Blueberry Muffin Bread

Blueberry Muffin Bread: A Cinderella Story.  Once upon a time, there was a man who hated butter.  (Insert screeching-to-a-halt noise).  Rewind!  Repeat!  Hates butter?  Who could possibly hate butter?  That was my reaction.  Apparently, along with the small minority of strange people who hate chocolate and cheese, there are those who detest the rich, fatty-glory that is butter.  My depositions professor is one of those misguided souls (He also hates cheese!!! Gasp!).  His casual utterance of this fact shocked me, and I was sure I had misheard him.  He might as well have said, "I hate kittens and butterflies!  I hate summertime and popsicles! I'll have some delicious cake, but hold the delicious."

I rationalized that perhaps he has a health-conscious outlook on life, but Prof. seems like a decidedly straightforward person.  He would have said, "I love butter but I choose cardboard."  Plus, he seems more into burgers than beer tofu and acai.  I decided I needed to bake something and bring it to class to test his exaggeration factor.  Something nice and buttery... Cookies!

So... obviously, the title of this post is NOT "buttery cookies."  I did start out with a cookie recipe, though unbeknownst to me it was the WORST cookie recipe EVER.  I should have known that the ill-fated cookie recipe (Grandma's sour cream delights or something of the sort) was a dud.  The cookies looked plain and buscuit-like in the photo, and the recipe suggested I spread them with jam - obviously to distract the eater from the fact that they have no flavor.  I moved on in search of something more promising, but alas, I could find no other cookies calling for the sour cream (with its fast approaching "use by" date) in my fridge.  Being a stubborn person, I proceeded to bake Granny's questionable cookies instead of opting for a more fitting pastry genre (sour cream coffee cake, duh).  After whipping up the dough (yum!), I put a small batch in the over, and popped the rest in the fridge to wait its turn.  Fast forward ten minutes.  Pull cookies from oven.  Remove from sheet.  Bite into piping hot... blandness?  Another bite to make sure... Dang it!!!!.  Dry, stiff, bland, gross.  No cookies for depos class.  No cookies going to the ball (to carry the strained Cinderella metaphor).  Maybe Granny was senile and penned the wrong recipe to poor grandchild.  Or maybe her taste buds departed with her youth (what's the grand-kid's excuse?).  Whatever the reason, I now had a huge bowl of dough languishing in my fridge.  But I wasn't ready to admit defeat! 

I turned to Paula Deen for help.  Drawling, y'all-ing Paula Deen is the queen of all things gooey, decadent, and BUTTERY.  She kind of looks like a fairy-godmother... If anyone could've save my withered sand-pucks, it was her.  Sure enough, a recipe for Paula's pound cake inspired me to doctor my dough.  With just two cups of sugar and four more eggs I had a cure.  Despite over-mixing (cardinal baking sin!), random extra ingredients, and a highly unorthodox preparation, my dough metamorphosed into a fluffy, sugar-crusted, blueberry studded treat!   Glamorous!  (For a realistic idea of the results, picture Duncan Hines blueberry muffins in loaf shape).  Although I can now live Happily Ever After, my muffin bread, sadly, will not get to go to the ball (i.e. depos class).  Too hard to serve and other plausible excuses.  I'm eatin' the whoooole thing!

Blueberry Muffin Bread

3 c. sugar
1 c. softened butter
1 T. vanilla
1 c. sour cream
6 eggs
3.5 c. flour
1 t. salt
3/4 t. baking soda
3/4 c. fresh or frozen blueberries (I used about a handful of frozen wild blueberries)

Preheat the oven to 325.  Butter two loaf pans or one 10-c. tube pan, dust with flour.  Cream the butter and sugar, and then mix in the sour cream, vanilla and eggs until well blended.  In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and baking soda.  Add the butter mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just combined.  Fold in the blueberries (avoid mashing unless you want ugly gray bread).  Pour into pan(s) and bake 1 hr and 20 min, or until dark-golden.  A knife inserted into the center of the bread should come out clean.

