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An image from a past tea at my home (summer time requires lemonade too!)
I attended a tea yesterday for a fellow grad student’s birthday at a local tea house. It was a lovely lovely afternoon– child free, women only, lots of talking and tea drinking. I usually go to tea for my birthday, but somehow this year it hasn’t happened, so it was nice to revisit that wonderful afternoon ritual for another’s birthday.
The ambiance of the tea house was very nice, and the service impeccable, but the food, honestly, was disappointing (then again, perhaps I am never satisfied with anything less than homemade). My auntie has schooled me in throwing our own very satisfying teas over the years (I was lucky enough to have her throw my baby showers and my wedding shower teas) and so it is very very hard to meet my expectations for tea food. Thinking on that on the way home, I thought I might share a couple of my favorite tea party recipes (I’ll post them at the end).
One of my favorite sandwich recipes that is a little outside the norm is Cucumber and Roquefort Cheese Sandwiches from a book titled Afternoon Tea Serenade (These are the top sandwich in the 1st picture). The original recipe was collected from The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco, which I can say from personal experience, does one of the best afternoon teas in the San Francisco area– truly worth doing if you are in the area and feel so inclined (my other favorite tea place in the San Francisco is Lovejoy’s– less refined, more eclectic, but delicious food and welcoming environment).
The thing that was missing from today’s tea experience was a hot scone. To me the scone is the anchor of a good tea, and the quality of the scone speaks to the quality of the tea. No scone? It is just luncheon with hot tea. I have made a variety of scones, but my favorite are a quick and easy biscuit-like Orange-Cherry Scone. This recipe came to me from my Auntie, but she told me it was originally from The Honor Mansion B & B in Healdsburg (a stone’s throw from where I live). I like these as much for their flavor, as for their ease– particularly because they can be prepped and placed in the fridge, then popped in the oven when your guests arrive, so that you may serve hot scones!
And last, a tea is really not a tea with out a little sweetness. The highlight of all the teas my auntie has thrown are her Chocolate Dipped Shortbread. She varies the shape of the cookie cutter to fit the theme of the tea, so for my sister’s baby shower which had a little prince theme for my nephew, she made little crowns. She has done these in dark chocolate, but in the last few years she has moved to white chocolate and they are as delicious as ever.
With these recipes, a couple egg salad sandwiches (try these with a little curry powder in them), and perhaps some fresh fruit and a pound cake or box of chocolates you are ready to serve tea. The only thing left is to ask, “One lump or two.”
Ritz Cucumber Sandwiches (My simplified version)
10 slices Tea Sandwich Bread (you can use cocktail bread or any other thinly sliced bread– I think Orowheat makes some thin sliced– or just your favorite bread. These are open faced so the thinness is not as important is with some breads– you do want to make sure it is sturdy enough to stand up to spreading, some breads will tear.
2 small cucumbers, peeled and cut into thin slices (or one English cucumber peeled and sliced) You can trim the cucumbers to the size of your bread and slice lengthwise, or just slice as you normally would.
8 oz Roguefort cheese
8 oz cream cheese at room temp
4 TBSP butter at room temp
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted (you can of course use the nut of your choice, pecans would probably substitute well)
Blend cheeses and butter together in blender or food processor until smooth. Spread a layer over each piece of bread (toast your bread if you like before hand). Place overlapping slices of cucumber on the toast. Trim off bread crusts (absolutely required for a tea sandwich– crusts are unsightly at the tea table), and cut into triangles. Sprinkle with toasted walnuts. Serve.
Orange-Cherry (or Cranberry) Scones
6 Tbsp cold butter
2 cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp finely grated orange rind
3/4 cup dried cherries ( I chop them into smaller pieces when them come whole– you can also substitute dried cranberries, etc)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
Preheat oven to 400. Lightly grease baking sheet. In a large bowl, cut butter into flour, sugar, baking powder and salt until misture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in orange rind and dried cherries. Add egg and milk; mix until mixture clings together and forms soft dough.
Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead gently about 15 times. Divide dough into fourths and pat into squares about 1/2 inch thick. Cut each square diagonally twice to form 4 triangles. Place on baking sheet. (The scones can also be frozen after being cut, or place on sheet and refrigerate covered overnight).
Bake abt 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm with butter, lemon curd, jam, or Devonshire cream.
Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Hearts
2 cups unsalted butter at room temp
1 cup sugar
1 tsp almond extract (or vanilla)
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped almonds (or pecans)
2 oz white chocolate, chopped
2 oz semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
4 tsp shortening
Preheat oven to 325. In a large mixer bowl beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add extract and dash salt; beat well. Add flour, beat just until well mixed. Stire in nuts. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with cutter. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes (cookies should not brown). Cool on rack.
Cook and stir white chocolate and/or semi-sweet chocolate and 2 tsp shortening over low heat (in seperate pans if doing both) until melted, stirring frequently. Dip half of each cookie into a chocolate mixture, or half and half. Let stand until chocolate is set.
Please ignore my lumpy crust. I usually stick to baking for this reason.
About a year or so ago, I began getting the magazine Vegetarian Times. I am alternately unimpressed and inspired by this magazine. Not sure if I just haven’t had the time for it, haven’t been interested in cooking, or if I’ve just become over saturated with cooking and recipes after a lifetime of reading Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, and my always growing cookbook collection. But this month was an inspriation month. I tried (sort of) a recipe from the pages of their latest copy, September 2008– Heirloom Tomato & Sweet Corn Pizzas.
Make that pizza, singular. The other dough I made into a regular cheese with red sauce for the children, wanting to hog all the tomatoes (from our garden) and corn (from our CSA) to myself (and my husband too, I do share–sometimes). Their recipe uses a store bought pizza dough (thank you Trader Joe’s), a garlic pistou and then a bit of cheese and veggies. Right off I knew I wouldn’t be following this one faithfully when I glanced over the instructions for the pistou and read “Wrap garlic in foil. Bake 40 minutes…” That wasn’t happening.
My kids were due home from soccer in 30 minutes and I needed to have dinner on the table shortly after that– I did not have 40 minutes + pizza baking time tonight. Knowing I was compromising the flavor, I decided to skip that step and use fresh garlic instead, but a little less of it.
Second bump came when I realized I’d forgotten to buy the cheese they called for (Cotija or feta)– did I mention I always end up going to the store more than once? I decided to ignore that too and use a bit of mozzarella I had in the freezer that I’d pulled out for the kids pizza already.
What resulted after these changes (and a couple more) was a delicious pizza, even more appreciated for it’s lack of resemblance to one of our 5 or 6 standard dinners. But the flavor did seem suscipsiously familiar… Then I remembered one of my favorite summertime salads from The Jimtown Store Cookbook: Cherry Tomato, mozzarella, & corn salad with basil. Sound familiar? It was as though this salad had been dumped on a pizza dough and warmed. What a wonderful thing!
Here is the pizza recipe (ammended) as well as an abbreviated version of the salad.
Heirloom Tomato & Sweet Corn Pizzas
ammended from Vegetarian Times
prepared garlic-herb pizza dough
garlic pistou my way:
4-10 heads of garlic (depending on size), minced or pressed
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 glugs olive oil
10 leaves fresh oregano
zest of half a lemon
3 handfuls of grated mozzarella (frozen straight from the freezer works fine)
fresh corn kernals from 1 ear of corn
assorted sliced tomatoes from your garden, csa, or nearest store–enough to fill your pizza
6 sliced/chopped basil leaves
other veggies you have on hand? I added sliced summer squash and sliced onion from our CSA
Preheat oven to 400 or possibly 450. Place pizza stone in, if you have one to heat. Whirl pistou ingredients in a small cuisinart or in a blender into a paste. Shape pizza crust to your liking, or to the best of your ability (mine is very poor, but always edible). Sprinkle cornmeal on a wooden cutting board if using a pizza stone, or on a pizza pan. place pizza dough on corn meal and adjust shape and crust. Spread pistou. Scatter corn kernals (and other veggies you want to cook– my squash and onions went on now) about. I also wanted some of the tomato cooked so I added about 6 slices now. Sprinkle with as much cheese as you deem appropriate. Slide onto hot pizza stone or place pizza pan in oven. Bake for 15- 25 minutes. Remove from oven. Top with the rest of the sliced tomatoes and then sprinkle basil on top. MMMMM!
