A Healthy Galette

Do you know the difference between a tart, a galette, and a pie? Well neither did I until I started typing this post. In fact, at first, this post was titled "A Healthy Tart". I wanted to know the difference between a tart and a pie and ended up coming across this website that defined a pie, tart, and a galette. Upon realizing what this actually was (a galette), I retitled the post and started again.

Basically, a pie is a sweet or savory dish with a crust and filling, a tart is again a sweet or savory dish but this time with shallow sides and only a bottom crust, and a galette is again a sweet or savory dish  but is a round pastry wrapped and fruit/vegetable dessert/dinner. Galettes are usually baked on a baking sheet. If you would like to know more about these very close but distinct cousins, I got my information off of this site here.

Up here in New England, the weather has been so cold this winter. One of the things that has helped me through these dark, bleak days is this galette. Now, this galette is a one-of a kind galette. I am pretty sure that it is meant to be a pick me up when days get long, tiring, and cold. In fact the name of the recipe is even, "Wintergreen Galette".

Inside the galette is a mix of greens, namely greens such as leeks, kale, and mustard greens. Put all of these together and cooked in a slow saute, then cooked in the dough and you have a recipe for DELICIOUS!!!. In fact, I like the filling so much, that I have even had the filling just plain for dinner. For my crust I used whole-wheat pizza dough, that I bought frozen, defrosted, then rolled out just like I was making my own pizza. Remember that from over a year ago? This recipe is from the blog called The Yellow House. I found it by my mother, who made it one day for me, and it became my new go to.

This is the galette

This is a picture of a pie

Here is a picture of a tart 

Without further ado, and because I want to go make one of these right now. Here is my beloved Wintergreen Galette from The Yellow House.

Chocolate Galore!

Well, hello there readers. I am typing this sitting at my newly organized desk (another new years resolution--organize my desk). Yes, I have another obsession. Chocolate. I can not get enough of it right now. I love chocolate. When I came across this recipe (again from Orangette), I knew I had to make it. When the recipe for a chocolate cake suddenly appeared on my screen, I just knew I had to make it (Well, ok, the recipe did not just appear on my screen, I made it come up). This cake looked so good. And...not to mention ridiculously decadent. Yes, I know sounds good, right.

So, I picked up all of my ingredients from the store. And the butter. Yes, the butter. Do you remember when I cooked and blogged about a lot of French foods in a row? Well, this is another recipe that I think is French...cross my fingers. Anyways this recipe calls for French butter (one of the reasons I suspect that this is a French recipe). French butter is higher in fat which produces more air bubbles. This are good in a cake because the make the cake airy. But that being said, high fat butter is not the best for you--hence the name high fat butter, and you do not always want your cake to be airy. But for this cake you do.

Let me tell you how the cake turned out. OMG! This cake was good!  I mean deliciously, melt in your mouth, decadent, death by chocolate good!  The chocolate!  Oh! the chocolate. The top was like a brownie and the inside was nice and creamy. This was hands-down one of the best chocolate cakes I had ever tasted. And that is hard. I love my chocolate cakes from the box (aka Betty Crocker Mixes). I know you are surprised, but sometimes I go box!

Did I mention that this cake is named Winning-Hearts-And Minds Cake by Molly Wizenburg's friend Kate (Molly is the author of Orangette)? This one did truly win my heart.

I Have A Feeling

Well, I have some exciting news! I have a New Year's resolution that I know you will love! BLOG MORE! Yes, that is one of my New Year's resolutions. 

I love lemon. I am obsessed with it. I put lemon juice on my apples even if I am going to sit down and eat them as soon as I finish putting on the lemon juice. When I was reading the blog Orangette (I went way back to the very beginning of the blog) I found this recipe. Well, let me say that when I figured out that there was lemon zest and lemon juice in this recipe, lets just say I went a little nuts.Then it clicked. My first post of the New Year should be on this lemon cake. 

It just so happened that I had 2 lemons in my fridge. Just enough for the fresh juice from 2 lemons needed for this. After I came home from the BC woman's basketball game against Virginia Tech with my cousins (which BC won 70-63), I made this cake. The batter took no time at all. Then I had dinner. After dinner, I glazed the cake. I got a little worried making the glaze because the glaze is so thin, it hardly looked like glaze but, it turns out the glaze was perfect. After I glazed the cake, I could not resist not having a piece then and there. So, I did. The cake was very tangy. VERY! But it was good. So, good I packed some in my lunch today. I thought it was even possible better, when it was a day old. Now I am sitting here having another piece now. I could not post about this cake without saying that this cake is a wonderfully, spongy yougurt cake. I think I might try the cake on its on and report back. Really. It might be the cake I make for birthday parties from now on. The cake could be made using many different variations (orange, raspberry, chocolate, etc.) Really, try this cake. It is a quick, easy, cake to make and it is so delicious! 

