Be excited friends, it’s blueberry week!  A couple weeks ago I discovered a blueberry farm in Auburn called Canterberry Farms.  Eric and I picked 6 pounds on Saturday, and I went back Sunday to pick another 8 1/2 pounds.   So Saturday I made an entire meal of blueberry dishes for dinner, as well as some muffins for breakfast.  I love blueberry muffins, but not as much as Eric, he made me promise blueberry muffins as his reward for helping me pick berries.  Trust me, these muffins are quite rewarding, they’ve been my favorite breakfast with my iced lattes in the morning.  The next two posts this week will have some more savory and sweet blueberry recipes for you!

Read more

I am so in love with this cake.  It’s perfect for the 4th of July, every slice is a little American flag that will bring oohs and aahs at your Independence Day picnic, potluck or barbecue.  I can’t take credit for the construction idea, it’s the brain child of Elissa (well her father’s idea actually).  You have to check out her blog, she’s the greatest 17 year old baker and blogger I’ve seen.    Anyway, I have only baked a couple cakes from scratch, and never a regular white cake, so decided it was time to experiment.  My experiments in baking have become so successful, I’m less and less afraid to do it.  I made the recipe below three times, once with no food coloring, once with blue and once with red.  My only food coloring was the gel kind which always comes out pastel, if you can get darker, go for it.

Read more

We’ve been getting a lot of rhubarb in our CSA, which is great because I love its tartness, it’s like a confused little produce item that can’t decide if it’s a vegetable or a fruit.  It’s the bridge between cold weather and harvest time that makes me feel like I can wait for local produce without getting scurvy (okay no I’m actually not worried about scurvy but it makes rhubarb even more fun to think it’s staving it off!).  Sometimes I just suck on a little piece to feel my face pucker up involuntarily.  With our first batch I made a rhubarb cherry skillet pie.  Oh man was it good.  But I wanted to start making something that could last, so I decided on jam which I can can (yes I said can can on purpose) and enjoy throughout the next year.  Besides with pie I have to eat it all that day before it spoils, wait, pie doesn’t spoil in 24 hours?  Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it

Read more

I was on my way home from work the other week and decided to pop into Goodwill to see if there were any good dishes for sale. Low and behold they had a 50% off housewares sale going on and so I got all sorts of fun things you’ll see in future pictures. I got several large white plates (my only white plate is the saucer you see the lemon zest on), I got a fun blue plate, glasses in different sizes (including the one my mango lemongrass ice cream is in), a cool wooden serving dish with removable metal pan (I think it’s for cooking, I’m going to have fun with it) and a fun blue bundt cake pan.

I decided that I’d have to try out my bundt cake pan over the weekend. One of my favorite flavor combinations is lemon and blueberry. I often add blueberries to my lemon bars, or add lemon to my blueberry muffins, so it seemed fitting to make a lemon blueberry bundt cake. I decided that since this was a cake, and I’m not the most confident baker, I’d better find a recipe. But of course I couldn’t just follow the recipe I found, oh no, I had to “make it better”. Fortunately, my boldness worked out and this cake was a big hit!

Eric and I couldn’t eat a whole cake by ourselves, so I brought it to my High School girls’ Bible study and then what was left to our teen recovery program we lead. Everyone loved it, and as hard as it was to not hoard it for ourselves, our waistlines are thankful. By the way, it goes really well with homemade blueberry ice cream, and Wednesday I will give you a recipe for that which is to die for! I mean it!

Now for the few changes I made. I really like lemon and don’t like things super sweet, so I cut the sugar almost in half and added more lemon. It’s still not a strong lemon flavor so don’t worry about it being over powering. The cake is a little dense (I believe because I used less sugar) sort of like a pound cake, which I really liked. Also, I believe the coating in flour is supposed to help keep your bueberries from sinking, mine still sank but left wonderful blueberry trails through the cake so I was fine with it. I used a pinch of sea salt instead of table salt because I didn’t have any, and I didn’t use corn syrup in the icing because I refuse to ever buy corn syrup!

