Monthly Archives: June 2009

My Big Feta Greek Spreading

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I’ve discovered there’s no place in the middle when it comes to olives. People love olives or they adamantly, for sure, no doubt about it, can not stand them. I’ve never heard anyone say, "Olives? Oh, I can take them or leave them."

I’m one who loves them. As long as they are not from a can. Don’t call me an olive snob, though.

I grew up on black olives from a can. My dad and I could eat a can together at one sitting. We never had to share. My mom and my brother were from the "can not stand them" camp. Now, though, I prefer them from a jar or from a bin in the deli case at the grocery store. Any color olives, with pits or without, stuffed with almonds or garlic or feta or jalapenos — I’m there.

I created My Big Feta Greek Spreading for a cooking class I taught in 2003, shortly after I’d seen the movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." The spread, with a cream cheese base, becomes a little bit Greek with the addition of feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, olives and pine nuts. The flavors develop when the spread is made the day before you plan to serve it. This time, I used Aromatic Roasted Olives, pitted and chopped to mix into the cheese spread. The recipe for Aromatic Roasted Olives is in my column this week. You can click here to get to it quickly.

I serve My Big Fat Greek Spreading with big chunks of chewy bread. Pita chips are also good with the spread. And for lunch, spread it on a toasted bagel and eat it along with a salad of fresh greens.

My Big Feta Greek Spreading is full of big fat flavor. You may even be able to sneak it by one of those no doubt about it, can’t stand olives people.

My Big Feta Greek Spreading

  • 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
  • 4 ounces feta cheese
  • 1/2 cup drained and chopped oil-cured sun-dried tomatoes (Pat tomatoes with paper towel to remove excess oil)
  • 1/4 cup pitted and chopped Aromatic Roasted Olives
  • 1/2 cup lightly toasted pine nuts
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried basil leaves
  • 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves or 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
  • 2 chubby cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

In a mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to blend cream cheese and feta. Add remaining ingredients and mix well with wooden spoon. Serve with chunks of chewy bread with crunchy crust.

 

Whisk It Wednesday: Road Trip — To Market, To Market, to Buy Some Calzones

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It’s my third Whisk-It Wednesday. As the professional organizer I am working with helps me whisk away the things in my office I don’t need and whisk everything I do need into a system I can easily maintain, I’ve been trying to do the same thing with the files on my computer. I still have some photos and stories from a year ago that I never shared. This week, I’m whisking out several photos from a culinary weekend  last summer.

Dennis and I, along with two other food- and fun-loving couples, headed south on a sunny Friday morning. First stop, St. Joseph, Minn., where we visited Jim Degiovanni. He and his wife, Mary, own Dancing Bears Farm and Bed and Breakfast. I had heard that Jim baked bread in an outdoor brick oven he built himself. I’ve been intrigued with the idea of baking outdoors. In fact, I’ve got a spot picked out in my yard that I think would be perfect.

I called Jim and asked if he would mind having some visitors. We arrived as Jim was preparing calzones with yeast dough he makes himself and fresh ingredients to fold inside of each one. Jim’s calzones are hot items at the St. Joseph Farmers’ Market. They go fast.

In Jim’s kitchen, just steps away from the brick oven, fluffy pillows of dough were resting, ready to be turned into calzones.

Jim invited his visitors to help pat the soft dough into a thin round.

Each disk of dough gets layered with spiced tomato sauce, fresh basil from Jim and Mary’s herb garden, cheese, and some get pepperoni, too.

The stuffed and sealed calzones are ready for a trip to the hot, hot, hot brick oven outdoors.

Jim uses his peel to carefully slide the calzones into the oven.

Many calzones can bake together in the deep oven.

In little time, the hot pockets were golden brown and oozing with cheese. The yeasty, Italian-style aroma must waft through the countryside around Jim and Mary’s farm on calzone and bread-baking days at Dancing Bears Farm. It must be one of the reasons people line up at the farmers’ market, waiting for the gates to open. They’re just following their nose. Jim shared his calzones with us. Oh, oh, oh. So, so good.

