not-really-cobbler berry cake

over thanksgiving weekend, i attempted to recreate a favorite childhood dessert of my FBIL. i’m not sure if i nailed the original, but what i came up with was a big hit.

he called it cobbler, but described it as cake with berries throughout that “totally integrate” with the cake. not really cobbler, but yummy-sounding, right?

this pioneer woman recipe seemed to come close.

problem? the recipe calls for self-rising flour. who has that around? not us.

fortunately, self-rising flour is easy to make at home by adding 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup.

problem? we didn’t have any baking powder! only baking soda. as you might know, you cannot replace one with the other. baking soda requires acid to do its thing, and since the rest of the ingredients were butter and milk, there was clearly nothing to make it rise.

solution? add lemon juice, of course! which also sounded like a lovely flavor to mix with the sweet, fruity, buttery cake. so good, in fact, that i also added some lemon zest. (another solution would have been to use buttermilk, if you had that around)

so, here’s my version of the recipe:

1 cup sugar (plus a little more for sprinkling on top, optional)
1 cup regular ol’ flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
juice and zest of half a lemon
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup milk
1/2 stick butter, melted (use the butter wrapper to grease the dish)
3-4 containers of berries (i used 2 blackberry, 1 raspberry and 1 blueberry and it was a LOT of fruit)

mix sugar, flour, lemon zest and salt in a medium bowl. mix lemon juice, vanilla and milk in another. melt butter in a third and let it cool a little. (sometimes coming right out of the microwave, the butter is hot enough to scald milk = bad)

whisk everything together quickly and pour into a greased ceramic or glass baking dish. i used an oval-shaped one that was about 12 inches long.

pour the berries over the top of the batter and push them in gently. sprinkle with a little more sugar if you’d like. i’m not sure it was necessary.

bake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees until nice and brown on top. it will still jiggle a little in the middle, but once you take it out and let it cool a little, it will solidify. (also, without any eggs in the recipe, it doesn’t matter if you err on the under-done side.)

did i say it was a big hit? it was a HUGE hit. i think they’ll keep me.

serve warm with whipped cream!

creating new family traditions, one baked good at a time.

the perfect chocolate chip cookie

everyone knows that the best chocolate chip cookies are made with shortening not butter.

now, that’s a bold statement, but it’s 100 percent true if you’re like me and you like a fluffy, cakey chocolate chip cookie.

if you’re one of those crazy thin/crispy chocolate chip cookie people, please move right along. there’s nothing for you here.

i also have been throwing lots of (yes, yummy, but distracting) things in my chocolate chip cookies recently – raisins, oatmeal, cinnamon, dried cranberries, pecans.

sometimes you need to get out the shortening, grab your kitchen scale and get back to basics.

here it is, folks:

7.25 ounces flour
1 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoons salt
4 ounces unsalted butter at room temperature
4 ounces vegetable shortening
3.25 ounces light brown sugar
3.25 white sugar
1 egg replacement equivalent (or one large egg, but then i wouldn’t eat as much raw batter AND you can totally undercook them)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2.25 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
2.25 ounces dark chocolate chips

i didn’t chill them and i didn’t put the rack in the second-highest position. i DID bake them longer than 8-10 minutes.

that, my friend, is a chocolate chip cookie.

recipe modified from ashley and sierra

sugar and spice roasted pumpkin seeds

you may remember last year, i made some pretty bangin’ pumpkin cupcakes with molasses buttercream frosting and pieces of pumpkin seed brittle on top.

this year, i’m resurrecting the cupcakes, but i’m trying something different on top. (why? one, we like to try new things here at icf. two, i was doing mini cakes this time and i thought a big ol’ piece of brittle might be overwhelming.)

spoiler alert:

so start with about a cup of pumpkin seeds (the amount i pulled from a smallish sugar baby pumpkin) and dry roast them at about 300 degrees until they start to brown just ever-so-slightly.

i did this whole recipe in my toaster oven. what a magical little machine it is!

let them cool to the touch, and add a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice or garam masala, a hearty pinch of salt and two tablespoons of sugar. i used demerara (or large-grained) sugar.

in a small bowl, beat the white of one egg.

pour just enough beaten egg white into the seed/spice mixture to coat everything and stick the spices to the seeds. i used about half the egg.

grease your cookie tray or toaster oven tray well and spread the seed/spice/egg mixture in as close to a single layer as you can get without going crazy.

