When answering the question “What are you up to” over the last few weeks, my answer has been a curt “busy”. Busy is a gross understatement. I’ve had a number of projects on back burners that all seemingly reached a boiling point at once while having several fantastic opportunities fall into my lap, with everything needing my attention these last two weeks. It’s been a juggling act like I’ve never had.
Category: baking
Pickled Peach Pound Cake.
I am frequently asked what I do with all the pickles I make. Some we eat. Some are shared as gifts with friends and family. And some get used for things like pound cake. Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Pickled peaches have essentially the same texture as canned peaches, but as they are infused with ginger, cinnamon, sugar and vinegar, they have a bit of a spice & tang. Which is precisely why I thought they would pair beautifully with the rich, buttery sweetness of pound cake. And they do.
Not that most of you have pickled peaches on hand, nor will peaches even be in season for pickling anytime soon. But in case you, like myself, are sort of over February to the point that you’ve turned the calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen over to March already, then you are probably starting to think about peach season and pickling said peaches and the possibilities of enjoying those pickles in various ways all year through. Because really, nothing says February like a pickled peach pound cake.
Goodness.
Did you ever make something so good that not only could you barely believe you made it with your own two hands, but you wanted to shout about from every rooftop and share it with everyone you knew?
I’m having one of those moments. In fact, I’m sitting here eating it and realized I just could not wait to blog about it. Which means I also didn’t bother with trying to take pretty pictures.
But we’ve discussed my photo laziness before. How I’d be a great food blogger if only I put more effort into my photos. But I’m an A minus type personality, which means I just fall slightly short of having everything perfect and I’m really okay with that. The buns looks fabulous, they taste even better and what you need to do is to just make them yourself already.
I stumbled upon this recipe on Pinterest yesterday and couldn’t wait to try it. Lemon Cheesecake Morning Buns. If that doesn’t sound like a cure for winter short of flying somewhere tropical, I don’t know what does. We are certainly ready for winter to be over with here. I’m itching to dig and feel the dirt between my fingers, Pat’s ready to fish and Edie is just ready to not be in the house with us.
The last time I followed a dough recipe from the internet, it was a fail. But everything about the recipe for this dough looked like it might work. And, fingers crossed in the back of my head, if it was a good dough recipe, perhaps it could be my new Christmas morning cinnamon bun dough recipe. I’m here to tell you, it’s good. And it will be my new Christmas morning cinnamon bun dough recipe. I can’t tell you how relieved I am that I got that one right on the first try- I love sticky buns as much as the next person, but certain parts of my anatomy were not thrilled to hear we had were going to be sampling recipes for the next year. The parts that tend to show I’ve been eating sticky buns for breakfast on a regular basis.
A few notes on the recipe – which I mostly followed. I subbed some spelt flour for white flour and used buttermilk instead of the called for milk with vinegar mix. I also ignored the pan advice, reaching for a cake pan that was not big enough (despite my better half standing there telling me the pan wasn’t big enough) so that I could have that nice round pan of buns. Not all of them fit in that pan, which meant I baked two pans this morning (there’s a third in the freezer, as I split the batch in half. I don’t need all those buns lying around and I do love having something I can just pull out of the freezer.) and explains the first picture of the 3 buns in their own pan. The top of the buns on the upper rack of my oven got a little brown, although they were only there for 25 minutes. They tasted just fine though (and I’ll see if my dear husband won’t mind recalibrating my oven for me today).
The dough was absolutely dreamy to roll out. I can’t remember last time a dough was so easy to work with. The end result is a pastry just as dreamy – light and fluffy with lemony cheesecake filling. I think these might even be good without the glaze. Something to try with the batch in the freezer for sure.
Critter bread.
I almost didn’t want to cut into this loaf and eat it, it was so cute. Doesn’t it look like a hedgehog?
January is anything but boring around here.
A hawk got itself trapped in the chicken coop this weekend. The girls were out eating bugs in the yard, so there was no harm done really. And I got some close up shots of a hawk.
Edie’s birthday meant a dinner/slumber party for more girls than our house can reasonably hold. And there were still some friends she wanted to invite that I put the kibosh on because well, our house is only so big.
Our dining room is almost the exact same length as our table with 2 leaves in it. The chair at the head of the table is actually in the hallway. And you can’t pull out the chair at the foot.
When inviting 8 girls, it helps to include your daughter in the final head count, which is actually 9.
There is a high pitched roar when you have 9 girls in your house. It stops for exactly 10 seconds when they eat.
