berries

Sponge cake slathered in melted jam, and topped with ice cream. And this is not a blog about eating for your health.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I live with a zombie-blasting puke machine. He’s 27. He wore the same sweatpants for days, and they weren’t even clean when he put them on. And we ate soup.

And then Tuesday came and we finally got to eat the pulled-pork and beans leftovers I brought home from my mom’s on Sunday night. And we went to see Julie & Julia, which was good except that I can’t handle the sounds of eating noises or movie kissing and there it all was in surround sound, and then it became the day before the day before payday, and I plunged deep into the kind of financial despair that usually hits whenever I open my mail, and it seemed like the time to do something responsible. That responsible thing? Using up what’s in the fridge. Fortunately, when Nick was sick, he cleaned the whole apartment, so now I have clean surfaces to work on. So Tuesday night, I roasted some sweet potatoes and tossed them in the fridge for gnocchi, took inventory of crap in the fridge, and decided to make a cake with blueberries.

Is there such a thing as a run-on paragraph? I think there is, because I think I just invented it.

Anyway.

And when I was taking leftovers, I also swiped my mom’s tattered old copy of The New James Beard, which is not new any longer as it’s two years older than I am. But there’s a recipe in it for sponge cake with apricot glaze. A soft, light sponge cake that nearly floats, suspended by the froth of stiff-peak egg whites, sticky with a melted jam glaze that Beard, on page 520, says “makes it rather special.”

Recipe.I added blueberries, and melted some of my peach jam, which became more of a sauce than a glaze, and served the cake with ice cream and fresh berries.

The great thing about this cake, aside from the fact that it’s delightful, to quote Jenna, my Wednesday dinner guest, is that it uses stuff you have on hand. You don’t have to buy anything fancy to make this – just use up what you’ve got.

Sponge Cake, adapted from The New James Beard

  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 cup egg yolks (which should mean the yolks from about six large eggs)
  • 1/4 cup cold orange juice
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 tbsp. orange zest
  • 1/2 cup egg whites (annoyingly, this means about four … save the two whites left over and make yourself an omelet for breakfast or something)
  • 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar (if you don’t have this, don’t panic. The recipe will still work without it)

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Mix the flour, one cup of the sugar, the salt, and the baking powder. Add the egg yolks, orange juice, zest, and vanilla, but do not stir or mix or combine any further than putting everything in the same bowl. Let it be.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until fluffy. Add the cream of tartar, continuing to beat, and then gradually add in the remaining half cup of sugar. Beat this until stiff peaks have formed.

Now you can mix the stuff in the other bowl. James Beard never says why you have to wait, but we’re following a recipe here, and even though I didn’t actually do what I was told (I beat it up from the beginning), I feel like I should still relay the process that he’s put forth in this fine volume. Beat until well blended, about one minute.

Using a spatula or other soft utensil, gently fold this mixture, about 1/4 at a time, into the egg whites. Folding is very simple, not at all intimidating. You will literally fold the egg whites over the batter until the batter and the egg whites are one light, fluffy super batter. Don’t stir. The bubbles in the egg froth are what keep this cake so light.

I added about one cup of fresh blueberries at the folding stage. Good call on that one.

When the batter is smooth, turn into an ungreased 10-inch tube pan. I didn’t know what a tube pan was, so I used a loaf pan. It worked just fine. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the cake has started to shrink away from the sides of the pan. The cake should spring back slightly when you press lightly on the top-centre.

Once you’ve removed the cake from the oven, immediately invert it, allowing it to cool before removing it from the pan. Glaze with 1 cup melted jam, possibly spiked with 1/4 cup cognac or whathaveyou – James also suggests kirsch or applejack. I think a dry white wine would be pleasant. I have no idea what applejack is.

I skipped glazing and used the melted jam as a sauce, and it was perfectly lovely, both in taste and appearance.

Pretty.

This should serve eight people, or four if you cut it very thick. Top with ice cream, or whipped cream, and fresh fruit, whatever’s in season or in your fridge.

Eating this made me feel responsible, like I was being sustainable and fiscally prudent and all that good crap. Like I could even begin to start thinking about addressing what’s in all those scary envelopes. Just like that. Stay tuned for tears and Nick’s sweatpants and comfort food come Friday/payday.

Eating in Portland: Touristing for the Gluttonous.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

And this post isn’t about recipes, because I am currently in the process of inventing one, although maybe it’s already been invented but I’m not going to search online for it and then once I post it, if I Google search for it, then my post will come up first and it will validate me AND the creative process. Tomorrow: Recipe. Today: Portland Love Fest.

