Peach and Blueberry Galette (or My Battles with Fruit Decay)

So, I have a nasty habit. I buy fruit on sale without any idea what I'm going to use it for. My most common culprits are soft fruits of any kind like stone fruits and berries. And I don't just buy a small amount. It's a sale! I've got to take advantage of it, right?

Add to that, there are only two people in my household. Two people. So it's a race between me, my oven, our stomachs, and our furry friend, I mean fiend, mold. Well, all that being said, we throw a lot of fruit away.

Well, it was getting around that time when old fruit decay was creeping up on our fruit, so I had to act fast. I searched around, and found this recipe, and thought it would be a great candidate for the peaches and blueberries I had on my counter and in my fridge.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite move fast enough, so our fruit had started to go. But thankfully, after a mad dash away from the fruit after I saw the fiend, Jacob salvaged enough for this galette.



I've made a galette one time before, and I had the same trouble that I had this time.

1. I didn't center the fruit well enough so I ended up with one doofus edge.
2. The butter content of the crust causes it to melt in the oven.

I want to know how to make a pretty galette. How do I make sure I won't end up uneven? How do I not leak butter every time I try? Teach me! :)


I liked this crust pretty well, but I think it needed to be sweetened up a bit. The galette ended up tasting very fresh tasting (as in just tasting like the fruit) but it wasn't the dessert taste I was looking for. I might try to tweak it sometime to see if I can get that dessert feel I wanted.

Still, I was happy to have come out on top this round, but I guess I should mention, right before this, I threw away strawberries an raspberries.
Christina:1 Mold: 2

Curds and Whey

So I've been into making yogurt lately because it's soo easy, and based on the milk prices here, it's actually more economical. I know...crazy! And with making it myself, I can determine the consistency, so I go with the nice thick, Greek-style yogurt. Jacob loves that too.




You can make it a little smoother with some stirring or the addition of some whey, but I'll get to the whey in a minute. Here's the recipe for making yogurt. I don't remember what website I got it off of, but there are plenty out there. Here's the one I make from memory.

Plain Yogurt

1 quart milk (any percentage)
3 tablespoons already prepared yogurt (you can use store-bought or homemade)

1. Pour the milk into a large saucepan and scald. This means to heat up but not boil. Do not boil. I tell when to turn the heat off by looking at the surface of the milk. By then it will have formed a thin skin, and when it's ready it will have reached the "alien stage" as I like to call it. The "alien stage" is when you can see ripples under the skin moving, like something is trying to get out of the milk. After it is doing that steadily, turn off the heat.
2. Let the milk cool down some. This is an important step. If you skip this, you'll kill the yogurt starter and just have some warm milk. I usually let it cool for about 45 minutes to an hour. It needs to just be warm to the touch.
3. Spoon out the skin. You need to take this off, or else you'll be eating it in your yogurt. Mmmm, plasticky yogurt pieces.
4. Stir in the tablespoons of yogurt.
5. Place the mixture, covered, in a warm spot. I like to use the oven with the oven light on. It's warm enough, controlled enough, and enough out of my way. Let it sit in that environment for at least 4 hours. I shoot for 4-5 hours.
6. Refrigerate the yogurt (yes, it's yogurt now) until cool. Then strain if desired. I do suggest a little straining, because it does have a lot of whey produced.
7. Eat and enjoy. Flavor however you want!



This is what I use to strain my yogurt. A sieve over a measuring cup with some cheesecloth. I spoon some of the yogurt in there, put it in the fridge and forget about it for a few hours or overnight...depending on how well I have forgotten about it. The cheesecloth will have your thicker yogurt, and the measuring cup will have caught all of the whey.


When you're done making yogurt, you'll have about this much whey as a by-product. People say you can just drink it. I tried it. It tastes like liquid yogurt. You also can use it in recipes whenever it calls for water. If you do that, you get a more flavorful whatever your making, and it's more nutritious as well, since the whey has a lot of protein and nutrients in it. I've been looking into making some recipes, and I'll post about them later.

But the best thing about making your own yogurt is that you get to flavor it however you want. I've tried honey, jam, lemon curd, and now...

