Fruit Archives - Baking With Unicorns

Lemons Make Me Happy :-D

October 11, 2014 by Baking Unicorn 1 Comment

Well, clearly my posting streak died. Damn you school!

But hopefully this post signifies the start of a more regular posting regiment… though considering how I failed to know about several exams and meeting that were on some calender somewhere, I say this with a grain of salt… or a block of salt.

This song/video I was planning on posting as my new favorite… about a month and a half ago. I still love it (clearly as I’m sharing it here), but it’s rather sad that it’s been that long since my last post. wah wah.

I actually love all of Miranda’s new CD, Platinum. Of note, the title track, Platinum, and Gravity is a B**ch.

So why do lemons make me happy? Because they do… specifically in yogurt form.
I’m currently training for a half marathon. It’s in 1 week! YIPES! Went for a 13.1 mile run (aka, a half marathon) last week and then spent the rest of the day limping around Grove Fest with friends. OOOPS! Apparently my body decided to be angry. But why is this of any importance to baking? Really, it’s only because the half marathon sent out a sponsor email with a coupon for Noosa Yohgurt, which has become my new favorite food thanks to my friend Caroline (damn her for getting me addicted). Anyway, I decided baking with said yohgurt should happen. Since lemon is me favorite, a natural progression was lemon pound cake, right? Right. After a bit of googling around for a recipe, I found Ina Garten’s recipe. Since it’s just me in my place, I decided to half the recipe and made only one cake (reflected below). As you’ll see in the pictures, my cake decided to sink in the middle rather than rise… I’m not certain if this is because I didn’t add enough baking soda (or powder?) cuz I definitely did not measure them out properly, or whether I beat the batter too much (or too little)… but regardless, my cake middle is concave rather than convex. Meh! Still tastes good!

Lemon Pound Cake
Inspired by this

Ingredients
Cake:
1 stick Butter
1 cup Sugar
2 Eggs
zest of 3 Lemons
1 1/2 cups Flour
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
salt
3 oz Noosa Yohgurt (lemon!)
2 tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
Syrup/Glaze:
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice
1 cup confectioners Sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an 8 1/2 X 4 1/2 X 2 1/2 inch loaf pan.

2. Cream butter and sugar together in mixing bowl. Add lemon zest and eggs to butter mixture and beat until completely combined. Set aside. In a separate bowl, combine baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour. Set this aside too! In a small bowl, combine Noosa Yohgurt, vanilla and lemon juice together, mixing completely. Then add half the flour to the butter mixture. Mix until incorporated, then add all of the yoghurt mixture. Stir yoghurt mixture in and then finish by adding the second part of the flour mixture. Mix completely.

3. Transfer batter to prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes (toothpick should come out clean!). Remove from oven (unless you want it EXTRA crispy) and allow to cool for ~10 minutes. While the cake cools, place 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup of lemon juice in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Allow sugar to dissolve completely. I personally wanted a slightly thicker syrup, so I allowed some of the liquid to boil off.

4. Use a spatula to loosen sides of cake from pan and turn onto wire rack. Take a fork to the top of the cake and prick small holes in the top. Pour prepared syrup on top of cake, allowing it to spill over sides and soak into the top via the pricked holes. Allow cake to cool fully (~45-60 minutes?). When cake is cooled, combine confectioner’s sugar and 1 tablespoon lemon juice in a small bowl. Continue to add lemon juice to glaze until desired consistency is obtained. Then drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake, again letting excess drip down the sides.

5. nom nom 😀

WAIT!!!!
So I started writing this post a week ago. Since then I’ve discovered a new song that has been on repeat all night. I would save it for the next post, but I’m faaaaaaar toooo excited to wait that long (cuz who knows when that will be?!). This is You + Me, a teaming up of Alecia Moore (aka, PINK!) and Dallas Green. So excited for this album!

Farmers’ Market Find: pt 1

August 10, 2014 by Baking Unicorn 1 Comment

Well, it seems that when I don’t have a job or work to do (other than cleaning and organizing) I have time to post things. 3 posts in a week? Unprecedented. But, cuz I know that life will pick up in the next week, I figure, may as well milk this posting time for all I can.

First, I would like to share this video. I saw it a couple months ago, but as my posting has been nil in the past few months, I haven’t had the chance to share it till now. Yanis, Arnaud, and Mehdi are phenomenal, and I love watching them dance! They are the reason I did a performance with the GGRD Jeerleaders in heels. The three kill it in this performance. Whenever I need a pick me up, I just watch this:

Now, because of all this free time, today I had the opportunity to bike to the farmers’ market in Tower Grove Park. I was too late to go to the free yoga class (went there last week with my friends Beth and Jack), but was just in time to hit the post yoga rush. After what seemed like an oddly long coffee line wait for a line of 5 people, with coffee in hand, I enjoyed a stroll around the whole market, scanning all the stands for the best produce. Most stands had heirloom tomatoes, so of course I had to get some. But what to do with just a tomato? Naturally, basil and bread were the next buys. Along with those, I found some small, sweet plums. Mine! My plan was to just eat the plums and make bruschetta with the other ingredients.

