Cherry Syrup

Let me just start this post off with two simple statements:

1. I Love where I live because of the amazing fruits and vegetables that grow in the area.
2. The bank I work at has amazing customers who bring us the fabulous fruits and vegetables grown locally. 

Just look at these cherries, they are huge and there was no way everyone in the office could eat them all so Friday, after everyone had been snacking on them for a few days and after everyone had taken huge bags full home to their families, I took what was left wanting to try some new things with cherries.

My first round of inspiration came when my children repeatedly asked me to make pancakes for breakfast. I thought that a cherry syrup would be perfect with the Oatmeal Pancakes we eat in this house all the time.  I wasn't sure if the best pancakes in the world could be any tastier, but I quickly discovered that this homemade cherry syrup elevated my favorite pancakes in the world to the "bestest pancakes ever ever ever," according to my 4 year old who, if you didn't know, is a brilliant.

This syrup could be used for any variety of uses, pancakes and waffles, ice cream, glaze for pork tenderloin, and even as a spread on sandwiches or wraps.  The flavor is tart and sweet with a spicy hint from the dash of cinnamon I added. Try this recipe with just about any fruit this summer, your family will love the results!

Cherry Syrup

Recipe Source: A Cook's Quest

4 cups cherrys pitted and cut in half

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

dash of cinnamon

Pit the cherrys and cut them in half.  If you don't have a handy dandy cherry pitter just cut them open and pop the pit out.   Throw into a food processor and blend until smooth. 

Pour the liquefied cherrys into a sieve in order to remove the skin and pulp.  Add the sugar and water to a heavy sauce pan.  Stirring constantly, bring the mixture to a boil.  Allow to cook 8-10 minutes or until reduced and the mixture begins to thicken.  This is when you really want to pay attention because at this point the longer you cook it, the thicker your end result will be.  I cooked mine about 12 minutes because I wanted a thicker product. 

Remove the syrup from the heat, allow to cool slightly and serve immediately or pour into air tight jars and refrigerate.

 **Cook's Note- If you don't have a food processor you can just cook the cherries whole until they are soft, mash them with a potato masher to extract the juices then strain. Return to the heat and boil until the mixture reduces.  You can also do this without straining the solids out for a more rustic presentation. 

Other fruits that you can do this with:

Apples

Strawberries

Blackberries

Raspberries

Huckleberries

Grapes

Blueberries

Make sure you taste your fruit and start with 1/4 cup of sugar for about 2 cups of fruit.  Some fruit may require more other fruit might be less.  Don't be afraid to add other flavors too, cinnamon is a great addition to almost every fruit above.

Total Cost $.05
The only thing I had to pay for was the sugar and cinnamon.

Lime Mascarpone Cream Puffs (a.k.a HEAVEN!)

 Finally, the day has arrived where you all get to see what I've been hinting at for so long.  The combination of three great things to make one fabulous treat.  The ingredients are simple, the flavors are complex and delectable.  There is the rich mascarpone cheese, the light whipped cream, the crispy shells and oh, the tartness of the lime curd that all come together into a marriage of pure bliss. This is a dessert that is SURE to please the masses at your next getogether and impress even those that are hard to impress...after all you get to say you made the cheese that went into the fancy French pastry (pâte à choux), that was mixed with the real whipped cream and combined with the fresh lime curd.  Pretty darn impressive if you ask me!

Lime Mascarpone Cream Puffs

Recipe Source: A Cooks Quest

Cream Puff Shells

Mascarpone Cheese (6 oz or so)

2/3 cup Lime curd (or lemon if you like)

Heavy Cream

3 tablespoons sugar

In a mixer whip the heavy cream and sugar together until stiff peaks form.

Meanwhile, combine the mascarpone cheese and lime curd.  The lime curd will turn a pale green color.  This is why I added the food coloring.  The final product will have a wonderful green color to it so your friends will have an idea what they are about to eat.

Stir some of the whipped cream into the mascarpone cheese mixture to lighten it up a bit.  Then add the cheese to the bowl with the whipped cream and fold the two mixtures together.  Be gently here, you want to maintain the integrity of the whipped cream. 

Next, fill a pastry bag fitted with a simple round tip with your filling.  Gently poke the bottom of a cream puff shell with the pastry tip and pipe the filling inside.  Or cut the tops off and fill them and then replace the tops.  It doesn't really matter which method you choose...they both taste great!

 Top with powdered sugar and enjoy!

Journey vs. Arrival

Quote of the Day:

You Are There

by

Erica Jong

You are there.

You have always been

there.

Even when you thought

you were climbing

you had already arrived.

Even when you were breathing hard,

you were at rest.

