Archive for the ‘dessert’ Category

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Great idea? Or greatest idea ever? Grape Popsicles.

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

We have a lot of grapes this year. We had a lot of peaches, and the tomatoes are still flowing in, the elderberries, raspberries, blueberries, well, 2010 has been a good year for fruit. I’ve started making grape juice in self defense (we can only eat so much jam before the next grape harvest comes along). Then R. suggested making popsicles, so I ran right out and picked some molds up at the dollar store. They proved very unsatisfactory (there’s sticky grape juice all over the freezer now) so I turned to Amazon. The new mold was delivered this afternoon and I’ve already made and sampled a batch and, yowsa – greatest idea ever.

The new mold has a metal cover with slots for those ubiquitous wooden popsicle sticks. The receptacles are sturdy and the frozen mix slides out easily. It also came with a recipe using orange juice that I adapted for grape.

Popsicles

3 C juice, 2 Tbs fresh lemon juice, 1/4 C sugar. Pour in molds and freeze for about 4 hours. The directions suggest soaking the sticks in water for an hour first so they don’t float up in the cells, but I was impatient and skipped that step to no ill effect.

Delicious. I think I want these instead of cake for my birthday next year.

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Mmmmm Chocolate Cobbler

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Wikipedia has a lovely entry on cobbler:

Cobbler is a traditional dish in both the United States and the United Kingdom, although the meaning of the term is quite different in each country. In the United States, it is usually a dessert consisting of a fruit filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a rolled pastry dough, then baked in an oven. In the United Kingdom it is usually a savoury meat dish, typically a lamb casserole, which is covered with a savoury scone-like topping—each scone (or biscuit) forming a separable cobbler. Fruit-based versions are also increasingly popular in the United Kingdom—although they still retain the separate cobbler (or biscuit) topping of the meat version—and savoury or meat versions are not unknown in the United States.

Chocolate cobbler is an old Maine dish that I had previously only seen in restaurants along the coast. I  couldn’t imagine the recipe that would make this combination of cake – crust – softness but today I traded a few oatmeal raisin cookies for a co-worker’s notes from her Mom and, voila!

Chocolate Cobbler!

1 C all purpose flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt

7 Tbs cocoa – divided and  1 1/4 C white sugar divided

1/2 C milk, 1/3 C melted butter, 1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 C brown sugar, packed

1 1/2 C hot tap water

Preheat oven to 350.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and 3 Tbs of the cocoa and 3/4 C of the white sugar. Reserve the remaining cocoa and sugar.

Stir in the milk, melted butter and vanilla and mix until smooth.

Pour the mixture into an ungreased 8 x 8 baking dish. In a separate small bowl, mix the remaining 1/2 C white sugar, the brown sugar and remaining 4 Tbs of cocoa. Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the batter.

Now, here’s where it gets weird: pour the hot tap water over the top and DON’T STIR!

Bake for 40 minutes, or until the center is set and doesn’t “jiggle”.

Serve warm (the top will be a goey sauce) or cooled. We like it cool and fairly solid, served with strawberries. This is a wonderful treat.

The Wikipedia entry also includes my all-time favorite cookbook title: Practical Sanitary and Economic Cooking Adapted to Persons of Moderate and Small Means. I can’t wait to find a copy.

Cobbler is a traditional dish in both the United States and the United Kingdom, although the meaning of the term is quite different in each country. In the United States, it is usually a dessert consisting of a fruit filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a rolled pastry dough, then baked in an oven. In the United Kingdom it is usually a savoury meat dish, typically a lamb casserole, which is covered with a savoury scone-like topping—each scone (or biscuit) forming a separable cobbler. Fruit-based versions are also increasingly popular in the United Kingdom—although they still retain the separate cobbler (or biscuit) topping of the meat version—and savoury or meat versions are not unknown in the United States.

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The Pink Moon

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

April’s full moon is tomorrow. This was the Pink Moon for the Algonquin and the Egg Moon for the English settlers. Last month was the Hunger Moon,  and while the lengthening days mean the peach tree is budded out and I have lettuce and greens to eat, there are only carrots left in the root cellar.  I’d flunk as a provider in the 18th century. Last night I took the last bag of 2009’s raspberries out of the freezer and made clafoutis in celebration of local grocery stores and storing more food in 2010.

Clafoutis is traditionally made with pie cherries, but works equally well with any soft fruit. Apples or pears would have to be cut into small pieces and poached first, but you could do that. The Husband suggested experimenting with a savory version for sweet corn – which would probably be delicious. The result is a three-way cross between a David Eyre pancake, pie, and cottage pudding but easier than any of those. There is really no excuse for not making a clafoutis every other day, in one variation or another, and I don’t know many recipes I feel that way about.

