Cook the Books Friday: Cornmeal cake.

It has been a slow baking month for Tea and Scones. It has just been to hot to cook. With Highs in the lower 100s and Heat Indices in the 105 area turning on the oven just did not seem like a good idea. Unless I wanted to bake really early in the morning. THAT wasn’t going to happen!

We finally had rain today and the temps dropped. Seemed like a good evening to bake. And it seemed a good idea to start back baking with Dorie’s Cornmeal Buttermilk Loaf Cake, with or without berries.

Instead of the loaf I used Dorie’s idea of a skillet cake. Same ingredients. Shorter baking time.

B is a big fan of cornbread. Sweet cornbread. So I figured he would like this cake.

I used Strawberries on his half …

…and blueberries on my half.

This was very good. Not real sweet. I topped with vanilla ice cream or sweet whipped cream.

The recipe is on page 264 of Dorie Greenspan’s Everyday Dorie.

You can find more Cornmeal Cakes at Cook the Books Friday

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GFGF: Fruit

This week the choice for Good Food Good Friends is FRUIT. My choice. Because the Farmers Markets are full of fresh fruits and veggies. I used some fresh and some canned. Not ALL fruits are available fresh. This fruit salad is based on an Ambrosia my grandmother used to make. For Thanksgiving. For Christmas. For Easter. It was one of my favorite sides.

I’ve taken her Ambrosia and kicked it up a notch. (BAM!) There are not measurements just add in the fruit you really like. Anything, really. I used mangoes, bananas, cherries, satsumas, and strawberries. I added coconut and then mixed it well into some Hibiscus Passionfruit whipped cream. PERFECT!!

See, no recipe. I found the Hibiscus Passionfruit flavoring and thought it would add a little extra to the whole mix. 1 cup whipped cream + 2 TBL flavoring.

More Fruit?

Kayte

Ellen

Donna

Peggy

Ulrike

Our next fresh ingredient for salad is Spinach. Peggy’s choice.

 

{EwE}Celebrating the Forth with Cheesecake

And not just any cheese cake.  Ellie’s Mini Cheesecakes with Strawberries.  And Blueberries.

The theme this week for Eating with Ellie was Red, White, Or Blue.  But since it was the Fourth –  our most important American holiday celebration – I just couldn’t pass up the chance to go  Red, White, AND Blue!!

 

This is a no-bake cheesecake with  a graham cracker crust. The little cheesecakes are made in muffin cups so 1 is just perfect for a quick sweet bite.  And since Cheesecake is one of my fave desserts it wasn’t hard to make this one.

Since there are no eggs in this recipe you just have to mix up the ingredients and pour the batter into the cups over the baked crusts.  Easy Peasy!

Ellie tops her cheesecakes with sliced strawberries.  There weren’t any decent ones in the store so I mixed in some home-made strawberry jam and topped with some blueberries instead.  And on some I just topped with strawberry jam and blueberries.  You can never have enough red white and blue.

The only thing wrong with these – the crust gets soggy after a couple of days in the fridge.

The recipe is from Ellie’s Comfort Food Fix  {page 266) .  Each cheese cake is only 250 calories. {And since I used Splenda instead of sugar you can take off 43 calories.  But hten I added in about 1/4 cup of strawberry jam, so maybe it evened out…..}

Check out the rest of Red, White, or Blue on Eating with Ellie!

 

{BCM} Strawberry Shortcakes Franco-American Style

It’s summer. Officially. Although, here in the deep south our summer started about 2 weeks ago when the rains FINALLY stopped and the sun came out. Talk about HUMIDITY!!

Summer means lots of cold drinks, cool salads, BBQ-ing, and Strawberries. And if you have strawberries then you absolutely HAVE to make Strawberry Shortcakes. I mean, its like a law or something…..

In the US this means using those little round sponge cakes that soak up all the juices. Or using a sweet biscuit. But the star of the show is always the berries. Sweet. Red. Juicy – if you are lucky enough to find them. It doesn’t matter what you serve them on. This weekthe Doristas are using Lady Finger cookie disks. It’s different.

