Tag Archives: food photography

The Weekend Dish-Creamy Tomato Soup

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Through the wonders of an Instagram discovery moment, and the beautiful truth behind the line, “like mother, like daughter,” today’s Weekend Dish comes to you courtesy of Sue’s daughter, Michele Greene, one of the original Backyard Cousins.

During the chilly fall months in Chicago there are times when nothing sounds better than a warm bowl of soup. This time it was creamy tomato soup compliments of a little Bon Appétit browsing. In thinking of what to pair with tomato soup the natural choice was grilled cheese, however, I didn’t want to stick with your ordinary grilled cheese, so I chose a Gruyere and caramelized onion on baguette twist.

Hopefully this soup and grilled cheese keeps you warm on a blustery day. For me, the process of making homemade soup gives a whole new meaning to “soup for the soul.” It’s a process that cannot be rushed and must be savored. So often, our lives are go, go, go and it is nice to slow down and pay mind to the many detailed flavors and the slow simmering of a delicious pot of soup.

Creamy Tomato Soup
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
10 sprigs thyme, tied together
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 28-ounce cans whole tomatoes
1–2 teaspoons sugar, divided
1/4 cup (or more) heavy cream
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper

Melt butter in a large pot, and then add the thyme, onion, and garlic (I use crushed garlic paste – great flavor and less work). Cook until the onion is translucent and tender.

Increase heat to medium-high.   Add tomato paste. Continue cooking, stirring often, until paste begins to caramelize in spots.

Add tomatoes with juices, 1 tsp. sugar, and 8 cups water to pot. Increase your heat to high and bring to an almost boil, then reduce heat to medium. Simmer until flavors meld (about an hour).

Remove soup from heat and let cool slightly. You will want to discard the thyme sprigs.

Now, you have two options: either work in small batches puréeing the soup in a blender until the entire batch is smooth, or use an immersion blender and work in the original pot. I bought a Cuisinart Smart Stick immersion blender a while back on a whim. I believe it was suggested in one of the recipes I wanted to experiment with and it had always been a kitchen tool that captured my curiosity, so I decided to give it a go. I can now say it is an incredibly handy kitchen tool.

Anyway, once your soup is properly pureed, stir in 1/4 a cup of cream. Simmer the soup a bit longer until all flavors come together, 10–15 minutes or longer. The last step is to season to taste with salt, pepper, and remaining 1 tsp. sugar.

You can add more cream, if desired, but I couldn’t bring myself to do. I always think of my Mom’s hearty and delicious meals that often use half the called-for butter, or creatively substitute Greek yogurt for sour cream. The thought of actually using heavy cream in a dish made me wince a bit, but 1/4 cup was the perfect amount.

While waiting for the soup to come together in the last 10 minutes of simmering, I began the grilled cheese.

Michele’s Chicago Grilled Cheese Round One
Olive oil – enough to coat a sauté pan and one long baguette
One onion, sliced thinly
One long baguette
Gruyere cheese, 1-2 cups shredded

Simply, pour a nice amount of olive oil in a sauté pan and place your sliced onion in it. Cook until the onion becomes caramelized.

While waiting on the onion, cut the baguette in half lengthwise. Put a very thin layer of olive oil on the baguette, and place under your broiler for a moment, just until it gets a nice crisp. Once the baguette is crispy place your caramelized onions on top.

Lastly, top your onions with a liberal amount of Gruyere cheese. Place under the broiler once again; just long enough for the cheese to melt. Enjoy!

Michele’s Chicago Grilled Cheese and Creamy Tomato Soup, Day Two

A few days after my initial soup-making venture, I reheated the soup and added apple and Roclette cheese to the previous grilled cheese recipe. Actually, I can’t take credit for that part at all. I have a co-chef that joins me in my cooking adventures. I love being able to bounce ideas off a fellow cooking enthusiast!

~Michele

p.s. If you want the perfect dessert for this meal, check out last week’s Chocolate Caramel Dandy recipe and vote for the Backyard Sisters entry in the L.A. Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off.  Hurry! Voting ends November 12.

