Cherry Bars and Cherry Blossoms

This just in: while cherry blossoms may have been in season for the last two weeks, cherries were not. I had the brilliant (but probably not so novel) idea to do a cherry dessert in the spirit of the Cherry Blossom Festival that has been going on here in DC. I was so excited about this plan that I stopped at Capitol Hill's local gourmet kitchen shop, Hill's Kitchen, straight off the metro after work to buy a cherry pitter. Shortly thereafter I arrived at the grocery store to discover that my only cherry options were frozen ones. Fresh cherries won't be around these parts until June. And thus my food education continues.

Oh well, the cherry show must go on. I decided to bake some cherry bars for my friends Allison and Mike (you may recall Allison as the MacGyver of baking), and their new little munchkin, Lucas (because you know my motto, babies call for bars). I first met Baby Lucas in the hospital before he was even a day old (my first time seeing a baby so new!). Since he was fresh out the oven, he kept his little arms and legs all curled up to his body as though he was still confined to a belly. I've loved him to bits ever since.

Lucky for me, mom emails out a single photo of her little cutie every few days so I can see him grow even when I can't fit in a visit. Nothing fancy, just a pic that she takes with her phone. I think the single photo every few days method is GREAT. Honestly, I might not always have time to peruse a lengthy album right away (though they are still appreciated!). But I always have time to open an email and have a smiling baby face looking back at me.

And now, drumroll please.... Here he is! He was actually awake and smiley for a lot of the visit, but I was too busy playing with him to get any photos. So you'll just have to enjoy him in this equally cute snoozing shot. Mom, dad, baby and I took a stroll around town (we may or may not have stopped for delicious cupcakes at Baked & Wired). Two stranger-ladies were so enamored by Lucas that they conspicuously pointed and started talking about him (is that what happens when you carry around a baby?). Allison graciously gave them a good look at babes and then we shuffled along. She's a good sport. (Sidebar: I've heard that stranger-ladies will go as far as to touch pregnant bellies. NOT OK, ladies. If I ever have a pregnant belly and I don't know you, hands off or you might get smacked.)

And for good measure, here are some photos of the blossoms:

Cherry Bars

Makes 16 bars

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
zest of one lemon
10 tbs. (1 stick + 2 tbs.) cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks 
1 egg
1-1/2 to 2 lbs. frozen cherries (sour if you can find them)
2 tbs. lemon juice
1/4 cup white sugar (for mixing with cherries)
1 tbs. cornstarch

Thaw the cherries completely and lightly press into a strainer to drain, getting out as much excess liquid as possible. Roughly chop the cherries so that they are halved. If lots of liquid is coming out, drain again. Set cherries aside.

While cherries are thawing, cut butter into chunks and place back in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Stir flour, sugars, baking powder,  salt and lemon zest together. Mix the egg and butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry cutter or your hands until the butter is incorporated and the dough forms pea-sized bits. A pastry cutter is ideal because you want the butter to stay cold. Using your hands warms the butter up, but, honestly, your hands are the only tool that will work besides a pastry cutter. Dough will be crumbly.

Pour half of the dough in a 9" x 9" square baking pan and pat down evenly.

Again, making sure all excess liquid is out of the cherries, stir cherries together with lemon juice, sugar and cornstarch. Pour cherry mix into pan (if there is a lot of liquid, spoon cherries into the pan using a slotted spoon). Spread remaining dough over top of cherries. I like my top crumb to be a little smaller than the bottom crust, so I had a bit of dough left over. 

Bake at 375 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until top is golden-brown. Pack up and bring for a picnic under your favorite blossoms.

Tangy Peach & Pumpkin Muffins

A very long time ago, my little sis gave me a Williams-Sonoma New Healthy Kitchen cookbook called Starters. At the time, I lived in an apartment and wasn't doing much entertaining. And I didn't normally whip up "starters" for myself. But as it turned out, the book has an awesome guide to seasonal fruits and veggies (grouped by color for us visual learners) that I was able to start using right away.

Check out the pinks and reds section - so pretty! Makes me want to run out and buy some radishes.

Obviously most fruits are available in more than one season, but Starters provides suggestions as to which fruits might be best in any given season. As you can see, peaches are best in summer. And I totally agree. If I'm going to eat a peach as a handheld fruit, I like it to be really sweet and juicy, which is what you find in the summer. But wait! Peaches have a life beyond the summer!
According to the food gospel of Katie, peaches are good for use as long as they feel ripe. I have no interest in hard peaches; I don't like them one bit. But a soft peach, even if it is super-tart, can make a great addition to winter breads, muffins and tarts.

