Food Lush

Summer Berry Dip: Balsamic Vinegar Reduction

By Dani

I shop at Costco, which means that I buy roughly 10 pounds of strawberries every time I think "hey, a strawberry sounds good!"

Maybe I should work on that. 

Anyway, I had a ton of strawberries in my fridge and so I made this tart for a party the other night, but it seemed a little boring. 

So, in a spirit of adventure, I poured a couple of cups of Balsamic Vinegar into a saucepan and started heating it up with about a half-cup of brown sugar and a tablespoon of honey, having read somewhere that it might be tasty. (If you can tell, I'm not very good at thinking through my cookery before getting after it. I just wing it and pray for luck most of the time.)

After about 20 minutes at a gentle simmer, I had a thick, sweet and sour syrup that punctuated my tart nicely and now has become my favorite dipping sauce for all my summer berries. My recipe made plenty extra, so I've been drizzling a bit over fruit salads and dipping my strawberries into it and wondering where it's been all my life. 

Try it. Easy, delicious and perfect for summer desserts. 

My after-dinner treat: strawberries and glaze in a teacup. Photo by me.

Mascarpone, Strawberry & Basil Toasts

By Tara C.

Inspired by Pinch My Salt's Strawberry Bruschetta, I made these little appetizers last weekend. The biggest change I made to her recipe was the addition of mascarpone cheese. They were tasty, summery, and very simple to make.

You need:

• Baguette bread
• Mascarpone cheese
• Strawberries, sliced
• Fresh basil, chopped
• Balsamic vinegar

First, slice a baguette 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick and toast the slices. I simply toasted them in a toaster oven, but you could also put them on a grill or toast them under a broiler for a minute or so. Next, spread each slice of toast with mascarpone cheese and top with sliced strawberries. I used an egg slicer to slice the strawberries. Finally, sprinkle chopped basil over the top and drizzle them with balsamic vinegar.

Ready to eat!

(photos from: me)

Watermelon Fake-Cake Centerpiece

By Tara C.

I got this idea from a friend who originally made it as a healthy alternative to a birthday cake. I made this for my aunt's birthday earlier this month and she loved it. However, I think it would be a great addition to any summer or outdoor party.

To make it, you need three thick watermelon slices. Cut off the rinds and trim them into three different sizes, then stack them with the largest on the bottom. Decorate your "cake" with berries or other cut fruit. Because there is no frosting to hold everything together, the watermelon layers can be slippery. Use toothpicks to secure the slices and hold any rogue berries in place. Just be sure to remove them when you're serving it.

I have to confess that the version you see pictured here is my second attempt. For the first one I tried using a personal-sized watermelon. It ended up looking a little puny and sad. So I went back to the store and bought a monster-sized melon and cut the slices much thicker. I was a lot happier with the result using a bigger watermelon. But we now have an insane amount of watermelon. I guess I'll just have to make a lot of watermelon cocktails. Things could be worse.  

Raspberry Buttercream Icing

by Jen L.

A lot of you will pass out when you read this next sentence. I am not a fan of traditional buttercream icing. I know, it's practically a sin. How could I be this southern and not like something with "butter" in the title? In my defense, if I mess with the traditional recipe a bit, I usually end up with something pretty delicious.

My family just returned from three -- count 'em, three -- weeks away visiting family. I couldn't wait to get back to my kitchen. I'd already planned to do some baking today, but my son hurried the process along. Around 9:30 a.m., he came to me and requested a vanilla cake with pink icing. Off to the kitchen I went.

I chose my traditional vanilla cake with pudding in the mix recipe and a bundt pan as my baking vessel. While that baked, my son and I got to work on the icing. Buttercream is easy. It's basically just butter and confectioner's sugar. My kitchen is a little more bare than usual, so I used one stick of unsalted and one stick of salted butter. It tasted fine in the finished product. To make this version, I used a 6-ounce container of fresh raspberries. We pureed them in the food processor, then I squished the pulp through a strainer to get rid of the seeds.  (If you know about my texture issues, you won't be surprised that seeing nothing but seeds in the strainer almost made me hurl.  Ahem.) My son tasted it halfway through the mixing process and declared, "It needs vanilla." He was so right.  Next time, I may even sneak a little almond extract in there. The result is a very creamy, slightly tart icing that is the most beautiful shade of pink.

Here's the recipe, if you'd like to give it a try!  I think it would be divine on a chocolate cake.