Cherry Tomato, Mozzarella, & Corn Salad with Basil
Adapted from The Jimtown Store Cookbook
8 oz marinated bocconcini (small fresh mozzarella balls) (the original recipe has you marinate them yourself, but I usually can find them already marninated in spices and oil and save myself that step for the extra 50 cents)
1 basket small cherry tomatoes (yellow, red or orange, pear shaped or round)
Corn kernals cut from 2 medium ears
About 12 basil leaves that have been chiffonaded
Mix it all together. Serve room temperature. You may want to add some pepper, salt and lemon juice or zest to taste. Perhaps even some pepper flakes.
In my jumbled vault of memories, I have a few, of myself and my sister, as little girls, freckled, sunburned, braids or pig-tails swinging, helping to make home made ice cream. I am quite sure that these memories have quantified, for it seems now that we did it many times; most likely it was exactly twice. No matter, I have that memory and it is lovely. What I do know is that the ice creams in question were churned on my grandmother’s patio, and as the ice cream maker was older than ourselves, it needed us to sit on it to keep it stable while someone turned the crank. This ice cream making was far from a solitary affair, but rather needed most all my large family to help get it from cream to ice cream. There was rock salt to be located, carried, poured. Bases to be mixed. And lots and lots of cranking to be done.
But oh, oh, oh! the flavor! Two stand out in my mind. One was a peppermint ice cream, made in part, from candy canes saved from Christmas and the other was fresh strawberry. It is hard to go back to store bought.
Well imagine how I felt now, these taste memories floating in my mind, when I saw that ice cream was up for Tuesdays with Dorie this week, and then remembered that I had, uncharacteristically, given away our ice cream maker just one month ago. [You can find the recipe for the Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream at Culinary Curiousity] I have been trying to turn over a new leaf, work against my patterns of saving every possible thing for every possible situation, and relinquished my ice cream maker to the Goodwill pile. It is true it had gathered dust. In fact, it had been living in my garage for the last couple years. When it was new and sparkly it got lots of use. But then our children were born and 9 years after receiving it for our wedding I think it had stood idle for at least the last 4. So into the pile it went.
At first I thought I would just take the alternate choice and make a recipe TWD had already done, but knew it wouldn’t be the same. So then I checked out the links on making ice cream with out a maker. I was committed to doing that. Even though it would of taken hours of attention. I really would of done it. But thank goodness for neighbors. Especially for Angie. I was going on and on about TWD and my ice cream maker deficiency when she offered hers up- bowl already frozen and ready to go.
So ingredients gathered (why I can never do this in one trip to the store, I don’t know), ice cream maker borrowed, and book before me I got to work. Quick work it was too. In about 5 minutes the ice cream was ready to chill before churning. Then after cleaning up the kitchen from dinner I popped it into the maker. 20 minutes later, into the freezer. Not quite the 12 person, all afternoon experience of my childhood! Since it doesn’t use a custard type base it is very quick, but it does taste distinctly different from the ice cream flavor I was imagining.
My son described the flavor as he licked the churning blade (plastic, no worries!) as follows: “This tastes like frozen yogurt! It’s not ice cream.” He did still lick every last drop, except for the large blob that dripped on his chest (although he might of gotten that one too, but I wasn’t looking). But he is right. This ice cream tastes quite similar to the Stonyfield yogurt tubes I buy my kids sometimes, that we then freeze for an afternoon treat. But while it tastes more like frozen yogurt than the ice cream of my childhood, it was delish nonetheless.
