Kitchen3N

Recipes and food fun from Apt 3N

Cherry Almond Cake

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I know, I know. I’m actually posting a non-chocolate recipe. There are few things that I enjoy as much as I enjoy chocolate. Vacations. Lobster truffle mac and cheese (just discovered at cute Sunnyside spot Côté Soleil while out to dinner with the talented and endearing Moni Begum of Moni’s Kitchen). Moroccan almond cookies made by La Rose Kitchen. Actually, any almond dessert is fabulous. Rainbow cookies. Marzipan (yup, straight up). Stollen (German holiday sweet bread with marzipan filling).

So cherry almond cake was a no-brainer. Last week I had made a cherry frangipane (fancy word for almond filling) tart. Recipe from NYTimes. It was SO good, but since there’s already a perfectly good recipe out there, I wanted to share a less-fussy version of the dessert for those who may not have the time or desire to make pâte sucrée, chill it, roll it out, fit it, trim it, blind bake it, then fill and bake once more.

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The answer is this single layer cherry almond cake. A standard beginning of creamed butter and sugar with the addition of 2 tbsp of almond paste that has been sitting in my cupboard FOREVER. Thickened with an egg, flavored with almond extract. Finally beefed up with a cup of flour, leavener and salt. I greased and lined a 9 in cake pan with parchment. Then I poured in the batter, smoothed out to the edges, dotted the cherries throughout for an even distribution, topped with slivered almonds and sugar, then baked for about 45 minutes.
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I used defrosted, drained frozen pitted cherries for this. Fresh cherries would have been out of this world, but I wasn’t about to try to pit 14oz of cherries! Fresh or frozen, it’s a delicious cake, but I would decrease the sweetness next time around. I adapted it from a Cooking Light recipe (I increased the fat content so could use a lower sugar content). Feel free to try it either way!

Ingredients

  • 6 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 tbsp almond paste
  • 2/3 cup granulated sugar (would decrease to 1/2 cup next time)
  • 1/4 tsp almond extract (might increase this to 1/2 tsp next time)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp cloves
  • 1/3 cup milk
  • 2 tbsp slivered almonds
  • 2 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 14 oz pitted cherries
  • powdered sugar for sprinkling

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray the bottom and sides of a 9in cake pan with cooking spray, Cut out a 9in round piece of parchment and line the bottom of the pan with it. Spray with more cooking spray.
  2. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and clove. Add salt and stir to combine.
  3. In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a medium bowl using an electric hand mixer, cream butter, sugar and almond paste until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes at medium low speed. Stop to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add egg and almond extract, continue beating until the egg is incorporated, then scraped down the sides of the bowl again. Add half o the flour mixture, then the milk, then the remaining flour. Mix until incorporated, then pour into the prepared cake pan. Dot the top with cherries, almonds and an even sprinkling of the remaining granulated sugar.
  4. Bake in preheated oven for 45-50 minutes until top is golden brown.
  5. After cooling, sprinkle with powdered sugar to serve.

Meyer Lemon Strawberry Lemonade

IMG_4823I’ve come a long way from the days of squeezing limes into a tall pitcher of water, and stirring in sugar until it dissolves. And stirring and stirring and stirring…

Lemon/limeades were usually reserved for Ramadan in my household. That meant we whipped up batches of the stuff without being able to taste it (since we were fasting) and without sticking to any sort of recipe (my mother never owned a recipe book). The results ran the gamut from mouth puckeringly tart to gaggingly sweet.

That won’t happen with this recipe. I won’t forget the looks on my guests’ faces when they broke their fast with this drink earlier this summer. Their eyes widened as they could not believe the incredible reward their taste buds received after a long day without food or drink.  IMG_4726This is an adaptation of a pretty straightforward Pioneer Woman recipe. I stuck to her proportions, but jazzed it up with some floral scented Meyer lemons, a simple syrup for easy dissolving, and ice for a quick cool down. I had never thought to puree strawberries in a food processor with sugar to get the strawberry part of a strawberry lemonade but it was so easy and so perfect. I think when you cook it down in a saucepan it has the tendency to thicken. This way it was perfectly smooth and pourable. IMG_4816 If you don’t have Meyer lemons in your grocery store, please proceed with regular lemons! If you do have Meyer lemons handy, you won’t regret it. They have such an amazing bouquet – floral, sweet. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but when you squeeze citrus, the essential oils mist up and out from the rind like a natural air freshener. When the oils of the Meyer lemons gets into the air, it perfumes the whole kitchen. Almost makes you want to take a bite out of it!

Summer’s not over as long as you’re making this drink! It HAS the power to keep summer going. Also, summer is not over until it’s my birthday. Seriously – last day of summer this year and I turn…twenty…I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

Adapted from Pioneer Woman.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound strawberries, hulled
  • 3 cups sugar
  • 8 to 10 Meyer lemons
  • 9 cups water
  • 2 heaping cups ice

Directions

  1. In a medium saucepan, dissolve 2 cups sugar with 2 cups of water and the peel of 1 Meyer lemon* over medium heat. Stir occasionally. When dissolved, remove from heat and let cool.
  2. Meanwhile, blend the strawberries in a food processor with 1 cup of sugar until well blended. Set aside.
  3. Using a citrus juicer, or by hand (over a sieve to catch seeds and pulp), juice 8 to 10 Meyer lemons until you have 2 cups of lemon juice. Set aside.
  4. Remove lemon peel from simple syrup. In a large pitcher or drink dispenser combine lemon scented simple syrup, strawberry puree, lemon juice, remaining 7 cups of water and 2 cups of ice. Stir to combine. Add more water/sugar to taste.

