Berries for Baby!

Hi from California! What is Sarah doing in California? Well, the Baking Sisters have some very exciting news - Rebecca had a baby boy last week! He was a month early but the little dude just couldn't wait to see the world and all the sweet things it has to offer. Today, in what my brother-in-law refers to as "catered surgery," he had his bris, or circumcision, which inducts him into the covenant of the Jewish people. Not much fun for the little guy, or really for anyone who doesn't want to watch an old Jew take a scalpel to an eight-day-old's genitals. But you gotta do what you gotta do, and now he is healing nicely. Plus, he got a name! His English name is Leo Evan, and his Hebrew name is Leor Chaim. And he is super-cute! 

Since a bris is a Jewish event, of course there has to be a lot of eating. And since this is California, said eating should involve fruit (especially since Adam doesn't like chocolate)! And since this is the Baking Sisters, that fruit should be in pie form! Newly minted big brother Simon and I went through Rebecca's cookbooks and picked out some recipes with enticing-looking pictures, and we settled on a berry pie from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert. Yesterday Simon and his relatives went to the Culver City Farmers' Market, and we bought the most delicious berries imaginable. It seemed almost a waste to put them in a pie, but into a pie they would go. 

And they definitely paid off! The pie went so fast, and it was not even runny, which is often a peril with fruit pies. It was so simple to throw together, plus it not too sweet, which was good for a 9 a.m. event. You can put in whatever kind of fruit you fancy (I substituted one cup of raspberries for blackberries, though that was mostly because these were the best blackberries I've ever eaten and I wanted to eat them raw.) The fruit was bright and amazingly flavorful; I really think it made a big difference! 


Mixed Berry Pie
from Ready for Dessert by David Lebovitz (pg. 80)


Pie dough (recipe can be found here)


2 cups hulled and sliced strawberries
2 cups blueberries
2 cups blackberries
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons tapioca flour or cornstarch 
1 tablespoon lemon juice or kirsch


1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon whole milk or cream
1 tablespoon coarse crystal or granulated sugar


Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.


Lightly flour a work surface and roll out one disk of dough into a 14-inch circle. Drape it into a 9-inch pie plate. Trim away the excess dough, leaving a slight overhang. 


In a large bowl, gently mix the berries with the 1/2 cup of sugar, tapioca flour or cornstarch, and lemon juice or kirsch. Transfer the berry mixture to the dough-lined plate and distribute in an even layer.


Roll out the second dough disk into a 14-inch circle. Moisten the exposed edges of the dough in the pie plate with water, then drape the second dough circle over the top. Working all the way around the pie, tuck the upper edges under the lower dough edges and crimp to seal.


In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolk and milk or cream. Brush the top crust generously with the egg wash and sprinkle with the 1 tablespoon of sugar. Pierce the top crust with a paring knife in six places.


Bake until the top crust is browned and the filling juices are thick and bubbling, 50 to 60 minutes. If the crust is browning too quickly, loosely drap a sheet of aluminum foil over the top during baking.


Let the pie cool for about 1 hour before serving.

Adventures with the Ice Cream Maker: Have You Milked A Goat Today?

Here's one from the Baking Sisters' dad! Take it away, Dad!

It’s time for another guest blog by the Baking Sisters’ dad. This incredibly delicious recipe is adapted from the signature dessert of Eden Village Camp, the first (and only) Jewish environmental residential camp, located in Putnam Valley, New York. EVC is a wonderful place (you can see for yourself at www.edenvillagecamp.org ) that has what may be the best camp food in America – some of which is grown by the campers themselves!

Enough with the commercial – let’s get right to the recipe:

2-1/4 cups goat’s milk

2/3 cup sugar

scant 1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)

3/4 cup half & half

3/8 tablespoon vanilla extract

Pour 1-1/2 cups of goat’s milk into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat. Add the sugar and salt, stirring until the mixture is completely dissolved. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator. Puree the blueberries in a blender until almost completely smooth. When the mixture is thoroughly chilled, add the remaining goat’s milk, the half & half, and the blueberry puree. Stir to mix thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the prepared bowl of an ice-cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s directions.

As I said, EVC is an environmental camp, so the original recipe calls for milking the goats (I got my goat’s milk in the organic/specialty dairy case at Fairway) and pureeing the blueberries in a bicycle-powered blender (mine is electric). I don’t think either variation affected the taste.

NOTE: I would consider substituting heavy cream for the half & half. And I would add a couple of tablespoons of alcohol (vodka or a fruit-based liqueur) to give the ice cream a smoother consistency.

Happy National Bundt Day x2!

Double post day!  It is Martha Stewart Cupcake posting day for November and National Bundt Day!  The cupcake post will be up soon.

