Pursuits in baking - Easy Blueberry Lemon Bundt

So, I've decided to start baking more.  I've hesitant to bake much for years, limiting myself to just flipping thru baking and decorating books and vicariously making alterations and imagining the perfect, awe-inspring results.  The reality, I felt, would be much different.  Exploding muffin tins, caved cheesecakes and gravity-oppressed souffles haunt my dreams.

I'm not exactly sure why I have this primal fear of desserts.  Perhaps starting up now will reveal a repressed memory of a bananas foster gone wrong setting my pigtails a-flame as a child?  Or maybe in another life I was flattened by a rogue 50 lbs bag of flour that leapt from a high shelf at the General Store?  More likely it's a simple fear of failure... and the mess this will turn my kitchen into on a regular basis.

All of that being said, I'm excited to branch out into the baking world... and to be sharing it with all of you.  Hopefully they're be lots of fun to be had, and probably a disaster or two to laugh about.  I mean, seriously, look what I do when I just taking PICTURES of baked things.

I thought I'd start out with some baby steps here and explore a couple of recipes that almost require a cake mix.  I say "require" because I've learned the hard way that adding things willy-nilly to pre-set cake recipes can get you into lots of trouble.  Boxed cake mixes, besides being fool-proof, contain emulsifiers that allow you throw in additions without making much, if any, changes to the mix recipe.

So here is my first project.  Be sure to check out the wonderful Carol Egbert's site for another project I guest posted on rainbow cupcakes using all-natural color - it should be up soon!


Recipe: Blueberry Lemon Burst Bundt Cake

What you'll need...
One box vanilla or white cake mix (you can also use lemon if you really want lemony cake!)
PLUS
Whatever ingredients the cake mix calls for
1 cup of plain yogurt (you can also use blueberry yogurt to really up the blueberry flavor!)
1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries
1/2 cup water
The zest and juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon of turmeric (optional, for bright yellow color - don't worry, your cake won't taste like turmeric!)

Special equipment: 12 cup bundt pan, small sauce pan, hand blender or food processor

What to do with it all...

Preheat oven to temperature according to boxed mix for a bundt pan
Liberally grease your bundt pan 
Add blueberries and water to a small saucepan to simmer for 5 mins, or until thawed (if using frozen) then allow to cool
Mix all cake mix ingredients according to directions, folding in the cup of yogurt, lemon juice and zest and optional turmeric
Puree your blueberries using a hand blender or food processor/stand blender
Pour puree into your cake batter, but do not stir
Pour batter into your bundt pan and bake according to box instructions (your cake may take a little longer because of the additions)
Remove after baking and allow to cool before inverting and removing
Glaze with a simple syrup, honey or simply dust with powdered sugar!

Warm Orange Beet Salad: 3 Ingredient Recipe #7

Today Jason told me something I've never heard anyone say to me before: Eat your vegetables.  This has never been said to me because there has never been a need.  As a kid, I was always opting for something green over normal kid stuff.  I was the only grandchild on both sides of my family and therefore was never in short supply of sweets to test this theory, either.

The biggest contributor was my father's dad.  Growing up we lived in the same building my grandparents owned.  I would come down from the upstairs apartment and there would inevitably be something waiting for me on the landing of my grandparents' level: a candy necklace, something of the "gummy" variety, or these super-sugary juice drinks that came in red plastic bottles shaped like robots.  The last was my favorite because once the bottles were empty, I would set them up as bowling pins in the hallway and use my stuffed Popple as a bowling ball (does anybody remember those??).

Most of these sweets weren't as eagerly anticipated as the robots, though, and I'd eat maybe one or two pieces and the rest would go into "the candy drawer": the entire top drawer of my dresser which was routinely raided by my visiting friends but I could've cared less.  The real love for me was a good spinach pie, or cabbage and potatoes from a fresh corned beef roast and even a Greek dish called horta vrasta which is nothing more than boiled greens dressed in olive oil and lemon juice.... most kids wouldn't talk to you for a week if you served them what I begged for nightly.

So you see why I was so shocked to hear myself being scolded for the one thing I have always done willingly, but having been a very busy week, my veggie quotient has been shockingly paltry compared to usual.  So tonight I up the ante with this little beauty.  Inspired by those very same horta vrasta combined with a dish Jason's mother makes, it's a hearty salad that works as a whole meal (and did for me tonight!).  It uses the green tops of the beets which are really tasty and NOT poisonous as I know some people think.  They're in the same family as chards and the greens taste very similar to Swiss chard.  I mixed up the cooking methods from boiling to sautéing for added texture/flavor.  The result is a really nice, balanced and health salad that made a perfect meal!

...So go eat your vegetables before you get in trouble, too!

3 Ingredients...


1 bunch of beets with green tops
1 orange, juiced and zested
1/2 a yellow onion, sliced

What to do with it...

