Buttermilk Bakes

Zucchini and Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

We have two very little girls, who somehow consume disturbingly massive amounts of food.  So this year we made the plunge, and signed up for a CSA.

Last week, we brought home, along with a lovely variety of greens and herbs, FOUR pounds of squash.  I had no idea how we could possibly eat that much squash, especially when our girls are not so keen on veggies.  At all.

Zucchini and carrot cupcakes!  Good bye squash, hello serving of veggies doused in cream cheese frosting, a.k.a. serving of dairy.  Harper was leery in the beginning, but came around in spades.  Now four pounds of squash seems measly.

This recipe is from John Barricelli’s The Sono Baking Company Cookbook, but the original is a carrot, zucchini and cranberry muffin, with the option for cream cheese frosting.  In the fall, I might go for the cranberries, but for now, they were not missed.  I dialed back the sugar from the original, figuring without the tartness of the cranberries it would not need so much.  They were plenty sweet enough.  I also subbed out half of the flour for whole wheat pastry flour, and added a pinch or cardamom just for fun.  They were super moist and flavorful, definitely a welcome summer treat. 

 Zucchini and Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Adapted from John Barricelli’s The Sono Baking Company Cookbook.

Print Zucchini Carrot Cupcakes

Cupcakes

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

¾ teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

¾ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon cardamom

¾ cups sugar

1 cup grapeseed or canola oil

2 eggs at room temperature

¾ cup finely grated carrot (about 2 medium)

¾ cup finely grated zucchini (about 1 medium)

1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375º F, and line a 12 cup muffin pan with cupcake liners.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and cardamom.  Whisk in the salt, and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, oil, eggs, carrot, zucchini and vanilla.  Add the dry ingredients, and fold them in until everything is moist and well incorporated. 

Using a 2 inch ice cream scoop, or ¼ cup, fill the muffin cups.  Bake until golden brown, and a cake tester comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes.  Let cupcakes cool completely while you make the frosting.  Makes about 13 cupcakes.

 

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

zest of 1 orange

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the cream cheese and butter until smooth.  Add the confectioners’ sugar in three additions, stopping to scrape down the bowl.  Mix until smooth, and beat in the orange zest.  Spread on top of cooled cupcakes, and enjoy!

Avocado Ice Cream with Chocolate Covered Almonds

If you are anything like my mom and husband, you are likely thinking: Avocado ice cream?  Not so much.  You might very well be coiling back, with brow furrowed and tong out, in your yuck face.  Well relax.  It is ridiculously good, and healthy.  Ridiculously fattening, yes, but really good for you fats, so indulge. 

 

The lime and tequila (Yea, lime & tequila. You like it. I know.) really accent the avocado.  It is super summery, sweet and really. really. Rich.  Make it.  Feed it to someone who trusts you, and watch their yuck face melt to yum.

Avocado Ice Cream With Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds
(Adapted from Paletas, by Fany Gerson, via A Cup of Jo, and Rick Bayless in Top Chef Masters, via the kitchn.)

Download Avocado Ice Cream

2 cups water

1 cup turbinado sugar or sugar in the raw

4 ripe avocados

Pinch of salt

4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice (2 limes)

¼ cup tequila

1 cup chopped dark chocolate covered almonds

In a sauce pan over low heat, combine the water and sugar.  Stir occasionally until all the sugar has dissolved.  Remove from heat, and let the simple syrup cool slightly.

In a blender or food processor, combine the avocados, simple syrup, salt, lime juice and tequila.  Blend until smooth.  Cool in the refrigerator, for about 8 hours, and prepare according to your ice cream maker’s instructions*.  Pour ice cream into a container, and fold in the chopped dark chocolate covered almonds.  Serve immediately, or allow to firm up a little in the freezer.

To store, place a piece of parchment paper, cut to size, over the ice cream before you put the lid on your container.  This will keep it from browning.  (There is enough lime juice it won’t get very brown, but it will a little bit without the parchment paper.)  This ice cream does freeze pretty hard.  If it has been in the freezer for a while, a day or so, it is best to leave it out for a little while before serving.

 

*If you don’t have an ice cream machine, no worries.  A couple of zip lock bags and rock salt will do the trick.  No zip lock bags and rock salt?  Well, this takes a bit of baby sitting, but it works.  Not interested in baby sitting your ice cream?  Make popsicles, fussy pants.  You might want to omit the chocolate covered almonds, or freeze them in layers in your popsicle molds.

Father's Day Treats

From the top:

Bourbon Brownies

Beer's BFF Cookies

Boozey Chocolate Sorbet

Bourbon & Homemade Ginger Ale

The Devil's Blondies

 

Happy Father's Day Y'all!

Bourbon & Homemade Ginger Ale

What feels like eons ago, in another life, when I was in art school one Mother’s Day found me slightly beyond broke, as usual.  Such is the life of an art student; it is part of the charm.  So, I filled an old thermos that was laying about with homemade margaritas, and mailed it to my mom.  It was perhaps the best gift I ever gave.

I decided to take the same approach to Father’s Day for Skylar this year.  Not that I am a poor art student anymore.  No, those days seem far from the trenches of parenthood.  But, what do you get for the man who has everything?  Okay, the man who has everything but a boat…

Booze!  Men like booze.  I like it, too.  Bourbon and Homemade Ginger Ale was my favorite drink when we lived in Chicago.  A little and wonderful restaurant on Southport, named Deleese, made them.  (Holy pants, just looking at their website makes me sad with nostalgia.  Such good food & good times!)  I’ve ordered ginger ale and bourbon many times since we left the Midwest, but it never was the same.  It never had that bite and spice; instead it was syrupy and sugary.