How can they eat and talk at the same time?
When a cake recipe says it’s perfect served with milk, that means 9 eleven year old girls will drink an entire gallon of milk with the cake.
9 girls at a slumber party don’t sleep. Neither do you really.
11 year old girls are more than happy to have Martha’s Moist Devil’s Food Cake for breakfast too. I used some strawberry jam as filler in between the layers, so therefore, it counted as a fruit serving. Or so I told them. I also told them they had to eat that entire cake so that I could bake another one for Pat’s birthday the next day.
One can only have so much cake lying around.
I love how good Pat looks in his sweater.
Peach Pound Cake also makes an excellent breakfast.
Edie managed to find a way to upstage Pat on his birthday, two days after hers, yet again. It’s always something, starting with when she was born and came home from the hospital on his birthday. This year it was strep throat. So while we didn’t get a date night like I’d hoped, we still managed to find some time to celebrate. And I made him a fantastic dinner – Lamb Curry from my More with Less cookbook and a peach pound cake, with the lamb coming from our friends the Roystons, no doubt some lamb that a member of our family helped bottle feed at some point, or at least we imagine so. We’ve bottle fed a number of lambs at their farm over the years. And enjoyed eating them.
And with that, our holiday season that started with my birthday in October just before Halloween, is over. I am not baking another cake until at least March, so help me.
4 days and counting….
It’s the Friday before Christmas and in the midst of today’s pre-Christmas meltdown, I didn’t realize I was running out to do last minute errands at lunchtime. Oh boy. If I wasn’t heading upstairs to sew one last quick gift, I’d be popping open a bottle of something.
I got some serious Christmas baking on last night, knocking a few items off the to-do list like sugar cookie dough to be baked sometime between now & then in Betty’s kitchen for Santa Claus, Christmas biscotti (cranberry & pistachio) for Pat, chocolate pretzels for Edie and Rachel’s pumpkin granola.
I’m not completely done yet – there still is no menu for Christmas dinner beyond Edie’s requested brussels sprouts and a yule log for dessert this year. Greens and chocolate cake sound pretty complete to me though. Nothing is wrapped, but I don’t like to wrap early anyway. Gives you something to do while you drink Christmas Eve. And just today I finally got the last of the necessary ingredients to make Grandma’s Fruitcake Cookies, which are a holiday standard. I know you’re wrinkling your nose at the idea of them and let me tell you – they are awesome. Graham crackers crumbs, dates, pecans, coconut, maraschino cherries, a can of Eagle brand milk, squish together in mini muffin tins and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. They are the bomb.
Edie still claims to believe in Santa this year, very likely the last year this will happen. The older neighborhood boys have been cornered and told to not ruin this for her, as they will not get any treats from my kitchen ever again. She’s heard kids at school talking and told me she still believed in Santa because she knew there was no way her parents would ever spend that kind of money on her for some of those presents she’s gotten over the years. Who knew my renowned cheapness would keep her belief in Santa alive and well?
Enough procrastinating for the day. I’ve got to go get my proverbial Christmas doo-doo in a pile. There are only 4 more days people! If you still need more things to help you procrastinate, head over to Jen’s Holiday Homes Tour if you haven’t already. Cheers all.
Today’s Experiment.
I’d been kicking around the idea of putting together some cooking classes that weren’t just canning & pickling focused. For starters, it’s a very seasonable topic, sort of a one and done class done at various venues around town, but also because I do more than just preserve food. I preserve food because I like to cook it, because I’m passionate about knowing exactly where our food comes from and I want to ensure that my family eats local all year long. Really, canning & pickling is just the first step, one small part of my cooking puzzle.
So there I was, kicking this idea around, trying to find a focus (why oh why does everything seem to require a freaking focus already?!?!?!) when I got an email from a friend, asking if I was interested in leading a cooking class for his department as their staff retreat. Would I? I love when the universe sends me signs like this, I really do. Dave’s a regular reader, so he had a few ideas of what he wanted me to teach them, but after a few suggestions, he left it up to me.
The hardest part was finding a space in which to do this. Budget was key, which ruled out a number of places. If only my kitchen wasn’t so small and dark, perhaps I could teach more than one person at a time out of here. One of his coworkers was able to get a church kitchen, which actually could not have worked out better. It was fairly well appointed and was made for a small group to cook together.