RASPBERRY BUTTERCREAM ICING

• 3 cups confectioner's sugar
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks at room temperature)
• 1 cup fresh (or thawed from frozen) raspberries
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

In a food processor, puree raspberries until fairly liquified.  If desired, strain to eliminate the seeds. Place butter, half the sugar, and raspberry puree into a large mixing bowl.  Mix on low speed until well-blended.  Add the other half of the sugar and the vanilla extract. Increase speed to medium.  Mix until very well-blended and slightly fluffy.  The icing will have a different consistency due to the fruit juices.  It will spread normally, though.  Frost cooled cake and devour.

It's a little melty because SOMEONE couldn't wait for it to cool all the way!

Ray Bradbury's Peach Kuchen

By Tara C.

I love to go to used bookstores and look for old and quirky cookbooks. One such find is The Great American Writers’ Cookbook, edited by Dean Faulkner Wells.

This book is a compilation of recipes provided by the authors themselves or a family member. As I scan through this cookbook, I am envisioning a book club dinner party featuring Norman Mailer’s Stuffed Mushrooms, Erma Bombeck’s Taco Salad, Hunter S. Thompson’s Open Face Cigarette Special Hot and Cold Sandwich with Artichoke Appetizer, and William F. Buckley Jr.’s Supply-Side Economics Fudge (best title, EVER, I think). But that will have to wait. Today I am interested in Ray Bradbury. As you may know, the author of The Martian Chronicles and Farenheit 451 passed away earlier this month. Why not pay homage with a favorite recipe?

His introduction is priceless: 

I wish I could think of something fabulous, but then as soon as I say that, I realize that I have a recipe that has been around our house for 25 years, and is incredible. Try this on your watering gums! Ray Bradbury's Peach Kuchen, by God! Stupendous stuff. Better than wine, popcorn, sex, cocaine, and memories of W.C. Fields!

I’m starting to think I’ve been under-selling my own recipes. And surely I can't be the only one who had to Google W.C. FieIds? I feel almost obligated to make something this steeped in hyperbole.

The result is very tasty. The custard topping topping is delicious with slightly tarte peaches. I recommend eating it warm.

Thank you, Ray Bradbury, for your enduring classics, for your ideas that provoked, challenged and entertained, and for the indelible mark you left on the literary world. I for one won’t underestimate your Peach Kuchen. My watering gums thank you, too. I think a slice would go well with a good book.

(photo from: me)

Ray Bradbury's Peach Kuchen
Recipe from: The Great American Writers' Cookbook, edited by Dean Faulkner Wells

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
½ cup butter or margarine (I used butter)
12 peach halves, fresh or canned or 2 pkg frozen slices (I used frozen slices)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 egg yolks
1 cup heavy or sour cream (I used heavy cream)

Start your oven at 400F or moderately hot and get out an 8-inch square pan. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and 2 tablespoons sugar together in a mixing bowl.

Cut in butter or margarine with two knives or a pastry blender under mixture looks like a coarse cornmeal. Pat an even layer of this crumbly pastry over bottom and halfway up the sides of baking pan. Use your hands and press firmly until it holds.

Skin fresh peaches and cut in half; drain canned; thaw and drain frozen peaches. Arrange peaches over bottom pastry neatly and sprinkle with a mixture of remaining sugar and cinnamon. Bake 15 minutes, then pour a mixture of slightly beaten egg yolks and heavy or sour cream over the top. Bake 30 minutes longer. Serve warm or cold to 6.

Toddler Favorite: Apple Chips

by Tara

I have tried several dried fruit recipes I've found on Pinterest, but none of them have worked until now (and Jess has had similar results). I've posted before about feeding my picky toddler. It's a struggle to get her to try things these days, especially fruits and veggies. So I've taken to tricking her into eating them by hiding them in foods. But these? She adores.

Apple Chips

(Photo from Vittles and Bits)

I sprinkled brown sugar on top, and that's it. They also took a bit longer than the recipe indicated to cook, about 20 minutes longer in my oven. Four days after I made them they were still crisp.

Easy, delicious, and my daughter will eat them: kid-approved is my favorite kind of recipe!

Fresh Strawberry Jams, Sweet and Savory

by Caitlin

A few years ago when I moved to Virginia, my friend Laura (Hi Laur!) got me back into a family tradition that had gotten lost somewhere on the way out of childhood: berry picking and jam making. 

