Blueberry Cake

A couple of weeks ago, the Boston Globe G magazine had several pages of blueberry recipes, each presented as something new to the culinary world. Well, as we all know, there really isn't much of anything new in the recipe world. Oh, yes, there are those who "de-construct" or introduce the world of chemistry to their kitchen efforts, but what I'm thinking about is the more basic recipies. Sure enough, two weeks later, the Boston Globe G magazine reminded us of the "Confidential Chat" column which many of us remember fondly, and darn if one of those "new" blueberry receipes wasn't right out of "Cakes and Cookies" kitchen!

So, here's the Blueberry Cake with Streusel Topping receipe which I made (at family's request) for the third time this morning.

TOPPING
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) cold butter, cut up

In a bowl, combine the sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter. Work the mixture with your fingertips until well blended; refrigerate.

CAKE
Butter (for the pan)
Flour (For the pan)
1 pint (2 cups) fresh blueberries, picked over
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk, at room temperature

1. Set the oven at 375 degrees. Butter an 8-inch-square metal baking pan. Dust the pan with flour, tapping out the excess.

2. In a bowl, toss the blueberries with 1 tablespoon of the flour.

3. In another bowl, whisk the remaining flour, baking powder, and salt to blend them.

4. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until soft and light. Beat in the egg and vanilla until soft and light. With the mixer set to its lowest speed, blend in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour.

5. Remove the bowl from the mixer stand. With a rubber spatula, fold in blueberries. Transfer the batter to the pan and smooth the top. Sprinkle the topping over the cake.

6. Bake the cake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the top is brown.

My modifications: I do not have a stand mixer, so I carefully planned out and used the four sizes of my trusty Pyrex mixing bowls with my hand mixer. For the ingredients, I used 1% milk instead of whole. I used an eight-inch-glass baking dish and reduced the oven temperature to 350 degrees and baked for 42 minutes.

And in the background of some of the pictures, you'll see something that makes me smile every time I cook and use it: My mother's FireKing measuring cup.

Posting recipies is something new for me.  I'm what I would label a "plain" cook--nothing fancy, nothing too challenging.  So with a nod to those who are much better cooks and infinitely better bloggers than I, thank you for the inspiration for this post.

Visit Letters from a Hill Farm and see the recipe for Blueberry/Cranberry Muffins here or visit Lesley's Kiss the Cook blog and check out the Berry Best Bran Muffins recipe here.

June 2011

June was a month chock full of memorable characters and luscious covers. With one exception, I was book elated through the entire month!

The Violets of March by Sarah Jio
(4/5 Fiction Scale)
Leave your need to ask "Really?" at the door and just sit back and enjoy this story of family, friends, and secrets all around.
First line:  "I guess this is it," Joel said, leaning into the doorway of our apartment.

22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson
(3.5/5 Fiction Scale)
Again, secrets…possibly the hardest to bear--secrets of survivors of war. This story of a post WWII reunion reveals in heartbreaking detail what it took to come to the house at 22 Britannia Road and the lengths a desperate family will go to to preserve its promise. The revelation begins with the opening line: "The boy was everything to her."

Vision in White by Nora Roberts (1st in Brides Quartet)
(3.5/5 Fiction Scale)
First in a quartet of books featuring four lifelong friends who own Vows, an all-inclusive wedding service. Light romantic read and a good inbetween book.
First line:  By the time she was eight, Mackensie Elliot had been married fourteen times.

Beach Roses by Jean Stone
(3.5/5 Fiction Scale)
My "this is really over the top" initial reaction to this book was soon overcome as the story of each one of the strong (even if she didn't realize it in the midst of overwhelming problems) women unfolded.
First line:  Dexa-scans and mammo-scans and ultra-scans and everything.

In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming
(4/5 Mystery Scale)
Series came highly recommended by another reader whose opinion I value, and this first installment didn't disappoint! Russ Van Alstyne, police chief of Millers Kill, and Clare Fergusson, new-to-town Episcopal priest, first meet when she reports a baby abandoned at the church. And so the story begins with mysteries of wrong doing and personal conflict. Very much looking forward to the next in the series, A FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH BLOOD.
First line:  It was one hell of a night to throw away a baby.

South of Superior by Ellen Airgood
(4.5/5 Fiction Scale)
McAllaster, described as a beautiful and hardscrabble town on the southern edge of Lake Superior, is the setting for the story of Madeline Stone and how she comes to find the meaning of "tzadik." The characters jump of the pages and invite you into their world, and you go willingly with hope of finding out their secrets. Best last line of a book ever.
First line:  The letter from Gladys Hansen was written in blue ink in an angular hand, on one sheet of plain white paper.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
(5/5 Fiction Scale)
For me, this book had it all--characters and setting that jump off the page and grab you while telling a story that leaves you gasping as it unfolds before your reading eyes.
First line:  The news of Anders Eckman's death came by way of Aerogram, a piece of bright blue airmail paper that served as both the stationery and, when folded over and sealed along the edges, the envelope.

Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews
(3/5 Fiction Scale)
Lifelong friends with secrets + one newcomer on the run + one hunky neighbor (with a secret, of course) + "charming" rental cottage in Nags Head = typical, if sometimes tedious, summer beach read.
First line:  It was not an auspicious beginning for a vacation, let alone for a new life.

Best Staged Plans by Claire Cook
(2/5 Fiction Scale)
That it took me three days to read 238 pages of fluff is a good clue to my feeling about this book. I liked Must Love Dogs by Claire Cook; I really liked Multiple Choice by Claire Cook. Her more recent efforts have been, well, meh. Best Staged Plans struggled to achieve "meh" status for me.
First line:  Okay, so I accidentally wrapped my reading glasses in one of the packages I mailed.





State of Wonder was tops for the month. I'm still pondering some of the conflicts that confronted the characters in this book. Sadly, Best Staged Plans just didn't do it for me--not even sure I would go back and give it a second try just to see if it wasn't the book for me at this time. Too many cutsey asides and too little story to suit my fancy.

So, I'm off to Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank to start July.

Bookticipation

Burnt Mountain by Anne Rivers Siddons

In stores July 19

From amazon.com.

Growing up, the only place tomboy Thayer Wentworth felt at home was at her summer camp - Camp Sherwood Forest in the North Carolina Mountains. It was there that she came alive and where she met Nick Abrams, her first love...and first heartbreak. Years later, Thayer marries Aengus, an Irish professor, and they move into her deceased grandmother's house in Atlanta, only miles from Camp Edgewood on Burnt Mountain where her father died years ago in a car accident. There, Aengus and Thayer lead quiet and happy lives until Aengus is invited up to the camp to tell old Irish tales to the campers. As Aengus spends less time at home and becomes more distant, Thayer must confront dark secrets-about her mother, her first love, and, most devastating of all, her husband.

I was totally gobsmacked by Off Season and am looking forward to Burnt Mountain.  With a main character named Aengus who tells old Irish tales, I'm hoping for allusions either to The Song of Wandering Aegnus (Wm. Butler Yeats--sigh...) or Tir na nog, the mythical Land of the Young. Hoping usually doesn't get me anywhere, but maybe this time....

August 7 Update:  Just finished Burnt Mountain and while the hoped for allusions were all there, the book was a bit of a disappointment for me.

Joy of Reading ~ A Fatal Grace

From A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

The store felt like an old library in a country house.  The walls were lined with warm wooden shelves, and they in turn were lined with books.  Hooked rugs were scattered here and there and a Vermont Castings woodstove sat in the middle of the store with a sofa facing it and a rocking chair on either side.  Gamache, who loved bookstores, thought this was just the most attractive one he'd ever met.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Every so often as you read your way through the year, one book just reaches out, grabs you, and doesn't let go until the last heart wrenching page has been turned. For me, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett was one of those books.

From Booklist (via amazon.com)
Marina Singh gave up a career as a doctor after botching an emergency delivery as an intern, opting instead for the more orderly world of research for a pharmaceutical company. When office colleague Anders Eckman, sent to the Amazon to check on the work of a field team, is reported dead, Marina is asked by her company's CEO to complete Anders' task and to locate his body. What Marina finds in the sweltering, insect-infested jungles of the Amazon shakes her to her core. For the team is headed by esteemed scientist Annick Swenson, the woman who oversaw Marina's residency and who is now intent on keeping the team's progress on a miracle drug completely under wraps. Marina's jungle odyssey includes exotic encounters with cannibals and snakes, a knotty ethical dilemma about the basic tenets of scientific research, and joyous interactions with the exuberant people of the Lakashi tribe, who live on the compound. In fluid and remarkably atmospheric prose, Patchett captures not only the sights and sounds of the chaotic jungle environment but also the struggle and sacrifice of dedicated scientists.

Passages

Marina - her relationship with her father
Marina did not forget her father in his absence, nor did she learn to accept the situation over time. She longed for him. Her mother often said that Marina was smart in just the way her father was smart, and that explained why he was so pround that she excelled in the very things that interested her the most: earth sciences and math when she was a little girl, calculus, statistics, inorganic chemistry when she was older. Her skin was all cream and light in comparison to her father's and very dark when she held her wrist against her mother's. She had her father's round, black eyes and heavy lashes, his black hair and angular frame. Seeing her father gave her the ability to see herself, the comfort of physical recognition after a life spent among her mother's people, all those translucent cousins who looked at her like she was a llama who had wantered into their holiday dinner.

