready for guests. They recommended serving that one with sweetened sour cream, but a dollop of plain yogurt works well too.

Working our way through the sweet potatoes, I made some curried lentils and sweet potatoes on Wednesday. This we have been eating with a dollop of sour cream.

Next week? We're thinking about apple crisp, some pumpkin {squash} risotto, and the swiss chard and sweet potato gratin {we have a lot of sweet potatoes!}.

The photo at the top of this list? It's the most delicious quiche we've cooked up in a while :: mushroom, leek, and arugula! I sautéd the leeks and mushrooms in some butter until the leeks were translucent and the mushrooms cooked down to my liking. The arugula was chopped up and added it to my milk, egg, and cheese mixture {I use about four eggs, 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese and about two cups of milk?}. The mushrooms and leeks were added to the pie crust first, then I poured the milk mixture over it and topped it with another 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar. And yes, I cheated with the store-bought crust. That's what happens when you have a last-minute idea that's too good to ignore on your way home from work.

Are you filling up on sweet potatoes and apples too?

Oh man, we're having a lazy blogging/email week around these parts. That's what happens during a busy work week ~ so much time spent looking at the screen that I can't bear an extra minute.

Anywho, in the evenings we've been cooking up a storm : salmon salads, slaws, and seaweed salads {our most exciting find of the week}. But this post is all about fungi for the fun guys. yep

When we were in Philly a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a delicious mushroom tart I had at Parc. It's on their appetizer menu, but I ordered it as my main course for brunch, and it knocked my socks off. The crust was flaky pastry dough, on it was a layer of cooked mushrooms that were chopped so fine it could have been a paste. The mushrooms were topped by a layer of gruyere cheese then a layer of sliced mushrooms. The finishing touch was a drizzle of truffle oil.

I thought about that tart every day for about a week after eating it {not even joking}. This is my lazy man's rustic mushroom tart.

I began by making a basic pie crust. I make mine in the food processor, and recently read a tip that makes remembering the ingredient ratios so easy : 3, 2, 1. Three parts flour, two parts butter, one part water. I didn't even roll out the pie crust, I just pressed it into my 8 inch cast iron skillet.

I then chopped up some mushrooms, sautéd then in butter, and at the very end added just a dash of water so that I could deglaze the pan and keep all the good flavors. That process was repeated with the sliced mushrooms for the top layer. Fresh thyme and rosemary were added to the chopped mushrooms. I then layered everything into the pan: chopped mushrooms, grated gruyere, sliced mushrooms. Here's what it looked like before baking ::

It was baked at 350F until the cheese was bubbling and the crust was nicely browned. When it came out of the oven, I topped it with some fried sage leaves {We were having fun picking and using fresh herbs for this recipe. Mint went into our mojitos and basil in our salad.} and a few nasturtiums.

My mom asked if I added any eggs for binding. I didn't, but I might add one next time, especially if I make the chopped mushroom layer finer. This particular version turned out perfect without anything binding it together. We were even able to pick it up and eat pieces from our hand without it falling all over the place. You may have noticed that I forgot the truffle oil. It was delicious without, but I can guarantee that there will be another mushroom tart in the oven this weekend with truffle oil.

Berry Crumbled. berry, berry crumbled...

It started with this box of fresh currants. My mom picked them up at a friend's farm and then passed them off to me for experimenting.

This was my first box of fresh currants, and I wasn't sure what to do with them. Add them to a salad? Bake them into some scones? Turn them into a tiny batch of jam? But then Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for a Triple Berry Summer Buttermilk Bundt {say that three times fast}. Her recipe used blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. I used the fresh currents, some sweet cherries and blueberries for mine. And then, in a feat of baking magic, I turned that bundt cake into a berry, berry crumbled cake.

The cake was baked on Thursday and traveled with us to Philly for the weekend where it was reduced to a smidgen of its former self. I guess we can all conclude that what it lacked in form it made up for in taste! It really was delicious. I think the lemon's worth of tart zest mixing with the sweet berries is what really made the cake. And the colors were perfect for our little pre-forth jaunt.

Happy Forth of July! I hope you find a pool to swim in and a watermelon to spoon.

We've been eating our way through the strawberries from this post. It's been a funny year for strawberries in Central PA, the early hot spell, following by days of rain and cooler weather have caused some farms in our area to not even open for a you-pick seasons, others have opened with a short couple of weeks of picking. We were lucky to get in early, pick our share, and feast on them ever since.

