Strawberry Wonder

This, folks, is a pile of heaven.  It’s essentially a giant strawberry shortcake, but with a spongy vanilla cake, homemade whipped cream, and a quart of sliced berries.  Mmm.  I bet it’d be good with peaches, too, later this summer, or any other ripe fruit you have, like raspberries.  Mm, mm, that would be good.

Oh, and hi.  It’s been about six months.

The cake underneath the mountain of whipped cream here is a riff on Orangette’s yogurt cake, which you can find here:  orangette.blogspot.com/2004/08/slow-roasting.htm.  It’s a nice, easy recipe using ‘jar’ measurements like the French–each jar is about 1/2c.  It’s a recipe that’s endlessly variable, which turned out to be a very good thing for me.

My plan was to make the cake, plain and simple, but I had problems from the start. I had to get ingredients first thing in the morning–I popped into Trader Joe’s right after it opened at 8–and they didn’t have a small plain yogurt, and I didn’t have time to go anywhere else.  So I got a vanilla.

I got home and started putting the recipe together without putting much thought into it,  and dumped the whole cup of yogurt into the bowl rather than measuring a half cup jar.  Oops.

I was grateful then that I’ve been baking long enough to be able to have an idea of how to salvage the cake, and I ended up baking a delicious little number.  First, I figured out how much yogurt I’d put in the bowl by filling the cup up with water and dumping that into a measuring cup.  Then, remembering that you can sometimes sub yogurt for oil to cut calories and fat, I altered the amount of oil in the recipe to account for several extra tablespoons of yogurt.  I also cut back the sugar, since the yogurt was sweetened and I didn’t want a terribly sweet cake.  The cake is really variable here because you actually stir the sugar into until it melts–usually sugar, creamed with butter, is what gives structure to a cake by providing something the flour can work with to create air pockets (thank you, Alton Brown–just get to the 8 minute mark and he’ll explain).

I cut the citrus in the original recipe out altogether, added a splash of vanilla extract, and popped the cake into the oven.  When it was done I let it cool, removed it from the pan, and used  a long serrated knife to slice it into two layers.

In the meantime, I beat a pint of whipping cream until it was thick, added 1.5 T of sugar, and beat it until it had gentle peaks.  I slathered some on the bottom cake layer and added a little more than half of my sliced berries.  Then I did it again.

This will last a couple of days in the fridge before it becomes questionable, but I don’t think it stands a chance of making it many days without being eaten.  Yum!  Summer on a plate.

Pantry Cooking, round 1

I’ve begun doing more pantry cooking, as I noted I would in my last post, over the weekend.  Shopping this week wasn’t as cheap as I anticipated, but that’s because we ran out of toothpaste, TP, and deodorant all at once, and because Stop and Shop had stuff I wanted to stock up on–big cans of Red Pack tomatoes were a buck, as was pasta.  But on Saturday night after much debating I made biscuits and ate two, warm, with eggs and some avocado–the avocado was also a buck at S&S and much of it’s still in the fridge.  Last night I made this dish on the left–not lovely, I know, but quite tasty–Barley Risotto with Mushrooms at Carrots.  The recipe is based on this one at the Splendid Table on NPR, but that original called for dried mushrooms, which I didn’t have, and the broth you get from reconstituting.  I skipped those things and simply used more chicken broth and more cremini mushrooms.

The trickiest part of this recipe was scaling–I had about 3/4 c of pearled barley, not the full cup the recipe called for, so I used a calculator to get the right amount of broth and cheese for the recipe so it wouldn’t be too loose or to bound with cheese.  The rest of the changes I more or less eyeballed.  But it went like this:

3/4 onion, chopped
2 smallish carrots, diced
about 6 oz cremini mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1T olive oil
just over 1 t thyme
3.75 c chicken broth
white wine–about 1/3 c
3/4 c pearled barley
1/3 c parmesan cheese

