My ship has come in....

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No I haven't dropped off the face of the earth...but close...I'm in Alaska! We have been on a week long cruise along the Inside Passage in Alaska. Now we are spending a week visiting with my parents who've been staying in Alaska for the summer. It's been a fabulous vacation, but I'll be back to baking soon!

Celebrate your 4th with an All-American Blueberry Pie

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If strawberries are a bite of Spring, than for me the blueberry is the fruit that signifies summer. Juicy and sweet, with just a hint of tartness, makes the blueberry perfect in all kinds of baked goods. I mentioned in an earlier post that I manager a local farmers market. Blueberries are at their peak right now at our market, just in time for the 4th of July.  Although other countries are beginning to grow them, blueberries are indigenous to, and primarily grown in, North America. Perhaps instead of the apple pie, blueberry pie should be considered the all-American pie! Head down to your local farmers market this week, pick up some fresh blueberries and celebrate all things American with a slice of blueberry pie.

I don't add a lot of extras to my blueberry pie. My pie has only a couple of ingredients. I think in the case of blueberry pie less really is more. Lemon is the perfect companion to the blueberry. It adds just a bit of tartness that really brightens up the blueberries and cuts the sweetness just a bit.

Fresh Blueberry Pie
(Printable Recipe)

For Crust
One unbaked pie crust in 9" pie pan
One disk pie dough, for top of pie, (your favorite recipe.)
I used Dori Greenspan's recipe Good for All-Most Everything Pie Dough for my crust. If you don't want to make your own pie crust you can use prepared pie dough found in the refrigerator section of you local grocery store. It won't be as amazing as a homemade dough but you'll still get a great pie!

Filling:

4 cups fresh blueberries

1/2 cup  granulated white sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch 

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon lemon zest

Egg Wash:

1 large egg yolk

1 tablespoon cream
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolk and cream. 

Make the Blueberry Filling:  In a small bowl mix together the sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice and zest.  Place the blueberries in a large bowl.  Add the sugar mixture to the blueberries and gently toss to combine.  Pour the mixture into prepared pie shell. I used cut out stars to top my pie with but you can do a lattice pattern if you prefer. Place the cut out pastry stars in a circular pattern on top of the blueberries, making sure to cover most of the top of the pie. Once the top of the pie is covered with the pastry stars, brush the entire surface with the egg wash. Place the assembled pie back in the refrigerator to chill for about 30 minutes.   

 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place the chilled pie on a larger baking pan, lined with parchment paper or foil, to catch any spills.  Bake the pie for about 20 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees.  Continue to bake the pie for about 35 - 45 minutes or until the crust is a deep golden brown color and the juices are bubbling and thick.  If the edges of the pie are browning too much during baking, cover with a foil ring. 

Place the baked pie on a wire rack to cool for several hours. If you cut your pie before it cools completely it will not set-up and will be very soupy. Serve at room temperature with softly whipped cream or ice cream.  

I say Caramel...you say Careamel

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Southerners have had a long love affair with cake. Like sweet tea, it's a staple at church dinners, family reunions, funerals, and celebrations of any kind. Many of these cakes have names as interesting as their ingredient list. Hummingbird cake, a longtime favorite for showers of any type, contains mashed bananas and pineapple. Lane cake, a specialty from here in Alabama, is a multiple layer cake filled with whiskey soaked raisins. Then it's frosted with a fluffy white boiled icing, another Southern favorite. There are many more cakes, each with interesting histories and closely guarded family variations on the recipes, that make the baker a legend in their part of the world.
I grew up in a family with Pennsylvania Dutch roots. We were more likely to eat a funny cake than a Mississippi cake. My first experiences of Southern cakes as a child, came while visiting an elderly woman that lived nearby. It didn't matter when you stopped by, she always had some kind of cake under a glass domed cake plate in her kitchen. Mom would stop by often to visit this particular neighbor, for various reasons. Not exactly a thrilling prospect for me and my younger sisters. We were expected to sit quietly while the adults conversed. The television, which was always on, offered no escape from our boredom. Our neighbor was an avid watcher of what she called "her stories", daytime soaps.  Mom knew to time her visits until after "As the World Turns" or there would be no conversation until a commercial break. She used the commercial break to fill us non-watchers in on what was going on in the World as it Turned. Yeah, not exactly the way I wanted to spend a summer afternoon. However, these visits did come with a silver lining; cake!  She would always offered us slice, or rasher, as she called it, of cake. I didn't know what a rasher of cake was, but I knew I wanted it! All of her cakes were amazing, but I especially loved her twelve-layer chocolate cake. Unbelievably thin layers of yellow cake stacked twelve layers high with rich chocolate frosting between all twelve layers. One bite and I was sent into cake induced nirvana, even the Turning World became a bit more enjoyable.
I recently purchased Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott. It's full of all the old Southern favorites. I decided to attempt a caramel cake for my book club. I have a couple of older Southern ladies in my book club and I knew they'd love this cake. I'd made a burnt caramel cake before so I thought this would be similar and no big deal to make. The yellow cake was very straight forward and made a lovely light as air cake. However, the icing was nothing I've ever worked with before. Maybe Southern women have some crazy lighting fast cake icing skills. Perhaps this icing recipe, which comes from before the days of air conditioning, doesn't set up as fast in an 80+ degree kitchen. Whatever the case, you've got to get this icing on this cake in 5 minutes or less or forget it! It starts to harden and I don't care what the recipe says there's not much you can do about it. So my first attempt at this cake was not a pretty one. It tasted divine which is really what matters, but my cake did not look like the picture in the book..at all!
I served it at my book club and found out I've been mispronouncing the name of this cake my whole life. Southerners love syllables as much as they love cake. I called it cara mel cake (2 syllables) and got odd looks from the 2 older ladies in my book club. They both simultaneously said, oh you mean care a mel cake, (definitely 3 long syllables). Oops, there go those Yankee roots popping up again!