Marina - her relationship with Dr. Swenson
Marina waited for a moment, hoping for more than a one word affirmation. She was on an unnamed river in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night feeling very much the same way she always felt with Dr. Swenson, like Oliver Twist holding up his empty bowl.

Marina - her responsibility
Marina looked at the crowd and then at the Indians and the message on every face was exactly the same: no choice. And so she took the chief's hand which he then held high above his head, about the level of Marina's cheekbone, and together they did the slow skip forward while the men beat their drums and the tourists took their pictures and the children followed with their dances, their snake and their sloth. In this group Marina danced with the people who were not white while the white people watched them. It would never have been her preference to be part of a tourist attraction. One of the children handed her the sloth and she took it. She hung it around her neck and continued her dance, feeling the soft, warm hair against her skin. Had anyone given her a choice, she would have chosen instead to be back on the porch behind the storage shed beneath her mosquito netting reading Little Dorrit. Still, she knew it was somehow less humiliating, less disrespectful, to dance with the natives than it was to simply stand there watching them.

Then there were those exquisitely written passages that just made me sit back and sigh.

   Pickles [a Golden Retriever] leaned up against marina now and he batted her hand with his head until she reached down to rub the limp chamois of his ears.

   From the grand exterior she entered a lobby of palm plants and tired brown sofas that slumped together as if they had come as far as they could and then given up.

   Marina had been a very good student, but she only raised her hand when she was certain of the answer. She excelled not through bright bursts of inspiration but by the hard labor of a field horse pulling a plow.

   There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was not getting used to it.

As hard as some of this story was to read, there was no denying the joy of spending reading time with Drs. Singh and Swenson along with Milton, Easter, and the Bovenders. Each small event, nuance, or description drew me in like the constant churring of one of the unnamed, unseen insects of the Amazon.

Visit the author's website here.

First Day of Summer

Frank W. Benson - The Reader

Summer reading…hammocks, lounge chairs, porch rockers, iced coffee.  Is there any more enticing image for an avid reader?  Planning the summer reading selections only adds to the anticipation of those long, lazy days.  There will be a few best sellers and favorite authors on the list…Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister, Burnt Mountain by Anne Rivers Siddons, or Silver Girl by Elin Hilderbrand.  The summer reading project…The Greater Journey by David McCullough.  What about those new-to-me authors…The Soldier’s Wife by Margaret Leroy or The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene.  Perhaps a classic or two…Jane Eyre for a reread or Pride and Prejudice for a long overdue first read.  But best of all…the serendipity of an unplanned perfect summer reading experience!

Joy of Reading ~ South of Superior

From South of Superior by Ellen Airgood

She felt the sun on her back, smelled pine needles and hot sand, heard the breeze whispering in the trees.  The rustle of grasses echoed the long-gone water.  She was in this clearing deep in the woods in a forgotten place, and for at least this moment needed nothing more or less.  She walked, and with each step she let another inch of the long furl of her expectations go.  The place itself was like a steady hand, a low voice, a very old person who'd seen too much to get overexcited anymore.  Stop now a minute, it said.  Stop searching.

Wordless Wednesday

Bookbag Goodies

Joy of Reading ~ The Seasons Hereafter

from The Seasons Hereafter by Elisabeth Ogilvie

Whenever she came near the table, she touched the books with nervous, sinewy hands. Suddenly she seized one and opened it and became instantly hypnotized by the print. She stood entranced until she was freed by the noise of the kettle boiling. Hurriedly, she took a thick heel of bread from the box, spread it with jam, and poured hot water over the coffee in the mug. She dragged a chair across the aged linoleum and settled herself, the books about her plate and mug like ramparts. There was the long ineffable moment of delicious indecision, fingers hovering over one binding and then another. She finally opened one book and propped it against the others, and as definitely as if a sound proof door had swung shut behind her and locked, she had left the world.

Bookticipation

Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank

From Barnes & Noble...

Dorothea Benton Frank's latest inviting beach read introduces us to Cate, a mid-life widow whose squandering husband bequeathed her with mountains of debt. Broke and desolate, she returns to the idyllic South Carolina seaside community that gave her many of her happiest childhood memories. Don't forget the sunscreen

...and those of you who know my weaknesses know that the cover alone puts Folly Beach on my Bookticipation list!