But once I got home, that plan dissolved. I found I had 6 plums plus 2 more that I had from the other day at Whole Foods. So many plums! Clearly baking was the only option. Because I had the basil, and I know that I NEVER finish all the basil in whatever dish I bought it for, I decided plum and basil should come together in a cake. And so that’s what happened here! This recipe is a modification of a cake I had in San Francisco several years ago. The baker actually has her own blog, The Moon in My Kitchen. She’s wonderful! This particular recipe is based on this post. The couple pictured in the post are my friends in San Francisco, and I was actually at the dinner where those pics were taken. Since that dinner, I’ve made this recipe in various forms. It’s delicious! And easy to play with.

With this particular iteration, I had leftover ingredients. I cut a few too many plums and made too much of the candied walnuts. So those became a salad with arugula, heirloom tomato, and fresh parmigiano-reggiano cheese. Nummy! (the ingredient amounts below are what I should have used. oops!)

Plum-Basil Cake
inspired by the link above!

ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
8 1/2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup +1 tablespoon sugar
zest from 1 orange
2 eggs
6 oz yogurt (I used vanilla Greek yogurt)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 oz chopped walnuts
~4 plums
~3 sprigs (?) Basil

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line a 9″ round pan with parchment paper.

2. Toss chopped walnuts, 1/2 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon sugar into a frying pan and place on medium heat. Allow butter to fully melt. Stir constantly until sugar and butter begin to caramelize and walnuts begin to toast. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. If you have small plums, then I would quarter them. If you have medium/large plums, I would cut them into eighths. Just depends on how thick you want your plum slices. Ultimately you will want 16+ slices. I cut up 6 plums. Quartered 4 and the other 2 into eighths. Hence why I had too many plum slices and the need to make a salad. As for the basil, remove leaves from stem and discard stem (unless you want it for something). Coarsely chop basil and toss plums and basil together in a medium bowl.

4. Sift flour, baking soda, and baking powder together in a small bowl. Set aside. Cream butter (remaining 8 tablespoons) and sugar (remaining 2/3 cup) together in a medium bowl. Add in 1 egg at a time, beating thoroughly after each egg. Toss in the orange zest, vanilla extract, and yogurt. Whip that all together. Add in the flour mixture and mix until just combined. Try not to beat it too much as it can make the batter a bit dense.

5. Spoon 1/2 of the batter into the prepared pan and spread it out. Then place plums with basil in whatever arrangement you want on top. Cover with remaining batter and spread this addition out. Place remaining plums and basil on top. Finally, sprinkle candied walnuts over everything. Bake for 55-60 minutes or until tester comes out clean from the center. I added extra plums to the center of my cake. This slowed the baking in the center, so it took a bit longer than 60 minutes in my oven. Play it by ear… or some such phrase.

6. Remove cake from oven and allow to cool for ~30 minutes on wire rack. Then, if you can, lift cake out using the parchment paper edges. Or turn it out. Whatever works for you. Then eat it all. All. 😀

A Crispy Holiday!

December 29, 2013 by Baking Unicorn 2 Comments

I just spent the past 9 days in upstate New York with my family for the holidays. It was a lovely time. My aunt and uncle came for 2 nights to celebrate xmas with us and my brothers and sisters, except the oldest brother, were all there with me and my parents. The Muppets were also there. We watched the Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Family Christmas, both classics to my family. One of my favorite songs from Muppet Christmas Carol is “Thankful Heart”, sung by Scrooge (Michael Caine) at the end of the movie. If you don’t know it, enjoy:

So much cooking and baking occurred as well. OOOFTAH!! I’m pretty sure I’m now a blimp. Perhaps I will eat only salads until classes start again…. granted, I put so much cheese on my salads and garnish them with a healthy side of croutons, I doubt this would reduce my blimp-ness any. Sigh. I’m terrible at diets and restricting food unless ordered by a doctor, and even then…. Guess I’ll just have to hit the gym a few extra times.

Despite my inability to restrict my eating, my mother has managed to do quite a good job a cutting out gluten from her diet. Course, this is because she’s allergic to it, but I still find it impressive (clearly this trait was not passed along). I spent most of the time upstate happily figuring out ways to make various desserts gluten free. It’s kinda a great challenge to make a dessert that is gluten free AND tastes at least similar to the gluten-ness version. To my mothers joy (or dismay), I managed to make a pretty darn good Toll House chocolate chip cookie to be free of the gluten and almost indistinguishable from the normal version. But that’s not what is recorded below. Why? Probably because I once again failed to document any of the things that I made upstate, except for this one that I made last night on a whim.