Even then it was clear

you were there.

Not in our nature

to know what

is journey and what

arrival.

Even if we knew

we would not admit.

Even if we lived

we would think

we were just

germinating.

To live is to be

uncertain.

Certainty comes

at the end.

I discovered this poem on The Writer's Almanac last week.  I recommend a daily dose of Garrison Keillor reading poems, telling us about events in history that happen on this day, and highlighting birthdays of famous authors and artists.

To hear Ms. Jong read some of her poetry out loud, and watch a great book trailer, click on her name, above.  I like what she says about the internet giving poetry a new voice.

I think of poetry as the highest art form of writing.  I have written a few poems, but don't consider it my strength.  I do love reading poems.  My favorite book is The Music Lover's Poetry Anthology.  I call it my comfort book. I read nearly every night before going to sleep, and some nights I have only enough eyeball strength for a poem.

What I like about You Are There is the message that we are exactly where we are supposed to be.  It's all part of the journey. 

Haven't you arrived once you've written a sentence that turned into a paragraph that turned into a story that you shared with even one person?

Haven't you arrived when you've learned to play or sing a new song, and then shared it?

Haven't you arrived when the green sprouts of your garden pop their heads above the soil, which you might enjoy as flowers or food to share with someone?

Haven't you arrived when you hang your artwork in a local coffee shop where people are drawn in, fingers outstretched, gently touching, having a tactile conversation with your work?

My artist friend JeMA and I were having dinner at the restaurant where her art is hanging.  I noticed people were looking at it and moving closer.  I told JeMA to watch.  The woman was touching the texture of her art.

Here's JeMA in front of her seaside pictures that hang in my favorite writing spot, the Coco Moon coffee shop.

Looks to me like she has arrived, AND is on the journey.  It is so much fun to sit there, writing, and watch people move in closer to the painting, to examine it, and feel it.

Journaling Prompt:  Describe where you are on your journey.  How have you arrived?

Lemon & Lime Curd

If you are a fan of lemon meringue pie or key lime pie, chances are you will love or at least like this lime curd.  Lime curd, just like its partner lemon curd, is a thick, spreadable, creamy, custard or pudding like preserve made of lemons or limes, sugar and eggs.  It is cooked until the mixture begins to thicken and then placed into jars for spreading on things like scones or muffins or topping heavenly cheesecakes.  I made this batch to be part of the cream puffs that I keep telling you about.  That recipe will be coming in a few days when all the parts are complete.

P.S. Don't be alarmed at the color of my lime curd. It is normally a light yellow color like butter but I wanted green for a very specific reason so I added just a smidgen of food color.   My motives will be clear once you see the final dessert. 

Lemon and Lime Curd
Recipe source: Adapted very slightly from allrecipes.com

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon lime zest
2 eggs, beaten


Directions

Place the sugar, butter, lime juice,lemon juice, & lime zest in the top of a double boiler; stir over medium-high heat until butter melts.

Mix 2 tablespoons hot lime mixture into the eggs and stir to blend. (This tempers the eggs so you don't end up with big chunks of scrambled egg.)

Reduce heat to medium until water simmers. Slowly whisk egg mixture into the lime mixture. Cook over the double boiler until lime mixture thickens and coats the back of a wooden spoon, 20 to 25 minutes.

Cool slightly, pour through a strainer to remove any bits of egg and the zest, then spoon into a clean, glass jar. Cover and refrigerate. The curd will thicken once completely cool. 
 
Total Cost $1.54
Lime Juice $.80 (8 limes at .10 each)
Lemon Juice $.05 (this wasn't fresh, just the stuff from the juice aisle that I had on hand for something else)
butter $.27
sugar $.22
eggs $.20

Pâte à choux (batter for cream puffs and eclairs and profiteroles...)

Cream puffs and eclairs and profiteroles of any flavor or size are a weakness of mine.  There is something about the light, airy pastry filled with marvelous flavors and topped with even more flavor that just makes me throw all reason out the window.  They are all basically the same thing, a pastry made from choux paste and piped or dropped and even sometimes fried to create a lovely light pastry.  I used to think that these little gems were hard to make, but my dear readers I was wrong, so very very wrong!

All of these creations begin by making a pâte à choux.  Yes, it sounds all fancy dancy and like something that doesn't belong in a home kitchen, but really it's not.  It only sounds fancy because it's French, and unless you speak French, which I most definitely don't, it will have that fru fru sound to it.  Pronounce it paht-ah-shoo, or call it by what most Americans call it,  cream puff shells, or make up your own name, really it doesn't matter as long as you try these perfect little bites of delectable goodness.  They are truly simple, easy food to make especially since you can fill them with anything.  Soon...very very soon I will show you what goes inside of them.

