Last Call for Honey Crisp

These are my all-time favourite apples. Even if you don't rank and re-rank apples every time you try a new variety, chances are, you'll still like this one. Most people I give a Honey Crisp to, love it. The people who don't, are Tony, and one other person both of whom prefer tart apples. In both cases Granny Smith apples are their favourite. Granny Smith used to rank as top apple for me too, and it's still in the top five... but the Honey Crisp is just so good.

The Honey Crisp is from the Annapolis Valley. The average Honey Crisp is large, and the perfect shape for the palm of your hand. It's crispy, and yellow fleshed. The flavour is like a light honey- sweet but not sugary or cloying. It's not as sweet as the Pink Lady, which I sometimes find overpowering. There is a good ratio of juice to apple, moist but not enough juice to run down your arm.

Anyway, the last of the Honey Crisps can still be sought out if you're quick about it. I bought extra this weekend because I know it's the last of them. Some local vendors started selling out two weeks ago, so I was lucky I was able to get a last cache at the market. If you have a chance, pick some up. Even if you're not an apple eater, I bet you could sell them to the desperate, or use them for bribes.

Red Pears

I love these red pears. In part because they're only here fleetingly. I have to be quick to spot them, buy them and eat them. I find they have about three or four days of average firmness, and then suddenly, without any signs, they are soft, with a deep sweet smell and about to go bad. And I eat them all in a day and say I'm only ever going to buy one at a time in the future. But the basket of smooth red curves is too hard to resist and I buy the basket again, if I can.

Yeasted Apricot Cake

I made this for an office baby shower coffee break recently. It was potluck, for 10am. These things never attract 100% food contribution, but I don’t think anyone cares. There are always people who like the excuse to bake, some who will always pick up from their favourite baker/grocer and others who will always forget or overlook it. Organizers never expect everyone will bring something, thankfully, or there would be too much food.

At my work place at least, there’s also an interesting superficial attempt to be healthy, at least in the planning process. Some people bring ginger cookies as a healthier option over the doughnuts, for example. This is one of my favourite ‘breakfast’ cakes because it’s sweet and dessert like, but makes a nice pretence of still appearing appropriate enough to maintain self-respect.

The cool thing about this recipe is the way it’s cut and folded. It’s just a basic yeasted sweet dough recipe, from Martha Stewart’s Christmas Cookbook. In her recipe, she uses a poppy seed filling, but I usually substitute cinnamon roll filling (butter, brown sugar, cinnamon), chocolate, or for this trial, an apricot filling. It looks incredible and fancy and complicated, but it’s so easy. Here’s my edited version.
Apricot Filling
3 C fresh apricots, halved and pitted (about 9-10)
Juice of 1 lemon
2/3 C sugar
½ C water

Put everything into a sauce pan. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 20 mins or until thick and glossy. Leftovers are good on toast!

Sweet Dough
1 1/2 C warm milk
½ C butter, melted
1 Tbsp salt
½ C sugar
2 large eggs
2 Tbsp yeast
6-10 C all purpose flour (depending on moisture)
½ C brown sugar

1. Combine milk, water, 2 Tbsp melted butter, and eggs. Sprinkle yeast over the mixture and allow to become foamy, about 15 mins.
2. Gradually add flour. Mix well until combined into a sticky dough.
3. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead until it becomes a ball. Place in a large buttered bowl and allow to rise about 1.5 hrs.
4. Butter two nine-inch tube pans, or muffin pans.
5. Punch down the dough and turn onto a floured surface. Roll out to a rectangle about 14 x 17 inches, and 1.5 cm thick.
6. Brush a third of the remaining butter over the middle third of the rectangle. Spread with about ¼ C apricot filling. Do not overfill, or you’ll have apricot squeezing out the ends. Fold the bottom third of the dough over the middle. Fold the top third over the middle. It should be like folding a business letter to fit into a #10 envelope. You should now have a rectangle of three layers of dough.
7. Rotate 90 degrees and roll out again. Repeat until you have filled and folded a total of three times. Let rest 15 minutes.
8. With a sharp knife, cut a 1 inch slice from one short end of the dough. Pick up the slice, twist it and place in the bottom of the pan. Repeat, filling each pan.
9. Alternately, place a single twist into a muffin pan to create mini buns.
10. Cover and allow to rise about 45 min or until increased in bulk.
11. Bake at 375F until golden brown, 20-30 minutes. Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes and flip onto a serving dish. You do not want to let it cool completely or the sticky apricots could make it difficult to remove.
I sprinkled brown sugar in the bottom of my pan, hoping to create a sweet stickiness.