• Remove greens from beets and wash everything thouroughly to remove grit and chop greens
  
• Place beets into a medium pot and cover with water
  
• Bring to gentle boil and cook until fork-tender (about 20 mins).  During this time you can cook the onions (see step 6)
  
• When beets are cooked, drain and allow to cool just enough to handle and slip the skins from them
  
• Slice the beets and set aside
  
• Add onions to a skillet with some butter and cook on medium with a little salt for 10 minutes, watching that they don't burn
  
• At end of 10 minutes, add orange juice to "deglaze" the pan and the remove orange/onion mixture to a medium bowl
  
• In the skillet from the onions, add more butter and saute your beet greens with salt and pepper until wilted but still crisp (about 4- 5 mins) then add to your bowl with onion/orange mixture
  
• Now saute your beets in the same way until they have a little golden crispness on each side (just 4 - 5 mins) and add to the bowl
  
• Top with orange zest and more salt and pepper to taste
  

Seven down, 3 to go!

Goes together like Peas + Carrots

I always remembered that line in Forrest Gump.  It stuck in my head without a place to use it from 1994 until recently.  Now I use it when referring to my boyfriend Jason and me (cause we do go together awfully well).  And that, naturally, led me to me to name a blog in honor of us and our corresponding love of food. 

It's named this, too, not just because of the quote, but because of Good Housekeeping magazines from the 1950s.  Leaf thru just one issue and you will see what I mean.  Pages of recipes so hideously inedible looking that it's downright good entertainment and impossible not to be utterly fascinating.  Jellied ham and tuna molds, Vienna sausages in blankets and, of course, the ubiquitous frozen pea and carrot side dishes looking gray and dejected playing the support role to equally blanched-pale haunches of meat. All decorated with garish pimento pinwheels or radish rosettes... which is like putting makeup on a pig and just as perplexing.
It would seem the reason for the all this had something to do with World War II ending. Suddenly rationing was over so meat, eggs and dairy abounded.  A flurry of technological advances had also brought frozen convenience goods into the everyday life.  So here's the 1950's housewife, hypnotized by the bright electric hum of the freezer aisles and glossy rows of packaged butt roasts sunning themselves under the florescents in the newly born Supermarket.  After years of shelling beans and eating boiled potatoes this will apparently make you go wild with food lust and begin constructing hideously mad dishes like Spam 'n' Limas. 

From this....

To this....?

While I'm glad we've since removed the deviled eggs from our eyes as far as food sense, I do sometimes oddly long for the nostalgia of a time I didn't live in.  A time when I could deliver a tower of meat and vegetables encased in gelatin to a dinner table with a straight face.  A proud face, even.  And while I suppress the urge to make some of these unsavory dishes, I am left with the desire to "improve" upon some of the original favorites out of an odd respect to keep them alive.  Dishes that might seem silly now, but were born out of a certain kind of hopeful nation on the other side of WWII.  After all, it was what people ate as they returned from war to the dinner tables, and they were the first meals of the most influential generation of our time: the Baby Boomers.

So why not have peas and carrots?  After, they really do go together so nicely... this version joins the 21st century with the addition of fresh mint, garam masala and orange zest.  By the way, if you don't have a microplane grater, I highly recommend investing in one.  They're not only practical and inexpensive, they're actually rather fun and I find myself creating excuses to "zest" things all the time... which leads to a refrigerator full of bald, slightly embarrassed-looking citrus fruit but some very tasty food.  Go buy now!

Recipe: Peas ♥ Carrots

What to get

8 ounces of fresh or frozen peas (if frozen, keep them this way until they hit the pan)

4 medium-sized diced carrots

1 julienne cut shallot

Small handful of fresh mint leaves - chiffonade

2 diced strips of bacon

Zest of half an orange

A few dashes of garam masala

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

What to do with it all

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat for a few seconds before adding the diced bacon (I actually like to use kitchen shears for this and cut directly over the pan).  Fry bacon until crisp and then remove.  Add carrots to the bacon drippings and sauté for 7 minutes then reduce to low and add shallots with a sprinkling of salt.  Salt removes moisture from vegetables so it's good here because you want to soften the shallots, not sauté them which would add some bitterness in this case.  After about 5 minutes the shallots will be translucent and carrots will have given up some tasty juices.  Turn the heat back to medium and add the rest of the ingredients and return the bacon. Sauté until the peas are cooked but not soggy (about 5 mins). 

Substitutions:

Fresh mint - Fresh tarragon or dry dill.  Dry mint is a no-no as it doesn't retain a fresh taste very well.

Shallot - 1/2 yellow or sweet onion

Bacon - Butter & shaved Parmesan or coconut oil & soy parm (vegans)

Orange zest - a splash of orange juice

Garam masala - ground allspice and cinnamon

Makes 1 to 4 servings depending on your appetite...for me this is one serving...