And off to the market they go. Along with some of Jim and Mary’s chickens, loaves of Jim’s breads, homemade granola, heirloom tomatoes — you must go see them at the market.

Jim isn’t the only who uses the oven. Two days after Jim is done baking calzones and loaves of bread, the oven is finally cool enough for his wife, Mary, to bake her special cookies that also go to the farmers’ market.

It’s one of those great Minnesota weekend trips — a drive to St. Joseph on a Friday to be sure to get to the opening of the Farmers’ Market at 3:00. If you get there early, browse around town and visit the campus of the College of St. Benedict. It’s beautiful. They have a very nice gift shop, too. If you’re hungry, my favorite place to eat in town is Bo Diddley’s, a cozy little place with homemade soups and delicious sub sandwiches made on their homemade sub buns. And be sure to check out the St. Joseph Meat Market right in town. They have so many varieties of house-made sausages. Some very unusual! You’ll have to take them home to cook them, though.

Then spend the night at Dancing Bears Bed and Breakfast. Meet Jim and Mary, see their gardens, all their farm animals and the brick oven. And I’ll bet you’ll get some homemade bread.

If you bring your bikes along, you can ride the Lake Wobegon Trail on Saturday. If you’re feeling real energetic, you can ride the full 28 miles from St. Joseph to Osakis. But remember, you’ll need to go back to where you started from, too.

I plan to get back to St. Joseph, Minn. this summer on a Friday so I can check out the farmers’ market, visit Jim and Mary to see what’s new at their farm and bed and breakfast. And while I’m there, I’ll stop next door to visit their neighbors, Mary Ann Friederichs and Steve Nelson, owners of Collegeville Artisan Bakery. You’ll probably see Mary Ann at the Farmers’ Market, too, with all kinds of freshly made Collegeville Artisan breads. Can you imagine how that country neighborhood smells? Not like cows, that’s for sure.

On Saturday morning we headed south again to the Minnesota Garlic Festival. You can read more about that in my blog post from last August. Just click here. This year’s Garlic Festival will be held on Saturday, August 15th in Hutchinson, Minn. at the McLeod County Fairgrounds. I’ll be there! Time for another road trip.

Mediterranean Bruschetta on Foodista

Have your cake and eat 7-Up, too.

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Everytime I look through my mom’s old recipe file, I get a surprise. It’s not often that I take time to flip through the very organized file of cards.  Some recipes she typed onto the cards, others are clippings from newspapers and magazines that she taped onto white recipe cards. I usually go to the large file when I’m looking for a recipe that I remember her making. The other day I was looking for a rhubarb cake in my mom’s recipe file, and I came across 7-Up Cake. It sounded like a pound cake, with lots of butter, way more sugar than what you’d put into a traditional cake and several eggs. The only liquid was 7-Up. I always like a good pound cake, so I made the 7-Up Cake.

I brought the butter and eggs to room temperature. I measured the 7-Up and lemon flavoring into a cup and set it beside the butter and eggs. When I was ready to mix up the cake. I pulled out my heavy-duty stand mixer. I beat the butter and sugar together for close to 10 minutes. I think superfine sugar works best. It dissolves much faster than regular granulated sugar. The eggs went in, one at a time, with each egg incorporated completely into the butter mixture before the next egg went into the bowl. I added the flour in 1/2 cup increments, alternating with some of the 7-Up/lemon flavoring. Just as my mom taught me, I started and ended with the dry ingredients. Lots of fluffy batter.

Although the recipe directs to bake the cake for 1 hour to 1 1/4 hours, I baked it to doneness in about 55 minutes. I’d suggest testing the cake for doneness with a long wooden pick after about 50 minutes of baking. Too much time in the oven will make the cake dry. When the tester comes out clean, the cake is done. Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a cooling rack.

