Blueberry Dutch Baby

 

Most of these ingredients I keep on hand except for the blueberries and lemon zest.  The blueberries are usually sold in a quantity that ends up being two cups so I need to buy two lemons.

INGREDIENTS

• 4 tablespoons butter, divided
• 1/2 cup  whole or 2% milk
• 1/2 cup  all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• the zest of one lemon

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• 1 cup blueberries
• Confectioners sugar for dusting

Maple Syrup

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INSTRUCTIONS

1. Place an oven rack in the middle position and preheat the oven to 450°F. Place a 9- or 10-inch cast iron skillet over low heat on your stovetop. Keep it over low heat while you prepare the batter. 
2. Melt two tablespoons of the butter in the cast iron skillet, then transfer to a blender. Add the milk, flour, eggs, granulated sugar, vanilla, salt, and lemon zest, and blend until smooth. (Do not skip this step — the batter will be lumpy if you do.)
3. Place the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter into the cast iron skillet. Turn the heat up to medium-high. Let the butter melt, add the blueberries, and give the skillet a shake. Immediately pour the batter over the blueberries and transfer the skillet to the oven. Bake until the pancake is puffed and golden, about 15 minutes.
4. You might be tempted to open the oven to check on things-especially if your oven glass door is dirty like mine and you can't see.  Resist this temptation and trust your oven temperature.  It will be ready in 15 minutes; no sooner and no later.  If you open the door you run the risk that it will fall and maybe you have invited guests that you want to see the dramatic tall dish that will then fall right before them and not in the depths of your oven.  
5. Remove pan from the oven, and dust with confectioners sugar, if you wish. Cut and serve immediately with maple syrup. Yes, it will fall.  You have not failed.  And if you can't serve it immediately, that's OK, too.  Hot blueberries can be overwhelming. But nobody is going to want to wait.  This is tasty. 

Donut Souffle

 3 large glazed donuts....from that morning or the day before

1 cup of milk

3 eggs

2 TBSP sugar

1 TBSP vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

grated nutmeg

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slice the donuts into discs and lay flat in a dish

blend rest of ingredients well and pour over donuts

get the donuts submerged into the liquid until it starts soaking up the liquid and cover it with plastic wrap.  Put into the refrigerator and let set for a while until it soaks up all the liquid.  It might be ready in a couple of hours.

Heat the oven to 375 and cook for about 30 minutes until it is puffy and set--not jiggly.

You might make a carmel sauce for it.  

French tost casserole

French toast casserole with fruit

• 1 small loaf day-old French bread ( or about 1/2 of a large loaf)
• 5 eggs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups whole milk
• 1/4 cup flour
• 6 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 cup blueberries
• 1 cup strawberry, sliced

Directions

1.    Lightly grease 9x13 pan.

2.    Cut the bread in 3/4-inch slices.

3.    Layer in the pan, fitting snugly. In a bowl, lightly beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla.

4.    Stir in the milk.

5.    Pour over bread; turn bread slices over.

6.    Cover and refrigerate overnight.

7.    In the morning, pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

8.    In a bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon.

9.    Cut the butter in bits, add to the mix and rub together to make a crumb topping.

10. Remove the pan from the fridge, carefully turn the bread pieces over and scatter mixed berries evenly over the bread.

11. Sprinkle with crumb topping.

12. Bake at 375 degrees for 35-40 minutes, until puffy and golden.

Blueberry Scones

I got this recipe from Shirley Miller. She made them for Linda and me when we visited her for a weekend of crafts, music and reading. She called them biscuits but I've started thinking of them as scones.

Set your oven to 425 degrees.

get your baking pan ready:  Line the pan with aluminum foil.  Spray with Pam and sprinkle with about 2 tablespoons of cornmeal

**the sprinkling part is important because these biscuits have the most awesome bottom crust

Assemble dry ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

take them for a spin in a Cuisinart
add:
6 Tablespoons cold butter

pulse a few times until the flour has those pea-sized pieces of butter.  You can put the bowl in the fridge while you do the second part:


3/4 cup cold buttermilk**
zest one orange
1 large egg

**Don't let the lack of buttermilk intimidate you.  Just add either a Tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to the 3/4 cup of milk and you'll be fine.  A lot of the TV chef's say they use this substitute more than real buttermilk.  Also I keep a bottle of Cointreau in the cupboard and use a teaspoon of it when I don't have an orange to zest.  As far as I can tell Cointreau never goes out of date.  They probably found Cointreau in the pyramids.

Add the orange zest and egg into the measuring cup with the buttermilk.  beat the eggs until they're smooth.

