Our Share of the Harvest

To make the holiday easier on my aging grandmother, we do potluck for Easter with my family these days (not sure why we don’t ease the tasks for my aging grandfather who still paces across his farm to hide approximately 150 dollar-filled plastic eggs–I guess cooking is more fun than finding 150 hiding spots).  And my experience is that recurring potlucks eventually lend themselves to assignments.  It’s no longer “What would you like to bring?”, it’s “So you’re bringing the deviled eggs again, right?

The eggs are my mom’s assignment (because hers are 100% the best and I think everyone else hates hard-boiling, peeling, de-yolking and filling a bunch of eggs).  My assignment has become dessert for which I am psyched.  In the land of potluck, the dessert assignment is coveted by two completely divergent types of people: the super creative and the super lazy.  The super creative folks are the ones who scour Pinterest for cakes with ingenious piping techniques, mini masterpieces in royal icing on sugar cookies and brownies with more layers than you can see with the naked eye.  The super lazy folks are the ones who pick up a tub of two-bite brownies at Food Lion and consider their contribution made.

I’ll give you one guess as to which side I land.

Easter two years ago, I made a stunning strawberry cream tort.  Tender cookie crust filled with homemade vanilla pastry cream, topped with fresh sliced strawberries.  My aunt whipped it out of the refrigerator and the whole thing ended up on the floor.

Last year, I made a lemon cheesecake–and learned to tape the tart pan bottom solidly to the cake plate–and this dessert could not have been more heavenly.  It somehow manages to be both decadent and refreshing at the same time.  The flavor is light and so Spring-appropriate yet you can’t forget the cheesecake-iness because it is so dense and thickly satiny.

This year, I’m thinking coconut cupcakes.  Or maybe a Caramel Cake in homage to my grandmother.  Or maybe I’ll just save myself some time and pick up some two-bite brownies.

Ha, not a chance.

Tags: cheesecake, dessert, Easter, lemon, Spring

I know, I know.  I get behind on blogging and all of a sudden weeks have gone by without a post.

But, I made these muffins and they WILLED me to put off doing the baby’s laundry, washing bottles, reading papers for work or whatever else it is that occupies most of my (sadly scant) free time and get back here to tell you about them.

I may never buy a bakery muffin ever again.  EVER.  The combination of buying myself a jumbo muffin pan and finding this recipe in my Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook has blessed me with the ability to make muffins that are not only giant, not only easy, not only fully customizable but are tasty enough to blow any bakery muffin out of the water.  Seriously, once you figure out how much batter to put in your muffin tin to get the right height on these babies you can put them in a pretty box and SELL THEM.  Or, at least, you can shock everyone at brunch with your amazing at-home baking prowess.

The crumb is dense and moist–kind of cake like but more dense and the flavor is not so sweet.  The tops on these muffins get so peaked and pretty, with or without a sugared or streusel-type topping.

And the phrase “with or without” can come up a lot when you’re following this recipe.  With or without blueberries?  Fine.  With or without lemon zest?  Ok.  With or without nuts?  Either will do.  How about chocolate chip?  We can make it with or without.  How about almond extract?  Yup, same there.  All you need is the base recipe provided below and you can mix in nearly whatever your little heart desires.  Mine desired to use up a Ziplock full of June-picked blueberries tucked into the deep freeze so that’s what I used but feel free to customize.

Your friends will think you spend your free time perusing trendy muffin shops instead of washing 25 drooled-covered onesies while this deliciousness is in the oven.

Tags: baking, blueberries, breakfast, brunch, muffins

My friend Wawa has a DIY spirit in the kitchen that I just don’t have.  Whereas I need a recipe 90% of the time to follow or at least give me inspiration, she’s one of those cooks who surveys the fridge and pantry and just comes up with something to eat.  She did just that when she put together this amazing salad as a contribution to a potluck baby shower.  I’m eating this stuff thinking My God, this is good!  This is way more delicious than most salads that typically show up at potlucks.  I gotta ask Wawa for the…

Crap.  There’s a 50% chance Wawa isn’t going to have a recipe because she’ll have just cobbled together ingredients to make this heavenly concoction.