*When peeling, take care not to get too much of the white part (pith) as that will make the simple syrup bitter.

Over the Muffin Top Blueberry Muffins

IMG_3893 I wasn’t planning on posting anything anytime soon. I’ve been swamped with work and caught in a whirlwind of Pre-K applications. If some of you have read my previous posts, you know I had been planning on homeschooling my kids. I felt I could provide them with a much more tailored education than could be provided at a public school – supplementing my kids’ homeschooling with extracurricular activities like soccer or dance classes, for the socialization, discipline, and physical outlet.

IMG_3889  But the extracurricular activities aren’t exactly panning out. My kids (ages 4 and almost 3) have such intense stranger/separation anxiety that they don’t want to participate. That’s not the only thing. As parenting young children evolves, it goes from becoming a physically demanding endeavor to an emotionally taxing one. As my days are less and less filled with diaper changes, bottle prep, washing, rocking to sleep, etc. those pockets of time are increasingly filled with

  • negotiations – how many times can you re-wear the same old tutu? when IS bedtime really?
  • refereeing – who deserves that toy? how do you ask patience of an almost 3 year old when you are running out of it?
  • cleaning up spilled milk/juice/paint – i literally cry over spilled milk

IMG_3897 So, we’ve made the decision to enroll our daughter in Pre-K, and my son, when he is ready, next year, God willing. I think it will be good for me – and by extension, the kids. I’ve found in my conversations with other moms (full time workers, part time workers, and stay at home homeschooling mothers) that mothers who work part time have the best of both worlds. They have an outlet in the form of work – using their intellect, getting tangible rewards, conversing with other adults, etc. Plus, they get to spend a good amount of time with their kids afterschool or whenever. There are obviously exceptions to this. I can’t imagine my previous boss allocating any less time from her profession, or rather, her mission in life, to anything else. On the other end of the spectrum I’ve seen some homeschooling moms who just have it together and are getting it done!  IMG_3900 But until my baby girl starts her long, arduous journey of education, she will continue helping me out in the kitchen. Somehow both kids helped with making these (from sifting the dry ingredients, to scooping batter) and despite it all – they came out decent looking! These started off with good intentions – part whole wheat flour, part almond flour. But ended up getting a sprinkling of butter/brown sugar/cinnamon that – you guessed it – sent them over the muffin top. It’s got that nice sugary crust that bakery style muffins have. Everyone is crazy about brown butter these days and I am, too. But not so much browning butter, then adding it to the batter. I like when the food cooks in the butter (pancakes, toast, you name it), so that the browning happens at the surface, where it can impart a crunch when possible and elevate the whole flavor profile of said food.

Try these crunchy, nutty, fruity, delicious muffins. Recipe adapted from Food.com.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup almond meal (if you don’t have this, then you can use all purpose flour, but it won’t be the same!)
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • zest from 1 lemon
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • half pint of blueberries
  • 1/4 cup butter, diced
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line muffin pan with 18 muffin liners.
  2. Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda together in a bow. Add the whole wheat flour, almond meal, sugar, salt and lemon zest. Stir with a whisk (if you try to sift the latter 4 ingredients, I’ve found that it just doesn’t pass through the mesh).
  3. In a separate large measuring cup or bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk and vegetable oil. Beat with a fork or whisk until well combined. Add to the dry ingredients, incorporating everything slowly. Take care not to over mix as that will toughen your muffins. Add the blueberries and carefully fold into the batter (you don’t want to mush the berries!).
  4. Using an ice cream scoop, evenly distribute the batter among the muffin pans. In a separate bowl, combine diced butter, brown sugar and cinnamon with your fingers. Dot the tops of each muffin with the butter/brown sugar mixture and bake for 20-30 minutes in preheated oven.

Basil Smoothie

IMG_2613I’m pretty sure Kawsar and I are the only ones I know who don’t like smoothies. There’s just something off putting about the texture and consistency, especially when bananas are involved. I wasn’t always this way. He did this to me. It’s funny all the little ways you and your spouse end up influencing one another. IMG_2596 Enter, the basil smoothie. As strange as it sounds, there is only one resounding response to this beverage any time it is served: REFRESHING. SO REFRESHING. No fruits here to muddle with the consistency. Just delicious, tangy, full fat organic yogurt. Fresh basil (a great way to use up that excess basil if your garden is currently overflowing – as basil tends to do). Simple syrup. And ice. Now if you have a quality blender, the consistency would be of a blended ice beverage. Mine is pretty prehistoric so when I hit the power button, it usually just liquifies the ice cubes. It doesn’t bother me too much, since the beverage itself tastes great. But if you are really looking for that shaved ice consistency, pour it into a flat baking dish, stick it in the freezer, and scrape with a fork every few hours to turn this smoothie into a granita type dessert. IMG_2601I saw Giada making this smoothie ages ago and I was hooked. I’ve tweaked it to cut down the sugar (and by omitting the lemon). Since then, pretty much everyone I’ve made it for has duplicated it at home.

I wanted to share this recipe weeks ago so you could enjoy it all Ramadan long. But fear not! We have several more weeks of summer ie lots more basil to be consumed. So if you’ve had it up to here with pesto, or just eaten your last caprese salad (though I don’t know how anyone can have enough caprese salad), then try drinking your basil. You won’t regret it!

Ingredients

  • 1 cup full fat plain yogurt
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup water
  • a handful of basil leaves
  • 1 cup of ice

Directions

  1. Make the simple syrup: dissolve the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Let cool.
  2. Add the remaining ingredients to the blender and blend until combined. Garnish with basil leaves.