Coincidence (noun): a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance.
Serendipity (noun): good fortune; luck; the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.
Was it a coincidence or serendipity that just days after bookmarking these roasted pear and chocolate chunk scones, I discovered that the Sourdough Surprises project for this month was sourdough scones?
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Pumpkin spice muffins are one of those things that seem to spring up in every coffee shop and bakery on the very first day of fall. The ones I’ve had the most are the Starbucks version – not because they are the best, but because they are everywhere. The Starbucks pumpkin spice muffin is more like a pumpkin cupcake and has a cream cheese filling inside, which, while a good idea, has sort of an odd, gelatinous texture. My ideal pumpkin spice muffin – which I have been on the hunt for – is denser, warmly spiced, and has a cream cheese filling with a much more cream cheesey texture. I tried to create such a muffin last year and failed miserably, so I’m happy to say that this recipe pretty much nailed it.
Oh hai, Riley-cat!
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When late summer/early fall hits and I start seeing dark purple plums showing up in the grocery store and at the farmers’ markets, all I want to do is make plum coffee cake – which, contrary to the name, doesn’t actually have any coffee in it. Instead, it contains plums (of course) and a cinnamon struesel topping, the combination of which is much more than just the sum of its parts.
My Nana had a recipe for a great plum coffee cake, but unfortunately neither my Mum nor I could find it anywhere. Luckily I found a pretty similar recipe on the internet, and it came out exactly the way I was hoping: moist, deep cake studded with jammy puddles of plum, topped with crumbly struesel and finished off with a drizzle of lemony glaze. So good as a mid-morning pick-me-up, or mid-afternoon snack, or dessert, or pre-bedtime nibble…
We had our first “fall” day a few days ago, and while I made this cake while it was still warm and sunny, it is definitely an appropriately cozy treat for cool, crisp weather. This makes a large amount of cake, but Nate and I weren’t complaining. Plus it meant I had some to take to my co-workers, who weren’t complaining either…
Adapted from The Kitchn. Makes a 9″ x 13″ cake. I used tiny purple Damson plums, but use any kind you want – we had an Italian prune plum tree growing in our yard when I was a kid and they made excellent coffee cake. Also, I used frozen leftover struesel from making muffins to top the cake, so the final product according to the recipe as written might look slightly different than mine.
Preheat oven to 350˚F. Grease a 9″ x 13″ baking pan and set aside.
Depending on how big they are, pit and cut into quarters or sixths:
about 20 small, ripe plums (or equivalent – the more, the better, in my opinion!)
Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together:
3/4 cup soft, unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
One at a time, beat in:
3 eggs
Stir in:
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
In a smaller bowl, mix together:
3 cups all purpose flour (I used 2 cups all purpose and 1 cup whole spelt)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
Sift the flour mixture over the wet ingredients and fold with a spatula to combine thoroughly.
Spread half the batter in the prepared pan and top it with half the plums, cut side up. Gently spread the other half of the batter on top and cover it with the remaining plums.
For the struesel topping, combine in a small bowl:
1/2 cup melted unsalted butter
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour
Mix until crumbly, then sprinkle evenly over the top of the cake. Bake in the preheated 350˚F oven for about 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with a few moist crumbs sticking to it. Let cool for about 15 minutes.
In a glass measuring cup, combine:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
Stir in enough milk to make a not-too-runny glaze, and drizzle it over the baked coffeecake. Serve warm or at room temperature. It will keep, covered in plastic wrap at room temperature, for a few days.
(Besides eating them with butter and jam, of course.)
One of my favorite ways to enjoy an English muffin is in eggs benedict with soft poached eggs and lots of hollandaise sauce. However, in my experience, making hollandaise at home can be a bit of a pain – you need a lot of egg yolks, a ton of butter, and a fair amount of patience, which I don’t always have in the morning when I’m craving a decadent breakfast. So instead, I like to make cheese sauce to smother everything with. It’s not exactly eggs benedict anymore, but it’s delicious.