The Weekend Dish-Chocolate Caramel Dandies

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The Backyard Sisters are getting competitive. The LA Times is holding the third annual cookie recipe competition and we have entered our favorite recipe from our annual Four Sisters Cookie Bake. Entries are being accepted until 5PM PDT today so if you’re feeling the calling to share we welcome the competition. Voting will take place on the LA Times facebook page from November 2-12. We encourage you to visit and vote, especially for ours if you like what you see.  You can peruse all the entries, or search for Chocolate Caramel Dandies. Here’s our entry:

Chocolate Caramel Dandies

If you close your eyes shortly after you slide a pan of crumbly Chocolate Caramel Dandies into the oven, you’ll notice a slight scent of roasted almonds, faint, as if a street vendor one block down has just begun warming his parchment packets of crispy delicacies.

This scent heralds the arrival of the annual Four Sisters Great Cookie Bake, a raucous all-day affair when we, with as many of our ten children as are in town, gather in Pasadena or Torrance or Trabuco Canyon to continue a tradition reaching back to our maternal grandmother and her three sisters.  We bake as if Christmas Eve couldn’t happen if we didn’t fill the white oval platter, big as a hug, to tipping with cookies made from recipes smudged with cocoa and butter and child size fingerprints and as inextricable from our Christmas memory as Santa and a tree and twinkly lights.

We make fudge and peppermint fudge. We bake molasses crinkles, delicate thin sugar crispies and frosted sugar cut-outs. We bake chocolate mud puddles and powdered sugar-covered snowballs and everyday chocolate chip cookies to keep the husbands away from the specialties and we often try something new, but we always, always, always bake Chocolate Caramel Dandies.

In fact, we usually bake two batches because they’re everyone’s favorite, including our neighbors who anticipate their own red plate gifts from the Four Sisters Great Cookie Bake.  It’s the timpani of a milk and semi-sweet chocolate duet, served upon a toasty almond-oatmeal crust and mellowed with a swirl of smooth caramel that thrills.  Even though Chocolate Caramel Dandies are as easy to make as a good decision, we reserve these treats for that one magical week in December when we share our good fortune and good cooking with each other and now here, we share with you.

Chocolate Caramel Dandies

Chocolate Caramel Dandies

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease a 9 x 13″ pan.

1   3/4 C all-purpose flour

1/4 C almond meal

2 C old-fashioned oats

1C packed brown sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 t salt

1 C (2 sticks) butter, melted

2 C (12oz. pkg) chocolate chips.

(I usually mix 1/2 milk chocolate and 1/2 semi-sweet.)

1 C caramel ice cream topping

1/3 C all-purpose flour

Combine 1 3/4 cups flour, almond meal, oats, brown sugar, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Stir in butter.  Mix well.

Measure out one heaping cup of crumble and set aside.

Press remaining crumble mixture into greased 9 X 13″ pan.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Remove from oven.  Sprinkle with chocolate chips.  Let chips melt (about one minute) and spread evenly over crumble mixture.

In a small bowl, combine caramel topping with remaining 1/3 C flour.

Drizzle evenly over melted chocolate chips.

Sprinkle with reserved crumble mixture.

Bake at 350 degree for 20-23 minutes or until lightly browned.

Cool in pan on wire rack then cut into small squares. Makes about 24 two-inch bars.

Tossing our oven mitt into the ring.

~ Catherine and Sue

The Weekend Dish-Apple Butter

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Apples It began years ago; so many I don’t know the exact number. Nana, Granddad, this backyard sister and her youngest backyard girl gathering on a day in the fall to make apple butter.

After the apples have been purchased and cleaned, and the peeler/corer/slicers and jars, have been dug out of storage, we are ready to get to work.

Those peeler/corer/slicers are nifty little gadgets and save a lot of time. When all peeled,cored and sliced the apples are placed on the stove to cook.

apples cooking on stove Once they are soft enough, everyone’s favorite part begins: whirring with the hand-held blender.

Sometimes it is a solitary task, and other times a helping hand is lent.

Or, a little moral support . . .

The spices are adjusted after the first taste test.

When it’s just right, it is placed in jars and the backyard girl gets a little treat.

The backyard girl, with her excellent penmanship, always gets the job of labeling.

The day yields some delicious apple butter to be shared and enjoyed for the next few weeks, and also a fantastic bonus for this backyard sister and her daughter of time well spent catching up, reminiscing, telling tales, laughing, listening to music and dancing. We are grateful Nana and Granddad are so generous with their time and kitchen skills (utensils too!) and I, for one, always come away with not only a treasure trove of jars filled with yummy apple butter but also the precious gems of new, fond memories made from the stories told and delights of watching granddaughter and grandparents sharing with each other. That just doesn’t happen every day; but it will tomorrow. Oh, and I also come away with lots of fun photos.

Here’s the recipe in case you would like to try it and see what develops . . .

NANA’S APPLE BUTTER RECIPE

Note: This recipe is adjustable for desired quantity and flavor. Any type of apple may be used. We choose a mix of tart and sweet. Canning jars are available at most supermarkets. They need only a thorough washing and drying before use in this refrigerated canning method.

We use two pans of eight quarts each.

16 lbs. apples, peeled and cored, divided equally in the pans.

5 lbs.  Granny Smith

5 lbs.  Fuji

6 lbs.  Honey Crisp

Into each pan mix in:

3 level Tbs. Cinnamon

¾ tsp. ground cloves

1 1/4 cups of sugar

1 1/4 cups of Simply Apple brand apple juice.

Simmer each pan on stove covered for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Taste as you go. Adjust spices to your taste. When apples become soft mash them with a potato masher, a wand mixer or whatever tool you have to smooth them to an apple butter consistency.

Yield: 14 large (16 oz.) jars.

Refrigerate after cooling.

~ Sue

The Weekend Dish

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brownies, dessert

Brownies –  chocolaty, chewy brownies, are one of my favorite desserts. Over the years, I have made countless batches and tried many different recipes. While some are very good, I think that there are a couple of types of brownie mixes that produce results just as good as, if not better than, the ones I have made from scratch. And let’s face it sometimes you just don’t have the time to make something from scratch but still want that fresh baked, warm from the oven goodie.

brownies, dessert

My two favorites are Trader Joe’s truffle brownie mix and Ghirardelli”s double chocolate brownie mix. When making the Trader Joe’s mix lately, I have been using olive oil instead of the melted butter, with the intent of making it lower in saturated fats. The result has been an excellent, moist brownie.

brownie mix and ingredientsThe brownies can be mixed up, baked and ready in a little over an hour – which also allows for a half an hour of cooling time. Both these mixes include chocolate chips and if you wanted to, you could add nuts or maybe some dried fruits as well. For another treat and perhaps dessert for a dinner party top a brownie with vanilla ice cream and drizzle your favorite caramel sauce over the whole thing (could even be topped with whipped cream.)

brownie sundaeI sure enjoyed preparing and photographing this recent batch, which also had the added benefit of making this backyard sister’s house smell wonderful; yet another reason to bake! We will be indulging all weekend long.

brownies, dessertAll in the name of art!

~ Sue

The Weekend Dish – Marinara Sauce

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While pondering the tomato table this week, I decided to look at things from a different angle. . . tomatoes, a view from under the table

This prompted me to try something. Catherine planted the seed when she asked if I had ever made marinara from our tomatoes. I had looked for recipes for fresh tomato sauces before and I must admit the thought of the work involved peeling and seeding the tomatoes didn’t seem worth it to me. But a couple of days ago, I wanted to make something which used a LOT of tomatoes. We already have a large bowl of salsa fresca and I wanted to use a LOT MORE tomatoes. So, I dove in, with no recipe. The result was a fresh, deliciously sumptuous sauce.

marinara sauceThe list of ingredients is short but the flavor- long.
Marinara Sauce

About 10 lbs of tomatoes, peeled and seeded
1 lg. onion chopped
5 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 cup fresh basil, chopped
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs. sugar
1/4 cup olive oil