Many berries were sliced and frozen ~ those we're nibbling straight from the freezer and blending in smoothies.

A few handfuls were sprinkled with sugar and frozen with their sweet juice ~ those will be thawed in the heat of summer for strawberry shortcakes.

Then there were the strawberries that were mixed with rhubarb for pie::

Weeks later and I'm still thinking about that pie. It was enjoyed as a dessert on the first evening, and then eaten with yogurt for breakfast the rest of the week! I followed this recipe, but added a bit of flax seed to the crumb crust ~ they add a bit of nutty flavor and a good dose of omega-3s. A healthy breakfast, no?

A whole pile of berries went into Nigella Lawson's strawberry ice cream. You can find the recipe by clicking on that link, and it's published in Forever Summer. I highly recommend the cookbook ~ it's couldn't be more perfect, being full of all sorts of dishes and drinks to inspire your summer eating.





But back to the ice cream, it's make using a custard base that's cooked on the stove top. It takes a bit more time and energy than some of the quicker, more basic ice cream recipes, but when you have strawberries this sweet and fresh, I think they are worthy of your effort!

And finally, we made some mighty fine strawberry sauce. Our intention was to make a small batch of this strawberry vanilla jam, but we didn't cook quite it long enough to reach the jell stage.

Unfortunate? Just for our hips, because we've been eating this sauce at a faster rate than we would have any jar of jam. The sauce has gone into morning cups of yogurt {as pictured}, it's gone on the strawberry ice cream {with some fluff and nutella if you're C}, and it's been added to seltzer water and Rhuby for a fine summer drink.

As strawberry season comes to an end, we're dreaming up recipes for the green huckleberries along our hiking route as we wait for them to ripen.

How we fought off the winter greys ~

The morning's walk with the dog was beautiful; the sun felt warm, and the air smelled sweet. This was not the case last week. Last week I thought I was going to suffocate in the dreary, grey, cold winter weather. It's not that the winter has been bad, just long, and rather mild with a lack of quality snow storms {the kind that require you to stay inside and hibernate like all good animals should}. Instead of staying in, we just had to trudge through it, and at this point we're ready for spring. Calder was feeling the weight of winter too, so we fought off last week's winter greys with a whole pile of sunshine in the kitchen.

It started with juicing the last of the Christmas grapefruits:: The pitcher of juice provided a few days worth of enjoyment and vitamin C, and by the end Calder and I were bartering for the last delicious drop. He drinks his straight up, I mix mine with seltzer water for a bit of fizz.

Then it was time to test out the new jellyroll pan, so I baked a meyer lemon spongecake and filled it with an almond buttercream {meyer lemons and almonds ~ two delicious crops from the sunshine state}::

And finally, there's nothing like a rainbow of color on your plate to add some sunshine to your day. This is a simple kale, beet and quinoa salad :: To put this together:
~ roast some cubed beets, sliced carrots, bell peppers and onions in the oven {with a bit of olive oil and salt}
~ cook some quinoa on the stovetop
~ sauté kale and garlic in olive oil
~ chop up some cherry tomatoes and cucumbers
~ mix it all together and enjoy! If you want a bit more flavor, you could add your favorite vinaigrette. We keep it in the fridge and eat it for lunch throughout the week.

The first snowdrop bloomed over the weekend and the daffodils are popping up, it looks like we may survive after all...

Weekend Update!

A day late this week, but it's a doozy {our standards are not that high ~ give us a new toilet and we're happy!}.


This weekend included a bit of muffin-making:: I used the basic muffin mix from the King Author Flour cookbook {it's my go-to for baking}. I then tossed in some chocolate chips and fresh cranberries. It's the perfect after work/before gym snack. I only used half a bag of cranberries, so I cooked up the rest with some sugar and lemon peel, creating the perfect sweet-tart jam for the muffins!

My drinker of a mom took C and I took the liquor store on Saturday night where I picked up a few new treats:: ROOT, which is a birch beer-like concoction full of organic herbs and spices. During the Superbowl I downed a few Root, maple syrup, and soda water drinks. It was the perfect, alcoholic version of birch beer.

And Marshmallow Vodka!:: In our house, where fluff is king, this stuff is like gold. Using some vanilla ice cream and a dash of Kahlua I mixed up some fluff milk shakes for my mom and I.

There was a new toilet installation:: Yes, C is wearing his bike suit. I think he got dressed to go out on a ride, realized it was freezing, and decided that installing the toilet would be more fun!

