Peach Crisp with Honey & Coconut

The weather has been unusually warm here lately, and the Jersey peaches have been available sweet and absolutely ridiculously delicious for weeks. I went to a farmers market one Tuesday almost a month ago and bought a small bucket of peaches that held perhaps five beautiful peaches. I only got to eat one of those incredible peaches, as my littlest brother, age 12, apparently ate the rest of them in immediate succession. The next week, I went back and bought two or three times as many, and I got to eat one in my morning oatmeal.

Charlie has a bit of an allergy to some hand fruits like apples and peaches, and I felt so bad that he couldn’t enjoy these awesome peaches with me. Since they don’t seem to bother him when they’re cooked, on my last trip to the farmers market, I bought enough to make a crisp or a cobbler with. (I never remember if there’s a difference between the two…)

I have a pretty big amount of honey left over from a wedding cake I did several months ago, and I’ve been thinking for a while about making a crisp/cobbler with honey as the sugar. I assumed it would be fine, but I did a bit of googling, and it seemed like people had been successful with it.

I also decided to go out on a limb and change out the fat that I used. I’ve been trying to be mindful of the food I’m putting in my body lately. (I recently got back from a roadtrip, and nearly every time I go on a roadtrip, I clean up my eating habits when I return because I feel crappy from eating so much crappy food on the road.) I decided to give coconut oil a try in this recipe since I’ve been wanting to experiment with cooking with it, and also because peach and coconut are great together.

The flavors in this were amazing. The peaches were perfect (no sweetener needed in the fruit portion). On the first day, the taste of honey shone through, but the next day, the coconut flavor showed itself a bit more. I would definitely make this again with these variations.

With a crisp, I usually just wing it, so unfortunately, these measurements are sort of approximations, but, in my experience, crisps are pretty darn forgiving, so it all works out. :)

*Note: My peaches were very juicy, and after the first day, things got a bit sloshy, so if yours are very juicy, too, I’d suggest mixing a tiny bit of cornstarch in with the fruit.

Ingredients

5-7 large peaches, pitted and cut into slices or large chunks (I left the skins on)
2 plums (optional, these were just very ripe and needed to be used)
1/3-1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 2/3 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons pepitas (optional)
1/3 cup coconut flakes (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Spread the fruit in the bottom of a pan (I used a corningware one about 12x12x2).

In a mixer or large bowl, combine the honey and coconut oil. Mix until blended. Add the dry ingredients (oats, flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon) and mix until large crumbs are form. Add a bit more flour or oats if necessary. Stir in the walnuts. Spread evenly over the top of the fruit. Sprinkle the pepitas and coconut on top.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the crisp is brown and the fruit is bubbling. Enjoy warm!

Carrot Cake with Bourbon Cream Cheese Frosting

Charlie’s birthday was last Sunday, but Sunday, we were at the tail end of a 30+ hour train ride from New Orleans back to New York. Our trip was delayed a bit because of the tornado in Alabama. We actually rode right through Tuscaloosa, AL, and the damage was just incredible. It was super sad and almost unbelievable to just see huge trees absolutely snapped in half. If you’d like to help the folks out in Alabama, one way you can do it is by texting FOOD to 27722 to donate $10 to the West Alabama Food Bank.

Now that we’re back in New York, and I’ve spend the week resting and doing laundry and other mundane stuff, it’s time to catch up on Charlie’s birthday. We had about four pounds of carrots from our last winter CSA delivery, so a carrot cake was certainly in order.

As usual, when making this recipe, I looked at a whole bunch of different carrot cake recipes and then mishmoshed them together, though I’d say the one that was the closest to what I was looking for was over at The Joy of Baking. I still made a bunch of changes, including reducing the amount of raisins and nuts and pineapple and making a spicier cake, since those are things that (if I recall correctly!) I’ve heard Charlie say he prefers in a carrot cake.

Charlie’s mom was around when I was baking this cake, and I let her taste the batter. She made a noise of exclamation. “What did you put in this?” she demanded. “It’s going to smell so good,” she said. She went to the kitchen window and started to open the window, then looked back at me. “That way the neighbors can smell it and be jealous,” she smiled.

Usually when I bake, it’s all about the flavor and nothing about the presentation. Friday night, though, I took a nap while the cake was cooling, then got a second wind and baked a whole second cake! I decided to really spend some time decorating the carrot cake while the chocolate chip cake was in the oven. The decorating didn’t come out perfectly, since it got to be two in the morning, I was getting sleepy, and the sequence that I did certain things in was not necessarily the most efficient, but it came out pretty darn nice.

I almost never write on cakes [the last time I did was probably last year's super silly birthday cake for myself, when I couldn't even find the tip for writing] so I was really, really happy with how the script came out. I took a half dozen semesters of typography in college, so I would have been gutted if my cake lettering was awful.

I think I’m getting the hang of this baking thing. *wink*

Photo of the cake topped with drunk raisins, drunk pineapple, and drunk ginger.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups oil
4 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 pound carrots, shredded (about 3 1/2 cups shredded, or about a dozen small carrots)
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup raisins
2 teaspoons chopped candied ginger
2 tablespoons finely chopped pineapple (optional)
a few tablespoons of flavorful bourbon (I used Woodford Reserve)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon cardamom

Ingredients: Cream Cheese Frosting
(sorry, I just kind of flung things into the mixer on this one!)

2 bricks of cream cheese
3/4 stick of butter
2 cups (or more, according to taste) confectioners sugar
2 tablespoons bourbon (I used Woodford Reserve)
2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
toasted coconut (for garnish)

Directions

Carrot Cake: Several hours before beginning, make the “drunk raisins.” I learned this tip from a new friend when we were out in New Orleans – thanks, Darnell! Place the raisins and ginger (and pineapple, if desired) in a small bowl. Add a small amount of bourbon – enough so that the fruit is covered. Let it soak for at least an hour, preferably more. Reserve a few tablespoons of this mixture for the decorating step.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place rack in center of oven. Spray two 9″ cake pans.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom.

In bowl of a stand mixer mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the eggs until frothy (about 1 minute). Gradually add the sugar and beat until the batter is thick and light colored (about 3 – 4 minutes). Add the oil in a steady stream and then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat just until incorporated. With a large rubber spatula fold in the grated carrots, drunk raisins (don’t forget to reserve some!), and chopped nuts. Evenly divide the batter between the two prepared pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. After about 5 -10 minutes invert the cakes onto the wire rack and then cool completely before frosting.

To assemble: place one cake layer onto your serving plate. Spread with about half the frosting. Sprinkle nuts, ginger and raisins if desired. Gently place the other cake onto the frosting and spread the rest of the frosting over the top of the cake. If desired, garnish with toasted coconut around the sides of the cake. Cover and refrigerate any leftovers.

Note about decorating: If you’re like me, and you prefer a much less sweet frosting, your frosting won’t be as stiff. What I did was frost the cake with the thinner icing, then, for the remaining 1/3 or so of the frosting, I added an extra cup or two of confectioners’ sugar. That way, the frosting was stiff enough to pipe the letters and the edge, but the entire cake wasn’t sickeningly sweet.

Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie

It’s December! And what does that mean? I have absolutely no excuse to avoid posting on my cooking blog. (Ok, so I have a few excuses – I’m still about 10-15k from finishing my novel for NaNoWriMo, even though I technically “won,” and I’ve been having a particularly nasty flare of my rheumatoid arthritis lately, leaving me pretty wiped out.) Excuses aside, there is definitely some exciting stuff brewing around here, like the arrival of my stuff from CSNStores.com!

The first thing I want to share with you is my awesome sweet potato pie recipe, as well as reveal one of the things I chose to review that we talked about in this post.

The first thing that arrived was perfect for use in this recipe. It was a potato masher from OXO!

I absolutely love OXO products, and I’m so glad that CSN Stores carry them. OXO was actually started by a guy whose wife had arthritis in her hands, and the kitchen tools they make are designed so you can grip them easier. This masher has a really comfy handle, and it is super sturdy. I have no doubt that I’ll have this in my kitchen for a long time. The handle might be a tiny bit short if you’ve got a really steamy pot, but all in all, I am super pleased. Shopping with CSN was easy (except for deciding what to get…) and two out of the three items I ordered arrived with lightning speed.

Hmmm…. now aren’t you curious to know what the other two items were? More recipes will be coming soon with the reveal. For now, check out this awesome masher action:

Disclosure: I was given this product by CSN Stores in exchange for writing this review, though this is my otherwise unpaid, unbiased opinion.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled programming. As a kid, I was never into sweet potato pie, but every year at Thanksgiving and sometimes at Christmas, my mom makes a sweet potato pie. She mashes up sweet potatoes with some brown sugar and butter, dumps it all into a graham cracker pie crust, and tops it with pecans. In the past couple of years, I’ve started to get more into various types of veggies like beautiful acorn squash and gorgeous yams, and the sweet potato pie really started to grow on me! At Thanksgiving this year, my immune system was particularly crummy from having just taken my RA medicine two days before, so I really wasn’t up for seeing the entire extended family (and all of the germs they might have), so we kept it low-key. I did have a serious hankering for my mom’s sweet potato pie, though, so we whipped up a slightly dressier version of our own.

