Julia's Pound Cake Recipe

So I realized that I posted about making this pound cake but never posted the recipe. It's way too good not to share and has become my "go-to" dessert when I'm wanting something sweet. It consistently comes out great, isn't too decadent, and I always have all the ingredients right in my pantry.

So, here you go...

Vanilla Pound Cake

Julia Child

3 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs, at room temperature, whisked to blend

1 cup milk, at room temperature

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 10 inch tube pan (ex: bunt pan).

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together into a bowl.

Put the butter into a bowl of a mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld mixer) and beat at medium speed until smooth. With the machine running, add the sugar in a steady stream. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides and beaters with a rubber spatula. Continue to beat at medium speed until the mixture is very light and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes.

With the mixer still at medium speed, begin to add the eggs in small additions, about a tbsp at a time. If the mixture becomes watery or shiny, stop adding the eggs and beat at an increased speed until it smoothes out. When the batter has come together again, decrease the speed to medium and continue adding eggs, scraping down the beaters and sides of the bowl from time to time; it will take 3-4 minutes to incorporate the eggs. The mixture is properly combined when it appears white, fluffy and increased in volume.

Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture and the milk alternately – 4 additions of flour, 3 of milk – scraping the beaters and sides of the bowl frequently and mixing until the batter is smooth after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix just to blend.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake for 55-65 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a cooking rack and allow it to cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Invert the cake onto a rack, remove the pan and cool to room temperature. The cake is best served in thin slices.

The cake can be kept covered at room temperature for about 3 days or wrapped airtight and frozen for a month. Keep in mind that stale pound cake is excellent slightly toasted and used as the base for ice cream sundaes.

*I lightly sprinkle with powdered sugar 

Popovers via Julia Child!

So ever since we visited my aunt and uncle in San Jose and they made us popovers with jam, we've been obsessed. They're fun and easy to make and now they're a semi-regular weekend tradition. We decided to try out Julia Child's popover recipe from the book Baking with Julia.

Autumn says, "Popovers! Yay!" (I swear the cupcake onesie was completely coincidental!)

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour (unbleached)

1 cup whole or 2% milk, at room temp (I used 1%, worked fine)

1/2 tsp salt

3 large eggs

2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

So first, you grease up the muffin pan. You can use a special popover muffin pan (the holes are larger) or ramekins, but we don't have all of that so we use a regular muffin pan. It works just fine. Position the rack on the lowest rung of your oven and preheat to 425 degrees. If you do use ramekins or custard cups, put them on a jelly roll pan and leave space between the cups. 

Pour all of the ingredients into a blender and whirl until smooth. (can also be done in a food processor or with a hand mixer). Strain batter if it is at all lumpy.

For muffin cups, use 1/4 cup of batter per cup, filling alternate holes so each popover has puffing space. 

Bake without opening the door for 25 minutes until they are puffed, nicely browned and crisp on exterior. Turn the temp down to 350 and bake another 15-20 minutes to help dry out the interior, which no matter what you do will always be a little doughy in the center. (Some pull this out, others it's their favorite part - I love it).

Serve immediately.

We serve them with jam. You could also have them with butter or honey.

You can wrap them airtight and freeze them for up to a month and reheat them at 350 for 10-15 minutes. 

Garden Beans & little treasures

One of my clients gave me an anthropologie gift card as a thank you (whoo hoo!) and I wanted to share one of the treasures that I purchased there last week. They are little handmade measuring spoons. The backs are striped which just adds to the cuteness. I love them and they make me smile. It's the little things.

My husband is growing several veggies in our garden. One of the things he's growing is garden beans and we just picked our first crop. Look how pretty!

They were super delish. Even Autumn was shoveling them in her mouth faster than I could cut them up and hand them to her! Yum. Nothing like organic veggies from your backyard.

Butter

So yesterday was another one of those days. You know, where you don't get a good night's sleep so you wake up cranky, to a cranky kid and it just snowballs from there. My baking/SAHM friend Michelle invited me over to make some butter. Just for fun. Seeing the need to get out of the house and have a little adult conversation, (you know, other than, "Stop that! That's the dog's food! Did you poop? What do you have in your mouth now?") I said an enthusiastic "sure!" and headed over.

I've joked more than once that I should learn how to make my own butter because I use so much of it. Actually I joke that a cow would have paid for itself by now, but you know, I love to bake and baking calls for butter. Michelle looked up how to make it and decided that she should try it out. It's ridiculously easy. So easy in fact, that you're going to laugh.

Here's the directions: Pour heavy whipping cream into a jar. Shake.

Yep. That's it. I mean there's some pointers along the way, but that's pretty much all you do. So here's how the shaking went...


What you need:

You need to leave some room for the cream to work it's magic. We ended up having to remove some of the cream part way through, so leave some more room than this. 

Shake for 20 minutes.

And this is what you get. It's done when the solid part (the butter) starts separating from the liquid (buttermilk). You strain the liquid out and you're left with butter.

Results: it was good and tasted like butter. It's not exactly cost effective though because the heavy cream is over $3 and it only makes about 1 sticks worth (maybe 2) of butter. I'm sure back in the good ole' days they didn't buy ultra-pasteurized heavy cream from the store and make it this way, so there's got to be a more cost effective way to do it. But this is fun as a learning lesson for kids and they can all take part in shaking the jar to make butter. 

Note: I'm reading this very interesting book called, The Feast Nearby by Robin Mather. (Find it on amazon here) It's all about eating locally on a budget and it's also super informative about food. I found out tidbits like ultra-pasteurized means that the milk is brought to a super high temp, causing the vitamins and all the good, natural things in milk to be depleted. They do it in certain products like heavy cream to extend it's shelf life because it doesn't sell as fast as regular milk. Trying to find local heavy cream that's not ultra-pasteurized is pretty difficult. For those of you living in the central florida area, I did find out that most of Publix's milk products are from local dairy farmers. Whoo hoo! All of their milk is rbST free (which means that the cows weren't given a horrible hormone to make them lactate at an unnatural rate) and that most of their dairy products are too. They said that in the hot summer months, when lactation in dairy cows is low, that they have to suppliment some of their milk from other suppliers out of state to make things like yogurt, ice cream and cheese so they can't guarantee that all of their dairy products are rbST free then. So, not 100%, but better than nothing. 

Happy eating!

Paris? Yes please.

I'm entering to win a trip to Paris through the OhHappyDay blog! You can enter too here: http://ohhappyday.com/2011/06/goes-to-paris

If I won, I'd eat my way through each arrondissement, taking photos and blogging as I go. Oh, and I'd probably fall over from giddiness. or sugar. or both. <3

Pickling Cucumbers

Last week my husband really wanted to try making homemade pickles. I was a little skeptical but when we went to a local farmer's market and they had cucumbers 6/$1, I conceded. So this was the recipe we used (I am pretty sure... It's from memory)

Per Quart pickle jar:

2 cucumbers
9oz water
5oz vinegar
1 sprig dill
1 clove of garlic
1/2 onion
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp kosher salt

You combine all but the cucumbers and boil it for a minute or two.

Make sure your jars are sterilized (we boiled them for 10 minutes)

Meanwhile, quarter your cucumbers length-wise

This was our little helper. 

Then you put the cucumbers in jars and pour enough liquid to cover them. Let them rest over night and then store in a cool, dark place (fridge) for at least 10 days. It says that the longer you let them sit the more dill flavor they will have. 

Happy Pickling!

ps. ever wonder why pickled cucumbers are called pickles but everything else is "pickled _____"? Maybe cucumbers were the first thing people ever pickled. who knows...