The cake is quite good sprinkled with powdered sugar and eaten as is. Just for the fun of it, I decided to cut the cake through the middle and sandwich some white frosting and blueberries between the two layers. I’m not very good at making straight cuts. I use toothpicks as my guide as I move the serrated knife around the cake.

The frosting/filling concoction I mixed up is acutally a traditional frosting for Waldorf Astoria Cake, sometimes called Red Velvet Cake. I made the Waldorf Cake as cupcakes for this week’s column, topping the bright red cupcakes with whipped cream cheese frosting and fresh blueberries, creating a patriotic red, white and blue dessert for the 4th of July. Traditionlly, though, the red cake is topped with a frosting made of a base of cooked milk and flour.

The cooked frosting is another job for the stand mixer. The cooled mixture of milk and flour is blended with butter and sugar that has been beaten for 20 minutes.  The sugar needs to melt into the butter, becoming light and very smooth. The recipe I offer here is the one I got from my 4-H leader years ago, along with the Waldorf Cake.

The cake is lemony fresh, a bit crunchy on the outside and moist and tender on the inside. If I ever make this dessert again, I would spread the frosting between the two layers of 7-Up Cake and serve fresh berries along side rather than layering them with the filling. I felt I needed to refrigerate the cake with the fresh berries in the middle.

Slices of just plain, unfilled 7-Up Cake would be delicious topped with fresh berry sauce and a dollop of whipped cream.

Blueberry and Cream-Filled 7-Up Cake

  • 3 sticks butter
  • 3 cups sugar (I recommend superfine sugar)
  • 5 large eggs
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons lemon flavoring
  • 3/4 cup 7-Up

Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Add flour, lemon flavoring and 7-Up. Pour into well-greased 12-cup Bundt pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Turn out onto cooling rack. When cake is completely cool, slice in half. Spread filling over bottom layer, saving some to spread on cut side of top layer. Arrange blueberries over filling. Position top of cake over the filling.

Cream Filling:

  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 pint fresh blueberries, rinsed

Cook flour and milk together until thick. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Cream sugar, butter and vanilla together with electric mixer for 20 minutes until very fluffy and sugar is dissolved. On low speed, blend cooked mixture into butter mixture in bowl. Frosting should be consistency of cold oatmeal.

Sand Cake, No Grit

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I was with friends last night for an Italiam-themed potluck meal. My firend, Bobbie, brought a dessert she found in one of Michael Chiarello’s cookbooks. Rosemary Sand Cake with Summer Berries is a light, lemony cake flecked with bits of fresh rosemary.

I used to watch Chiarello’s Food Network show every Saturday. I love his casual style and his down-to-earth approach to food preparation and entertaining. And he just seems like such a nice guy.

He often made use of fresh herbs in the dishes he prepared on his show. For this cake, he chose rosemary.

The recipe calls for potato starch. It has a silky texture, similar to cornstarch and gives the cake a fine delicate texture. Bobbie found potato starch at our local natural food co-op, but I think many grocery stores carry it. It’s probably on the shelf with other baking ingredients.

We could barely detect even a hint of rosemary as we ate the cake. Bobbie had just baked it in the afternoon. We think that after the cake had been stored overnight, the flavor of the fresh herb may be more pronounced. My group of food-loving friends talked about trying other herbs in the cake. Lemon thyme would be good.

Tender, grainy, delicate (no grit) — a sand cake that makes a perfect base for fresh, summer berries. We all loved it. I think you will, too.

I wish I had a slice to eat for breakfast this morning. With a cup of rich, dark coffee. And Michael Chiarello sitting with me.

You can go right to Michael’s recipe by clicking here.

If you’re a fan of Michael Chiarello, you can keep up with him at his blog: ChiarelloBlog.

I miss him on the Food Network, but right now he is a contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef.