Since I wasn’t sure exactly how many of the four of us at dinner would be interested in the sweet potato pie, I opted to make adorable little mini pies! This allowed me to customize them, too, since I actually prefer walnuts over pecans, and since one of the diners is diabetic and had to avoid the sweetness of the marshmallow topping. And if you’ve got vegan dinner guests, this recipe is easy to adapt. Many graham cracker crusts are actually vegan – or you can easily make one yourself. Natural foods stores also carry vegan marshmallows, which can be snipped apart with kitchen scissors to trim them down to the appropriate size for these tiny treats.

As for my thought that we might have too much… I think these were gone by the end of the night. I had to have my brother bring reinforcements of my mom’s leftover sweet potato pie when he came to visit the next day.

Ingredients

3 large yams/sweet potatoes
6 mini graham cracker crusts
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Earth Balance (or butter)
pinch of salt (more if you used unsalted butter)
pecans or walnuts for topping
mini marshmallows for topping (optional)

Directions

Wash your sweet potatoes. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Boil the sweet potatoes (skins on!) until soft (probably about 30-40 minutes, depending on their size – test with a fork).

Remove the sweet potatoes from the water and put them on a cutting board to cool. Carefully remove the skins with a paring knife, or just grab them with a potholder and the skin should slide right off.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Mash the Earth Balance or butter, brown sugar, salt, and sweet potatoes with your awesome potato masher. (Oh, you don’t have an awesome potato masher? You can get one here.)

Divide the sweet potatoes between the mini graham cracker crusts. You’ll want to heap the sweet potatoes up and out of the crusts. Decorate with nuts and marshmallows to your liking. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, or until your nuts and marshmallows are nice and toasted.

Apple Walnut Salad with Grilled Portabella

Just thought I’d share an incredibly amazing salad that I just threw together consisting of almost all local produce. In fact, I think the only veggie in here that isn’t local is the portabella mushroom.

I got a bunch of great salad-y things in the farm share today, and Charlie (not the biggest salad eater) won’t be home for dinner. I basically started throwing things in until this monster was born. It’s got protein (including a tiny little bug I just fished out… hmmm, guess I should wash the lettuce more thoroughly next time) and good fats and it tastes incredible.

leftover grilled portabella mushroom (in a soy sauce marinade)
red leaf lettuce
carrots
celery
sweet peppers
cutting celery (it’s a really green, almost herby thing)
small apple, chopped
couple tablespoons of walnuts
tablespoon or two of pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds)

I’d originally thought about throwing some cheddar cheese in there, but it just didn’t need it. The smokiness of the mushroom, the sweetness of the apple, and the depth of the walnuts, and since my pepitas were salted, the saltiness of that… It was awesome! Highly recommend you try it… minus the tiny bug.

On another note, we went apple picking a week ago, and I have nearly a half bushel of apples still. I did make turnovers, and I did make two mini pies, but you see, that baking was done when our friends Ben & Emily came to visit after they were in the area apple picking. So, we really didn’t use many of our apples since they brought a ton with them, too.

My Harvest Fruit Crisp has been on my brain (I can almost taste it), but I’m definitely going to have apples left after that. If all else fails, I’ll make Overflow Apple Butter and give it away, since clearly, for me, it’s all about the actual experience of picking apples rather than the need to have nine million apples in my house. I’ve made it abundantly clear that I prefer pumpkin for my fall baking and cooking.

So what should I do with all these apples?

This is what we’re working with, here. You can see there’s even a few extra hidden back there in my bowl of squash. Do you have a favorite recipe that I should try? Or is there something you wish you knew how to make that you want me to experiment with?

Beer Pie (with Pecans & Walnuts)

I joined an online baking community recently, and it is awesome to see what everyone around the world is baking. Since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up here in the USA, someone suggested making a beer pie. I made a bunch of changes to the recipe, like adding chocolate and walnuts, but it was a great help to have since I’ve never made a pecan pie before. Charlie loves pecan pie, though, and he said that this was one of the best things I’ve ever made. It did not last very long!