With the exception of a few racist billboards, America proved to be pretty awesome. And not to be totally unpatriotic, but I think Canada has something of an inferiority complex as far as the US is concerned. I think it’s because we don’t have Happy Hour here. Or Crunchberries. It’s like America is Canada’s cool older stepbrother – we don’t really get some of the things he does, and sometimes he’s an asshole, but mostly we wish we could be as cool as him. Unless he’s Republican that year.

In America, they have a special line of Doritos just for stoners.

"Tacos at Midnight," anyone?
"Tacos at Midnight," anyone?

It was a hot one, registering 103°F, or 40°C, so we were parched the whole time. We got some lemonade, which I was totally going to make fun of until @katarnett posted her discovery that blue dye is actually good for you now, so now I guess I’m jealous that in America, raspberries come in blue.

It was freakishly good!
It was freakishly good!

Although it’s only a five-hour trip to Portland from the Canadian border, it took us closer to nine hours to get there, because of all the stops. Theresa’s dad’s truck, which we borrowed, had air conditioning, but old cheapness habits die hard for Theresa, who couldn’t bring herself to turn it on because of the chance that using the air conditioning might eat up all the gas in the truck, which might mean we’d have to get more gas, which was expensive. So we drove fast with the windows down, and stopped a fair bit for cool drinks and swims in lakes.

When we got to Portland, we refreshed ourselves with some deliciously cold, enviably cheap pints of good microbrew.

Theresa

Vincente's

Rogue Dead Guy Ale

Beautiful.

We stayed in a hostel called McMenamins White Eagle Saloon, and even though it didn’t have air conditioning and we were sweltering, it was a pretty awesome place to sleep for $50 (total, not each). Except that sometime after we returned to the room from the bar downstairs, I remembered that I once heard that there have historically been more serial killers per capita in the Pacific Northwest than anywhere else in the world, so then I couldn’t sleep in case one lept out of the closet or climbed through the open window to serial kill one of us. I never think of these things at home, which is also Pacific Northwesterly. It could be time to get serious about medication.

At the bar, we ate and drank for cheaper than we may ever have done either before.

Delish.And we learned about this amazing beer called “Ruby,” which is the most perfect girl-beer ever invented. It tasted like raspberries (the red kind), and it was magical and cold and everything great about the world in a single pint glass.

And we drank and drank and laughed and laughed and The Exhasperated Ex-Ex-Patriot came from across town to join us, and a marvellous time was had until I dumped too much dijon onto my $3.00 burger and then I felt sad but then more beer came and life was good again.

The next morning, after several cold showers and night terrors over serial killers, we went for breakfast at Voodoo Doughnuts. Prior to the trip, my two goals for my time in Oregon were simple: eat a foie gras jelly doughnut, and also eat a maple bacon doughnut. Turns out, the foie gras doughnut is sold somewhere else, and the maple bacon doughnut sells out like crazy at Voodoo, so much so that when we got there around 9:00 am, they were completely out of stock. I settled for a PB&J doughnut, which was a delicious combination of peanuts, peanut butter, deep fried dough, and raspberry jam. Manna.

Voodoo Doughnuts.

SDC11190

Voodoo Doll doughnut

PB&J

Oozing.

And so we took to the road again, sad to be leaving so quickly, but delighted at ourselves for all the gluttony. And I shall return to Portland very soon, as it turns out I am madly in love with it for the same reasons I am in love with Vancouver but somehow Portland managed to out-doughnut Canada and also the drinks are very cheap there.

Also, in America, they still have POG. No. Fair.
I hog POG too.So, I guess what I mean to say is that you should come back tomorrow, because I mean to tell you all about brandied apricot cobbler with ginger, and it will be all kinds of delicious and completely new because I will have invented it. I think. It’s very warm out still and that could be why I’m finding it very hard to have coherent thoughts, never mind the struggle it’s been to try and write them out.

Canning: The Third Act. And it turns out that 10 years later, math can still get the better of you. Or, “Strawberry red currant jam.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Pretty.So, a bijillion things happened this week and it was impossible to get to the currants any earlier than today, so you can imagine how much I had built it all up in my mind. Glorious red jelly, I’d imagined, spread all over the tops of little rounds of brie that I would bake in puff pastry – and then we got busy, and Nick’s sister Jess had a baby, and I ran out of jars and payday hadn’t quite happened and then I found myself in a copy-editing frenzy for my friends’ fantastic magazine on my day off and then there were shirtless French men on my deck painting and getting all aggro and asking me questions and my head was going to explode and then, AND THEN, when I finally squished all the juice out of the red currants, I measured and found myself with two cups. TWO. I did not anticipate this, and I calculated and estimated and everything. And I needed like seven cups to make jelly, so I defrosted all my strawberries from a month ago and made strawberry jam with red currants and was a little disappointed but holy crap. And then I burned my hand.

Curranty.