I Remember...

Hello, so this post goes along with yesterday's post about France and Ile Flottantes.  This is a list of 9 items that I remember from my trip to France. 

1. Learning my way about the Metro

2. Tarte Flambee, and Ile Flottantes
3. Seeing the Eiffel Tower and riding all the way to the top
4. Walking down the Champs Elysees
5. Eating Creme Brulee for dessert wherever I went 
6. Going in the Notre Dame
7. Riding down the Seine River in a boat
8. Going to the Louvre 
9. Going into the Versailles Paris

Those are just some of the many things that I remember from my trip to France!

Let's reminisce!

Hello, sorry I have not posted in so long. I have had a really crazy past couple of weeks and have barely had time to breathe! Anyway, let's reminisce. 

So, my grandparents, Nana and Papa, have started an incredible tradition. They bring their grandchildren on a trop when we were 8. Just this afternoon, at 3:30, they got back from Ireland with my cousin Norah. After they got back, my grandfather called to reminisce. As we were reminiscing, it brought me back to Creme Brulees, Tarte Flambees, and Ile Flottantes from my 8-year-old adventures. Anyway, I had made Ile Flottantes at one of my cooking lessons with Macy and now have decided to share it with you. Don't forget to reminisce with your favorite people as you make this!

October: Find-your-uncle-in-the-middle-of-the-night-eating-chocolate-cake-it-is-so-good Chocolate Cake

The first thing I did when I got to my beach house this summer, was to sit down with my new favorite cook book. The cookbook, which my aunt gave me for my birthday, is called "The Baker's Dozen Cookbook". It's an amazing cookbook with tried and true techniques as well as 135 delicious looking recipes.  Well, anyway in this book there are a couple of pages of pictures. I was looking at these pages of pictures and came across a picture of chocolate raspberry cake. This cake looked amazingly delicious and was screaming my name.  So, I decided to make it. 

Once I started looking at the recipe, I realized that it was going to be a big cake, and a lot more work than I expected. There were 4 different parts to the cake, so it was going to take a long time! 

All of my cousins (16...all younger than me!) have been wanting to help me make something this summer. (They all claim that they are chefs, but really they just want to get on the blog.)  Since this was such a big cake, I thought that this was a perfect time to ask my cousin, who had asked me first, to help me and together, we attacked this cake. 

Anyway, making the cake lasted over a span of a couple of days and no I do not mean I stayed awake over a couple of days to make this (I don't think I could have made it because these days I am so tired at the end of the day!).

I used fresh picked raspberries (you know my mom and blueberries!) and I seriously encourage you to do the same. The raspberries tasted fresh and they were ripe and juicy and not about to grow mold on them like some of the ones from supermarkets! The spongy chocolate cake! OMG!!!! It was so good. It was not too dense which was something I was worried about, but at the same time, it was not too light. On a scale of 1-10 of the sponginess I would rate it an 8. Chocolate cream filling...rich, creamy, all the good things about filling. Finally, seriously decadent chocolate ganache which is French for frosting...so not Betty Crocker. These main components made the cake so deliciously TDF (to die for)!! 

Once we started looking at the recipe, we found out that we did not have a spring form cake pan. We tried a bundt pan, but the cake didn't rise as high as it should, so we ended up cutting the cake in half to make a half of a cake. Even though the cake was small, it was delicious, I mean truly TDF! The raspberries really were a great mix with the chocolate. I loved this cake and hope you do too! 

Just 1 thing, make sure you have an abundance of time! 

BTW: I know who it was who ate my cake in the middle of the night! Father of C and godfather of N... or was it you father of hummer-loving son!!!

My finished cake! (before my uncle got to it!)

For this cake, you will need the cake recipe, a genoise recipe, a ganache recipe, and a glaze recipe. All of these recipes are included!