back in the (toaster)oven at 300 for about 15 to 20 minutes, until it starts to feel hard and dry and gets nice and toasty but not burnt.

take it out and let cool only a couple minutes before turning out. (i had to whap the back of the pan a little, but it all came out very well)

break into whatever size chunks serves your purpose.

these are crispy and sooo delicious. i could munch them like fall-flavored m&ms and they were perfect on top of the cupcakes.

if you’re looking for another way to serve them, slice apples, schmear with a little herbed goat cheese and top with seeds.

nectarine sundae

i had some leftover coconut gelato and an overripe nectarine. what does that spell?

dessert!

everybody knows that the best way to prepare stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, etc) for dessert is to grill them, but when it’s 56 degrees out, i discovered that a cast iron skillet works just as well.

cut your nectarine in half, spritz it with a little cooking spray, and place both halves cut-side down in a cast iron skillet preheated to medium-hot.

(since he declined the invitation of dessert, i decided to make a night of it and toast some pecans to go along, too. no need to dirty another pan – just throw them right in on the side.)

cook the nectarines until they sizzle and brown and get warm all the way through. only takes a few minutes, depending slightly on the ripeness of your fruit.

scoop on some ice cream, sprinkle with nuts and

ta da!

nothing wrong with that for dessert in 10 minutes…

mango and strawberry ice cream pops

since making fudgesicles and since the temperature has been over 90 degrees for what feels like roughly a decade and a half, i’ve been thinking a lot about frozen treats.

this one is totally adaptable, obviously. use whatever you have around – fruit, berries, herbs, fruit juice, milk, cream, tea, coffee, even water.

i used one small mango and six or seven strawberries that i had leftover. blend them all up in a food processor or blender with some sugar (to your taste and based on how sweet the fruit is. i used a light tablespoon. you could also use honey, molasses, or maple syrup, again depending on your taste and what fruit you’re starting with) and a pinch of salt. you could add some vanilla or other flavoring, too, if you wanted.

then i poured the mixture into a measuring cup because i know my popsicle molds take a little over a cup of liquid. the fruit came to just under a cup, so i added enough heavy cream (mmm! you could use milk, fruit juice, tea, water) to top it off, and stirred well.

then into the molds, into the freezer (i wish i could crawl in there with them), and wait!

delicious!

rhubarb clafoutis

well, my friends, here we are in our fabulous new kitchen. this place just makes me want to cook fabulous dishes and plate them up all pretty. so, i’m making a new-kitchen resolution to go through the almost 400 recipes i’ve bookmarked over the years and either cook them or toss the recipe. no more lollygagging. besides, what’s the point of saving recipes if they just sound good and you never make them? it’s like leaving money in the bank.

in 2006, i took an amazing trip to france with my mum and grandmother. we ate so much great food, but one dish that really sticks out in my mind was a cherry clafoutis that mamacooks made. i don’t think i had had clafoutis before then, but it was cherry season and while we were driving around the countryside, there were tons of roadside stands selling the freshest, yummiest cherries we had ever had. my mom decided the best – and easiest, in a borrowed kitchen – way to enjoy them was a clafoutis.

i haven’t been able to get it out of my head since, so when i came across this recipe for roasted rhubarb and vanilla bean clafouti (rhubarb being one of my favorites), i just had to bookmark it. and when we needed a summery dessert to christen our new home, this had to be it.

he’s also never had clafoutis before, so i was excited to knock his socks off.

unfortunately, i messed it up.

it was still edible (gobble-able, really), but i need to make it again. this time without leaving out a very important ingredient. this is my brain on vacation.

clafoutis is so easy. first, you prepare your fruit. the rhubarb was tossed in sugar and then roasted at 350 degrees for about 20-25 minutes, until it got a little caramelized. depending on your fruit, you could just do a sugar toss, or use them straight up.

once the rhubarb cools a little, i broke up a tablespoon or so of butter and scattered it on top, rubbing a little extra up the sides of the dish.

the batter is 1/3 cup sugar, 3 eggs, a teaspoon or more of vanilla, one cup milk (if you lose your mind and leave out the milk, know that your clafoutis will still be edible, it just won’t be appropriately custardy. at all), half cup flour, zest of half a large lemon, and a pinch of salt. whisk it all together well, and pour over the fruit in an 8- or 9-inch dish.

bake at 350 until it gets a little golden on the edges.

enjoy hot, or room temp for breakfast (if you have any left over!)

welcome to the new neighborhood!

fudgesicles

well, this is apparently something that everyone does, but that no one told me about…

homemade fudgesicles!

