healthy cake

Dear Mom,

Speaking of healthy desserts, how about some good old fashioned carrot cake?  I think this is the original healthy dessert, it features vegetables as the main ingredient!  What's more healthy than getting a good dose of beta-carotene, vitamin A and fiber?  All in cake form?  This recipe has pineapple and pecans in it too, so we will just be topping those other healthy items with some heart-healthy nut oils and immune-boosting vitamin C!  Don't forget the calcium in the cream cheese frosting.  All in all, this is a very healthy cake, so why not have two servings? 

This cake is pretty easy to put together, you could do cupcakes too if you want individual portions, just decrease the baking time to about 15-20 minutes. 

carrot cake

1-1/2 cups AP flour
1-1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup sweetened, flaked coconut
1/3 cup chopped pecans
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
3 tbsp. veggie oil
2 large eggs
2 cups grated carrot
1-1/2 cups canned, crushed pineapple, drained
cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350.  In a large bowl whisk together flour, sugar, coconut, pecans, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  Whisk together oil and eggs in a separate bowl.  Add the oil and egg mixture, carrot and pineapple into the flour mixture, stir until combined.  Pour the batter into a 13" x 9" baking pan coated with cooking spray.  Bake in preheated oven for 35 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack.

cream cheese frosting

2 tbsp. softened unsalted butter
1 8-oz block of cream cheese, softened
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2-1/2 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup sweetened, shredded coconut

With an electric mixer, beat together cream cheese, vanilla and butter until well blended.  Slowly add the powdered sugar beating constantly.  Spread onto the cooled cake.  Toast the coconut.  I use my toaster oven to do this, just spread the coconut out on a small baking sheet and put it in the toaster oven, watching it very closely as it has a tendency to burn quickly.  As parts of the coconut gets browned, stir it and re-spread it out on the baking sheet.  (You could easily follow the same procedure in a regular oven.)

Sprinkle the top of the cake with the toasted coconut.

home-grown

Dear Mom,

Oh that tomato relish...  I will be extremely upset if you don't save a jar for me and John.  I have been telling him about that stuff since I've known him, and this is the first time in those eight years that you've made it!  It is a hard thing to describe, its definitely not something you can buy off the shelf.  I think if I had a dishwasher I would have made the stuff myself by now, but with out a dishwasher the idea of sanitizing everything just frightens me.  I know you can boil the jars and what not, but I'm still terrified of botulism!  I know that this is kind of ridiculous, but considering how much I love food (and how much I eat) I have this terrible feeling that it will be my demise some day!  (I also have fears of becoming lactose intolerant or allergic to gluten, in which case I might as well be dead.)

So making tomato relish is kind of out of the question.  Unless of course we wanted to eat the whole batch in one sitting, which it sounds like if we were Dad that would be an option.  Not only is it really not feasible from a kitchen engineering perspective, it is also not economically feasible.  Tomatoes are pricey!  When we moved to Chicago we fell in love with our apartment because of the great little third floor wood deck out back that gets the morning sunshine which streams between the leaves and branches of a beautiful old tree in our back yard.

 
I was so excited to try to grow potted tomatoes, peppers and herbs.  The herbs did great!  And that's about it.  The foodie in me though, has still not let the dream of home-grown peppers and tomatoes die.  I'm still trying.  Every year I buy a tomato or pepper plant and give it the old college try, but every year this happens:

With the tomatoes its worse.  The good thing is we have an abundance of great farmers markets in the city of Chicago, and we also subscribe to that wonderful consumer-supported-agriculture box that arrives at our doorstep every other week.  So when I spied some beautiful peaches at the farmers market, I held back the urge to devour them immediately after purchase and decided to make a cobbler.

