Petite Treats - Vanilla-Cranberry Coffee Cake

My friends at Beth Cook Publicity sent me a complimentary copy of Petite Treats by MORGAN GREENSETH and CHRISTY BEAVER.  The whole idea of "guilt free" mini treats (they're guilt free right?) really peaked my interest.  I was particularly curious about making individual serving coffee cakes.  My introduction was with a recipe of Vanilla Cranberry Coffee Cake and I'm thinking of  the Hazelnut Fig Coffee Cake.  Maybe I'll just get fancier and bake the Strawberry Cream Eclairs.  The point is that the recipes are easy to follow and quick to put together.  If you have a large group for dinner, creating several choices is not a lot of work.

Pot lucks coming up for the holiday season?  Kids lunches with a special mini treat?  Hostess gifts?  There are so many possibilities.

CRANBERRY-VANILLA COFFEE CAKE

Get your morning off to a delicious start. MAKES 12

½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1¾ cup sugar
1 cup fresh cranberries
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon allpurpose
flour, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon unsalted
butter, at room temperature, divided
2 large eggs
½ cup heavy whipping cream
powdered sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a standard 12-well muffin pan with paper
liners.
** I cheated a little here and used the larger muffin tins.  Baking time was 25 minutes.
2. Scrape the vanilla bean into a food processor fitted with a blade. Discard the
pod.
3. Add the sugar and pulse until combined. Transfer all but ¼ cup to a
medium bowl.
4. Add the cranberries to the food processor. Pulse briefly until the cranberries
are coarsely chopped but not pureed.
5. In a medium bowl, sift together 2 cups of the flour and the baking powder
and salt.


6. In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle
attachment, combine ¼ cup of the butter and ½ cup
of the vanilla-sugar mixture. Beat on medium until
pale and fluffy.
7. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing fully after
each one and scraping down the bowl as needed.
8. Reduce the speed to low. Add half the flour mixture, then half the whipping
cream, then the remaining flour, then the remaining whipping cream, scraping
down the bowl as needed.
9. Using a 2-inch ice cream scoop, fill each muffin liner halfway full. Place a
dollop of cranberry sugar on top of the batter, avoiding the edges. Top with the
remaining batter, filling each liner three-quarters full.
10. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon flour to the
remaining vanilla sugar. Blend with your hands until combined. Sprinkle over
the top of each cake.
11. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center returns with no crumbs. The
toothpick may return with cranberries on it, and that’s OK.
12. Allow to cool for 15 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a cooling rack
to cool completely. Use a fine-mesh sieve to dust with powdered sugar before
serving.
13. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Verdict:  What a delicious mini cake this was and just enough to make me happy.  The crumb of the cake is light and the topping divine.

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

I have such mixed feelings about the fall.  The colour of the leaves is so beautiful.  You get the days that are great for sweater weather (my favourite).  But, the days start getting shorter and then the time change hits and it eventually becomes dark by around 5pm here.  Don't even get me started on the cold weather, snow, freezing rain, etc*.  So, for now, I'm trying to squeeze in as much tree-gazing time as possible.  

Last week we got together with friends at the Arboretum. It's an area in Ottawa, on the Experimental Farm (land that is used for agricultural research) with a variety of trees.

In addition to some cute knitted sock and preserves, our friends gave us a bag of jerusalem artichokes that they were given from a neighbouring plot at their community garden.  

After looking around at various recipes that included jerusalem artichokes, I decided to make this soup recipe from Simply Recipes.  The only adaption we made is that we didn't have as many artichokes and we added two carrots.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 pounds jerusalem artichokes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 quart chicken stock (we used vegetable stock)
• Salt and black pepper to taste

METHOD

1 Heat the butter in a soup pot over medium-high heat and cook the onions and celery until soft, about 5 minutes. Do not brown them. Add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Sprinkle with salt.

2 Add the jerusalem artichokes and the chicken stock to the pot and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low, and simmer, covered, until the jerusalem artichokes begin to break down, 45 minutes to an hour.

3 Using an immersion blender or upright blender, purée the soup. If using an upright blender, fill the blender bowl up only to a third of capacity at a time, if the soup is hot, and hold down the lid while blending. Alternately, you can push the soup through the finest grate on a food mill, or push it through a sturdy sieve. Add salt to taste.

Sprinkle with freshly grated black pepper to serve.

Verdict: The soup made for a nice warm lunch.  With the addition of the carrots, I found the soup to be a bit sweeter than I expected.  But, everyone enjoyed it.  For me, the most enjoyable part was being able to discover a bit about this jerusalem artichokes.

R's mom made these biscuits to go with the soup.  I asked her for the recipe and she said, "oh fit" and walked away.  I took this to mean that she doesn't have a recipe.  But I know she used flour, cream of tartar and baking soda.  Not sure what else.  

* I know I should talk about many of the great winter activities in Ottawa (canal, cross-country skiing, Winterlude, etc.), but for now I'm just going to wallow in a bit of post-summer pity.

Tomato Sauce

I am so glad I had stocked my freezer before E arrived (with Giz's help and the help of a friend).  I try to be productive during the day, but between our outings (necessary for maintaining my sanity), nursing and E's strong preference for being held (read: tendency to cry her head off when she isn't being held), it can be challenging to get much done.  Particularly chores that can't be dropped part way through.

(I can never get enough of these "ugly cry" pictures)

Thankfully, my cousin has been in town for the past week and a half.  I told her that, aside from the whole "husband-sharing" thing, I thinking having a sister-wife would be great.  With her love of babies, she happily entertained E while I made tomato sauce using up the tomatoes from our garden.

I blanched the plum tomatoes to get skin off.   

Then I diced the tomatoes, along with garlic and shallots.  I brought the tomatoes to a boil and let it boil down for about 45 minutes.

Since I didn't have enough tomatoes to make it worth canning, I went ahead and prepared sauce with other ingredients like roasted red pepper (finally finishing off the 1.5L jar that Giz felt we needed in our fridge), artichokes, herbs and chilli peppers.  This is the base of many of our pasta sauces.  

I then froze the sauce ( I just need to remember to add a bit of sugar when I warm up the sauce because it's a bit on the acidic side).

There's something so satisfying about growing the food yourself and making it from scratch.  Here's what we started with:

Part way through the season: