Tag Archives: Baking

Blueberry Coffee Cake

A friend recently mentioned in passing that my photos used to be mostly foods we cooked or baked and hasn’t been lately, but with good reason, and she missed reading about it. (Admittedly bumblebees photos filled my entire iPhone and I need to clear space now). This post is for you Leibe!

It does seem like ages the last time I REALLY got to sink my hands and teeth into something I baked out of our kitchen. Yes, yes I’ve baked oatmeal cookies almost weekly now…but I mean really baked something with the kitchenAid and all! So I found myself jonesing one Sunday morning and took advantage of the “free-time” and whipped up the most scrumptious Dahlia Bakery’s sour cream coffee cake (so kindly introduced to me by our dearly missed friends).

Imagine a nice thick blueberry sour cream coffee cake topped with just an irresistible cinnamony crunchy streusel topping. OKAY! Now STOP imagining and go bake it!

Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Cinnamon Streusel
Serves 12
Recipe from The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook

Ingredients:

Streusel:
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
6 tbsp cold unsalted butter

Cake:
2½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
2 cups berries (blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries)

Directions:
Preheat over to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9×13 pan and set aside.

Make the streusel: combine the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a bowl. Dice the cold butter, add it to the mixture, and blend with your fingers until crumbly. Set aside.
Make the cake: Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda into a bowl, and set aside. In an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each and scraping down the bowl as needed. Mix in the sour cream, vanilla, and salt. Add the dry ingredients a third at a time, mixing until just blended. Fold in the berries.

Scrape the batter into the pan and spread it evenly with a spatula. Sprinkle the streusel over the top.

Bake 45-50 minutes, until a tester comes out mostly clean. Cool in the pan in a wire rack.

Backpackbees

Gather. Eat. Drink. Repeat

Friends, we certainly missed you at our table over the weekend!

We gathered, ate, drank and repeated all evening. Nothing better in our book!

These friends are friends that have cooked a special birthday meal for us and have given us such wonderful gifts, we’re very blessed to have met them all, so we certainly wanted to return the favor with a special treat for them!

The menu was French themed and featured the following:

^L’Apéritif (Drinks): Assorted beer, cocktails, homemade mulled wine

^L’Entrée (Appetizer): Pan seared foie gras served on homemade whole-wheat toast

^Le Plat Principal (The Main Dish):
Sous vide duck breast, served with fresh steamed broccoli, and pommes frites (french-fries)

^La Salade et le Fromage (Salad and Cheese):
Seasonal dinner salad and assorted cheese plate (served on my favorite Pennsylvania board)

^Le Dessert (Dessert): Vanilla-bean crème brûlée with local strawberries

Le Café (Coffee) : Coffee & tea

Bon weekending!

Backpackbees

Winter berries and the past

There are certain times throughout the year that I get very nostalgic about my childhood. So much so, I find myself shortly afterwards in our kitchen baking or making it simply to have a taste of the past. Make no mistakes, I enjoy adulthood and eagerly look forward to the future, but you know those days or moments when they hit you…

Today for me it’s homemade strawberry shortcake. Oh yes, a delicious family recipe that I covet, passed down generation to generation, butter, Crisco and all. No sharsies with this one folks. I know what you are thinking… Mmmm isn’t it sort of out of season to be longing for shortcake? Yes and no. I guess the great and not so great fact about the US is that at any time of the year you can get your hands on imported fruits and vegetables. I try not to be that gal, strive to purchase as much locally, plus we’re currently located in South Korea where local strawberries are divided into two growing seasons, summer and winter.

If you recall on a past blog post in the summer-ish we visited a nearby greenhouse and picked our own. With our winter berries we weren’t as adventures, we simply visit our local vegetable stand and purchase one or two containers a week. (They are that good!)

I enjoy learning more and more about anything that surrounds the topic of food. I found it very interesting when chatting up some Korean friends and locals that, the winter berries grown here are Maeyang strawberries, a cross and byproduct of two other strains of strawberries. I am told that these winter beauties yield a higher sugar content, because they are said to breath less at night, so unlike its sister summer berry, it loses far less nutrition, thus losing less of their precious sugar. I can absolutely attest to that! No need to sprinkle a dash of sugar on these little sweeties. Oh and the smell of the berries, imagine the best perfume in all the world!

