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It’s been at least a decade since I made this cake. I got the original recipe from The Kitchn, and that old printed copy on has been folded up and used as a bookmark in my cookbooks for these past 10 years.
Continue readingIt’s been at least a decade since I made this cake. I got the original recipe from The Kitchn, and that old printed copy on has been folded up and used as a bookmark in my cookbooks for these past 10 years.
Continue readingOn a whim, I made a loaf of this bread when we were home between big summer trips. Then I made it three more times that week! Each time it was gobbled up within 24 hours, and by my last bake, I had the recipe memorized. It’s that easy and great for snacking.
Continue readingWe know that there’s an “official” Donut Day, no, wait, there are actually TWO donut days! But when we were growing up, Fat Tuesday was celebrated with donuts and called Donut Day. We like to keep that tradition going. Sometimes we make fried or baked donuts, but this year, we’re celebrating with a donut cake.
Continue readingForget pumpkin spice season, in our house fall is apple crisp season!
Continue readingWith the long weekend coming up, this simple cake makes a delicious breakfast that’s perfect for sharing (and snacking!). Yes, the cake’s combination of basic ingredients + easy prep makes this the perfect cinnamon snacking cake.
With a list of pantry staples for its ingredients, it’s likely that you’ll have everything that you need to bake this on a whim. It’s definitely the sort of simplicity that I really appreciate when want to bake something first thing in the morning… and then snacking on it all weekend.
This recipe comes from the Sweetest Menu site. I often find myself making minor adjustments to recipes. Reducing sugar content is my m.o., but in this case I didn’t have to make a single change. The recipe was perfect as is! So perfect
Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease and flour an 8-inch round cake pan Instead of flouring, you could grease and line with parchment paper.
Cream together the butter, sugar, and vanilla until well blended and light (about 1-2 minutes). Add the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping down the sides between each addition.
Sift the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon. Add half of the flour mixture and half of the milk to the batter, mixing in on a low speed. Add the remaining flour and milk and mix until the batter is smooth, but being careful not to unnecessarily over-mix.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes. Until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. While baking, mix together the remaining 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1 Tbsp sugar.
When the cake comes out of the over, brush with the melted butter and then sprinkle with the cinnamon-sugar mixture.
If you haven’t introduced your kids to eating dandelions yet, this cake is a great place to start! And if YOU haven’t eaten dandelions yet, well then this will be a truly beautiful treat for everyone.
Start by sending the kids out to pick a bowl full of open dandelion flowers.
I have the perfect Halloween cake for you. Continue reading
This post was originally published in June of 2016. Follow our simple quiche formula, and it will make your mid-week dinners a piece of cake quiche.
If you follow us on Instagram, then you may have noticed that I’ve been having fun with a #quicheoftheweek hashtag. I don’t make and post a quiche *every* week, but that’s the goal, and I find that my quiche-making really ramps up in the spring and summer time. So, since today’s the first day of summer, I thought it was the perfect time to share my basic quiche formula. Continue reading
A few weeks ago, we woke up to our first snow of the season. If that wasn’t special enough, I thought that it was worth fully celebrating the day, and any celebration worth its salt requires a cake. That was the humble beginning of our “First Snow Cake”.
The base of our cake is a delicious ginger cake and it’s topped with a healthy layer of powered sugar snow. It’s a simple cake that’s easy to bake on a whim and should definitely be incorporated into your next snow day. The recipe and more thoughts on celebrating the everyday below. *I’m thinking that next year the cake has to be baked in this pan.
This was such a packed month of cooking that I broke the post up into two parts. This is part two and covers the desserts, canned goods, and fermented projects for the month. If you are interested in what came in our share this month and the main-course dishes we made, check out this post.
Picking up where we lift off in the last post, here are the sweet and unique ways that I used the fruits and vegetables in our farm share.
If you want to eat dessert for breakfast, you’ve come to the right place. I’m nothing but an enabler on this front, BUT only if the dessert is fruit-based. No, wait, I also eat cake with my coffee.
This was a good month for feeding my dessert-for-breakfast habit. With weekly peach deliveries, and a few weeks with plums, there was plenty of fruit for the baking.
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Stone fruit tea cake (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : peaches and plums
We made this cake twice during the month, the first time with just peaches, the second time with peaches and plums. Even though it’s called a cake, Calder and I both thought that it was the best cobbler we’ve ever tasted. It’s delicious straight from the oven with vanilla ice cream.
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Peach crisp (a simplification of the apple crisp recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookbook) : peaches
I have to confess that I made this for our camping trip with the full intention to only eat it for breakfast. I packed a few small cups of Greek yogurt, and the combination was perfect.
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NYTimes {famous} Plum Torte : plums, eggs
I came across this recipe after reading the NYTimes article about it being the paper’s most requested recipe.
I don’t know why my plums sunk. Is it the altitude? No matter, the torte was still amazingly delicious. I think the boys and I ate half of it for our afternoon snack before Calder even got home from work! We have a few plums left, and I’m thinking of making this one more time for the season.
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I have to admit that for all of my interest in learning new things and experimenting, I’ve shied away from home fermentation projects. I always thought of it as such a risky venture with the chance for contamination, but after being gifted a few fermentation-related tools (this mason jar fermenting set and a couple of ceramic fermenting weights), I thought it was time to give it a try.
I’m working on both a jar of giardiniera and another of sauerkraut. Neither batch is done yet, but this is the week I get to test both, and when they’re done, whether good or bad, I’m excited to do a follow-up post to share my results along with a deeper discussion about why fermented foods are good for your gut.
*This isn’t my first foray into fermenting. It all started with kombucha! This is just my first time throwing vegetables into the mix.
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Giardiniera : basil, onion, carrots, broccoli, green bell pepper
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Sauerkraut (from Preserving by the Pint) : cabbage
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I’m hoping to do some more canning this fall, but keeping my expectations in check, I’m focusing on small-batch canning. A couple of great resources that I heavily rely on for small-scale canning are the books Food in Jars and Preserving by the Pint. Both are written by Marissa McClellan, who writes a canning-focused blog called Food in Jars (another great resource for canning recipes, tips, and tricks).
If you’re nervous about canning, then doing a small batch is a great way to start. You can do it with the pots already in your kitchen, so you aren’t investing in new equipment. You can also do it with a smaller quantity of produce, so the prep-time is less, as is the clean-up, and it’s not a big loss if the batch fails (it won’t).
This month, I focused my canning efforts on that big box of peaches we received, making both a peach salsa and a peach bbq sauce.
Peach BBQ Sauce (from Preserving by the Pint) : peaches, onion
The BBQ sauce recipe makes about two half-pint jars. We’ve been using it on grilled skinless and boneless chicken thighs this month, and it’s so good that I ended up making three batches of the sauce so that I’d have enough to pass around to my family!
Peach Salsa (from Food in Jars) : peaches, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno
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Needless to say it was an exciting month in the kitchen. We tried so many new-to-us dishes, and all were delicious! I can’t wait to see what the month ahead brings, and I’m really excited to push myself to try even more canning and fermentation recipes.