The Prodigal Blogger

Blueberry hand pies

Well, it happened. I finally got fat enough from all of the creaming, whipping, and consuming of butter that it took me just about a month to muster the strength to lift one fifty-pound finger to type a few words for this blog. Each word I type costs me eight grams in sugary sweat. Between blueberry hand pies, butterscotch pudding, spicy brownies, and a final adieu to hamburgers (though it was not long ago that we said "hello!" again), your humble and rotund author has finally grown a set of twinkie-esque fingers that have made it hard to blog. Seriously. Okay really, I am terminally lazy, but this blog is important to me, so I wanted to post a set of teaser photos to entice you back to the diabetic side. Recipes will eventually follow. Thanks for, um, stick-y-ing around, hah hah.

Honey-caramel peach pie

Brioche hamburger (veggie burger too!) buns

Almond cake with raspberry filling and bittersweet chocolate frosting

Sweet cherry pie with all-butter crusts, a.k.a. Pony Pie

Peach Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting

Even the dollops of frosting are sweating!

In case you’re sitting in an air-conditioned office with no windows right now (guilty), I just want you to know: It’s still decidedly summer. Hyper-summer even. So summer that I am a constant mess of mosquito bites and sticky curls, and my primary activity—when I can muster the strength to remove my face from in front of the air conditioner—is drinking cold beer. (Wait, I mean exercising, Mom! No seriously, exercising!)

But despite this omnipresent boggy misery, there was no stopping the summer-spirited recipe for peach cupcakes posted on SmittenKitchen last week. If stone fruit cupcakes are what we can expect as a product of the summer season, well than I’d say that the asphalt-melting, crazy-making heat is a reasonable sacrifice.

We ran out of cupcake liners, but my ever-resourceful and ingenious friend Vanessa fashioned these parchment paper liners. They make the cupcakes look simultaneously coy and rustic, yes?

Peach Cupcakes
Adapted from SmittenKitchen from which the frosting scheme was also shamelessly copied. Makes about 24.

3 cups cake flour (I used all-purpose unbleached)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Generous pinch of nutmeg
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup dark or light brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups buttermilk* (or sour cream or full-fat yogurt )
3 large peaches, cored and chopped small (I went for a 1/3-inch dice)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg and set aside. Cream the butter and sugars together, beating until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl between each addition, and then add the vanilla. Gently mix in the buttermilk. Stir in the dry ingredients and fold in the peach chunks.

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cupcake liners. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of cupcakes comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes for five minutes in the tins, then turn them out onto wire racks to cool completely.

*Remember, if you’re out of buttermilk or don’t want to buy any, you can substitute a mixture of milk and white distilled vinegar. In this case, add 1 ½ tablespoons vinegar to 1 ½ cups milk, set aside to let curdle for ten minutes, then you’re good to go!

Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a small bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, cornstarch and powdered sugar. In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add the sugar-cornstarch mixture and vanilla, beat until frosting is smooth and light. Chill the bowl in the refrigerator until it thickens back up a bit, about 30 minutes, then spread or dollop on cooled cupcakes.

Gingersnap Mascarpone Nectarine Tartlets

As opposed to the sexy close-up, how about a demure far-away shot?

My first bag of the season of farmers market nectarines went bad after suffering for only a moment in this relentless city heat. I arrived home Sunday morning to find my tartlet plans thwarted by enormous angry flies and weepy, mangled fruit. My experience with DC produce has generally been depressing or gross, but in the still heat of a deadly weekend full of nectarine and peach casualties, I committed to transcending my own produce expectations so that I could finally and convincingly claim to friends in California that, “Christ no, I don’t miss the produce at all! Gosh, not even kind of!”

Lo and behold! As if the city knew I was about to shrug off my tenuous food allegiance, it bestowed five excellent, if bruised, nectarines upon me, and I made one of my favorite fruity baked goods to date. I might occasionally miss the ease of a California fruit excursion, but damned if I don’t love coaxing this fickle produce mistress that is the east coast into giving me a good piece of fruit every now and then.

Gingersnap Mascarpone Nectarine Tartlets

As Deb from SmittenKitchen suggests, this would be excellent with strawberries, or any kind of stone fruit, or a chocolate-wafer crust. I think you could add maple sugar to the filling and use blueberries with a graham cracker crust too and come up with something pretty awesome. I also recently saw peanut butter wafers at Whole Foods. I'm just sayin'....

Crust
43 gingersnap cookies, coarsely broken (about 3 1/2 cups of pieces—I used gingersnaps that were about the size of ‘Nilla Wafers)
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Filling
1 8-ounce container mascarpone cheese
6 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon finely chopped crystallized ginger (optional)

Topping
4 to 5 small nectarines, halved, pitted, cut into thin slices
1/4 cup peach jam, warmed
Finely chopped crystallized ginger, or mint leaves for optional garnish (I passed on this)

For crust: Preheat oven to 350°F. Finely grind gingersnaps in food processor. Add melted butter and pulse on and off until crumbs are evenly moistened. Press mixture over bottom and up sides of six 4-inch-diameter tartlet pans with removable bottoms. Bake crust until color darkens, pressing sides with back of spoon if beginning to slide, about eight minutes. Cool completely (I did not cool mine completely by any means, and it was fine).

