sss-Crumb-tious!

I don't bake a lot. It's not really something I enjoy. Too precise for me.

But this past weekend I headed down to the beach to hang out with my cousins, so I wanted to bring something sweet. I thought that a nice crumb cake would be a good idea.

Since I didn't have a good recipe, I had to do a little Internet searching. After checking out a few different recipes, I ended up choosing this one from Cooks Illustrated (recipe and photos below):

 

 

 

Ingredients

For the Crumb Topping:
1/3 cup granulated sugar (2 2/3 ounces)
1/3 cup dark brown sugar (2 2/3 ounces)
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon table salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), melted but still warm
1 3/4 cups cake flour (7 ounces)

For the Cake:
1 1/4 cups cake flour (5 ounces)
1/2 cup granulated sugar (3 1/2 ounces)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter (3/4 stick), cut into 6 pieces, softened but still cool
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup sour cream
Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

 

 

 

 

 

Instructions

1. To make the topping: Combine sugars, cinnamon, salt, and butter in medium bowl to combine.

2. Add flour and stir with rubber spatula or wooden spoon until mixture resembles thick, cohesive dough.

3. Set aside to cool to room temperature, about 10 to 15 minutes.

4. To make the cake: Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees.

5. 4. Cut 16-inch length parchment paper or aluminum foil and fold lengthwise to 7-inch width.

6. Spray 8-inch square baking dish with nonstick cooking spray and fit parchment into dish, pushing it into corners and up sides; allow excess to overhang edges of dish

7. In bowl of standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt on low speed.

8. With mixer running at low speed, add butter one piece at a time; continue beating until mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no visible butter chunks remaining, 1 to 2 minutes.

9. Add egg, yolk, vanilla, and buttermilk; beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute, scraping once if necessary.

10. Pour batter to baking pan; using rubber spatula, spread batter into even layer.

11. Break apart crumb topping into large pea-sized pieces between your thumb, pointer, and middle fingers and spread in even layer over batter, beginning with edges and then working toward center.

12. Bake until crumbs are golden and wooden skewer inserted into center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool on wire rack at least 30 minutes.

13. Remove cake from pan by lifting parchment overhang.
14. Dust with confectioners’ sugar just before serving.

Enjoy!

   

  

harvest and sauce

So, this past weekend we picked a ridiculous amount of vegetables. Our biggest harvest to date, the majority of which were tomatoes.Sooo Manyyy Tomatooooes!
And what better to do with a ton of tomatoes than make sauce. So here goes...

Here's all the ones we picked:

And here are all the ones I made my sauce with:

Let's begin.

Normally I only use tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic and basil. But I read a recipe online that said to start with mirepoix (celery, carrot, onion), so I thought I would try that. And into the pan they went.



Next step: blanch the tomatoes. Doing this makes peeling the tomato very easy. To start, make a small "x" mark on the tomato. then drop them in boiling water for about 30 seconds, then take them out and drop them in ice water to stop them from cooking.

    

Next step: remove the skins and the seeds. This step is very easy. Very messy. But very easy.

Once you remove the tomatoes from the ice bath, the skin will basically be falling off of them.

Remove all the skin then quarter them so you can remove the seeds.

           

To remove the seeds, simply squeeze them out with your hands. Reserve the juice if you want to use it for something else.

   

Next step: chop 'em and toss 'em in the pot with the veggies. At this point I also threw in a bunch of fresh basil and some garlic powder. fresh garlic is best, but I forgot to get some, so I used the powdered stuff.  (Oh, and I have no photos of this step because I got a phone call and forgot to take some. But you can figure it out).

Let them cook for a while, then run a hand blender through them to make it smoother.

If you don't have a hand blender, get one. Otherwise, run the tomatoes through a regular blender before adding them to the pot.

Next step: simmer.

By simmering the sauce at a low temperature for a while, the water will evaporate out, and you/ll be left with a nice, thick, rich sauce. As you check on it and stir it, taste it to see if it needs more salt, sugar, garlic, or whatever.

As you can see, the longer it simmers, the lower the level gets on the pan (see the inside of the pan where the sauce was when it started simmering?).

That's it: Sauce from my own tomatoes. Nice!

Enjoy. See you soon.

Carrie

OH... and in case you were wondering about the rest of the harvest, here's some pics:



And we finally picked our first cantaloupe!