Avocado Chocolate Chip Quick-bread

The (future) avocato experiments with avocado!  Plenty of naysayers attempted to stifle my creative inspiration, and claimed my half-baked plan would birth the Frankenstein of breakfast breads.  Oh ye of little faith!  When was the last time I baked something inedible? That's what I thought.  Much like the misunderstood monster, my Franken-bread isn't a looker like it's tall, golden, banana blessed cousin.  It has a greenish cast and a sunken middle, but its physical imperfections conceal a soft, tender crumb, gilded with gooey chocolate.  If we can accept and adore carrot cake and zucchini bread why not avocado quick-bread?  The avocado can hold its own against the garish carrot or tedious zucchini any day.  Like the banana (the familiar and celebrated star of America's favorite quick-bread) the avocado is mild, creamy, buttery, and slightly sweet.  The avocado likes to associate with vegetables, but it is a fruit (well, according to University of California's Avocado Information page it's a very large berry...), and it's high time the avocado joined the ranks of other fruits in breakfast and dessert recipes!  And I'm not just talking about the garnish on huevos rancheros.  I do have to admit that I don't envision myself making avocado cobbler anytime soon so maybe we can just ignore the Avocado Information page and pretend an avocado is not a berry.

The Obscure Avocado

The more I thought about the similarities between avocados and bananas, the more obsessed I became with concocting an "avocadoey" version of banana bread.  My original plan was to bake my favorite banana bread recipe and substitute an equal amount of avocado for the banana.  It hadn't even occurred to me that there might be a legitimate avocado quick-bread recipe out there already!  Turns out there are quite a few, so I decided to conduct a taste-test bake-off: My recipe v. the Internet!  In the end I adapted both recipes to fit my own specifications, so I'm taking full credit for the deliciousness of either result, and blaming any failures on inherent flaws in the pre-adapted recipes (obviously, ha ha).

Battling breads

My banana bread adaptation wasn't as pretty as the "real" avocado bread, but I liked it better.  The taste volunteers couldn't agree on a hands-down winner, so I'm posting both versions.  Both were admittedly... different.  But really yummy!  We should all know by now that "different" is not a synonym for "bad."  So get over your prejudice against avocado desserts, and give one of these recipes a try.  If you can't bring yourself to serve Franken-bread at your afternoon book club meeting, you could wait until Halloween.  Its oddball color and unconventional flavor will blend in with the other kooky treats, and you can pass yourself off as festive instead of freakish - next to all the other ghoulish goodies, no one will notice your misbegotten monster.

Avocado Chocolate Chip Quick-bread I (Banana bread adaptation):

Preheat the oven to 350.  Butter and flour one loaf pan.

Cream 1 c. sugar with 1/2 c. softened butter.  Add two eggs and mix well.  In a separate bowl, stir together 1 and 1/4 c. flour, 1 t. baking soda, and 1/2 t. salt.  Add 1 1/2 c. mashed avocado to the egg mixture and mix well.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Stir in 6 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips.  Pour batter into greased pan and bake until a knife inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean (1 hr- 1.5 hrs).

Avocado Chocolate Chip Quick-bread II (spiced version):

Preheat the oven to 350.  Butter and flour one loaf pan.

Cream 1 c. sugar with 1/4 c. softened butter.  Add two eggs and mix well.  In a separate bowl, stir together 1 and 1/3c. flour, 1 t. baking soda, 1/2 t. baking powder, 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. cinnamon, and 1/2 t. allspice.  Add 1 and 1/2 c. mashed avocado and 1/4 c. buttermilk to the egg mixture.  Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined.  Stir in 6 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips.  Pour batter into greased pan and bake until a knife inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean (1 hr - 1.25 hrs).

Don't knock it 'till you've tried it!

Delicious Snack

Ciabatta Ricotta Burrata Nutella Dulce Grilled Sandwich. 