I left in the oven about 5 minutes too long and was horrified when I turned it out. It doesn't look very nice, but it tasted good. It didn't taste burnt, but gave it a thin candied crust. I don't think I'll aim for that very often, but seem people love that sort of thing.

Blackberries

It's blackberry season, and they're delicious this year! It's the berry that seems to receive the least attention (I suppose currents receive less than blackberries, but that's the thing- most people don't even consider them in the local berry pageant). They're around for only a short period of time, so they're easy to miss. Also, they don't seem to be popularly cultivated so you have to be willing to pick your own, or pay an exhorbitant amount to buy them picked.

I purchased these at $2.99 per pint in the City Market this morning. I also picked blackberries last weekend at Rockwood Park for free. The blackberry bushes are right off the main paths of the park and are showing off a lot of sweet fruit. I ate all of mine before I considered taking a picture. They were delicious.

I told Tony I was simply going to gobble these up fresh, but on further consideration, I'm thinking of making them into muffins. He'll have a better chance of getting some.

Sneaky Cake

This one is being posted by request, as it is required shortly for a birthday. It’s from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte and quickly went into regular rotation after its introductory baking. My eldest brother was staying with me at the time and re-named this cake from Hesser’s “Chocolate Dump-It Cake” to “Sneaky Cake” on the basis that you think you don’t want any cake, but then you have a piece to be polite, and then you want all of it. I think that issue comes up with lots of different foods, not just this cake. I don’t really feel Hesser’s title does the cake justice, neither do I feel that you really do get to just dump everything in- there are a few basic cake techniques involved.

There are three things about this cake that make it so nice: it’s easy, it’s moist, and the topping or ‘frosting’ is just melted chocolate chips and sour cream. It tastes incredible, and should probably be marketed by the dairy companies. It’s the topping that actually snuck up on my unsuspecting brother. You can also get away with relatively standard quality chocolate with this cake, it still comes out amazing.

Here is Hesser’s recipe. The only adjustment I’ve made is to reduce the amount of topping to 1 C each of sour cream and chocolate chips. I find it is quite enough for my tube pan cake, but you might want to make more.

Cake
2 C sugar
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
½ C butter, plus more for greasing the pan
1 C water
2 C all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 C milk
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Topping
1 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 C sour cream, at room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Grease and flour a 9 inch tube pan.
3. Put the sugar, unsweetened chocolate, butter and water into a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir occasionally until everything is melted and blended. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, 15-20 minutes.
4. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
5. In a small bowl, stir milk and vinegar together.
6. Whisk eggs and milk mixture into the chocolate mixture.
7. Whisk in the dry ingredients in several additions.
8. When smooth, add the vanilla and whisk.
9. Pour the batter into the prepare pan. Bake about 30 minutes or until the cake bounces back when touched.
10. Allow the cake to cool for about 10 minutes and turn out onto a rack. Let cool completely.
11. Melt the chocolate chips. Let cool to room temperature. Hesser warns that the sour cream and melted chocolate chips must be at the same temperature, otherwise the topping will come out lumpy and grainy. Test it by stirring a little together, if it mixes smoothly, it’s ready. Combine the rest of the chocolate and sour cream together.
12. When the cake is cool, frost with the chocolate topping.

Saturn Peaches

The Saturn, or Donut, peaches have been out for about two weeks, and I've been happily eating lots of them. I enjoy the Ontario peaches, also out right now, but the Saturns are a little different. The flesh is white and the flavour is creamy sweet. They're also flat, which makes them very easy to eat, especially in public. You can eat around the edges, taking a bite straight to the pit. That makes it easy to suck up the juice as you bite, and you don't have to worry about juice going in all directions, including down your arm, as it does with regular peaches. So I've been taking these to work, and I can eat them at my desk without making a mess of everything.