Though we didn't know each other then, we each grew up in Massachusetts, spending June mornings picking berries and making jam with our moms and aunts. It's been a lot of fun carrying on the tradition in our own way, as adults, each with our childhood memories in hand. Strawberry season here comes a bit earlier, and this year with our particularly warm March meant jam making before Memorial Day. Unprecedented! 

Laur and I start the day niiiiiice and early, aiming to get to the farm (Butler's Orchard) before the crowds and before it gets too hot, then we head home to spend the afternoon jamming. Sometime in between there's lunch and a couple of beers. Beer drinking makes jam making even more fun. Fact. 

This year in a little over an hour the two of us picked four full flats; about 40 pounds. That's a lot of crouching and squatting and sore arches and berries crushed on the seat of your pants, but man is it ever worth it:

There's absolutely nothing that compares to a warm berry fresh off the plant and red all the way through. They make grocery store berries ashamed to be berries. 

I've lost count, but we made somewhere around 6 or 7 batches of jam with this. The rest of the berries were frozen or eaten out of hand. We made four different kinds of jam. 

Up first: A few batches of Classic Strawberry Jam. This is the recipe inside the powdered pectin box and it's a good one to master because once you do you can start playing around with different flavors (more on that in a minute). For my palate it tends to be too sweet (you'll note that there's more sugar than fruit in most jams) so to one batch I added about a 1/4 cup of lemon juice and, toward the end of cooking, the zest of a lemon. It balanced it nicely and kept it bright while still being plenty sweet. I'd like to play around with even more zest and juice to see what would happen.

Up next: A variation on the Classic Strawberry: Strawberry Orange Black Pepper. We used the original recipe as above and at the start of cooking added the juice of one orange, 1/4 cup lemon juice, the zest of 1.5 oranges, and 1 T black pepper.

Verdict: The flavor is really lovely.

Tweaks: I'd like it to be a bit bolder on the pepper and the orange zest. Next time I'd do zest and juice of both oranges, and add them closer to end. I'd increase the black pepper to 2.5 or 3 T, and probably grind it a bit finer too. An easy shortcut with this one though: Add more pepper when I open a new jar. 

Experimental batch number three was this recipe for Strawberry Jam with Balsamic and Thyme. I'd been wanting to make a strawberry balsamic jam for a few years and was excited to try this recipe. I used half lemon thyme and half regular thyme because I have both in my garden. I tasted it about halfway through cooking and it didn't have enough acid or balsamic taste for me so I added another 1/4 c of balsamic vinegar. 

Jam at the start of cooking. 

Verdict: Yum. Though it doesn't taste particularly balsamic-y or thyme-y, there's a nice balsamic note somewhere in the finish. Balsamic changes so much while you cook it (ie: what it looks like when you start a reduction vs. what you finish with) and I think adding it at different stages helped give it a nice round flavor profile. This jam has a beautiful rich, deep, dark color from the vinegar and I'd love for the taste to match that. 

Tweaks: I'd add another generous 1/4 cup of balsamic at the end of cooking. I'd also spend more time chopping my thyme very, very finely to try and get all the flavor out of it. I like the taste of thyme, but I loathe working with it's tiny little leaves. 

Finally, we made this Strawberry Jalapeño Jam.

I haven't tried it yet, but I have high hopes. Two years ago I made an Apricot Jalapeno Jam (aka ApriHot) that has been a big hit. Jalapeños just have such a wonderful flavor that goes so well with fruit!

Other Jam notes: 

- Laura and I have sworn off liquid pectin. Even when following the recipe for liquid pectin batches, we never seem to have any luck. Laura was able to succesfully rebatch one of her regular Strawberry jams that didn't set using this recipe for Liquid Cement. It uses liquid pectin, I know, but she said it worked and I'm planning on using it on a rebatch this weekend. 

- I enjoy savory jams on bagels, toast, English Muffins, and all the places you'd traditionally use jam. I also like it as an accompaniment on a cheese plate or served with baked brie. I know some people like spooing it over cream cheese and serving that as a spread for crackers. They're fun to play with in cooking as well, used in glazes for chicken or pork. 

Have you made jam before? Do you have a favorite jam recipe? A recommendation for using a savory-sweet jam?

All Photos by Me

Watermelon Popsicles

By Jessica

My son's favorite fruit is watermelon. He's eaten himself sick on it before, easily putting down an entire "personal" size watermelon himself. Recently I bought two and decided to commit one to making some homemade popsicles for him.