That was too long for the post title.  I tend to focus my posts on baking and dessert, and this delicious snack (ok, it was really my dinner) fits neither of those categories, but it weaseled its way in after my sister heard the tantalizing sizzle of butter in the pan, caught me licking a golden drop of dulce off my finger, and asked what I was making.  I got halfway through the description of my meal ("Ciabatta ricotta burrata nutella...") before my voice trailed of sheepishly and I realized I had crossed the line of food-weirdness.  Her mouth dropped in disbelief and her eyes devoured the crusty, oozing, buttered sandwich as I carried it to my seat.  "Can I have a bite?"  She asked hopefully.  At that moment I knew my mad-hatter recipe had to go on the blog so the world could indulge in my hedonistic treat. 

This glorified grilled cheese sandwich will only work with top-quality ingredients, which I suggest you obtain from a good Italian deli.  I am lucky enough to live a hop-skip-and a jump away from Bay Cities Deli - the Willy Wonka of Italian delis.  My favorite snack ever is a torn chunk of hot Bay Cities bread, slathered with dulce de leche and topped with gooey burrata or fluffy ricotta.  I was inspired by a recent streak of grilled cheese dinners to transform my regular impromptu snack into a respectable sandwich (although I admit that a sandwich filled with chocolate and caramel sounds more frivolous than respectable...), melted and griddled to perfection.  If you live anywhere in West L.A. and have not yet sampled the fresh cheeses and breads from Bay Cities, or their marvelous sandwiches, you're deprived and I feel sorry for you. 

Ingredients 

1 loaf of freshly baked ciabatta bread
1 jar Nutella
1 jar dulce de leche
1 tub fresh ricotta cheese
1 tub of burrata
2 tsp. butter
(obviously you won't need the whole loaf/jar/tub of each of these ingredients... or maybe you will!)

Saw off a large hunk of ciabatta, and split down the middle to form a future sandwich.  Spread your desired amount of ricotta on one half of the bread, and top with burrata.  Remember, the burrata and ricotta are going to melt out the sides of the sandwich, so go easy!  On the other half of the bread, spread a thick layer of Nutella, and top with a thick layer of dulce de leche.  Press the Nutella-dulce half down on top of the cheesy half.  Heat the butter in the frying pan until it sizzles and bubbles, then press the sandwich into the golden butter-foam.  Grill on medium-low until the cheese melts and the sandwich is heated through.  I cheated and used the toaster oven after a few minutes to get mine really toasty, but for the more patient folk, covering the frying pan will help trap the heat and get your delicious snack ready lickety-split.

Lemony Pound Cake Doom

Cake is a dangerous thing.  This cake is pure evil.  Like an ancient Latin manuscript that invokes demons when unearthed, my friend and I came upon this recipe buried amidst equally intriguing blogged recipes.  It once occupied an honored place amongst the glossy pages of Rose's Heavenly Cakes, but this fallen angel has been warped and adapted into the cake Siren.  Warm from the oven, golden and piquant, soft, and irresistibly moist... you will be doomed.

My equally food-obsessed friend and I concocted this recipe in conjunction with a recipe for lemon meringue pie, and the evilness of the cake recipe asserted itself even before we began baking!  Some malevolent hand guided us to pick a horrible pie recipe involving corn starch (as a bona fide foodie, I am ashamed to admit I made a custard pie containing cornstarch), and NO SUGAR.  Somehow, probably because we were distracted by the evil pound cake recipe, we failed to notice that the pie filling contained not one iota of sugar.  We baked the entire pie, and only noticed when we sampled our creation that something had gone horribly wrong.  It might've made a nice sauce for a chicken dinner, but under a mound of meringue it was just plain gross.  The lemon pound cake obviously stole the show.  If cakes could cackle, ours would have.
 