Peel tomatoes by submersing in boiling water for about 3 minutes then remove and immediately plunge into a bowl of ice water. This makes the skins easy to remove, they practically slide right off. Puree the peeled tomatoes in a blender about 30 seconds or until smooth ( I like mine a little chunkier so I didn’t blend too long.)  Next, put through a strainer to remove seeds. Heat the olive oil in a large sauce pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and saute until translucent then add the garlic and stir together and cook about 2 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, salt, sugar and basil. Let it simmer for at least an hour or more until it turns a darker, richer red and reaches the consistency you like. You can serve immediately or refrigerate and save it for the next night and let the flavors marry. Serve with your favorite pasta.

spaghetti with marinara May I suggest a theme night for a dinner and a movie. While you are enjoying your scrumptious fresh marinara sauce, check out or re-acquaint yourself with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. It is the story of a bored and sheltered princess who escapes her guardians and heads into Rome for adventure where she meets an American newsman. You will be transported to Rome for an evening – the film was actually filmed there.

Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona, Rome

Enjoy and Ciao!

~ Sue

The Weekend Dish – Promenade Pasta

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What’s the best compliment you ever got in the kitchen?

One night J sat at the kitchen table watching me try to invent a pasta dish from the random pickings of a quick farmer’s market trip.  When I’m in creation mode he knows better than to ask how he can help, but he stays nearby in case I forget he’s home and starving.  I figured he must be wondering what he’d gotten himself into, marrying this oddball who doesn’t cook like normal people do by reading from a cookbook or recipe box.

My process is more, hmmm, shall we say, kinetic?  I open the pantry door, retrieve ingredients, stare, return a bag of dried cherries in exchange for a tin of pine nuts. Maybe my hand swirls in the air as I waft imaginary aromas toward my nose. I close my eyes and air chew, trying to imagine exactly what I want. I twirl to the refrigerator for a lemon maybe, or a vegetable. My hip bumps the fridge door closed as I pivot to the island countertop, hands full of spinach.

“You cook like you’re dancing,” he said and I melted. I pulled him up off the chair for a quick waltz around the table before returning to the skillet heating up on the stove.

I was pretty happy with how that night turned out, yes for the dancing, but also for the pasta.

The surprise of the dish is squash blossoms.

I’ve eaten squash blossoms in salads where I find them beautiful, but a little out of place. Squash blossoms overpower gentle lettuces like butter and get lost in hearty greens like kale.  But heat these babies up – and yes technically the stork doesn’t bring zucchini to your garden, it begins life as a seed and then a squash blossom – and something symphonic happens, sort of like how the drudgery of an ordinary weekday meal prep can turn into a kitchen waltz.

I call this dish Promenade Penne with a nod toward how the pasta pot and squash blossom skillet waltz together toward the grand finale of a meal culled from a stroll through the farmer’s market. Also, there’s a little sweet kiss of honey in it, and all good proms end with a kiss.

Promenade Penne
INGREDIENTS:
3 large sweet potatoes
One bunch fresh squash blossoms
olive oil
3 T pine nuts
3 T honey
1 lb. penne
4 C washed baby spinach leaves
Freshly ground parmesan and fresh ground pepper to taste

– Peel sweet potatoes and slice into 1/2 inch circles.
– Heat a large skillet over medium-high flame.  Add enough olive oil to coat skillet.  Let it warm up, then sauté pototoes until slightly browned and soft. Stir now and then to prevent burning.
– Meanwhile, in a separate pot, heat water for pasta. (This is a fine time to dance.)
– Right about the time the water begins to boil, the potatoes should be tender.  Toss pine nuts into skillet with potatoes and allow to brown just a bit.
– Add pasta to boiling water and cook according to package directions.
– Turn potatoes down to low. Add squash blossoms and stir.  If necessary, add a dash more olive oil.
– When the pasta is al dente, drizzle the honey over potatoes and squash blossoms.  Stir to coat and heat evenly.
– Drain pasta in a colander.  Place spinach in empty pasta pot and after pasta is finished draining add back to the pot so the pasta heat slightly wilts the spinach.  You may toss with a little more olive oil.
– Place pasta and spinach in a large bowl. Spoon sweet potato and squash blossoms on top. Garnish with fresh parmesan and pepper if you like.Light the candles.  Good night.