Blueberry Crisp with Buttermilk Ice Cream

It’s blueberry season, and I’m taking my own advice and eating heartily. When blueberries seemed to suddenly become recognized for their incredible nutritious properties and thus very popular, I was selfishly worried that world demand would increase, prices would go up and I wouldn’t have as many blueberries as I wanted. Luckily, blueberries are an important crop for New Brunswick farmers, I can still afford to buy them (I picked up a quart for $3.99 this morning at Pete’s Frootique), and in general, I still get to eat as many blueberries as I want.

One of the ways I do this is to pick my own. My sister and I always had a blueberry picking outing every August when she was still in town, and I’ve kept on going on my own since she’s left. Rockwood Park, in the centre of the city has blueberries and rock cranberries growing wildly and abundantly throughout the park lands. Anyone can visit the park for free, for swimming, hiking, picnicking, etc. And I go for the berries.

With three hours of picking, I was able to gain about 4 litres of blueberries- enough for this crisp, snacking, and for bowls of berries with milk, sprinkled with sugar (and old childhood bedtime snack).

The first layer of crisp I put on the berries was overtaken by the berries, so I took it out of the oven and added some more crisp. It didn’t feel like too much crisp, in the end (is there such a thing as too much crisp?), so I guess it just cooked right into the berries. As a result, I’m recommending a 1.5:1 of berries to crisp. I cooked this one at more like 3:1, but it actually turned out great. Instead of cream, I served it with buttermilk ice cream, which was heavenly rich (but I reminded myself that the buttermilk is fat free, of course).
Blueberry Crisp
1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Use as many as is required to cover the bottom of your baking dish at about 2 inches deep.
3. Make sure the stems, leaves and bugs are removed from your berries. Rinse them in water, and allow them to mostly dry.
4. Lightly coat the berries in flour, and put into your baking dish.
5. Mix even amounts of sugar, flour, and butter (approximately ½ C each of flour and sugar, and 6 Tbsp of butter) in a mixing bowl until crumbly, like pie pastry. Add more of any of the three ingredients to gain the appropriate texture. Add to the top of the blueberries.
6. Bake covered for about 30 minutes. Uncover and continue baking for 15-20 minutes or until the crisp is lightly golden.

I found the buttermilk ice cream recipe online at Epicurious. I made it according to the recipe, and it was fabulous.

Five Star Strawberry Ice Cream

This must be my favourite ice cream. The primary qualification for that title is that we just finished it, and I’m thinking about it a lot. It was soooo good. And now the strawberry season is already passed again, and I’ll be thinking of it for another 11 months.

I should pull myself together and heartily eat local raspberries and blueberries. I’m planning some raspberry picking this weekend. And I noticed the local high bush blueberries used as landscaping on campus are ripe and tasty. I’ve been snacking as I wander around between buildings.

This recipe is from Cooking.com and is the primary reason I still tarry through their website on occasion. When I first received my Cuisinart ice cream maker (a gift from my wonderful sibs), I had only the instruction manual’s recipes. Which turned out to be not so helpful, for me at least. My first ice cream success was a Company’s Coming recipe which used processed pudding mix powder. For a long time, that was the only one I made. This strawberry ice cream recipe was my first ‘from scratch’ ice cream success which may inspire extra loyalty in my heart, but I honestly believe it deserves all accolades anyway. I suppose the berries themselves deserve some of the credit too.

Strawberry Ice Cream
1 C whipping cream
½ C half and half
2/3 C sugar
5 large egg yolks
½ C corn syrup
3 C fresh strawberries, hulled

1. Combine cream and half and half in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer.
2. Whisk yolks, sugar, and corn syrup in a medium bowl.
3. Gradually stir warm cream mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking all the time.
4. Return mixture to the saucepan.
5. Stir over medium low heat until the custard thickens and coats the back of a wooden spoon, about 10 minutes.
6. Transfer custard to a bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight or until chilled.
7. Puree strawberries. Gradually blend into the custard.
8. Strain the custard through a fine meshed sieve.
9. Process in an ice cream maker according to your models’instructions.

