Category: recipes

Starting with Split Pea Soup.

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Yesterday I posted on Facebook that I was making my first batch of split pea soup for the year.  Split pea soup is Edie’s hands down favorite soup, one she requests frequently and since she’s been under the weather with some sort of bug, she got her request.

I was first introduced to split pea soup by my friend Beppy in college – back in the days when I lived in a party house with two male roommates and I myself did zero cooking and even less cleaning, I remember coming home one afternoon to find Bep elbow deep in a sinkful of dirty dishes, cleaning away, with a pot of split peas simmering on the stovetop.  Since then, I cannot eat them without thinking fondly of her. That kitchen had the best light, even if it was otherwise a crappy kitchen with no counter space and an electric stove that my cat liked to turn on by pressing the power buttons across the top, starting at least one small fire.  Those were the days….

The thread that followed my post was a mass sharing of recipes, not just for split pea soup, but for Chicken Corn Soup and White Bean & Kale soup as well.  It inspired me to put them down all down somewhere together.

First up, what started the whole thing, split pea soup.

Becky’s Split Pea Soup
Take a bag of split peas, rinse and cover with water in a pot. Simmer for about 45 minutes.
Saute sliced onion, celery, carrots, garlic in bacon fat (or butter or oil). Add to the split peas, as well as broth, salt,pepper, thyme and barley. Cook for about another half hour or so.

Ashley suggested simmering it with a ham hock. 
Mary Ann puts sliced potatoes, ham, carrots, onion, coarse ground pepper, garlic, sea salt and celery salt in her version.
Cynthia adds curry powder.
Carla adds smoked turkey legs and a jalapeño pepper in addition to usual onions, celery carrots, garlic, salt and pepper.
Cynthia also adds dill, sour cream or yogurt to make it creamier.                 

Vikki’s White Bean & Kale Soup Stem & chop one bunch of kale; bring a quart of salted water to boil and simmer the kale for 15 minutes or so, til it’s soft. Drain the kale, put it aside, & save the liquid; should be about two cups left. Warm 1/4 cup olive oil in your pot; mince 4-5 cloves of garlic, sauté them in the oil for a minute or two, then add a large pinch of crushed sage and give it a couple stirs. Throw the kale back in, mix it up with the oil & garlic, then add the kale water plus enough extra water to make about 3 cups of liquid, plus two cans of white beans (drained & rinsed). I like to add some chicken bouillon or scrapings from the freezer, but you don’t have to; another good option is a rind of Parmesan. let it all simmer for 5 or 10 minutes, then puree it smooth with an immersion blender, salt as needed, and thin with a little extra water if you wish. sprinkle it with Parmesan before serving. Bread is a must.      

Becky’s note:  I make a similar soup, but I don’t always puree mine.  I add sweet & spicy Italian sausage that I cook in a separate pan until it’s fairly well cooked, slice it and add it after I puree (If I puree).   

Holly’s Chicken Corn Soup
Put 5 boneless chicken breasts, a cup of water, salt and pepper and a chicken bouillion in a crock pot to cook over night.
The next morning, shred the chicken, add it back to the chicken broth and add: large can chicken broth, bag a frozen sweet corn, 2 cans of creamed corn, 4 chopped hard boiled eggs (do NOT use hard boiled eggs already made from the store-I made that ‘stinky’ mistake before), also add: 1 small chopped onion, 5-6 (cubed) white potatoes, finely chopped stalk of celery and a few tablespoons of celery salt, 1/4 cup of sugar, and pepper. I have it all in the crock pot and will cook on low all day. it is really good and simple to make. Serve with bread. Occasionally have added 1/4 cup or so of whole milk if you want it a tad creamier.

Last but not least, is this recipe for split pea soup that Bonnye sent me this morning.

Bonnye’s Split Pea Soup

1lb dried split peas
2 quarts chicken broth, water or mix
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
1pkg Canadian bacon,diced dash cayenne
1 ½ cups onion,
diced ¼ tsp thyme
dash cayenne
¼ tsp marjoram 1 tsp salt ½ tsp pepper 1 cup celery, diced 1 cup carrots, diced

Place peas, chicken broth, Canadian bacon, onions and all seasonings into a pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer, cover and cook for 1 ½ to 2 hours. Add celery and carrots. Cook for another hour. Will thicken in storage so add water if you wish when you reheat.