With heels kicked up,
~ Catherine

 

The Weekend Dish – Fresh-Tomato Dishes

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I have a bit of a problem. Though many, myself included, might say it is a good problem. We all should be so lucky to have “problems” like this. It has its roots in the spring. In April, when it began warming up here in southern California, the eco-warrior turned his thoughts to planting the vegetable garden. The past few years or so, he decided to focus on tomatoes. We love tomatoes and the ones sold in supermarkets just don’t hold a candle to homegrown ones. The entire garden is dedicated to tomatoes. First, he came home with about 30 plants, then, a few days later, about 20 more. For a while there, it seemed like every time I turned around he would be walking across the yard carrying a six or eight pack of tomato plants. Our garden is fairly large, but it was filling up fast.

I inquired if all these plants would fit and was constantly reassured there would be room and we would be so glad in the summer. The first tomatoes began ripening in mid-June and since then, we have had a patio table full of tomatoes and a few more on the counter in the kitchen. 

We have shared with family and friends and scoured cookbooks and the internet for recipes as well as trying to create a few of my own. We have been eating so many  tomatoes every day, I’m surprised we aren’t turning red!  It has been a never ending cycle of using the ripest and then, just as the table top is starting to be visible again, it fills up from another harvest. Like I said, we love tomatoes and  I do enjoy the challenge of trying to incorporate them in as many dishes as possible and creating some new ones as well, but I feel guilty if we fall behind and some get overripe. These tomatoes are delicious, sweet and flavorful. However, I feel like I am bailing the Titanic with a pail. I recently came across this article on some of the surprising benefits of tomatoes and felt  re-invigorated by the thoughts of all those vitamins and “good for me” nutrients just waiting to be devoured in our backyard.  One of our favorite ways to use the tomatoes is in a salsa fresca.

Salsa Fresca

15 tomatoes
½ sweet onion
1 clove garlic
½ bunch of cilantro
1 jalapeno seeds and membrane removed
juice of 2 limes
½-1 tsp salt

Chop the tomatoes and onion and add to a large bowl. Finely mince the garlic,cilantro and jalapeno and add to bowl. Add the lime juice and salt. Stir, then taste. Ingredients can be adjusted to taste preference. Add more or less jalapeno for spiciness preference, etc. Serve with tortilla chips or put in tacos, burritos, refried beans or anywhere you want a little spicy tomato sauce.
Makes enough for a party!

For breakfast, I have been making Salsa Fresca Poached Eggs. Add a splash of olive oil to a pan, heat over medium high heat, then add about 2 cups of salsa. I let that simmer and thicken for about 10-15 minutes, sometimes shorter,  (depending on how hungry I am). Then, add 3 or 4 eggs put a lid on the pan and let them poach for about 4-5 minutes; time can be adjusted to how done you like your eggs.  I serve it with warm corn tortillas.

For the Italian version of the above dish, Tomato Italiano Poached Eggs: add chopped sweet onion and a clove of chopped garlic to the pan with the olive oil and cook until softened then add about 1 tsp sage and 1/2 tsp rosemary, this can also be adjusted to your taste preference. Next, add  6-8 tomatoes chopped and simmer until thickened a bit 10-15 minutes. Salt and pepper to your taste, then add about 6 oil-cured olives, halved, and 3-4 eggs. Put the lid on the pan and cook 4-5 minutes, or to your liking. Serve with a good Italian bread toasted.

I think next year I will suggest staggering our plantings but for this year,  here’s to lycopene, and salsa, and bruschetta, and oven-roasted garlic and basil tomatoes, and …

I know I’ll miss you in the winter.

~Sue

Road Trip!

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“Summer road trip” are three words that belong together like bacon, lettuce, and tomato.  While some roads are just a long haul between here and there, others are so drenched in history and literary ghosts that a ride along them is more pilgrimage than crossing.

Route 66, known as “The Mother Road,” or “America’s Highway,” is my voyage quest thanks to a family history that involves my father migrating along the route from New York in 1944 in a 1939 Chevrolet, and of course there’s John Steinbeck’s exhilarating description of the perils of the route in The Grapes of Wrath.

66 is the mother road, the road of flight…

And 66 goes on over the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and the black center mountains hang unbearable in the distance…

It’s the main cross-country highway that begins in Chicago and led migrants from Oklahoma to California, but it travels in two directions and I first met it heading east from  Los Angeles to Arizona in a lumbering brown Pontiac Bonneville station wagon loaded to sagging with four girls, two adults, Oreos, liverwurst, grapes, bubble gum, and a Sing Along handbook.

