events

Farmer’s Market Fruit Galette

Rustic fruit desserts are my favorite, and I almost always order one if it’s on the menu when we eat out. (My husband likes to guess what dessert I’ll choose, and he’s usually right because my taste is so predictable.) However, unless there’s a birthday or holiday to be celebrated, or a Daring Bakers challenge to try to conquer, I rarely bake desserts of any kind at home.

But the rhubarb and kumquats that were yesterday’s impulse buys at the farmer’s market got me pining for something chunky and tart and sweet and coarse and juicy and messy and perfect in its imperfection. A galette of the rhubarb and kumquats along with some of the other market bounty — strawberries and basil — seemed about right.

I’m submitting this as my first entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, the venerable and popular event founded by Kalyn (Kalyn’s Kitchen) and hosted this week by Anh of Food Lover’s Journey. I think both rhubarb and kumquats are interesting enough to merit “featured plant” status, so I randomly picked the kumquats.

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A Good Cheesecake Spoiled (But Not Really)

Well, it just figures. The one time — the one and only time in my ever-hopeful-but-never-successful cheesecake-attempting career — that I manage to bake a cheesecake that doesn’t crack, I can’t show it off. I can’t carry it triumphantly to the table to admiring “ooh”s and “aah”s and “look, no Grand Canyon in that cake”s and “she’s such a cheesecake star”s. Nope, I’m obligated to transmogrify this one beyond all recognition. Not only that, but I didn’t even have the brains to take a photo of it in its pristine, glorious smoothness.

I had to get that off my chest, but I’m really not all that broken up, because the mutation was in service of a good cause. Elle (Feeding My Enthusiasms) and Deborah (Taste and Tell) gave us Daring Bakers an excellent challenge this month: Cheesecake Pops. It’s a recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor.

The idea is that you bake a cheesecake (and it doesn’t even have to be a lovely, crack-free, perfect cheesecake) and scoop it out into little balls which you then impale on sticks, freeze, and dip into chocolate plus any other coatings your heart desires.

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Granola for BreadBakingDay

I made granola for BreadBakingDay. You may be thinking: Ahem, this is BBD, not BCD (BreakfastCerealDay). To which I would reply: True, but this granola is so much more than a breakfast cereal. Bear with me.

Ten days ago, I had never made granola. I hadn’t eaten granola in years. Granola was merely a faint shadow lurking at the periphery of my long-term memory. Then I read about Molly’s favorite granola on Orangette, and I thought, this looks good. In fact, this looks great! Not to mention ever-so-easy. And, modulo a substitution or two, I had all the ingredients on hand.

A couple of hours, a batch of homemade applesauce, and nearly three pounds of oats, nuts, and seeds later, I could confirm that Molly does not exaggerate: the stuff was amazing. My family thought so too. We ate it with milk. We ate it with the rest of the applesauce. We ate it with yogurt, with almond milk, and right from our hands. We ate it in the morning, yes, but in the afternoon and evening, too. We showed no restraint whatsoever. Within two days, it was gone.

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BBD #08 Roundup

BBD Roundup logo It seems there was an awful lot of celebrating going on in March, and I have the breads to prove it. This month’s BreadBakingDay #08: Celebrate! found 49 53 people in 15 countries making breads in honor of official and unofficial holidays, personal triumphs, special people, and more. Now I have the honor of presenting them all to you.

First let me thank Zorra (1x umrühren bitte aka kochtopf) for originating and managing this wonderful monthly event. I am passing the hosting baton to Astrid (Paulchens FoodBlog), so keep your eye on her blog for the announcement of the new BBD theme on April 6.

And now without further ado, I give you, in the order they arrived in my mailbox, the most stunning collection of celebration breads ever assembled anywhere:
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A Piece of Cake

Birthday cake

Yes, this is a cake. And on this blog, a cake can only mean one thing: it’s Daring Bakers challenge time again.

Morven (Food Art and Random Thoughts) selected Dorie’s (as in baker/author extraordinaire D. Greenspan) Perfect Party Cake for this month.

I made the cake for my own birthday party. This got me slightly in trouble with my family, who have a notion that one should never make one’s own birthday cake. But this is Birthday Rule #2. Rule #1, which always trumps Rule #2, is that the birthday girl gets to do what she wants. They knew I had them there, and they were just going to have to get over it. As you can see if you count the candles carefully, this was my 20th birthday. Sure it was.

I wish I had an amusing tale to tell about something going horribly wrong but salvaged in the end by my brilliant ingenuity and intrepid Daring Baker spirit. But no. This was, in fact, a piece of cake from beginning to end. This is a testament not to my mad cake-baking skills (ha! not!) but to the true perfection of Dorie Greenspan’s recipe, from her book Baking From My Home to Yours.

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Hot Cross Buns: Not Just for Easter

One of the first nursery rhymes I remember learning was Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One-a-penny, Two-a-penny, Hot cross buns!

When my mother was ticked off about something, she always said she was “cross.” So when I sang the rhyme, an image of grouchy buns languishing in summer heat would paint itself across my mind’s little eye. I suppose I imagined they were cross because wasn’t being hot (in those days when that wasn’t a good thing) enough to make anybody cross?

I’ve understood for quite some time that “cross” refers to the buns’ decoration and not their state of mind, but it was only recently that I learned that hot cross buns are a traditional spring celebration bread.

Although hot cross buns have been associated with Easter for several centuries, they probably predated Christianity. Small cakes or loaves adorned with an equilateral cross were offered to deities in ancient cultures such as early Egypt and Greece. The feast of Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring (from whom Easter derived its name), was celebrated at the vernal equinox. The cross on the sacramental cakes eaten during the feast may have symbolized the balance (between light and darkness) of the equinox, the four quarters of the moon, or the symmetry of the seasons.

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