eat! craft! live!

maple blueberry muffins

Through a long series of events including sales, free berries and our Greenling delivery, we recently ended up with more blueberries than anyone should ever own at once. *ahem* Which is not to say that I don't love blueberries - I do. As a kid, we had a giant blueberry bush in the front yard and when it was time to make muffins, my sister and I traipsed outdoors and picked blueberries until our fingers (and our mouths!) were stained with the sweet juices of summer.

This muffin recipe reminds me of home - maple-flavored muffins studded with sweet, bursting berries. As if I didn't long to return to Maine already, now my nostalgia and desire to escape from this hot, southern place are even stronger! Until that becomes a reality, I will have to tide myself over with these summery Maine muffins.

Maple Blueberry Muffins
adapted from The Muffin Book

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup milk
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 400° and grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, maple syrup, milk and melted butter. Add to flour mixture and stir until just combined. Carefully fold in berries.

Spoon into 12 muffin cups and bake until golder brown, about 15-18 minutes.

I found that these muffins are so deliciously buttery to begin with, they don't need to be buttered...it's like holding a little portable pancake in your hand! But by all means, butter them if you want to...

garlic chive-parmesan biscuits

One of the pleasures of getting fresh, local groceries delivered (or shopping at the farmer's market!) is finding new uses for familiar vegetables and herbs and getting to try new vegetables and herbs! I'm a big fan of chives - we are growing two big clusters in the garden after all - but I generally eat the onion-flavored variety. It's not that I hadn't ever tried the garlic kind, it's just that when I think "chives" I think "onion." Onion chives are delicious, with their snappy little tubular stems. But garlic chives, with their flat stems, are delicious too. They add just the right amount of garlicky flavor to these tartly cheesy drop biscuits. And since they're drop biscuits, they're super easy to make - no kneading, rolling out dough or cutting! Just plop them down and they're ready to go. I've been making batches of these and freezing them, so I can have fresh biscuits at the drop of a hat! Delicious with a cold summer soup.

garlic chive-parmesan biscuits
adapted from Joy of Cooking

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan
• 1/4 cup finely snipped fresh garlic chives
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425°F. Whisk together in a large bowl the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the butter pieces and cut them in with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs, with a few larger pieces. Add fresh chives and parmesan and whisk thoroughly. Add the buttermilk all at once and stir until the flour mixture is thoroughly moistened. (The dough will not be smooth.) Drop by heaping tablespoons onto an ungreased baking sheet 1-2 inches apart. Bake until the bottoms are golden brown, about 12-15 minutes.

blackberry buttermilk cake

When a girl gets fresh blackberries in her grocery delivery box and stumbles across a recipe for a deliciously simple cake calling for raspberries, what does she do? Why, substitute, of course! A tiny substitution, to be sure, and one that might be repeated this weekend with, get this, blueberries! It's that glorious time of year here when the fruit is all juicy and bursting with flavor and it's hard to even save enough to bake with because it's just so easy to pop them all in your mouth... But restrain yourself! Because this cake is amazingly delicious with its crisp, sugary top and so simple I had to make two. In two days. It's that good.

blackberry buttermilk cake
adapted from Gourmet, June 2009

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 stick butter, softened
• 2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
• 1 cup fresh blackberries

Preheat oven to 400°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan. (My cake pans have gone missing so I used a pie plate. Worked great.) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, if using. Beat the butter together with the 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then beat in vanilla. Add the egg and beat well. At low speed, mix in the flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Spoon batter into prepared pan, smoothing top. Scatter blackberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Bake until cake is golden and a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate. Apparently, two cakes serves two people over the span of about three days, if you're us and there aren't a lot of other groceries in the house...

fruit crisp!

It's summer in Texas! Summer means hot weather. Hot weather means not wanting to spend hours slaving over a hot stove. Conveniently, summer also means an abundance of cool, fresh fruits and veggies. Lovely, delectable things that require little to no cooking. (I've been really getting down with some fresh veggie sandwiches lately...)

Fruit crisps are some of my very favorite warm-weather desserts. The fruit is (hopefully) in season, the ingredients are few and the effort is minimal! But the reward is delicious...especially with a wee bite of cool vanilla ice cream or a dollop of fresh whipped cream. Wash and chop a few fruits, combine a few ingredients in a bowl, toss them all in the oven for a bit and voila! Scrumptious fruity dessert.