The whim mostly stemmed from my friend, Mik, sending me this AMAZING apron:

I felt it only natural for me to bake something at that moment, so I did! Having had a lot of chocolate floating around in other recipes, I decided to switch it up a bit and make a fruit based dessert that would also go well with the multiple 1/2 gallon tubs of ice cream that were in the freezer. So here it is, my version of apple crisp, modified to make it gluten free.

Apple Crisp Sans Gluten:
Loosely based on This

Ingredients:

6-7 Granny Smith Apples
Zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups Gluten Free Oats (I used Bob’s Redbarn)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Peel, core and cut apples into thin slices. Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon, the nutmeg, the cloves, the lemon zest, and 1/4 cup of sugar to the apples. Toss together until completely mixed up (all slices of apple are covered with spices and sugar).

3. Cream butter and rest of sugar in a small mixing bowl. Add in the oats and cinnamon and combine. The mixture should be fairly crumbly. Place the apples in an 8×8 pan (I used a glass Pyrex dish). Shake the pan/dish a bit to get the apples to “settle in” a bit. Cover the top of the apples with the oat and butter crumble.

4. Pop the pan/dish into the oven for ~30 minutes. I decided it was done when the oats were beginning to brown and an apple, when pierced with a toothpick, was soft but not mushy. Let cool for a ~10 minutes and the serve with your favorite ice cream (or whatever you have left over from the holidays!)

Lighting in mom’s kitchen was weird… But it tasted grrrreat!

Of Lemons and Cornmeal

November 17, 2013 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Thanksgiving is approaching far faster than I would like. Mostly this means that I am supposed to be finishing up those pesky applications for graduate school, however clearly I’m typing this post rather than working on my applications. I’m the worst!
But it’s FALL! I love this weather. I love being able to wear hoodies and scarves while not freezing my bum off as I walk to the subway stop. I also love the crunching of the leaves (and of course the pretty colors that the leaves turn). As I was walking to work today, I saw these roses and was a bit surprised by them being in full bloom in the middle of November, but then again, I know nothing about plants, so maybe this is totally normal?

But back to Thanksgiving. I was musing over possible dessert recipes for this years festivities. Lots of thoughts of caramel, apples, cheese and pumpkin have been floating around my somewhat crowded head. Nothing has been set in stone yet, and probably wont be until I am in the kitchen in central NY. This particular recipe popped into my head because corn is a “festive” ingredient, right? And I love lemon. So why not throw them together into a delicious cake? I’ve made this recipe before, perhaps a year or so ago, and wanted to revisit it. I changed a couple things from how I made it last time, and I think there’s a minor but noticeable improvement.

First, I changed how I made my almond flour. Last time I used my food processor to chop up the almonds into small enough bits to be an acceptable “flour” however I was scared I would turn the almonds into almond butter if I blended too long, so the “flour” was rather coarse. This time, I blended the almonds with the sugar, hoping that the sugar would help keep the almond bits separated and less prone to becoming butter. The result was finer almond bits and no butter! Second, I added more lemon zest, both to the cake and to the syrup. Each part received zest from 1 1/2 lemons, making the whole cake super lemony, but not tart!

If I make this again and have the patience to do so, I think I’ll use a coffee mill to make the almonds, sugar and cornmeal all SUPER fine. I like the somewhat grainy texture of the cake as it turned out this time, but I’m curious to see if making the dry ingredients super fine will make a smoother cake. Also, note that this recipe is GLUTEN FREE!!!!!

Almond Flour Progression

Cornmeal Lemon Cake
modified from a recipe I took a picture of at Equinox… no clue what the book is. SORRY!

Ingredients
Cake:
10 oz raw almonds
8 oz white sugar
6 oz cornmeal
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
3 eggs
zest of 1 1/2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon baking powder

Syrup:
zest of 1 1/2 lemons
juice of 2 lemons
1/2 cup sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8″ round pan with parchment. Set aside.

2. Place almonds and sugar into a food processor. Pulse for ~40 seconds. Take a look and see if more pulsing is needed. Again, the sugar should help prevent the almonds from becoming butter, so don’t worry about that too much. If you want to try to get the almonds to be finer, go ahead and pulse longer. When satisfied, sift the mixture. undoubtedly, some almond bits will not fit through. Put cornmeal and the almond bits that are too large into food processor and blend some more. Sift again. If some almond bits are still too large and you have the patience to do this again, return some of the cornmeal/almond/sugar mix that did sift through to the food processor with the too-large almond bits. Pulse and re-sift.

