coffee cake

It started thunder-storming here a few hours ago. I used to not like them. When I was a kid, I had this Little Mermaid (I'm pretty sure it was Little Mermaid) wrist watch for a little while. I left it in my friend's sandbox by accident, and it rained that night and killed the watch. After that, I had this sense of having left something perishable in the rain every time it stormed.

Nowadays storms are more fun. They are a reason to turn off my computer and think of other things to do. Tonight, I quilted for a little bit (I know, I should have been doing homework), and then made a coffee cake, which turned out soooo yummy. It's from Mom's old Quick Breads, Soups and Stews book, by Mary Gubser. (Credit where credit is due!)

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Filling:

½ cup brown sugar, packed

⅓ cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

¼ cup cold butter, cut in pieces

1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

Cake:

2 cups all purpose flour

1½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter

2 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°. Spray with cooking oil or whatever suits your fancy.

For the filling: Combine brown sugar, flour and cinnamon in a food processor. With metal blade, pulse until ingredients are mixed. Add cold butter and process until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. (My mixture did not resemble coarse cornmeal. :P) Transfer to bowl and stir in chopped nuts! Set aside.

For the cake: Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a bowl and set aside. (Hehe, my filling looks like turkey stuffing in black and white)

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine butter and sugar. Beat until "light and fluffy." Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Alternately add dry ingredients and sour cream to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Scrape down sides and beat until creamy. (This is such a pretty batter.)

Stir in vanilla and mix well.

Pour half the batter into the prepared pan, spreading it evenly. Sprinkle filling over the batter - all the filling!

Pour second half of the batter over the filling, spread it evenly. It can be a little tricky to spread with the filling wanting to stick, but it's not a huge deal if there are some exposed bits. 

Bake for about 40 minutes, check to see if it's done. The book says it may need another ten, depending on ovens. 

Remove cake to wire rack, let cool for 10 minutes, then pop it out of the pan.

This turned out DELICIOUS. Seriously, it was soooo good. Try it.

13

I made chocolate chip cookies today... They are delicious.

The first picture was taken with the normal lens, but the second picture was taken with a macro attachment, which is why there is such a tiny plane of focus that is sharp. :) Oh! and I wanted to say that I didn't touch these pictures at all, no editing whatsoever.

oatmeal cinnamon-raisin scones

Oatmeal cinnamon-raisin scones are... *quickly searches handy thesaurus* ... scrumptious, mouthwatering, delectable. Yum. Another Baking Illustrated recipe.

1 & 1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats, or instant oats
1/4 whole milk
1/4 heavy cream
1 egg
1 & 1/2 cup unbleached, low-protein flour, like Gold Medal (not King Arthur. If you use King Arthur, make sure to add a tbsp or two more milk)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
10 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup raisins

I didn't have whole milk or heavy cream, so I just used 1/2 cup half and half, which seemed to work just as beautifully. Also, if you don't have unsalted butter (is an advocate of salted butter!), you can use salted, just remember not to put the extra salt in.




Spread the oats onto a cookie sheet.


And toast in the oven at 375, until lightly browned and fragrant. Let cool. Prepare a baking sheet. It says to use parchment paper, so if you have some, go for it. I had no problem with a naked pan.

Turn up the oven to 450.


Mix together cream, milk and egg in a medium sized mixing bowl. Set aside 1 tbsp for glaze.






Put flour, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar and salt in a food processor, fitted with a blade. Pulse until mixed, about 4 or so one-second pulses. Chop up the butter into small pats and dump on top of the flour mixture, then pulse about 14 one-second pulses, or until its the consistency of rough cornmeal. Mm.

Pour into separate, large mixing bowl. Add oats and raisins, keeping 2 tbsp of oats behind for use in dusting workspace. Pour in liquid mixture and fold together with a spatula until it forms these lovely mashy clumps. Then, the fun part... make sure your hands are clean, then dig into it yourself. I love squishing food with my hands: ground beef, mashed potatoes, frosting, if it's mushy I like to mush it. Anyway, back to the recipe. Knead it in the bowl, until it's in one cohesive mass.



