My raspberry bushes are keeping me in business this summer with a full bowl of ripe gorgeous berries every day! I have only 3 bushes but it must be their location in the back yard that makes them so happy. They are against the wooden fence and face east so they have sun until about 4 o’clock every day. I planted them 3 years ago and for the past 2 years they have done extraordinarily well- bearing fruit right through to the end of September. I looked at every garden centre this spring to find more bushes of the same type but no luck. I will just have to hope that they spread their roots and multiply.
So here is another recipe to use some of those beautiful red delicious raspberries that are begging to be eaten this time of year. This is a a light cake with a crumbly streusel topping and is amazing served warm with vanilla ice cream or perfect for breakfast with a cup of coffee. Either time of day you will enjoy the burst of raspberry and the crunch of the brown sugar topping.
Banana and peanut butter – 2 flavours that just go together. But have you ever had them together in cake form? This is two breakfast items all fancied up and pretending to be dessert, but if you want you can have it for breakfast!
The other great thing about this recipe is that it is all mixed in one bowl. Dry ingredients, followed by wet ingredients, followed by eggs and there you have it – your cake is ready to bake! The banana gives it great moistness and that amazing flavour. I prefer to bake this in a 9×13 pan, but feel free to do in 2 round pans and make it a really pretty cake.
The frosting has just a hint of peanut butter, not too overpowering. Just enough to enhance the fluffy frosting and give that great combination of banana and peanut butter. It makes quite a bit of frosting so that you can spread it on nice and thick so that every bite has it’s fair share.
2 large very ripe bananas, peeled and broken into chunks.
½ cup butter, room temp
¼ cup sour cream
¼ cup milk
2 eggs,room temp
1 tsp vanilla
Frosting
½ cup butter, room temp
2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
4 cups of icing sugar
2 tbsp heavy cream
½ tsp vanilla
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 ℉ and grease a 9x13 cake pan.
In the bowl of a stand mixer or large mixing bowl if using a hand mixer, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the sugar, banana, butter, sour cream and milk. Mix on low speed until combined, then at med speed for 1 minute.
Add the eggs and vanilla and beat a further 2 minutes.
Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth top.
Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Place on rack to completely cool.
Meanwhile for frosting:
Beat butter and peanut butter together. Add 2 cups of icing sugar and beat until smooth. Add vanilla and cream and beat until fluffy. Gradually add remaining icing sugar.
This recipe for crisp is simple and absolutely delicious and is the perfect backdrop for all of that summer fruit bounty around us. You can use whatever fresh fruit is in season and every combination always turns out wonderful. For this one I used fresh raspberries from my garden, wild blueberries I had picked at camp and peaches from the farmer’s market.
Berry Muffins – tender and moist packets filled with raspberries and blueberries. These muffins make a decadent breakfast treat or a wonderful afternoon pick-me-up. They are so yummy you could even serve these with ice cream for a casual dessert. So what ever time you decide to have one of these you will be smitten with the burst of berry flavour.
The batter comes together quickly in a bowl and like most muffin recipes, no electricity required! Melt the butter in the microwave and let is come to room temperature. When you do whisk the wet ingredients together it will resemble curdled milk but that is fine, it will all work out. When folding the berries in, add them just before all of the flour is incorporated so that the berries won’t all be broken up. Fresh berries work best in this recipe, but you can use frozen blueberries, just toss them with a teaspoon of flour first before you add them to the batter.
I have been making this pizza dough ever since it was published in Bon Appetit a while back. It has even replaced my go-to recipe for our wood-fired pizza oven so that tells you just how good it is. I have gone back to baking my pizzas in a pan! It results in a thicker crust, but it is nice and crispy and chewy and has a fantastic texture.
This dough is very forgiving and most times I will make it in the morning and put it in a very large bowl, cover it and let it rise all day until it is time to bake pizza. I find that the longer the dough rises, the better the flavour is. I have even put it in a plastic bag and kept it in the fridge for a few days before baking it and it was fantastic.
So back to the wood-fired pizza oven, because this dough has a quite a bit of oil in it, it is very difficult to put on a pizza peel and slide onto the stone. I can tell you this because I tried it and ended up with a really ugly looking calzone stuck to the bottom of my pizza oven! It smelled really good until it started to burn, but then at least I could scrape it off and start over. So if you do decide to slide it directly on to your stone, ensure you sprinkle lots of cornmeal down first ! That’s when I decided to make the pizza on a baking sheet and put the sheet directly on to the stone. That pizza was terrific!
If you don’t have a pizza oven, no worries, this pizza will cook up beautifully in a really hot oven. I like at least 450ºF. Remember to always put your pizza stone in the oven before you turn it on, this way it will have lots of time to absorb the heat. It is a good idea to let the oven come to temperature and then wait at least another 10-15 minutes for the stone to get really good and hot. If it is a hot day and you still want to make pizza, you can use your gas/propane bbq to cook your pizza, just put your pizza stone on the grill and let it heat up and away you go – a pizza oven outside!
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for bowl, plus more for pan
2 teaspoons sea salt
4 cups all-purpose flour
1½ c warm water
Instructions
Whisk together yeast and 1½ cups warm water (105–110°) in bowl of stand mixer; let stand until yeast starts to foam, about 5-10 minutes.
