SUMMER’S FINALE

Posted in Desserts, Sweets by sallybr

My favorite season is over. Soon it will be time for “the move”: summer clothes will go into storage, while long sleeves, sweaters and coats will return to my closet. My sandals will be gone, and with them the nice tan on my feet… The poor babies will be hiding in socks and shoes for months!

To say goodbye to Summer, I picked a yellow watermelon and turned it into granita. Watermelon is my beloved’s favorite fruit. His ritual is to sit on the couch with a huge slice dangerously balancing on a plate, and our dogs locked into full begging mode close by. The dogs are watermelon maniacs; they can smell it from several rooms away.

Granita is a refreshing classic, conveying the essence of Summer’s bliss with each spoonful.

WATERMELON GRANITA

Make a simple syrup
1 cup water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Heat until sugar is completely dissolved; cool to room temperature.

Make the fruit juice
Watermelon pieces
1 T lemon juice
pinch of salt

Juice the watermelon (easier if using seedless fruit, but we prefer to buy the regular kind). Measure the amount, you will need a minimum of 3 cups.

For three cups of juice, add the full amount of simple syrup made, the lemon juice and salt. Mix well.

Make the granita:
Pour the mixture in a glass baking dish, 9×13 inches, or 8×8 inches. Depending on how thick the layer is, the longer it will take to freeze. Place it in the freezer, and every half an hour (or 45 minutes, depending on the size and shape of your dish), scrape it with a fork to destroy the ice crystals forming on the edges, then place it back in the freezer. Do this several times, maybe 4 or 5 times, until the mixture is completely frozen. It will take from 3 to 6 hours.

To serve, scrape the frozen granita with the tines of a fork into a serving bowl. Decorate with mint (which you can also add to the juice, I normally do that, but forgot this time), and….

ENJOY!

To print the recipe, click here.

click for more photos e receita em portugues

4Sep2009

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU PEACHES…

Posted in Desserts, Sweets by sallybr

MAKE A PEACH PIE!

MAYBE TWO?

Actually, the title of this post should be “When friends give you a bushel of peaches….” Our great friends (and neighbors) went for a long trip during the Summer, and asked us two important favors. “Use our swimming pool as often as possible” and “Harvest all our veggies and fruits and enjoy them”. !!!!!!

Yes, you are all allowed to be jealous, not everyone has the same good luck… These friends are beyond special for many reasons, the pool and the fruits don’t even make it into the top five!

Besides being fantastic folks, they are great gardeners. If my beloved husband and I would ask you to stop by to “harvest and enjoy” our garden, you’d be lucky to leave with a skinny zucchini (Skinny Zucchini, too bad I already named my blog!), a few unripe tomatoes, and a tiny bunch of basil. This is not the case with our neighbors, who mean business in the garden. We had a major peach invasion of our home: at least one hundred (probably more, we stopped counting after a while) gorgeous pieces of fruit!

DH came to the rescue, as he usually does in fruity situations. As a matter of fact, if a pie has a lattice, then you can be sure I wasn’t involved. This time I took a completely secondary role, washing the dishes and admiring my beloved’s skill producing two gorgeous pies after 10pm on a work day. Sorry, ladies, he’s definitely taken! 😉

PEACH PIE
(recipe adapted from Joy of Cooking, 2nd edition)

Para receita em portugues, visite o Cantinho Brasileiro na pagina seguinte

10-12 peaches, white or yellow fleshed
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 + 1/2 Tbs cornstarch
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 + 1/2 T butter
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yolk, beaten with a little water (egg wash)

1 recipe of pie crust (click here for my favorite) or store bought, good quality pie crust

Heat the oven to 450F.

Peel, core, and cut the pieces into slices and add to a large bowl. Combine the brown sugar, salt, cornstarch, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and sift the mixture all over the fruit, mixing well.

Roll half of the pie dough to cover the bottom of a 9-inch pan, and add the fruit mixture to it. Sprinkle lemon juice all over, and dot with butter.

Roll the second half of the dough, and form a lattice. Cover the pie, brush the crust with egg wash, sprinkle with a little cinnamon and sugar, and place it in the oven. After 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 350F and bake for 35 to 45 minutes more, until the crust is golden, and you can see the juices bubbling through the opening.

Cool it over a rack, and serve with or without whipped cream (freshly whipped, of course!)

ENJOY!

Here are some photos of the pie in the making….

Gorgeous peaches, thanks to our dear neighbors

Assembling the pies….

Into the oven they both went…

para receita em portugues, siga o link

25Jul2009

SNICKERDOODLES WITH A TWIST

Posted in Cookies, Desserts, Sweets by sallybr

cookies1

For the record, I don’t have a sweet tooth. I can go for months without dessert, and my sweet cravings are satisfied by some yogurt with a little agave nectar and by bits of bittersweet chocolate every now and then. So, if I tell you that when I made these cookies I ate one and went back for three more…. trust me, you should fire up your oven!