Russian Tea Cakes

The cookies I’ve been using for my profile picture were made at Christmas with crab apple jam, compliments of my friend Kara, whose mum made the jam. The jam was tasty, but even better it captured the light wonderfully and took on jewel tones.

I made Russian Tea Cookies again, with butter that needed to be used up and jam from the condiments population I’m trying to decrease. In this picture is a fig compote I picked up at Fox Hill Cheese House in Port Williams, NS last fall which is quite nice with the buttery flavour. Substituting almond extract for the vanilla and using marmalade is also quite tasty.

These are basically a shortbread cookie, but the texture is just a bit more cakey than a Scotch shortbread. I have no idea where the recipe came from. It’s just been floating around until it went into regular rotation from its Christmas run. There’s a probably hundreds of variations on this cookie, but I wonder how many are actually from Russian households? I just did a quick google on them, and apparently Russian Tea Cakes and other members of the shortbread cookie family originated in medieval Arab culture.

Russian Tea Cakes
1 C butter
½ C confectioner’s sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 C all purpose flour
¼ tsp salt
¼ C jelly (jelly seems to hold form better, the jam looks like a dried up puddle leaving a residue behind on the banks of the cookie).

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Add the extract and mix well.
3. Add the flour and salt and mix into a moist dough.
4. Form into one inch balls.
5. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and indent the cookie with the back of a spoon. If you find your spoon has flattened the cookie nicely, but has no support for jelly, try using a ¼ teaspoon measure, or your thumb.
6. Fill with about ¼ - ½ tsp jelly.
7. Bake for 15 mins at 325F.

Traditionally, I think you’re supposed to sprinkle them with confectioner’s sugar in advance of serving. I think they look pretty enough without so I usually eat as is.

Pineapple Coconut Cake

I love this cake. It’s simple, delicious, and uses stuff I usually have hanging around. I feel like it is perfectly plausible eat it this cake for dessert or breakfast, because it’s coconut and pineapple- perfectly healthy. The colour scheme reminds me of daisies, and it gets eaten up rather quickly.

I’ve tried it with other fruits, with mixed berries or peaches going over best. I’ve even done it with rhubarb, and frankly- it was tasty, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the best framework to show off rhubarb. Toasted almonds are a nice substitute for the coconut too. I haven’t done it in muffin or mini cake pans, but I think it would make a wonderful single serving dessert, served with fresh fruit and drizzled glaze. We generally don’t use the glaze, but now consulting the recipe, I see it’s actually called “Sticky Pineapple Cake” but we’ve been calling it Pineapple Coconut Cake. Hm, it just doesn’t feel sticky if you omit the glaze.

This is from Michelle Cranston’s Fresh which was a gift from Tony’s brother and sister-in-law (thanks Tim and Nerida!). The pictures are beautiful, and the recipes are focused on eating fresh, in season food, put together with a minimum of fuss. It’s an Aussie book- which means their seasons and fresh food do not quite coincide with ours, so it feels slightly exotic without being actually foreign.

Sticky Pineapple Cake
1 ½ C sugar
2 C coconut, lightly toasted
1 C coconut milk
1 ½ C diced fresh pineapple
4 eggs
2 C all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder

Glaze
1 tbsp butter, softened
1 C icing
2 Tbsp fresh lime juice (orange or lemon is also good)

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Line an 10 inch spring form pan with parchment paper (I usually scoff at parchment paper, but I sincerely recommend it for this cake batter in a spring form pan).
3. Put the sugar, coconut, coconut milk, pineapple and eggs into a bowl and stir until combined.
4. Combine flour and baking powder, and fold into the wet mixture.
Pour into the prepare pan.
5. Bake for 1 hour, or until lightly golden and the middle is cooked through.
6. Beat the butter and icing sugar together until thoroughly combined. Add the lime juice slowly, mixing at the same time to retain smoothness. Pour over the warm cake.

