Blueberry Cornbread

A much-anticipated summer milestone in Michigan’s thumb is the start of the blueberry season, and I’m happy to report that it is currently in full-swing. We get a lot of our blueberries from a little berry farm in Croswell, Michigan. You can pick them yourself or buy them picked by the pound, depending on how much time and energy you have at the moment! Either way, they are sweet, easy to eat, and go well with many different quick breads like pancakes, muffins, waffles and cornbread. 

Here, we decided to include some of the blueberries in cornbread. You may have a favorite cornbread recipe, but you can always include a couple of cups of fresh blueberries in the final mix before putting the batter in the pan. This is a standard cornbread recipe that I like, and the berries not only give it a beautiful look, but add a special dimension to the hearty cornbread.

Blueberry Cornbread

1 cup cornmeal (white or yellow)

1 cup flour

½ cup sugar

3 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs

2/3 cup milk

½ cup vegetable oil

2 cups fresh blueberries (you could also use frozen, but I like the texture of the fresh)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together. 

In another large bowl, beat eggs, milk and oil together until combined.

Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix together until just combined. Fold in blueberries and pour batter into a greased 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 baking dish.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until top is a deep golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool a little before cutting. Serve with lots of butter!

Making Rhubarb Bars

The Michigan rhubarb season does not go unnoticed at CoF. There is a period of time, usually between the middle of May and the middle of June, I find myself buying up rhubarb wherever I find it for sale. Because of its limited availability, I need to get a year’s worth of it in the freezer as soon as I can so I can stop worrying about having enough rhubarb on-hand! 

If it’s not going to be used immediately, then it gets trimmed of leaves, washed and cut into one-inch size pieces. Then it goes into a freezer container until someone gets an idea to make a rhubarb pie, crumble, coffee cake or as in this case, rhubarb bars (or “rhubars”).

These delicious bars have a very buttery, almost shortbread-like bottom crust, with a gooey sweet top that is dotted with tart bursts of ruby-red rhubarb. These are something very different and go great after dinner with coffee or just on its own.

Rhubarb Bars or “Rhubars”

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

2 cups flour

2/3 cup powdered sugar

3 cups granulated sugar

½ cup flour

1 ½ tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon

4 eggs, beaten

4 – 4 ½ cups rhubarb, chopped into one-inch pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using an electric mixer, beat together butter, two cups of flour and the powdered sugar until a stiff dough forms. Press dough into a greased 9 x 13 baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, or until it turns lightly golden. 

While the crust is baking, beat eggs in a large bowl and add granulated sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon and mix together well. Add rhubarb and fold it into the batter. 

When the crust is done, remove from oven an immediately pour filling batter on top of crust and return it to the 350 degree oven and bake it for 40 minutes, or until the filling begins to get brown on top. 

Remove and allow to cool completely before cutting into bars.

Old-School Peanut Butter Cookies

Baking cookies is a fairly regular exercise in the CoF kitchens, and while it is always fun to experiment and try new recipes, most often I find myself preparing one from what I refer to as the  “trinity of cookies:”  chocolate chip, peanut butter and oatmeal. This has a lot to do with the ingredients that I have on-hand when I get the urge to make cookies. It seems that I always have flour, butter, eggs, white and brown sugar, chocolate chips, peanut butter and rolled oats in the kitchen.

So, one morning I decided to make a batch of peanut butter cookies. These are the ones you imagine when you think of peanut butter cookies – round and sporting some crinkles around the edges, with the familiar criss-cross top made using the tines of a fork. These are the peanut butter cookies my mom and the mothers of my friends made growing up in our suburban Detroit neighborhood. They go great with a tall, cold glass of milk or with coffee or tea. 

Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup sugar

1 cup shortening (I use Crisco here, some use margarine instead but I’ve never tried that method)

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup peanut butter (creamy or chunky – use regular PB, not the “natural” style where the oils separate)

2 eggs

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Using an electric mixer, cream together the sugars, shortening and vanilla. Add peanut butter and eggs and combine, scraping down bowl as necessary.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Gradually add flour mixture to peanut butter mixture, scraping down bowl as necessary. Continue to mix until dry ingredients are totally combined. Dough will be thick.

Roll dough into balls (about the size of a ping-pong ball) and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or sprayed with non-stick spray. You should be able to get a dozen on a sheet. Using a dinner fork that is dipped in flour, gently press down on dough ball in one direction, lift fork, dip again in flour, and press down on dough in perpendicular direction. This will both flatten the dough ball and create a criss-cross pattern on top of the cookie. 

Bake in oven 10-12 minutes until lightly golden. Remove and transfer cookies to a cooling rack.  

Pasta Avocado

The avocado is one of those foods (it’s actually a fruit) that I’ve always associated with one thing: guacamole. I guess I’ve had sliced avocados in salads or on sandwiches, but beyond that I don’t give it much thought. But I’m finding out that this creamy, rich fruit is good in many different applications.

When an avocado ripens, the flesh becomes quite soft and easily mashed or spread. This makes it ideal for a kind of pasta sauce. For those who are bored with the same old tomato-based sauces, or don’t  have the time or ingredients on-hand to whip up some type of pesto, an avocado sauce is a great way to do something different.

This pasta avocado dish comes together quickly. It almost takes no more time to make the sauce than it does to boil the pasta. It is also vegetarian friendly and great served with a salad and some really good bread.