This recipe comes from Cooking Light, and can be made with any type of stone fruit.  Apples or cherries would also be great, you could probably even mix and match different types of fruit. 

peach cobbler

for the peach filling:
5 good-sized peaches, chopped into quarters
(that sounds like Grandma-speak - how about large peaches)
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1-1/2 tsp. grated peeled fresh ginger
1/4 cup sugar
1-1/2 tbsp. flour
1/8 tsp. salt

for the dough:
1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 cup chilled butter, cut into pieces
1 tsp. grated lemon rind
6 oz. chilled 1/3 fat cream cheese, cut into pieces
1/2 cup cold buttermilk
2 tbsp. turbinado sugar

Preheat oven to 375.  Lightly coat 6 ramekins with cooking spray and cover a small baking sheet with foil.  Place the ramekins on the baking sheet.

Combine all filling ingredients and divide among the 6 ramekins.

For the dough, in the bowl of a food processor place flour, sugar, salt and baking powder and pulse 3 or 4 times.  Add the butter, lemon rind and cream cheese, pulse until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.  Add the buttermilk and pulse until blended.

Drop the dough by spoonfuls over the peaches, dividing evenly.  Sprinkle with the turbinado sugar and bake at 375 for 35 minutes or until the dough is golden.

birthday

Dear Mom,

I'm starting to turn into quite the slacker myself, like mother like daughter I suppose.  For whatever reason I was having trouble finding the inspiration to write.  Not that this recipe that I'm including isn't inspiring, I think I was just suffering from writer's block (or maybe blogger's block).

I think part of my problem is that I'm getting old.  This upcoming weekend I'll be mourning the loss of something...  My twenties.  It's truly tragic, but I suppose we've all been there, or will be at some point.  Don't get me wrong, I've thoroughly enjoyed the past three decades, and to be honest I think it was more depressing when I wasn't carded at a bar for the first time.  But still, I think women especially are expected to be particularly upset by this birthday, and maybe its just social pressure, but I'm not immune to it.

At any rate, I was thinking about trying to bake my own birthday cake.  I thought it would be fun, and I've never made a cake from scratch before.  I usually just grab a box of funfetti mix and two containers of frosting.  (One for the cake and one for late night musings about things like depressing birthdays.)  Although I've been thinking that baking your own birthday cake could possibly be bad luck, and I think its just too risky for this birthday.  But I did think about your pie, and I think the very nature of pie is relatively safe and free from negative superstition.  This recipe isn't exactly "All-American" apple pie, its more a rustic French version of pie.  It might be pie's predecessor, I'm not sure, you can Wikipedia it if your interested and get back to me; I'm too old and tired right now.  I do love your apple pie, what makes it so delicious is that strudel crumble topping that goes on it.  What makes this galette recipe so good is the crust, the marscarpone cheese gives it a rich, slightly tangy taste.  I chose to top this one with pears and raspberries, but you could really substitute any combination of your favorite fruits.

pear & raspberry galette

for the crust:
1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup cold marscarpone cheese
1-1/2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
3 tbsp. ice water

for the filling:
2 pears, sliced (ripe but still firm)
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tbsp. flour
1 tbsp. lemon juice
pinch salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon 
1 small pack of raspberries
2 tbsp. raspberry preserves
1 tbsp. honey

1 egg, beaten

In a food processor pulse to combine the flour, salt and sugar.  Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.  Add the lemon juice and marscarpone, pulse a couple times.  Add the water and pulse until the mixture is moist and crumbly.  Dump the mixture on to plastic wrap and form into a disc, place in the fridge for 1/2 hour.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Mix the pears, sugar, flour, lemon juice, salt and cinnamon in a small bowl, set aside.

Remove the dough from the fridge and place on a piece of parchment paper.  Place a piece of plastic wrap over the dough and roll out to an 11-inch disc, about 1/4-inch thick.  Remove the plastic wrap and transfer the disc to a baking sheet, leaving it on the parchment paper.

Spread the dough with the raspberry preserves, leaving about a 2-inch border.  Layer the pear mixture on top.  Dot with raspberries and drizzle with the honey.  Brush the edges of the crust with the egg.  Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the crust is golden.  Cover loosely with foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes.