Springtime Cupcakes!

After three weekends of plans, we finally got a day to relax! Today, we're going to try to convince Nolan's parents to come over to mow the yard (we don't have a mower yet), and then maybe go into town to put our order in for our chickens!!

This is my first recipe of the new year with lemons. These cupcakes also have a unique ingredient that I think add value and flavor to them, so don't knock it 'til you try it!

Okay, gotta go drink another cup of coffee and get ready to prep the barn! Have a great Sunday!

Lemon and Mayo Cupcakes with Toasted Meringue!

So! You might be a little grossed out with the addition of mayonnaise in this recipe, but I think it really does add a richness that is sometimes lost in plain Jane lemon cupcakes. Also, as you may have seen in my instagram story, I used a small lighter that I got from the dollar store to toast the meringue and it worked perfectly (I'm kind of scared of kitchen torches). 

Ingredients: 

• 1 1/2 cup AP flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 4 TB unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs + 1 egg white
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 TB lemon zest
• Juice of 1 lemon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare large muffin tin (or regular sized!) with paper liners
2. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder in a mixing bowl
3. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar
4. Add eggs. It will look slightly curdled, but that's okay!
5. Add remaining ingredients and mix until smooth and a pale yellow
6. By hand, mix in dry ingredients, a quarter cup at a time, with a rubber spatula
7. Divide evenly into your prepared cups
8. Bake for 25 minutes or until browned for large, 18-20 minutes for regular-sized cupcakes
9. Allow to cool before topping with meringue

Ingredients and Directions for Meringue: In a clean bowl of a stand mixer, whisk 2 egg whites on high and continue to beat until soft peaks form. Add a 1/3 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract. Keep beating until you get to stiff peaks. Use a piping bag (or even a regular ol' freezer bag!) and pipe onto your cooled cupcakes. Use a torch to toast meringue and serve!

Springtime...and a Tart

My mother has given up trying to plant anything beautiful in the yard of hers. Too much bad dirt, she says. Stunted apple trees and peaches that never seem to ripen in any hurry. Grapevines that choke the chickenwire fencing. The ground is shale, the rocks are jagged. The dirt is bad. The earth is worn down by the creekbed.

My mother gave up on making a garden, so she buys her produce from the dollar store. She buys flowers to hang from the porch rafters. She waters them with a soda cup she got at the gas station in town.  A bird’s nest pops up one afternoon and then baby birds pop up the next. One fell out of the nest and my dad threw it out behind the fence so the dogs wouldn’t get it. He didn’t tell my mom, kept it a secret from her I guess you could say.

There isn’t anything beautiful in that yard of hers.

Not that it’s promised, it never has been. The shale is rough and cuts up the hands. Grass grows in patches until late June, when it springs all at once. Then the dandelions, then the peach trees, then the snow. It’s a cycle I forgot. One I witness from my bedroom window. I’m staying here for a while, until my sister has her baby and I know what the hell it is I want out of life.

But it rained for three weeks straight and I drove the turnpike with my sunglasses on until eight at night. The mountaintops in the distance have steam on their fingertips and the bees that built their hive by the mailbox are plump and greedy. Lazy, tired. They don’t move when I draw the red mailbox arm up. They don’t move when my father comes home with a pizza for dinner. They dance along the mulch and draw cuneiforms in response to rainclouds. They know tomorrow it might rain. They know tomorrow their queen may be washed away. They know that the bird behind the fence might still be there and there’s nothing to do about it but wait for the grass to grow and the peach trees to twist their thirsty branches up, up, upwards.

It’s springtime in Pennsylvania. And I forgot how its reality comes in waves of dreams and pigment. In flashes of thunderstorms and screen doors slamming shut. It’s springtime and I wear a sweater on the porchswing. I avoid the baby birds, the beestings, and mailman. I sit and squint my eyes, wondering if it’s just as beautiful down the road as it is right here in this moment.

Pear and Strawberry Tart

Ingredients for Fruit Filling

• 2 pears (preferably Bosc), cored and sliced thinly
• 8-10 medium-sized strawberries, hulled and sliced thinly
• 2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon Gran Marnier (option, but I had some leftover from this post, so I said why not)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions for Fruit Filling

1. In a large bowl, gently mix all ingredients together to macerate strawberries and infuse the pears
2. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour
3. While waiting, work on crust

Ingredients for Crust

• ½ cup butter, softened
• ½ cup shortening
• ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
• ¼ cup white sugar
• 1¾ cup AP flour
• ¼ cup almond meal
• ½ tablespoon of vanilla extract
• 3-4 tablespoon ice water (fill a small glass of ice water and scoop out from it as you go instead of measuring beforehand)

Directions for Crust

1. In a food processor, pulse together all ingredients except the ice water 5-8 times or until the fat is processed to the size of a pea
2. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in ice water, one tablespoon at a time. When dough begins to come together, stop motor
3. Turn dough out onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc
4. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for half an hour

Ingredients for Ricotta Topping

• ½ cup ricotta, full-fat
• 2 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar
• Pinch of salt
• ½ tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions for Ricotta Topping

1. Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl until combined

Assembly and baking instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil
2. Take rested dough out of the oven and roll into a round that is roughly ¼ inch thick (will be about 14” in diameter)
3. Transfer dough to prepared baking sheet
4. Spoon fruit filling into center of round and allow for a one or two inch edge around the circumference
5. Fold edges inwards to keep the filling in
6. Dot the fruit filling with ricotta mixture
7. Mix one egg with a little water and brush the dough with your egg wash
8. Sprinkle with a little more white sugar
9. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until crust is golden and brown
10. Serve immediately, but can keep for about 4 days

Happy 70th Anniversary, Nordic Ware!

She remained for so long a fragment of eyelash wishes and the dimpled smiles of her grandchildren. She would have fourteen now, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve never met her, only spoke about her a handful of times. We keep silent about her. She’s been gone since 1985.

Anniversaries are hard to come by in my family; people just don’t stick around long enough to have many of them.  My grandfather who went by Eugene only celebrated 22 years with his wife before he lost her. Half that time was spent on the road, the other half was spent drinking in the garage behind the house, avoiding diapers and tantrums and the bills changing colors. Anniversaries were hard to come by then, too. Sometimes they celebrated in September, sometimes when the tax check came in. Sometimes that money went to school clothes for their six kids. Sometimes it went to get rich quick ideas: investments in land, oil, a no-good brother down the road.

We don’t have a lot of photos of her, of anyone really. I know there’s a photo of her sitting on a step and she’s smiling and she’s beautiful. There’s a photo of my grandfather in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, drinking a soda in that same album. Photos of me, top lip stained red with juice, are tucked in those pages, too. My mother said she would have liked me if she had met me. I wonder about it sometimes, too.

We do have a few things, artifacts of a time when my grandfather felt whole and my mother still felt like a child. A ring my sister wears on her index finger, the patina of a cheaper metal shining, dappled, in the sunlight once in a while.  An unfinished quilt that sits in a hope chest in my parents’ room. A cast iron skillet that’s more for decoration than for cooking. And a cake pan. Light and slightly dented, it sits on a shelf in the back of the house called the mudroom. We use it once a year, maybe at Christmas, maybe at the Fourth of July. But it’s there when we need it, unquestioningly so. I look forward to the cake, to the memories we made with it. How it is one of the last relics of a woman I never met. How she bought this pan and fed six kids on a budget with it. And now I bake with it, too. It’s a Nordic Ware Bundt pan, one of the classic designs.

I was fortunate enough to celebrate their 70th anniversary with them. And I can’t stop wondering if that fragment of a grandmother named Norma, bought her own bundt pan for some celebration, too. But in that celebration, I roasted some cherries and mixed my batter. A vanilla bundt cake with goat cheese icing, baked in a crown-shaped pan. Fit for a king, or a baker in Pennsylvania, or a mother of six in rural Indiana.

Vanilla Bundt with Roasted Cherries and Goat Cheese Icing

A cake this could needs to be in the shape of a crown. Celebrating Nordic Ware's 70th Anniversary, this cake is light but filling with its cherry and goat cheese accents. Yields one Bundt.

Ingredients for the Vanilla Bundt Cake:

• 1 tablespoon. vanilla extract
• 1 cup buttermilk, half ‘n half, or whole milk
• 1 and ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup shortening, room temperature
• 1 stick butter, room temperature + more for pan
• 1 and 1/2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 and 3/4 cups AP flour + more for pan

Directions for Vanilla Bundt Cake:

1. Preheat oven to 325*F
2. Butter and flour your bundt pan
3. In a medium bowl, sift together baking powder, salt, and flour
4. In a measuring cup or small bowl, whisk together milk and vanilla
5. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat fats and sugar on medium-high until light and ribbony
6. Gradually add one egg at a time until incorporated
7. Reduce speed of mixer and alternate between adding flour mixture and milk mixture, a third at a time
8. Mixture will appear lumpy and perhaps very dry, but when constantly stirred, the batter will come together
9. Gently pour batter into prepared bundt and bake for 55 minutes to one hour
10. Cake will be done when a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into bundt
11. Allow to cool while continuing with recipe

Ingredients for Roasted Cherries:

• 1 quart frozen or fresh cherries
• 2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 ½ tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoon brown sugar

Directions for Roasted Cherries:

1. Preheat oven to 425*F and prepare a half sheet pan with parchment paper
2. In a large mixing bowl, stir all ingredients together, ensuring all berries are coated in sugars, oil, and vinegar
3. Pour onto prepared sheet and roast for 20-25 minutes, or until caramelized and juices are running from cherries
4. Remove from oven and allow to cool before spooning into center of bundt

Ingredients for Goat Cheese Icing:

• 2 ounces goat cheese, room temperature
• 2 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2-3 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 3-4 tablespoons whole milk or cream
• A pinch of salt

Directions for Goat Cheese Icing:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment, beat goat and cream cheeses together on medium-high until light, fluffy, and well-incorporated
2. With mixer still running, beat in vanilla
3. Add confectioner’s sugar, one half cup at a time, until icing starts to come together
4. To thin out consistency, add milk
5. Add a pinch of salt to taste and ice on bundt immediately

A special thanks to Nordic Ware for sponsoring this post. Nordic Ware has been producing quality kitchenware products in their 70 years and are now one of America's most beloved and iconic brands. I am honored to be celebrating their 70 years in business and especially excited at using their commemorative gold crown bundt pan for many years to come. For more information or products, check out their website!

Hot Cross Buns for Easter: In Partnership with Red Star Yeast

So suddenly the winter’s gone and the salt-stained boots lying in the mudroom are the only indication it ever stopped by at all. Without invitation, Spring trespassed on the cold mornings, stretched her arms and I kept my windows open to greet her. A lot has happened in six months and this persephonic heat wave doesn’t remember any of it. And I thank her for that.

I’m drinking my coffee on the porch these days, a blanket and a dog on my lap. I take my time. I don’t wear cologne these days, all my clothes smell like the breeze. A finch sat on the porch swing last night and didn’t seem to notice me. I’m enjoying the times I get to be invisible. A truck broke down a mile from my house; but I just kept driving.

This week is almost Easter and that, too, crept up on me. I haven’t celebrated in a few years—I let life get the best of me and was too busy trying to forget about others. We’re celebrating early, my parents are driving to their house in North Carolina and my sister works the weekend shift now. We’re meeting at a truck stop and eating at a diner. My dad says I can order anything I want on the menu, he’s just happy to have me home now. My mom apologizes for the last-minute choice, but the candy store’s busy and she’s too tired to cook when she gets home. I say it’s all fine because it really is. As long as I’m with them, I’m happy.

But I kept one tradition going this year, to keep the memories of cellophane grass and hollow chocolate bunnies alive. I made hot cross buns for tomorrow, for Good Friday. I made these for every tradition I thought I forgot, for every year I thought I could leave them all behind. I’ll give a few to my sister and her husband and pack the rest in a basket for my mom and dad. It may not be much, but it’s all I can give. It’s been a long six months of winter for me.

Coconut-Roasted Carrot Hot Cross Buns with Pineapple Ginger Icing

Yields 12-18 buns

Ingredients for the Roasted Carrot Puree:

• 5-8 carrots, cleaned
• 3 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions for the Roasted Carrot Puree

1. Preheat oven to 425*F and prepare a pan with aluminum foil
2. Lay carrots on foiled pan, spread out
3. In a small measuring cup, whisk coconut oil, sugar, olive oil, pepper, and salt
4. Pour mixture over carrots and stir with a wooden spoon to coat
5. Roast for 25-35 minutes or until browned, tender, and a little caramelized
6. Let cool and puree in a food processor

Ingredients for Coconut-Roasted Carrot Hot Cross Buns:

• 2 cups water, warm to the touch
• 5 teaspoons Red Star Active Dry Yeast
• 1/2 cup white sugar, packed
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup roasted carrot puree (above)
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons softened butter
• ½ tablespoon of orange zest
• 4 1/2-6 cup AP flour 

Directions for Coconut-Roasted Carrot Hot Cross Buns:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, add water, sugar, salt, and yeast. Let sit for five minutes until foamy
2. Add egg, puree, orange zest, and butter. Turn mixer on low to mix all ingredients together
3. Keeping the mixer on, begin adding flour, one cup at a time. Keep adding flour until dough begins to stick away from sides of bowl (if you add too much flour and dough becomes "sandy", add a small amount of water or milk to reconstitute)
4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead for 3-5 minutes until springy
5. Place in a well-oiled bowl, turning once. Cover with a towel and let sit for an hour in a warm, dry place until doubled in size. 
6. Turn back out onto floured surface and punch down slightly. Cut into 12 or 18 equal pieces and place well-oiled pan
7. Cover with a towel and allow to rise for 20 minutes
8. While rising, preheat oven to 350*F
9. Bake for 25-32 minutes or until golden brown on top.
10. Allow to cool slightly before icing tops of crosses

