October 16, 2014

Plum Cake

October 16, 2014/ Margaret Lunetta

I’m not to be trusted, clearly.

Well I’m here though, now, let’s focus on that. And with this cake no less.

So funny thing, I thought the plums would be on top, similar to another olive oil cake I’ve made. I guess this batter was a bit less structurally sound.

I peeked in about halfway through and saw they had disappeared. Oops.

I had one of those, well let’s hope for the best moments and went on with the baking.

Lucky for me, you, and the party I went to later that night, it was for the best!

And those cute little jammy surprises were as lovely as you might imagine they would be.

Eat up buttercup!

This is essentially the same cake that I used here.

Plum Cake

adapted lightly from this cake from Canelle et Vanille

Yield: 1 nine inch round cake

Ingredients:

small amount of butter for greasing/flouring pan

3 eggs

1 cup raw sugar

1 cup full fat greek yogurt

1/2 cup olive oil

Zest of 1 lemon

1 cup brown rice flour (mine was sprouted and organic), plus a bit extra to flour pan.

1/2 cup millet flour

2 tablespoons tapioca starch

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 italian plums, halved and pitted

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Line a round 9-inch cake pan with parchment paper. Then butter and flour the sides of the pan.

Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, yogurt, olive oil and lemon zest.

Once mixed, add in the brown rice flour, millet flour, tapioca starch, baking powder and salt. Whisk again to thoroughly incorporate.

Pour into the cake pan and spread it out evenly.

Gently place plum halves all over the top of the batter.

Bake cake for 30 to 40 minutes or until it’s edges have turned a lovely golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.

Let cake cool in pan and then run a knife around the edges and flip onto a plate. Remove the parchment paper from the bottom of the cake then take your serving plate or platter and flip cake again so the top is now the top once more.

I served mine with a dollop of greek yogurt on top.

September 04, 2014

Baked Peaches

September 04, 2014/ Margaret Lunetta

I've been posting desserts that just take a buncha time. Like this has to chill for like 8 years in the fridge and don't worry, straining all the seeds out of this will take no time at all. No big deal. It's worth ittttt, I say. Blah blah blah. ((Wait listen….totally worth it --- both of them))

I’m just trying to make a point for today’s post. These peaches are the easiest to throw together and you need to make them right now before peaches are gone FOREVER.

You'll soon learn I don't lack for any exaggeration or excitement.

At first I wasn’t totally sold on them, I’m gonna assume because it was like 10 in the morning and it was already sweltering hot out and eating hot fruit first thing in the AM was just not my cup of tea at that moment. It was so hot in my kitchen that my cream wouldn’t even whip. Hence the barely whipped cream in the photos, but I assure you that was not the problem. I’ve been known to just pour cream onto berries just straight from the bottle.

What?

You don’t do that? You ain’t even lived.

Anyways. The point here is. Later on, after dinner, I ate one cold from the fridge (with just straight cream drizzled on top.) And if that wasn’t the most tasty, refreshing, lovely bit of dessert.

So really, these work warm from the oven or cold from the crisper. Will last in a fridge a day or two before topping starts to get soggy, but they probably won’t be there that long, if you know what I’m sayin’.

Baked Peaches

adapted slightly from this recipe over at smitten kitchen

Ingredients:

4 ripe peaches, halved and pitted

½ cup almond flour

⅓ cup coconut palm sugar

a pinch of salt

a dash of cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter

Whipped cream for garnish, optional

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Mix almond flour, coconut palm sugar, salt, and cinnamon together in a small bowl. Incorporate butter into the mixture with hands until it’s evenly distributed.

Divide mixture equally among peaches, filling each of the peach’s centers and lightly pressing the mixture down to cover the peaches’ surface..

Bake for about an hour or until topping is golden brown and crisped, and peach is soft and tender.

Vegan or strict Paleo option -- I bet you could switch out that butter for coconut oil without issue.

Can serve warm or cold.

Serves 8

August 29, 2014

Nectarine Tart with Hazelnut Crust

August 29, 2014/ Margaret Lunetta

Down with the simple recipes I’ve been posting all week! And hear, hear to something a bit more complicated! Check out that ingredient list! Finally more than 5 items needed! Are you with me?!

Honestly this isn’t that complicated at all. But it does look fancy though, huh?

Most of the time it takes is hands off. Refrigeration and cooling time are what take this recipe up a notch, timewise. But that’s what weekends are for, amirite?

I’m sure this would also work with any fruit you have on hand. The custard is very neutral tasting so any summer fruit spread out over top would be both tasty and pretty looking. But that’s not to say the filling isn’t exciting. Just versatile.

I’m also pretty sure for the nut crust any variety of ground nut could work, but don’t hold me to that.

This could also easily become vegan if the honey in the filling is switched out for maple syrup or other sweetener and the butter in the crust is switched out for coconut oil.

Nectarine Tart with Hazelnut Crust

Ingredients:

Filling

1 can cold full fat coconut milk

¼ cup chia seeds

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon tapioca starch

Crust

2 cups ground lightly toasted hazelnuts

2 tablespoons maple syrup

dash of cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter

Topping

3 nectarines, halved, pitted, and sliced thinly.