Tomorrow I will return Angie’s ice cream maker. And, of course I will bring her a taste! I have to if I ever want to try that very tempting Honey-Peach Ice Cream on the very next page! Perhaps that can get me closer to recapturing that childhood decadence.
Last summer, or fall I saw a recipe in Cooking Light for a Lime Chiffon Cake. I thought it looked, and sounded delicious, and I had not really had a lime cake before and was interested in trying it. Last fall also was when I went back to school to begin my Master’s and so most of my cooking desires were left unfulfilled. This recipe floated about my kitchen, from the counter, to the bookcase. I pulled it out over winter break and it sat on my table for a while. I had an email exchange about it. Clearly it was unfinished business for me.
This summer has afforded me with a long stretch of time free from my school year worries– no carpooling/carting the kids about (well, at least not as much as usual), no classes to teach, no classes to read (and read and read) for. At the begining of summer I made a kind of mental to do list; high on that list was this cake. But suddenly summer’s end was nearing. And I hadn’t made this cake!
Determined to not have it haunting me this year (I’ve got a churros recipe that is threatening to take its place) I decided to make it. Today. I kept thinking I would make it for a party, potluck, etc., but as the timing has never worked, I made it for absolutely no reason at all. But, whew! What a relief!
I followed the recipe fairly closely, except for substituting the Cool Whip for Whipping Cream (I’ve never really gotten over when somebody told me there is a common ingredient between Cool Whip and something used in your car– whether it is true or not doesn’t probably matter). It went together fairly easily and quickly. The best part was the smell of the limes as I zested them!
Taste? The crumb of the cake was very nice, but I expected that as it used egg whites and cake flour (the key, in my opinion, to a nice crumb). The filling, made with sweetened condensed milk, seemed a little sweet to me, but my husband thought the cake overall was a bit on the tart side. I think this would be an excellent cake with a cup of tea. The blueberries (listed as optional) I think are absolutely necessary to cut the intense lime flavor of this cake.
Well, now that I’ve made this cake and we really can’t be eating a whole cake ourselves, I’ve packaged some chunks for delivery to friends tomorrow. I just hope this cake isn’t haunting me as long as the recipe did.
Find the recipe for this cake here.
The only drawback to baking! Dirty dishes.
As a grade schooler I had a friend whose house I loved to visit. Not only did she not have a little sister, she had a great victorian dollhouse (which as these things go, she never wanted to play with as much as I did, or perhaps I just never could say how much I wanted to play with it). In addition to these perks when coming for a playdate, each time we walked into the house after school (so it seems to me now), there was a loaf of banana bread waiting for us to snack on. My mom baked a lot (late at night after my sis and I were in bed), but her main vice was chocolate chip cookies, so this banana bread was a treat for me (we didn’t get many of those cookies anyway, but rather ususally just saw the evidence in the morning).
When I read that this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was a banana bread I was leary. I love a basic banana bread, and even have a favorite banana muffin recipe, but chocolate banana bread has never appealed to me particularly. But one of the reasons I thought doing this baking group would be fun, was trying recipes I would normally skip over. And so the baking began!
Why do my bananas look that way? Frozen reserves.
Fresh Nutmeg! One of my small delights!
After pulling my frozen bananas from the freezer to defrost (This, by the way, is one of my great discoveries as an adult! That I could actually freeze my ripe (or overripe) bananas in the skin and all and use later has greatly enhanced my happiness with ripening bananas on my counter. I especially love using the frozen bananas in fruit smoothies as it eliminates the need for ice.) I got busy on this recipe. A little nutmeg grating, chocolate melting, and soon it was ready for the pan. This “loaf” is actaully a marble banana cake and I did, as usual, find the marbalizing part a bit of a chore. I am not convinced that a marble cake’s flavor makes up for the extra minutes spent mixing up the chocolate batter and carefully alternating batter and then swirling. But I’m a simple girl and like to move as quickly and effienciently as I can in the kitchen most days.