So there you have it, at least 7 different ways of making Split Pea Soup, two ways of making White Bean & Kale Soup and Chicken Corn Soup, a Pennsylvania Dutch classic I grew up eating at the school cafeteria – back when they still cooked school lunches.  All thanks to Facebook.  Happy Soup Season everyone!

Not Pickled.

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I put some produce up this week that believe it or not, wasn’t pickled. I know, right?
I stumbled upon this last summer and it worked well, so I decided to try it again. I take an assortment of chili peppers and roast them in the oven until they are done.
Most were from my garden.
The thing about chili peppers is that one plant produces buckets of them.  There is always plenty to share.
I happened to be the lucky beneficiary of a chili pepper enthusiast I met at Leni’s Second Wednesdays last week who brought a few extras along.
I’m digging the Peruvian Purple Peppers. I may need to grow some next summer. I grow purple basil & purple pole beans, why not purple hot peppers?

 

You can also find chili peppers for about 10 cents each at the farmer’s market this time of year.  $1 worth of peppers is a great deal.  Enough to make a nice hot sauce.  (That’s my next experiment.)
Roasting helps the skins pop off and I read somewhere that it makes them hotter because the roasting releases the capsaicin. Don’t quote me on that.  It does make them easier to chop up and throw in the freezer.
Last year, I filled small jars with them, but by the time I would finish a small jar, some of them had gone bad in the fridge.  So I thought I’d freeze them in ice cube trays and have smaller portions I could work with.  It doesn’t always take much of my mix to flavor a dish and I like having my own, local chilis, you know?
I didn’t think about wearing gloves though, so my hands tingled for a good few hours yesterday afternoon and evening.  I think I did that last year too.  I blame my blondeness.  I’m good about washing my hands after chopping peppers, but I did two cookie sheets full of peppers, a grocery bag worth.  When you deal with that amount of peppers, you really should consider gloves.
Last year I tried making a hot sauce with cayenne peppers and vinegar and Pat didn’t care for it.  So, I’m going to try again, but get a little fancy with it.  Maybe add some fruit?  I don’t know.  Anyone ever make one?  Know someone that makes one?  I’m now accepting recipes.

Plan B.

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The plan was for an group playdate at the park for my Girl Scout troop after school yesterday.

Despite my saying we weren’t going to continue once they left their elementary school, they all asked if we could please do Girl Scouts again this year.  They have so many other activities, I hesitated to say yes, until I realized that what they wanted was the social aspect – they wanted to know that they had time set aside here & there for their old pack of friends in the middle of making new friends at a new school.  So I said yes.  I’m a sucker for those girls.

We’re not officially starting it off until they are more settled in school, but I thought a get together would be good for the girls.  I thought they could all walk down to the park, I’d have a nice snack and they could play together until they had to run off to their other activities.

I knew there was a chance of rain in the forecast, as there has been all week.  But for the first time in days, the sun was actually out yesterday.  Until about 10 minutes before the girls were due to be released from school.  The clouds rolled in, but I perserved, having packed my little red wagon with a cooler of bottled water, tablecloth and napkins,  a big bowl of grapes and a very special treat, what we call “Uncle George’s O’Henry Bars” – named for the fishing buddy of Pat who gave me the recipe after I downed about half a pan of them at his house one night.  One of the very recipes in my repertoire that isn’t completely from scratch and super healthy. 

Normally, I ask that parents send a healthy snack.  I specifically request fruit, no sugary treats, because I don’t give a rats behind what any study says, you put sugar in that group of girls and get ready to peel them off walls.

As the some of the girls came up the street, thunder boomed.  I had the girls break down the park set up and bring it back to the house.  I ran around my house, totally unprepared for nine 10 year old girls.  I moved the coffee table out of the living room, spread the tablecloth and declared it a ‘floor picnic’.  They devoured their snack, piled on my sofa and started crawling the walls. 

My living room is exactly eight and a half feet wide by eleven feet long.  It is not big enough for 9 girls.  It’s definitely not big enough for 9 girls who are crawling the walls thanks to the sugar I had just fed them because I thought it’d be nice to give them a treat and because I thought they’d be running it off at the park.  Rain plans are never my thing and usually, it works out for me.  Not so much here.