**Cook's Note-This is very similar to the recipe I used for the base of the Strawberry Cream Puff Cake

Pâte à choux

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter
3/4 cup water
1 cup all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
4 eggs

Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In sauce pan, combine the butter and water.

Meanwhile on a piece of parchment paper, sift together the flour, salt and sugar. This is also a good time to crack your eggs, get your mixer ready and fit a pastry bag with a coupler but no tip, or cut the corner off a plastic bag.

 Bring the water and butter to a rolling boil, remove from heat and dump the flour mixture in all at once. Stir with a wooden spoon to incorporate.

Return the pan to the burner and cook, stirring, for about one minute. The mixture will form a ball and coat the pan with a thin film.

Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl or standing mixer equipped with the paddle attachment. Mix the dough for a minute or so, on low speed, to release some of the heat. Add the eggs, one at a time, completely incorporating each one before adding the next. Beat until the dough gets thick and ribbony.

Fill your pastry bag or plastic bag with the warm dough. Line a heavy cookie sheet with parchment paper and anchor it to the tray with a little dab of the dough at each corner.  Or you can  use stoneware like I do.  Pipe about forty to forty five 1 1/2-inch mounds about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

 

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden and puffed. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 10 minutes or until they are golden brown and there are no droplets of moisture in the crevices. Turn off oven, prop the door with the end of a wooden spoon and leave the choux to dry for another 10 minutes. Use when cool, or freeze, wrapped in a plastic bag, for 2-3 months.

Retro Desserts, Part V: Cherries Jubilee . . . with Pomegranate Juice & Grand Marnier

Last year, I did a little series of posts focusing on retro desserts. My desire was to zero in on a few of the more definitive desserts that Americans typically associate with the mid-20th century. Sweet and enduring dishes that, despite their lack of modern fashion sense, have managed to avoid full admittance into the dreaded Halls of Obsolescence. How did they escape that fate? By embedding themselves deeply into the treat-loving American psyche, that's how. We don't give up our heroes without a fight, and we obviously feel the same way about our best desserts.

In 2009, we talked here about banana cream pie beneath a snowy drift of whipped cream, triple-layer devil's food cake cloaked in chocolate buttercream, dark chocolate bread pudding, and well-stuffed faux Oreo cookies. It's been quite a while since the last retro post, so I figured it was time to add to the list. No time like the present!

Now, one could argue that cherries jubilee, though having enjoyed a decade or so of wild popularity in the U.S. about fifty years ago, doesn't really fit into the retro American category very neatly. I don't know about you, but my mom sure never made this stuff at home when I was a kid. Flaming food? If food ever caught on fire in our kitchen it didn't happen by design. That was too much pseudo-sophistication for a traditional Midwestern household in the 1960's.

But that's okay. I'm admittedly stretching my own guidelines a bit here. Though it's true I never ate this back then, it seems like every major cookbook I ever peeked into contained a recipe for it. Cherries jubilee, along with its sidekick baked Alaska and its exotic cousin crepes Suzette, popped up constantly and, if not necessarily on middle-class dinner tables, then in TV shows, in movies, in magazines, and on fancy restaurant menus. Somebody out there was eating it, and with good reason.

Of course, cherries jubilee is not at all American in origin. We have the legendary French chef and restaurateur Auguste Escoffier to thank for this beautiful, elegant, and relatively simple dish. He whipped it up in honor of Queen Victoria's "golden" or "diamond" jubilee celebration (exactly which event it was seems to be in question). Whether or not he ever served it over vanilla ice cream is sketchy at best, but that's the form in which it entered our culinary vernacular.

This particular version, which I've taken the liberty of calling my own, is . . . well . . . jubilant. Usually made with cherry brandy, aka kirsch (kirschwasser, literally translated as cherry water), or sometimes with the almond liqueur Amaretto, I instead used Grand Marnier, the bitter-orange based liqueur; it's an interesting alternative to kirschwasser, which doesn't seem to be easily accessible/affordable, in my neck of the woods.

Frequently augmented with almond extract, I left that out of my jubilee recipe entirely. Usually including cherry juice or a cherry juice blend, I chose to use POM Wonderful brand pomegranate juice instead and that worked really well. (Thanks very much to the POM Wonderful company for kindly sending me a free case of their superior juice! I love it!) Pomegranate juice looks and even tastes similar to cherry juice, so it was a natural choice.

Use the nicest, sweetest, ripe black cherries you can find in your jubilee--fresh vs. frozen if at all possible. If you use bad cherries in a recipe that features them, then all will be for naught, so be sure to taste those babies first!