Naked Lemons

Cake Ingredients

2 eggs
1 egg yolk
3/4 c. sour cream, plus one T. sour cream
2t. vanilla
2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 1/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 T. lemon zest
14 T. unsalted butter, softened

Lemon Topping

1/2 c. sugar
6 T. lemon juice

Butter and lightly flour 10 c. tube or bundt pan.  Preheat the oven to 350.  In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, egg yolk, 1/4 c. of the sour cream, and the vanilla.  In a separate, larger bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest.  Add the butter and remaining sour cream, mixing on low speed until just moistened.  Increase speed to medium and beat until the mixture lightens in color and becomes fluffier.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Reduce mixing speed to low, and add half of the egg mixture, beating until incorporated.  Add the rest of the egg mixture, and beat on low until incorporated.  Spread the batter evenly into the pan, and bake for 45-55 min.  The cake is done when a knife inserted in it's center comes out clean.  Meanwhile, make the lemon topping:

In a small saucepan, mix the lemon juice and sugar over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.  Do not allow the mixture to boil.  When the cake comes out of the oven, skewer it or stab it all over with a knife (sounds so evil!) and drizzle with half of the lemon topping (ouch! lemon on stab wounds!).  Unmold the cake (using a springform mold came in handy- no need to wait for it to cool!) and drizzle with the remaining syrup.  Torture yourself by waiting until the cake is cool enough to handle, or devour the steaming cake immediately and sacrifice your tongue and lips for its melting texture.

Butter

When I was in kindergarten our class made butter from scratch.  We took turns churning heavy cream throughout the class period until the cream became thick, and we spread it on graham crackers for snack time.  Now that I've actually made butter from scratch, I realize that the kindergarten concoction was really over-whipped cream, but the memory of eating our own creamy creation has stayed with me and inspired me to try the real deal!  This recipe is a great way to use up that extra whipping cream sitting in your fridge.  Supposedly you can use cream that has begun to turn, but I think that sounds kind of gross and I recommend using delicious fresh cream.  There is something satisfying about crafting basic ingredients by hand.  I like to get carried away and imagine life as a local dairy farmer churning out fresh butter and specialty cheeses to sell to foodies around the world!  Luckily, you don't have to be a dairy farmer to make your own butter (or your own cheese, but that will be a future post).  Read on!

Ingredients

Heavy cream (any amount - I used about a cup)
Ice water (for washing)
1/4 t. salt per cup of heavy cream (if you want salted butter)

Beat That Butter!

Place the heavy cream in a bowl and whip on high speed.  You can use a hand mixer or a stand mixer, but if you have one I recommend using the stand mixer with a splash guard.  I only had a hand mixer, so I enlisted a volunteer to hold a towel around the bowl to prevent the cream from flying all over me and my kitchen.  Keep whipping the cream.  Keeeeep whipping.... The cream will pass soft peaks, firm peaks, curdled stage....keep it up... At between five and ten minutes the cream will "break," i.e. it will separate into a solid and a liquid: butter and buttermilk!  Whip a minute or so past the break, and then take a spatula and press the butter into one large ball.  Squish it against the side of the bowl to remove as much buttermilk as possible, and then carefully pour the buttermilk into a separate container (save for use in pancakes!). 

Now you need to wash the butter to remove the rest of the buttermilk residue.  You can eat the butter without washing it, but it will last much longer if you follow this washing procedure: pour some ice water into the butter, and mix on high speed for a minute.  The water will become cloudy.  Pour the cloudy water down the sink and repeat until the water is relatively clear.  Squish the butter to get as much water out as you can, pour it off, and add the salt.  Mix on low speed to incorporate.  Viola! Fresh salted butter for your butter crock!

Coconut Cream Meringue Cake

Ahhh the taste of success. It's really the cake that tastes so wonderful, but it's always nice to make a slam dunk after a horrible failure. Thank you Fine Cooking! Fine Cooking is officially my new favorite food magazine. Ok, that's a lie, Fine Cooking has been at the top of my list for quite awhile. They won me over with their big glossy pictures, and backed up their photo skills with superb recipes. This is one of those recipes. The picture in the magazine is a little better than mine, but I wanted to give you the "real thing," not some gussied up Styrofoam frosted with shaving cream (I'm on to you Fine Cooking! No way those gorgeous pictures are real. Next thing you know people are going to start claiming that no airbrushes ever touched those photo-captured fashion models).