However, I have to say, the cake is pretty good. I am not converted (or convinced the marbling was worth it!) though, and while my kids and I are munching our way through this loaf, next time I’ll probably fall back on my original banana bread or my favorite fancy one from Cooking Light magazine years ago: Jamaican Banana Bread.
The recipe for the Black & White Banana Loaf is posted at A Year In The Kitchen.
Summer fruit waiting to be transformed
Technically I am not fulfilling the TWD rules this week, so it will not count towards my participation this month (which means I will do next weeks recipe as well), but I had all the ingredients and had wanted to make this one anyway. And so I did. At least it is still summer, and therefore fitting for the Summer Gallette recipe chosen for this week.
I bought some nectarines, peaches and plums at our CSA yesterday when we went to get our box of farm goodness (oh! the glorious summer tomatoes and basil in there!). And finally this afternoon I found a little space of time to put this together. Wonderfully it really did not take long, but it did take a bit of forethought because the butter for the dough needed to be frozen, and then the dough itself needed to be chilled. Other than that it basically made itself in no time.
I have to say, I’m always a bit afraid of pastry. My friend is a whiz at it, but I find it troubling and usually avoid it. I’ve had some luck, but more frustration, ripped crusts, and mishaps than I care to list here. It was a lovely suprise to have this crust come together so quickly and easily in the food processor (brilliant!). Even better, it tasted devine! Light and buttery. Dare I say…flakey?
My leaky lucious gallette
I love making this kind of pastry over a pie in a dish– the free form crust suits my non-perfectionist style much better and saves time , as well as dishes to be washed! I have made similar desserts, mainly working from Ina Garten’s (Barefoot Contessa) recipe for Apple Crostata in her Parties! cookbook. (Here is another of her crostata recipes I was able to find online) This cookbook is one of the most stained and tabbed books in my collection, precisely for these types of simple, flavorful recipes. Her crostata differs from Dorie’s gallette mainly in the topping. Dorie used the custard, Ina a light crumb topping. Honestly, I couldn’t taste the custard enough to warrant the extra step– I could taste the fruit and the crust and that was enough for me with a great big glass of milk– but… I was eating it quite warm in order to be able to post this evening. Perhaps the custard comes into its own in cooling; I should know at breakfast tomorrow!
One last note about this recipe. I’m not sure if I just had extra juicy fruit, or used too much but my gallette leaked all over. In fact there was so much juice I had a hard time telling if the custard had set. Really I don’t mind, the juice made it luscious to eat, but it did make the bottom a little less crisp than would be ideal. I wonder if the the leaking would have been worse without the crumbs and jam?
I will leave the experimentation for another day.
Find the recipe for the Gallette posted here.
Photo from my vacation!
We are home again! And while when I am here too long I can only think about traveling, when I am away too long, I can only think about home. Our full trip was almost two weeks and it was nice to come home, check on my garden (still growing), my to do list (still growing), and think of fun summer things to do in our area where my bed is (blackberry picking is high on our list this week). I was also anxious to get back to my posting here. We came back a bit too late to get my TWD up today (check tomorrow– I did get all the ingredients today and they await me in the morning) but not too late to get up another post about baking with children– one of my favorite topics.
My Baking Boy a couple years back
In my last post about Baking with Children I mentioned one of my favorite cookbooks for children, the well-known classic, Pretend Soup. And my favorite recipe in that book? Popovers. Hands down one of the most satisfying baking you can do with young children. I’ve made this recipe now multiple times not only with my children, but in their preschool classrooms where it never fails to be a hit.
The great thing about this recipe is that it is broken in to steps making even the prep work managable for the kids. The children get to “paint” the muffin tins with the melter butter, and just as Katzen promises, some children “love” this and will do this for quite a while, making for some very buttered tins!
The format of the cookbook is a bit lengthy with grown-up hints, the recipe itself, and then simplified pictorial directions for the children to follow. I can’t obviously recreate that here, so I will do my best to give enhanced directions. The best bet is to check out the book itself, at the library or at a bookstore.
Popovers
adapted from Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen & Ann Henderson
best eaten slightly warm, with jam
This recipe will work in a toaster oven and in mini muffin tins.
