Posts filed under ‘Sweet Treats’
Rhubarb Napoleons
I don’t know what it’s like in your part of the world, but here in my neighborhood, it has been the most glorious spring. After the dreary cold days of last spring, it feels like the heavens have finally decided we deserve a month of picture perfect warm sunny (with just a few showers once a week) days that have made even just a short walk down the street to the market or post office magical. The sidewalks of Philadelphia are lined with the blooms of cherries, apples, dogwoods, red buds, tulips, bleeding hearts, brunnera, hellebores, lilacs, lilies of the valley, and much more. On my deck, the blueberry bush and the alpine strawberries have been blooming their little hearts out, getting ready to give us a fine feast in the months to come. I’m nearly giddy with the return of fresh fodder at the dinner table.
Activity in the garden has been at a near manic pace (my continued excuse for neglecting you fine folks; forgive me?) and the young tender leaves of arugula, beets, kale, lettuces, carrots, cilantro, and peas are all making steady strides towards the sun’s rays. I have also been busy preparing the beds for and planting the seedlings of myriad cut flowers for my business, including lisianthus, dianthus, calendula, queen anne’s lace, english daisies, flowering oregano, fragrant stock, poppies, larkspur, nigella, sunflowers, sweet peas and more. Expect to see plenty of flowers here on SFTF this summer as they are my new muse when it comes to thinking up recipes. Colors seem to inspire me just as much as flavors these days.
For instance, the cheery pink of delicate and exotic bleeding hearts reminded me instantly of rhubarb and prompted me to conjure up a recipe for something equally beautiful, delicate, and just a tad exotic. The rhubarb is from the three seedlings I started myself in the summer of 2008. They have grown into near monsters, offering up more crispy pink stalks than I could ever know what to do with, even though all the nay-sayers told me that growing rhubarb from seed was silly since it would take years to get a plant that produced much.
This recipe for Rhubarb Strawberry Napoleon with Rhubarb Coulis is ridiculously easy, though it might look complicated at first glance. Just buy the frozen puff pastry and throw it in the oven. Then chop up a bunch of rhubarb and slice a few strawberries. Put two saucepans on the stove and beat the heck out of the whipped cream and waa-laa! You’re done! Then sit back and soak up the verbal declarations of your marvelous culinary skills as your dinner guests ooh and ahh.
The strawberries, by the way, aren’t quite in season here in Philadelphia yet. I fortunately had just a few of my petite alpine strawberries from last season still in the freezer that were perfect for this dish. If you don’t have frozen local berries, but you did put up some chunky strawberry jam last season, you could easily stir in a couple spoonfuls to the filling and would be just as well off. Or, if you have no strawberries, this dish would be just as delicious with just rhubarb if you added another teaspoon of sugar to the filling to offset the tartness of the rhubarb flying solo.
What local yumminess are you eating
now that warm weather is back in town?
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
Spring is here! Or so it seems with three days in a row in the upper 50s. I’m wearing flip flops again, my friends! And with the warm kiss of spring sunshine, I find myself distracted by thoughts of getting into the garden and going to shop for plants and seeds. While it’s a good excuse, you fine folks still deserve a new delicious post so I apologize for the delay in putting up this last week’s post. These Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins are worth the wait though.
I have this amazing local bakery just up the street from me. Driving or walking by it and the unabashed aroma that flows from its doors is like scratching that last patch of dry winter skin…it smells sooo good, but it is also torture in a way. I buy my dinner rolls there and love how they come in an old-fashioned brown paper sack that crinkles as I take it from the baker’s hand. On my last visit, I spied a gorgeous muffin in their sweets case and my instincts told me, correctly, that it was pumpkin in flavor. What intrigued me was that there was a dollop of cream cheese that had been baked into the top of the muffin. I had to try it so I naturally had it added to my paper sack. As I expected, it was incredibly moist and delicious.
While I loved the muffin from the bakery, I found myself thinking about how I might play with the recipe if I had it at my disposal. Unfortunately, though I can’t say I blame them as what they make is pure gold, the bakery doesn’t give out their recipes. So, left to my own devices with a concept floating around my head for a few days, I determined that I would make my own but increase the ratio of cream cheese per muffin as I really loved that element in the bakery’s version. I realized in the end that what I was really envisioning was a pumpkiny-remake of the traditional black bottom cupcake.
