Sweet Treat of the Week - Double Your Pleasure

I had an absolutely splended 4th of July weekend. Thursday was my company picnic. Friday night Kevin and I headed to the Fireman's Carnival and ate awesome tacos. Saturday night I went to a barbecue at my mother's boyfriend's house (which I'll never do again - waaaaayyyy too much family awkwardness in his home), and Sunday evening my good friend and riding instructor, Lynne along with her husband threw another barbecue. When I wasn't out eating, I was at the barn riding, so I haven't been online much to read your blogs or make any posts. I hope to catch up with all of you wonderful people this week and see what you all made and ate this weekend.

Anyway, my weekend was filled with parties, so what better excuse to make dessert? I bookended my weekend with this last week's Sweet Treat of the Week and this week's Sweet Treat of the Week.

So what delights were in store?

The company picnic is also the company bake off. I said in a previous post that the picnic would be the one exception this summer where I baked from a blog rather than from a book. I had found the perfect recipe, a recipe that looked like a surefire winner, in a blog many months ago.

Can you guess who's blog?

Come on. Guess!

Will this help?

The recipe of course is Emily's. These are her Oreo Cream Cheese Brownies. It goes to show you that I never forget a delicious looking recipe when I see one.

They have yet to do the voting, so I don't know if I won. They were gobbled up pretty well at the picnic. I made 32 of them and there were maybe 10 or 12 left when I went home. I had a few people tell me how good they were. However, I heard a few other people singing the praises of other desserts, so I don't know how these will fare once the votes are counted.

For Lynne's party I followed the rule for this summer and I went back to the book.

I made a chocolate chip banana tea cake this week.

I have seen so many great banana bread recipes on the blogs. I have seen them with Nutella and Dulce de Leche and all sorts of interesting ingredients. This cake was just chocolate chips (not that there's anything wrong with that). I was a little disappointed with the texture of this cake. It was almost chewy. Lynne and Kevin both told me it was great, but I thought it could have been better.

Two recipes from this book down and neither has thrilled me. They haven't been bad, but nothing I have made so far has been as good as Emily's brownies.

If you still want to try, email me for the recipe.

Come On Baby Lita My Fire*

Nutritionists are always telling us to try a new fruit or vegetable each week. I'm also growing tired of always buying the same stuff at the farmer's markets week after week. I made this week's trip with the intention of trying to find something new.

I found these. They're called lita squash. They're weird and green. They look like eggplants that spent some time in a science experiment and have become dangerous mutants. I stared at them for a while. When they didn't shoot death rays out at me, I decided to buy them.

I did an internet search for them. I found there isn't much out there on the internet about them. I did find this page. What was really funny was that the author of this blurb said her squashes came from Migliorelli Farm. Well, Migliorelli Farm is exactly where my squash came from. Migliorelli has a very large tent at the Sunday morning market.

There was a sign on the barrel they came from saying they were good for stuffing or grilling. I decided to try stuffing them. I've never made stuffed squash before. I decided the time had come to do just that. I decided to do something with a little Middle Eastern flair, but with turkey instead of the more traditional lamb. I'm not terribly fond of raisins (I'll pick them out of my desserts and my trail mix), but I sometimes like them in savory, spicy dishes, so I put them in here along with some pine nuts.

I was less than thrilled with the squashes themselves. Maybe it's because I'm not much of a squash person, but I just found these a bit blandly squashy. Hubby liked them quite a bit, although I think his affection was more for the stuffing than the sqush itself. I also think I'd add a little more spice to this the next time.

Some lemon or orange zest would also be good in this. Too bad I forgot to buy the required fruit to make the zest. I think a diced pepper would be nice in this as well.

Stuffed Lita Squash

Ingredients
4 Lita Squashes
1 pound ground turkey
1 onion, finely diced 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tbl chopped fresh mint
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
Olive oil for sauteeing onions

Put whole squashes in a saucepan of simmering water and simmer until tender. Cut in half lengthwise and scoop out some of the insides, forming a "boat". Brush with some olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Cook onion in a pan with the olive oil. Add the cumin,coriander and salt and coat well. Add the garlic. Cook until onions are soft.

Mix onions with turkey meat, pine nuts, mint and raisins.

Pour meat mixture into squash shells. Place on a baking sheet and cook for about 30 minutes or until the meat is cooked through.

*These days when I describe my blog I say it's a blog of pointless anecdotes and bad puns peppered with all sorts of geek references**. I throw a recipe in so I can still call it a food blog.