Start by putting your oil in a big dutch oven or good-size sauce pot over medium heat.  Add onions and carrots and cook about 5 minutes, until softened.  Add mushrooms and a bit of salt and cook, stirring frequently, until they’ve begun to brown and cook down, about 8-10 minutes.  Add wine, thyme and barley and cook, stirring, until wine is nearly gone.  Add 3c of broth, bring to a boil, kick down to a simmer and let cook about 25 minutes, until barley is about tender, stirring often.  Add last bit of broth, stir, let it cook a bit until creamy, and add cheese.  Voila–done.  It doesn’t taste quite like regular risotto, but was lovely and hearty on a not-so-cold winter’s night.  We ate them with biscuits and roasted cabbage slices, care of an aging, wilted cabbage in the fridge that was on its last legs.  Total amount of new ingredients for this dish was only a few bucks, mainly for the 3/4-package of mushrooms and for the cheese, as we’d run out and had to buy more.  It’s something we ordinarily keep in the house but like everything else, it eventually gets eaten.

Now I can cross “1/2 c pearled barley” off my pantry list.  Tonight, mac and cheese with ham (frozen from Christmas) and broccoli (frozen, because I’m lazy).  We had cheese leftover from right after Christmas and already had the pasta, too.  I might need to pick up some milk (pretty unusual in our house), but that’s about it.

Corn Cakes with Avocado Salsa

One of my lazy summer passions is Pinterest, the website where you can pin (like a digital bulletin board) photos that strike your fancy into category boards.  You can also spend hours browsing the pins of others, and repin those you like.  It probably won’t surprise you that my biggest board is food (surprise, surprise).  I have been trying to do more than passively pin pretty photos of delectable meals but to actually make them (each pin contains a link to the pin’s original site).  This photo (mine) is of a pinned recipe I found for corn cakes with avocado salsa.  They were labor-intensive, but totally worth it, and a great way to enjoy late summer vegetables.

I’m just going to direct you to the original recipe–no sense reinventing that wheel here since I made them just as the original author, Rebecca of the hilariously-named site Ezra Poundcake, instructed.  If you have the time to give (probably an hour) and a food processor, I strongly encourage you to give them a go.

Oops! Catching up with crafts and jam

Wow, it has been a busy summer.  I don’t know how it is mid-August already.  Between house projects, syllabi, and article editing, the months have really flown by.  I hadn’t crafted in ages until yesterday, though I tend to make a lot of stuff in the summer.

And this is one easy craft, so I’m not sure how much it counts, but I’m taking it, anyway.

Right there is a little pile of voile–super-soft cotton–in the Little Folks line by Anna Maria Horner.  It’s adorable with little houses, trees, deer.  When I saw it on sale at Sew Mama Sew, I thought it was time to buy myself a little something to make myself a little something.

So I made this:
It’s called an infinity scarf.  I know it’s hard to see here, but I take awful self-portraits.  Essentially you make a big tube.  And wrap it around your head.

Here, have a tutorial:  http://thecottagehome.blogspot.com/2011/05/lightweight-spring-infinity-scarf.html

I sort of fudged sewing the short ends together to make the tube, but my sorta ugly seam is well-hidden when I wrap it around my neck.  This whole project took me all of a half an hour, and the payoff was faaaaantastic.

If you like easier projects, I think you should also take a stab at canning.  A lot of people find canning intimidating.  It can be, I suppose–sometimes you have to be fast on your feet and you do spend a lot of time in a warm and humid kitchen.  But the recipe at Food in Jars for this particular jam takes a  lot of the chaos out by making it in the slow cooker.

First you have to have a LOT of fruit, in order to make 8 cups of puree in your food processor/blender.  I think I used nearly 4.5 pounds of berries.

Then you put them in the cooker with a little sugar and, if you want, some spices.  I didn’t want any–the reason I was trying this recipe is because I wanted a spread (technically this is a butter) with pure blueberry flavor.  My other blueberry jams tend to taste more sweet than blueberry-y.  This recipe uses less sugar and no pectin, and the results were amazing.  It cooks down for several hours and then you process it in a water bath.

Don’t take my word for it–Marisa at Food in Jars has legions of happy commenters on this recipe!

