baking

Blueberry haven

| Green Card Gardener

Because we have a berry farm in the area where you can pick your own, I don’t bother growing blueberries. The place is perfectly organized: on peak days, such as around July 4th, one family member greets you with a walky-talky alerting a second person, who leads you to your assigned spot. This way you don’t have to pace up and down the rows looking for ripe blueberries. One year, I spent 1.5 hours picking from a couple of bushes and came home with almost 20 pounds of blueberries. After we all have our fill, most of the blueberries go right into the freezer.

Today I used the last bag of those blueberries for a Blueberry Corn Coffee Cake. The recipe is adapted from Deborah Madison’s Sweet Corn Coffee Cake with Berries in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Her recipe is based on an 8-inch springform pan but this one is for a 9-inch cake, therefore the amounts are a bit odd. If you use frozen blueberries like I did, bake the cake a few minutes longer, and if it browns too much on top, cover with a sheet of aluminum foil. Just make sure no ice crystals are clinging to the frozen berries, which might make the cake soggy.

Blueberry Corn Coffee Cake

7¼ ounces flour

3½ ounces yellow cornmeal

5 ounces sugar

2¼ teaspoons baking powder

1 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

6 ounces buttermilk

3½ ounces sour cream (reduced fat)

Finely grated zest of 1 untreated lemon

2¼ teaspoons vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2¾ ounces corn oil

2 cups blueberries

Light brown sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9-inch springform pan.

2. Mix the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk buttermilk, sour cream, lemon zest, vanilla extract, eggs, and corn oil.

4. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients until well combined. I find that a silicone spatula works best, as you can scrape over the bottom and pick up any lumps.

5. Fill the dough into the prepared pan. Distribute the blueberries on top and gently press them into the dough. Sprinkle with brown sugar and bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

6. Run a knife around the edge to loosen the cake from the pan and remove the rim. Cool completely on a wire rack.

The spirit is willing but…

| Green Card Gardener

It’s true, I just recently made the resolution not to buy any more kitchen tools. Easier said than done – when I was in an overstuffed kitchen supply store in New York this week, I succumbed to the temptation. No matter how much my friend teased me, saying I did not need this ludicrous “beginner’s tool”, I bought an egg separator ($1.91 including tax, so money-wise it was a modest impulse purchase). And, I must say it came very handy for the eight eggs that went into the almond-orange cake for a Passover Seder.

I started out with Claudia Roden’s recipe for Almond Cake in Orange Syrup from The Book of Jewish Food but ended up combining and tweaking several of her recipes. Because the cake had to travel several hours to its destination, I assembled it on site. Next time I will definitely use a springform pan, which is higher than the cake pan I used. My cake baked over the rim and crumbled, but since it is sitting in syrup anyway, the imperfection could be disguised by flipping the “ugly” side to the bottom.

Almond Cake with Oranges

Oranges in syrup:

4 large oranges, at least two of them organic

3 cups sugar

Juice of 1 lemon

Cake:

7 ounces unpeeled raw almonds

8 eggs, separated

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 cups orange juice (can be store-bought, but use a good quality)

2 tablespoons orange liqueur (Cointreau)

1. For the oranges in syrup, scrub the two organic oranges with a brush under running water. Dry and zest them thinly. Peel the other two oranges. Thoroughly remove the white pith from all the oranges.

2. Cut the oranges into even 1-inch slices and remove any seeds and pith from the middle.

3. Bring 4 cups water, the sugar and lemon juice to a boil in a large skillet. Stir until the sugar has dissolved.

4. Carefully place the orange slices in the skillet, if possible in a single layer. Put an inverted dinner place on top to fully immerse the slices in the liquid. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

5. Remove the oranges from the liquid with a slotted spoon. Spread them in one layer on a large plate.

6. Boil down the syrup at high heat to about half. Let cool.

7. Place the almonds in a heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand for 5 minutes, then drain and fill the bowl with cold water. Slip the almonds out of their skins and spread them on paper towels to dry.

8. Grind half of the almonds finely in the food processor. Chop the other half of the almonds to a coarser but not chunky consistency, using the pulse function.

9. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 10-inch springform pan.