Gigi's Fabulous Caramel Cake
Source: Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott

Ingredients:

Yellow Cake 
3/4 cup butter
1 cup milk
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2teaspoons salt
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Gigi’s Caramel Icing
2 2/3 cups light brown sugar (or one 1-lb box)
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
7 tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pre-heat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans.
Combine the butter and milk in a small saucepan, and cook over low heat until the butter melts. Do not let it boil or the milk will curdle.  Stir well and let cool to room temperature.
Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, and mix well with a whisk. In a large bowl, combine the eggs and sugar, and beat well at high speed, scraping down the bowl often, until light yellow, smooth an thick. 3-5 minutes.
Stir the flour mixture into the egg mixture, mixing only until the flour disappears. Add the cooled milk mixture and the vanilla, stir well, and divide the batter between the prepared pans.
Bake at,325°F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the cakes are pale golden brown, spring back when touched lightly in the center, and begin to pull away from the sides of the pans.
Cool in pans for 10 minutes on wire racks. Then turn out the cakes onto racks to cool completely, top side up. 
Make the icing; have the cake layers handy and ready for frosting, so that you can spread the warm frosting quickly once it is ready. In a heavy medium saucepan, combine the brown sugar, butter, evaporated milk, and vanilla. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir well and then adjust the heat so that the frosting boils and bubbles gently. Cook for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool for 5 minutes.
Beat the icing with a wooden spoon until it thickens, 2 to 3 minutes. Place a cake layer, top side down, on a cake stand or serving platter. Quickly spread some icing over the top, and cover it with the second cake layer, top side up. Ice the top quickly and then spread the remaining icing over the sides.
If the icing becomes to hard to spread, warm gently over low heat, add a spoonful or two of evaporated milk, and then scrape and stir well until the icing softens enough to spread again. Dip a table knife in a very hot water to help soften and smooth out the icing once it is spread.

N

See the icing looks like it was put on with a putty knife!

Rosemary Infused Honey

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 I 've been busy as a bee the past couple of weeks preparing for opening day of the farmers market that I manage here in my home town. It takes months of work, hundreds of phone calls, and thousands of emails to get the farmers market ready for business each year. I helped build our local farmers market from the ground up. It took well over a year of planning just to get it off the ground. Last summer was our first season. It was so gratifying to see those tents go up and the people in our community line up to buy fresh produce from our local farmers. I feel very strongly that we need to support our local growers and think more locally when it comes to eating.
Having a year of experience under our belts, made planning and executing this years market a little easier. The best part, for me, of managing the market is getting to know so many of our local farmers and producers. They are a wonderful hardworking and independent group of people. I look forward to seeing them each week and love buying what they've grown. It's so nice to have a face attached to the food your eating. 
The Beekeepers Association has a booth at our market. Each week different beekeepers run the booth and bring along the honey they've collected from their bees. They encourage their customers to sample the different honey. It's amazing how the honey for one grower tastes completely different from that of another grower. Their hives may be only a few miles apart, yet have a completely different taste and color.
I can't help myself, I always buy too much at the market. I end up having to freeze, or can, or throw a party, to use up everything I've bought each week. I decided, since I had quite a bit of honey, I'd try infusing some of it with herbs and see what happened. I went with rosemary this time because I think that rosemary and honey are a terrific combo and because I have the world's largest rosemary bush. Seriously, it's like some mutant plant or something. Anyway, I used the quick method of infusing my honey. With the slower method, you don't heat the honey at all. The herbs slowly over time infuse the honey with their flavor. The honey has a longer shelf life if you use this method, but I'm too impatient to wait several weeks for the honey to be infused! So I used the quick method. It's quite easy and I loved the end result. Rosemary is perfect with honey. I've already used this honey in so many things: salad dressing, drizzled over cheese, on fresh fruit, and in my marinades. It would be perfect in place of regular honey in the grilled figs I made here.

