Strawberry Shortcake

It's my friend's birthday today.  So I made him a strawberry shortcake as his birthday cake!  His name is Bryan, and you probably recognize him from such places as...my blog!

Hopefully this cake will not cause yet another face palm.

Aside from it's uses as a good birthday cake, strawberry shortcake is a great summer dessert!  The recipe I use comes from the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book.  It's very easy, but it employs some interesting equipment.  The first thing that needs to be taken care of before any real baking starts: Make the strawberry sauce.  I do this by slicing strawberries and macerating them in sugar.  This creates a delicious sauce for the shortcake, as well as ice cream, pound cake, anything you'd put strawberries on, really.  Sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Next I mixed together 1 1/2 cups flour with 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, and a 1/4 tsp each baking soda and salt.  

Next came the "special equipment."

This is a pastry blender.  It's used to "cut in" fat, in our case butter.

1/3 cup of butter.  I cut this into smaller pieces so the mixing could be easier.

Now, even with the smaller pieces, clumping is still an issue.

I fix this by using a knife to remove the excess butter and get it back into the flour.  The recipe states that the butter should be cut in until the mixture looks like "coarse bread crumbs."

Kinda like that.  Next came the wet works.  Combine a slightly beaten egg with 1/2 cup sour cream and 2 Tbsp milk.

Stir into flour mixture with a fork until just moistened.

Instead of turning out the entire thing onto a baking sheet, or spooning it out into little servings on a greased up baking sheet, I decided to employ cup cake flutes to keep a uniform shape, and to make clean up easier.  I also used my cookie scoop to dish these out.

I baked these for 15 minutes.  They came out golden brown, and smelled delicious.

To finish off, beat heavy cream with a splash of vanilla.  Top these little guys with the strawberry sauce and vanilla whipped cream.  I'll post a picture of this finished product later on.  Enjoy!

Chocolate Zucchini Cup Cakes

Clearly I have a cup cake problem.  I had so much zucchini left over from my bread, I decided to make cup cakes as well using this recipe.  Using vegetables in sweet baked goods has always intrigued me.  I loved eating my vegetables as a child, and didn't have to be "tricked" into consuming them.  In fact, they were usually the first thing off of my plate!  However, having a career in child care, I can see why hiding nutritious things in sweet and enticing edibles would be ideal for parents.  And honestly, who would say "no" to delicious chocolate cake?

Making these cakes was similar to making the zucchini bread.  The dry ingredients are mixed in a small bowl, and the wet ingredients are mixed together.

However this time I had to employ the use of buttermilk.

Buttermilk is often used in baking as a thickener. I didn't have buttermilk in my fridge, so I used regular 2% milk with lemon juice in it.  This causes the milk to thicken and makes it a great substitute for the recipe.

After mixing the butter, oil, and sugar with the eggs and vanilla, I added the dry ingredients alternately with the "buttermilk."  This made it a pretty standard cake mix.  Then came the shredded zucchini.

And for added fun I sprinkled in white and semi sweet chocolate chips into the mix.  I baked these for 30 min, rather than the 50 min stated in the original recipe.

They came out great!  Moist, and not too sweet.  Didn't even notice the zucchini, which could be a good thing if you were attempting to feed your picky child more veggies!  Enjoy!

Zucchini Bread

The mother of a pair of campers where I work recently bequeathed pounds of zucchini to us.  My boss made baked zucchini for lunch the other day, and I took two large specimens home to turn into baked goods to give to the staff.

This zucchini once shredded was far too great for the bread that it was intended for.  But, I used what I could.  The recipe I used came from here.  Very easy, and similar to a pumpkin bread recipe I like to use during the fall.  Basically, it's the muffin method.  The muffin method employs the mixture of wet ingredients before adding the dry.  So, first I combined the eggs, oil, vanilla and sugar (yes it's a "wet" ingredient) in a bowl.

Slowly add the dry ingredients, previously mixed together in a separate bowl.

Stir in 2 cups of shredded zucchini.

Pour into loaf pans and bake for 1 hour.

This is a lot of zucchini, and I know I won't use it all in one recipe.  Next on my list is chocolate zucchini cake, again for the lovely staff at my camp.

Mint Chip Ice Cream

We've had a heat wave this past week in Albany, and it's been really difficult to find relief.  I work at a camp during the summer, so I've been jumping into the lake, staying in the shade, drinking water, and in the evenings, eating the occasional scoop of ice cream.  Now, out of all ice cream flavors, I think mint is one the most refreshing of flavors.  It just tastes cool.

The recipe I use is by the great Alton Brown, and you can find it here.  I forgot to buy Andes Mints, so I used my favorite chocolate chip!

Another thing I don't usually have in the house is peppermint oil.  It's also expensive.  What I use instead is peppermint oil is peppermint extract.  It's slightly cheaper, and it gives you a good mint punch.

This recipe is executed the same way as the chocolate ice cream recipe I posted before.  Heat the dairy mixture,

whisk egg yolks and sugar together,

temper eggs with dairy, combine and simmer until it coats the back of a spoon.  Add flavor enhancements after mixture cools for 30 min.

Chill overnight, and place in ice cream machine, following manufacturer's instructions.

The ice cream came out great.  It's cool, refreshing, with a little bit of chocolate to cut through the mint.  I hope you enjoy it!