I went to our local beverage store, and I asked for a recommendation on a good stout, since that’s not what I usually drink. I was hoping to get something like Leffe Brune, but I was told that it’s only available in Belgium, which is where I sampled it. He asked me if I wanted Guinness, and I said that I wanted something with a chocolaty finish, so he pointed me to Lion Stout, a brew from Sri Lanka. I tried a sip before I put it in the pie, and it was perfect – very dark and flavorful.

As usual, I cut back on the sugar a bit, so this pie really tastes like like the chocolaty stout (so much so that I wouldn’t recommend serving this at a family event).

Ingredients

1 unbaked 9″ pie crust (I cheated here and used a frozen one from the store)
12 ounces Lions Stout (or any other dark, sweet stout)
2 tbsp Butter
1 cup light corn syrup
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup pecan halves
1 cup walnuts
3 eggs
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
egg wash (if desired)
pecans for garnish

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Pour beer into a pan and heat on medium. Reduce to a syrup-ish consistency, then let it cool slightly.

Melt the butter in a separate pan.

Combine the reduced beer with the melted butter, corn syrup, brown sugar, and flour with a wire whisk until thoroughly blended. Add the walnuts and pecans.

In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add a small amount of the warm syrup mixture to the eggs before stirring the eggs into the syrup mixture. (This evens out the temperatures so you don’t end up with scrambled eggs in your warm syrup.)

If desired, brush the crust with your egg wash.

Pour the filling into the crust, mixing in the chocolate chips as you pour. Garnish with pecans.

Bake in the center of the oven on a baking tray in case of spills! for approximately 40 minutes or until a knife stuck in the center comes out clean.

Cool before serving.

Holiday Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

This entry was made the day before Thanksgiving. The rolls ended up being left in the oven too long because someone besides me was responsible for them, but I’d make them again – aside from being too hard from being in too long, they were good.

“I hope they’re good,” I said, referencing these rolls that I had rising in the fridge. Charlie’s sister has instructions to put them in the oven when she wakes up in the morning, earlier than the rest of us, since her friend needs a ride so she can catch a flight.

“I hope they don’t eat them all before we wake up,” Charlie said woefully.

This recipe is based on the one that’s on the King Arthur Flour website , except that I’ve made a lot of changes. Some of them were because I just didn’t have some of their products that they sell, like their Easy-Roll Dough Improver, and some of the changes were for reasons such as, I think it’s blasphemous to not include cinnamon in the filling inside of sticky buns.

Either way, those are the origins, and I’m quite happy to have the inspiration. Charlie, his sister, and the other people sleeping at our house tonight were quite happy for me to have it, too.

(Don’t let these spend too long in the oven! I made the mistake of letting someone else mind them, and they were in too long and got a bit dried out.)

Ingredients

Dough
3 1/4 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons natural sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups pumpkin
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1/4 cup bread flour
3 tablespoons unsalted butter

Filling
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons maple sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon natural sugar
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Glaze
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 brown sugar
4 tablespoons cane syrup, golden syrup, or light corn syrup
2 tablespoons cinnamon (or, to taste)

Directions:

Combine all dough ingredients and mix them in a stand mixer or by hand until a smooth, soft dough is formed. Add a bit of water if the dough is too dry. Spray a non-metal bowl with oil and flip the dough once to coat. Cover with a damp cloth and allow to rise in a warm place for about one hour (the dough will not necessarily double in size).

Combine the filling ingredients and stir well. Deflate the dough and roll it out onto a floured surface into about a 12×16 rectangle. Spread the filling over the sheet of dough, then, starting with a long edge, roll the dough into a log, pinch the edge to seal it, and slice it into 16 1-inch pieces.

To make the glaze, melt the butter, then stir in the sugar, syrup, cinnamon, and walnuts. Pour some on the bottom of the pans, and drizzle the rest on top.

Bake the buns in a preheated 350°F oven for 25 minutes for 2 round pans, or 35 to 40 minutes in the sticky bun pan, or until they’re golden brown and you see the glaze bubbling.

Remove the buns from the oven, and immediately turn them out of the pan(s) onto a serving plate to cool.

Harvest Fruit Crisp

*Note: I don’t usually consume much of the sweets I’ve made. Mostly, I bake for other people. This crisp, however, is so delicious… well… let’s just say that I won’t have to worry about distributing any at work in order for it all to get eaten. This is another recipe with the sugar cut back, but make sure you taste your apples – if they’re very bland, you may want to add a bit more sugar.