Blueberry Picking: A Lesson In Life

In my family, we have a tradition of going blueberry picking every summer. As soon as the fresh blueberries start arriving in the store, I start dreaming about fresh blueberries.  This summer, after a few weeks of extreme heat, and then extreme rain and then a cold spell, we finally had our day to go picking in late July.  Lucky for us, we got a fair amount of blueberries. I picked almost 5 pounds, despite the challenging picking conditions.  Last year, we picked pounds and pounds of blueberries.  They were practically falling off the bush into our pails.  Sadly, this year, because of the weather late spring and early summer with extreme heat offset by extreme cold, the conditions for picking were not as good.  There were lots of blueberries... but not all were ripe and many were small.  In short, we had to pick around to find the best berries...you know, the fat, plump, juicy, really blue blueberries.  Blueberry picking is a longstanding family tradition.  My grandfather used to pick as a little boy.  My mother picked them as a little girl.  And, the tradition continues with me.  

At some point my mom decided that the only time she would buy blueberries was when we picked them ourselves.  I guess that it was her way of teaching us that food doesn't grow in super markets.   Kids these days think that food comes from supermarkets. The only thing my mom grows are the geraniums that die days after we buy them from the store, despite our best efforts to grow them. We really do try to grow them, but we sometimes forget to water them and when we do realize that we have not watered them for 1 week, we then compensate by over watering them. Lets just say we are no gardeners.  However, blueberry picking is something we can do.  

A few years ago, she decided to teach us the value of a blueberry and told us we had to pick enough blueberries to last us the whole year. (She would freeze them for us.) That year, we picked only enough blueberries to last us to November. It was crushing to realize that we would have to wait until June for more fresh native blueberries.  The following year we headed back to the field with a new purpose.  After each picking, my mom stores them in freezer bags with our names, saying, "you eat what you pick"  Last year, we picked enough blueberries to last us until the following June! 

We adore the blueberries that we pick. They are sacred in my family.  Not only are they delicious fresh fruit, but they are also great in desserts. Some desserts that we enjoy with the blueberries are blueberry cobbler, blueberry muffins, blueberry smoothies, blueberry pancakes, blueberry pie, and the best of all, blueberries on warm oatmeal on a cold winter day.  For  me, blueberry picking is a symbol of summer. Sometimes the blueberries get me through the cold, long New England winter...dreaming of summer. 

Fresh blueberries are the best!

When All Else Fails, I Revert To Food...

O.K. let me explain. So, the reason I have not posted recently is because June has been a crazy month. First, I had this ongoing project for social studies that my class had been working on since March! The project was on a national park, and my park was American Samoa National Park located in of course, American Samoa.  Then, I got out of school really late due to all the snow days that I had. Lastly, my summer has been really hectic and crazy! So much for my effort to "post more this summer".  

Back to the school project... At first I had no interest in learning about this park...and then I started uncovering tons of interesting facts!  The park is located 2,600 miles from Hawaii and 4,800 miles from the closest US mainland. There are only about 4,000 visitors per year at my park which is nothing compared to the more than 9 million at the most visited park, the Great Smokey Mountains.  Don't worry if you have never heard of the park before, neither had I! You should worry even less if you haven't been there, afterall, flights only go from Hawaii two times a week.  I also found out about this very cool coral reef and crown of thorn starfish...more on that later!
 
Fortunately, this school project presented me with a chance to create something other than a written report.  I was just about out of ideas ( it was afterall already the end of June!) on what creative art project I could do and my mother was insisting she would not be spending loads of money at Michaels with only 3 days to go in my elementary career.  What could I do? ... Hmmmm, food anyone?

First, I wanted to do something with blue jello because almost 38 percent of this park is underwater. Then I realized that the jello would melt in between 8:50 and 1:30 (the time my school started at and the time that the projects were being presented at).

Then it hit me, why not bake a cake and do something creative with it. So, on June 19, I baked the cake. Then I made frosting, food colored it 2 different colors, food colored coconut, and frosted ice cream cones.  The green frosting was my grass, with the coconut on top of it, the ice cream cones were frosted green, like trees. The almond flour (left over from my rum cake) was the sand on the beach. Then the blue frosting was my ocean along with blue sprinkles. Then I got modeling clay and made a crown-of-thorn starfish with a coral reef. The coral reef had a stomach on it because that is how the starfish eat the coral. These starfish are killing the coral reefs so I thought that it was important to display one. 

So, do you wonder how the project ended?  Well, most importantly, the cake turned out to be a big hit!  I also learned that it's possible to do a great art project in 1 afternoon with 3 days left in the school year without spending loads of money at Michaels. Well...finally, I learned...


WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, I REVERT TO FOOD!!!!

This is a picture of my project