Whisk It Wednesday: Katie’s Frozen Lime Pie

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My son and daughter-in-law, Andy and Katie, and their sweet baby Claire were here for a few days. Andy and Katie enjoy being in the kitchen and appreciate good food. It seems nine-month-old Claire will soon be joining in on kitchen fun. There’s no doubt she is turning into a little foodie. She sits in the Tripp Trapp chair (we’ve had it since our boys were little) at the table with us, gumming small chunks of cooked potatoes, avocadoes, sweet potatoes and peaches. Before long, she’ll be wanting garlic mashed potatoes, fresh guacamole, sweet potato pie and peach salsa. And probably some of her mom’s Frozen Lime Pie.

I’ve never been a big fan of frozen desserts that do not include ice cream or gelato. I call Katie the queen of homemade ice cream. She makes the best and often stirs it up and treats us to her homemade frozen cream when she is here. So, when Katie said she would make the Frozen Key Lime Pie from Ina Garten’s "Barefoot Contessa Family Style" cookbook, I was only mildly excited. I love lime and I know anything that comes from one of Ina’s cookbooks has got to be delicious. I figured there was a chance I might like the frozen pie.

Katie made the graham cracker crust, packing it into a glass pie plate with the side of a metal measuring cup. She learned that tip from Barefoot Contessa on one of her Food Network segments. The crust baked for about 10 minutes. Once it had cooled, Katie made the filling with lots of lime juice and freshly grated lime zest. Ina Garten, always being concerned about keeping good food easy to prepare, calls her pie a Key Lime Pie, but she doesn’t call for key limes in the recipe. Those tiny little limes take forever to juice. The pie doesn’t take long to make, either, since the filling requires no cooking. Just mix and freeze.

I notice, too, that Ina Garten often uses extra-large eggs in her recipes. Her Frozen Key Lime Pie calls for the yolks of 6 extra-large eggs. Katie saved the egg whites and Andy made an omelet with them the next morning for breakfast.

Sweet whipped cream covers the lime filling before the pie goes into the freezer.

The recipe is from Barefoot Contessa, but I give the credit for this particular pie to Katie. She made it. Perfectly. Complete with cute corkscrews of lime zest decorating the top of the pie.

The four of us ate half of the pie one evening and the other half the next afternoon. I wanted more. Crunchy crust, light, tangy frozen filling and sweet, rich whipped cream topping. So good. And now Katie is not only the queen of homemade ice cream. She’s the queen of frozen lime pie. Lucky Andy. Lucky Claire. Lucky me!

The recipe for Ina Garten’s Frozen Key Lime Pie is on the Food Network’s web site. Click here to go right to the recipe.

Some other blogs that have featured Frozen (or not) Key Lime Pie:

Say Yes to Hoboken uses Ina Garten’s recipe and includes a nice photo of the pie.

At chow.com, there’s a Key Lime Pie recipe. But no whipped cream slathered over the top?

My Baking Addiction has Key Lime Pies baked in little 4-inch springform pans. They’re cute.

Planks on a grill with bananas

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Although the method of cooking food on a wooden plank has been used for ages, it was just 10 or 12 years ago when I first discovered it. One of my husband’s buddies brought the idea back with him from a fishing/camping trip he’d been on. He had watched fresh salmon being prepared on a cedar plank. They decided to try this technique on the grill in our backyard. It was a delicious success.

Since that time, we’ve occasionally used cedar planks as a tray for grilling meats on our grill. Just recently, though, I received a copy of "Napoleon’s Everyday Gourmet Plank Grilling," by Ted Reader. I’d never thought about preparing appetizers and sides on a plank, let alone dessert. And I had never thought of soaking the planks in anything but water before placing them on the grill. But, Reader often suggests soaking planks in a mixture of water and wine or juices, sometimes along with fresh herbs, in large zip-top plastic bags. As I read through the book, I caught the plank-grilling bug. I’m not a big steak lover, but the photo of Reader’s Red Wine-Planked Peppercorn New York Strip Steaks was tough to pass up. I soaked cedar planks in a red wine and water mixture for several hours. Once the steaks have almost cooked through, they are topped with a gorgonzola and red grape mixture. The steaks were tender, moist and flavorful with just a hint of smokiness. The topping surprised me with its perfect combination of sweet and tangy — so good with the steak. You can click here to get the recipe and see my photo of a planked steak. I think it would make a great grilled meal for beef-loving men on Father’s Day.