The tartness of the peaches is so perfect with the sweetness of the muffin. It's much harder to plan for tart peaches in summer, so make these now! The recipe contains cornmeal and is naturally a bit crumbly, but the crumbly muffin meshes perfectly with the big chunks of moist peaches. I reduced the sugar from 3/4 cup suggested in the inspiration recipe to 1/2 cup, but feel free to stick with 3/4 cup if you want a sweeter muffin. Whatever you do, don't skip the peach slices on top. If you're making these muffins for guests, it gives them a classy touch, but more importantly, it adds more fresh, tangy fruit to each muffin. Mmm, mmmm, mmmm.

Tangy Peach & Pumpkin Muffins

Makes 15 muffins

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or unbleached all-purpose)

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup light brown sugar (or 3/4 cups, depending on taste)

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 peach, diced into chunks, plus 1 peach for slicing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare muffin tin(s) by greasing the cups or using muffin cups. Cut your two peaches - one should be cut into chunks, the other halved and then cut into thin slices (for the slices, be sure to cut out the part of the flesh that was closest to the pit; it is usually very dry). 

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients together and then blend by hand into dry ingredients. Fold in peach chunks. Fill greased or lined muffin tin 2/3 full with batter. Place 2 to 3 peach slices on top of each muffin as shown in pictures above.

Bake muffins at 350 for 18-20 minutes. 

Let muffins cool on a baking rack. Warning: the smell of these muffins baking will make you want to eat the entire pan straight out of the oven. Please let them cool at least a bit so you don't burn the lining of your mouth off. This tip is with love, from me to you.

Vanilla Biscuits with Cranberry Sauce & Fresh Whipped Cream

  

For a long time, the only cranberry sauce I knew looked like this. And as long as that was my reference point, I resisted it. Hard. I was never really a fan of cranberry juice either, save for when I found out it promoted good, ahem, health, at which point I desperately tried to persuade my taste buds otherwise (to no avail). In any event, it took a long time for cranberries to worm their way into my heart, but they did. And I'm pretty sure they're here to stay.

So when the rows and rows of very shiny cranberries showed up in my grocery store, I knew they needed a vehicle into my stomach, stat. A leisurely perusal through Martha Stewart's Cooking School unearthed the most perfect companion: vanilla biscuits. I've got to hand it to her, Martha has nailed the vanilla biscuit. When these little cylinders of joy come out of the oven, the smell of vanilla and buttery sweetness are like a silent dinner bell (just watch . . . people will show up in the kitchen). 

I prepared the biscuits and cranberry sauce as a dessert, with whipped cream. But if you really want to step up your Thanksgiving game, serve these biscuits and cranberry sauce with your turkey and stuffing. Your guests, with tears in their eyes, will say "Bless you, [your name here]. This is what Thanksgiving has been missing all my life." Verbatim. I promise.

A few notes: Vanilla bean is expensive. You'll probably pay close to $10 for two beans. But seriously, it's Thanksgiving and it's worth it (do you see those flecks of vanilla in the dough?). Pony up.  

Also, if you (like me) are not practiced at biscuit making, you're in for a surprise. The dough doesn't form a ball in the mixing process. When you combine the wet and dry ingredients, stop mixing once you have clumps that look like the below picture. They will come together just barely enough to cut out the biscuits.

Because not everyone owns a biscuit cutter.

Vanilla Biscuits with Cranberry Sauce & Fresh Whipped Cream

adapted very slightly from Martha Stewart's Cooking School cookbook

Biscuits

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 tbs. cornstarch
3 tbs. sugar
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 vanilla bean
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 cups cold buttermilk

2 tbs. heavy cream (for brushing)

sugar for sprinkling

Cranberry Sauce

4-5 oz. fresh or frozen (and thawed) cranberries
2 tbs. sugar (or more to taste)

Whipped Cream 

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tbs. confectioners' sugar

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract 

Whisk together flour, cornstarch, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Using a pastry blender or your fingers, incorporate the butter into the dry mix until you have a crumbly mixture (pieces should be the size of small peas). 

Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the beans out using a knife. Mix vanilla bean and vanilla extract into buttermilk and whisk. Add buttermilk to the flour mixture, stirring with a fork until the ingredients are incorporated. As pictured above, the resulting "dough" will remain in separate lumps. Turn dough onto a clean work surface and work the pieces together with your hands, folding the dough onto itself a few times. Work the dough into a rectangle 1 to 1-1/4 inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter (or round measuring cup or cleaned-out soup can), cut out 6 biscuits (for the sixth biscuit, you'll need to gather the scraps together and form the biscuit). Place biscuits onto a parchment lined baking sheet.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chill biscuits in the fridge for 20 minutes before baking. Brush tops with heavy cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake 10 minutes and rotate cookie sheet. Reduce heat to 375 degrees and cook for 10 more minutes. Transfer biscuits to a cooling rack. 