During my childhood summers we’d always enjoy a nice size slice of shortcake topped with fresh local strawberries, sometimes cool-whip topping, but almost always soaked in a bowl of milk. This cake would accompany a bowl of parsley potatoes. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. Recently Skyping with my grandparents we had a good laugh because Mr. B couldn’t wrap this mind around the fact that there wasn’t any protein, and the fact that was the entire meal. Hahaha! I suppose it might sound odd to those out there reading this post too, but I confess those dinners as simple as they were, were the very best. My great-grandmother coined the statement that you had to have the salty with the sweet. The saltiness of the parsley potatoes and the sweetness of the strawberries. This was a grandmother that knew her foodie stuff, she’d rather enjoy her dessert served before any meal. I certainly belong to the correct bloodline.

While we didn’t serve parsley potatoes tonight with our strawberry shortcake (party-pooper Mr. B), we did enjoy an outstanding marinated grilled chicken with corn barley salad from Iowa girl eats. The link is here and we didn’t change a thing. We used our fresh corn on the cob that we shucked and froze when it was available. We know you’ll enjoy this hearty easy dish during the weeknight too!

So now it’s your turn to share your childhood meal nostalgia with us. Do you re-visit the past with any sorts of odd meals? We’d love to hear!

Backpackbees

It’s Not To Early for A Bit Of Christmas

….Is it??

Typically we wait until the day after Thanksgiving to put up our tree, well except the past two years. Last year Mr. B got excited and insisted we purchase another tree because he had crossed the 5 year mark in Korea and I think he realized that the one we had sitting in storage wasn’t going to be making an appearance anytime soon in Korea. He also declared that he wanted to put it up before we had hosted our Friendsgiving. It was really sweet.

This year i’ve noticed many of our friends posting photos of their cozy homes all decked out with their Christmas swag. At first I thought ALREADY?! Then this past week it got me and sucked me right in. I’m guilty, i’ve had Charlie Brown’s Christmas music on and have changed out our pumpkins for red berries and greens.

After I decorated the first tree, I decided something needed to be filling the air with its Christmasy flair. I’m not talking about a candle, it needed to be homemade and baked for the right feel to go along with the good vibes.

As you know, I adore our cookbook collection and of course consulted my gal-pal Isa and whipped up an orange chocolate chip bundt cake. The cake uses orange zest and really added that hint of citrus spiciness you think of around the fall/winter holidays. Just enough to tickle the nostrils and stimulate your taste buds! Plus Mr. B is a huge fan of chocolate. Win-win!

You can find the link to her recipe here. I highly recommend you pick up her book, even if you check it out for a bit from your local library. I tweaked the recipe due to the availability of items in our kitchen. I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk, homemade vanilla extract, tangerines in the place of orange for the zest, used Ghirardelli Chocolate 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Chips in the place of semi-sweet, and I cut back on the sugar. I also didn’t end up adding in the ground flaxseed. Digging into the cake that evening was a treat! Next time I’m going to make sure I have oranges on hand just to taste the difference.

We are not skipping or discounting any part of Thanksgiving this year, but as i’ve seen and recently have felt, it’s never to early to get excited about something as important as Christmas! What are your feelings, or are you waiting until after Thanksgiving to get in the Christmas spirit?

Backpackbees

Click, Ship & treat yourself!

I ordered dukboki and I finally got to try out Chap chae also spelled Jab Chae (잡 채). Chap Chae consist of clear noodles made from sweet potato. The noodles are typically stir fried with sesame oil and served with thinly sliced carrots, onions, spinach, mushrooms. Sometimes the dish can be found served with beef or chicken or served cold or hot. This dish did not include meat and was served cold. It was delicious!

After eating lunch we decided to start heading back to catch the train. Along the way we checked out a few shops selling fur, umbrellas, bags, and toys. We checked out the Majeongyo underground shopping center. Here we found the typical shops selling shoes, bags, clothing, art, etc.

Walking into one of the shops with a friend I learned about the traditional Korean wedding gift. Are you ready for this? The gift is a pair of hand carved wooden ducks. Yes, ducks! These ducks symbolize both partners in marriage. What really got me was the female duck has cords wrapped around her beak. The cords were to represent that the wife to keep silent and support her husband…. Hmmmm….

At the Korea wedding the groom’s mother tosses the duck to the bride and if she catches it the couple’s first born will be a son. If when the duck is tossed and she misses of course it will be a daughter (less desirable).

After the marriage ceremony, the ducks are placed in the couples household on display. The ducks positions will tell what the relationship status currently is. When the ducks are facing each other beak to beak everything is going fine in the marriage. When the ducks are turned away tail to tail there is trouble in paradise. I found the ducks to be very interesting and thought I should share.