Ingredients:
2 TBSP butter, melted (to “paint” with)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 375. Have the children paint the insides of the muffin cups with the melted butter (you may need more than the 2 TBSP depending on how much they enjoy this part– don’t rush them! Focusing on the process instead of the product is very important for young children)
When they are ready, break the eggs into the mixing bowl (try my trick for the small bowl for each or Katzen’s listed “break them on the bottom of a big bowl and let the egg run out into the bowl”). Once you have all the shells out of the egg, add the milk and beat well. Add flour and salt and whisk until blended.
Pour the batter into the muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 full. You can put the batter in a small pyrex measure cup to let the children help fill them on their own. Bake for 30 minutes without opening the oven (if using mini muffins it will be less– you will need to watch them, but this is part of the fun of popovers!)
Remove from pan and prick with a fork to let steam escape (truth be told I don’t think I usually remove them from the muffin pans– lazy, I guess). Katzen suggests having your child wear an oven mitt when they prick the muffins to protect them from the steam.
Eat one. And another. Add a little jam to the next. Maybe time for a glass of milk, or a mug of tea. Now one more.
Now get them young'uns in the kitchen!
This is my first week doing TWD and I am very excited. I’ve had Dorie Greenspan’s Baking cookbook up on my shelf for over a year now and have baked some out of it, but as with many of my cookbooks in the last year, it has not been put through the paces as much as I would have liked. I have found two great birthday cake batters in there (Devil’s Food White-out Cake [pg 247]- a chocolate chip cake- and Perfect Party Cake [pf 250]- a lightly lemon flavored white cake with a stupendous crumb) but beyond that ventured very little. When I stumbled upon TWD one night last week while blog surfing– jumping from one baking blog to another through links– I was delighted. Accountability- that’s what I needed to explore her book more; so I signed myself up.
At least 2 weeks out of every four I must make the chosen recipe from her cookbook and then post my experience, reaction, etc here. So here is week one for me. My next posting will be not be for one or two weeks as I will be out of town.
So lets get down to the pudding…..(you can find the recipe here)
I’ve made chocolate pudding from scratch before from Barefoot Contessa’s cookbook, Parties! (I’ve found a recipe link here for that version) and with success. I am always delighted with the result, and with anything chocolate, the better quality chocolate you use the better your result. So this time I pulled out the bittersweet Valrohna bars which I tuck up in my baking cabinet for just such times.
After weighing out my five ounces I thought I should do this recipe right and prep all my ingredients (measured and all) before I got started. This is not my usual method, but I was multitasking with cobbler in the oven, and one child still awake making periodic visits to the kitchen for one more tuck in.
A few characteristic flubs (broken yolk while separating eggs [dump, start again], too much sugar in the milk [dump start again], too much milk in the milk [scoop out with a measuring cup because I was tired of dumping out]) and I got down to business. Of course that wasn’t the end of my mishaps– while taking my bubbling cobblers out of the oven the milk boiled and overflowed the pan, flooding my burner. Milk was fine but I was a 1/4 cup short now– that would be the 1/4 cup that was now filling my burner plates. No problem, pour off finished milk, boil 1/4 cup more with a sprinkle of sugar– Good as New!
Over all I found the back and forth between pan and food processor a bit tiring, but I think that is because where I plug my cuisinart in is not very handy to the stove, so I couldn’t, say, pulse AND watch the milk (of course we all know this isn’t why the milk overflowed, but it could have been). But I understand the reasoning– my arm was not exhausted after whipping up this pudding. When I’ve made some puddings and pastry creams (which are similar to pudding, and which this same cookbook has a great recipe for (Dark Chocolate Cream page 25 
the amount of whisking needed is downright frightening and I end up with flared up tendonitis in my forearms. Ina Garten’s recipe uses a similar technique but she utilizes the kitchenaid mixer instead of a cuisinart– perhaps that could be used here as well– but in either case I appreciate the modern shortcut.