Friday night we prepared a meal centered around grilled Jerk Pork Tenderloin, using a recipe from the June 2009 issue of Eating Well magazine. Dessert didn’t come from Reader’s book. Cider-Planked Stuffed Bananas was an idea born from our love of chocolate-banana anything and a desire to come up with another food to grill on wet planks. My son and daughter-in-law were with us. My daughter-in-law readily admitted she did not like warm bananas, but said she’d give them a try.

I’ve been using grilling planks from Maine Grilling Woods. They are slices of tree trunk, the bark still attached. I’ve got a few different sizes of the oval planks and several varieties, such as white cedar, olive and apple. I find they don’t start burning on the grill like some rectangular cedar planks I’ve purchased that come wrapped in packages of two or three planks. The planks from Maine Grilling Woods smolder on the grill, adding interesting flavor to the food that rests on them.

I slid the planks into a large zip-top bag and poured in a mixture of half water and half apple cider, sealed up the bag and let them soak all day. At dessert time, I set out bananas with brown-speckled skin which was a sign they would be perfectly sweet. I cut a deep slit into the flat side of each banana, being very careful not to go through the other side. Bowls of "stuffing" ingredients surrounded the bananas. There was peanut butter, both chunky and creamy, mini-marshmallows, coconut. Whatever you like to eat with bananas would probably work as a stuffing ingredient.

Each person created their own stuffed banana and then set it on a small, wet plank and onto the grill it went. The bananas heated up in the closed grill, sweet cider-spiked smoke swirling around them as they cooked, adding more flavor. In 5 to 10 minutes, the peanut butter was melting and the chocolate was soft.

The warm bananas can be eaten right out of the skin, scooped out with a spoon. We decided to scoop our stuffed bananas out of their peelings and right into a bowl full of ice cream. Premium vanilla ice cream is a good addition to this dessert, but I had mine with a scoop of Luna and Larry’s Coconut Bliss, a non-dairy frozen dessert that I discovered at my local natural food co-op last week. It’s made with coconut milk. It comes in several flavors. I’ve only tried the Naked Coconut. It satisfies my coconut-loving tastebuds.

The verdict: My daughter-in-law had two bites and turned it over to her husband to finish. She went with the ice cream only. I liked the warm banana with my scoop of Coconut Bliss. The two guys each downed their grilled stuffed bananas with lots of ice cream. It’s a fun dessert that makes sense to make when the grill is still warm after cooking the entree.

Next time you’re gathering family and friends for an outdoor picnic, soak some grilling planks and set up a make-your-own stuffed banana bar. And have the ice cream ready to scoop.

Cider-Planked Stuffed Bananas

  • 1 banana per person
  • Plenty of stuffing ingredients of your choice — chocolate, butterscotch and peanut butter morsels, creamy and crunchy peanut butter, coconut, marshmallows
  • Grilling planks
  • Apple cider for soaking planks

Early in the day you plan to serve the Stuffed Bananas, mix equal parts water and apple cider. Pour over grilling planks in large zip-top bags. Set aside.

Place bananas on work surface, laying them on a flat side. Use a sharp paring knife to cut through the skin into the banana but not all the way throught to the other side. Use a clean finger to run through the slice, opeing it up a bit. Push stuffing ingredient into the slit. Place bananas on soaked planks and place on grill. Close lid of grill and heat over medium temperature until stuffing in bananas is melted and banana peels have turned dark. Eat warm right from the skin or scoop out of skin and eat with ice cream.

 

 

Whisk it Wednesday: Road-Trip Rhubarb Cake

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Last Friday, my two biking partners and I headed down to Red Wing, Minn. We were on our way to do the Tour de Pepin, an organized bike ride beginning in Lake City. We chose the 32-mile route that would end in Stockholm, Wisconsin.