Smoothie!

I forgot about smoothies. I suddenly remembered them this weekend, while putting away fruits and vegetables. At one time, I used to drink them all the time for breakfast. If I was short on time, I simply dumped it into a travel mug and went on my way. People thought it was coffee in there, so I never came off as too healthy.

This was my Saturday lunch smoothie: half a banana, half a cup of fresh local strawberries, a quarter cup of orange juice, half a cup of milk, and a teaspoon of honey. I took out local high bush blueberries for it also, but I ate them all before I actually got around to adding them.

Isn't it pretty?

Honey & Spice Ice Cream

This ice cream tastes like Christmas. I love my honey ice cream and was curious about this variation. I am enjoying it, but with every bite I imagine evergreen wreaths decorated with red bows and cinnamon sticks, oranges hung with cloves and gingerbread men. This would be excellent with gingerbread cake, or even a tart apple pie. I am going to have to eat the rest of it with ‘summer’ food in order to brand it in my head for warm weather.

I thought it would show small brown specks from the spices, but there was hardly any. It looks suspiciously white, which adds to the surprise of the strong flavour. It is sweet, and both the cloves and cinnamon are each discernible.

Honey & Spice Ice Cream
2 C milk
20 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
1 whole egg
3 egg yolks
¼ C sugar
¼ honey
1 ¾ C heavy cream

1. Pour the milk into a medium saucepan with the cloves and cinnamon sticks. Heat to simmering. Remove from heat and allow to infuse for at least an hour, or overnight.
2. Beat the egg, egg yolks and sugar and beat until frothy and thick.
3. Heat the spiced milk to the scalding point.
4. Beating the eggs all the time, pour the hot milk into the eggs.
5. Pour the egg and milk mixture back into the saucepan. Cook over medium low heat, stirring all the time. When the custard coats the spoon, remove from the heat. Stir in the honey. Allow to cool.
6. When cool, strain the custard through a very fine sieve, removing the spices.
7. Cover and refrigerate overnight or until thoroughly chilled.
8. Stir in the whipping cream. Churn in an ice cream maker.

Strawberry Shortcake

It’s finally warming up. There was a final last snow hurrah which in the interior of the province which missed us (we had drizzle), and the air is beginning to feel warm. I’ve never been interested in sun tanning, but this year, I can kind of understand it.

To celebrate our newfound spring, I splurged and purchased flown in strawberries to use up the leftover biscuits as strawberry shortcake. Somehow, it just feels like the perfect dessert to express exuberance. It’s probably because the local strawberry season is so short, we all eat as many as we can get, and strawberry shortcake is the most elegant, pretty and perfectly satisfying strawberry dessert there is. And everyone has their own way of serving it. I have witnessed arguments over the best strawberry shortcake version.

Up to now, I have been serving it with homemade strawberry sauce, whipped cream, decorative fresh berries, and cream biscuits. The cream biscuits were a recipe from my sister which she found in a Pillsbury cookbook. It’s simply Bisquick mix, and enough heavy cream to make a dough. Roll them out, cut into circles, and bake at 350F until puffed and golden. They really are excellent biscuits.

Now, I think I’ll serve my strawberry shortcake with the buttermilk biscuits. They are the perfect texture, and the soft flavour is great with the sweet berries. They don’t absorb the juice too quickly either.

Banana Bread

My father recently departed, visiting from the Caribbean. He doesn’t make it North very often anymore. In advance of his visit, we stocked up on the foods he likes: hard pears, red delicious apples, cantaloupe, sardines, hot chili peppers, Asian noodles, etc. And the thing he wanted to eat most that he couldn’t get at home in the Dominican? Fish balls, vacuum packed in plastic, purchased at local Chinese markets. He was very excited, and kept saying “Remember how much I like them? Remember how often I used to eat them?” Of course I didn’t. Frankly, I was a little surprised at their existence, never having noticed them myself in the same Chinese markets. He seemed disappointed that I lacked his enthusiasm and kept declining his offer to share (more for him, I reasoned…).