I tried capturing the sweet moment of all of them piled on top of each other on my sofa with a very nice camera I’m currently borrowing to see what I want to upgrade to.  Apparently that plan didn’t work out so well for me either, as I really don’t know how to use a nice camera, only my fancy point and shoot.  I have a whole slew of pictures that look like that. 
Sigh.
Finally, it stopped thundering, the anticipated downpour never happened and the girls asked if they could go outside.  So, back to the park we went and they happily spent the rest of the afternoon running around in the misting rain. Alls well that ends well, even if you have to scramble to get there.
Thank you all for your comments and emails after my last post.  There seems to be some bumps in being able to put my uncle to rest – things like no will – so for the time being, we are on hold as to when we will have to go up for any sort of service.  In the meantime, life goes on, even when nothing seems to go to plan. Which seems to be the plan.
Uncle George’s O’Henry Bars
1 cup sugar
1 cup light Karo corn syrup
1 cup peanut butter
Combine over heat until smooth.
Stir in 6 cups Special K
Spread in pan.
Melt:
1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 bag butterscotch chips
Spread on top.  Chill. Serve when hardens.

Gardening (mis)adventures that tasted good.

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It’s almost September. It’s been a long hot summer and my garden is looking scraggly.

I finally found some time to give it the attention it has been craving.  I weeded, ripped out some dead things, cut some things back hoping for a fall revival, planted some new greens.
In my enthusiasm,  I cut back what I thought was a dead branch of sage.
Turns out it was just leggy, because at the other end of the foot long branch were some happy new sage leaves.
The only squash plant that has produced anything in my garden this summer were a few volunteer compost bin butternut squash plants. When the squirrels were on their rampage to eat everything in sight just a few short weeks ago, they had gnawed through the vine, causing an unripe (green) squash to become unattached. I was not about to let them have it, so I brought it in and hoped to be able to do something with it.  It actually did ripen sitting on my counter for a few weeks. 
So, with the sage I hadn’t meant to cut back and the butternut squash that I hadn’t planted, I made our first fallish dinner the other night – Roasted Butternut Squash, Sage & Feta Pizza.

I peeled and diced the squash, tossed it with some sliced onions, salt, pepper & olive oil and popped it in the oven at 350 or until it was browning nicely. Probably close to an hour, but I tend to not keep an eye on the clock and just depend on things smelling right.  Highly technical cooking skills in use there.
For the pizza, I prebaked a crust for about 5 minutes, then covered it lightly in olive oil.  I had some jack cheese in the drawer, so a light sprinkle of that, spread the squash & onions on top of that, added some feta and the fresh sage leaves.  I covered all of that in a light dusting of more jack cheese and then baked the whole thing until it was golden and well, looked right.
That’s a highly technical cooking term.  Use it at your own risk.

If only I cared more.

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If I was a good food blogger, I’d take the time to ensure decent pictures of the food I blog about.
If I was a good food blogger, I’d take the time to put together a real recipe.
But alas, some days I am just too hungry to take the time for nice pictures.  Some days I just go with the flow and throw things in a pot and cook them and am pleased with the results. 
Above is one of those results. It started out as stewed okra & tomatoes.  I threw in a jalapeno from the garden and minced garlic with the onion,  some fresh corn cut off the cob, fresh thyme & parsley a few minutes after the tomatoes, Old Bay and shrimp after cooking the okra for a few minutes and served it on a bed of grits.  I measured nothing, as is my habit.  Everything about it was just right though.  I’ve always seen rice recommended to be served with stewed okra & tomatoes, but after giving grits a try, I think that’s the way I’ll be serving it from here on out.  They were a much better foil to the sauce.
I know people steer clear of okra because they think it’s slimy.  It’s true, when you slice it, it is slimy.  Cooked however, it loses that quality and becomes a thickening agent.  Fresh okra is the only way to go.  I prepare it exactly four ways all summer long:  stewed in gumbo or with just tomatoes as seen above, battered & fried and pickled.  I hear it’s tasty roasted on the grill and I intend to try it that way as well one of these days.  It’s a pretty plant to have in your garden – it gets tall and the blooms resemble hibiscus. Just be sure to plant a good bit of it, as once you get the taste for fresh okra, you’re hooked.  And pickled okra in your bloody mary’s is quite good.

Bread & Butter.