Use a comfortably large bowl, because all these ingredients (except the fruit) are going in together:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup  sugar
a pinch of sea salt
3 large eggs
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1/2 C whole milk
1 1/2 pints raspberries (3 cups)  or a mixture of raspberries & blueberries
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting, possibly a little lemon juice for sprinkling, maybe a little maple syrup, you know? Whatever.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter a 9-inch gratin dish (or a pie plate). In a bowl, whisk the flour, sugar and a pinch of salt. Whisk in the eggs, butter and lemon zest until smooth. Add the milk and whisk until light and very smooth. Pour the batter into the gratin dish and top with the raspberries.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the clafoutis is set and golden.Don’t underbake – it should not be soggy. Let cool slightly. Dust with confectioners’ sugar or other garnish, cut into wedges and serve.

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The $100 Cake

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

The name of this cake comes from one of those pre-Snopes stories about a woman who had a slice of cake in a famous New York (or Chicago, or New Orleans) restaurant and it was so delicious she paid the chef $100 for the secret recipe. I always felt the story was an unnecessary foil for what is, actually, a very tasty chocolate cake that holds up well to bake sales and buffets (pieces don’t crumble) and can be made with one bowl and a mixing cup of unassuming ingredients. It is also entirely dependable – this is the first cake my son learned to make.

I made this particular cake for the monthly Tri-County Beekeeper’s Association meeting at the Prospect Community Hall last night. The decoration is a set of painted HO gauge figures from Woodland Scenics and, if you ever have to decorate a cake for a roofer, or you’d like a wide selection of tiny tombstones for Halloween, here you go. I recommend gluing the figures to a (clean and unused) popsicle stick with nontoxic glue and sinking it into the frosting, so that no one breaks a tooth on a miniature wheelbarrow.

$100 Cake

Stir (or sift) together in a large bowl: 2 C cake flour (regular unbleached will work, but cake flour makes a lovely texture), 1 C sugar, 4 heaping Tbs cocoa, 1/4 tsp salt. In a measuring cup whisk together 1 C cold water and 1 C mayonnaise, 1 tsp vanilla.

Use real mayonnaise – this ingredient represents both the fat and the eggs in this recipe. Soynaise doesn’t work (trust me on this). Homemade mayonnaise is wonderful, should you have any leftover.

Combine the two mixtures until smooth (I use a whisk, gently). Pour into a 9 x 12 or 10 x 13 pan and bake 1/2 hour at 350, until the top springs back when lightly touched.

Allow to cool completely and frost with: 1/2 C softened butter, 2 C confectioners sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla. Decorate!

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Key limes in the grocery store,

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

make Key Lime (or Mexican, or West Indies lime) pie. That’s just good sense. I use a recipe that someone cut out of a Gourmet magazine nearly ten years ago (it wasn’t me – I don’t cut things out of magazines).  I’ve long since memorized it, but I dug out the original clipping so that I wouldn’t steer you wrong. And yes, it’s the same four or five ingredients I remember, but I have made some adjustments over the years.

The recipe allows for using bottled lime juice, and even recommends a brand. Don’t do it! When key limes appear in your grocery store (or who knows – on the tree in your back yard), then you can make this pie. Absolute proof of this is the fact that you’ll need 1/2 C plus 2 Tbs of juice to make this pie, and that’s exactly how much juice the limes in that silly neon green one pound bag will produce. See? Cosmic.

So. Buy the bag. Allow the limes to ripen in a cool dark place for a few days, until some  are slightly mottled with yellow spots and the skin has thinned. Roll one under your palm on a flat surface to break some of the membrane, then slice off about 1/2″ from one end. Insert your wooden lemon-juicer, or your fingers, and allow the juice to dribble into a large, stable container – like your 2 C pyrex measuring cup. You don’t want to knock this over. Oh, and if you have any papercuts on your hands, or like me, having been pruning blackberry bushes lately, you’ll know. The juice will be pale, rather opaque green and smell wonderful.

For crust

  • 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs from 9 (2 1/4-inch by 4 3/4-inch) crackers
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

For filling

  • 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  • 4 large egg yolks
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons key lime juice

Make crust:
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Stir together graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter in a bowl with a fork until combined well, then press mixture evenly onto bottom and up side of a 9-inch (4-cup) glass pie plate. Actually, these days I use an 8″ pie pan. They’re a little harder to find, but with the Boy at college I can stand to have less pie around the house. This recipe works well either way.