As this was an all-day class and Dave requested we do several dishes together, I had them start with lunch, which was pizza. Once that prepwork was done, including making the dough, from scratch, by hand, we moved on to the big attraction. Gumbo.
I’m really not sure there is anything as well suited to team work as gumbo is. There is plenty of chopping to go around, there is roux to be made as well as broth. I walked them through how I like to do it – using as many burners as I can. At one point, we had the broth simmering, sauce for the pizza cooking, roux browning and the holy trinity sauteing to start the gumbo.
If you take it step by step, you could spend all day making a pot of gumbo. As much as I think it’s worth it, I also love doing as much as possible all at once. Even that though, takes prepwork, and teamwork.
Although Dave did try to do a big chunk of it on his own.
Lunch was absolutely delish if I say so myself. We did a roasted butternut squash, sage and goat cheese pizza (which Dave had requested after reading that post) as well as a plain cheese pizza. Just yesterday I read a piece on Beyond the Flavor about Michael McCarthy of Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie making pizza at home and couldn’t help but notice his oven was much hotter than I set mine – 550 vs. 450. Inspired, I decided to experiment with that temperature and honestly, I have to say that that cheese pizza tasted just like one you’d get a pizza shop. I’m still patting myself on the back for using that bit of knowledge – so much so that I came home and have already started the dough for dinner.
Thankfully, no one else in this house had pizza for lunch, so there will be no lectures on their part about how pizza twice a day might not be healthy, not to mention boring. At least she got over the whole no cold pizza for breakfast thing.
I digress. After we feasted on our pizza lunch, we headed back into the kitchen. There, I showed them how to make the easiest and most divine chocolate cake ever. I love sharing that secret – that a handful of ingredients, assembled in 5 minutes and baked for 30, can fool everyone you know into thinking you are a baking genius.
One of the downsides of cooking around your camera, is that sometimes you get stuff on the lens. It does, however, lend a dreamy quality to the picture, doesn’t it?
We finished the day with biscuits. I got to expound on a bit about my biscuit theory and shared with them my whole grain version, even throwing a little bit of lard into the equation. After putting a few of our biscuits in the oven to be sampled, the rest were divided and packed up, to be baked later in the day at home. After all, who wants to spend a day cooking only to have to go home and do it all over again? Not only did everyone take home biscuits, they had been instructed to bring along tupperware and so everyone took home gumbo after sampling the finished product. It was declared a success and while I am still mentally critiquing myself as to what I can do better, I also changed some things on the fly that turned out pretty good. That’s the secret to good cooking (and life really), is being able to adapt without flinching. It’s all in the instincts. Can you convey that in a cooking class? I sort of think I did.
Making Mincemeat.
During some conversation with my friend Leni at some point either this past fall or summer, the topic of mincemeat came up. Leni having recently retired this past year as the African-American Historian at Monticello, I knew that our exercise in mincemeat was going to entail historically accurate recipes, at least one of which would probably be from Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife cookbook. First published in 1824, it’s considered one of the first American Southern cookbooks and a fairly decent record of how food at Monticello was probably prepared. The conversation had sprung out of discussions of what she was going to do with the all the various parts of the pigs she was then raising. I was slightly curious to get a pig’s foot or two to try (what else) pickling them while she was more interested in boiling them down and making mincemeat out of them.
Yesterday was mincemeat making day. It seems the Mary Randolph version calls for venison, which Jackson supplied, as well as some bear, which was used to make an 1839 Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Bryan version of mincemeat.
One of the things I like about heading out to gatherings at Leni’s is that you never know who you’re going to meet there. A few years ago, I’d heard of Jackson’s classes in which students learned to hunt, dress and cook their catch. I loved the idea of it, would love to actually take it one day, only it seems (to me) that hunting requires patience (that whole sit in the woods thing – I cannot possibly sit still that long) one of those things I’m convinced is an over-rated virtue, mainly because I lack it. Ideally, I’d rather skip to the butchering and cooking part, getting someone else to do the hunting for me.
The meat Jackson brought technically was roadkill – the car in front of him hit the deer and I missed part of the story on the bear, catching only the tail end of the tale where he actually completed the killing of the bear. So it wasn’t like either animal was sitting by the side of the road for who knows how long. I share this because I really just like bragging that I’ve eaten roadkill. (Although as I typed that, I realized it’s not the first time I’ve had roadkill. Hey, it’s free, grass fed, organic meat.)
