Nectarine Upside-Down Graham Cake

It’s always upsetting when fresh produce begins to go. We bought some lovely nectarines at last week’s farmer’s market and sadly, due to a week of entertaining and a subsequent plethora leftovers, the nectarines sat, virtually ignored for much of the week until at one point my husband resigned them to the refrigerator. They’re not bad, just a little tired. They needed to be revived. Reinvented.

The weather has turned chilly and damp here, and the wind is now whipping off of the water, so I decided to turn my sad nectarines into a warming upside-down cake. In the spirit of maintaining some level of healthfulness – they should have been a nutritious snack, after all – I made this cake with half whole wheat graham flour. The result is a hearty, dense cake that’s not too sweet. Fruit and fiber make this a less than sinful option for breakfast or brunch.

P.S.: by the way,  just FYI – this is YankeeCook’s 100th post. Hooray! I thought of installing one of those falling confetti, ticker-tape type plugins for this page, but I decided that would just be tacky. Too horn-tooty. Anyway, I’ll be sitting on my front steps waiting for those flowers you’re sending.

Nectarine Upside-Down Graham Cake - yields 6 to 8 servings

2 T butter
2 T honey
4 nectarines, sliced
2 eggs
1/3 C canola oil
1/4 C sour cream
1/2 t vanilla extract
1 C granulated sugar
1 C white flour
1 C whole wheat graham flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the butter at the bottom of 9 inch cake pan and allow it to melt in the oven while it pre-heats. Remove from oven. Drizzle the butter over the melted butter so that it is evenly distributed. Arrange the nectarine slices at the bottom of the pan.

In a medium size bowl, combine eggs, canola oil and sour cream. Gradually mix in sugar.

Sift flours, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Pour the batter over the nectarine slices in the cake pan.

Bake for 25 – 30 minutes until a wooden tooth pick comes out clean.

Allow to cool 10 minutes until the edges of the cake begin to pull away from the pan. Using a butter knife, loosen any edges that have not pulled away from the pan. Invert onto an oven proof dish.

Raise the oven heat to 500, and move a rack to the highest position. Place the inverted cake on the top rack so that the fruit caramelizes under the broiler for 5 minutes.

Remove from oven. Serve warm or cold with or without whipped cream.

Berry Shortcake

It’s berry season. My grandmother was famous for making a bang-up Strawberry Shortcake. In fact, she would make it every year for my mother’s birthday, until the year my mother finally requested a “real” birthday cake. Grandma felt that my mother is fortunate to have her birthday fall during berry season. That and it meant she got out of having to frost a cake. Wise lady, my grandma.

In any case, she made her Strawberry Shortcake with sponge cake.  Homemade of course. None of this supermarket nonsense. She was also known for making root beer from scratch, but that’s another story.

I like to make Shortcake with fresh homemade biscuits, for a nice buttery, salty flavor to balance the sweet whipped cream and assorted berries. Strawberry Shortcake is wonderful of course, but variety is the spice of life. I like to mix things up once in a while, which is why I like to use any number of seasonal berries in in Berry Shortcake.

Berry Shortcake - serves 4

1 pint of assorted  fresh blackberries, raspberries or strawberries
2 T – 1/4 C granulated sugar, depending on sweet tooth
1 C flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1 t sugar
1/4 t salt
1/3 C ice cold butter
1/2 – 3/4 C buttermilk (depending on the weather)
1 C heavy whipping cream
2 t sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Toss berries with the sugar in a large bowl and refrigerate for 1/2 hour, but no more than 2 hours. They start to get squishy and discolored after too long. We’re looking for fresh and bright, people.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs. Tip: When dicing the butter, I find that it’s helpful to coat the knife in flour and sprinkle the butter cubes with flour as you go. This way, the cubes are not fused together when they are dropped into the flour mixture.

Stir in the buttermilk until just moistened. Divide into quarters. Form each quarter into a ball and place onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 11 – 14 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean and the tops turn a lovely golden color.

Meanwhile, using either an electric beater, a counter top mixer or a whisk, combine the sugar and cream and beat until soft peaks form. Too far beyond that and it will end up as butter.

Remove the biscuits from the oven and allow them to cool. Carefully cut each in half, top the bottom half with a bit of whipped cream. Cover that with berries, a larger dollop of whipped cream and the top half of the biscuit.

Serve outside on a patio or deck after dinner, and watch the evening sky as the sun sets.

Cream Cheese Marble Brownies

It’s good to have a chocolate recipe on hand for emergencies and rainy days. The past few days have been awfully rainy and cold here on the coast of New England, and these fit the bill nicely. Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – it’s nice to have a rich dessert-type snack.