Bake crust in middle of oven 10 minutes and cool in pie plate on a rack. Leave oven on.

Make filling and bake pie:

Whisk together condensed milk and yolks in a bowl until combined well. Add juice and whisk until combined well (mixture will thicken slightly).  Pour filling into crust and bake in middle of oven 15 minutes. Cool pie completely on rack (filling will set as it cools), then chill, covered, at least 8 hours (or put it in the freezer for about half an hour after it is mostly cool. Keep checking to be sure it does not really freeze.)

Goes well with whipped cream, and an expectation of Spring.

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Somebody’s Grandma’s Banana Bread

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Occasionally I forget to look around the house before I find myself in the grocery store on lunch hour, wondering if we have bananas. And then we end up with too many bananas.

This is a terrific recipe for banana bread, but it’s not my grandmother’s. For one thing, no one in my family is “Grandma”. Women who’s children have children are addressed by their name, say “Martha”, or by their title and surname, as in “Grandma Burnham”. That goes double for recipe cards. The card for this recipe is so stained and creased that I’m not sure who wrote it but it doesn’t matter. This is the fix for when you’ve been to the store without a list. Again.

Grandma’s Banana Bread/Cake

Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour a 9″ tube pan.

Toast 1/2 C walnuts or pecans in a frying pan until “sweating” and fragrant. Process them in the food processor until chopped fairly small. Don’t clean the bowl. Empty the nuts into a bowl and mix with 1 Tbs of the flour and spice mixture below. Sometimes I add 1/2 C raisins to the mix. Set aside. This recipe calls for 1 C mashed bananas. I regularly throw 3 into the cuisinart and process until smooth. I think you get more banana taste that way. Set aside.

Combine in a small bowl: 2 C flour (can be partially whole wheat), 2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp allspice (optional, but I like it).

In a large bowl cream 1/2 C shortening (I use melted butter, but anything goes here), 1 C sugar. Add two eggs and 1 tsp vanilla and beat well. Use neighbor-lady eggs if you can get them.

Add the flour mixture, then the bananas, then the nuts and stir everything together. Dump it into the tube pan and spread evenly. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the bread is quite browned on top and firm to the touch.

I’ve frosted this bread with orange cream cheese frosting (which is delicious), but more often I serve it with butter and jam for tea.

I had a friend, years ago, who couldn’t stomach the tiny pieces of flour that occasionally stick to the walnuts and raisins in this cake. I found him picking them out at the dinner table one night, and thereafter mixed the nuts with cocoa so it didn’t show. I have no idea how wide-spread that affliction may be, so use that information if you have to, down the line.

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Mom’s pound cake

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Tonight I wanted to use the rest of the eggs that Carrie sent up from Portland. We’ve been doling them out, enjoying the bright yellow color and “stand up” quality to the white that are particular to cherished backyard poultry. We buy very nice eggs in the market, but they’re just not the same. Time to make Mom’s pound cake recipe.

This recipe is entirely easy. It requires one bowl, your mixer (hand or stand, doesn’t matter), common ingredients and is always dependably delicious. It does require one “secret” ingredient (lurking in the background of this photo) – 8 oz of soda. My mother’s recipe lists Fresca, but I’ve used Mountain Dew, Cherry Coke and, in this case, a pony can of Sprite that happened to be hiding in the pantry.

Ingredients
  • 1 1/2 C butter (Yes, I know. It’s a pound cake – it’s going to have butter. And the recipe says “softened” but you know butter wouldn’t soften in my house in January without a blowtorch, so melted works fine.)
  • 3 cups sugar – Put all the ingredients in bowls so you can pour them in while mixing.
  • 5  eggs – Really good ones from your friend’s chickens if possible.
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1/2 tsp lemon extract (although you can go nuts here. Orange? Anise?)
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • OPTIONAL If you’re not sure about your soda’s fizzy quotient, it is not cheating to add 1 tsp. baking powder.
  • 1 cup Sprite, 7-UP, Or Sierra Mist, or anything fizzy and sweet

Preheat oven to 340 degrees.

Dump the melted butter in a large bowl. Add the sugar, 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing after each addition. Add  extracts and mix well. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add soft drink, then mix together until combined.

Pour into a greased bundt pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, until the cake is browned on top and fairly firm.  This is a lot of batter, but has never overflowed my bundt pan – I do put a cookie sheet on the rack beneath just in case.  Remove cake from oven and invert pan until cake drops out.

Occasionally I add fruit to this recipe. Tonight’s version has dried strawberries for the yum.