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This morning I taught my first official canning class at the Charlottesville Cooking School.  I’ve taught countless friends how to can so that part wasn’t new.  I’ve assisted with numerous classes at the school over the years, so I felt comfortable in that space, but the part where I stand up in front of complete strangers and be credible about something?  That part had me nervous.  As did the part where I make sure the class was structured so that we got everything done in the amount of time scheduled for the class. Somehow I managed to pull it off though. 
We canned tomatoes and zucchini bread & butter pickles.  The class had been advertised offering cucumber pickles, but last week as I was walking around the farmer’s market, I had a heck of a time finding pickling cucumbers.  It seems the heat this summer fried just about every farmer’s crop that I talked to, causing the lack of them at my local farmer’s market.  I know from experience that regular cucumbers don’t pickle nearly as well as the pickling variety.  They will still make a fairly decent bread and butter pickle, but you can’t rush the soaking step.  As I couldn’t find a recipe with a soaking step shorter than 3 hours, the time allotted the class was 3 hours, well, I realized I was going to have to make a substitution if I was going to send my students home with a jar of pickles that I knew was going to be good.  So, after reading up on pickles, zucchini pickles it was!

After all, I didn’t want their first pickle experience to have a sub-par result.  I’ve made dill pickles that haven’t turned out and it stinks to put a bunch of work into something that you end up throwing out.  They were all taking the class because they wanted to learn to can and I wanted to make sure they enjoyed it.

I promised my students that even though we didn’t make the cucumber pickles, I would share my recipe with them.  The recipe I use is the one my mother used, from an old Ideals Family cookbook, published in the early 1970’s, although I have seen this recipe elsewhere as well. 
Bread & Butter Cucumber Pickles
(from The Ideals Family Garden Cookbook)

1 gallon cucumbers
8 small white onions
2 green peppers, shredded
½ c. salt

Syrup
5 c. sugar
1 ½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon ground cloves
2 Tablespoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon celery seed
5 cups cider vinegar



Wash but do not pare cucumbers. Slice crosswise in paper-thin slices. (You will be well paid for this seemingly tedious task. A slicer might be easier, but be sure the slices are paper-thin.) Slice the onions thin and cut the peppers in fine shreds. Mix the salt with the three vegetables and bury 1 quart of cracked ice in the mixture. Cover with a weighted lid and let stand for 3 hours, then drain very thoroughly.

Meanwhile, make a pickling syrup as follows: Mix the sugar, turmeric and cloves together. Add mustard and celery seeds and vinegar. Pour this syrup over the sliced pickles. Place over a low heat and paddle occasionally, using a wood spoon. Heat the mixture to scalding, but do not boil. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal by processing for 10 minutes.
Let stand at least 4-6 weeks before cracking open.  The longer they sit, the better they get.
I don’t remember the yield on this recipe, it’s been a year or two since I made it and I don’t have it noted.  I think it makes somewhere between 7 and 9 pint jars worth. 
Happy pickling!

Pickled Peach Pie.

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After taking exactly one bite of the pickled peaches I’d made last month, my little foodie Edie declared we needed a pie made of pickled peaches.  This weekend I accommodated that request.

That girl of mine is onto something.  Combined with ice cream (for dessert) and yogurt (for breakfast), pickled peach pie is the way to go, if you can stop yourself from eating the jar of pickled peaches.  After her first bite of pie, she informed me, we’re gonna need more of these, so I guess I’m going to head out this week and get another half bushel or so of peaches to pickle, because we have managed to eat almost half of the two batches I put up just a few weeks ago.

Pickled peaches have the consistency of canned peaches – that is, soft.  Where the pickling comes into play is the taste.  They have a bit of a tang to them from the vinegar, a bit of spice to them thanks to the ginger and cinnamon and the natural sweetness of a peach.  They are, as has been said around here, ‘dang good’.
I used the recipe from The Serious Eats website in pickling them.  The only variation I did to the recipe was to grate the ginger rather than slicing it.  As I noted in my post when I made them, I had a good bit of brine left over – enough to get at least double, if not triple what the original recipe called for. Which clearly, is a good thing.

I did a tutorial on making a pie crust a while back for our friend Bea who is living in England, but realized I didn’t include the recipe at the time (I had sent it to her previously), so to correct that, here’s my pie crust recipe.  It’s based on the recipe my mother handed down that I’ve tweaked slightly.

Pie Crust
(Yields 2 crusts for a 10″ pie pan)
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or a mix of white & whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter (or crisco or lard or a blend of shortenings), cold.
6-7 tablespoons ice cold water with a dash of vanilla.
Cut butter or shortening into flour, salt & sugar until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.  Slowly add the water, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough just holds together.  (I find whole wheat flour needs more water than white flour.)
Let the dough rest in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.  Even just a few minutes helps when you roll it out.  The colder the dough is, the easier it is to roll out.   I roll out my pie crust between two layers of wax paper.  I pull one layer off, lay my crust down in the pan (or on top of the filling) and then gently peel the second layer off. 
To make pickled peach pie, I drained two and a half pint jars, tossed them with a sprinkle of sugar and about a 1/4 cup or so of flour, similar to the recipe for a regular peach pie.  I followed the baking instructions for standard peach pie – my method is to bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 for 35 minutes or so. 
A note about pie pans- I use only vintage Wear-Ever aluminum pans.  I have tried many different pie pans over the years and aluminium pans are the way to go.   It results in a much nicer bottom crust than any other pan and is what commercial bakeries use. 