This recipe comes to me, and thus you, from my mom. One year in college, I asked for a blank recipe book for Christmas and asked family members to write down recipes for their favorite foods. This is one that my mom entered. It is rich and crumbly and very sweet - reduce the brown sugar a bit if you're not into that sort of thing or if your fruit is already quite sweet. Also, the recipe calls for cinnamon, but feel free to experiment with whatever spices your little hearts desire! The fruits are up to you too - in the past week I've made one with the last of the good apples for the season and another with the first of the blackberries and peaches!

Fruit Crisp

• 1/4 lb. butter (1 stick) - slightly softened and cut in pieces
• 3/4 cup oatmeal
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (or spice of your choosing)
• about 3 cups fruit, give or take - washed, possibly peeled, and in bite-size pieces

Optional additions: raisins, chopped nuts, coconut, extra spices...

Preheat oven to 350°. Have ready an 8x8" or similar sized pan. Dump the fruit in the pan. (See? Easy.) If I'm using apples, I like to dust them with an extra sprinkle of cinnamon at this point. In a medium bowl, whisk together the oatmeal, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Add the butter pieces and combine using a pastry blender or a fork until the mixture is crumbly. (The largest bits should be about the size of peas and most of it should resemble breadcrumbs.) Pour mixture over fruit and bake for about 35 minutes at 350°. Serve warm or cold, alone or with ice cream or whipped cream. Or serve with a bit of honey-sweetened Greek yogurt for an indulgent breakfast treat!

strawberry bread

If strawberry scones aren't quite your speed, maybe some delicious strawberry bread? (But seriously. If strawberry scones don't sound completely delicious to you, I'm not sure we can be friends.) With the first strawberries of the year in our Greenling box, we received a printout of a recipe for strawberry bread. "Strawberry bread?" I thought to myself. "Hm." I must admit that upon first inspection, it seemed a little odd. Banana bread, sure. Zucchini bread, of course. But strawberry bread? So I hesitated. But I was wrong to do so! After seeing a few tweets about how delicious it was, I made it myself. And boy was it tasty. But it was also chock full of oil and sugar and the recipe may have been halved at one point because it had the very odd requirement of 1 1/2 eggs. So I played with the recipe a bit and came up with a version that still holds on to the delicious flavors and moistness of the original, but with added whole wheat flour and less sugar and oil. The end result was definitely delicious and a whole lot healthier than the original!

Strawberry Bread

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 pint strawberries, washed and sliced (about a cup)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/4 cup applesauce

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a loaf pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. In a large bowl, or the bowl of a mixer, beat together the strawberries, vanilla, eggs, sugar, oil and applesauce. Gradually add the flour mixture to the strawberry mixture and beat until fully combined. Pour into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. For extra deliciousness, sprinkle powdered sugar on top of the loaf after it has cooled. Yum!

strawberry scones

I was going to blog about these scones. And then I forgot I was going to blog about the scones and started making plans to blog about these socks that I finished a few days ago. (They're swell.) But then I forgot to actually take photos of the socks and so here we are back at scones again! Which is really just fine, because these scones? Are delicious. I whipped them up Sunday morning before M was out of bed and would have loved to eat them all myself, but I refrained. At some point in the mid afternoon, I asked him if he'd tried them yet and he said they were the best he'd ever had. "Seriously?" I asked. His response? "Yeah. I've had three."

They're that good. They aren't your typical scone. When I think "scone," I all too often think of chalky, crumbly, somewhat dry, wedge-shaped, semi-sweet, but generally bland, concoctions. Maybe there's a currant or two tossed in. And maybe they've got that godawful sugary icing drizzled over the tops in little zigzags. (Am I the only one who hates that stuff? It's like they're trying to make up for the fact that they know the scones are dry and boring.) These are moist and flavorful and slightly sweet and slightly tart. They make use of the very first of the spring strawberries - somewhat tarter than I'm used to and oh, so fruity and wonderful! (My apologies to those of you in northern climes who are still anxiously awaiting anything resembling a fresh, local bit of fruit. You can gloat later in the summer when I'm frazzled and hot and my garden is yielding nothing but chili peppers.)

Strawberry Scones
adapted from the Joy of Cooking

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• slightly less than 1 pint of fresh, barely ripe strawberries, cut into small pieces - you don't want them to be overly ripe or they will get mushy when you try to mix them in

Preheat the oven to 425°. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add the cold butter and cut it in with a pastry blender (or your preferred method) until the largest pieces are about the size of peas and the rest look like breadcrumbs. Add the strawberries and toss them around so they get coated in the flour mixture. Whisk together the egg, heavy cream and vanilla and add all at once to the flour mixture. This is where things get messy! Stir in the wet ingredients just until the dry ingredients are moistened. I found that the easiest way to do that was to stir a bit with a wooden spoon or spatula and then just use my hands. The dough will not be firm enough to roll out but it will be a bit firmer than your average drop biscuit type dough. Pull off small chunks in the vicinity of, oh, about 1.5-2 inches in diameter? (I really should keep better track of these things!) Form them by hand (or use a spoon, if you're not down with getting a little messy) and place them on a cookie sheet several inches apart. I used parchment because I'm a little lazy about cleanup. Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove and cool on a wire rack. I thought they were delicious on their own, but M said they were "mind blowing" with a bit of honey. You be the judge.