Not unlike any girlfriends road trip, we braked often for antique shops, any other cute little shops, and food. I’m always on the lookout for darling little props to use in food photographs. I found a few pieces that I couldn’t live without. A stop at an antique shop on Highway 10 in Motley and cute little Weekend Cottage in Clear Lake had all three of us adding shopping bags to the back of our vehicle.

An old fluted cake pan seemed like it would be perfect for baking quick breads. The scalloped-edge Syracuse bowl was irresistible. I wish there had been more. It seems like the perfect size for big scoops of ice cream. I’ve already had it on my counter filled with malted milk balls and chocolate-covered banana chips. And the floral pattern on the plate just grabbed me.

The old-fashioned cream-whipper may be my favorite treasure from the trip. See it in the photo with the cake?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived in Red Wing just in time to be able to spend about an hour at Falconer Vineyards. When we pulled into

the parking lot at the winery, the Falconers were out watering all the plants and their golden retriever, Cedar, was happily watching them. They have a beautiful spot tucked into the hills. We sat in the sunshine at one of their outdoor tables with a bottle of North Star Red, some cheese and  some crackers. It’s a place to put on your must-visit list when you are in the Red Wing area.

On Saturday morning we wound up pedaling 32 miles through raindrops and very cool temps in the low 50′s. We were soaking wet and freezing by the end of our ride. After changing into dry clothes in the bathroom of the Dollar Store (the guy there felt sorry for us and invited us to use the employee bathroom as a changing room) we headed for a great homemade lunch at Chickadee Cottage Cafe in Lake City.

I was anxious to try out my new little (old) cake pan. My friend, Jodi, shared one of her favorite rhubarb bread recipes with me. She says it came from an old (1993ish) Betty Crocker Fresh! Spring Recipes book. I’ve adapted the original recipe, which called for pears. I also added some pumpkin pie spice that I had on my shelf. I sprinkled a mixture of sugar and butter over the top, stealing the idea from Bickey Bender’s recipe that I shared on my previous post. I baked part of the batter for Old-Fashioned Rhubarb-Peach Coffee Cake in my new pan and still got nine big muffins and a tiny individual-sized loaf. I call it old-fashioned just because I baked it in an old pan. I love the flavor of rhubarb and peach together. I use that combination in my Crisp, too.

If you have an old-fashioned cake pan, pull it out to bake this coffee cake. And if you don’t just bake the batter in two loaf pans.

Enjoy.

Old-Fashioned Rhubarb-Peach Coffee Cake

  • 1 1/2 cups finely chopped rhubarb
  • 1 1/2 cups finely chopped fresh peaches or frozen peaches that have been thawed first
  • 1 2/3 cups sugar
  • 2/3 cup canola oil
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 4 large eggs
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (or your favorite baking spice)
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 cup chopped nuts

Topping:

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon softened butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour baking pans of your choice. In large bowl, mix rhubarb, peaches, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs. Sift dry ingredients and stir into mixture in bowl. Transfer batter to baking pans. Mix Topping ingredients and sprinkle over the batter. I baked the cake for about 40 minutes, the large muffins took about 30 minutes. If you use two 9- x 5- x 3-inch loaf pans, baking time will be 50 to 60 minutes. Makes 2 loaves.

Rhubarb Bread Created by an Artist

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While many of you have been enjoying fresh rhubarb from your garden for weeks, here in northern Minnesota the rhubarb is finally ready to harvest.

Although I have a few favorite rhubarb recipes that I prepare each year at this time, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to enjoy the early-summer stalks of tartness.

A week ago I was spending time with friends in the Park Rapids area. We visited the studio of artist, Bickey Bender. In a cozy loft above a large garage, it’s a space that allows her imagination to take over as she creates with watercolor and paper art.

From her studio, she invited us into her home where she had a snack of rhubarb bread and fresh fruit waiting for us. The Rhubarb Nut Bread she had made for us was so moist and delicious. Bickey told me it is always the first rhubarb recipe she makes in the spring. She was willing to share the recipe.