Ingredients for Pineapple Ginger Icing:

• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• ½ teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 tablespoon pineapple juice
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar

Directions for Pineapple Ginger Icing:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment, mix cream cheese, ginger, and pineapple juice on medium-high until well incorporated
2. With mixer reduced to a medium-low speed, begin adding confectioner’s sugar, a half-cup at a time until icing is a desired viscosity with no lumps
3. Spoon icing into a piping bag and pipe crosses onto buns
4. Allow to sit for two minutes
5. Enjoy!

Thank you to Red Star Yeast for sponsoring this post. I believe in using quality products when it comes to baking and I am always confident my dough will rise beautifully with Red Star! Check out the active dry yeast I used for this recipe and others on their website, follow them on instagram and like their Facebook!

And while you're at it...like my Facebook and Instagram too!

A widow. A rose. A table. A cake.

God is a widow in a mantilla and I pass her every day at work.  She sits at a bus stop and cross-stitches red roses on black cloth.  Always looking down, always toiling.  Hungry and waiting at the bus stop.  I drink some coffee and forget about her for the day.

Roses, they mean things.  I've only ever received roses twice.  Once when my grandmother died, each grandchild got a red rose to throw on her grave.  Once for Valentine's Day, when we had resolved to take some time apart, to see other people, perhaps to be our own people.  Those were yellow.  Roses, they speak things.  The widow sews roses while she waits for the bus stop, deep red roses.  Grave roses.  She's telling a story, passing the dawn light between her needle and thread.  Stitching years of aching years, manacled to her task.  I forget about her every day.

I toil in my own way.  I try to keep busy.  I leave tasks until the last moment, when the flies dance on the trash, when I have to use a fork to spread jelly.  I do this to have a task, to distract my mind, to tell myself that I will keep living as long as I stay busy.  I think I'll be rewarded if I just keep moving.  I think it's called Protestant work ethic.  But, I just keep thinking how sharks and hummingbirdswill die if they ever stop moving.  I wonder which one I am.

I like to work with my hands.  Holding other people's, tenting them in some facsimile of devotion when I really need a favor.  Throwing carrot stumps to Milo, hiding my face when I'm hungover and working twelve hours.  I used to beat my brother at thumb wars and now I could go a year without ever thinking about him.  I used to do a lot of things, but I built all the furniture in this tiny apartment of mine.

I built myself a table this week, I built it from old fence posts. I found them on a walk.  I sanded them down and I thought about that old woman and her stitching, so I stained the wood as dark as her fabric, as dark as her drawn-on eyebrows, as dark as the mantilla she wears under the high Texas sun.  I work on it when I need to focus, I'm not afraid to knick it or scratch it.  I'm not afraid to hurt it like I am with the hearts of others.  I crumbled old yellow roses on it, the last of that old Valentine's Day bouquet.  I baked on it, too.  An almond-cornmeal cake with rose buttercream frosting.  And I knew I was cursed with the same old hex as that widow on my morning drive--we're too afraid to be alone, so we just keep staying busy.

Almond-Cornmeal Cake with Rose Buttercream Frosting

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For the cake:

• 10 TB butter, room temperature
• scant 1/4 cup greek yogurt
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 TB clover honey
• 3 whole eggs, large
• 1/2 cup buttermilk 
• 2 ts vanilla extract
• 1/2 ts almond extract
• 1 1/2 cup almond meal
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 2 ts baking powder

For the frosting:

• 1/2 stick butter, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted
• 2 ts rose water extract
• about 2 TB heavy cream

For the cake: makes one 9-inch cake or two-tiered 5-inch cake

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease desired pan, use parchment for bottom of pan
2. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter, yogurt, sugar, and honey together until light and whipped on medium-low.
3. Add each egg, one at a time, and allow to incorporate between each egg
4. Add buttermilk and extracts
5. In a separate bowl, measure out all dry ingredients and whisk until combined.  No need to sift, as the meals are coarse and will not sift as beautifully as, say, confectioner's sugar. 
6. Slowly and gradually add dry ingredients to stand mixer set on low, pausing in thirds to allow to incorporate.
7. Turn off mixer, use a rubber spatula to mix by hand to ensure mixer did not miss anything
8. Pour into pan, bake for 30-40 minutes. Allow to cool completely before turning out or decorating

For the frosting:

1. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix butter, sugar, and rose water on medium-high until combined.  Mixture will be dry and crumbly.
2. Gradually add cream until desired consistency.

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