It's blueberry season here in Northeast Missouri, and we've been picking! Three visits to the local U-Pick, and many more visits to the bushes at our friend's house. I like to go into the winter months with at least 6 to 8 gallons of frozen berries for baking, smoothies, pancakes, and eating. And of course eating them fresh is one of the true joys of summertime. If you've read my blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I am a big time baker - cookies, muffins, granola, and quick breads are my favorites. Camping on our land has made food selection and preparation somewhat trickier - for instance, it's really hard to keep meat for more than a day with no refrigeration (we use … [Read more...]
“I Can’t Wait Any Longer” Salsa Recipe
Around this time of year, my taste buds get a hankering for the fresh, piquant taste of homemade salsa. While I do can tomato and tomatillo salsa for year-round use, there is nothing like walking into the garden to select a ripe red tomato, dicing it into chunks, adding some cilantro, salt, onion, and a jalapeno and devouring an entire bowl of salsa fresca in one sitting. It is something we do on a daily basis during peak tomato season. The only problem is that I don't have ripe red tomatoes (yet)! But I do have beautiful cilantro from the garden I manage, sweet onions in my spring garden, garlic from last summer in Oregon, and just-ripening Gypsy sweet peppers. In a moment of salsa … [Read more...]
Making a Wedding Cake: Part Four – The Big Day
Saturday was the Big Day. We made our lists and checked them twice, gathered our supplies, took the cake out of the fridge Friday night, and the icing out on Saturday morning. We loaded the cake layers, lemon curd, and icing into large coolers and headed over to the wedding site. Despite pounding rain and thunder, everyone involved in wedding preparation was in great spirits, and we busily got to work with more than one interested onlooker. Our first task was whipping the cold icing back into warm fluffiness with our hand mixer. I had read that this would be no problem - just give it a little beating to restore the texture. I readied the first layer while Brian beat, until he … [Read more...]
Making a Wedding Cake: Part Three – Baking
Three batches, 16 cups of sugar, 4 dozen eggs, and 8 lbs of butter later, the cake is baked, the icing is whipped, and the curd is in the fridge! Perhaps the highlight of the baking experience for me was the drama of the Swiss Meringue Buttercream icing. Quite frankly, making this icing was a bit daunting - so much whipping, so much butter at stake. But the oh-so-friendly and helpful world of cake blogging made everything work out just fine. Starting out with 8 sticks of butter, cold and ready to be added to the egg whites and sugar. First you get this lovely, marshmallow fluff consistency, Next, you add the pats of butter, bit by bit, Until the icing looks like … [Read more...]
Making a Wedding Cake: Part Two – Tasting
Thursday night we prepared our first test cake, a Lemon Wedding Cake courtesy of Martha Stewart. It baked up beautifully golden brown and slid right out of the 8" round pan. Friday, I carefully sliced the cake horizontally in half, and then in a semi-circle so we could experiment with a four layer cake. On each cake layer, I edged the cake with a thin circle of swiss buttercream icing, and then filled with alternating layers of jam or lemon curd. We asked our friends Mike and Julia to join us for a sunset cake tasting Friday night. Part of the goal of this tasting was to experiment with jam-curd flavor combinations. An informal Facebook poll hinted that lemon-blueberry might be the … [Read more...]
Gluten-free Raw Buckwheat Granola Recipe
For the past 15 years I have been on a quest to make the perfect granola. Admittedly, some years that pursuit has looked more like roaming the shelves of the natural food store, searching for the perfect blend of nutty crunch - a granola that could stand up to milk without getting soggy. A radical shift in my granola making occurred when I was introduced to the idea of using raw buckwheat groats in place of rolled oats. For those that have only experienced the very distinctive flavor of toasted buckwheat, raw buckwheat groats are totally different - subtle, yet hearty, substantial, but not overpowering. Plus, buckwheat is gluten-free, low glycemic, and packed with essential amino acids … [Read more...]