But different can be good. As these French style sweet treats were. Dorie says we should call the Ladyfinger Disks Indies: Celebrate Independence Day in the US and Bastille Day in France. I’m just gonna call them DELISH!!

Layers of Indies with sweet berries and sweet cream. Cannot beat that on a hot day in the Deep South.

Check out the other Shortcakes on the Tuesdays with Dorie website where we leave our links for this week’s “assignment”.

The recipe is on page 338 of Dorie’s Baking Chez Moi.

 

{SRC} What DOES Debbie Do?

Debbie does DELICIOUS!!!

In more ways than I can count!

And lucky for me she was my assignment for June’s Secred Recipe Club.
For once I did not have any trouble picking a recipe. I WANT to do ALL of them!! But since I only had two weeks and there are TONS of delicious, healthy recipes on Deb’s site, I had to settle for two, or maybe three…

Before we start with the Recipes…Debbie of Debbie does Dinner is a mom and home cook who decided that dieting was the pits unless you had good tasting food. She has adapted and developed tons of recipes that are healthy, delicious, and lower in calorie. Thanks, Debbie. These are just what I needed.

Okay, now for the food!! Breakfast: A Breakfast Smoothie to be exact. With lots of fruit and dairy and SPINACH!! Yeah, I know what some of you are thinking. SPINACH? In a smoothie? But it totally works. AND it means more fiber and protein. Yep!

All those beautiful healthy colors!!

10 strawberries
1 banana
1 handful of blueberries (or blackberries)
6 oz. low fat plain yogurt
1/4 cup low fat milk
1 big handful of baby spinach

Put all of the ingredients into a blender and mix until you reach desired texture. If you want it cold and icier, freeze the fruit before putting in the blender. {I used all frozen fruit.}
While I make smoothies quite often I have never put spinach in one. There were lots of little pieces of green, red, and blue from the spinach and berries. Great start for the day. {Original Recipe}

And Dinner meant QUINOA. Debbie has several quinoa recipes on the site. If I had had some Sun-dried tomatoes I would have made this one but the Mexican Quinoa was awesome.

Mexican Quinoa

1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup yellow corn
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp dried cilantro
2 cups quinoa, rinsed
3 cups veggie broth
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp. oregano
Salt and pepper

Boil the onion in about 1/4 cup of veggie broth in a large saucepan.
When it is soft add the garlic, cumin and chili powder and cook for about a minute. Add the quinoa, broth, diced tomatoes, corn, oregano, salt and pepper.
Bring to a boil then reduce the heat, cover and simmer until the quinoa is tender and the liquid has been absorbed, about 15 minutes.

Lots of wonderful flavors in this one. The only change was to add some corn and put some dried cilantro IN the saucepan with the other ingredients. It was a tasty side. For lunch the next day I added some diced roasted chicken. YUMYY!

And Dessert! Of Course!

And lucky for us she had a cheese cake recipe. Lucky because that is our favorite dessert. And then, even better, it had PEANUT BUTTER and CHOCOLATE!!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Filling:
2 (8 oz) bars cream cheese {Lower cal with fat-free}
3 eggs
3 egg yolks {I used Egg Beaters}
1 cup Splenda
1/2 cup fat free sour cream
1 cup creamy peanut butter

Topping:1 cup fat free sour cream
1 cup milk chocolate chips
2 tbsp. light brown sugar

DUMP all the ingredients into a food processor. Process until it becomes a silky smooth mixture.
Pour the filling into a springform pan (9″ or 8″) and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 5 minutes.
Remove the pan from the the oven and place it aside allowing it to cool just a bit.
Warm the sour cream and milk chocolate with the brown sugar in a small saucepan over low heat. Gently whisk to blend in the chocolate as it melts, then take the pan off the heat.
Gently pour topping on top of cheesecake and put back into the oven for about 15 minutes.
Cool cheesecake completely before eating. The chocolate topping will harden in the fridge.
Debbie’s original cheese cake had a crust but I made mine crustless. {Original Recipe}

I have so many of Debbie’s recipes pinned. It was hard to pick and I still have to try:

Lemon Yoghurt Muffins
Blueberry/AlmondAmaretto/Quinoa Crisp
Apple Fritter Bread and her
Tomato Basil Bread

Just to name a few.