A side note, completely unrelated to scones: Whole Foods finally put up their own recap of the food blogger bash I wrote about last week and they're giving away a free goodie bag to one of the lucky commenters on this post over at the Whole Foods blog. It's a great goodie bag - I'm still munching my way through the pita chips, though most of the other delicious tidbits are long gone. So head over, if you're so inclined, and leave a comment before Friday, March 27 for a chance to win!

crispy salted oatmeal cookies with butterscotch chips

I have fond memories of some sort of butterscotch-chipped cookie baked by my grandmother. I remember eating them while playing with plastic horses in my grandparents' living room. Only one of the horses was actually a mule (who makes plastic mule toys?) and my grandfather would point it out every. single. time. It cracks me up now to think back on it. The late afternoon sunlight would reflect off the snow and stream through the picture window as I tried to minimize my cookie crumbs and gallop the plastic horses over their carpeted paddock in front of the Christmas tree.

These are not those cookies.

I don't know what cookies those were, though I suppose I could just call my grandmother and ask. (If she even remembers! They might have been only memorable to my 5-year-old self! Who knows?) But these cookies make a nice, sophisticated stand-in for now. I first saw them on everybody likes sandwiches, who got the recipe from smitten kitchen. Both of them used good white chocolate. Me? I love white chocolate. Love it. I really and truly do. And I'm sure these cookies are more than delicious with white chocolate. But with a bag of butterscotch chips burning a hole in my cabinet and the memory of those childhood cookies haunting me...what's a girl to do but surrender to the butterscotch gods?

Crispy Salted Oatmeal Cookies with Butterscotch Chips

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/4 t. salt
• 14 T. unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 t. vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 6 oz. butterscotch chips
• 1/2 t. fancy salt

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and the 1/4 t. salt in a medium bowl. In another bowl, beat together butter, sugar and brown sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Slowly add flour mixture and mix until just blended. Stir in oats and butterscotch.

Use a tablespoon measure to place dough on parchment-covered baking sheet. Press down on each ball to flatten slightly and sprinkle a bit of fancy salt on each cookie. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Makes about two dozen cookies.

apple-date coffeecake muffins

Very rarely do I make up a baking recipe from scratch. I modify and change, tweak and substitute, but that's about as far as it goes. With cooking, as opposed to baking, I always make things up from scratch! I'll use a recipe more as inspiration than actual instructions many times. A dash of this, a plop of that, stir some of that over there in this over here and voila! Dinner! Baking always seemed so complicated. So scientific. And I was too afraid to make mistakes. Because it's true - most baking differs from most cooking in that there really are certain scientific things that need to take place in order for the food item, whatever it may be, to come out alright. I guess I'm just getting to the point where I know what those things are!

This is all to say that I've finally made up my own recipe for a baked good. And oh what a baked good it is! I debated over the name. Is it a coffeecake? Is it a spice cake? Muffins? Mini muffins? Giant pan? Oh, the decisions! I went with muffins, though you can make it in just about any form you want - and I've tried most of them! I like muffins because they're good portion control. And with this cake, you might need it! It is rich, sweet and buttery with added moistness from the fruit and sour cream and just enough spice to keep me happy.

Baked in a 9x13 pan yesterday morning, we wrapped up half to store in the freezer for later and another little portion for the neighbor. And the other large piece? Let's just say that quick work was made of it...

And now, without further adieu...

Apple-Date Coffeecake Muffins

• 2 cups flour
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 t. ginger
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 4 eggs
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1 apple, coarsely grated or finely chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped dates
• streusel topping, recipe below (optional, but delicious!)

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly grease your baking vessel of choosing - I've used a 9x13 pan, muffin cups and mini muffin cups.

In a large bowl, cream the brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, ginger and cinnamon. In a second medium bowl, combine the eggs, sour cream, honey, applesauce and vanilla. Gradually add the wet and dry ingredients to the brown sugar and butter, stirring after each addition. Stir in the apples and dates. Pour into prepared pan and top with streusel topping. (Also delicious - pour half the batter into the pan, top with half the streusel, then repeat. Streusel filling! And topping! Yum.) Bake 9x13 pan for 45-55 minutes, muffins for about 26 minutes, and mini muffins for about 15. Cool and enjoy!