The whole thing ended in a twist? I know, I’m annoyed too. Luckily, the jam is delicious. And I’d had four beers for breakfast so I was in a good mood despite all the failing and French people yelling and the injuries so I totally didn’t even cry. Success? We don’t measure it with a very high bar around here.

Strawberry Jam with Red Currants

(Makes 8 to 10 jars.)

  • 5 cups crushed strawberries
  • 2 cups red currant juice
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 7 cups sugar
  • 1 packet of Bernardin Original Pectin

Prepare your jars.

Combine strawberries and red currant juice in a large pan. Squish in your lemon juice. Add pectin and stir until dissolved. Bring to an aggressive, bubbly boil, and add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Bring back up to a rolling boil, and then set the timer for one minute, and stir your aggressive pot of molten strawberries while they boil furiously. Ladle into your prepared jars, and process as usual.

If, when pulling the jars out of the boiling water so you can put your jam into them, one splashes you, COOKING YOUR GODDAMN HAND, then feel free to shout swears as loud as you want, regardless of how many French men there are on your deck. They probably can’t hear you anyway, and if they can, whatever. THEY SPEAK FRENCH.

Oh – remember how I wasn’t sure if the raspberry jam was going to set? It did. Loosely, but it totally worked, so I am triumphant. So, I guess this concludes my series on canning. I made some scones though, and I’d like to tell you all about them – they’re the Starbucks vanilla bean scones, but better. They go great with either jam. You’ll love them, I promise. Here’s a sneak preview:

Vanilla scones with jam.

The Second Act: A raspberry jam success story. (I think.)

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments
Before.
Before.

Every couple minutes, the lid on another jar pops and seals and my heart fills with joy. Now the only concern is whether or not the jam will set, because I got too excited and misread the recipe, and then when I went back and reread it I was all, “that can’t be right,” and even though I didn’t really know what I was doing I scoffed and decided I could do better … but the leftovers are firming up nicely so hopefully that’s a good sign. I now have eight jars of raspberry jam, and there aren’t enough exclamation points in the world to convey how excited – no – how ebullient I now am. Ebullient means enthusiastic or BUBBLING OVER WITH JOY, all caps. I know you probably know that, but I had to look it up to double check and it’s my job to know words like that, so, you know. Anyway. It’s like when you figure out how to do something you used to think was impossible, like merging onto the highway, only it turns out you can totally do it and then you’re just so full of pep that you can’t stop beaming or asking for high-fives. Except better, because I still don’t really know how to merge onto the highway without braking.

Like I said, I’ve never really done this before. I’ve hovered close by while my mom canned things or pickled stuff or turned fruit into jam, and I watched my grandmother from the stool I’d perch on across the counter top on the other side of the kitchen, but I never really got all that helpful over it. I think that’s because the last time I saw either of them can anything I was much smaller and far more likely to drop hot things all over myself and everyone. I think it’s also quite a pain in the ass, this canning business, and so after a certain point I suspect it became more trouble than it’s worth. And the mess gets everywhere, and it’s sticky.

The recipe I used comes from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving via Epicurious, but I didn’t really read it all that closely and it turns out my way was way better, because if you follow this recipe, I think you’d end up with not very many jars of cloying red plonk. I’ll give you the recipe I thought I was using, but you may want to follow Epicurious’ Procedure for Shorter Time Processing because I am not very helpful as far as the technical stuff. There’s molten raspberry goo running down the side of my fridge.

Raspberry Jam

  • 4 litres/1 gallon/16 cups of fresh raspberries
  • Juice from 1 lemon
  • 4 cups granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 250°F. Place sugar in a pan in the oven, and bake for 15 minutes. Apparently sugar dissolves much quicker in the raspberry mixture when it is warm. This is true. The sugar disappeared in no time. Literally, seconds.

Put raspberries and lemon juice into a large stainless steel pot. Bring to a full boil over high heat, mashing berries with a potato masher as they heat. Boil for one minute, stirring constantly. Once the sugar is good and warmed, add it to the pot. It will stop boiling for a minute or two, but let it come back up to a boil. The recipe said that it should only take five minutes to form a gel, but I think that’s based on not nearly as many berries and way more sugar (by volume) than I used, so I boiled the berries in the pot for closer to ten minutes. To test whether the jam was thickening, and it’s hard to tell when it’s at a full-rolling boil, I took a small spoonful of jam and stuck it in the fridge for two to three minutes. If it was thick enough when it was cool, then that was good enough for me.

When satisfied that it’s thick enough, spoon the jam into your prepared jars – I used eight small jars of varying sizes, which held between one and two cups each. The recipe should make 10 one-cup jars.