One of the other foods he likes and doesn’t get in the Dominican, is banana bread. Ovens are rare in the Caribbean (and who would want one in that heat?), and really, baking was never my father’s thing. The food he was really hoping for when he visited was apple pie and banana bread- the two things I completely forgot about.

My brother managed to round up nine over ripe bananas hanging around his apartment, and I made banana bread for all. I couldn’t imagine how we would get through three loaves- but we did. And my brother’s roommate didn’t even get any (he contributed many of the bananas). My dad took most of a loaf with him.

This is my mother’s recipe. I used to think banana bread was a dead easy recipe that everyone could and did make. Perhaps because of its popularity, many people do try to make banana bread, but it seems I hear of many unsolved issues related to banana bread baking. The one I hear most frequently is bread that doesn’t rise. My mother’s recipe uses both baking soda and baking powder, which is unusual among those who object to the lack of height in their own banana breads. So here is my mother’s, tall, moist, and good for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dessert.

Banana Bread
½ C vegetable oil
1 C sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3 bananas, mashed
2 C all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
3 Tbsp milk
½ tsp vanilla
½ C chopped walnuts or chocolate chips, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Beat vegetable oil and suagr together.
3. Add eggs and bananas, and mix well.
4. Sift together dry ingredients.
5. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk and vanilla.
6. Pour into a greased loaf pan.
7. Bake for 1 hour.

Raspberry Custard Tart

This is tonight's dessert. While the rest of the meal will be largely experimental, I've made this tart many times before, and it's always a hit. My brother and a friend are coming to dinner, and this is one of his favourite desserts. It's from the Joy of Cooking, and is listed as Open Faced Peach Pie, but I noticed a while ago that the custard works wonderfully with raspberries. To be fair, it really is good with peaches (fresh or canned) and mangoes, but I love the raspberries best. As it's still (a very cold) April here, I used frozen raspberries I keep on hand.

I'm saying 'custard' but the filling that goes with raspberries isn't like an egg and milk custard baked in the oven. It's creamy, and rich, almost like a pudding, but with more of a truffle texture, with a vanilla flavour.

This one takes just a bit more time than the plum tart I posted earlier, but is quick and simple. And you can use almost any fruit on hand, so it's easy for unplanned desserts. You could use any dessert crust for this, but I use my regular pie pastry recipe. Here is the filling recipe.

Raspberry Custard Tart

Pie pastry for one 9 inch tart pan (or pie pan)

1 egg

3/4 C sugar

6 Tbsp melted butter

1/3 C all purpose flour

1 tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

1 C raspberries, or enough fruit to cover the bottom of the pan

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. Line the tart pan with the pie pastry. Trim the edges.

3. Arrange the fruit evenly in the lined pan.

4. Whisk together all remaining ingredients.

5. Strategically 'pour' or drop the batter over the berries evenly. It will seem like there's not enough. Just make sure it's even, and it will fill itself in.

6. Cook in the oven for 10 minutes. Than turn the heat down to 350F and cook for 55 minutes more, until the top is brown, bubbly and crusty.

7. Serve warm, cold or at room temperature with raspberry sauce and/or whipped cream.

Plum Tart

This was my offering at the in-laws last weekend for Easter dinner. The original recipe is from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte (I have also posted her excellent Almond Cake) and uses peaches. I’m not sure I would have thought to try this recipe in the first place- my unfortunate attitude would have been: Fruit tart? Too easy. My friend Rachelle tried it and enthused so much about it that I hard to try it too.

It is very easy, and quick. I can pull it together after work, along with a real meal, in time to be eaten at a reasonable dinner hour. It’s flexible enough to substitute with seasonal fruit. I’ve used fresh peaches, and canned peaches (so good), and fresh mangoes. Hesser also recommends pears, apricots and apples. The crust is amazing, and probably the best part: the almond flavouring sets off most fruits, and it has the texture of lots of butter, but it uses olive oil instead. This is easy to eat without feeling too guilty.

Here’s what I did for the plum tart in the picture:

Plum Tart
Preheat oven to 425F.

