Category: Desserts

The best thing about planting a garden is all the fruits and vegetables. The worst thing is all the fruits and vegetables. Especially if you’re not really a Susie Homemaker that loves to can and freeze. Guilty. Pretty soon the horrible zucchini and tomato pandemic will begin, but right now I’m just trying to deal with some berry vines that I suspect are on steroids.

First it was the Loganberries. These little suckers are so fragile they pretty much turn to mush if you look at them cross eyed. I don’t really want to make berry jam, so my favorite use thus far has been to make a berry crumble. Pretty tasty topped with vanilla ice cream, or we actually prefer vanilla yogurt.

Following the loganberries were the early boysenberries. At least I can freeze them because they’re sturdy little berries. Being lazy as usual, I just baked some into a boysenberry galette . (It’s made just like the nectarine galette, just pile the crust full of berries instead.) I use store bought pie crust. You can judge me, but I don’t care. I’ll be sitting on my lazy butt, eating this with a smile on my face.

No telling what else I’ll have to make before I defeat these berries. And then the later ripening berries will kick in. The horror!

All that matters is how it tastes. Words to live by when you’re just a lowly home cook. I think I’m doing good if what I cook doesn’t end up as the dog’s dinner. Truth be told, I once made something so horrible the cat wouldn’t eat it.

The other night I was watching little kids making eclairs on Master Chef Junior. It dawned on me it had been a really long time since I made eclairs. The kids were coming for dinner, so I thought it would be nice to have something different for dessert.

You’re supposed to have a pastry bag to exqueez the pastry dough onto your baking sheet so they’re pretty and uniform. I couldn’t find my pastry bag. Pretty hard to keep tabs on something you use so seldom, but I think it’s possible I threw it out.

An industrious mouse chewed through our dryer vent, through the dryer hose, through an interior wall in the laundry room, and from there went on a rampage through every nook and cranny of our house. Well, maybe more than one mouse. We had no idea how they were getting in, so the pillaging went on for quite a while.

Long story even longer, at least one ended up in our kitchen cabinets. I had to clean and disinfect the cabinets, wash everything, and threw out lots of stuff. So probably that’s what happened to the pastry bag.

Anyway……I had no pastry bag, so I decided to put the dough in a plastic sandwich bag and cut off the corner. Only it turns out I had fancy sandwich bags that are pleated to make square bottoms, so no real corner. Forging ever onward, I cut a hole and squeezed out just a horrible mess. I wasn’t about to give up at this point, so I used a knife to sort of smush the pastry into something that resembled what might turn out to look like eclairs. And guess what, they didn’t look too bad, see!

Of course, not having a pastry bag, I couldn’t inject the pastry cream into the eclairs, so I just cut them in half. It’s probably better anyway, because how can you tell how much cream you’re squeezing in when you can’t see it?

I didn’t have semi-sweet chocolate, but I had some bittersweet chocolate chips, so they worked for the glaze. All things considered, they didn’t look to bad, and more importantly they tasted pretty darn good. So you don’t have to be a pastry chef, and you don’t have to have all the fancy shmancy tools of the trade to make your culinary dreams come true. Raise a glass, lower your expectations, and make some chocolate eclairs for yourself. Have two….they’re small 🙂

It was Mr. Man’s mother’s birthday, so I fixed dinner for the family and transported it 30 miles. I get ridiculed for my ginormous collection of cooking paraphernalia, but I really do use all this stuff. I have a group of three serving crock pots, a big crock pot, two small crock pots, and two teeny tiny ones. And I need them all, till death do us part.

I also have one of those portable coolers that keep food hot or cold, depending on which way you flip the switch. I imagine they’re not much good at cooling, but I have ice chests for that. I need it to keep food hot, sometimes for hours.

So I put some salisbury steak and mashed potatoes in the heater. Filled the bank of crock pots with three different veggies, and we had our own version of Meals on Wheels.

Seems fitting I let Grandma choose the cake, since it was her 89th birthday and you should get some perks for being that old. (I don’t think there are very many, just sayin’.) She picked a good old fashioned carrot cake, which luckily everyone likes. So…I pass the recipe on for posterity.

I welcome men in the kitchen. I welcome anyone who wants to cook for me because I hate to cook. If the dog could whip up breakfast for me, I’d let him go for it.

Unfortunately, around here Man + Kitchen = Disaster. Today I have no work I have to finish, so I thought I’d make some cookies. Well, Mr. Man got a bug up his nose to make cinnamon rolls last weekend, and I’ll have to say they were pretty good. Better than mine. BUT…..Bobby Flay he’s not.

He tried to mix up a giant batch of bread dough using a little hand mixer. Are you kidding me? Even the Cuisinart couldn’t handle it so he had to give up and knead the dough by hand.

And once that little hand mixer was out of sight, it was also out of mind. (We all know men simply cannot multitask.)

So today I took out the mixer to whip up some sugar cookie dough and this is what I found…

I had to pick dried up bread dough out of the holes before I could stick the beaters in. Sigh!