Mary, the woman behind The Food Librarian, one of the blogs I read regularly, is celebrating National Bundt Day by making 30 Bundts in 30 Days. Today is National Bundt Day and I want to help her celebrate! Mary has an exceptional dedication to the bundt. This is actually the second time she has made 30 bundts in 30 days and hers are always so beautiful. Her photography is wonderful too. We have never met, but she seems like such a sweet, kind person from the way she writes. You should check out her blog.

Instead of 30 bundts, I made 2. One is actually one that I got from Mary's blog -- The Blueberry Lemon Bundt. This cake was amazing. Other than adding a glaze of powdered sugar and lemon juice, I left it as written and it got rave reviews. I made it for my first education committee meeting this year and I think it helped the meeting run really smoothly. I always know I can turn to Mary, the queen of bundts, when I need something fantastic. The recipe can be found here.

The other bundt I made is from the always fabulous Dorie Greenspan. So glad that two fabulous women could provide me with recipes for two fantastic bundts. This cake doesn't look like much, but it is delicious! It is the Brown Sugar Bundt Cake from Baking from My Home to Yours. Inside the cake there are pears and raisins (which I skipped). I used farmer's market pears and their flavor really complimented the brown sugar and gave something special to the cake. Dorie says this cake is best the day after it is made, so I made it on Thursday night for Shabbat dinner on Friday. I also made it parve, and it was still delicious which, in my mind, is the sign of a great cake. You can find the recipe here.

Happy National Bundt Day and Congratulations to Mary!

Blueberries for Dad

If any of you remember last father's day, you remember that our dad is awesome.  The best dad in the world.  You may also remember that our dad is very hard to buy father's day cards for because he does not mow the lawn (as we don't have a lawn), play golf, drink beer or watch TV.  However, he does love blueberries, so it is always easy to make him something delicious for father's day.  This post is in honor of my awesome dad.  Sorry I can't be with you, but if I was, this is what I would make.  A shout out also goes to my awesome husband, who is a terrific dad and who also likes blueberries (but not as much as our son, who has been known to eat a whole pint in one sitting.  I guess he takes after grandpa).

In addition to this cake being delicious and appropriate for father's day, it also helps me in my ongoing quest to empty my fridge, freezer and pantry before the big move to LA.  We became the owners of a GIANT box of blueberries when our friends went to New York for 2 months, so I needed to find something to do with them.  Of course, I turned to Dorie and she did not disappoint.  This recipe also used up some buttermilk, brown sugar and pecans that I had around (her recipe calls for walnuts but I used what I had).  I also didn't have nutmeg or a lemon to zest, so I just left it out.  It turned out great without those things.  Look for more recipes from cleaning out my pantry in the next few days.

I urge you to make this cake.  It is delicious and easy.  The hardest part is waiting 1 hour for it to cook.  Make this for the blueberry loving dad in your life -- or raspberry or blackberry or any other kind of fruit (except strawberries -- Dorie says they are too watery) and wish all the dad's you know a Happy Father's Day!

The recipe is after the jump

I Love Muffins: Blueberry

I have been trying to find a muffin worth eating here in Texas.  Many of them are way, way to sweet, or they are too dry or they just don't taste good.  I have decided that the only solution is to make my own.  Sometimes you just want a really good muffin.

I have made this a bunch of times.  They are from one of my favorites -- King Arthur Flour -- and they are delicious.  I would make a couple of adjustments to the recipe.  I think that you could reduce the sugar somewhat.  They are not overly sweet, but they could be less sweet, especially if you want them as a breakfast treat, so I might go down to a little more than half a cup of sugar.  Also, you could substitute some of the white flour with whole wheat flour (or white whole wheat flour) if you want them to be a bit healthier.  Finally, I thought that 1.5 cups of blueberries was way to many for the amount of batter.  I would reduce to one cup and you would have plenty.

I didn't have any sparkling sugar, so they looked good, but they didn't have that sugary crunch.  You can find the recipe here.

Enjoy!

OMGalettes!

PEACHES!

Peaches peaches peaches!

So juicy and delicious! I read somewhere (the New York Times Dining section?) that, while most produce has suffered from this summer's schizoid weather, this is a great year for peaches. So I went out and bought peaches at the Union Square Farmer's Market. Yellow peaches, white peaches- I don't discriminate.

Now, what to do with all these peaches? I was faced with a similar fruity dilemma, thanks to the five containers of blueberries in our fridge after my Farmer's Market binge. (It's just me and my dad in the house now, and much as we love blueberries, it's a little much.) Daddy suggested that I make pie, but since there's only two of us, I thought I should make something a little more manageable. Poof- galettes!