I looked around the internet for a set recipe before just deciding to wing it, I mean popsicles are essentially just flavored frozen water, right?

I used two of these adorable sets from Ikea. Since I live in a boy house, I bought blue/green but it also comes pink/yellow.

For the recipe if you could call it that, I cut and cubed a small personal watermelon which weighed about 4 lbs. I removed all the seeds and used a blender to turn it into juice. The bottom of the bowl where I collected the cut pieces of watermelon during seeding had some juice in it so I dumped that into a sauce pan and added 2 TB of sugar and brought it to a simmer to turn it into a quick simple syrup. While still hot I dropped a handful of blueberries in to soften them and warm them through. Once it all cooled a bit, I added it back in to the watermelon juice mixture and blended it in. I also added a pinch of salt to keep the whole thing from being too cloyingly sweet.

I'm not sure what if any taste benefit adding that small amount of blueberries gave but I like the look of the little flecks in the finished popsicles.

I'm sure I'll be making more through the summer!

(Photo from: my iPhone)

Strawberry Cupcake Hacking

by Elissa

So I love to bake (and eat) cupcakes. It all started in law school, when I offered to bake 12 dozen cupcakes for my roommate's wedding. We spent several months taste testing different recipes (it was hard labor), and I managed to bake and frost all 144 cupcakes the day before and morning of the wedding. Anyways, I'm always happy to volunteer to bake cupcakes and I now have several tried and true recipes that I can make practically in my sleep.

But this weekend presented a challenge. I needed to bake 3 dozen cupcakes in three different flavors, and the recipients had requested that one of the three flavors be strawberry. This was outside my wheelhouse, as I'm more of a chocolate/mocha/red velvet expert. Fortunately I was able to get some super-ripe strawberries at the farmer's market last week, so I knew I had a strong start. Then I turned to the internet to try to figure out how to make a great strawberry cupcake from scratch.

The first result when you google "fresh strawberry cupcake recipe" is this recipe from Sprinkles, the famous cupcake shop (they recently opened an outpost in DC, but I have yet to try it).

{photo credit: marthastewart.com}

While most people love the strawberry cupcakes at Sprinkles, this recipe got mixed reviews, with lots of folks saying it didn't have much strawberry flavor. The recipe calls for adding fresh strawberry puree to fairly basic cupcake and buttercream frosting recipes. While poking around on marthastewart.com, I came across a different strawberry cupcake recipe, this one from Martha herself. Martha calls for adding small chunks of strawberry to the cake batter and then for making a strawberry swiss meringue buttercream, which is quite an endeavor (I'm still in awe of A'Dell for making this cake). I was not up for that major a baking project this weekend. So I decided to go with Martha's recipe for the cake (which got a good review from Annie's Eats) and a version of the Sprinkles strawberry frosting that I altered to try and boost the strawberry flavor. Here's the result:

Definitely not as pretty as the Sprinkles cupcakes, but I think the frosting tasated amazing. I doubled the amount of strawberry puree called for and cooked it down to concentrate the strawberry flavor. I also subbed a couple of ounces of cream cheese for some of the butter (I've never met a cream cheese frosting that I didn't love). Hopefully the recipients will like them as much as I do!

Lemon Pudding Cake and Cute Ramekins - Be Still My Summer-Loving Heart

By Dani

Over the weekend, my honey and I went on a camping/kayaking adventure out in the wild. It was 80 degrees in the California desert (a welcome change from the foggy gray we've been enduring here on the coast) and it inspired me to fully embrace the hope of sunshine.

Basically, I've packed up my meatloaf and stew recipes and I'm breaking out the chicken, shrimp, fish and grilling ideas in hopes that if I eat summer-y foods, summer will arrive. It's a tenuous theory at best, but I am sticking to it. (Everyone who lives somewhere with real winter and/or genuinely hot summers can cue laughter, now. I know, I know, my wussiness knows no bounds, but I want to go to the beeeeeeach.</whine>)

As I told you last week, I'm being swarmed by lemons this spring, and nothing says sunshine and tan toes and baby birds like individual lemon desserts, amirite?

Thanks to my yet-uncured magazine obsession, I found this awesome recipe in Real Simple and it is absolute perfection. Easy enough for a weeknight, cute enough for entertaining.

Plus it gave me an excuse to buy these adorable (and affordable! bonus!) ramekins from Target:

Two in turquoise, two in yellow.

Mmmmmm... looks (and tastes) like summer already.