The brownie swirl is rich and dense and complements the fluffy sweetness of the cream cheese swirls. People seem to like them anyway…

Cream Cheese Marble Brownies - makes 16 brownies

1 C butter, softened
3/4 C sugar
1/2 C unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa powder
1/2 C milk
3 eggs
3/4 C flour
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 C confectionery sugar

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a large bowl using a electric beater or stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add the cocoa, milk and 2 of the eggs one by one, until well combined. Gradually add the flour.

Using an electric beater or stand mixer, cream the cream cheese until soft. Add the egg

and beat on medium until combined and lemon yellow. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar one quarter cup at a time, on low at first (to avoid a sugar sandstorm), and then increase the speed as the sugar is absorbed, scraping the bowl occasionally.

Pour half of the brownie batter into an lightly greased 8 x 8 inch brownie tin (you could use a glass or ceramic brownie dish, but I like to use a tin, because it’s more responsive to heat and it cools down faster when removed from the oven. But hey, it’s your kitchen).

Spoon the cream cheese mixture into the pan in three evenly spaced columns. Spoon the rest of the brownie batter around the cream cheese columns to fill in the spaces. Shake the pan slightly to make even out the surface.

Take a sharp knife and run lines across the surface in one direction. Do the same in a different direction, being careful not to mix the two components too much. We want swirlage people. Not mixage.

Bake 40 -50 minutes until the edges are pulling away from the pan slightly and a toothpick comes out almost clean from the center. Place on a cooling rack and allow to cool for at least 1 hour before cutting.

Ingredient origins: butter – Maine; Sugar – Florida; Equal Exchange cocoa powder – Dominican Republic (by way of the Netherlands); Milk – Massachusetts; Eggs – New Hampshire; Flour – Vermont; Organic cream cheese – Unknown; Confectionery sugar – Unknown

Lemon Tarragon Teacake

Teacakes. Is it not the most adorable word? It conjures images of flowery tablecloths, delicate china and smiling aunties.

Tarragon is a social chameleon. The Gatsby of herbs. It gets along just as well in sweet dishes as it does with its more common savory partners. This recipe demonstrates the former. Lemony, sweet and dense, Lemon Tarragon Teacake is the perfect showcase for tarragon’s delicate, mellow flavor. Confectionery sugar creates a nice crisp top.

For the full herb garden effect, try it with lavender, chamomile, jasmine or a similar floral tea.

Lemon Tarragon Teacake – serves 10

2 T lemon juice
2 eggs
1/4 C canola oil
1 C sour cream
3 C confectionery sugar
2 C flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
3 T chopped fresh tarragon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium size bowl, combine lemon juice, eggs, canola oil and sour cream. Mix in confectionery sugar 1/2 cup at a time.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Fold in the fresh tarragon

Pour into a metal loaf pan and bake for 55 -65 minutes until a wooden tooth pick comes out clean.

Coconut Curry Brownies (that happen to be Lactose Free)

This idea came to mind the other day when I was trying to think of what to do with some leftover Thai curry paste. We’d had our fill of savory-spicy applications, so I thought using it in something sweet might be interesting. Chocolate takes on spice very well and coconut goes nicely with curry and chocolate, so I decided to develop a brownie recipe using all three.

I also decided to cocofy it, thereby unendairying it. I just made up those words, but what I mean is that in this recipe, typical dairy based baking ingredients are replaced with coconut milk and coconut oil. I chose to do this in order to achieve the rich coconut flavor that complements chocolate so well. The fact that it’s lactose free is a happy and delicious accident.

These turned out to be dense and moist, with a decadent coconut flavor and a mild finish of curry spice. If you’re not into spice in your brownies, you may omit the curry paste. I suppose.

Lactose-Free Coconut Curry Brownies – yields 2-3 dozen, depending on the size of the brownies and the brownie pan.

1 C unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 C coconut oil, softened
1 can (14 ounces) coconut milk, full fat recommended
1 t Thai red curry paste
2 eggs
1 1/2 C sugar
1 C flour
1 C unsweetened, shredded coconut

In a large bowl, combine the coconut oil, cocoa and coconut milk, carefully folding the cocoa powder in before stirring (this will prevent a cocoa powder sandstorm when you use the electric beater in the next step).

With an electric beater set to medium beat until smooth. Add the sugar, eggs, curry paste and flour, beating on medium until combined. Stir in shredded coconut.

Pour into a greased, 10 x 13 inch rectangular brownie pan or 9 x 9 inch square brownie pan for higher brownies Bake at 350 degrees for 18-25 minutes for the rectangular pan, or 25-30 minutes for the square pan, until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack for at least one hour before cutting into squares.

Ingredient Origins (this time they’re not so local, but at least they’re still keeping with the minimally processed, less than five ingredients, requirement): Equal Exchange cocoa powder – Dominican Republic, by way of the Netherlands, Organic coconut oil – Colombia, Coconut Milk – Thailand, Cage-free organic eggs – New Hampshire, Sugar – unknown, Flour – Vermont, Shredded coconut – Oregon.