Today was our last farm share delivery of the season, and we got yet another harvest of apples. As I mentioned in this entry, autumn is a great time to take advantage of local harvests. I haven’t done any baking with apples lately, though, so ours were accumulating. I’d meant to make a crisp last week, and this week, I was low on energy after working and picking up the share, but, well, I’d thrown a pot of vegetable stock on to boil, and I had some free time on my hands. And thus, the Harvest Crisp is born.

I was really dying to stir in about a half cup of pumpkin puree with the apples, but I didn’t want to open a whole can when I only have the huge ones.

This recipe is kind of like stone soup. You can substitute what you have and adjust what you don’t. I’m going to throw in some suggestions, but feel free to improvise. I’ve bolded the choices that I made.

Ingredients

5-8 medium apples, preferably of mixed variety, peeled, cored, and sliced
2-3 pears, peeled, cored, and sliced (optional)
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
A handful of walnuts or almonds (optional)
A handful of fresh cranberries, dried currants, or raisins (optional)
A handful of sunflower seeds

And, everyone will need:

1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons natural sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup quick cooking oats
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
a bit of lemon juice (to keep the apples from browning)
1 stick unsalted butter or soy butter, cut into chunks

Directions

Toss the fruit in the lemon juice, and, if using, the pumpkin puree.

Arrange the fruit in the bottom of an oven-safe casserole dish or 9×13 baking pan.

In a stand mixer, or, with a pastry blender, cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients (oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, natural sugar, brown sugar, salt). Mix until large crumbs are formed and the mixture has an even texture.

Stir in any miscellaneous ingredients such as, in this case, the cranberries and walnuts. Spread the oat mixture over the fruit evenly so that the fruit is completely covered.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the crisp is brown and the fruit is bubbling. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Last weekend, we went up to Massachusetts to visit a whole mess of our friends, and of course, wherever there is a whole mess of our friends, I try to make baked goods appear. First, we drove up to Vermont to buy some maple sugar, since it’s an ingredient that I’ve been dying for since I saw it on Iron Chef America sometime late in the summer, and I haven’t been able to get it in any store around here. We went to Plummer’s Sugar House, which was down a scenic drive with the start of some lovely fall foliage. Then, we visited with a combination of old friends and new friends, plus we met up with my brother Jon and some of his friends.

In my baking arsenal, I brought a double batch of my trusty Environmentally Friendly Brownies, six of my new Mini Chocolate Chip Ricotta Cakes, and two dozen autumn themed Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting (though we gave one to the nice gent at Plummer’s Sugar House).

Not many people I know bring a whole cooler full of goodies with them on a weekend visit, but no one complained! I also had, defrosting from frozen in the cooler, a mini-loaf that’s a variation on this nectarine muffin recipe and either an apple or a peach pie (they weren’t labeled well in the freezer) from the pie eating contest, both for my brother who also happens to live in Massachusetts.

People have been begging for this recipe ever since I mentioned it, so here it is! In pumpkin recipes, I usually decrease the sugar and increase the spices, so that’s the main difference that you’ll see between my recipe and most that are around the internet. As for the cream cheese frosting, it’s another experiment that I’d never tried out before, and it was awesome! It was a perfect match for the cupcakes. Some internet recipes recommend as much as four times as much confectioner’s sugar in the frosting, but that would make me absolutely ill, so I recommend starting with a minimal amount and increasing it if absolutely necessary.

Ingredients: Pumpkin Cupcakes

1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons natural sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree (a 15oz can)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions: Pumpkin Cupcakes

I prepared mine in my stand mixer, but as usual, feel free to use your trusty bowl or hand mixer.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake trays with cupcake liners.

Mix butter, brown sugar, natural sugar, eggs, vanilla, and pumpkin puree.

In a separate bowl, mix your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt).

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing constantly. Alternate adding the milk and the dry ingredients until both are completely added.

Scoop mixture into pre-lined cupcake trays.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Cool completely before frosting.

Yield: 24 cupcakes

Ingredients: Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick unsalted butter
8 oz cream cheese
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 cup walnuts (optional)
orange sprinkles (optional)

Directions: Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Combine butter, cream cheese, maple syrup, confectioner’s sugar, and cinnamon. Mix with a hand mixer or stand mixer until smooth. If desired, add more confectioner’s sugar 1/4 cup at a time.

Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes prior to frosting.

Top with a few autumn themed sprinkles and a couple of chopped walnuts.

If you’re baking ahead, store the unfrosted cupcakes in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, or freeze if it will be longer than that. The cream cheese frosting should be stored separately in an airtight container in the refrigerator and the cupcakes should be frosted right before serving.

