Category Archives: recipes

baking, recipes

Dessert in my favorite shade of blue

On Saturday we stopped by Rockford’s grandmother’s house to pick some blueberries. His grandfather, Pop, had the greenest of green thumbs, and the blueberry bushes he planted when they moved into their “new” house some 12 years ago have been magnificently productive. Pete puts at least as many blueberries in his mouth as he does in his bucket; Poppy, not surprisingly, doesn’t eat a single berry from her harvest.

“I don’t like eating them,” she says. “I just like the festivity of picking them.”

Rockford and the kids picked probably 2 quarts of blueberries, and last night we turned some of them into a Blueberry Upside-Down Cake.

Blueberry Upside-Down Cake

adapted from “The Best Recipe“

Topping
4 tablespoons butter, plus more for cake pan
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 1/2 cups blueberries

Cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs, separated
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup milk

For the topping: Butter bottom and sides of 9×3-inch round cake pan. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in medium saucepan over medium heat; add brown sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture is foamy and pale, 3 to 4 minutes. Pour mixture into prepared cake pan; swirl pan to distribute evenly. Distribute blueberries evenly over topping; set aside.

For the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk flour, baking powder, cornmeal and salt together in medium bowl; set aside. Cream butter and sugar in large bowl. Gradually add 1 cup sugar; continue beating until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in yolks and vanilla. Reduce heat to low and add dry mixture and milk, alternating in three or four batches, until batter is just smooth.

Beat egg whites in a large bowl at low speed until frothy. Increase speed to medium-high and beat to soft peaks. Add cream of tartar and continue to beat to stiff peaks. Fold a quarter of the beaten egg whites into the batter with a large rubber spatula. Fold in remaining whites until no white streaks remain. Gently pour batter into pan and spread over blueberries. Bake until top is golden and toothpick inserted into cake center comes out clean, 65 to 70 minutes.

Rest cake on rack for 2 minutes. Slide a paring knife around the edge of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Place a serving platter over the pan and hold tightly, then invert the cake onto the platter. Carefully remove the cake pan.

A note about the order of things

I only have a stand mixer, and I only have one bowl for it. This means I have to be a little creative about the batter and the egg whites. I get everything I need for the batter lined up, then I beat the egg whites, put them in another bowl and wipe the bowl down so I can use it to mix up the rest of the batter.

I am considering getting a second bowl for the stand mixer.

Pop gave us a few sticks (or sproutlings or cuttings or whatever you call them) from his blueberry bushes after we bought the house, and I so want them to thrive. I do not have the greenest of green thumbs, though, not by a long shot. So for now we will continue enjoying the bounty of Mom & Pop’s blueberry bushes, and I will keep coddling the sproutlings for as long as they need to be coddled.

recipes

Thank me later

You should make this. Right now. No, really.

Southern Living’s Lemon Icebox Pie Ice Cream

3 to 4 lemons
2 cups half-and-half
14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup coarsely crushed graham crackers

Grate zest from lemons to equal 1 tablespoon. Cut lemons in half; squeeze juice from lemons into a measuring cup to equal 1/2 cup.

Whisk together half-and-half, sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice. Pour mixture into the freezer container of your ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions. Stir in graham cracker crumbs and lemon zest; transfer to an airtight container. Freeze two hours before serving.

recipes

How to make the season’s saddest cookie

1 Comment

Church windows cookies are fun to make, regardless of the outcome.
One would think that Church Window Cookies would be very, very difficult to mess up. There are only five ingredients in it, after all, and pretty much the only thing you have to do is melt and stir.

And yet.

Let me tell you a few good ways to do it wrong.

First, make sure you don’t buy the right amount of ingredients. Next, pay no attention to that fact. Proceed with the recipe as written, using too much butter for the amount of everything else in the recipe. This will ensure that your cookies do not have the right consistency.

Second, get distracted while the butter and chocolate is melting. It’s best if you can walk away and not notice that the chocolate and butter are burning slightly in the pot. This will ensure that your chocolate is a little gritty and that the pot is just that much tougher to clean.

Third, forget to add the vanilla. Easy to do, as there are a whopping five ingredients to this cookie.

Fortunately, it’s hard for chocolate and marshmallows to taste bad. They can be ugly easily enough, as we have shown today. But they are almost always edible.

Church Window Cookies
1/2 cup butter
16-ounce package milk chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
16-ounce package colored miniature marshmallows
2 cups flaked coconut

Melt the butter and chocolate chips in a heavy saucepan over medium heat; mix until smooth and creamy. Remove from heat, and stir in the vanilla and the marshmallows. Scatter about half of the coconut onto a large baking sheet. Form the chocolate mixture into two logs on top of the coconut. Use the remaining coconut to coat the logs. Refrigerate until the logs are firm, about 1 hour. Cut logs into 3/4-inch slices.