Then, if you have one, use a 9 inch round cake pan. Sprinkle the bottom of the pan with half of your set aside oats, plop the ball in the middle, and squash it evenly into the pan, until it is flat. Then sprinkle the top with the other half of the oats, pat them, and move on with life. You can use a dough scraper or a brownie cutter or a chef's knife to cut the pie-like dough into eight parts. Taking the parts out may be kind of tricky, depending on the consistency of your dough. If they take a bit of smushing to come out, just reshape them.

Place them on your prepared baking sheet, 2 inch apart. Get out your 1 tbsp of cream/egg mixture and brush it onto each wedge, then top with 1 tbsp of sugar. By that I mean, start with 1 tbsp and use it for all of the scones, not a tbsp each. Which might seem obvious to you, but I found myself wondering what the book meant. o.o

Stick them in the oven for 12-14 minutes. They will look DELICIOUS and make you begin to hyperventilate, from the mouthwatering aroma of autumn cinnamon, and wholesome, hearty oats... but don't burn your face off trying to take a whiff from the oven, like someone silly. Not me. I wouldn't do anything so silly.


Wash dishes while you're waiting. It's a clever time-passing trick. Take pictures of your faucet, it really boosts your dish-washing energy levels.


This is how mine looked. *drools*



They were perfect. Fluffy, but dense, oaty, cinnamony, raisiny, and the glaze was delicious on top.

I strongly advise you to make them. Bake them. Eat them. Have some tea or milk or coffee. You'll feel like life is even more worth living. Honest. But you really should eat them outside, on a table in the yard, with a table cloth and a little vase of flowers, and your bestest friends or family with you. On your best china. That is what you should really do.


p.s. i wrote these instructions down by memory. do not come after me for vengeance if it goes wrong somehow, because i forgot to mention that the main ingredient is a cup of shrimp w/ heads. :D

i'm grand

Hi there. How are you? I hope you're good, because I'm grand. Yesterday, as we were coming home from Quinn's Taiji class, I kind of felt sick, so when I got home I sort of... just went to bed. At 7:30. It was a weird occasion. So, in the middle of the night, I woke up and the first thing I thought was "pity I didn't wake up at dawn, dawn would be fun, must be kind of early if the stupid roosters haven't crowed me out of my warm snuggly bed through the closed window." So I pondered on what time it could be. I could heard Dad snoring, so it was before 6 am, because he hadn't gone to work yet.

Then an idea occurred to me. What if it was like 11:00 or something horrible like that. So I decided to get up and brush my teeth, because I hadn't done that before hitting the sack. As I passed M&D's room, I saw the digital alarm clock, blaring, in red neon, "11:54."

All I thought was, "aw man." So I found out Mom was just going to bed, we talked for a bit, I got something to eat, did homework for a while, and listened to Coldplay. I like Coldplay a lot... I happened to be learning about poetry and rhythm in American Lit., which Coldplay uses constantly. :D Anyway, then I went back to sleep an hour later and slept til 9:30... I slept nearly 12 hours. And I'm likin' it.


This is an example of what might happen if my hair and a brush get together. And for anyone who doesn't believe me when I say my eyes are GREEN with a little brown, here's some good proof.


Rain has been pouring down all day long. It's awesome. For tea we decided to make scones again, but we didn't have the same recipe, so we looked up one online, but it wasn't the same. We were also out of sugar, so we used some cinnamon sugar we had stored up. However, the dough was so STICKY that I couldn't knead it or do anything with it. We ended up globbing weird gooey lumps on the cookie sheet. They turned out yummy, though. :)




This is a pic of my tea. For a random fact of the day, I used Lightroom setting "Kate" on it. :) Sara inspired me to name my presets after TV show characters. I picked LOST. I'm going to save something yummy for Sawyer.


Raindrops.


I have a trick. A secret, amazing trick. When I take really, really bad pictures, like this one, all I do is ... use the KATE preset! Translated into normal-person-language: turn it black and white, hit the contrast wayyyy up and just pretend that it's really classy.

See, this is the original:

I actually TAKE really crappy pictures, most of the time. Just happen to be a tasteful cheater. :D Now you know my secretest secret.