My jubilee did not "flame" in the classic fashion, sadly. Maybe because I didn't add in the full recommended amount of brandy. I got just the tiniest flame out of mine, then it fizzled. Pfffftt. Like that. It seems that the flame concept is mostly for show and not much else, or so I am telling myself, but no matter. Flame or no flame, cherries jubilee is still wonderful.

Oh, and before I forget, this was made using the finest homemade vanilla ice cream recipe I've ever run across. Not unexpectedly, it's from David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop. If it can be improved upon, I just don't know how. The texture is right on target in every way, and the flavor is exceptional.

I've made some sorry dud ice creams in my day, but this one was a huge hit here. My 17-year old son, Charlie, gave me a solid fist-pound directly upon tasting it. He said something like, "Mom, you may have finally cracked the ice cream code." I know it must be a blazing success if that kid will actually eat it with gusto.

The ice cream recipe below makes one scant quart and no more; it's very rich and ultra creamy. If you're serving a crowd, plan to make more than one batch!

Cherries Jubilee . . . with Pomegranate Juice & Grand Marnier

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

For the cherry sauce:

1 cup pomegranate juice (I recommend POM Wonderful brand)
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
4 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 pinch ground cinnamon
About 4 cups of whole, sweet, fresh black cherries--pitted
2 Tbsp. to 4 Tbsp. Grand Marnier liqueur (Use up to 1/3 cup if you love this stuff; I used the lesser amount  because I didn't want to overwhelm the flavor of the cherries.)

In a medium sauce pan, stir together the sugar, cornstarch, and cinnamon. Add in the pomegranate juice and, on medium heat, stirring constantly, bring the mixture just to a boil. Immedately lower the heat. Simmer the sauce for a couple of minutes, still stirring constantly, just until it thickens enough to easily coat a wooden spoon. You want it to be about as thick as gravy, and no thicker; it needs to remain pourable.

Remove the pan from the heat and gently stir in all the cherries, to coat them. Set aside.

In another smaller pan, carefully warm the liqueur. It doesn't need to be hot--just warm. Now, pour the liqueur over the cherry mixture and immediately light it with a long match. If you time this well, and have your dishes of ice cream scooped and ready, the  cherry sauce can be spooned over the ice cream while it's still flaming, for a classic presentation. (I have yet to achieve this, so don't be discouraged!)

For the vanilla ice cream:

1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups heavy cream
pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise
yolks from 6 large eggs
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, sugar, 1 cup of the cream, and the salt. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and add them, along with the hull of the bean, into the warm mixture. Cover the pan and remove it from the heat; let it steep like that for 30 minutes.

Pour the remaining 1 cup of cream into a large bowl; set a fine mesh strainer on top of the bowl.

In a medium size bowl, whisk together the yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the yolks, whisking constantly, then pour this all back into the medium size saucepan. Over medium heat, constantly stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan, heat the mixture until it thickens enough to coat a spatula. Pour this custard mixture through the strainer over the bowl of cream; stir it into the cream thoroughly. Put the vanilla bean into the custard and add in the vanilla extract. Cool it in its bowl, set over an ice bath (a larger bowl filled with ice).

Once cool, chill it completely in the refrigerator. When you're ready to churn the ice cream, remove the vanilla bean. Churn and then freeze the ice cream according to the manufacturer's instructions for your ice cream maker.

* * * *
(Hey--do you love POM Wonderful? Here are a couple of other great food bloggers' recent posts showing how they used their free POM juice! These are two of my favorite blogs . . . )
Day Dreamer Desserts
More Than a Mountful

(If you'd like to comment on this post, or to read any existing comments, please click on the purple COMMENTS below!)

Sunshine and Sorrow

Quote of the Day:

Touched by An Angel

by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.


Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.


We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

A rose is a symbol of love. Its gorgeous shape and delicious smell draw us in.  And, yet, this beauty doesn't live forever, and its thorns tear the flesh.

We enjoyed a wonderful weekend, sunny skies, warm weather, time with friends, great conversation, and delicious food.  I finished reading the book I found on my trip West by Maya Angelou.  While I was enjoying all those things, my friend was deciding to take her four-year-old son off life support. We don't know why he stopped breathing in the night, why his brain swelled and caused so much damage, or why his days on this Earth were so short.  His brief life brought joy, love, and meaning.

God sends us sweet roses, loving friends, and magnificent sunrises to help us through the dark days.

The sunrise on the West Coast looked like this, the full moon still shining over the water, and the sun reflecting off the front of the waves. 

From Psalm 30, Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. 

Journaling Prompt:  Write about your recent joys and sorrows.