We arose before dawn as the prospect of overheating, laden as we were, was real.  Our tires devoured miles of hot highway below while fat bugs splattered onto the windshield.  As the stars dimmed and I witnessed my first sunrise creeping into the sky turning strawberry, I saw Mojave yucas and Joshua trees – silent, dark sentinels guarding the vast emptiness with what looked like arms upturned in salute.

We were not alone on the road.  Other children in other cars hung their heads out windows too and we waved to each other.  You didn’t dare run your air conditioner crossing the desert in 1968; you might overheat so it was four, fifty-five.  Four windows down, fifty five miles per hour.

Some cars had brown flax Desert Water Bags draped over the hood ornament. Air blowing across the fabric cooled the water. Just in case the radiator blew.

The sight of cars prepared for human or auto lifesaving measures heightened my sense of the danger of crossing the desert. Desert Water Bags are a thing of the past, sold on e-bay to vintage item collectors.  Now there are cell phones and call boxes, rest stops with drinking fountains and orange-vested Caltrans workers.  The swath through the desert is more quickly traveled along Highways 15 or 40 now.  The ghosts of Dust Bowl migrants lingers only in novels and photographs.

“Summer reading” are two words that belong together like “me and you” and in Chapter 12 of The Grapes of Wrath you’ll find the best description of the precariousness of traveling the old Route 66.

In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting rods hammered and pounded. And the men driving the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehensively. How far between towns? It is a terror between towns…

Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses, for a change of tone.

These days you have to travel into Arizona which boasts the longest continuous stretch of Route 66 still paved and usable, reaching about 155 miles between Topock and Seligman, to see evidence of the road’s old treachery.

Outside the Roadkill Cafe, Seligman, AZ.

Reading Steinbeck as a passenger during my last Mojave Desert crossing made me wish for a new kind of Desert water Bag, one to capture the spirit and thoughts of those who had gone before. I felt like I was meeting the ghosts in the open land and I wanted to drink in their spirit, ripe with bravery.  If somehow The Grapes of Wrath skipped your own reading history, it’s one of the books selected by the National Endowment of the Arts “The Big Read” program which aims to inspire “people across the country to pick up a good book…listen to radio programs, watch video profiles, and read brief essays about classic authors.”

Summer Road Trip. Summer Reading. Me. You.
Where will our journeys take us this summer?

With high adventure,
~Catherine

The Weekend Dish – Scones

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Well, it has finally arrived. The opening day of the Summer Olympics is today.

Buckingham Palace

In honor of the host city, London, I felt scones would be a proper food tribute. 

The scone is a simple but delicious quick bread. It is traditionally served with clotted cream and jam. The basic recipe is versatile and can be modified by adding nuts, chocolate chips, zests, and fresh or dried fruits. My favorite addition is dried tart cherries.

They can be served with tea or they are also an excellent accompaniment to coffee. A few years ago, I found this recipe while trying to have a full-fledged tea party with my youngest daughter and since then our family has enjoyed them many times. This time I used our grandmothers’ dishes as an extra special place setting, figuring they don’t get out of the china hutch enough.

Recipe for Cream Scones

If you want to make them lighter you can use half and half or milk.

Preheat oven to 375° F (190° C) and place rack in middle of oven. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2 cups (280g) all-purpose flour
1/3 cup (66g) granulated white sugar
2 tsp (10g) baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/3 cup (76g) chilled, unsalted butter
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp (5g) pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup (125ml) heavy whipping cream
Egg mixture for brushing tops: (brushing the tops with mixture helps with browning the tops)
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp heavy cream

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into small pieces and blend into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or two knives. The mixture should look like coarse crumbs. In a small bowl combine the egg, vanilla and whipping cream. Add this mixture to the flour mixture stirring until just combined. Do not over mix this mixture. Knead dough gently on a lightly floured surface. Roll or pat the dough into a circle that is 7 inches (18cm) round and about 1 1/2 inches (3.75cm) thick. Cut this circle into 8 triangular sections. Alternatively, you can cut the the dough into rounds with a cookie cutter. Place on prepared cookie sheet. Brush the tops with the egg mixture.

Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Variations:

-Add 1/3 cup dried tart cherries
-Add 1/3 cup miniature chocolate chips
-Add 2 tsp lemon zest and 1 Tbsp poppy seeds
-Add 1 Tbsp poppy seeds and use 1 tsp almond extract instead of vanilla extract and       sprinkle top of scones with sliced almonds after brushing with egg mixture.

I must say the only variation I have tried is the cherries and we love it so much that I haven’t tried the others.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do and if you would like to follow the Olympics here is the official website. Perhaps while nibbling a fresh from the oven scone . . .

~Sue

Recipe courtesy of  joyofbaking.com

The Weekend Dish – Creeping Crust Cobbler

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… A Creeping Crust Cobbler Recipe and story

Apricots, like most good things, require patience.  The tree stands barren through winter’s chill while you are left to remember and dream, to wait and hope the small fruit arrives by the buckets come summer.

There are many things like an apricot.

Crystal Cove, CA

 A California sunset, for example.  Or, as Deborah Slicer writes in her poem, “Apricot,” “The weight of a small child’s fist, / a girl…”

Apricot Girl with her Nana who made the family’s first Creeping Crust Cobbler.

In our family it was a girl who inspired Nana, the Backyard Sisters’ mom and grandmother to 10, to turn a bumper crop of apricots into Creeping Crust Cobbler, now a summer dessert staple in all the sisters’ homes.

It was the blazing hot summer of 1987 and Nana had come to stay with Catherine who had just given birth to a son.  Nana made a tradition of spending a week with her daughters whenever a new baby was born. One of the joys of this time was getting an extended visit with the older children in the house, and one of the Apricot Girl’s favorite things was picking up fallen fruit from the ground.

Apricots were one of Nana’s favorite fruits and she knew there was something better to be done with this backyard gift than throwing them for Max the Golden Retriever to catch.  “Let’s turn this into something delicious for dessert.”

When Nana asked what sort of cookbooks I had, I pulled out one that her own mother, Gammy to us sisters, had given me as a wedding shower gift.  A Collection of the VERY FINEST RECIPES ever assembled into one Cookbook was exactly the kind of book to find a homey recipe for apricots.

Gammy loved buying cookbooks from church groups or school PTAs and this book was a compilation of a fund-raising cookbook publishers best recipes.  It perfectly captured the sort of mid-western American fare she made most frequently.  Turns out, I put the right tool in the good cook’s hand. On page 189, Nana found a recipe for Creeping Crust Cobbler.  We’ve tweaked it a little over the years.  But there’s one thing that’s never changed; I always remember the summer Nana and the Apricot Girl discovered one of the favorite desserts in the entire Backyard Sister family.

CREEPING CRUST COBBLER
Heat oven to 350.

1/2 C butter
1 C flour
1 C sugar
1 t baking powder
1 t salt
1/2 C milk

1 C, or less, sugar.
2 C fruit  We’ve successfully made this with apricots, peaches, plums, and blueberries, or any combination of them all.  You can use the fruit solo or mix together. I usually don’t peel the fruit, but you can if you like.

– Heat fruit with sugar in medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar melts and thickens a little.

– Melt butter in 10-inch baking dish by setting dish with butter in it in heating oven.

– Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl.
– Add milk and mix.
– Spoon batter in large glops over the melted butter. (Is there anything better than a recipe that uses the word “glops?”)
– Pour fruit and sugar mixture over dough.
– Bake in 350 oven about 30 minutes, until crust is golden brown. (Sometimes this bubbles over into your oven so you might want to place the pie pan on a cookie sheet.)
-Crust will rise to the top.  Serve warm or cold.

Superb with a dollop of ice cream. Excellent for breakfast.

With sweetness,
~ Catherine, Sue, Gammy, Nana, and the Apricot Girl

p.s. You can read Deborah Slicer‘s poem, “Apricot,” in its entirety on the Orion magazine website here. Orion is a treasure for anyone interested in nature meets literature meets culture.