Plebeian Peach Walnut Oatmeal

Usually our cooked oats come out in the wintertime and summers are, as might be expected, a time for cold cereals. Last week, however, we got some wonderful peaches in our farmshare and oatmeal sounded like an amazing idea. Charlie got it started while I got ready for work, and I tossed it together on my way out the door. The results were astounding for how easy the recipe was.

Ingredients

Oatmeal… prepare according to package directions, but I’m strongly recommending that you don’t use the bullshit instant kind. Quick oats if you must, old-fashioned if you’ve got a few minutes.
Peaches, one small per serving, washed, pitted, and chopped into bite size
Walnuts, about one small handful
About 2 teaspoons, give or take, brown sugar

Directions

This one’s pretty straightforward. Since you’ve already prepared your oatmeal according to the directions on the package, you’ll just need to mix all this stuff together and enjoy it. Throw a dash of cinnamon in there if you’re feeling wild. Amazing. Definitely one of the best bowls of oatmeal I’ve ever had.

P.S. Don’t judge me about the plastic spoon! We almost never use plastic utensils or paper plates. I was heading into work, and Charlie was heading to the city to help his friend move out of her apartment. I should get one of these to avoid this problem in the future. I can leave it on my keychain. Hehe.

“Environmentally Friendly” Cakey Brownies

As I mentioned the other day, my friend Bo popped by from Brooklyn to eat Kale-Came-in-Our-Farm-Share Creamy Potato Soup with us. I already had some Spiral Herb Rolls going on one rack in the oven, and I figured that it would simply be a waste of energy to not whip up some brownies that cooked at the same temperature and for about the same amount of time.

We actually have had a box of brownie mix sitting in our cupboard for months. It’s not crappy mix, either, it’s King Arthur Fabulous Fudge Brownie Mix, which I’ve admittedly never had, but I enjoy their other products and got the brownies tossed in free when I spent an obscene amount of money at their store in Vermont last fall. The mix sits untouched, however, since I almost always decide that if I’m going to dirty a bowl, dirty a pan, add an egg and add some oil, I may as well make brownies from scratch.

My go-to recipe for brownies lately has been this one, and I’ll probably still use it sometimes, but Charlie says the recipe below is his new favorite. I had to come up with this one because I was stuck at home with our broken-down car, and I didn’t have enough chocolate to melt to make the other ones. I did, however, have some dutch cocoa powder. These are a little more “cake-like,” but definitely still fudgy. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of melting chocolate in a pot, this is the recipe for you.

Ingredients

1 cup butter, melted
2 cups white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened dutch cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
3/4 cup Heath Bar Toffee Bits (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) a 9×13 baking dish.

Combine the melted butter, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each, until thoroughly blended.

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture until blended. One at a time, stir in the chocolate chips, walnuts, and toffee bits. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared baking dish.

Bake in preheated oven until an inserted toothpick comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes.

Cool pan on wire rack before cutting.

Philadelphia Zucchini Bread

This zucchini bread is called Philadelphia Zucchini Bread not because it’s native to the area, but because we’re bringing it to Philly when we go there next weekend. A guy we know is letting us share his hotel room for the low price of one homebaked zucchini bread. Since I’d never made zucchini bread before, I thought it would only be polite to make a test run before the real thing. (Besides, Charlie looooves zucchini bread, so it would be torture for him to give away all the zucchini bread!)

As usual, I want to make a lovely presentation out of things, so I’ve adapted a two loaf recipe to fit my ten cup Heritage Bundt Pan. I started with this recipe as a guideline, but I made some changes already and will be making more on the next round.

(I can’t wait to make a version for us that really adapts it to be a healthy version using whole wheat flour, milled flax, and reduces the fat.)

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon (I’d say they weren’t quite heaping, but they were generous teaspoons)
3 eggs
5/6 cup vegetable oil (I’d reduce this a bit more, maybe sub in some applesauce… it was a tiny bit too greasy, leaving grease marks on napkins)
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar (I used a mixture of light and dark)
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini (I probably used a bit more than this… I had a huge zucchini and used the whole thing!)
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Grease and flour one ten cup bundt pan or two 8 x 4 inch loaf pans.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

Mix flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl. You could sift them if you were feeling ambitious, but I never do.

Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake for 40 to 60 minutes (longer for bundt pan), or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 15-20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

It’s awesome! If you’ve never had zucchini bread before, like me and my assistant baker of the day, Mary, it’s sort of like a carrot cake. If you wanted to make it more of a dessert than a breakfast, I bet you could top it with a nice cream cheese frosting or glaze.