i made these at our camp in new hampshire. since it’s a good 20 or so minute drive from the nearest grocery store, having ice cream up there has always been nearly impossible. (could i bring a cooler to the store? yes. have i ever? no. i prefer to think of ice cream as the forbidden fruit when i’m there. it’s just always been that way.)

anyway, once i heard about this technique, i knew they were perfect for making at the camp. after all, that’s always been where i was allowed to eat things i wasn’t normally allowed to eat at home, like store-bought cookies, powdered ice tea mix, potato chips…

so. start by making a box of instant pudding mix.

when it cools to room-ish temp, pour into molds or, because i didn’t bring mine, paper dixie cups.

add sticks – popsicle sticks or whatever you have around. if your pudding isn’t thick enough right away, throw them in the freezer for 10 minutes or so, then add the sticks. mine were fine right away.

i froze them overnight, and, boy, were they tasty! great texture, flavor… i’m totally going to make them again.

but now it’s time to get fancy! layers of graham cracker crumbs and marshmallow fluff? somehow a mint layer? a peanut butter swirl? vanilla pudding with berries stirred in? have you done this? what else do you recommend?

chia seed pudding

there are certain readers of my blog out there who are going to think this looks and sounds like just about the nastiest thing they could think of. move right along.. that means more of it for the rest of us!

(it’s electric! boogie woogie woogie)

i am super-intrigued by chia seeds. how could you not be intrigued by something that was an as-seen-on-tv product during my youth, and is now featured on every fancy-shmancy cooking blog out there?

i’ve been saving a recipe for chia seed pudding for awhile now, and then when it showed up on the pain quotidian menu, i couldn’t help myself any longer.

chia seeds develop a jelly-like texture when mixed with liquid, so chia seed pudding is a lot like tapioca, but with seeds, like a raspberry.

plus, it’s waaaay healthy. according to wikipedia, “one ounce of chia seeds contains 9 grams of fat, 5 milligrams of sodium, 11 grams of dietary fiber, 4 grams of protein, 18 percent of the recommended daily intake of calcium, 27 percent phosphorus and 30 percent manganese.” tasty and healthy, too.

so here we go:

mix together one cup of milk (i used unsweetened soy, but you could use whatever kind you use), 3 tablespoons of chia seeds, 2-3 teaspoons of sugar (depending on the milk you’re using and how sweet you like things), one teaspoon vanilla extract (the more expensive, the better), half a teaspoon ground cinnamon, and a small pinch of salt.

mix together well. you’ll find that cinnamon and chia seeds don’t like being mixed into cold milk, but eventually they’ll go.

refrigerate over night and give it the occasional stir as it thickens.

think of this recipe as a base for proportions. you could use different flavors than cinnamon and vanilla. or you could stir other things into the pudding when you serve it. or use chocolate milk. the possibilities are endless.

i had the leftovers for breakfast with blueberry jelly!

 

love it. making it again as soon as i can.

not-sweet-not-savory polenta with molasses

i enjoyed it so much, i didn’t remember to take a picture of it until it was gone!

i’ve been doing my super-darnedest recently to reduce my intake of refined sugars and white flour, so when i needed a little something late on a wednesday night, i set about creating a snack that wasn’t too sweet, but satisfied my late-night craving for comfort food. (you could easily enjoy this for breakfast, too!)

i warmed up a quarter cup of milk and a quarter cup of water and a pinch of salt in a small sauce pan over medium-low heat. it shouldn’t boil.

dump in a quarter cup polenta or cornmeal, and whisk or stir until it’s gotten nice and thick.

drizzle with a small spoonful of molasses and enjoy!

(makes one perfect late-night serving. i would double the recipe for breakfast.)

thick, rich, dairy-free(!) hot chocolate

i’ve been having a terrible craving for hot chocolate recently, and when i saw this recipe, i was pretty sure it would fit the bill.

they weren’t kidding, either. it’s “super decadent, so rich and intense.” such a thick, velvety texture.

i couldn’t possibly drink a whole mug. a very small serving was the perfect night cap (and these tiny fiesta-like bowls santa brought me were perfect for serving it in!)

5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tablespoons sugar
1/2 tablespoon corn starch
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup water

start with cold water in a sauce pan, add vanilla extract, cocoa, sugar, and corn starch.

turn the heat to medium-low and stir until it gets thick, about 10-15 minutes. (don’t give up! it’s worth it)

from may i have that recipe