And while he did that I was photographing our African violet. After a year the house it's finally blooming! As everyone says, it'a all about finding the right window.

Ooh, I also started a new knitting project and hung a few more things up around the house. More on that tomorrow!

The Weekend

My last post was last Monday when I told you about last weekend.

Well wouldn't you know, another Monday rolled around, so it's time for a Weekend update. We woke up to snow on Saturday! That meant hopping in van and driving through the woods to get to the nearest slopes. For Calder it also meant tolerating my requests to !stop! when I saw some cows in the snow:: And now it's raining. again.

Back home that evening, C cooked up something delicious for dinner. I don't remember what it was, but I remember where Ca$h was:: Notice we've kept our little village up. It's become our winter village, and it probably won't come down until the daffodils bloom! The little bird house village is still going strong too.

And then on Sunday, I did a bit of baking. Remember when I mentioned that my grapefruit marmalade wasn't setting? Well it never did set, so I was left with jars or grapefruit syrup. We thought it'd be fun to add a citrus slant to a chocolate layer cake {think about how good a chocolate orange tastes, now imagine grapefruit}.
The grapefruit syrup spread beautifully, even soaking into the lower layer a bit making it extra moist, and it was fun surprise to get a bit of zest in your bite.

Happy Monday*

Soup and Snow

Last night my brother suggested that I "publish something relevant", because in his words, "everyone knows you can knit a hat". Taking his suggestion to heart, I've decided that nothing is more relevant on the first snowy day of the year than soup!

If you want some meat in your soup, may I suggest a good ham and bean soup served with buttered sourdough and a seasonal pumpkin beer?

If you want a meat-free soup, try Maya*Made's Three Sisters Soup {named for the corn, squash, and bean ingredients ~ a fun science lesson in itself}, served with some warm soda bread fresh from the oven and kale sautéed with garlic::

Need a quick and easy lunch for work next week? Layer rice, black beans, salsa and cheddar cheese in a jar. Pop it in the microwave to warm it up and melt the cheese and enjoy*

On our late summer table...

Usually, I put a little music up on Wednesdays, but sadly I'm feeling a bit parched in the music department. Any suggestions? While my ears are starving, I've noticed that at least our table, and my belly, has been fully of delicious late summer veggies in all forms...

Spinach, leek, and tomato quiche {with extra-thick crust!}:: ... um, it looks a bit deflated the second day, but what it lacks in volume, it packs in that Popeye-spinach punch.


Pickles!
These are quick, easy, and oh so delicious! Refrigerator Pickles

Ingredients::
3 average-sized cukes {more if you're using smaller, pickling cukes}
1 green pepper
1 onion
1 Tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons celery seed
Chop, slice, etc. Let stand 1 hour

Mix the following and add it the veggies::
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice

Then add 1 sliced lemon and stir. Cover the container and refrigerate 24 hours before eating {we sampled them five minutes in, two hours in, twelve hours in, and finally 24 hours in... we are down to half a batch and need to make more ASAP!}. Serving suggestion ~ on your plate next to a warm and toasty grilled cheese.

Dilly Yellow Beans::
{recipe found here}

Roasted Veggies two ways::

{Zucchini, Vidalia Onion, Carrots, Bell Peppers}

{Beets, Potatoes, Leeks, Carrots}

B-L-Ts!



And to go along with today's theme, I found this beautiful, inspiring video...watch it and then go bake a cake!

beet cake from tiger in a jar on Vimeo.

Birthday Cake!

I woke up today with two missions : make a birthday cake and water the flowers {water the sh*t out of the flowers}.

These last few weeks of ignoring the garden and focusing on the wedding have left the flowers looking a bit dull, but I'll leave the garden update for a future post and focus on the birthday cake.

I've had my eye on this cake for a while, and decided that it was the perfect project for christening my new Kitchen Aid!

I can definitely see why this is Alicia's go-to birthday cake. It's nice and simple, and made with ingredients that I always have on hand. The cake itself comes out moist, bouncy, and with the right amount of crumble. Plus, if you follow Alicia's lead and add the coffee, you'll get a good, dark color.

After popping the cake into the oven, I read her frosting recipe. It calls for a roux... which caused me to pause. I was up for baking the cake, but a roux on a relaxing Sunday/birthday morning? I wasn't so sure this morning, but one frosted cake later, I assure you it's definitely worth the effort.