The result was a jam that tasted like raspberries, not too sweet. There was just a tiny bit left over, and I ate it all with a spoon, and it was as bright and cheery as the fresh berries were, which is pleasing because it means that we’ll get to taste summer all year long. The best thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t make way too many jars that you’ll eventually throw out, and it’s manageable enough that you can make it on a tiny apartment stove (mine has only one large burner – the other three are the little kind, which makes it just slightly larger than the stove you get in those awesome plastic Fisher Price kitchens).

Raspberries, pre-jam.

Progress.

Steamy.

Rolling boil.

Filling the jars.

Sealing.

Mess.

By now, all eight lids have made their happy little popping noise, so barring a disaster or something, they should all be sealed. Now we wait – apparently I am to test these in 24 hours to be sure that they’ve sealed tightly. So think happy thoughts for my eight little jars. Tomorrow, or possibly the next day because I’m now out of jars and lids and everything, the challenge will be red currant jelly, which will be a different kind of experiment and though I haven’t decided if it’s going to be spicy habañero red currant jelly, plain-old regular red currant jelly, or something else, I think it’s going to be fun – I’ll tell you all about it very soon. It’s kind of like being an Iron Chef in your own kitchen, which is better because you always win and if you’re lucky you can still get someone else to clean up.

After!
After!

This was supposed to be a single post about raspberries, but it’s turned into a three-part series, and this is the introduction, so bear with me. It will either conclude awesomely, or you will find me on my kitchen floor in tears. Or, “Canning: Act 1.”

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

Inspiration.Grace is a bit of a keener. She canned cherries, which takes actual work and know-how and a cherry pitter, and while I am not to be outdone, I don’t want to try too hard because it’s uncomfortably hot in here, sweaty hot, and I figure I can make jam and have that be plenty good enough. And you know what kind of fruit is perfect for a full-mouth flavoursplosion that you don’t have to peel or pit anything for? Raspberries. We’re in July now, kids, and raspberries are plentiful. So our berry-picking team – Grace, James, and I, now plus Nick – travelled forty minutes to Langley to pluck bucketfuls this week’s fruit obsession.

I Pick!
I Pick!
Nick, Grace, and James read the rules.
Nick, Grace, and James read the rules.

Also, not stated but implied, "Don't have too much fun. If you're having the kind of fun that causes you to shriek gleeful obscenity into the fields, please keep it PG13. There are little people everywhere, and you will not see them until after you've said something terrible but kind of awesome."
Also, not stated but implied, "Don't have too much fun. If you're having the kind of fun that causes you to shriek gleeful obscenity into the fields, please keep it PG13, even if you think you're hilarious."

And so we picked raspberries, which was the plan. At first it looked like everything had been picked over, and we were a bit despondent, but that’s the thing about raspberries. To get the good ones, you have to look under the leaves, and that’s where you find berries so ripe that just the swipe of your fingers invites them to pop off into your hand and they’re so juicy and red that just the touch of your skin causes them to eke scarlet summer perfume all over your palm, and if you can get them to your mouth in one piece you’ll find that it’s the most perfect flavour you’ve ever let melt on your tongue.

Nick picks.
Nick picks.
Juicy.
Juicy.

And they’re so big! Nothing like the tiny little things you buy at $4.99 for those dinky green paper half-pint containers that usually contain at least three rotten ones, which you don’t find until after you get home and company’s on the way so there’s nothing you can do. No. These were big and fat, and surprisingly inexpensive.

And so we picked, and Nick threw unripe ones at me which is against the rules and ate twice as many as ended up in the bucket which is also not encouraged, and James went shirtless and was ravaged by the branches, and I was awesome and well-behaved and didn’t say anything inappropriate except for a few times but most likely no one heard me, and Grace picked meticulously and only found perfect berries because she has a knack for that, and patience, and the inappropriate things she said were way worse than the things I said, so there.

I'm trying to show you how big the berry is and also I should probably have worn a bra.
I'm trying to show you how big the berry is and also I should probably have worn a bra.

But that’s not all. No. We got the raspberries, and had a great time playing outside … AND THEN WE GOT CURRANTS! Which means that raspberry picking came with a bonus round, and so now in addition to a recipe for raspberry jam, I am going to figure out jelly making, and that’s why this thing will take place in three parts, as opposed to one long, rambling, generally incoherent celebration of summer fruit. And I’ve never really done this on my own and unsupervised before, but I’ve bought or borrowed everything I need to make it work, so how hard can it be, right? And the good news is, if I can do it, any idiot can. And if it fails? You can totally just buy jam.

I expect that by the end of the week, we’ll all be happy little badgers surrounded by piles of vanilla bean scones smeared with fresh raspberry jam, or brie dripping with red currant jelly and baked in puff pastry, and nothing will ever feel more right. Stay tuned!

I know, right?
I know, right?