My Dad taught me how to make this cheese sauce and pour it over eggs. I like to add sautéed mushrooms because it reminds me of mushrooms and cheese on toast, which is another of my favorites. Other good things to layer under the poached eggs include ham or bacon, sliced tomato, sautéed spinach – pretty much anything you might want to put in eggs benedict. This was great with homemade English muffins, but any kind of toasted bread will work. Cheese sauce is kind of like chocolate that way – you can put it on practically anything and it will be good!
Serves 2.
In a small saucepan, combine:
a good handful of grated cheese (any kind – I used orange cheddar)
a small teaspoon of all purpose flour
1 – 2 tbsp milk (you can always add more to thin it out later, but it’s hard to thicken up if you add too much milk to start)
Put the saucepan over medium heat and stir the sauce with a whisk as the cheese melts. When it starts to bubble and get smooth, season it with salt, pepper, and cayenne or hot smoked paprika (I love the smokey flavour it has) and remove it from the heat.
I usually make the cheese sauce first and then sauté the mushrooms, poach the eggs, and toast the muffins. Then when I’m ready to assemble, I warm the sauce up over low heat and add a little milk to thin it if necessary.
You will need:
2 English muffins, split and toasted
sliced mushrooms sautéed in butter with salt, pepper, garlic powder and Worchestershire sauce (and/or whatever else you want to use)
4 poached eggs (I love this method for poaching eggs)
Butter the English muffin halves. Top them with the mushrooms and poached eggs. Pour a big spoonful of cheese sauce over the top and garnish with chives if you’re feeling fancy.
English muffins just happen to be one of my favorite breakfast foods (only partly because they form the base for eggs benedict) and they are one of those things that I keep meaning to make but never get around to doing. Enter Sourdough Surprises. This is the third time since I started baking with the group that the monthly project has coincided with something on my “to make” list! Perfect!
As always, I am kind of awe-struck that a bubbly mess of flour and water can so easily be turned into something like this:
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Big announcement time: Nate and I bought a house!!
We moved in the middle of August and have settled in pretty quickly – we love it here. We are in Shawnigan Lake, about 40 minutes from Victoria where we both still work, but we traded up for lots of privacy and green space. 🙂 Plus the Cowichan Valley has a seriously thriving local food scene, which I am very much looking forward to exploring!
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Seeing local strawberries in the store is a sure sign that summer is here, but to me, it is the raspberries that signal its true arrival. Last summer I got nostalgic about blackberries, but really, it’s all about the raspberries. My mum used to grow reapberries in her garden and I loved eating them straight off the bush, still warm from the sun, sweet and tangy and so good, and now, they taste like summer to me. BC raspberries are finally in stores and I have been shelling out the $4 or $5 per pint to get me some summery goodness. The only problem is that they don’t keep and I needed to find something to do with them besides eating them by the handful. Enter: Raspberry-Lemon-Poppyseed Muffin Cakes….
This month’s Sourdough Surprises project was bagels, yet another item that just so happened to be on my “summer to-make” list. The recipe comes from Susan at Wild Yeast, a fantastic blog and resource for all things concerning bread and the home of YeastSpotting, a weekly round-up of user-submitted blog posts featuring bread and yeast (to which this post has been submitted!).
You should really head over to read Susan’s original post of this recipe, because not only is it witty, it is also very informative. I’ve never made bagels before, but I do agree with many of her opinions, including the one that the only good bagel is a chewy bagel. This means kneading the heck out of the dough, and unless you have arms of steel and a lot of free time, you’re going to “knead” a stand-mixer. (Sorry, that was terrible.)…
This is the second post in a series of three – click to read Part I and Part III.
As promised, here’s the follow-up to my last post on Danish pastries: how to shape and fill the Danishes. So fun!
I got really excited about the different Danish shapes I was going to make, so I tried a whole bunch of them. They were all pretty successful so I’m confident that I can pass along my skillz ;). I only used half the batch of dough to make these (I couldn’t justify making sixteen Danishes for only two of us) so I will be experimenting with the rest of the dough sometime soon… stay tuned for Part III! ;)…