Yes. I licked that Cuisinart bowl clean while my finished little puddings were chilling. And just for the record– I prefer the film on my pudding so I did not cover it. I love breaking through that film to the smooth depths.
The end product? Superb. Very Chocolately. Ultra Chocolately. I might almost substitute a wee bit of semi-sweet for some of the bittersweet chocolate (I used Valrohna 70% bittersweet). The richness is a nice way to savour it slowly. The six little cups (by the way I have to give credit to La Tartine Gourmande for the inspiration to use these little yogurt glasses that had been kicking around my kitchen for a while– too cute to recycle) that it made have lasted a few days as 1/2 of each is enough for each sitting.
I will be tabbing this recipe for future revisiting, but hopefully won’t flood my stovetop next time with sticky sweetened milk.
First off I really must warn you– this is not a typical southern recipe. This is more of the Northern California 70’s pseduo-hippy mom recipe. The actual description should be Honey-Whole Wheat-Peach Cobbler– but it’s what I grew up on so I knew no differently and love it best. This is something that my mom made but I’m not sure where she got the recipe from. My dad did a lot of the cooking when I was a kid- dinners, packing our lunches, making breakfast– but my mom usually did the baking. In the summer we could count on peach cobbler at least a few times, and when the blackberries were ripe and someone had headed down the block to the empty fields where they grew to pick a bowl full, we would get a blackberry peach cobbler—mmmmm.
I loved to eat this warm with melting vanilla ice cream (always Haagen-Daaz of course), but even more so for breakfast the next day (it usually didn’t last much longer than that). A sweet breakfast was special treat in our house of whole grain cereal or oatmeal sweetened with raisins and milk only; cold peach cobbler with a large glass of cold milk was mighty fine!
So it being summer and all and organic peaches being on sale this week I thought I really should make this before I had to wait another year, because even though you can use frozen peaches there is something about using fresh. I made two smaller ones tonight, one for a potluck, and one for breakfast tomorrow! It’ll be a nice change from my yogurt and granola and my kids will be thrilled.
Honey (Whole Wheat) Peach Cobbler
3 lbs peachers, peeled, pitter and sliced or 2 1 lb pkgs unsweetend frozen peach slices, partially defrosted
3 TBSP lemon juice
1/2 cup honey
2 TBSP cornstarch mixed with 2 TBSP water
2 TBSP butter
1 recipe whole wheat and honey topping (see below)
Preheat oven to 400 place the peaches in a shallow 3 qt baking dish. Stir in the lemon juice, honey, and cornstarch mixture. Dot with pieces of the butter. Prepare topping and drop by spoonfuls onto fruit mixture, leaving space in between– it will spread a bit and some gaps are desirable to see the peaches peeking through. Bake for 30 to 35 minues or until topping is well browned. Serve warm or cool, with vanilla ice cream or milk, morning or night.
Topping:
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour (tonight I used 3/4 cups whole wheat & 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup cold butter
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup honey
In a bowl, stir together whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt, ground cinnamon, and nutmeg. With a pastry blender, cut in cold butter or margarine until well blended. Stir together milk and honey; add to bowl, stirring until combined.
Note: If you want to make a blackberry/peach cobbler substitute some of the peaches for blackberries. Simple and delish!
I mentioned in my previous post that I’d come across some recipes to use up any buttermilk I might have in my fridge. I tend to buy a carton for a recipe and then never use the rest of it– not sure why really, but thought I should add a few buttermilk dedicated recipes to my repertoire— you know… just in case. I had just the buttermilk in my fridge. I had bought it for a gluten-free cornbread mix I had made for a visiting friend of my daughters and it was languishing in the back of my fridge. Fortunately, it lasts a while, and I was able to find the buttermilk cookie recipe (by chance of course, because I had forgotten the carton was even in there as usual) before the date on the carton.