I felt sheepish taking what was probably a fairly healthy muffin concept and turning it into a rich decadent cupcake. So, I worked hard to find ways to dial down the fat and calorie content without sacrificing that gooey cream cheese indulgence that has always made black bottom cupcakes one of my favorite desserts. Initially I wasn’t all that wowed by the muffins (it really is much more of a muffin than a cupcake, though sweet and cakey still) when they came out of the oven and I had my first bite after breaking one open and letting the steam escape. But then the next day, after having sat in the fridge, the flavors and richness were much more apparent.
I suppose with spring in the air, I’ll have to give up my pumpkin-pushing ways for awhile in favor of fresh spring flavors. But I still have some puree in the freezer so there might be one last pumpkin recipe on SFTF before we all jump into the joys of fresh straight-from-the-farm vegetables again!
Kumquat Coconut Cupcakes
The first day of March truly harkens of spring around here. The mounds of snow we’ve been buried under for a month are beginning to drip hypnotically as they melt in the fantastically warm sunshine. Oh that we would have seen the last of the white stuff for this year, but I haven’t let myself entertain such hopes seriously. After all, March has come in like a lamb, and you know what they say about its exit in such a case. I’m nearly frantic with the need to get into my garden to start preparing seed beds and fretting anxiously over my spring bulbs that would normally burst forth with blooms in just a few weeks.
So in acknowledgement that spring may have come or it may equally be far away, I’ve got yet one more winter treat for you. Kumquats hang heavy from the indoor trees here at the moment. They’ve reached the end of their season and need to be picked and used up. I was happy to oblige.
The tropical combination of coconut and kumquats seemed fitting for a creating a recipe that bridges the winter and spring seasons. It was awfully fun to create mounds of snowy coconut and roll sunny kumquats down them for this photo shoot. Sometimes it’s good to play with your food.
I should warn you that I’m still tinkering with this recipe. The cupcakes were rich and moist, but a bit too dense for my liking. Cake, cup-shaped or otherwise, should be fluffy, should it not? I suspect that it was the extra juice of the kumquats that I didn’t account for that weighed down the crumb so I’ve tweaked the amounts of liquid below but haven’t actually had a chance to test it again to be sure. Don’t mind my Miss Perfectionist attitude; those cupcakes from the first batch were gobbled down with rave reviews between greedy bites so there’s nothing to fear. I wanted to be sure to share this recipe with you before fresh kumquats sadly disappeared from your local market for another year, if they haven’t already.
If coconut’s not your thing but you’ve still got a pint of kumquats to use up, don’t forget about the delectable Cranberry Kumquat Cornbread recipe from a few weeks back. Or, if you really aren’t that fond of eating kumquats at all, D has found that they make very good eyeballs for snowmen.
Winter Harvest Bundt Cake
It’s hard to do justice to this recipe in words. You really have to taste it to know how wonderful a cake made with honey, pumpkin, parsnips, carrots, buckwheat flour, buttermilk and dark chocolate can truly be. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a cake that is so moist and flavorful, yet so packed with vitamins and relatively void of fat as far as cakes generally go.
This little brain child of mine was inspired by a recipe two winters ago that I conjured up for Parsnip Spiced Cupcakes. I had more parsnips in my crisper drawer this winter, and I remembered how big a hit those cupcakes were so I thought perhaps I should make another batch to bus us through this blustery winter. As I was sorting through my root vegetable stash, I grabbed a few sweet carrots that are still going strong and thought I might as well add those to the recipe. When I spied the frozen pumpkin puree in the freezer, I knew the wheels in my head were turning a different direction, though obviously a baked moist crumb was still on the menu, just now in rich dense {and healthy} bundt cake form.
Now, I’m not one to often promote a product other than the occasional cookbook or a local food item on this blog, but I do want to mention one that’s become a staple in my pantry (or rather fridge) and is a real lifesaver. It’s a powdered buttermilk that stays good for ages and you can mix up just the amount you need for a recipe rather than buying a carton at the store and feeling preasure to use up the rest of it. I found my red tub in the baking asile right next to the cake mixes and chocolate chips. This snowy winter, it has saved me more than one trip to the grocery store when the weather is antagonizing my kitchen escapades.