This season’s favorite salad.

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I’m a big fan of having salads in the fridge for quick meals during the summer months.  My new current favorite is based on a salad in ‘Salad Makes the Meal’ by Wiley Mullins.  The first time I made the Lentil & Bulgur salad, I failed to recognize that I had used Barley instead of Bulgur until I noticed it was taking forever for the grain to cook.  Yes, I realize they look nothing alike and clearly, it was a blonde moment for me.  In my defense, they both start with the letter ‘B’ and are grains.  I have made it with bulgur and realized I like it better with barley or it’s Italian cousin, farro.

I do include a few items from the recipe, but I also play pretty fast and loose with it, as I do most recipes that aren’t cake.  I also have found the Chive Blossom Vinegar I made this spring to be an excellent substitute for the red wine vinegar called for.

Becky’s Lentil & Barley Salad
1/2 cup lentils, rinsed and drained
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt to taste
Place lentils and garlic in a saucepan, cover with water by 2″ and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until tender, about 15 minutes.  Drain well, transfer to large bowl.
1/2 cup barley (or other grain of your choice)
salt to taste
Place barley in a saucepan and cover with water by 2″ and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until tender and cooked through, about 20-40 minutes.  Drain and add to lentils.
(Both of these can also be cooked in broth for extra flavor.)
Additions:
(In any combination)
Chopped celery, carrots,bell pepper, cucumbers.
Toasted nuts, such as cashews, slivered almonds or walnuts.
Chives or scallions, parsley
(The recipe calls for fruit to be added, such as an orange, grapes or raisins as well.)
Season with salt & pepper, drizzle with olive oil and vinegar and toss.  Serve immediately or let it sit for a few hours in the fridge.  Also good with greens, either chopped and mixed in or served on a bed of them.
Enjoy!

A Feast for the King of the Castle.

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Since I am slightly demanding about being pampered on Mother’s Day (read: I want someone else to get up and make me coffee and I’m not cooking dinner that day), I feel the least I can do is make Pat anything he wants for dinner on Father’s Day, even if it’s something I don’t like, like lamb.
Pat & Edie are both fans of lamb.  Me?  I don’t care for it.  I have tried it numerous ways over the years and it just does not appeal to me.  Since I do most of the shopping and cooking around here, we tend to eat what I like, which means no lamb, except for special requests on days like Father’s Day and birthdays. 
Not too long ago, I had seen a post on E.A.T. for lamb burgers that Tim said (and I quote directly) “If you have shied away from lamb, this is a good recipe that has training wheels.” So when the request came in for lamb, I immediately thought of this recipe.  At the very least, I figured I’d be happy with the sides of hummus and couscous.
We opted to grill the burgers instead of cooking them on the stovetop, but otherwise, I followed Tim’s easy recipe.  I whipped up some hummus, some Tzatziki, a Couscous salad and a Watermelon Feta Mint Salad which Pat dubbed “Watafet”Salad.
I liked it.
I liked the lamb.  It was the cumin that did it I think.  Over the years, I have found the addition of cumin almost always adds something interesting to a dish and this was no exception.  We will definitely eat lamb burgers again cooked this way.    Thanks Tim.  You have just made my family very happy to hear we will be eating more lamb. 
I also followed Tim’s side suggestions, with the addition of the watermelon salad. For the couscous, I simply tossed some fresh thyme and chives from the garden with some chopped cherry tomatoes and black olives, salt & pepper and a dash of olive oil.  I’m the only person in this house who likes cucumbers, so I left them out, although they would be a good addition as well. There were some in the tzatziki, so I didn’t want to push it.   As for the “Watafet Salad”, I chopped up about a quarter of a watermelon and a handful of fresh mint.  I added crumbled feta, salt, pepper, lime zest, the juice of a lime and a generous dash of olive oil, tossed it all together and served it.  It didn’t appear to be a salad that would keep well, so I wouldn’t make more than you can eat at the time.  However, it was quick, easy and would be a great dish to carry along to a potluck.
It was a feast fit for the king of our castle. 