Quick method for infusing honey with rosemary

1 cup honey (such as clover honey)
a good sized handful of rosemary

Place honey in a double boiler with water in bottom. Squeeze rosemary
leaves to release flavor and add to honey. Bring water to a boil; bring
honey to 185°F and keep at 185°F for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and
let stand for 10 minutes. Strain while still warm. Strain into a clean glass jar.
Makes 1 cup. Store in the refrigerator. Honey should be good for several months.
.

Stop by your local farmers market and pick up some local honey and infuse some for yourself.
P.S. Infused honey would make a great gift.

Fresh apricot upside-down cake

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Pineapple upside-down cake always evokes memories of my childhood. My mom made a killer pineapple upside-down cake. She'd put pecans in the center of each pineapple ring, way better than a maraschino cherry, in my opinion. That wasn't the best part of the cake, however. Unlike most cakes, the outer edge of a pineapple upside down cake is the best part of the cake. The brown sugar and butter form a thick caramely edge that makes getting to the end of your piece of cake kind of like getting a prize at the finish line. Back then, I didn't care much about the cake part of the pineapple upside-down cake, it was all about the caramel for me. I remember strategically planning my piece of cake to include at least one pecan, and the edge with the most caramel. This was not always an easy feat when competing with four other sisters with the exact same agenda. As mom would cut the cake, we'd all watch for that perfect slice and try to beat each other in the, "I want that piece, Mom!"

I got these gorgeous apricots this week and came across a recipe for apricot upside-down cake. I thought that that caramel topping  and the lightly almond flavor of the cake would be great with apricots. The perfect combo of tart and sweet with that wonderful caramel edge... I know, sounds awesome, right?!? Oh, and now that I'm cutting the cake, there are no worries about not getting that perfect slice.

Fresh Apricot Upside-down Cake

(printable recipe)

Source: Gourmet July 2003
For topping
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
10 or 11 small (2- to 2 1/4-inch) fresh apricots (about 1 1/4 lb), halved lengthwise and pitted

For cake
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 large eggs at room temperature 
3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk


Preparation

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Make topping:
Heat butter in a 10-inch well-seasoned cast-iron or heavy nonstick skillet (at least 2 inches deep) over moderate heat until foam subsides. Reduce heat to low and sprinkle brown sugar evenly over butter, then cook, undisturbed, 3 minutes (not all of sugar will be melted). Remove skillet from heat and arrange apricot halves, cut sides down, close together on top of brown sugar.

Make cake:
Sift together flour, baking powder and soda, and salt into a small bowl.

Beat together butter, sugar, and extracts in a large bowl with a mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.  Beat in eggs 1 at a time, then beat until mixture is creamy and doubled in volume, 2 to 3 minutes.

Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture in 3 batches alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture, and beat just until combined.

Gently spoon batter over apricots and spread evenly.

Bake cake in middle of oven until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes.

Wearing oven mitts, immediately invert a large plate over skillet and, keeping plate and skillet firmly pressed together, invert cake onto plate.Take care doing this, the skillet will be very hot! Carefully lift skillet off cake and, if necessary, replace any fruit that is stuck to bottom of skillet. Cool to warm or room temperature. 