Add in 2 Tbsp. oil, then flour and sprinkle salt on top.
Using dough hook, mix on low speed until dough comes together, then continue to mix with dough hook until smooth and soft. This usually takes about 5 - 7 minutes.
Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turning it a few times so that it is well coated. Ensure the bowl is large enough that will allow the dough to at least double, more is better. Cover loosely with plastic wrap.
At this point you can refrigerate the dough if using the next day. If using same day, put in draft free spot and let rise. If the dough starts to climb over the top, gently push down with the palms of your hands through the plastic wrap.
Best if you let rise at least 4-6 hours, preferably 8.
When ready to make pizza,coat a sheet pan or a cookie sheet with raised edges liberally with olive oil. Gently turn dough out of bowl onto pan. Let it rest for 10 minutes before attempting to work with the dough.Then using your fingers work the dough out into the pan, if it starts to spring back, let it rest again. You may need to do this a few times before you have it reaching all sides.
Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rise again about 30 minutes. At this point put your pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. Once the dough has puffed, gently spread your sauce and add your toppings.
Place on pizza stone and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden around the edges and cheese is melted.
With a wooden or metal spatula, slide the pizza onto a wooden cutting board. Let sit for 5 minutes before slicing.
It was a spectacular weekend at camp. The weather was hot, 30ºC, almost too hot for me. It is sometimes hard to believe that 6 months from today, it could be -30ºC! What a wonderful place Northern Ontario is. It has been so hot, windy and dry that the wild blueberries have been hard to find this year. The berries in most of my usual spots have been all dried up, but I got lucky and the one just down the road had some under the trees in the moss. I picked 4 cups, enough to make something….what should I make with my valuable commodity?
The decision Blueberry Zucchini Loaf…a quick loaf full of shredded zucchini, lemon zest and my wild blueberries. This recipe makes 2 loaves so 1 to eat and 1 to freeze or share. As with most quick breads this is mixed by hand in a bowl, no appliances required, other than a box shredder for the zucchini if you consider that to be an appliance.
This is the perfect snack to take on a picnic lunch while fishing and that is exactly what we did with our Blueberry Zucchini loaf. Thank goodness that the loaf made it into the cooler, because I forgot the rest of the containers that had the salads in them. We survived the day and so did the fish as we didn’t even catch one!
I hope you have the opportunity in your neck of the woods to enjoy wild blueberries and make something yummy with them, or just enjoy them one at a time – a burst of wonderful.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease 2 loaf pans.
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, yogurt,vanilla,lemon zest and sugar. Fold in the zucchini.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt,baking powder and baking soda.
Sprinkle dry ingredients over the wet and stir until almost combined.
Gently fold in the blueberries. Divide equally between the 2 pans and smooth the tops.
Bake 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a skewer inserted in the center of a loaf comes out clean. Cool 20 minutes in pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.
Strawberries just picked, still warm from the summer sun, that is natural sweetness at it’s finest. Over the past few weeks I have picked about 6 baskets of strawberries from 2 farms in my area, Emiry’s Berry Patch and Strawberry Fields. Considering the cool weather we have had the berries were ripe and sweet even if they were a little late in the season. Thanks to the bounty from these farms we now have all of our winter stash of strawberry jam stored away in the freezer, but there was still lots left for eating and baking.
I have been searching for a good dough recipe for hamburger buns for quite a while. I really don’t like buying store bought bread of any sort, but making the perfect hamburger bun has eluded me for quite some time. My son, Matthew, is the connoisseur of hamburger buns. If the bun falls apart while he is eating it is a world calamity. If the bun isn’t big enough for the burger that is another issue. It has to be sturdy enough to hold all of the condiments but not too thick. So you can see finding the perfect hamburger bun is a huge challenge at my house, let alone making one from scratch.
This is a definite deviation from my usual recipe type post, but it is summer and we are spending the week at our camp. Today it was humid,windy and hot and I was just relaxing sitting on the boat down at the dock. I was looking back at the shore and just amazed at all of the different types of grass and flowers growing there.
We aren’t those type of folks who have tried to recreate the neat and tidy city yard here by the lake. Our shoreline is totally natural, we let the grass grow tall and the weeds pop up between the slats of the dock. The birds are always flying in and out of the grass catching bugs and hopefully nesting there too.
According to my Mom these are wild morning glories and they look a lot like petunias.
There used to be actual gardens up by the camp that I had planted flowers in but the wild flowers just keep taking over, so I have just let them win.
Then the water was calling so I sat on the boat and then our little family of ducks swam by…what timing! Those little ducklings have grown so fast in the past few weeks, pretty soon they will be the same size as their momma.
Hope you have enjoyed my relaxing day goofing off and doing not much of anything. What a way to spend Monday. I could definitely get used to this.
Shortbread for the summer season? Yes!!! Shortbread and all it’s variations is probably my all time favourite cookie. I have added just about everything to this cookie dough at the Christmas season- chocolate, butterscotch, white chocolate, nuts and even dried fruit. But with the addition of lime and lemon zest to the dough and a lime and lemon glaze the result is a refreshing little bite sized treat- just perfect for those summer barbeques.