Sure enough, the recipe Wawa sent me was her volumetric approximation of the “little of this, some of that” method that led to this wonderful salad.  But it worked.  This salad is delightfully tangy and acidic with tons of flavor coming from each of the components plus a substantive dose of filling carbs/protein from the quinoa.  Substantive enough that this recipe can do double duty–as a side salad, like I enjoyed at the baby shower, or as a healthy lunch, which is my favorite role for it.  I’ll make a big batch of it and have lunch all week long.  It keeps well in the fridge and, unlike some healthy salads, is hearty enough to keep you from crashing around 3 pm.

On of the unexpected benefits of Wawa’s method of throwing in whatever sounds good is that this recipe is perfectly pliant to your own tastes.  For example, her original recipe had a pretty heavy dose olives which kinda turns my stomach so I left them out without compromising the rest of the dish.  You can add them back in if you’re a fan.  Greg doesn’t like sundried tomatoes so I leave them out of his portion and we like the bite of pepperoncini so we toss in a few extra.  Feel free to adapt the ingredients and the amounts to suit your tastes.

If I keep winging it like this, I may end up with a little of this, some of that method of my own.  Not good for a recipe blog but good for my lunches, if my versions turn out as well this.

Tags: healthy, lunch, quinoa, salad, side dishes, spinach, vegetarian

Since Greg and I got married, my mother has been hosting breakfast on Christmas morning as a way to accommodate our ridiculous holiday schedule that ensures we make appearances at several different houses, eat several different meals and wish a Merry Christmas to nearly every relative either of us has ever had.  Some people complain about hectic holidays but we love it, even this year with a 2 month old to tote around.  My mom goes all out for breakfast, always including her egg casserole with bacon, sausage or peppers, and adding whatever else she feels like in a given year.

This year, I was asking Greg what I should contribute to the Christmas morning table.  Baked french toast?  Cinnamon rolls or sticky buns?  Cheese danish?  Then I brought up biscuits and gravy but quickly shot that down because I wanted something that was easy to make a head of time.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Slow down there,” he said.  You sure you can’t make biscuits and gravy?”

“No,” I replied.  “The gravy might get gummy once I reheat it and the biscuits won’t be so flaky.”

“But you could make biscuits one weekend just for us, right?”

Clearly I had hit on something with that suggestion.

So, I ended up making eggnog french toast and cinnamon bun bites for Christmas and back burner-ed the biscuits and gravy until recently.  I have to say, as good as the french toast and bites were, the savory sausage gravy and flaky biscuits I made were just glorious.  The gravy is spicy and silky and has that meaty, savory heft to it that you want out of such a breakfast.  The biscuits are kind of like scones–buttery with a flaky-tender mix that sops up some of that gravy deliciousness without turning into a soggy mess.

And, as it turns out, the gravy reheats really well if you add a little more water the next day and the biscuits do pretty when re-warmed in a toaster oven.  Maybe we have our answer to what to bring for breakfast next Christmas.

Tags: baking, breakfast, brunch, sausage

I set out to make healthy muffins, really, I did.  I thought I was going to make some sort of power muffin with flax and applesauce and wheat germ and other stuff they sell in the health food aisle at the grocery store–you know, the aisle that is usually brown and green with pictures of wheat and sunshine.  The one at Giant also has hardwood floors instead of the institutional floor tiles that the disgustingly normal rest of the store has.  Being healthy and natural is too beautiful for tiles, only hardwoods for the crunchy customers!

Or maybe the jacked up prices on all the healthy stuff paid for just enough flooring for its own section.  I don’t know.

The point is, I wanted to utilize that aisle to its fullest and yet, when it came down to it, I used the brown banana and chocolate chips I already had in the house to make a delicious if not overly healthy batch of muffins.  The result was a chewy but not too dense muffin with a lot of flavor and the little bits of chocolate made them satisfying enough to a sweet tooth like mine that I could eat them as a sweet snack instead of as the power breakfast I had envisioned.  All in all, I’d say a sweet yet homemade muffin with banana and a touch of whole wheat flour lands us somewhere between the healthy aisle and the cookies-crackers-crap aisle–I guess it’s appropriate we have laminate floors?

Tags: baking, bananas, chocolate, muffins, snack