I chose these cookies because I was mesmerized by their picture in this wonderful blog. I am so glad I did, even though my photos don”t come close in terms of quality, the flavor of these babies is great: snickerdoodles with a twist…

For Brazilians and other foreign readers who may not know about them, snickerdoodles are a classic, probably of German origin, that have been around since the beginning of last century. They are very simple cookies, that get rolled in cinnamon and sugar right before going into the oven. The crinkled look is their trademark.

In this rendition, a little coffee powder is added to the dough. Normally, I don’t like changes in a classic recipe, but in this case, the results were awesome. Even if you’re not fond of coffee, give these cookies a try. The coffee flavor is subtle, and it’s wonderful with the cinnamon, making these cookies simply irresistible.

closeup

CINNAMON CAPPUCCINO COOKIES
(recipe adapted from “A Kiss and a Cupcake“)

1 cup butter (two sticks), softened
1 + 1/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 + 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 + 1/2 tablespoons powdered coffee (see comments)
granulated sugar + cinnamon (3:1)

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream together sugar and butter whipping them with an electric mixer for about 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until smooth. Add powdered coffee and beat until incorporated.

Combine remaining dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add to butter mixture in three batches. Chill resulting dough for 20-30 minutes. Scoop out 1-inch balls of dough and roll them in sugar/cinnamon mixture; place on chilled cookie sheets 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until centers are set.

Yield: 2 1/2 dozen.

click here for comments and additional photos

10Jul2009

BBA#9: Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Loaf

Posted in BBA Challenge, Breads, Desserts, Sweets by sallybr

Nine breads down, thirty-four to go!

From cinnamon rolls we follow a similarly delicious path, to a cinnamon-raisin-walnut-loaf (that’s quite a mouthful!). Running the risk of eternally jinxing myself, I’ll say that making this bread was a piece of cake, especially considering that I threw caution to the wind and halved the recipe again.

Peter Reinhart offers two variations to the basic recipe: a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar before rolling the dough into a loaf (creating a beautiful swirl in the center of the bread), and a light coating with melted butter plus cinnamon-sugar on top after baking. I decided to skip the swirl, as both me and beloved prefer to go light on sweets. But the sweet crust on top was impossible to resist, so I complied.

Loaf1

dough9

The dough was very nice to work with, smooth, soft, and rose quite well. But, you don’t have to take my word for it… Just follow the link for additional photos.

click here to see more

2Jul2009

A PIE FOR YOUR 4th OF JULY

Posted in Desserts, Sweets by sallybr

This year is very special for me, as it will be my first 4th of July as an American Citizen! I went through the Naturalization Ceremony on May 29th, a day I will never forget. Of course, I am looking forward to this weekend…

To share with you our favorite recipe for a very American pie, I introduce a guest blogger: my beloved hubby, who is much MUCH better with sweets and desserts in general than me.

Mom’s cherry pie. I grew up watching the women of the family make all kinds of fantastic sweets in the kitchen, including apple dumplings (mom), fudge (sisters), taffy (grandma), and a whole lot of cakes and pies (mom, grandma, aunt Mildred). I wasn’t a participant or apprentice in the creation of these delicacies, except for stirring the fudge, pulling the taffy or (happily) cleaning the beaters. Nevertheless, the memories gave me the interest to make a few sweet things on my own. Here’s a 4th of July pie that you and your kids will never forget…

4thofJulyPie

The Joy of Cooking is my kitchen bible, and here’s the Rombauer-Becker recipe for a fruit pie
(p. 650 of 2nd ed):

BERRY OR CHERRY PIE WITH FRESH FRUIT

1. Line a pan with pie dough (see below), or buy a frozen crust

2. Prepare, by picking over and washing, 4 cups of berries or fresh sour cherries – let them drain thoroughly or even spread them on a towel to dry. For the 4th of July pie we made two pies, and prepared 4 cups of fresh blueberry filling and 4 cups of fresh cherry filling, then appropriately divided them between the two pies.

3. For each 4 cups of fresh berries or sour cherries, combine 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of flour, 1/12 T lemon juice, ½ t cinnamon, and 2T quick cooking tapioca. Mix and then mix with the berries by gently stirring. If don’t have a source of fresh sour cherries, as we did while living in Michigan (the Traverse City Cherry Festival is Jul. 3-11 this year), then buy a couple of cans and use 3 (drained) cups instead of 4. If the canned cherries are sweetened, then reduce the sugar in the cherry filling to 2/3 cup.

4. Let the fruit mixture(s) sit for 15 min or more while you preheat the oven to 450 F.

5. Fill the pie shell(s) with the berries or cherries. For the 4th of July pie, use a couple of pieces of heavy paper or cardboard to confine the blueberries to one quarter of the pie shell, then take the paper/cardboard out. Cut 2 T butter into pieces and distribute it over the berries.

6. Roll out some dough (see below) and cut lattice strips or the stars and stripes; assemble on the pie

7. Bake at 450 F for 10 min, and then reduce the heat to 350 F for an additional 40 min, until the pie is golden brown.

In case you are tempted to buy a frozen pie crust, please read this article (you can also read it for inspiration). To make the pie dough use your favorite recipe, but if you don’t have one, Sally recommends you use this.