Tart Casing
1 ½ C all purpose flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
½ C olive oil
2 Tbsp milk
½ tsp almond extract

1. Sift together the flour, salt and sugar.
2. Whisk together the oil, milk and extract.
3. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry in a circular motion, and mix with fork or fingers until just moistened. (Hesser does all of this right in an 8 inch square pan she uses for the tart).
4. Move the dough to a 9 inch tart pan. Use your fingers to firmly pat out the dough to cover the bottom of the pan and the sides. Trim the edges.

Filling
5 plums: 2 black sweet plums with red flesh, and 3 sweet plums with a yellow flesh; washed and sliced, leaving the skins on.
1/3 C sugar
1 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp butter

5. Arrange the plum slices in the tart, arranging them so that they overlap slightly and cover the whole tart.
6. Using your fingers, pinch together the sugar, flour and butter, until crumbly. Sprinkle over the plums.
7. Bake for 30min, until the crust is browned.
8. Serve warm, cold or at room temperature, with whipped cream or drizzled cream.

Lemon Curd Bars

It’s not feeling very spring like here in the Maritimes. Snow moved in on Thursday night, and it’s been cold, snowy, and lightly icy since. This isn’t usually an area for outdoor egg hunts anyway, but this Easter is a little reminder that we Maritimers can still be smug about our ‘wild weather’ (wink, wink).

So I was looking for a little edible sunshine last night and made lemon bars for the first time. I hear they are quite common in this area- they are talked about a lot, but I rarely get to eat them. I think it’s because they’re consumed at home before they can get offered around.

This is the recipe from the Joy of Cooking, the “Cockaigne” version, meaning it’s the personal family recipe of the Rimbauer-Becker family who edits the Joy of Cooking. An advantage of this recipe is that the curd cooks in the oven, instead of having to stir it on top of the stove and then layer it on, as I have seen in other squares.I was minorly appalled to see it called for 3 cups of sugar, but I just reminded myself there is a whole cup of lemon juice involved. And it does make a lot of squares. And they’re tasty.

In the picture, it looks like there might be confectioner’s sugar on top. It’s actually just a lot of little bubbles that cooked into the top. It looks very pretty, and means I didn’t feel compelled to sprinkle even more sugar on top.

Lemon Curd Bars
Base
1 1/2 C flour
¼ C confectioner’s sugar
12 Tbsp cold butter

Preheat oven to 325F
Line a 13x9 inch pan with parchment paper (not necessary, but it makes the whole thing easier, and helps to prevent leakage).
Sift together the flour and confectioner’s sugar.
With two knives, pastry blender, or your fingers, cut the butter into the flour, until crumbly.
Press the dough into the pan evenly.
Bake for 20 min or until very lightly golden brown.

Filling
6 large eggs
3 C sugar
Grated zest of one lemon
1 C plus 2 Tbsp lemon juice (about 8 lemons)
1/C flour

Reduce temperature to 300F.
Whip the eggs with a whisk.
Whisk in the sugar.
Whisk in the zest and lemon juice.
Lightly sift the flour on top of the mixture, whisking it into the egg mixture to prevent lumps.
Pour it on to the baked crust.
Bake for 35 min. or until set.

Favourite Buttermilk Muffins

Before my sister left for school four years ago, we took a sunny afternoon to rummage through her recipe collection. She was leaving the continent and had to choose carefully what she brought with her, and what she could put in storage. Her cookbooks would go into storage- except for the ones I lobbied to borrow and the select two or three she brought with her. That left binders and piles of recipes clipped from magazines, shiny store printed recipe cards, handwritten recipes on notepaper, and recipes bubble or laser printed on copy paper or loose leaf. The idea was to discard unwanted, unused, impractical recipes, and keep the ones that she loved, used and still wanted to try. There was also a pile marked for me. I was staying put, and had plenty of space for more great recipes.

That’s when I inherited my sister’s computer print-out on Hilroy paper of the Magnolia Bakery Blueberry Muffin recipe. This is one of my sister’s favourite bakeries. She didn’t need the recipe anymore, she had the hardcover cookbook (going into storage).