Cranberry sauce: While biscuits are baking, put cranberries and sugar in a food processor or mini-chopper and blend until mixture is chunky. Obviously you can add water or extra sugar and blend longer to get a saucier consistency. Do whatever you like. I served the cranberry sauce cold, but this mix can certainly be warmed in a saucepan or the microwave.

Whipped cream: Place a glass or metal mixing bowl in the freezer for 15 minutes. Mix heavy cream in the cold bowl using a hand mixer at high speed. Once soft peaks form, add sugar and vanilla, and mix until cream is thick.

Makes 6 biscuits and toppings

Sweet Potato Bread with Apricots and Scrabble

A friend of mine has two of the cutest little tots on the planet. The kids are quite hip, but as they are both under the age of two, Saturday nights are still pretty low key. So she recently hosted an evening of Scrabble. I LOVE Scrabble. And until this get together, I fancied myself as good at Scrabble (me = sorely mistaken). Two of the ladies who joined us were like super Scrabble geniuses with laser beams coming out of their eyes and zeroing in on the highest scoring squares (and one of them noted that she was "rusty"). I think I lost by a thousand points. Oh well, at least it was a good excuse for a new homemade treat.

Making something "homemade" or baking "from scratch" has different meanings to different people. I'm pretty lenient with those terms - as long as the dish didn't come straight from the store shelf or out of a box, it counts as homemade in my book. As I've mentioned before, I didn't make a pie crust until this blog, but I would still say that I've made many a homemade pie. So when I read this recipe and discovered that it called for me to actually roast sweet potatoes rather than buy them in a can, I almost skipped it (in retrospect, the roasting was so easy, I feel embarrassed even sharing this bout of laziness). 

But I didn't skip it. Instead I said to myself, "Get it together, woman. You are a flipping food blogger now and food bloggers roast their own root vegetables." And now you all can enjoy the fruits of my labor. And by "enjoy," I mean look at photos. Although if you invite me over for Scrabble, I'll bring you some.

For our wedding, we received a really awesome and unique gift of Penzey's Spices, including a whole nutmeg (thanks Greg & Marlene!). According to European lore, our marriage will remain happy and sound as long as the nutmeg remains whole.

It looks like we may have some rocky times in the immediate future. At least we'll go down with good eats.

Disclaimer: these are actually yams. At the grocery store, I was scoping out the potatoes and could only find a bin marked yams. So I politely asked the grocery store man where I could find sweet potatoes. He walks around to where I'm standing (in front of the yams), gives me a dirty look and says, "Yer lookin' at em." Still politely, I say, "Oh, sorry sir, I'm actually looking for sweet potatoes and not yams." To which he responds, "Same thing." Now I'm annoyed. You work at a grocery store, dude. They're not the same. Upon further questioning, he says something to effect of sweet potatoes only being available around Thanksgiving. Um, hello, grocery store man - that's NOW. Maybe he should reevaluate his line of employment.

Sweet Potato Bread with Apricots

adapted from the awesome cookbook, Good to the Grain

Dry Mix

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tbs. cinnamon

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. nutmeg (freshly ground if you have it)

1/4 tsp. allspice (or pumpkin pie spice)

Wet Mix

2 tbs. cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks

1/4 cup light brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt

1 medium sweet potato (3/4 lbs.) (photo shows two potatoes because I baked two loaves)

3 oz. dried apricots, cut into chunks

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a pan with aluminum foil or parchment paper and roast the sweet potato for 1 to 1-1/2 hours, until it is tender all the way through when tested with a knife (all of the insides should be squishy). Juices will start to seep out and caramelize around the potato. Set aside to cool, then peel and cut in half. Cut each half into large chunks, but keep halves divided.

Lower oven temperature to 350 degrees. Grease or line a loaf pan with parchment paper. Mix all dry ingredients together. Separately, whisk together the buttermilk and yogurt in a small bowl. 

Using a stand mixer (with paddle attachment) or hand mixer, cream the butter and sugars together in a large bowl. Scrape down the sides with a spatula; add the egg and half the sweet potato. Mix on medium speed for about 1 minute, or until thoroughly combined. On low speed, slowly add the dry mix and blend until mostly combined. Add buttermilk mixture and mix until combined. Add remaining sweet potato and continue to blend until barely combined; visible chunks of sweet potato should remain. Spread apricots across the batter (to avoid clumping) and fold into batter using a spoon or spatula. (If using a stand mixer with paddle, you can add the apricots at the same time as the remaining sweet potato.)  

Pour batter into a greased or parchment-lined loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 65-75 minutes. Remove loaf from the pan upon removal from oven and place on a cooling rack. Slice and spread with your fave preserves. Use all 7 letters for a ridiculous bonus. 

Makes one loaf