This is gonna be awesome. Nerdy awesome. Which is the best kind.
Just in case you live, um, on a planet with no movies or internet or books or newspapers, the final installment of the Harry Potter films is coming out on Friday. This is cause for a party.
A new friend of mine threw one such celebration last Friday (costumes required, duh), and I couldn’t resist cooking something from the books to take to share. But what!? So many options!
I settled on cauldron cakes. I wasn’t sure exactly what these are supposed to look like, but after a bit of perusing ideas on the interwebs, I came up with a plan. I’m pleased to say that I think it turned out well.
I know it’s actually the 2nd. But the Fourth of July is one of those holidays that gets a whole weekend. Some get a day, some get a break, this one gets a weekend.
What are you doing for the Fourth? Traveling? Cookouts? Blowing your yard to bits with fireworks?
Making a patriotic dessert?
Of course you are!
And how lucky that a holiday to celebrate the birth of our nation falls in a season ripe with berries that match our national colors.
This dessert is essentially three components: shortbread, berries, and cream. You can dress them up however you want to.
So far I’ve posted lots of wholesome (sort of), savory (mostly), meal-type recipes for your reading & eating enjoyment.
It’s time for something truly unnecessary, but totally worth your time.
Homemade candy!
Too difficult, you say? Surely must be… handmade candy is wildly expensive, so it must be a complicated, time-consuming challenge that only fabulous cooks can achieve after years of training, right?
Not so.
Here’s the secret that gourmet candy companies don’t want you to know: many candies are deceptively easy to make. Really. A big pot, a wooden spoon, and a candy thermometer (you can find one for less than twenty bucks at a home goods store, maybe even your grocery store’s baking aisle) comprise the bulk of the equipment list.
Of course, you’ll need some ingredients. Candy with no ingredients would be, well, gross.
Of late, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with integrating honey into my cooking. In my continuing quest to eliminate non-local foods from my diet, white sugar is going to be a major challenge. It makes an appearance on the ingredient list of almost any recipe, but it only grows in like, three US states. (Is that redundant, US states? Please advise.) Anyway, unless I plan to move to Florida, Hawaii, or Louisiana, the odds of finding sugar cane at my local farmers market are slim at best. Honey, on the other hand, is fashioned by busy little bees all over the place.
In a moment, I’ll show you how to make this tasty dessert. It’s easy. It’s delicious. It’s summer in a ramekin. I’m horrified that I’ve never made it before.
But first, a public service announcement.
Don’t be scared of ugly fruit.
A blemish, a torn bit of skin, or an asymmetrical shape do not a bad fruit make. Just like a frizzy hair day (read: every day I spend in the South) doesn’t make me a bad person. Contrary to what grocery stores would have you believe, not all squash produce pops out of the ground coated in wax and uniform in shape and size. Embrace variety.
“Seconds”, as you’ll see and hear them called, can provide an extremely economical way to buy fresh, local produce in bulk. While Grade A (code for pretty freakin’ perfect) produce is usually sold at the farmers market by the quart, pint, or pound, seconds are usually sold in bulk for a very low price so the farmer can avoid trucking home boxes of excess, super-ripe produce.The first batch of peaches I bought this season (about a month ago, amazingly… NC peaches ripened in mid-May) were seconds, and instead of paying $5 a quart, I paid $2 for an entire bagful that is now mostly sliced and in the freezer. This week was even better: the peach lady only had seconds available by the time I made it to the market, asked me how many I wanted, and wouldn’t let me pay her a dime for the eight peaches she placed gently in a bag.
Not too shabby, right?
If you frequent farmers markets or buy directly from farm stands, keep your eye out for seconds. Some vendors will have a seconds section, others keep them to the side until the Grade A produce is sold. If you don’t see any, ask! Chances are you’ll get a sweet deal.
I’m not exactly sure when I made the transition from thinking I hated carrot cake to eyeballing it with lust at bakeries. It seems to be one of those desserts with distinct factions: the lovers, the haters, and the folks who are mostly there for the cream cheese icing. I was somewhere in between those last two.
But whatever triggered this change in taste has permanently embedded carrot cake on my list of desserts to make whenever carrots find their way into my fridge.
For some reason I’ve always strongly associated carrots with fall harvests, not spring ones. Perhaps it’s because they are orange and fit oh so nicely into the autumn palette. I’ll be honest, there are lots of “when food grows” ideas that I’ve had to re-address after moving here. We arrived last August, and I kept waiting… and waiting… and waiting for carrots, storage onions, and potatoes to appear. A couple of vendors had carrots for about two weeks in early November, but that was it.
Recently, however, tables at the market have buckled under the weight of carrots so fresh the dirt still clings to them.
There are SO many recipes for carrot cake out there. Some with pineapple, some have apple sauce, some with a wide range of semi-exotic spices. I decided to try a family favorite from one of my dad’s cousins. It’s simple, but according to my mom it’s “soooooooo good!” Direct quote.
One day, I marched home from a nearby orchard, pink-cheeked and grinning, with thirty pounds of apples. I shoved them precariously onto the bottom shelf of my refrigerator, accompanied only by the water pitcher squashed against the left side wall.
I ate fresh, local fruit all winter. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to expand my horizons (or, technically, shrink them), draw more and more of my food directly from my local surroundings, and possibly even grow some of it myself.
If you had told me ten years ago, or even three years ago, that I would be launching a food blog on Earth Day this year, I would never have believed it. Ever.
Well.
Here we are!
Now, I could just make my dinner and be done with it, but I like sharing! And since I can’t have you all over for dinner every night, this seems like the best way I can share my adventures with you. Who knows! Maybe a recipe on this site will give you something new to try in your own kitchen. Maybe you’ll take comfort in reading my tales not only of success, but of the occasional disaster (I’m talking to you, homemade caramel sauce). Maybe the garden on my balcony will inspire a new plant or two in your own spot of sunlight. Maybe picking thirty pounds of apples on a brisk October day will be for you what it was for me: a place to start.
I hope you’ll stick with me as I embark on this tasty journey. And I’d love to hear from you as you eat & cook your way toward your own culinary goals.
So keep reading! Subscribe. Share, like, tweet, comment, e-mail, add to reader, follow… pick your internet verb(s) of choice and stick around for the fun. And the food, don’t ever leave before the food.