As the summer winds down, I’m planning on making some salsa verde and canning it; we made a half-batch of three pints last year and this year I’ll make a full, as we loved it.  I did make seven pints of sweet pickles that are now in the basement with the cherry jam and this butter.  With the fall I’ll make apple sauce and maybe some vanilla/pear jam in between.  That’s it, though–a leaner canning year, but that’s ok.  I’m hoping to find a cheap chest freezer on craigslist and step up the preserving next summer, or get some tattler lids (bpa free, reusable plastic?  sweet!) and do tomatoes (last year a bunch of my lids got rusty spots on the inside–the tomatoes were probably fine, but it made me nervous).  It’s almost time to start planning Christmas gifts, so the less time I spend over the canning kettle, the more I can spend on that.  And in two weeks, it’ll be time to reunite with my eager students and start another semester.  Wow, the time goes so quickly.

Cherries I Forgot I Photographed

Typically I neglect blogging because I haven’t photographed anything; this time, I forgot I took photos.  Here’s my first canning effort of the season, since I missed the strawberries:  sweet cherry jam.  The cherries are from Washington State, alas, but they were pretty good.  The jam is just the Ball recipe that comes in the pectin package.  Truth be told, I don’t love it–it’s a lot of sweet and a not a great deal of cherry flavor.  Hmm.  Tasty, but not ideal.  But hey, at least we have some jam set aside.  Next up will be blueberries, though the ones I picked last week are already near gone, so I’ll have to get more.  Following that, in short order, will be sweet pickles and tomatillo salsa.  Yum.  But for now, cherries.

Cherries, I discovered, are actually quite tasty in pancakes.  I suspected they might be, given how awesome cherry clafoutis is.  These pancakes were quick and easy to make, except for pitting and chopping the cherries.  I added a handful–maybe 10 cherries?–to the following batter:

1 1/4 c flour
3 1/2 t baking powder
1 t salt
2 T sugar
1 1/4 c milk
1 t vanilla
1 egg
2 T canola oil

Mix, without overdoing it–a few clumps are ok. Add chopped cherries. Heat up a skillet over medium heat. When a bead of water dances on the surface, you’re ready. Cook a couple of minutes until browned and puffy, then flip. Let that side cook a couple of minutes and you’re good to go. Keep an eye on your skillet–mine always gets a little too warm and I have to turn it down or else I end up with brown but raw pancakes. Ick.

Maybe cherry season is coming up locally, and you can try your hand at these cakes–you won’t be sorry.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to keep from wilting and try equally hard to get some work done.  Enh!  Late July already?  Yikes, stripes!

Hot day? Make Panzanella.

I’m not sure if we’ve ever talked about panzanella together.  If not, we really should have.  I’ve only made it once before last night, which is crazy: it’s quick and easy, goes down really easily with some crisp white wine, and is perfect for summer.  Panzanella is an Italian bread salad, designed to use up leftover loaves.  If I were you, I’d run to the store right now and get some bread, so you can have this for dinner tonight.

What’s nice about panzanella is that you can include pretty much whatever you have handy.  This particular version, which I made for dinner with a friend last night, contains half a wide Trader Joe’s baguette, most of a cucumber, about half a pound of fresh mozzarella (it was on sale this week, so I didn’t make it myself.  This is easy, remember?  But you could make it a lot more involved by baking your own bread, making your own cheese, and growing your veg.  On another day, that would be up my alley), 1/4 of a vidalia onion, finely chopped, a tomato, some basil slivers, and half a red bell pepper.  I also added a can of rinsed white beans for added protein.  If you had artichokes, they’d be great; if you like olives, add them.  Feta?  Why not?  It’s very, very flexible.

For the dressing, I mixed a scant 1/4 c (maybe more like 3 T) red wine vinegar with a little more than 1/4 c extra virgin olive oil.  Add salt and pepper, pour over salad, and toss.  You want to do this with at least 20 minutes to spare, as all that bread soaks up the dressing in that time, which is what makes this salad spectacular.  This giant bowl of salad will feed only three hungry people, I have to caution you, as it is nearly impossible to stop eating it.  You might be able to get four servings, but I’d just add more, instead–finish off that cucumber, the pepper, the cheese, and add more baguette.  Include a little more oil and vinegar.  You won’t regret it!