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Hardy Ancestors – Mincemeat

Monday, December 28th, 2009

68 adams rdI grew up in this house. There were cows wandering the first floor when my parents bought it in 1955 shortly after I was born. My father had adventures and tetanus shots ripping off the decrepit front porch and flipping the huge old floorboards over to hide the damage from the livestock. The house was built in 1770 – or thereabouts and had been updated last around 1800. He did extensive renovations before my grandmother would allow my mother to move in with the new baby.

The Institute Cookbook’s recipe for mincemeat “has remained unchanged for quite some time”. The book dates from 1800 and the editor is prone to understatement so I imagine a cook in my childhood home might have made it the same way in 1770. My father told me once that his grandmother made mincemeat with woodchuck, but he too was prone to understatement and I would keep to the “lean beef” mentioned in the recipe, myself.

1 lb suet, 2 lbs lean beef, 1 quart chopped apple

1/4 C candied orange peel and 1/4 C candied lemon peel, 1/2 lb citron, 3 C seeded raisins and 1 C currants

Juice and grated rind of 1 lemon and one orange

1/2 C molasses, 1 C sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp allspice and cloves, 1 nutmeg, grated (about 1 tsp)

2 1/2 C sweet cider (as opposed to hard cider)

Let the meat simmer slowly in a covered kettle until tender (insert my father’s story about sampling the meat cooking on the back of the stove, finding it fairly lean and good, and then being told it was ‘chuck). Run the meat and then the suet through a meat chopper and mix well. Add the other ingredients, chopping the peels and citron before adding. Put in a stone (ceramic) crock and let stand several days to ripen. Bake in a plain or half puff paste double crust pie.

I should add that I’ve had vegetarian versions made with beets and dried apples instead of meat and suet – not the same, but not bad.

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Plum Duff

Friday, November 27th, 2009
plum duff

Normally I wouldn’t start a post off with a picture, but “Plum Duff” isn’t really going to tell you much all by itself. And the Wikipedia article will re-direct to “Spotted Dick” and then you’re REALLY going to need a picture. It’s a dessert, people. A lovely, delicious, traditional dessert created by people for whom the term “Spotted Dick” was a fond endearment.

For this recipe you’ll need a few specialty items. I always hate running across that in a recipe I perhaps haven’t read closely before starting out; “You’ll need a flugelhorn!”,  announces the author, brightly. “These days you can find one easily on Amazon!”.  So, advance warning, for this recipe you will need a pudding mold or basin with a lid or cover, a metal trivet to rest the mold on the bottom of a pot, either tall enough to enclose it, or close enough that a collar of aluminum foil will do the trick.

My Great Aunt Margaret’s Plum Duff

  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup melted vegetable shortening
  • 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  • 2 cups cooked prunes
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 tablespoons cold milk plum duff 1
  • Beat eggs well.
  • Dissolve brown sugar in hot, melted shortening and whisk in the eggs slowly, so they don’t cook.
  • Add cooked prunes that have been drained and mashed with fork*.
  • Sift flour and add. Dissolve soda in milk and add last.
  • Fill greased pudding mold 2/3 full, cover lightly and steam one hour over rack in large cooking pot.

    • * This used to be a very messy process – cutting the prunes with a sharp pair of sewing scissors, cooking and then mashing the results. Now we can throw the cooked, drained fruit in the cuisinart and have done with it.

    Now mix in the prunes, add the flour. . .

    plum duff 2

    And spoon the whole mess into the greased pudding mold. Now would be a good time to mention that the pudding is going to be a solid mass in the bottom of this mold after you’ve cooked it and allowed it to cool. It will look like it is solidly glued in there, but no – set the pan in very hot water for a few minutes and then invert over a plate. It should fall right out – if not feel free to repeat the process. It’s not like this stuff is fragile.

    plum duff 4To the left in this photo is my aluminum trivet, useful for keeping the mold off the bottom of the pot. It is stamped “1820 Cincinnati” on the bottom, so hey – an antique! I expect modern trivets would work just as well. Also, please ignore the Goya Black Bean Soup can. I’m not making anything from this product placement – the can was there for our supper of huevos rancheros later on that night.

    I didn’t think I had a photo of the pot with its aluminum collar, but here it is. Evidently I’d thought I’d blog my recipe for huevos rancheros, because there’s all the fixin’s, but thought the better of it. Everybody already has a favorite recipe for those.  But waaayyy in the back there you can see how to make your stew pot a steamer for your pudding mold.

    plum duff 5Steam the pudding at a low to moderate temperature for about an hour. You shouldn’t be able to hear it boiling madly, and check about half way through to see that the water level still comes close to 3/4 of the way up the mold.Add more hot (from the tap) water if you’re getting low. The temperature may drop below simmer for a minute but it’s not going to bother your Duff.