I just had to share the photos I took of the fresh fruit. Look at the way she cut the watermelon. They looked like little pine trees. The little trunks on each wedge of watermelon made a perfect handle to easily pick the watermelon up with and eat it just like a popsicle. I thought it was great fun eating it that way. Wouldn’t children just love it? Leave it to the creative spirit of an artist to come up such a cute idea. And it really did make the fruit platters look like a work of art.

Great treats from Bicky, the baker and the artist.

 

RHUBARB NUT BREAD

Bickey Bender 2009
Temperature: 325 degrees

Time: 40-45 minutes

2 loaf pans

  • 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
  • 2/3 cup liquid shortening
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup sour milk
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon soda
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 1/2 cups diced, fresh rhubarb
  • 1/2 cup nuts, chopped (optional)

Stir together in order given. Put into 2 greased loaf pans.

Sprinkle the following Topping over the loaves:

  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon butter

Bake in 325-degree preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes.

Whisk it Wednesday: Shortbread Tart

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Working on getting my office organized is a lot like rejuvenating an old house — one thing leads to another. As I worked with the professional organizer a couple of weeks ago, we cleared the top of each of my two desks. Now, when I walk into my office, I marvel at the feeling of lightness and freedom I experience. And I can actually work at my desk.

She’ll be back this afternoon for another round in my office. Our first session led to my purchase of more project pockets. All of those papers need to go somewhere, right? Those that didn’t get tossed need a new home in a project pocket. It also led me to the desktop of my computer. As I weeded through a few of the folders, I realized I have several photos that I had planned to share with you on this blog, but never got around to it. I hate to just delete them. So, I’ve decided I would begin sharing those photos and telling the stories behind them once each week.

Welcome to the first Whisk It Wednesday. I’ll be whisking photos out of folders on my computer and right onto this blog. I’ll be working to prevent a loaded computer from crashing and you will get some photos, recipes and stories that have been forgotten in the dark corners of my computer.

This photo of Shortbread Tart isn’t all that old, really. When I developed Crunchy Peanut Butter & Fudge Delights for this week’s newspaper column, I gave them a buttery brown sugar crust. Made of only flour, brown sugar and lots of butter, it is shorbread in disguise.

Using the same shortbread crust recipe, I created a tart. I patted the dough into the bottom and up the sides of a round ( nine- or ten-inch) tart pan with a removable bottom. If you don’t have a tart pan, you could use a quiche dish or even a large pie tin. Before baking the shortbread, I spread some apricot preserves over the top, sprinkled some sliced almonds over the preserves and then crumbled some shortbread dough that I had kept in reserve over the whole thing.

I’ve made two more of these Shortbread Tarts since that first experiment. Each time it brings raves from tasters. I will stick with the apricot preserves (I used Smucker’s Simply Fruit), but try any flavor you like.

Shortbread Tart, with only five ingredients, is easy to make and easy to eat. It’s what I’ll be making for those times when I just don’t know what to make for dessert. I think I’ll try serving it with one of the new Haagen Dazs five ice creams, each flavor made with only five ingredients. I haven’t tried the new Haagen Dazs flavors yet, have you? As a matter of fact, serve Shortbread Tart and a scoop of Haagen-Dazs five together and the dessert adds up to a 10. That’s perfect.

If you love shortbread, you might also be interested in this recipe that I posted last year for Buttery Shortbread.

Shortbread Tart

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup (packed) brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)
  • 1/4 cup apricot preserves
  • 1/3 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, brown sugar and butter. A food processor works well for this. Spread 1/2 cup of this mixture on a plate and set in freezer. Press remaining mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a 9- or 10-inch tart pan with removable sides.

Spread apricot preserves over the top of dough. Pull reserved dough from freezer and crumble it over the preserves. Sprinkle evenly with almonds.

Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the crust is golden brown. Place pan on wire rack to cool completely. Cut shortbread into wedges and serve.