So, when I went hunting for a ginger ale recipe, I went with the spiciest I could find, the one from Amateur Gourmet.  It is not for the faint of heart.  I love it.  You might not.  Leave out the lemongrass and chili if you would like the kick without the burn.  {Ahhh, feel the burn!}  Any-who, I just made these cocktails to taste, without really measuring, probably 1 part ginger syrup, 2 parts bourbon, 4 parts club soda, and a squeeze of lime.  I’m giving you a more formal version, in case you like it like that.  Feel free to alter it to your own taste.

Bourbon and Homemade Ginger Ale
Recipe adapted from "Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef" by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Via Amateur Gourmet.

Print Bourbon and homemade ginger ale

1/2 pond fresh ginger, unpeeled and sliced

1 stalks lemongrass, trimmed and roughly chopped

1 small fresh chilies, stem removed

3/4 cup sugar

10 cups soda water

4 cups bourbon

Limes

Combine ginger, lemongrass and chili in a food processor, and pulse until minced, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Place pure in a saucepan with the sugar and 2 cups water.  Bring to a boil, and simmer for 15 minutes.  Cool, then strain and chill.

To serve, combine the ginger syrup, soda water, bourbon and juice of a lime in a large pitcher.  Garnish each glass with a lime wedge.  Serves 16.

Roasted Strawberries, with maple syrup & balsamic vinegar

You might be thinking roasting strawberries in June, when they are in beautiful juicy abundance, is blasphemous.  I thought so, too.  Instead, this simple gesture, with a little olive oil and maple syrup, brings out the best in strawberries.  Their flavor bakes down, concentrates into a soft syrupy delightful mess with hints of port and balsamic vinegar.

I’ve made these three times now with the intention of paining them with something else, a bit of cake, of gelato or something lovely, to make a more complete dessert.  Every time the strawberries have been so delicious the have inadvertently insulted the other food.  So, go now.  Preheat you oven to 350º F, and eat them strait from your roasting pan.  It is all you need.

 

Roasted Strawberries with maple syrup and balsamic vinegar

Adapted from Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson.

Print Roasted Strawberries

1 pint fresh strawberries, hulled

2 tablespoons maple syrup (if you can find grade B, it has a darker richer flavor)

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

½ teaspoon kosher or sea salt

1 tablespoon port wine

A few drops of balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 350º F.  In a roasting pan, drizzle the strawberries with the maple syrup and olive oil.  Sprinkle the salt, and toss strawberries to coat.  Roast for about 40 minutes, long enough for the juices to thicken and strawberries to be cooked through.  While still warm, sprinkle the port and balsamic vinegar over the strawberries. Stir gently.  Serve warm, or let cool and store in the fridge for up to a week.

Buttermilk Cake, infinity adaptable

We had some buttermilk closing in on its expiration date, a perfect opportunity to make cake! 

Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day came in the mail last week, and as much as I though I’d love it, I love it more.  Beyond a wealth of knowledge, enticing recipes and drop dead gorgeous photography, the book itself has a great feel to it.  So matte and smooth, it feels like daydreams.

Unfortunately, I did not have all the ingredients for the Heidi’s Buttermilk Cake recipe, or the half a day it seems to take to load a preschooler and toddler up to take them to the store.  (It is bananas the amount of effort it takes to get us out the front door.)  Even with all of my mixed up little substitutions, it was divine: moist, rich, tangy, summery, and just sweet enough. All in all, it is a healthy cake really, with wheat flour, fruit, sugar in the raw and so on.   

The baby and I had the leftovers for breakfast. It is just the kind of cake I like to wake up to.  Or, have after a light lunch, after dinner, a midnight snack would work, too… 

Buttermilk Cake

Adapted from Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson.  I’m including my substitutions here, which were largely dictated by what we had in our pantry.  I’m planning a little pantry makeover.  But, if yours is anything like mine, feel free to use the substitutions.

Download Buttermilk Cake 

2 ½ cups whole wheat pastry flour (Substituted 1 ¼ cups white whole wheat flour and 1 ¼ cups all purpose flour.)

1 tablespoon aluminum-free baking powder

½ cup fine grain natural cane sugar (Substituted turbinado sugar.)

½ teaspoon sea salt

2 large eggs

¼ cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled a little (Substituted ¼ cup canola oil.)

Grated zest or 3 lemons

½ pound rhubarb cut in ½ inch pieces (The original recipe calls from 8 to 10 plums, thinly sliced, and suggests it would be good with just about whatever fruit was in season.  Ms. Swanson also includes a winter variation, with 12 pitted and quartered Medjool dates and 1 cup lightly toasted walnuts.)

3 tablespoons turbinado sugar or sugar in the raw

Preheat oven to 400º F.  Butter and flour an 11 inch tart pan, and line the button with a circle of parchment paper.  (I used a 9 inch tart pant without a problem, and a 9 x 13 inch baking dish would work, too.)

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar and sea salt.  In a smaller bowl, stir together the eggs, buttermilk, butter (or canola oil) and zest.  Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and fold to combine. 

Spoon the batter into your prepared pan, and spread it out evenly.  Scatter you fruit on top, and sprinkle with the turbinado sugar or sugar in the raw.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown at the edges and the center bounces back at the touch of a finger. 

Allow cake to cool slightly before serving.  While this cake is best served warm from the oven, it does keep well for a day or so.