In addition to Jackson, there was his girlfriend Helenah, Jenny, Jessica, two of Leni’s sons, her granddaughters, my Edie and lots of cameras. We jumped in, with the venison version of mincemeat on one burner, the bear version on another, Leni’s pork version on a third, with a fourth burner being devoted to creating the filling of pelmeni – a Siberian dumpling made with bear.
As I was heading out yesterday, Pat asked if I even liked mincemeat, reminding me that it had been served at various family gatherings over the years to much avoidance on my part. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure I would like it. I find that cooking meat well is an art, one that many members of my family lack, so I tend to avoid anything they made with meat it in over the years as a self-preservation technique. Trust me, if you had grown up eating some of the meat I was served on a regular basis, you’d avoid it too. I’m always willing to try something though, especially if it’s prepared by someone I know is a good cook. Considering Leni has not only raised, but prepared some of the best pork I’ve ever had, I knew I was in good hands here.
There was much similarity in the recipes Leni had us using. I was surprised (and delighted) to find that each one called for large amounts of fruit, generally in equal amounts or more to the meat and suet, of fruit in the form of apples, raisins and currants. Brandy, cider, sugar and spices were also added, then the mixtures bubbled on the stove top for a few hours.
While they cooked, we feasted on some tasty smoked pork that Leni had prepared and then I learned how to make the pelmeni, which essentially is a pirogi. I’ve always wanted to try making them but have been slightly intimidated. Thanks to Jenny telling me I could just get going on the next batch and not wanting to appear like I had no idea what I was doing, I just did what I was told, grabbing a dough ball, rolling it out and jumping into the process. It certainly helped that the dough was positively dreamy to roll out, which immediately took a huge chunk of intimidation away. (You know I walked out of there with that recipe too. Because that is what I do when I stumble upon something like that.)
The pelmeni filling was finely chopped onions, cabbage and bear meat, which was cooked before being rolled and then boiled in broth for a few minutes before being served with fresh dill and sour cream.
Leni thought that mince tarts would be a better way to serve the mincemeat rather than one large pie. To differentiate between the venison and the bear mince tarts, the venison tarts had a dot of dough on top. As it was a savory filling, she used lard in the crust, making them incredibly flaky and savory themselves. A perfect pairing.
Verdict? I liked the mincemeat. There was so much fruit in the mix that the meat added texture more than anything else. There was a nice savoriness about the tarts. The venison version, which was based on the Mary Randolph recipe was a touch more savory than the bear. I had prepared the bear version, following the Kentucky Housewife recipe, substituting allspice for cloves that were MIA as I was putting it together. By the time the cloves had appeared, I hesitated on adding them to the allspice, so I skipped it. As the pork version needed more time, we did not sample it, although Leni assured us all she’d get a jar to us in the near future. I came home with a pack of pelmini for the freezer, as well as two pint jars of bear mincemeat filling that I look forward to making into tarts over the next few weeks.
Yesterday was a learning experience on several levels – I love cooking with other great cooks because I never fail to learn something new from them. There was history, specifically food history – did you know that historically most wild game was referred to as venison? I did not. There was the typical small town connections made that make me love Charlottesville, where it seems everyone sort of knows everyone else somehow, even if you’ve never actually met before. I listened in on and had some inspirational and informative conversations. As I’m still getting over this nasty upper respiratory bug, I was not entirely my enthusiastic self, but it was a fantastic memorable day nonetheless, one that I shall be mulling over for some time. Thank you Leni for hosting, introducing me to mincemeat as well as everything and everyone else I got to know yesterday. What a treat of a day.
Why good cooking is dangerous.
My go-to dish when we eat at any Mexican restaurant is Chili Rellenos. I had them somewhere once upon a time stuffed with a blend of cheese and potatoes, which made my little Irish potato loving self think that was quite possibly the best version ever. I’ve tried my hand at making them myself a few times over the years with poblanos I grew myself, with mixed success. They are a little bit of work and while I do many things from scratch, I bake my own bread, I can, I pickle and all that jazz, I really not-so-secretly prefer one pot, one paragraph dinner recipes. Chili Rellenos is not one of them. You have to roast the peppers, you have to peel the peppers, if you are stuffing them with anything but cheese you have to precook that. There is the sauce to go on top and something to round out the entire meal. Really, much easier to just go out and order it from your favorite Mexican restaurant.
Because I spend so much time putting up produce from about May through now, I just happened to have some pre-roasted and peeled peppers in my freezer, ready to go. I pulled them out the other night and while they were thawing, I threw some sweet potatoes in the oven and baked them.
When I was at city market a few weeks ago, there was a farmer selling sweet potatoes by the bucket. Of course I had to get some and now have a glut of them. I also had some goat cheese hanging out in the fridge and the idea of a goat cheese sweet potato version of chili rellenos struck me as a really great idea and one I could just taste.
I served them up on a bed of grits and man, they were good. They were even better than I thought they would be. As I cooked up the sauce to go with them, I realized it was basically the same sauce as the one I make for enchiladas. There was a bit of a kick from the chilis I used in the sauce, as well as from the fact that I did not remove all the seeds from the peppers I stuffed. It was fine for me & Pat and Edie was a trooper about it, so it turned out okay. I think I have a few more whole roasted peppers in the freezer which are definitely going to be made in this version of chili rellenos. I don’t think any Mexican joint is going to come close to touching how good these were. I hate when I spoil it for myself, especially something like this. The down side of cooking, definitely. Sometimes you really should stick to take out. Yes, I said that.
My experiments in bread baking have achieved a new level of goodness as well. The last few batches I’ve made of both extra tangy sourdough bread as well as sourdough baguettes have been scrumptious. I’ve used whole grain flours in them and have given them extra time to rise. A few years ago, I assisted in a bread baking class at the cooking school taught by Gerry over at Albemarle Baking Company, who makes the best baguettes this side of the Atlantic, hands down. Among the tips he shared for baking good bread was letting the dough have plenty of time to rise and let the yeast do it’s thing. Admittedly, it had not clicked with me to try this with bread recipes other than his, but in making recent batches of bread dough, I’ve realized that these have sat longer than called for, to spectacular results. Turns out that guy might know actually know something about baking after all. I’ve also been experimenting with adding extra gluten as well as water when using whole grain flours. The last baguette batch I think I used whole wheat pastry flour combined with regular whole wheat flour as well as bread flour. I had a jar of unlabeled mystery flour, it could have been whole wheat pastry flour, it could have been high gluten flour I keep on hand for pizza dough or it could have been some rye flour. Not really sure. It was also way too sticky for me to knead it long enough and somehow, despite all that, that bread was light and airy and delish. Another eureka moment I recently had was to make the entire recipe, even when it results in 2 loaves or 6 loaves, and before the second rise, pop the extra dough into the freezer. That way, the next time I’m feeling like a loaf of fresh baked bread, I don’t need to start first thing in the morning. This has been met with much applause by the waistband of my jeans, because as you can tell by the photo above, I cannot stop eating the glorious fruits of my labor long enough to take a picture of a full loaf of bread, which is dangerous when you just pulled 6 loaves out of the oven.
By the way, that was a foot long baguette when it first landed on that cutting board.
Pecan Pie.
Being the slack food blogger that I am, I have no step-by-step shots of how I prepared my pecan pie last week. Then again, the fact that I am sharing my pecan pie recipe the week after Thanksgiving is telling too, isn’t it? It’s still good for Christmas though, right? I mean, certain members of our household have asked if we can have another one sometime soon.
I did not grow up eating pecan pie. I’m not a big fan of cooking with nuts, so the idea of a pie devoted to them left me scratching my head. It wasn’t until I met my better half that I realized that pecan pie is more about butter and sugar than nuts. And certainly I can get behind anything that combines butter and sugar.
The recipe I make is one that I got from a friend of Pat’s folks. It’s pretty much the best damn pecan pie recipe in the world and the only one you will ever need to make.
I’m such a slack food blogger that I didn’t even get a decent shot of my finished pie – this one is one Edie took with her father’s iphone, a little after the fact. I tried making the crust edges all fancy, showing off the skills I picked up when I assisted in that pie baking class last summer, only to realize as I was pouring the filling into the pie crust that I had prepared a filling for a much bigger pie plate than I was using. Whoops! I managed to fix it somewhat, but it wasn’t entirely pretty. I ended up pouring what was left of the filling into a ramekin, baking that and we ate that hot out of the oven, giving us that pecan pie fix the night before Thanksgiving.
Enough with my issues, here’s the recipe. Make it. You’ll like it.
Pecan Pie
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup White Karo syrup
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups pecans
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
Combine first three ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil.
Beat eggs in a separate bowl. Pour a small amount of hot liquid into the eggs, beat and then add the remaining hot mixture. Stir in the remaining ingredients and pour into prepared pie plate. Bake at 375 for 30-40 minutes.
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 