Not your average fruit dip

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I have to say I have never been a fan of fruit dips. You know, that seemingly obligatory, tooth-achingly sweet goop that shows up on fruit trays, salad bars, and at catered events. I'd come to the conclusion that the only reason that the only reason for its existence, was to mask bad, under ripe fruit. To somehow fool us into eating that rock hard cantaloupe or barely pink strawberry . Or perhaps like kids, we needed to be enticed into eating our fruit. Anyway, I've never seem a need for dip with fruit, but having been a caterer, fruit dip is regular request from clients, to be included with the mandatory fruit and veggie tray. I've made several different fruit dips over the years but never had one that appealed to me in the least. I was recently catered an event and needed that requested dip. So I decided to look for something new. This particular recipe caught my eye because it included coffee liqueur. It seemed like such an odd combination of ingredients that I just had to give it a try. The recipe said that the coffee liqueur was optional, so I added a couple of tablespoons to see if I'd like it.  Oh my! It's amazing. It tasted so good I added the rest of the 1/3 cup.  This recipe also called for cool whip, a product I never use, but I did this time. I plan to make it next time with sweetened whipped cream, and see how that works. I'm just glad I found a fruit dip that actually tastes good!!

Brown Sugar Fruit Dip

Source: (Sami Cameron, Corpus Christi, Texas, Southern Living, JULY 2007)

Yield: 3 1/2 cups

Ingredients: (printable recipe)

1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup coffee liqueur
1 cup frozen whipped topping, thawed
assorted fruits

 

Method:
Beat brown sugar and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth. Add sour cream, vanilla, and coffee liqueur, beating until smooth. Fold in whipped topping. Cover and chill 4 hours. Sprinkle top of the dip with brown sugar garnish, if desired. Serve with fruit. Strawberries, pineapple, and grapes are really good with this dip.

This dip is not too sweet, with just the right amount of tang that it really compliments the fruit, and doesn't just mask it with sugar. The next time you have a party, whip up this dip to go with that fruit tray. You just might be a convert too!

Seafood, sunsets, and saving our coast

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Sorry I  know not much has gone on here at Half Baked for a week or so. Hubs and I have been on vacation. We headed down to the beach for a week of sun and seafood. It was sublime! We love to go to a part of the Florida coastline along the Gulf of Mexico, know as "the forgotten coast". Situated between Mexico Beach  and Carrabella, it's a beautiful part of the coast, with pristine beaches and few people. The open beaches and lack of people allow you to experience the wildlife that you'd never see along the more crowded coastal areas. On one of our previous trips, we went there in early fall and got to witness newly hatched sea turtles being released into the ocean. That was really amazing. We've seen many dolphins, and even got an up close look at a bald eagle as it swooped down and grabbed a fish that had washed up on the shore. That's we love about going this part of the Gulf of Mexico. That and if you've never had fresh wild caught Gulf shrimp or oysters from Apalachicola, you've missed out on some of the world's finest seafood! It's a unique and beautiful part of the Florida coast and the beaches are dog friendly, so we can take the whole fam. It's truly a place to get away from everything, I didn't even have cell phone coverage where we were staying. Now that's a get away!

 Hubs was the one that first wanted to come to this area for vacation. He had flown over it many times and said it looked beautiful. When he found out that he could fish from the beach and we could bring the dog,  he was sold! Pompano is one of the fish that can be caught from the shoreline. They usually run in the spring and fall and like the calm water in this area. Pompano is a delicious white fish. It has a delicate buttery flavor that makes it one of the best fish I've ever eaten. The average size of pompano is only about 2 lbs. Because of it's size and great flavor, pompano usually commands the highest price of any fish caught in America. Did I mention they can be caught from the shore??!!?? Hub's mission each time we go; catch at least 2 pompano before we leave and grill them for dinner. He did catch two this trip and they were fabulous.

We leave them whole and prepare them very simply:
After the fish have been cleaned. You could fillet them but it's really not necessary, once cooked the flesh just comes away from the bones. 
Score the skin on both sides (btw pompano have no scales!)
Rub the each sides with about a tablespoon of butter
Salt and pepper
Then place on a hot grill. Charcoal give the fish a really great flavor, but a gas grill works just as well. Grill the fish 8 -12 minutes per side depending on the size of you fish. Add a squeeze of lime and that's it!

 Maisy likes to help with the fishing!

Unfortunately, the BP explosion and oil spill that happened just a few days before our vacation, threatens to destroy this beautiful area. Tourism, fishing, shrimping, and oysters are the main industry in this area. The oil spill could ruin the beaches and kill the much of the wildlife. The fishing industry could be permanently impacted by this catastrophe. All of the local people we talked to are worried that their livelihoods may soon be destroyed. I'm sure all the folks that live along the Gulf of Mexico and make their living from it, feel the same way. I don't know the answer to this problem or how it can be fixed.  I hope that our government and BP will do whatever it takes to clean up this mess and save the coastal areas of the Gulf from permanent devastation and preserve it for future generations.