A lot of people don't seem to know what a galette is. It's sort of like a pie or tart, but instead of being made in a dish you just dump the filling onto a circular piece of dough and fold up the edges. The word most frequently used to describe galettes is "rustic." Take that to mean what you will, but I take it to mean that it's okay to be messy. Galettes are also nice because you can make them whatever size you want. I made one little one (which I ate), one medium-sized one (which my dad ate), and one big one (which is sitting in the fridge). It's kind of like Goldilocks, if the papa bear's bowl of porridge was sitting in the fridge.

The recipe was a joint effort between Tartelette and LaDue & Crew. I like Tartelette a lot but usually I'm too intimidated to try her recipes, because they look so elegant as to be inaccessible for a novice baker like me. Still, I had made the galette that I linked to for my college suitemates as a Valentine's Day treat, and they gave the dough rave reviews, so I decided I wanted to try it myself. As for LaDue & Crew, I had never heard of her, but it was the first result that came up when I searched "peach blueberry galette," and it looks like she has some yummy recipes! Yay the Internet!

I have to say, despite what my suitemates said, I wasn't sure the galette dough was worth it. It was pretty good but not amazing, and it's a female dog to make. Both times I just couldn't get it to cohere (even though this time I cheated and used a food processor for the first part). Instead, the middle of the dough was sticky, while along the periphery it was crumbly and crumbs spilled everywhere. In general it's really difficult to work with, so I think that next time I'll try a different dough. Still, the thing I liked most about it was that it wasn't too sweet, so it didn't overpower the natural sugars in the fruit.

The filling was delightful, though I sort of made up the ratios. I didn't want to put in too much fruit because I knew I wasn't making many galettes, but I kept dipping in the bowl to eat the peaches! They were just so good! Anyway, I had a lot of leftover fruit at the end, so I just ate that. Om nom nom. I also added some cinnamon, which I think gave it a nice extra kick.

Overall, these were pretty fun to make, and a great summer treat. I did learn the hard way, however, that if you make your galettes on parchment paper and then set the baking sheet on the stove to cool, you should not turn on an open flame right next to the sheet. I almost burned down our kitchen!

For the Pate Sucree:
2 cups (250gr) all purpose flour
2 tablespoons (25gr) sugar
pinch of salt
1 stick (113gr) butter, cut in small dices
1 egg
2-4 tablespoons cold water

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar and salt and cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or two forks until the mixture ressembles forms pea size crumbs. Make a well in the center and add the egg. With a fork, start working the flour in a little at a time and when most of it is incorporated, quickly mix the dough into a coherent and smooth mass, adding some cold water, a tablespoon at a time, if necessary (this varies depending on the humidity or altitude of where you live). Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

For the filling:

6 or 7 large peaches, peeled, pitted, and sliced

1 c fresh blueberries

1/2 c packed brown sugar

1/8 tsp nutmeg

2 Tbs cornstarch

1 tsp Vanilla

1/8 c slivered almonds

Blogger's note- I added about 1 1/2 tsps of cinnamon

Combine peaches and blueberries in a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and nutmeg. Then add cornstarch, and combine well. Pour into bowl with fruit and mix. Add vanilla, and mix. Set aside.

To assemble:
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Roll the dough onto a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thick and cut three 6-inch rounds in it and place them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Fill the center of each round with the filling and crimp the edges towards the center. I don't like to cover the fruit that much with the dough but that is a personal preference. Brush the crust with egg wash and sprinkle with the remaining sugar over the galettes. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. (Blogger's note: I have no idea where she got that number. Both times I made it it was closer to 35 minutes, and it didn't even get very brown in that time.)

Plain Jane Plain Cake

We're going to try something a little different today and open today's post with a movie review. No, it's not for G.I. Joe, despite that cinematic masterpiece's obvious relevance to this blog. Rather, it's for Julie and Julia, which I saw on Sunday and Rebecca is going to see soon. I would highly recommend it for anyone who likes to cook, bake, eat or produce estrogen. It's the rare Hollywood movie about women where the main topic of conversation isn't men, and it will make your mouth water! Meryl Streep is incredible as Julia Child; Amy Adams, while okay, kind of gets chewed up in the jaws of Meryl's awesomeness. Oh well, that's what happens when you play in the big leagues. It inspired me to cook my way through Dorie Greenspan- a bout of inspiration that wore off pretty quickly when I remembered that I go to college, but still.

Speaking of Dorie..on to the post! So here's the deal. I really love blueberries. They're my favorite food, and I think it's genetic, since my dad also loves them (and so did Simon, last time I checked). So when I came home from Julie and Julia and was rooting around for recipes (Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a classic cookbook, but a) it's not great for anyone that keeps kosher and b) it's not stellar on desserts), I came across Dorie's Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake and made it the very next day.