    Cool the pudding in the mold overnight in a cool place, then unmold it and decorate for the season. I used horehound, lavender and geranium because this is Thanksgiving and you can never tell when someone is going to eat the garnish – better to make it all edible.

    Now go check out all the interesting steamed dishes out there, like The Bitten Word’s Persimmon Cake (which they did w/o a pudding mold).

    2 large eggs
    1/2 cup melted vegetable shortening
    1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
    2 cups cooked prunes
    1 cup all-purpose flour
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    2 tablespoons cold milk
    1. Beat eggs well.
    2. Dissolve brown sugar in hot, melted shortening and add to eggs.
    3. Add cooked prunes that have been drained and mashed with fork.
    4. Sift flour and add. Dissolve soda in milk and add last.
    5. Fill greased pudding molds 2/3 full, cover lightly and steam one hour over rack in large cooking pot.
    6. Serve hot with Rum Sauce or whipped crea

    2 large eggs

    1/2 cup melted vegetable shortening

    1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

    2 cups cooked prunes

    1 cup all-purpose flour

    1 teaspoon baking soda

    2 tablespoons cold milk

    1. Beat eggs well.

    2. Dissolve brown sugar in hot, melted shortening and add to eggs.

    3. Add cooked prunes that have been drained and mashed with fork.

    4. Sift flour and add. Dissolve soda in milk and add last.

    5. Fill greased pudding molds 2/3 full, cover lightly and steam one hour over rack in large cooking pot.

    6. Serve hot with Rum Sauce or whipped cream.

    1. m.

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    Apple Brown Veronica

    Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

    Apple Brown Betty is a wonderful concoction that always involves bread crumbs; a deep-dish, homey dessert that involves bowls and spoons and oftimes a little vanilla ice cream. This weekend I wanted something more portable. I ended up with a hefty shortbread crust, a layer of very thin-sliced apples and the ubiquitous bread crumbs drizzled with butter – something that I could eat out of hand, wandering around the yard with a cup of tea. I explained to The Man that it was almost Apple Brown Betty, and he suggested that I name the new dessert after the other girl, hence, Veronica.

    This is a wonderful recipe if you have a food processor. Put the ingredients in and process, one after another, and don’t bother to clean it between times. I love this recipe.

    Apple Brown Veronica

    • 6 slices firm white sandwich bread (I use anything here – sesame baguettes, english muffins, dinner rolls, even cinnamon raisin bread.)

    Shortbread

    • 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter (Did I mention this is not a diet friendly recipe? Don’t skimp, and don’t substitute, or it won’t be Veronica.)
    • 2 cups all-purpose flour
    • 1 cup packed light brown sugar
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt

    Apple filling

    • 1 stick unsalted butter
    • 2 lb tart apples (4 large, seven small-to-middlin)
    • 1 cup granulated sugar
    • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
    • Spices – go nuts. Allspice, cloves, lemon rind, anise, cinnamon and five-spice powder – whatever.

    Preheat oven to 350°F.

    Grind bread to fine crumbs in a food processor (and don’t bother cleaning it). Spread in a shallow baking pan and toast in middle of oven, stirring once, until golden, about 5 minutes. Leave oven on.

    Cut butter into 1/2-inch pieces, then pulse in a food processor with flour, brown sugar, and salt until it begins to form small lumps. Sprinkle base into a 13- by 9-inch baking pan and press evenly onto bottom. Bake in middle of oven until golden, about 20 minutes.

    One of the things I love about this recipe is that it makes a good, thick layer – no desperately trying to push crumbs into the corners of the pan while the middle gets holes.

    While the shortbread is baking melt butter and keep warm. Peel, quarter, and core apples and thinly slice with the slicer attachment in the food processor. Stir together sugar, spices and flour in a small bowl.

    Sprinkle half of sugar mixture over hot shortbread, then top with apples and sprinkle with remaining sugar mixture. Top with bread crumbs and drizzle butter over them.

    Bake, pressing down on filling with a metal spatula halfway through baking, until apples are very tender and bread crumbs are golden, 50 minutes to 1 hour total. Cool 20 minutes in pan on a rack. It’s important to reach in the oven and press the mixture down – the bread crumbs and butter become one with the apple mixture and don’t flake off when you’re eating one outside, over the winter turnips.

    apple brown veronica

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