Should you be eyeballing the ingredient list below and raising an eyebrow, rest assured that you can use more conventional ingredients, such as white sugar and just all-purpose flour, instead of the honey, raw sugar, and buckwheat flour in this recipe. I opted to keep the ingredients as “wholesome” as possible to intensify the rustic wintery comfort dessert quality of this cake, a quality well-worth preserving if you can. I also learned a lot about buckwheat flour. I’d just used it before in pancakes and wasn’t sure how it would affect the texture of a cake. As it turns out, I love how tender it keeps the crumb and the nutty flavor is a lovely boon. Buckwheat lowers the gluten level in the cake so if you are trying to exclude gluten from your diet, I’m sure this cake could easily be made gluten-free. In fact, I’ve made it a few times now and pushed the amount of buckwheat flour up to one and a quarter cups with no apparent consequences (though D didn’t like it as much that time because it was too “earthy” for him).
Dusted with snowy confectioner’s sugar, Winter Harvest Bundt Cake is sure to bring a smile to everyone who has braved the cold to join you for a slice. Even weary shovelers will perk up after just one bite. And with all that vitamin C in there, one might even get away with calling this a flu and cold preventative medicine. Maybe. But, really, the flavor alone justifies that second slice.
Cranberry Kumquat Cornbread
Alright, after all the recent pumpkin recipes (and, yes, there is still more to come…hopefully there are no collective groans to be heard out there, unless they are hungry bellies voicing anticipation), it’s perhaps time for a palette cleanser. I had hoped to actually pull off a savory dish of some sorts for you, but as it turns out, my mind is consumed with baking these days. I attribute this constant craving for sugar and butter to the dull gray of winter and a fundamental instinct to put on pounds and hibernate. Damn you, Mother Nature!
But really, I should keep my curses to a minimum as being obsessed with the oven and flour in a season of limited local ingredients leads to wonderful concoctions that I might not otherwise try. Case and point: Cranberry Kumquat Cornbread. I have to confess, I didn’t dream this one up on my own for a change. I had dear reliable Martha’s help and the scrumptious pictures in one of the fall issues of her magazine to get the mental cogs turning.
Time for a word about the star ingredients of this loaf: the cranberries are still from the stash in my freezer that I horded away when cranberries were easily had from the local bogs in New Jersey back in the autumn. The kumquats are a different story. Rarely are kumquats local fare when you come from a climate that experiences deep freeze winters. Jewels of the sub-tropics and tropics, kumquats are one of my favorite citrus treats. Fortunately for me, my present position at a large public garden with a greenhouse dedicated to fruit production allows me a chance to indulge my kumquat cravings with local sensibility. The fragrance of both the blossoms and the fruit on the trees is intoxicating; I make a point to pass by them every day.
For those unfamiliar with kumquats, they look like very small oranges and come into season usually around Christmas and last for a couple months. Sometimes there is a second flush of fruit later in the year if you’re lucky. In any case, there are many different cultivars and each has a varying ratio of sweet and sour. You see, to eat a kumquat, you must eat the whole fruit, rind/peel and all! The rind is actually the sweet part of a kumquat and is very tender compared to other citrus. The flesh and juice of the kumquat is typically very sour. I equate it to the fruit version of a piece of “sour patch kid” candy. You need to be careful of seeds though when swallowing a kumquat whole (though some varieties don’t have any). Eat one carefully before you eat a whole handful in a hurry.
The wonderful thing about kumquats is that they are relatively compact plants/trees and they make for good house plants if you have a sunny south-facing window and some patience when it comes to hand-pollinating. I think it’s worth the effort as I absolutely adore cooking with kumquats; they’re so distinctive. Adding them to this recipe for the cornbread further accentuates the juxtaposition between the sweet buttery dense texture of the bread and the powerful burst of tart juicy flavor from the fruit on top. Really, it’s just lovely. The one sad part though is that the carnberries stain the kumquat red so you can’t tell what is what once it’s all said and done. I had hoped for a speckling of orange and red flecks.
I liked the bread very well as it was. But I thought after eating a few slices that it could be improved upon by layering the fruit a bit more in the loaf. So, I’ve adapted the recipe below to indicate this, and I wanted to be sure to mention it here because the photos obviously only show the fruit on top (per the original recipe I was following). Don’t be confused if yours looks different after using the recipe below.
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