And it’s a good thing I’m pretty rational, or I’d swear we had a Poltergeist in the house. I’m always finding cabinet doors standing wide open. And every time I need to use something like a measuring spoon, it becomes a treasure hunt. Because even though those spoons have been kept in the same drawer for years, somehow they materialize in random drawers with no rhyme or reason. And what’s the aversion to washing a pot or pan by hand? If it won’t fit in the dishwasher, Mr. Man WON’T wash it.

OK, I feel better now…..

Back to making sugar cookies, in January, using a Christmas tree cookie cutter. Because I put all my cookie cutters away. Somewhere. In what I’m sure is a very good place. And someday I’m going to figure out just where that place is.

 

Tomorrow we’ll be the proud parents of a bouncing baby girl. Fully grown! No sleepless nights! One more chance there will be somebody to feed us when we’re old and drooling!

Angela’s been part of the family for years but tomorrow it becomes official. She’s had more than enough time to figure out what she’s getting into but she’s marrying Jace anyway, and we go along with the deal. All I can say is she’s a brave girl.

The kids didn’t want traditional wedding cake. Angela is a girl after my own heart. She’s having an ice cream bar. Jace wanted his favorite strawberry swirl cheesecake with strawberry sauce. I just finished making the last two. (Insert sigh of relief) But I say there’s no such thing as too much dessert, so I made some rum cakes too. Just in case we’re feeling a mite peckish after all that dancing.

This rum cake is no family secret. It’s the old Bacardi Rum Cake recipe that’s been around forever. And yet, I’ve never seen anyone else made it. That’s really a pity because this is the most awesome go-to holiday dessert ever. It’s really moist, so it keeps for days. You can make it a day or two ahead of your holiday party, or a month ahead and just stick it in the freezer. It freezes really well. Best of all, everybody loves it.

I always make it with Bacardi rum. It’s the least I can do to pay them back for all the years of tastiness.

This isn’t just my favorite apple pie in the whole world, it’s the only apple pie I’m allowed to make for the rest of my life. I’m always trying to improve on perfection, but my last attempt at making a better apple pie was my last, period.

Son Jace was soooo looking forward to apple pie because it’s one of his favorite desserts. Sadly, I was trying a new recipe. He took one bite and looked at me like I’d just ripped the ears off a kitten. He was horrified, disgusted, disappointed, all in one very expressive look I’ll never forget, and will never live down.

He wanted to know what was wrong with the pie. I told him I was trying a new recipe. He said, “Why would you do that”? Why indeed. Every time I serve apple pie now, the family teases me about the horrible apple pie debacle of 2013 and I have to relieve the horror all over again. Lesson learned. You just don’t mess with perfection.

This was not the first time apples got me in trouble with Jace by the way. It all started when he was still really little, less than two years old certainly because he was sitting in his high chair eating lunch. Apparently he had done something that displeased me, don’t remember what now. I remember I delivered what I thought was a very eloquent lecture designed to induce immediate attitude adjustment, which I concluded by saying in the time honored words handed down by my mother, “So, how do you like them apples?”. He just looked at me and said, “No, Mommy. It’s not THEM apples, it’s THOSE apples”. Sigh! It was then I knew I was in over my head, and I’m still trying to keep my parental head above water. Lesson #5,652: don’t mess with his apple pie.

So this is what perfection looks like. It tastes even better! Plus it’s EASY!!!

When a whole pie is just more than you want, or making a pie is just too much trouble, don’t do without, make a galette! Nothing could be faster or easier, especially if you use a ready made pie crust. (I should have stock in the Pillsbury company.)

The nectarines are getting ripe on our little tree, so Mr. Man brought some in and left them sitting on the counter. Yeah, I can take a hint. But I could not possibly put out less effort making anything than it takes to make a galette, and he’ll be a happy camper. That’s what I call a win, win.

Of course most of the time we want some nectarines, we have to resort to buying them at the store or some local fruit stand. Either way, you’re apt to be looking at fruit that was picked before it was quite ripe and put into cold storage. So I’ll pass along some advice I got from a fruit inspector. Look at the nectarine right around where the stem was attached. You’re looking for a nice warm, golden yellow color. Those will be the ones that were ripest when they were picked. OK, there are white nectarines, and I can’t help you there, but those aren’t the ones you usually see at the grocery store.

You can make a galette with nectarines, peaches, plums, apples, whatever you have on hand. I’m ashamed to admit that it’s not really a problem for two of us to polish off a whole galette of an evening. But, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it makes a nice and rather elegant dessert for four.

Summer’s here and fruit’s ripe. Now’s the perfect time for a galette!

Last night’s dinner was a success. Our guests went home porked to the gills and we didn’t have to order pizza. Merl’s brisket was fork tender. I tried suggesting some manly big time outdoor grilling become a Sunday ritual, but he’s not buying what I’m selling. It was worth a shot.

The cheesecake I made for dessert came out just like it’s supposed to, no gaping wound. So, I’ll get that recipe posted this morning before I begin another boring and stressful work day which could stretch through the entire week. I just never know.

But first, here’s a nice basic cheesecake for Danelle and whoever else needs it. Enjoy!