Chop the orange zest very finely.

10. Separate the eggs. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, cinnamon, and almonds. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

11. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in a preheated oven for 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. If the cake browns too much but is not done yet, cover it loosely with aluminum foil.

12. Let cool slightly, then carefully remove from the pan and cool completely on a cake rack.

13. Boil the orange juice down to about half. Let cool and stir in the Cointreau.

14. A couple of hours before serving, place the cake on a deep cake plate. Pierce the cake several times with a fork. Drizzle with half of the reduced orange juice.  Arrange the orange slices on top and brush them with a bit of the syrup for a glaze. Pour the rest of the reduced orange juice all around the cake and chill until serving.

Scones in disguise

| Green Card Gardener

A few years ago, I had the most delicious cheese scones with ham and scallions at the café of the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York. I tried to imitate them a couple of times using the basic recipe for scones from The Joy of Cooking but I was never quite satisfied with the results.

Yesterday I made one of my standard weekend breakfast treats, the Basic Buttermilk Biscuits from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, when my eyes fell on a few leftover slices of boiled ham and a bunch of scallions that I had bought last week but did not use. I decided to make a second batch of scones. Without any butter or eggs, they turned out far better than any of the previous trials.

Next time I might add a bit more cheddar, ham, and scallions but I am happy with the scones as they are. Or, shall I rather call them biscuits?

Cheese Scones with Ham and Scallions

2 cups (10 ounces) flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

Pinch of salt

1 bunch scallions

3 slices boiled ham

1 ounce grated sharp cheddar

1/3 cup canola oil

1 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or with parchment paper.

2. Mix the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl.

3. Trim the scallions. Remove the green part except for about 1 inch. Chop the scallions finely.

4. Chop the ham finely. Add it to the flour mixture together with the scallions and the grated cheese.

5. Whisk the canola oil and the buttermilk in a separate bowl. Add to the flour mixture and blend with a rubber spatula until just combined.

6. Place 9 equally sized mounds on the prepared baking sheet. They don’t have to look neat – in fact, the less you handle dough, the lighter the scones will be.

7. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Place on wire rack and cool completely.

Makes 9 scones

Spring cleanup’s sweet side effects

| Green Card Gardener

This weekend, I did a big spring cleaning of the kitchen. There were two surprises. I was not aware how much I have accumulated since I moved to the Pennsylvania mountaintop ten years ago (if I had not been into cooking already, I would have certainly started here, as the local restaurant scene is dire, especially if you come straight from New York City). Not that I don’t use all those tools and equipment. Everything is put to use some time, even if only once a year, like the cherry pitter. Yet I promised myself that I will try to stick mainly to replacements.

The other surprise was a jar of canned pears from 2009, the last year we were able to enjoy the pears from our own two pear trees. Usually the other stakeholders to the pears, most likely raccoons or groundhogs, eat the pears before we can. One year when I went out with two large baskets for picking, all the pears were gone. Not a single pear on the tree. It had been loaded with fruit just a couple of days before.

Since I don’t know if and when we will have our own pears again, I wanted to use this last jar for something special. I made my favorite pear cake that my husband says must be eaten with vanilla ice-cream (he had two helpings sitting next to me on the sofa as as I write this, saying that the second was only a test to see if it still tasted as good as the first).

Spiced Chocolate Pear Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground allspice

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon cardamom

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 packed cup (10 ounces) light brown sugar

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup pear nectar (from the canned pears)

¼ cup finely minced crystallized ginger

2 ounces finely grated bittersweet chocolate

2 cups canned pear chunks, drained

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Butter and flour a 9-inch-diameter springform pan.

3. Mix flour with baking powder, baking soda, salt and all the spices.

4. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until creamy. Add eggs, vanilla extract and pear nectar.

5. Gradually work in the flour mix until dough is smooth. Add ginger and chocolate. Fold in the pear chunks.

6. Pour mix into the prepared pan and even out with a spatula. Bake 45 to 60 minutes, until toothpick comes out somewhat clean (because of the pears, there will always be some moisture clinging to the tester, but it should not be liquid).

7. Cool cake 10 minutes. Release cake from pan sides with a plastic knife. Cool completely on rack.