2 to 3 tablespoons of peach preserves, warmed (or whatever you have around - it probably wouldn’t matter much. I used a strawberry-peach jam)

Directions:

In a bowl combine the coconut milk, chia seeds, zest, juice, vanilla, honey and tapioca starch. Whisk well to incorporate and then cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours and up to overnight.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl combine the ground hazelnuts, the maple syrup and the cinnamon. Using your hands get the butter well incorporated into the nut mixture.

Pour nut and butter mixture into a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the mixture into the pan to cover the bottom and sides evenly.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until sides the sides become a gorgeous golden brown. If at any point in the baking you see part of the side begin to slump down just press it back into place with the back of a spoon.

Cool crust completely.

Once your filling has properly chilled and thickened (you should be able to run your finger or a spoon through the filling and not have it fall directly back in place) you can fill the cooled crust, spreading it evenly throughout.

Lay the nectarine slices one by one next to each other, overlapping them slightly along the edge of the crust. When that layer is finished, overlap slices in the remaining space in the center of the tart but layer the slices going in the opposite direction of the outside layer.

Take your warmed preserves and using a pastry brush, lightly glaze the nectarine slices.

Cover and chill the tart for another hour before serving.

Tart will keep for about a day in the fridge before the crust starts to get a bit soggy. Still delish.

Yield: 1 ten-inch tart

August 26, 2014

Blackberry Sauce with Olive Oil Yogurt Cake

August 26, 2014/ Margaret Lunetta

I was aiming to post this before a weekend since it’s a dessert and baked things sometimes take a bit more time to produce but I wanted to get this up here before blackberries are but a distant memory of the summer.

The cake itself is super quick and easy. The sauce takes a bit more hands on time but it’s worth every second, at least I think so. Again, this is one of those summer standbys. We have huge blackberry bushes lining the entire length of my mother’s giant garden in Connecticut.

So I grew up eating this sauce all of August on top of Eggo waffles and on ice cream and on a simple yellow round cake that is similar to the cake I made here.

This cake though is gluten-free. It also utilizes yogurt, which for awhile there I was drowning in after having worked on a shoot for a certain big Greek yogurt company. Yay for perks of working on the culinary team! I made out like a damn bandit.

With the sauce I also decided to see if I could use something less refined like maple syrup instead of regular sugar and it worked like a charm. Careful using a wooden spoon with this, it will get stained a lovely shade of magenta.

I think it’s an improvement really.

Blackberry Sauce

Ingredients:

1 ½ pints blackberries

¼ cup maple syrup (you may need to add more depending on the sweetness of your berries)

squeeze of half a lemon

Directions:

Throw your blackberries, maple syrup, and lemon juice into a small saucepan on a low to medium heat. Stirring occasionally and keeping at a low simmer. It will take the berries about 40 minutes to break down and for the sauce to be the right consistency. It will seem juicier than you think it should. But wait there’s more to come.

After 40 minutes, take your cooked berries off the heat. Gather a medium bowl, a small-medium fine mesh strainer and a spoon.

Place the strainer over the bowl and pour just a bit of the sauce into the strainer. Using the back of the spoon begin to press on the remaining chunky pulp getting as much solid berry as you can through the strainer. You should be left with mainly seeds once you’ve gotten as much as you can out of the pulp. Dump the seeds and start again with another pour of cooked berries. Continue in small batches until your saucepan is empty and your bowl is now full of strained berry puree.

Use this sauce to pour over the below cake, or other cake of your choice. Or ice cream. Or waffles. Or yogurt. Or anything…….should last about 2 weeks in the fridge.

Yield: approximately 2 cups

Olive Oil Yogurt Cake

adapted lightly from this cake from Canelle et Vanille

Yield: 1 nine inch round cake

Ingredients:

small amount of butter for greasing/flouring pan

3 eggs

1 cup raw sugar

1 cup full fat Greek yogurt

1/2 cup olive oil

Zest of 1 lemon

1 cup brown rice flour (mine was sprouted and organic), plus a bit extra to flour pan.

1/2 cup millet flour

2 tablespoons tapioca starch

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Line a round 9-inch cake pan with parchment paper. Then butter and flour the sides of the pan.

Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, yogurt, olive oil and lemon zest.

Once mixed, add in the brown rice flour, millet flour, tapioca starch, baking powder and salt. Whisk again to thoroughly incorporate.

Pour into the cake pan and spread it out evenly.

Bake cake for 30 to 40 minutes or until it’s edges have turned a lovely golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.

Serve slices with blackberry sauce drizzled on top and I mean it’s not like ice cream on the side would be out of place either.

August 09, 2014

Roasted Peach Strawberry Chunk Popsicles

August 09, 2014/ Margaret Lunetta

Remember those cute bitty strawberries I told y’all about last week? The suspicious ones? Welp, I learned more about them this past farmer’s market visit. They’re called tristar strawberries and they have a much more flexible growing season. So my little suspicious strawbs, are definitely local, totally seasonal, and um, er, wut...oh the organic front? Yea….the jury’s still out. I had already bought them with my eyes before my wallet made it out of my bag and I was afraid to know the answer. So I still don’t know the answer, but the strawberries are little nuggets of summer heaven so I’m surely okay living in denial about them.

I ended up mixing some of them up into something "cool" with the other stars of summer, some sweet local peaches.