Tony doesn’t like blueberries, so I have discovered other wonderful combinations. Cranberries or raspberries are the custom, but I recently discovered that apple butter swirls are quite good too. This recipe is quite sensitive to over mixing, so I didn’t really swirl the apple butter- I just alternated spoons of batter with smaller spoons of appled butter. As the muffin rose, it became a nice swirl.

I make them in extra large muffin tins, so that one works as a light lunch or a big breakfast. Here’s the original Magnolia Bakery recipe on loose leaf:

Magnolia Bakery Blueberry Muffins
3 C flour
¾ C sugar
1 ½ Tbsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
2 large eggs, beaten
1 ½ C buttermilk
6 Tbsp unsalted butter softened (I usually just melt it)
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
1 ½ C blueberries, lightly coated with flour
1 Tbsp sugar for sprinkling (I don’t bother)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Grease 12 cup muffin pan.
3. Mix together dry ingredients, making a well in the centre.
4. Combine liquid ingredients.
5. Pour the liquid ingredients into the well, folding just to combine. Fold in berries, zest, nuts, etc.
6. Fill the muffin cups. If using, sprinkle with remaining sugar.
7. Bake for 20-22 min. (I do 26 min.) until lightly golden.

Cranberry Pie

Isn’t this pretty? It’s the colour – cranberry. The flavour isn’t bad either. This is another selection from the Taste of Acadie collection- straightforward, good, basic and hearty.

I’ve used cranberries in pies (mixed with other berries, mixed with apples), in crisps, cookies, squares, cakes and muffins, but for some reason it had never occurred to me to make them the centerpiece primary flavour. I would have thought they would be too tart, but like most fruit pies, there is enough sugar in this one to overcome any tartness.

The recipe did not call for a pie size, so I used my standard 12 inch pie plate. I recommend using a 9 inch pie plate. Better yet, this filling would be excellent in tarts or mini-tarts. I served it with whipped cream, but you could easily put a lattice or ‘crisp’ top on it, or decorate with fresh fruit or custard or creme fraiche. It was easy to eat: not too sweet or tart.

Tarte aux pommes de pre
(Cranberry Pie)
2 C cranberries
¼ C water
¾ C plus 2 Tbsp sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 Tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 pie crust, uncooked

1. Bake the pie crust at 400F for 10min. Allow to cool.
2. Meanwhile, put the cranberries in a large pot with the water and sugar. Bring the water to a boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. Allow the mixture to cool.
3. Add the beaten egg, butter and vanilla and mix well.
4. Fill the pie crust with the cranberries. Cover with a lattice crust, if desired.
5. Return the pie to a 350F oven for another 35-40min.
6. Serve warm or chilled.

Kipferl

Well, the Christmas baking splurge is in full swing now. Part of the fun of Christmas is that it's a set deadline. Sure, sure, there's visiting and gift giving afterwards, and still plenty of time to bring out your test goodies between the 26th and New Year's- but Christmas Eve is the goal. Although I've still got a lot to do, I think I'm going to be OK with plenty of cookies for everyone. Here's one of my favourites.

I've been making kipferl for... a long time now. It's just another variation of a butter cookie, also known as almond crescents. My mother used to make them when I was very small and I copied the recipe form one of her much used notebooks. I started making them because I needed numerous inexpensive Christmas gifts. Gradually, over time, I became knowm for them and people would specifically ask for kipferl for Christmas. A few years ago, I stopped making them in large quantities. I was bored and wanted to make other cookies. But they are good, and I am lured back. Their shape is haunting, their taste is simple and rich, and they're easy. My sister dips hers in chocolate, and some people serve them plain. I think confectioner's sugar is the prettiest, reminiscent of snow (which we don't have), soft and white.

Kipferl
1/2 C butter
1/2 C ground almonds
1/4 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 C all purpose flour
2 Tbsp cornstarch

1. Cream butter, sugar and almonds
2. Add flour and cornstarch. Mix well.
3. Shape into approximately 1 inch long crescent shapes. I form a log, squash it, and turn the edges.
4. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350F for 10 min.
5. Allow to cool. Dip in chocolate, roll in cornstarch or eat plain.