So hop (Get it – Blog HOP) on over to Debbie’s blog and try some of her DELICIOUS! recipes.

 

{FFWD} sable breton galette with berries

It is now Saturday. Try as I might I just didn’t find the time to get this great little dessert posted before midnight. But…at least this week I found the time to actually MAKE the FFWD pick.

The galette was super simple to put together. A simple sable cookie crust that went together in no time, fresh berries, lemon curd, and whipped cream gave us an elegant dessert. Since there are only two of us at home now I only made 1/4 of the recipe. This gave me more than enough do to make a 6″ tart with some dough left over for a cookie. I topped it with lemon curd AND whipped cream, {orie suggested one or the other….}and topped that with some fresh blueberries from the garden. Some strawberries from the market and some blueberries from the pasture behind the house. Sooooo good. This is definitely a keeper. Fresh, faintly sweet, flavorful.

Visit with the other Members of FFWD and drool over their galettes. You won’t be sorry.

The recipe is on page 464 of Dorie’s around my French table

Sorry for the dark pictures. I just got a new computer and haven’t yet learned how to use the picture edit.}

 

Super Simple Strawberry Ice Cream

Strawberry Season. I can think of lots of wonderful sweets to make with fresh Strawberries. Pie. Cake. But the first thing that comes to mind is usually ICE CREAM!.

Rich Strawberry Ice Cream

2 cups fresh strawberries stemmed and halved.
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 Tbl vanilla extract
dash salt

Add 1/3 cup sugar to the chopped strawberries and let sit about 30/40 minutes.
Place strawberries and remaining ingredients in a blender and process until smooth.
Cover and refrigerate until ready to freeze. Pour contents into ice cream maker.
Devour!! {Okay, that’s not really part of the recipe, but this IS good ice cream.}

This is a composite of several recipes because I couldn’t find one I really liked that was quick.

 

{Phyl’s Ice Cream Week} Strawberry FroYo

I admit it! I cheated! There!! I said it and I don’t feel bad at all.

Tuesday of Ice Cream Week is Frozen Yogurt. And I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed for making what I wanted so I improvised. I seem to be doing that more and more all the time.

Have you ever wondered if you could make frozen yogurt by just pouring regular yogurt into an ice cream maker? I had. For quite a while.

And the answer is…..

YES!!!

I went on Bing and asked that question. I got various answers. Helpful, sorta. I figured all I had to lose was the price of a quart of yogurt so I just did it!! I used:

1 quart Strawberry low fat yogurt
3/4 cup Splenda {you can use the same amount of sugar}

and simply poured it into the ice cream maker. Viola!! Frozen Yogurt!! After about an hour in the freezer it was perfect. Not too hard, still creamy (despite what I had read!) and delicious.

This is dangerous information. All I have to do now is buy regular yogurt (think of all the flavors out there) and throw it into the ice cream maker.

Visit Phyl, and Rebecca, Abby,and Di for their ice creams.

 

{TWD2} Crisps, Pies, and Torts! How sweet it is!

I’m sorry!

What month did you say it was? MAY!! How did that happen. Didn’t we just have Christmas? New Years?

Time just flies by!! Too quickly sometimes! But we make the best of it….

And we do that by BAKING! Lots and lots of baking! At least I do because I am doing TWD catch-ups. At least there are 5 Tuesdays this month. Two reserved for Baking with Julia, the NEW TWD! And three for catch-ups. WHEW!

In 1958 I was living just outside Liverpool (you know, BEATLE City!) We had a huge house in a little village (Rainhill) and there was a garden in the backyard. In that garden we had RHUBARB. Lots of RHUBARB! I remember liking it as an 8 year old but that was lots of years ago. Did I still like it? Only one way to find out!