Streusel Topping
from the Joy of Cooking

• 2/3 cup flour
• 2/3 cup finely chopped pecans
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 5 T. melted butter
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. salt

Combine all ingredients.

The first time I made the streusel topping, it was perfect. The second time it seemed like there was too much butter and not enough dry stuff - I'd be curious to see what others have to say!

simple pizza

As promised, here's one of the many recipes inspired by the bounty of produce we've been getting lately. (I love Greenling!) A simple pizza made with just tiny, perfect, ripe cherry tomatoes, a few herbs and some fresh mozzarella on a homemade crust.

The tomatoes came in our Greenling box and it's time for a confession: I'm not a huge fan of tomatoes. Especially cold ones. Thus, the normal pop-'em-in-your-mouth-and-eat-'em way of ingesting these little red orbs clearly wasn't going to work for me. Nor could I stomach them in a salad, on a sandwich, or sliced with some salt and pepper. They just simply had to be cooked. But how? When I think of wee tomatoes like that, I always think of fresh mozzarella. Fittingly, the idea of a simple pizza was born!

Making pizza is one of my family's favorite things to do when we're together and hungry. My dad is a great cook and baker and he always whips up a delicious dough seemingly out of thin air. I have fond memories of being a kid (and an adult!) and standing around the kitchen island in my father's house with pans of dough and tubs, bags and packages of every pizza topping imaginable. We would each decorate our own section of the pizza, sometimes collaborating, sometimes making little fences made of olives so that so-and-so's grilled onions wouldn't accidentally migrate onto someone else's slice. This would, of course, render that slice completely inedible to the offended family member. Onion contamination is not to be trifled with. ;)

The recipe for pizza dough I always use is my father's. I'm not sure where he got it or if he made it up from years of baking with us kids. The one thing I do know is that it is written down in my cookbook and I go back to it time and time again whenever the urge for pizza strikes. Sometimes I vary it with different flours, herbs and spices and sometime I stick right to the recipe. Here it is, in my father's words. Enjoy!

Pizza Crust

• 3/4 cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon yeast
• A little salt
• A tablespoon or so of oil
• A tablespoon of sugar
• Bread flour

Combine water, salt, sugar and oil and about half a cup of flour. Mix it well with a whisk. Add yeast and mix it well again with a whisk. Let it rest a minute or two and the yeast will have time to hydrate. Add enough flour to make a dough you can handle. Turn onto a floured surface. Add flour & knead til dough is smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl, cover with wax paper & let rise. When it has risen, punch down, turn onto floured surface & roll out to fit pizza peel or pan. If using peel, cover it with flour/corn meal to prevent sicking. Pan should be greased. Let dough rest & rise a few minutes, then add toppings & bake in hot oven.

As you can see, this recipe assumes that you already have some idea of what you're doing! For my deliciously simple pizza with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, I first brushed the whole thing with olive oil, then topped it with halved cherry tomatoes and slices of fresh mozzarella. I sprinkled it with some herbs, probably basil, maybe thyme or oregano, but I can't honestly remember now. As is my rule when cooking, add what feels right! Once baked, the cheese had melted all around the tomatoes and each bite was a little reminder of summer.

cake in a mug?

You may remember that I made cookies on election day. You may also remember me mentioning how haphazardly I cooked them. I just wanted to share the above lovely photo of just how haphazard they really were! (Not that it kept my co-workers from eating them all in the span of about ten minutes the next day when I brought them to work.)

I ran across this recipe for a cake in a mug just a little while ago and now I'm craving cake. In a mug. In the microwave. I may or may not actually rouse my lazy bones and go into the kitchen and see if we have any hot cocoa mix. It's trashy, I know, but it sounds so satisfying right now! I already made oven baked eggplant parmesan and crispy baked zucchini fries this evening. And homemade pasta sauce. And an appetizer of radishes with good butter on little bread rounds. (Sadly, the zucchini fries and bread and butter left us so completely full that the eggplant parmesan has been demoted to tomorrow's work lunch.) But I might be able to rouse myself for some cake.

In other food news, I really want to make a variation of these cookies, which I actually first saw over at Everybody Likes Sandwiches and was then reminded of again just the other day by Amy from Commonplace. Ah, cookies. How I love thee... Alas, this evening I'm so exhausted I can't do much besides lie here on the couch with my laptop and a big mug of berry flavored green tea. G'night!