Pasta Avocado

2 ripe avocados

3 cloves garlic

Juice and zest of one medium lemon

3 TBSP olive oil

¾ - 1 cup fresh basil leaves

1 tsp salt

Fresh ground black pepper

I pound pasta (I like to use rigatoni or penne for this, but use your favorite or what you have on hand)

I start by putting a big pot of water on the stove for boiling the pasta. As the water heats up, I make the sauce. 

Zest a medium lemon and set zest aside – this will be the garnish for the top of the pasta. Then juice the lemon and set juice aside.

In a food processor or strong blender, combine the garlic, olive oil and lemon juice and blend until the garlic is finely chopped and everything is combined. 

Cut avocado in half lengthwise and remove pit. Scoop out flesh with a spoon and add to garlic/oil/lemon mixture along with the basil leaves and salt. Combine until mixture is smooth and creamy (it will be on the thick side).

Cook pasta as directed. Drain pasta and return to pot. Add avocado sauce and toss to combine.  You will notice the sauce will thin out a little from the warm pasta as it coats all the noodles. Transfer pasta to large serving bowl or platter and garnish top with lemon zest and freshly ground black pepper (to taste).  Serve immediately along with grated Parmesan or asiago cheese on the side.

Doughnuts (or Donuts) for Dinner!

It turns out that June 7 was actually “National Donut Day” here in the United States. For many, this designation is akin to a “National Breathing Day” – in other words, donuts are celebrated each and every day of one’s life.  Why do so many have this unwavering devotion to these little fried cakes? I’m guessing the primary reason is because they taste so darn good! Plain, glazed or dusted, filled with jelly, custard or cream, round or rectangle, in all variations the donut has become a part of regular indulgence for many of us.

Some spell it doughnut, which I understand is the proper way. My Webster’s New World College Dictionary lists it as “doughnut” and notes that “donut” is the informal spelling. It is defined as “a small, usually ring-shaped cake of sweetened, leavened dough, fried in deep fat.” Sounds good to me! But for our purposes, I’m going to refer to these little delights as “donuts,” because we are fairly informal about such things here at Cavalcade of Food.

In honor of the donut, we decided to make our own from scratch. I researched a number of recipes, and found that donuts generally fall into either the “cake” or the “raised” category. It depends on whether you use baking powder or yeast as your leavening. We opted to make the cake-style donuts, which seem more old-fashioned and better matched for coffee dunking. 

Making donuts from scratch takes time and preparation. But for special occasions, or if you have some extra helping hands around the kitchen and you want a fun project, homemade donuts are well worth the extra effort. Our “research” indicated that these donuts are best when eaten warm, with coffee, tea or apple cider. They are not good the next day (on the off chance that you have any leftovers), so make a point of eating them all soon after making them!

Homemade Donuts

3 eggs

2 TBSP butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup buttermilk or sour milk

3 ¾ cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

¾ tsp ground nutmeg

¾ tsp cinnamon

Vegetable oil for frying

½ cup sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

Using an electric stand or hand-held mixer, beat the eggs, butter and sugar together until well combined. 

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking powder and spices. Set aside.

Add the buttermilk or sour milk to the other wet ingredients and beat together until well combined. To make sour milk for this recipe, put two teaspoons of white vinegar or lemon juice in a measuring cup and then fill with room-temperature milk to make 2/3 cup. Let stand for about 10 minutes.

Gradually add sifted dry ingredients to wet ingredients beating together until dough forms. The dough will be on the loose side and very sticky. Scrape down bowl to get all the flour incorporated. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour – two hours is even better.

Prepare your rolling surface. I use a very well floured pastry cloth on top of a board, and a rolling pin cover that is also well floured. This is a sticky dough, even when chilled, so keep some extra flour handy. You will also want to dip your donut cutter in flour prior to each cut. Put some flour on your hands, too – this will help it from sticking so much to your fingers.

Start bringing your oil up to temperature. A frying thermometer is an excellent tool here, but you can also use an electric skillet or fryer set to 375 degrees. It is very important that the oil gets to 375 and stays there – if the oil is too cool the donuts will absorb a lot of oil making them greasy.  You want the oil to be at least 2-inches deep in whatever utensil you end up using (a Dutch oven will also work fine). 

Remove half the dough from the refrigerator (leave the rest chilling until you are ready for the second batch).  Roll the dough out on floured surface until it is ¼ inch to ½ inch thick. Start cutting out the donuts, dipping cutter in flour before each cut. If you don’t have a donut cutter, you can use a biscuit cutter and then just cut out the center hole with a knife. Place cut donuts on waxed or parchment paper. 

Gently drop donuts one at a time into hot oil. DON’T CROWD THEM – you should only fry three or four at a time. They will first sink and then pop up to the surface and begin frying. When they have turned a nice golden brown on one side, gently flip them over (I use a slotted spoon) and fry the other side. Donuts fry up quickly, so this will go fast. 

When both sides of the donuts are done, remove from oil and place on a sheet pan with layers of paper towel or brown paper bags. This will draw some of the oil out of the donuts.

In a large bowl, combine ½ sugar and two teaspoons cinnamon. When donuts are still warm, toss them in this coating and it will stick to them.  You could also toss them in a bag of powdered sugar, or make a glaze for them – this is where you can really get creative!

These are best when still warm!