I followed her instructions to a T *except* for that whole bit about whole milk. I only had 2% in the fridge, and I knew that whole milk only has about 3% fat. So I threw caution to the wind, and it worked!



A note about the roux : it was a piece of cake. ha! If you look at the ingredients, you'll notice that you're making a hefty portion of roux (1 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of flour). As long as you keep your heat on medium to low, with that quantity of liquid & flour, you don't have to worry about it burning. And as long as you keep whisking, per Alicia's warning, you really won't have have to worry about lumps.


This may just become a birthday regular around these parts too! I'll just have to work on my decorating ~ did you see how beautiful hers is with the red sprinkles and strawberry?

Macarons!

This, my friends, is a short and sweet story of perseverance.

I wanted to make macarons, not the coconut variety with two o's (macaroons), but the French ones with one o. I don't know when I first had them, but there was a bakery down the street from one of my apartments in Boston and it was such a fun treat to buy just one while I was walking around town.

Just as I was leaving Boston I saw this book for the first time, and took it as a sign::

It was time to step up to the plate and make a macaron. I asked for the book for Christmas, Santa delivered, and the rest is delicious.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this was going to be a fickle endeavor. How could it not when meringue, syrups of sugar water, and butter cream are involved?

My tip : Take some good common sense, patience, and, as I mentioned at the beginning, perseverance into the kitchen with you. Why? Well, on this particular day, not one of the timed events in my kitchen matched the book's suggested times.

-After you mix the meringue batter, you pipe it out in to this perfect little circles (following the little pattern you traced on wax paper). Dudes, my circles were anything but perfect. I'm blaming it on my batter, which seemed a touch too runny and would not just SIT STILL. But eh, I figured if it all ran together I'd end up with one big awesome treat.
-The pan o' perfect circles is supposed to sit for 15 minutes (30 on a summer day) until a slight crust forms on top. After 15 minutes? no crust. 30? no crust. At that point I figured I'd go do something fun in the craft room and come back when I was good and ready. Really I think it was only an additional 15 minutes, but it worked! There was a crust, so on to the next step.
-Bake for 15-18 minutes in a 375F oven. Oh boy, after 10 minutes, I smelled something burning and ran to the oven. Luckily it was just one of the smaller, misguided dots of batter on the pan, but the pan was definitely done and any more time was going to be too much. So, from then on I set the first timer to go off at 8 minutes and check on the pan every minute or so until they were done. {I think I need an oven thermometer}



-Check out the pictures! There are no perfect little circles, but they look, felt and tasted like the real thing. They even have the little pied, or foot, that they are supposed to get. And according to the book "without it, the pastry cannot be called a macaron." We la-di-da. I think we're making macarons after all!

-Now for the stinking butter cream. The recipe calls for heating up 3T of sugar and 3T of water in the microwave for 1 minute, stirring, and then heat again for another 4 minutes. Of course no two microwaves are the same, and of course, my microwave burned the mixture {to a smoking, smelling, brown mess} after a mere 2 minutes. So I went at it again, this time keeping my eyes on the prize after a minute and pulling it out of the microwave after a minute and forty-five seconds. {Ah, the joys of an inherited microwave, I can't figure out for the life of me how to turn the power level down, but I'm guessing that would have helped!}

-The butter cream worked on the second go, and finally, finally, I was left with an easy step : make those cute little sandwiched treats!

{I wanted to take some over to a new neighbor, and found that popping them into a mini bread pan worked perfectly!}

Will I make these again? Yes! They were so stinking delicious. C thought that the butter cream was a little too buttery, but I loved it. So I may experiment with another butter cream recipe. One that does not use the microwave.

Are there any left? Nope, I nibbled on them, and then I took the rest off to my sister's house where they mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night, and we still didn't catch the little elf that ate them!

Would I recommend the book to a friend? Most definitely. While the times were off, I could just blame that on the differences in kitchens. The book is full of clear and careful instruction, step-by-step pictures, and an amazing array of ideas for flavoring both your cookies and the creams.

i heart you

I hope your Valentine's day was heart filled, whether your hearts were hidden in cakes, crocheted, or digital*! If you're still looking to add some spice to your week, check out this gingerbread recipe, I found it via Maya*Made.

And since she doesn't have a blog, I had to share my sister's fine work::It's the heart-cake from i am baker, find the tutorial here. We're thinking this would make a fun surprise at the wedding!

*a not-so-fun heart fact ~ blogger wouldn't let me publish this post with the digital sign for heart {< 3, but without the space} in the text! It produced errors.