Morning Sunshine (Cinnamon Buns Any Time)

Lately we haven’t had a lot of sunshine in these parts.  After a stellar Monday, we’ve had dreary rainy days the rest of the week (though as I type this it seems to be brightening a bit!).  I’ve been a little dreary, myself, and have tried to begin a news fast to eliminate at least one aspect of my irritation (I tend to over-absorb), even if I can’t control others (I try to deal well with rejection but it’s not my particular strong suit).  Yesterday I was antsy, thinking about an old project, a new project, and just decided to put my hands in a big old bowl of dough and knead out my anxiety.  This pan of buns–plus 11 more in the freezer–is the result.

I’ve always been a lover of cinnamon buns.  They’re yummy, soothing, but tend to take a lot of time to make, even if most of that time they’re rising on their own.  This particular batch was from a site I found that discussed making mass quantities and sticking a bunch in the freezer for easy access down the road.  You make the dough, let it rise, roll it out and add cinnamon and brown sugar, roll up, slice, and freeze a bunch of them on a cookie sheet.  I put seven in this pan and stuck them in the fridge for a long second rise.  This morning, I pulled them out for 20 minutes or so before popping them in a 350* oven.  The frozen ones I’ll put in a pan at a later date and let thaw and rise on the counter overnight (though the heat of summer might not be the best time for that–they could over-rise in a kitchen that’s 87 overnight.  It can happen when you don’t have AC and you keep the windows in all but the bedroom closed overnight).  Then they too just go in the oven.

The recipe for these particular rolls, though you could use any recipe you like as long as you follow the method, was taken from here:  http://amysfinerthings.com/big-batch-cinnamon-rolls.  I halved the original recipe, which makes 36 rolls, as I didn’t have space in my freezer to freeze them all on cookie sheets.  I found the link through another site, this one:  http://goodcheapeats.com/2010/03/cinnamon-roll-convenience-without-can/, which I found through my new favorite time waster, Pinterest.  I like Pinterest.  I get to pin all kinds of photos and browse other people’s photos and repin them should I so desire….hours can be spent doing this, just to warn you.  I started using it so I could keep track of kitchen ideas.  Now it is, surprise surprise, where I mainly post pictures of food.

At any rate, if you like cinnamon buns to be ready at your convenience, I strongly suggest you make a batch of these, pop them in your freezer, and enjoy them for months weeks days to come.

Molly’s County Fair Cake

I know I’ve been gone a long while, and I’m making my return with this amazing cake.  We moved into our very own house two weeks ago; the boxes are all unpacked and chaos is fairly minimal now.  We don’t have a couch, though, and that is still throwing us off.  Where to sit at night?  CHAIRS?  All our chairs have un-upholstered, wooden arms, and our elbows have taken a beating on these as we try to curl up in the chairs the way we would on the couch.  I’ve taken to stretching out on the floor, which is without a rug–so as you see, some elements are still in progress.  Our couch is scheduled to arrive next week, and then proper lounging can begin.

The week before we moved I barely cooked–what was the point?  We ate so much takeout, it wasn’t fun anymore.  Since we’ve moved in, I’ve been a cooking and baking machine.  Snickerdoodles.  Pasta with fresh mozzarella.  Four loaves of bread for toast.  No-Knead bread.  Chicken with avocado.  And today, in addition to some hamburger buns made with no–knead dough, Molly’s County Fair Cake.

Molly posted about making this cake and linked to her original recipe today; I had all the ingredients, which is pretty unusual–it calls for sour cream, which I rarely have on hand but bought to make some delicious pinto bean taco filling earlier this week.  I decided to make half of her recipe and bake it in a bread pan.  She instructs the baker to sugar the pan; since the batter tasted pretty sweet (I am only mildly embarassed to admit I licked it clean), I didn’t.  My cake stuck a bit–it lost a corner on the bottom–so I had the sad fate to have to eat it.  Then I trimmed the edge of the warm, buttery, vanilla cake to be even, which I’m sure you realize was not so much for the sake of the cake’s architecture but for my taste buds.  I am was going to bring this to a cookout tomorrow, but now I’m having second thoughts–this cake, especially a bit warm from the oven, is heaven.  As you can see, I didn’t bother to even get a plate.  It is to marvelous to waste the time finding one.