I have to say, I was kind of disappointed. But to be fair, a lot of the disappointments were my fault. Our house has really fallen into baking disrepair since I was in Pennsylvania, and I came home to find no unsalted butter, no light brown sugar and only two eggs of an indeterminate expiration date. Lame. Still, I soldiered on, and the cake wasn't bad. It just wasn't great.

I thought it came out too thin, which was once again my fault- the recipe calls for an 11 x 7 pan, and I didn't have one so I used a bigger one. Hence, thin cake. However, the recipe also calls for a pint of blueberries, and I thought that was way too much. I didn't even put in a full pint (I was nibbling at them in their container- sue me), but it was a kind of overwhelming amount and sometimes the cake threatened to fall apart because the blueberry-to-crumb ratio was too much.

That said, there were good things about this cake as well. I made it on Monday, and today (Friday) it's still really moist and not at all stale. The brown sugar flavor is strong and unique. You can have it for breakfast, or serve it with vanilla ice cream as a dessert (yum yum yum! I highly recommend). It is, as its name states, a plain cake, and it's pretty versatile but nothing too special.

But never fear, dear reader(s?). I went to the Farmer's Market today and bought a whole mess of blueberries. Tonight- Maida Heatter's blueberry crumble!

A Father's Day Blueberry Pie

Our dad is awesome. He is an excellent dad. We learned many of our cooking and baking skills from him. However, it is always hard to buy a father's day card and/or present for him because he doesn't really drink beer, never plays golf and can only rarely be seen on the couch watching TV (although on the couch sleeping/pretending to read is a different story). Despite these troubles, we know that he loves blueberries, so making a blueberry pie was a no-brainer.

Confession time -- I ran out of time and so used pre-made pie crusts. They were good, although I know the pie would have been better if I made the crust. However, I did roll out the top so that I could seal the two crusts together well.

Second confession -- the picture is terrible since we ate the pie soon after I baked it and it was such a hit that there was very little left to photograph. Sorry!

Anyway, we made the filling from Dorie's Double Crusted Blueberry Pie and it was AWESOME. The only thing is that we had a lot of leftover flour/sugar/lemon mixture after pouring the filling into the pie, which we left out so that it would not overflow. It turned out great.

Here is the recipe:
2 ½ pints fresh blueberries
1 cup of sugar, or a little more, to taste, plus more for dusting
½ cup all purpose flour
Pinch of salt
Coarsely grated zest of ½ lemon
Squirt of fresh lemon juice, or a little more, to taste
¼ cup dry bread crumbs (you can use packaged unseasoned crumbs)

1 large egg, beaten with 1 tsp of water, for egg wash
Sugar, for dusting

Getting Ready: Butter a 9-inch pie plate (Dorie uses a standard Pyrex pie plate).

Working on a well-floured surface (or between wax paper or plastic wrap), roll out one piece of the dough to a thickness of about 1/8 – inch. Fit the dough onto the buttered pie plate and trim the edges to a ½ inch overhang. Roll the other piece of dough into a 1/8 inch thick circle and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat. Cover both the circle and the pie plate with plastic wrap and refrigerate while you pre-heat the oven and prepare the filling.

Getting Ready to Bake: Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Put the berries in a large bowl and gently stir in the sugar, flour, salt, zest and juice; let sit for about 5 minutes. Taste the filling and add more sugar and/or lemon juice, if needed.

Remove the pie shell and top crust from the refrigerator. Sprinkle an even layer of the breadcrumbs over the bottom of the shell. Give the filling a last stir and turn it into the crust.

Using your fingertips, moisten the rim of the bottom crust with a little cold water. Center the top crust over the filling and gently press the top crust against the bottom. Either fold the overhang from the top crust under the bottom crust and crimp the edges attractively or press the top crust against the bottom crust and trim the overhang from both crusts even with the rim of the pie plate. If you’ve pressed and trimmed the crust, use the tines of a fork to press the two crusts together securely. Using a small, sharp knife, cut 4 slits in the top crust crust and cut a circle out of the center, then lift the plate onto the baking sheet. (If you have time, refrigerate the pie for about 30 minutes. The pie can also be wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 2 months. Glaze and sugar it before you put it in the over and add at least 15 minutes to the baking time).

Brush the top crust with the egg wash, then sprinkle the crust with a little sugar, just to give it sparkle.

Bake the pie for 30 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees F, and bake the pie for another 30 minutes or so (total baking time is about an hour) or until the crust is a beautiful golden brown and the filling is bubbling up through the slits. If the crust seems to be browning too quickly, make a loose foil tent for the pie.

Transfer the pie to a rack and let it cool and settle for at least 30 minutes before serving.