Kathleen: Weekend Baking

This weekend I was meant to go for a long ramble with a couple of my friends.  Sadly, our walk was cancelled (especially sad since the weather was quite good), and I felt it would be a waste of my weekend to use it watching TV and playing games.  So in addition to errands, mowing the lawn, cleaning, and so forth, I have done some baking.

This week the greengrocers had some very cheap blackberries on offer.  Cheap blackberries is not often something I come across, so of course I had to make a blackberry pie.  This is my first latticed blackberry pie in twenty years.  Obviously I have a bit of practice doing lattice ahead of me, but I'm immensely pleased with the results.

Yesterday was more normal cooking; I made a red curry and basic muffins.  The muffins are the same type that Mum used to make when we were children, nothing special but my favorite muffins to make.  This is the muffins, 36 hours after they came out of the oven.

Linden's Delicious Vengeful Desserts

Well, I was certainly not happy to hear that the entire family Conspired Against Me regarding the pizza at the beach (except for Papa, who shows his love in other ways).

So I guess it's time to bring out pictures of my delicious cakes. Of all the desserts I make, these are the most requested and most delicious.

The first has its roots in the humble American coffee cake - a confusing name in this country, since all of their cakes tend to have the dryness which distinguishes coffee cakes from other cakes and makes it good for tea time. But this one adds rhubarb, and lots of cinnamon and a hint of ginger, and makes a not too dry, not too dense, not too sweet, but very delicious cake. Topped with big crumbs of cinnamon and brown sugar and butter. Then, while the cake is in the oven, the cakey bit rises up over the crumbs, subsuming them and making a lava-field looking top, which results in what you might think of as Cake Surprise. When you fork off another bite, you don't know whether it will contain a chunk of rhubarb, a buried big crumb, or both!

The second cake is even more delicious, and much richer. It is a torte, made by whipping eggs for half of eternity until they get light and fluffy and ten times their original size, and then browning butter over the stove, for a nice round nutty flavor. Then, to top it off, there's large chunks of chocolate and pears. It is  delicious, and by the time I got my camera, two thirds of it was gone.  Not a great picture, but if you look at the sides you can see chunks of pear and chocolate hiding inside the delicious moist dense cakiness.

 

(Oh, am I making those of you on diets want some? I'm sorry, maybe you should have thought about that before you Conspired.)

And you know what else, because I'm feeling a little vindictive about the Lies, we're not going to stop with cakes. Here are my delicious raspberry-topped lemon muffins, an excellent balance between sweet and lemon, with raspberries perched on top for some extra zing.

Oh and in all of my hard work on my thesis, I almost forgot my double dark chocolate chunk muffins, which are deliciously moist and densely chocolatey, with big chunks of chocolate lurking inside, just waiting to attack you with deliciousness. Some even say they are the best chocolate muffins they have ever had, and I am tempted to agree.

There, I'm feeling a bit better now. Back to work.

Linden's Dessert Dump

I have been very quite the last month, and I will continue to be quite, for I am revising! Which is the English word for studying. But I thought I would regale you with some of my past desserts. We have:

Strawberry-rhubarb muffins

oddly-rotated earl gray tea cookies

Banana bread cobbler with pecan crumble and rum.

I have also been making delicious meals, but they are going to have to wait until all this revising calms down.

Kathleen's Waffles and Banana Nut Muffins

On Sunday morning, I whipped up my first batch of waffles in ages, complemented by Weight Watchers cream and fresh strawberries from the farmer's market on Gloucester Green. I wanted to cook waffles last weekend, but unfortunately I couldn't find strawberries anywhere. Not in town, not ordering groceries online...

Anyway, they turned out very nicely, though I can't say the same for my waffle iron, which I may have dropped down the stairs. It is in more pieces than it used to be, but it does work.

Now, my waffle iron is only small, and I had to make 10 separate batches, so that means a lot of time in the kitchen. Consequently I spent that time making a batch of banana nut muffins, the nut being walnut. They didn't come out as well as when I made them in the fall, as they are a bit too dry, but with a glass of milk they are still yummy.



Next up: corn muffins! Maybe in a couple weekends; I'm too busy this weekend. And I need to find buttermilk, which is hard. I'm looking forward to it, though, because I found real maize meal, I have always loved corn muffins, and they are much healthier than the banana nut muffins, which means I can have two muffins for breakfast, instead of just one.