A Cake AND A Pie.

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In the midst of the craziness of the last week of school, a dear friend had her birthday. We got together to celebrate it Saturday night with dinner and drinks. I was asked to bring dessert, which I was more than happy to do, as she had made me a yummy chocolate cake for my birthday last fall and I wanted to return the favor. In addition to our two families were two others, with a kid count close to 10, so after some thought, I decided that the kids needed their own dessert. I realized that I wasn’t up for making two cakes, so when I woke up in the middle of the night with the genius idea of making a chocolate pudding pie for the girls, I was pretty proud of myself.  When I realized I could use my mac daddy cake carrier to transport my two desserts, I was even more proud of myself.  I used the stacking cupcake levels to hold the two desserts.  What I love best about that thing is that it collapses for storage, so while it can hold 24 cupcakes, two cakes or a cake and pie as the case may be, it doesn’t sit around taking up the space of two cakes.
 I made a chocolate pudding pie with a chocolate graham cracker crust for the kids.  I smashed a packet of chocolate graham crackers, sprinkled in a little bit of sugar, melted 6 tablespoons of butter, poured it on top and combined it all, then spread it out in the pie plate.  I chilled it briefly before pouring the pudding on top.
I used the chocolate pudding recipe from Wayne Harley Brachman’s Retro Desserts cookbook.  I’ve blogged about this cookbook before – it’s my go-to dessert cookbook. Not only does it have great recipes, it talks about techniques, which are really key to baking.   Homemade pudding is fairly easy and once you’ve had the homemade version, you will find it hard to eat the instant boxed version.  (I’m including it here at the end of the post.  Try it for yourself.)
I think the key to good pudding is using fresh, whole milk.  I use a local dairy, Homestead Creamery, who bottle their products in glass.  The difference in taste from any other dairy product you’ve ever had is something you just have to try for yourself. 

After the pie cooled for a few hours, I spread a layer of fresh whipped cream on top of the pudding, then garnished the pie with fresh cherries.
As for the grown-ups dessert a few weeks ago, I happened to notice an old Bon Appetit my birthday celebrating friend was getting rid of that had a picture of what looked to be an amazing chocolate cake on the cover.  I ended up ripping the recipe out and bringing it home. As I was looking for a cake to bake, I realized this cake was the perfect one to bring with us Saturday.
It’s from the September 2006 issue, La Bete Noire.  I have never ever made a cake with this much chocolate in it – just the cake calls for 18 ounces, with the ganache on top calling for another 8 ounces.  It’s a flourless cake, with the ingredients being butter, chocolate, eggs and a simple syrup.  I think what appealed to me the most was the fact that you left the cake in the springform pan you baked it in, then dumped the ganache on top, making sure it was evenly distributed and then let it chill for a few hours.  That is definitely my kind of frosting. 

I garnished this cake with dollops of whipped cream and blueberries from our bushes and served it with more whipped cream and berries.
A chorus of girls serenaded the birthday girl.  Once everyone tried the cake, it was agreed that chocolate pudding pie was a much better dessert for the girls.  “The Black Beast” was intense. And divine.  And actually pretty darn easy to make, which is key, because when you make a pie and a cake in the same day, you don’t want to spend the day slaving over them, especially when it’s close to 90 degrees outside.
I brought home the remnants of the chocolate pie as well as a little bit of the birthday cake, leaving the bulk of it for the birthday girl.  I think I have found a new go-to cake that will leave everyone impressed with my baking abilities, although honestly, it’s just an ability to read a recipe and know which ingredients to use.  You can never go wrong with 60% cacoa.  Ever.

Chocolate Pudding
from Retro Desserts
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa
1/2 cup sugar, divided
2 1/2 cups milk, divided
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
Melt butter and chocolate.
Whisk the cornstarch, cocoa and 1/4 cup of the sugar into 1/2 cup of the milk, then whisk in eggs and yolks.
In  heavy bottom saucepan over medium heat, bring the remaining 2 cups of milk and 1/4 cup sugar just to the simmering point (it will wiggle in the pot).  Drizzle this hot liquid into the egg mixture, while whisking constantly.  Return the mixture to the saucepan, whisking constantly.  Cook until the mixture thickens.  Mix in the melted chocolate.  Pour into serving bowls,covering the surface with wax paper to prevent a skin from forming.  Let cool, then refrigerate until chilled.  Makes 6 servings or one pie.