So today was my buttermilk cookie day. All went well. No glitches, cursing or even burnt trays. I really had no idea what to expect and I was pleased with them. The batter had the consistency of some cake batters I had made, and indeed they are little cake cookies. I would have liked the lemon flavor stronger myself, but I try to not mess with a recipe the first time with it. My son tried them and deemed them “sour”. This description does match up with ezrapoundcake’s description as “tangy” so his acute sense of taste has been noted for furture tasting needs.
We now have a cookie jar full. The true test will be how long it stays full. I could very well have turned languishing buttermilk into languishing cookies. We will see.
It is fall! Well, almost. But the apples are starting to come in and to me that signals fall. Each year since before I had kids I have been making apple butter in the fall. After the first slightly scary leap-of-faith canning with my friend Sarah it has become a ritual. She had the equipment (large black pot you could fit a child into) and had seen it done. I had nothing but came anyway. We followed the directions and amazingly we got 3 cases of delicious spicy chunky apple butter (that link goes to my favorite apple butter- I double it and usually up the spices) for our labors and gifted it away at Christmas time.
I’ve learn to go it alone since then and have added to my equipment. Somehow I inherited (or stole, but I can’t remember and she never asked for it back) her great canning pot. I’ve since gotten a few tools I feel are essential. Top of the list? Jar grabbers- for avoiding nasty steam burns when taking your hot jars out of the sterilizing bath and when putting them back in for the “hot water bath” after they are filled. I’ve tried dishtowels and tongs– usually out of desparation because the jar grabbers have gone missing in the garage or other– but they really are essential to pain-free canning.
Since the “old days” of peeling 3 bags of apples by hand with a paring knife I’ve also upgraded to an apple-peeler-corer. I have the Pampered Chef version (which I coveted for 2 years and 4 pampered chef parties before I felt wealthy or justified enough to spring for it) and it works wonderfully clamped on my butcher block island. The true bonus of this contraption is that the kids love it too. Wait, actually that can sometimes be a drawback as they will run like wild things, whooping and laughing with glee when they see it and not let me alone until they get do turn the crank for at least 3 apples each. But delays in productivity aside, it is a great kids-in-the-kitchen tool. I have seen them used at my son’s preschool- each child allotted one apple only to their dismay- to make joint apple sauce, or they just enjoy the great long strip of apple slice it makes for a snack.
But my canning days aren’t here quite yet. Usually I prep my apples and then freeze them until a calmer October day seems right. It is too hectic this time of year-back to school-last minute vacations- sunshine and warmth to enjoy. It is also often too warm. Canning necessitates being in the kitchen with a huge pot of boiling water for quite a while– great swathes of steam enveloping your face and hot jars lining your counters like a marching band in formation. So I save the warm cinnamon smells of cooking apples and spices for the cooler months, BUT before Christmas. That is always my true deadline, because I absolutely love giving these little jars out every year.
So last week I bought my box of Gravenstein apples. They have a short season so you have to act fast. By the time I found time to peel and prep them though, they had already gotten a little too soft to use my handy-dandy apple peelin’ contraption on them, so this bunch I did have to peel by hand. Surprisingly I found that when you are not in a mad dash to peel 3 bags of apples, but rather just a half a box (we ate the other half!) the hand peeling is relaxing. There is a welcome rhythm in guiding the knife around and around, sliding under the slightly tough skin and pulling it through the apple flesh. My children splashed in our little pool in some late summer heat and I smelled apples and thought ahead to fall with it’s brisk mornings and orange afternoons.
These apples won’t actually go into the apple butter. They’re for apple pies. My apple butter apples will probably come from an acquaintance’s over-loaded tree for free- and I won’t care what kind they are because I’ve find all kinds make great apple butter. But Gravensteins are built for pie and so I get them ready now. This is a trick I learned from Sarah again (who in turn had stolen it from her Grandma. As my neighbor said, “the Grandmas have all the tricks”). I sugar and cinnamon/nutmeg them and into the freezer they go in usable amounts (quart freezer bags). When the desire hits for warm home-made apple pie I run to the store for a pre-made crust (Trader Joe’s makes a really nice “natural” one) and toss in the frozen apples and bake.
Easy as pie.