For filling: Beat first six ingredients in medium bowl until smooth. Beat in crystallized ginger if you’re using it. Spread filling in prepared crust. Cover loosely and refrigerate at least two hours and up to one day.

For topping: Overlap nectarine slices atop filling. Brush with jam. Sprinkle with garnish if you’re using it. Serve, or refrigerate up to six hours.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Sacrificial offering to summer in exchange for decent produce. Thanks DC!

Pie is my jam. Humidity is not. And though no humidity could stop me from making a pie with berries this good—though it could very damn near well ruin my crusts—humidity makes me just lazy enough to lose my desire to click away on a hot computer pretending like I need to cajole anyone into making a pie that is this flaky and awesome.

Baby berries! I almost just want to be friends with them and not eat them.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Mixed and matched from Gourmet, New Best Recipe, and SmittenKitchen

Crust
Makes two shells for a 9 inch pie tin

3 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup chilled solid vegetable shortening, cut into pieces
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
8 to 10 tablespoons ice water (I used 9)

Filling
You want about seven cups of fruit. The recipes I consulted split it half and half, but I used four cups strawberries and three cups rhubarb. If you use more strawberries, and they are good ones, feel free to dial the sugar back too.

3 cups 1/2-inch-thick slices trimmed rhubarb (about 1 1/2 pounds untrimmed)
2 2-quart baskets of strawberries, hulled, halved (about 4 cups)
1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar (filled modestly—I left a little off the top)
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon raw sugar for sprinklin’

1 large egg whisked with a little water for glazing the crust

1. Make crust: Combine flour, sugar and salt in processor. Using on/off turns, cut in shortening and butter until coarse meal forms. Blend in enough ice water 2 tablespoons at a time to form moist clumps. Gather dough into ball; cut in half. Flatten each half into disk. Wrap separately in plastic; refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.

2. Make filling: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine first 7 ingredients in large bowl. Toss very gently to blend.

3. Assemble Pie: Roll out 1 dough disk on floured work surface to 13-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter pie tin (I used metal, you could use glass). Trim excess dough, leaving 3/4-inch overhang.

4. Roll out second dough disk on lightly floured surface to 13-inch round. Cut into 10 1/2-inch-wide strips. Spoon filling into crust. Arrange 5 dough strips atop filling, spacing evenly. Form lattice by placing remaining dough strips in opposite direction atop filling. Trim ends of dough strips even with overhang of bottom crust. Fold strip ends and overhang under, pressing to seal. Crimp edges with a fork or with your fingers. Brush glaze over crust and sprinkle sugar on top to decorate.

5. Transfer pie to baking sheet lined with foil. Bake 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Bake pie until crust is golden and filling thickens, about another 35 to 45 minutes. Transfer pie to rack and cool completely.

Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing and Deformity

When life hands you a sticky-ass and stubborn dough, then go to town with a sticky-ass icing and your new pastry bag. This has been the second week in a row that some sort of anarchical breeze in the air has totally upended my recipe plans, but despite their challenged appearance, these cookies are super good. The challengedness may even add to their charm. This was supposed to be a fleet of elephant- and anchor-shaped cookies that was about one-half less Fail, but the dough was a huge pain in the culo to work with, hence the easy-peasy circles.

A bag of icing and the temptation to get perverted on a blank cookie canvas can be a little pressing for those of us with a sixth-grade maturity level, but (advice) I found that images did not come out as well as designs. The splatted arachnid is maybe my favorite example of a perverted drawing gone wrong (hint: the sticky-ass icing matched my totally ass mood at the time). And if you happen to be a cake decorator or have any sort of icing prowess, shoot me an email and let’s talk about bartering baked goods for decorating skills, yes?

Legend: dots, sweet tooth, HUD logo, dotted elephant, effed up tic-tac-toe board, a splatted arachnid, fetus-elephant, more dots, phallic stripe, dots, and more dots, a bicycle!, deformed scissors/four tennis rackets

Oh hey man, your bike has some sweet geometry.

Classic Sugar Cookies
Adapted from Baked! New Frontiers in Baking

1 ¾ cup all-purpose four
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking power
¾ cups (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 Tablespoons cold vegetable shortening (Spectrum brand makes non-hydrogenated)
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. In a medium bowl whisk the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat the butter, shortening, and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Add the egg and vanilla and beat until just combined. Add the flour mixture, an mix gently until incorporated. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. (No joke, don’t skimp on this. This dough is a bastard to work with—the firmer the better.)

2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F, and line two baking sheets with parchment. Dust work surface with flour (I found that I had to lay that flour on thick), unwrap dough and plunk it down. Roll out to ¼ inch thick. Dip your cookie cutter in flour, and use it to cut shapes out. Save the excess dough (from the outlines of the shapes), refrigerate again for about 20 minutes, roll out and go for it again. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes until they are set, but not browned (mine were fine brown). Let sit for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.

Royal Icing

2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
2 large egg whites
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice until the mixture is completely mooth. It should be the texture of glaze, so add more sugar if it’s too thin, or more lemon juice if it’s too thick. I found that I had to add a lot more sugar. If you want to dye some of the frosting for accents, just divide it into the corresponding number of bowls and dye away.

2. A great way to decorate these is to use a small tip on your pastry bag, though as you can see, having a small tip doesn’t automatically give you artistic license. Just outline the shape you want, fill it in, and hope real hard that it doesn't run everywhere and ruin your vision like what happened to my cookies.