This cake has the "Wow" factor in every respect: three fat layers, moist from sinful amounts of butter and sour cream, are buoyed on puddles of custard that has been stuffed with fluffy coconut and lightened with clouds of whipped cream. Then the whole shebang is smothered with enough meringue to kill a diabetic. I should know. THEN, the meringue is caramelized with the handy kitchen-torch I'm sure all of you have lying around in your kitchens. If you don't own a kitchen blow torch you should probably get one. Even if you only use it one time, to make this cake, it will be worth it (provided you don't somehow screw up the cake before you get to the torching).

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that this is not a trivial recipe. In addition to a beautiful, miraculously good cake, I ended up with cramped hands, sore arms, seven-thousand dirty bowls, and a kitchen splattered with egg whites and whipping cream. Not to mention I felt ill after nibbling cake batter and frosting for 3 hours. But don't let me dissuade you! The cake is freakin' delicious.

One more tip: not a good idea to put a roll of paper towels behind the cake while caramelize the meringue. Aiming flame thrower at flammable objects = bad.

Cake:
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
13.5 oz all-purpose flour (3 c. for those of you without baking scales)
4 t. baking powder
1/2 t. kosher salt
1 c. coconut milk (shake well, room temp)
1 T. vanilla
2 c. sugar
2 large eggs at room temp
6 large egg whites at room temp (don't throw away the yolks! save 3)
2/3 c. sour cream

Coconut Filling:
2 c. heavy cream
3 large egg yolks
3/4 c. sugar
2 T. flour
1 c. sweetened flaked coconut
2 T. unsalted butter
1 T. vanilla
pinch of kosher salt

Meringue:
3 c. sugar
1.5 c. egg whites (about ten large) at room temp

Make Cake:
Preheat the oven to 350. Butter three cake pans and line with parchment. Butter the parchment. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a 1 c. measure, mix the coconut milk and vanilla.

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Scrape the bowl and add eggs one at a time, beating well after each egg. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and beat slowly to incorporate. Add half the coconut milk and beat to incorporate. Alternate adding flour and coconut milk, beating after each addition to incorporate, and ending with the flour. Beat in the sour cream.

In a clean bowl, beat egg whites to soft peaks (lift out the beaters and the whites should droop a little off the ends). Dollop some egg whites into the batter and stir to loosen. Fold remaining whites into the batter gently. Divide batter between three pans and bake 25-30 minutes. A toothpick poked into the center should come out clean. Now, the recipe instructs you to position the pans so that two are on the top rack and one is on the lower rack, and no pan is directly over another. This sounds like a bunch of hooey to me, but do it just in case.

Make the Filling:
In a medium bowl, whisk yolks with 1.5 c. of the cream. In a medium saucepan, combine the yolk mixture with the flour and sugar. Cook over medium heat, whisking continually, until smooth. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cooking, whisking, for 8-10 minutes. The mixture should achieve a pudding-like consistency. Remove from heat and stir in the coconut, vanilla, and butter. Allow to cool to room temp. Whip the remaining half cup cream into soft peaks and fold into the cooled pudding.

Make the Meringue:
Set a metal bowl over a pan of simmering water, and whisk the egg whites with the sugar until the sugar melts completely, 3-4 min. Rub the mixture between your fingertips to ensure complete melting. Transfer the mixture to a cool bowl and beat on low speed until the mixture becomes opaque and thickens, 4 min. Raise speed to medium and beat the mixture to barely-soft peaks. Increase speed to high and whip the mixture until thick and glossy. Peaks should stand up and curl slightly when the beater is lifted. This should take another 4 min or so.

To assemble, unmold the cakes and sandwich half the filling between two layers. Add the rest of the filling to the top layer, and place the third layer over it. Don't forget to remove the parchment. Mound the meringue on the cake. You do not need to use all of it! Dollop gobs here and there and spread it to cover the cake completely, then pile a little more in the center for good measure. You'll probably use about a third, but if you really want to you can use all of it. I just prefer to have a few crumbs of cake with my meringue.

To make the fancy little spikes on the cake, dip your fingers into the meringue and lift. Poke the cake all over until it's crazy looking.

Use a kitchen torch to brown the meringue by holding the torch a few inches from its surface and guiding the flame around the cake until it is browned to your liking.