Transfer the dry ingredients to a bowl with a rounded bottom.  This makes it easier to mix evenly.

measure 1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries and set aside.  Do not thaw blueberries if frozen

Get the dry ingredients out of the fridge.  pour the wet into the dry and stir with a fork until it all comes together. It should be uniformly lumpy.  Shirley calls for a "shaggy" mixture.  Turn out onto the countertop, sprinkling flour on the dough to make it easier to shape. Add the blueberries until they're incorporated.

Gently form the dough into about 12 balls, then biscuits, squares or triangles, with your hands. If you cut into the dough you will cut the blueberries and end up with blueberry juice running onto the pan making tiny messes. This one tiny step can avoid that mess.  Also lining the pan with aluminum foil helps.  Bake about 10-18 minutes until they're done. Check the oven after 10 minutes.

icing:
1 teaspoon almond or vanilla, extract
1 teaspoon milk
powdered sugar.....maybe 1/2 a cup

Make a small slurry of 1 teaspoon almond extract, 1 teaspoon milk then add powdered sugar until you get it the consistency you want it.  You can either pipe it onto the scones or spread with a knife. 

To pipe it - put the mixture in a small ziplock bag and cut a small hole in the corner of the bag.

Invite two friends to spend the weekend and enjoy this with them.

Sticky Buns

It's the morning after Thanksgiving and everybody is Turkey Comatose and you've cooked everything with any kind of Wow factor.  Try this.  It's Ina Garten's recipe.  Her stuff always works.

Of course, you don't have a package of puff pastry in your freezer.  You were looking for an excuse to go to Walmart on the day after Thanksgiving, weren't you? I'm sure there will be no one in the grocery department.

Whenever you make this, it is a surefire winner.  I've never known it to fail or fail to please.  Ina uses raisins in her recipe but I don't like raisins so I don't have them here.  If you want, use them in place or in addition to the pecans.

Notice the ingredients are two parts:  one step is putting stuff in the muffins tins and also putting filling on the pastry. This is a real sugar overload.


Ingredients
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature.
1/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 cup pecans, chopped in very large pieces

1 package (17.3-ounces/ 2-sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted

For the filling:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup raisins …. Or not.....or chopped pecans!!!  :)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place a 12-cup standard muffin tin on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the 12 tablespoons butter and 1/3 cup brown sugar. Place 1 rounded tablespoon of the mixture in each of the 12 muffin cups. Distribute the pecans evenly among the 12 muffin cups on top of the butter and sugar mixture.

Lightly flour a wooden board or stone surface. Unfold 1 sheet of puff pastry with the folds going left to right. Brush the whole sheet with the melted butter. Leaving a 1-inch border on the puff pastry, sprinkle each sheet with 1/3 cup of the brown sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the cinnamon, and 1/2 cup of the raisins. Starting with the end nearest you, roll the pastry up snugly like a jelly roll around the filling, finishing the roll with the seam side down. Trim the ends of the roll about 1/2-inch and discard. Slice the roll in 6 equal pieces, each about 1 1/2 inches wide. Place each piece, spiral side up, in 6 of the muffin cups. Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry to make 12 sticky buns.

Bake for 30 minutes, until the sticky buns are golden to dark brown on top and firm to the touch. Be careful - they're hot! Allow to cool for 5 minutes only, invert the buns onto the parchment paper (ease the filling and pecans out onto the buns with a spoon) and cool completely.

Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/easy-sticky-buns-recipe/index.html?oc=linkback

Coffee Cake

I've been channeling Ina Garten the last two weeks in search of the perfect coffee cake. We used to always have a store-bought one on Christmas morning.  But, to my horror, I couldn't find one in the freezer case this year.  When I went to the recipe sources it was slim pickings.  I wanted one with no exotic ingredients like sour cream.

The first one I tried was nasty.  I suspected the Crisco I used was too old.  So I tried it with fresh Crisco and still didn't like it.  The next one--sans Crisco-- was too dry.  This morning, I added apples and half a banana for extra moisture and a second egg to give it more body.  And I love it!

Three coffee cakes later I think I have a recipe that I'm happy with.

ingredients:

2 cups of Bisquick
2/3 milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
cinnamon
1 teaspoon orange zest
vanilla (you know how I am about vanilla)
1/2 apple chopped fine
1/2 bananna chopped fine
1/2 cup blueberries (OK, so maybe this is an exotic ingregient but I swear I had some in the freezer.  It's not imperative you put blueberries in. And if you don't have a banana or an apple in the house, then shame on you for not eating healthy like I do.)

mix everything well except for the blueberries. Pour it all into a greased pan (I use a round spring-form)
Once everything is in--and only then--carefully sprinkle the blueberries on top

Then add the strusel topping:

1/3 cup Bisquick
1/3 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
cinnamon
mix this in the Cuisinart until the butter is pea-size
then add in 1/3 cup granola cereal (or not if you don't have it)
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Bake at 350-375 for about 25 minutes.