3. Cream butter and ~1 cup of the cornmeal/almond/sugar mixture together in a large bowl. Add the eggs and beat together. Add the rest of the almond mixture, lemon juice, lemon zest, and baking powder. Combine until completely incorporated. Transfer better to prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes (or until toothpick comes out clean).

4. Allow cake to cool in pan for at least 30 minutes then transfer to a wire rack. While cooling on the rack, prepare the syrup. Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a light boil over a low heat. Stir constantly with wire whisk for ~7 minutes or until mixture has thickened to a runny syrup consistency. Remove from heat and set aside.

5. Poke holes in the top of the cake! I used a toothpick cuz it was handy, but a fork would work and probably would have been faster than a toothpick. Pour syrup over cake, allowing it to soak into the holes you just poked. I used almost all the syrup, but probably had a couple tablespoons left in the pan. Make sure you get around the edge of the cake as this is the most well done area and soaking it in syrup will soften it up a bit.

6. Serve either immediately or allow to cool completely. Either way, it tastes pretty damn good!!

The Evolution of Apple Stuff

October 15, 2013 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

I have very strong memories of “Apple Stuff” from childhood. I thought it was delicious!!! (or that’s my memory of it. Perhaps my mom remembers otherwise). If I recall correctly, then Apple Stuff was a recipe that my mom modified from something she found in the newspaper. Quite simply, Apple Stuff is the combination of granny smith apples, raw cashews, and a bit of lemon juice. Throw it all into a food processor to chop it all up, and PRESTO! Apple Stuff!
I made a batch a few weeks ago. Delicious as always and just as I remembered it. As I was munching on my apple stuff, I got to thinking of how this could be incorporated into a baking delight. I started out with thinking of making it into a cheese cake kind of thing, where instead of peanut butter, one uses cashew butter and then adds some caramelized apples on top. This still may happen, but will require a touch more planning and though on my part.
But last Wednesday, we had out weekly lab meeting and there was brie, crackers and grapes. yum! And then it hit me, brie and apples are great together… right? That’s a thing? Maybe? From there, I decided granny smith apples and brie would be excellent together. But a brie cheesecake does not sound delicious to me. That actually sounds terrible and no unicorn in the world would endorse such a thing. So how could I combine brie and apples into a baked good? Course I next went to scone! But I just made a savory scone… Then it hit me, BISCUITS! They’re totally different from scones because they aren’t triangular shaped, right?
So that’s what I have concocted. Brie and Apple Biscuits.
Unfortunately, the brie was super strong, and the apple was not so strong. So they were mostly Brie Biscuits. When I remake these, and I’m sure I will sometime soonish, I’ll probably double my apple and half the brie amount. But what follows below is the recipe that I just used to make this first batch of biscuits!

Brie and Apple Biscuits
modified from J.P.’s Big Daddy Biscuits

Ingredients:
1 medium sized granny smith apple
1/2 lb brie (cold)
2 cups flour + extra for kneading
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter (cold)
1/2 cup milk

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Heavily grease cups of a 12 count cupcake pan. May want to also flour the insides.

2. Place brie on a flour dusted cutting board and have extra flour near by to throw onto brie as you cut it. This helps to separate the brie into distinct cubes as you cut it. Cut the brie into small cubes (~1 cubic centimeter). Place brie cubes, fully separated from one another into a bowl and place back into fridge.

3. Place flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter (cut into ~6 pieces) into food processor and pulse for 20-30 seconds. This will cut up the butter, yielding a coarse cornmeal texture. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside.

4. Peel granny smith apple, cut into ~8 sections, removing core and seeds. Place this in the food processor and pulse for 20-30 seconds. The consistency of the apple should be like that of a cole slaw. Add apples to the butter/flour mixture. Add in the chilled brie cubes and mix everything together. Slowly add most of the milk. Combine until ball of dough forms. This should be somewhat sticky, but not impossible to handle. If it seems too dry, then add in a little more milk.

5. Turn dough out onto a heavily floured surface and knead for 1-2 minutes. The dough should still be sticky, but not clinging to your fingers and unmanageable. Form dough into a ball and then gently flatten the dough out into a circle that’s 3/4 inch thick. Using a knife, cut the dough into 12 even sections. I did this by first cutting into 4 sections (perpendicular cuts), and then divided each of these 4 quadrants into 3 pieces. Take each wedge and form into a ball. Plop the ball into one of the well greased cupcake cups.

6. Bake for 13-15 minutes. Take out of oven and let cool. I’m not entirely sure how long one should let these cool for. I let them cool for ~5 minutes and then started to take them out of the pan. This was very difficult as the cheese was causing the biscuits to stick to the sides. I’m not sure if this would have been easier if the cheese had cooled. As an alternative, try using cupcake papers next time? Not sure if that would help.

7. Serve warm! Or as my friends Mik and Vani did, serve with pasta topped with eggplant and tomato sauce.

(nom nom… munch)