**I realize now that this post has at only of those things. I need a geek reference for the trifecta now. Um...Star Trek, Star Trek, Star Trek, Monty Python, Discworld, Star Wars and Lost! I think I'll leave my other trademark - my tendency to leave novella-length comments on other people's blogs for another day.

Penne Al Cavolfiore

It was another Friday night and I wanted to take it easy, but I was thinking that I should try to make something a bit more nutritious than hot dogs. However, I wanted something so easy that others could make the same dish without the need of a recipe. Here are just a few guidelines for an awesome pasta dish. You're good to go.

Along with the kale I bought at the farmer's market this week, I noticed that cauliflower was beginning to make an appearance. I snatched some up right away.

Cauliflower, like kale, is best cooked in the oven. I tossed it in some olive oil and salt and put it in the oven at 400 degrees until it looked like this (I'd say it was about 30 minutes).
In a pan I heated 2 tablespoons of olive oil and threw in 4 cloves worth of minced garlic and a hearty pinch of red pepper flakes. Once that was starting to smell nice, I added the juice and zest of one lemon, and about a half a cup of white wine.

Finally I tossed in a pound of cooked penne rigate and the cauliflower along with a little choped fresh parsley (not shown).
My portion was tossed with a generous amount of pecorino cheese. My cheese-hating, lactose-intolerant husband preferred his plain.

Then I sat back and enjoyed, remembering that a dinner without large slabs of meat or without chocolate can still be delicious.

The Summer Tradition is Back - Sweet Treat of the Week

Those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer are back (well, at least on the calendar they are ). While summer isn't generally thought of as the best time for baking, it's perfect for me. When summer comes I have a much looser schedule and more evenings free. There are no dance classes, no play rehearsals, and fewer commitments to anything. I can always set aside an evening to bake something.

This is my third summer of baking weekly. The first summer I just baked whatever I felt like baking. Last summer I decided to give my baking a theme. I decided to only use recipes I found on people's blogs. Baking that way was a wonderful experience. I baked things I found on the blogs I read regularly (how can I not bake from Emily's blog after all?) but my regulars led me to other blogs as well. Thanks to the blog-buddies-of-blog-buddies I discovered new blogs, new recipes, and made new blog buddies of my own.

Although I think it was a great theme, I find myself compelled to take Sweet Treat of the Week in a different direction this summer. There is something I need to do.

My brother and sister-in-law gave me this book for my birthday three years ago: Chocolate Chocolate by Lisa Yockelson. They know me well. Chocolate is, after all, one of my favorite things on earth.

This book is so big and so full of chocolate recipes, it's totally intimidating. There are many variations on your basic chocolate cake (layer cakes, cupcakes, and sheet cakes) and then several more variations on frosting. Don't even get me started on the chocolate-coconut cake variations (and the chocolate-coconuts bars and cookies, etc.). There are brownies galore and every type of bar cookie imaginable. How could I make it all? How do some of these endless cake and cookie recipes actually differ from each other?

This is my summer to find out. Each week I am going to make a recipe from this book. I've made a few things out of it in the past, so this summer I will make sure that I make something I have never made before. It's going to be hard to decide exactly what I will bake because I have so many choices, but I will force myself to choose. I will try to make a variety of cookies, cakes, brownies, and bars.

There will be one exception. Next week is my company picnic and I found the recipe I wanted to use in the annual bake off months ago. It's from the blogs rather than from a book. (Any guesses as to who's blog? It's probably not difficult.) I feel a little guilty not baking from the blogs since there have been so many good recipes out there lately, but I feel like I need to conquer this book.

So what did I make this week?

This is a Chocolate Buttermilk Cake. It's a simple sheet cake that uses unsweetened dark chocolate and cocoa in the flavoring and it has buttermilk rather than milk as the liquid. It was a childhood favorite of Yockelson's. It's a very simple cake that I fancied up by using Scharffenberger chocolate. The frosting I can only describe as a combination of fudge and buttercream. It's super rich and dense. As you can see, the frosting layer is as thick as the cake.

Would you like a closeup?

(I will be kind to the author and request you email me for the recipe rather than my stealing it and copying it here.)

The verdict? It was very popular at the office. Half my company was out of the office for a conference today, so there weren't many people around and yet they still managed to finish the large amount of cake I had brought in. I was even asked to make another one for the company picnic.

Personally, I thought it was good, but not terribly special. I'm wondering if the midnight sheet cake would be better, or the sheet cake with sour cream instead of buttermilk.

But the company picnic will be a whole different story

A Little Kale Magic

Leafy greens. I know they're good for me. I know I should eat a lot of them. I know that they are very easily accesible at the farmer's markets in the spring and early summer. I just can't get into them.