Do yourself a favor and make Molly’s cake.  Here’s the halved recipe, suitable for a bread pan.
6 T butter, softened
1 c + 2 T sugar
2 eggs
1 c + 2 T flour
1/8 t baking soda (I eyeballed this, using a 1/4 teaspoon)
1/4 t salt
1/4 c + 2 T sour cream (I overflowed my quarter cup–close enough!)
1/2 t vanilla

Molly writes:
“Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each. To creamed mixture add sour cream and flour mix, alternately. Starting and ending with the flour mix. Mix until just blended after each addition. Stir in flavorings.

Pour batter into a greased and sugared (that’s the key) bundt bread pan. Bake at 325 degrees for an hour or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan onto a wire rack and continue to cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.”

I didn’t even get as far as the powdered sugar.  Yum.

Thing-A-Day Catchup: Projects 2 & 3

Project 2: Lavender Linen Spray and Deodorizer

I’m playing catch-up and cheating a little, as I actually made this on January 31 but really wanted to share it. It’s a lavender linen spray, made from rubbing alcohol, water and lavender oil. We recently bought a natural latex mattress topper, to try and extend the life of our not-so-old-but-really-sagging mattress, but despite several days of airing and being on the bed it still smelled a little like memory foam. The Mr. wasn’t keen on it. So I made this linen spray. The downside of it is that you have to spray it with at least 5 minutes of drying time–otherwise you can really smell the rubbing alcohol. Other recipes call for vodka, which might solve that problem. I didn’t have vodka, though, and this being a state with endless blue laws, couldn’t get any on the Sunday I planned to make it.

Another handy use of this stuff is as a deodorizer. I tried making a deodorizer a couple of weeks ago–websites swore that spritzing white vinegar on the armpits of old sweaters, for example, was a cure-all since the vinegar dries odorless and/or could be washed out. My experience ran contrary, though, as one of my favorite coats now smells vaguely like salad dressing and one of my old sweaters still stinks a little. But yesterday I wondered if this lavender/alcohol mix would do the job–the alcohol, like the vinegar, kills bacteria, which often causes smells-and I sprayed it on the pits of my workout jacket, which is made of nylon track-suit material. Lo, it worked! They’re in the wash now and smell better than they have in a looong time.

Basic recipe here: http://www.helium.com/items/1478956-how-to-make-linen-spray

Total cost, including bottle of essential oil and spray bottle, about $10–but I can make many more rounds of the stuff!
Project 3: Rigatoni with Cauliflower

This is one of our favorite vegetarian mains: rigatoni with pan-roasted cauliflower, tomatoes, and topped with buttered, toasted bread crumbs.  It’s one of those dishes I have to walk away from, lest I eat all of it myself.  It’s easy and pretty quick.  The recipe is from Serious Eats, which got it from a cookbook called Salt to Taste.  Totally worth making.  Here’s the link to the recipe:  http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/02/rigatoni-with-cauliflower-pecorino-hot-pepper-and-bread-crumbs-recipe.html

Thing a Day 1: Banana Cinnamon Muffins

My friend Laura asked me to join Thing-A-Day with her–it’s a website where people daily post something they made, for the whole month of February.

Unsurprisingly, I am already behind.  I made these muffins yesterday but being me, I didn’t post until today.  I blame my tardiness, though, on the cabin fever that sent me heading for the hills yesterday (or, the pizza shop last night).

I haven’t yet made anything today.  I planned on sewing, but spent the day reworking syllabi (third time’s the charm? Stupid snow), playing with our neighbor, and wandering aimlessly around the house.  I am making dinner, though, so maybe I’ll claim that as my ‘thing.’

Here’s my thing-a-day link: http://sweetpeasewsandcooks.posterous.com/

Laura’s has been accidentally deleted.  Oops.

And here’s the recipe for these muffins.

Preheat oven to 375*.

In a bowl, mix 1 1/2 c whole wheat flour, 1 tsp EACH baking powder and soda, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon.

In another, mash up three bananas.  Add an egg, beat in.  Add 1/2 tsp vanilla, about 1/3 c of plain yogurt, 1/2 c brown sugar.  Mix, mix.  Add dry.  If too dry, add a couple tablespoons of milk.  Mix, mix.  Spoon into a greased muffin tin.  I made 10 reasonably-sized muffins, and they took about 18 minutes to bake.