Blueberry Lemon and Buttermilk Bundt Cake

Ingredients

1 TBS white vinegar
1 cup milk (I used 2%)
2 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 pinch sea salt
1 cup butter softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
4 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups blueberries, tossed with
1 tablespoon flour

Glaze:
3/4 cups confectioner’s sugar
4 TBS lemon juice

Instructions

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix white vinegar with milk and let sit 10 minutes (this makes buttermilk). In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder,baking soda and salt.

In the bowl of your stand mixer (or another large bowl using a hand mixer), beat butter until smooth. (Don’t throw away your butter wrappers!) Add sugar and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until fluffy.

While it’s beating, use your wrappers to butter the bundt pan, then dust with some flower.

Back to the mixer…Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla and beat until combined. Beat in flour in three additions, alternating with buttermilk. Beat for 2 minutes. Fold in blueberries. Pour into the prepared pan.

Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes, turn over onto your plate (it should come out easily) and let cool completely. Mix confectioners sugar with lemon juice and spoon over the cake (wait until the cake is cool or it all melts off!). Garnish with lemon zest, lemon curls and blueberries.

This was a conversation in Sam’s Club back in early November…

Eric: “Oooooh! A Pumpkin Bundt Cake with CREAM CHEESE FROSTING! It’s so beautiful!”
Diana: “Yeah, it does look good.”
Eric: “I think we should get it.”
Diana: “What? We don’t buy things that aren’t on the list. That’s why you’re here, to keep me from buying things that aren’t on the list.”
Eric: “But it looks so good.”
Diana: “It’s probably full of way too much sugar, and preservatives and other unhealthy stuff.”
Eric: “But it looks so good.”
Diana: “Okay, I’ll make you one.”
Eric: *smile*

I try not to make us desserts unless we have somewhere to bring them. This is pretty easy since he leads a Middle School boys’ Bible study, I lead a High School girls’ Bible study, and we’re part of an adult Bible study. Eric has a mega sweet tooth and can eat a whole pie in a couple days. I love my handsome, healthy, fit husband, and although I’ll love him no matter what, I want to help keep him healthy. By having somewhere to take them, we get a piece with everyone else, and maybe have a few leftovers.
I ended up waiting over a month to make his bundt cake. Part of that was because I don’t have a bundt pan, and am not willing/able to pay full price for one. I was checking Goodwill and finally settled for a jello mold. This actually worked out great because it’s half the size of a regular bundt cake pan, so that’s less sugary leftovers for us to “have” to eat. For a full size bundt cake you can double the recipe (I think!).

I’m a pinch of this handful of that kind of cook, so baking is more of a challenge. I still experiment but I do a little research first. I looked at about 10 different recipes for pumpkin bundt cakes and other bundt cakes to get ideas of proportions. I knew what flavors I wanted. The one I liked the most and followed mostly was on epicurious. I liked the idea of using buttermilk. I was nervous, especially because we were taking it to a potluck, but it turned out amazing! By the way, it makes a delicious breakfast too

I’d say it serves about 16 small pieces (like what people would take at a potluck) or 10 pieces if you were serving it at a party as the only dessert.

Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

3/4 stick unsalted butter, softened, plus additional for greasing bundt pan
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting pan
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin (or fresh pumpkin puree)
1/2 cup buttermilk (I made mine by adding 1 tsp white vinegar to 1/2 cup milk, let sit 10 min)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg plus one egg yolk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter bundt pan generously, then dust with flour, knocking out excess.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, buttermilk, and vanilla in another bowl.

Beat butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes, then add eggs and beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and pumpkin mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture and mixing until batter is just smooth.

Spoon batter into pan, smoothing top, then bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 30-40 minutes. Cool cake in pan on a rack 15 minutes, then invert rack over cake and reinvert cake onto rack. Cool 10 minutes more.

Frosting

3/4 cup cream cheese

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix well and spread over cooled cake.