Don't get me wrong. I don't dislike them the way I dislike peas, but I can't get excited about them. They either taste too bitter or just sort of vegetal to me. I need tons of garlic to make them taste good. The one way I truly enjoy greens is in pasta dishes mixed with ricotta cheese. That doesn't go over well with Sir Pickypants, Lord of Lactose Intolerance. Nonetheless, I buy them because I need variety in my veggies and they are so easy to obtain this time of year.

This weekend I purchased some kale at the farmer's market.

I don't mind kale. Taste-wise it's neither too bitter nor too bland. I don't like the texture though. I have always found it tough. I never liked chewing through those leaves.

But what if I didn't have to chew so hard?

Last night I discovered a magical things known as CRISPY KALE. Now when you make something "crispy" it tends to mean you are likely to make the taste and texture of just about anything delicious. Crispy kale is easy to make and the leaves melt in your mouth.

No recipe needed. All you need to do is:

1. Heat oven to 350.
2. Trim stems from kale and toss with salt and olive oil.
3. Lay on a baking sheet in thin layer and stick it on the lowest oven rack.
4. After 10 minutes, give them a flip and then cook until the leaves are delicate and cripsy.

Light, salty, crispy vegetable bits. It's like eating potato chips, only it's actually good for you.

That's a lamb chop on the plate. You know the veggies are good when I'm more excited about them than I am about the meat!

Sugar High Fridays - Strawberry Almond Scones

I recently experienced a very happy combination of events.

First I had a major scone craving. I really wanted to make some scones. While shopping for my scone ingredients, I came across a container of dried strawberries. I thought it would be really fun to put them in my scones.

Not long after I decided to make the scones (but before I actually did make them) I found out that this month's Sugar High Friday has a theme of nuts and fruits. Well a theme about nuts and fruits is right up my alley, no? ;-) It's hosted this month by Mansi of Fun and Food, a charming and very educational blog showcasing vegetarian dishes, Indian food, and easy tasty desserts. It's been a long time since I last participated in a Sugar High Friday (or a blog event of any kind for that matter). I decided I would use it to showcase my scones. All I needed to do is add some nuts to them.

I used a basic scone recipe and substituted a third of the flour with almond meal and added a couple of almonds on top along with those strawberries.



The suckers were HUGE. I cut them into eighths, but the next time I make these, I will definitely cut them in smaller wedges, or perhaps cut them with biscuit cutters and make round scones.

They were very well received. My husband couldn't get enough of them.

Strawberry-Almond Scones

Ingredients
1 cup almond meal
2+ cups all-purpose flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup butter
1 egg beaten
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp almond extract
1 cup milk
1 cup dried strawberries
Whole almonds

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a baking sheet.

Mix together 2 cups of flour, almond meal, salt and baking powder.

In another bowl mix the egg, milk, almond extract and lemon zest.

Put butter and flour mixture in a food processor and pulse until it forms coarse crumbs.

Remove from the food processor and carefully stir in strawberries. Then gently stir in the milk and egg mixture. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead briefly. You may need to add a bit more flour is dough is really sticky.

Roll out into a circle and cut into 8 (or more) wedges. Place on baking sheet and press some whole almonds onto the top of each scone. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Baking for a Cause

Thanks for all your patience and kind notes. You, my readers, are the awesomest! The recital (not a competition, just a performance thank goodness) was full of bluffs, blunders, errors, and miscounts, but my family in the audience told me it looked great. I had one tap routine and one jazz routine. My husband surreptitiously took video of the tap routine and is threatening to put it on YouTube.

So after spending all of Saturday practicing and practicing and practicing and then performing Saturday night (followed up with a grilled cheese, waffle fries, and a chocolate egg cream at the diner afterwards), my busy time was not up yet. My office is doing a fundraiser for the American Cancer society. We're participating in the Relay For Life on Friday and we had a Monday morning bake sale.

Every bake sale has cookies and brownies, so I like to do something different.

I made a cherry-almond pie. You can get the recipe from the Williams Sonoma website.


I also made a blueberry buttermilk cake. I saw this recipe on both Stacey Snacks and Smitten Kitchen. The recipe is supposed to be made wiht raspberries, but I had a glut of blueberries in the house and decided to use them instead.

The pie was a big hit and sold out by the end of the day. I even purchased a slice for myself (I found the almond flavor a bit lacking). The blueberry cake was less popular, although one of our analysts who was out of the office yesterday said today he would buy all leftovers, so it will be gone this morning.

I'll also be doing the ACS Relay for Life. If anyone is interested in sponsoring me, I'll post the link.