Strawberry-Rhubarb Double Crisp

I have to admit I didn’t expect to like this. I tasted the Rhubarb before slicing it up and putting it on the crust and it was NOT what I remembered. But in the crisp it added a touch of tart to the sweetness of the strawberries. Admittedly, I did not use as much as Dorie called for (1 lb) but it was enough to taste the tartness. The sliced rhubarb is scattered over the bottom crisp layer, covered by a sweet strawberry filling over which another layer of crisp is scattered. YUM!! is all I have to say. The ginger (but not the crystallized) added a certain amount of zing to the crisp and cuts back on the sweetness of the filling. It. Was. Good! And just because – I added a slightly sweet gingered whipped cream on top. I liked that!! Just enough ginger to compliment the ginger in the crisp.

This crisp was selected in April 12, 20ll by Sarah of Teapots and Cakestands where you can find the recipe. Or find it on page 420 of BFMHTY.
BTW this is a double catch-up because it WAS an April recipe but there was not rhubarb to be found in April.

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Now! May!
May 6th, 2008, the TWD group all came together over a Peanut Butter Torte.

Imagine a fluffy Peanut Butter Mousse filled with chopped peanuts, flavored with espresso, poured into an Oreo Cookie crumb crust flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon, topped with chocolate ganache and you have this torte!! OH! MY! HEAVEN! IF you like PB and IF you like Chocolate, that is!
As is the case, the espresso served only to heighten the taste of the chocolate. And since the cinnamon and nutmeg are in the crust it doesn’t overpower the mousse itself. The SIL said it tasted like a PB Cup. I think it is MUCH more than that! MUCH MORE!! Definitely a repeat here.

I made 1/2 of the recipe and it fit nicely into a 5″ springform with just a tad left over for, eh…. tasting!! Yeah, that’s it. TASTING!!

Thank you, Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food, great choice. Elizabeth’s page is no longer available, but I did find the recipe on Susan’s blog. And it is on page 282 of Dorie’s BFMHTY.

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May 13, 2008, TWD visited Florida – kinda – with a wonderful lime and coconut pie chosen by Dianne of Dianne’s Dishes

Florida Pie

What we have here is a creamy lime meringue pie combined with a creamy coconut layer on the bottom. Can you imagine the combo – lime and coconut (Yeah, I know. You are singing the song, too! So were all the other TWD bakers on this one!!!) The coconut layer added a little ‘chew’ to the pie. The lime was faintly there and just the perfect level of tartness for the sweet coconut. Coconut is also mixed into the meringue. Everyone liked this one!

1/2 of the recipe resulted in two 6″ mini pies. Just right for two people.

Look on page 340 of BFMHTY for Dorie’s recipe. And you can find the recipe on Dianne’s blog.

 

{TWD2} Berry Surprise Cake

So, here it is, the last Tuesday in January and the last (but one) TWD January treat I missed. {I say but one because there are the Chocolate Fluff Filled Madeleines but those will have to wait.}

January 20, 2009, I missed Mare’s pick. Sorry, Mare. But I am making up for it now.

Berry Surprise Cake

This cake reminds me of summer. It is filled with berries – Dorie suggested Raspberries but said we could use any berry so I used blackberries and strawberries – and covered with Whipped Cream. Almost a strawberry shortcake, but way better.

The sponge cake is hollowed out, brushed with Raspberry Syrup {I had some DaVinci so I used that.} and then filled with a cream cheese/whipped cream filling and berries.

Since mine was small {6″ springform} I did not slice the whole top of the cake off, but rather cut the center out and sliced off a piece of the removed cake.

I wanted to make sure I had plenty of room for the filling. 1/2 of the recipe of cake was perfect for the smaller springform. 1/2 of the filling and whipped topping was also just right.

Delicious! Light! Refreshing! Definitely something to be enjoyed in the summer, but also a way to brighten up the winter.

You can find the recipe on Mare’s blog – Meet Me in the Kitchen – along with other delicious treats!! Or on page 273 – 275 in Dorie’s Baking From My Home to Yours.

Now on to February and the missing treats….

I know Nancy is catching up on TWD as is Leslie so go visit with them, too.