Invite 10 people over to help you eat it because it won't keep very well! Nothing worse than slimy second-day meringue! Ok, another lie. I ate two pieces the second day. But I don't recommend refrigerating leftovers (cardinal cake sin), and since the whole thing is made of eggs I wouldn't advise keeping it too long. Shouldn't be a big problem!

Golden Prosecco Cake with Lemon Curd and Macerated Berries

Wow. Martha Stewart completely failed me this time. Yes, I am most certainly blaming this failure on her recipe, seeing as how I followed it to the letter. I should have known there was something fishy about a recipe that required whipping egg whites mixed with loads of brown sugar to stiff peaks! Ain't gonna happen. My whites remained a puddle of brown froth.

Nonetheless, I forged ahead, convinced that baking the brown slop migh somehow revive it. Nope. Martha's brown sugar angel cake looked edible when I pulled it out of the oven, however, and I began to think nothing was amiss. The lemon curd went off without a hitch, my tangerine-macerated berries glistened in their crystal bowl, and a jar of double cream waited in the fridge for dinner to end.

As the guests finished their wine, I hopped up from the table to unmold the cake. I sawed the edges loose, tipped the cake over, and patted the bottom. A damp chunk of gray cake fell out with a splat. Not good. The cake was a total, utter, disgusting mess. It looked more like a drowned squirrel caracass than angel food cake. I ventured a nibble and grimaced at the slimy, tough texture and old-sock flavor. With a furtive glance over my shoulder I whisked the disaster into the garbage, and hurried to the cupboard to look for a cake mix. Good old trusty cake mix!

Plain yellow cake, while delicious, would not exactly go with a random bowl of berries and lemon curd, so I opted to doctor the cake and make ... whatever I had ingredients to make! A half-consumed bottle of prosecco in the fridge inspired Golden Prosecco Cake With Lemon Curd and Macerated Berries. Fortunately, the cake turned out perfectly.

The butter in the recipe gives the cake a pleasant toothsome crumb, and the prosecco lends a heady fragrance. This cake has a sturdier texture than regular yellow cake, which allows it to absorb the juice from the berries and create a moist mouthful without becoming soggy. It would probably taste great with berries mixed right into the batter! That can be my next experiment. Although, I'm somewhat dissuaded from experiments after the horrible rubbery mess my last one produced.

Prosecco Cake

1 box yellow cake mix
1 pkg instant vanilla pudding
1/2 c. melted butter, cooled
1/4 c. canola oil
4 eggs
3/4 c. prosecco

Lemon Curd

6 egg yolks
1/2 c. lemon juice from 3-4 lemons
1 T. grated lemon zest
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. softened butter

Macerated Berries

1 pkg fresh raspberries
1 pkg fresh blackberries
1/2 a tangerine
3 T. sugar

Whipped Cream

3/4 c. heavy whipping cream
2-3 T. powdered sugar

Make the lemon curd:
In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, lemon juice, and egg yolks over low heat. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens to the consistency of hollandaise sauce (coats the back of the spoon). Do not allow the mixture to boil! This will result in lemon flavored scrambled eggs. Remove from heat and stir in softened butter and lemon zest until the butter melts completely. Chill until cold. If you don't like skin on your puddings, set plastic wrap on the surface of the curd before chilling.

Make the cake:
Preheat the oven to 350. Mix all the cake ingredients together, stirring for five minutes. Pour into a heavily buttered bundt pan and bake for 30-45 minuts, or until golden brown. Make the berry mixture while the cake bakes.

Wash and dry the berries. Stir the berries and sugar together, and squeeze the juice of the tangerine half over the mixture. Stir and refrigerate.

While the cake is still warm, but cool enough to handle, gently cut around the edges of the bundt pan and release the cake onto a serving plate.

Whip the cream into soft peaks, add the powdered sugar, and mix on low until incorporated.

Serve wedges of the warm prosecco cake with a scoop each of lemon curd, whipping cream, and berries. Deny existence of fallen angel cake.