Blueberry Curd! I didn't even know there was such thing as blueberry curd. But blueberries were on sale, and I found this recipe for red currant curd here and thought, why not try, so I did. Here's what I did.

Blueberry Curd
adapted from The Daily Spud

1 pint of blueberries
1/3 cup of water
mounded 1/4 cup of sugar (add more or less to your taste)
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 egg yolks

1. Rinse the berries and put them in a saucepan with the water. Boil for 10-15 minutes until dark purple and pulpy. I squeezed the blueberries that did not pop with the back of my spoon to get an even mixture.
2. Run the mixture through a sieve to remove stems and casing that did not boil down.
3. Return to saucepan and mix in sugar over medium heat until dissolved. Taste and adjust sugar if needed. Add pinch of salt.
4. Whisk egg yolks and add a spoonful of the blueberry mixture to heat the eggs. Then add to the rest of the blueberry mixture, whisking until desired thickness is achieved.
5. Remove from heat and whisk in butter until melted.
6. Let stand or store to let it set up before using.

Now you may remember that I made some biscotti that landed me a gig making a birthday cake. Well, I was experimenting around with cake to find one that would work for the party. I first made a white cake, and it was sooooooo dry. So I did some searches for a more moist cake. Here's one of the cakes I found.

A lemon curd cake. It was pretty easy to make, but I wanted to see if I could make it into a layer cake. The cake was very dense, but I did manage to split it, and I put the blueberry curd I had made earlier in between the layers. Then I covered it all in a cream cheese frosting. The cake was really good. Really lemony, but really heavy and sweet. Definitely a grown-up cake and not a little kid's birthday cake. Darn.

Anyway, here's a cross section.

You may be wondering what that blue thing is at the top of the cake. It was one of my experiments for decorating the birthday cake.

Here's the top view of the cake.

So that blue was a little portion of Cinderella. The part is supposed to be a Disney Princess theme, so I was working on tracing those characters in chocolate to put on the cake. I think it turned out pretty well.

Here's a close-up of Cinderella.

She broke in some places putting her on the cake, so I'm going to reinforce the back with some more chocolate. I'm not exactly sure how many princesses I'll make. We'll just have to see what happens. And pray that I find a cake that's moist and kid-friendly. Pray hard!

Berries in the Fridge

Recently, I went to the store and blueberries and raspberries were on sale. So naturally, I had to buy them, even though I had no plans for them. And they sat in my refrigerator for a few days, while I was busy doing other things, and then I realized oh! I need to use those berries.

I was originally going to do a tart, but I didn't have enough eggs. So I had to find a recipe that fit my berries and my number of eggs. I finally did, but it required making two desserts instead of one. Oh darn! I was soooo disappointed. :)

For the raspberries, I made Berry Surprise Cake from Baking from My Home to Yours, page 273. I know...but I like the book, and I still didn't have internet at this time.

The cake was almost a sponge cake, and the filling was a mixture of cream cheese and whipped cream. Overall, the cake was very light, which was nice. The recipe called for a syrup to be spread on bottom layer of the cake, but if I did it again, I would omit this. It just made the bottom a little weird to me.

So with no further ado, Berry Surprise Cake!

Here's a bite.And here's the whole cake.

I tried to get a picture of the inside, but it didn't turn out great. But here is anyhow.

And then with the blueberries, I made Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie, on page 361.

The only thing was, I didn't realize until a few nights after that I only had 2 half pints, not 2 pints of blueberries. The recipe called for 2 1/2 pints of blueberries, so I thought I'd be just a little short, but how wrong I was. It still tastes okay, but it's much flatter than it was supposed to be and not all of the sugar got incorporated. Hee hee.


Here's the whole pie.

All in all, they were fun to make a fun to eat. Good thing, cause I'm still eating them!

Finally, a post...and an Iron Cupcake

So it has been one crazy month. We've moved to LA, and I'm trying to get our apartment set up and find a job. And bake and keep up with this blog. All of which is difficult without internet. I don't get it until Friday! Argh! Anywho, I'm using Jacob's work computer to get this post done, so here goes. My submission to Iron Cupcake: Blueberry Lemon Cupcakes.

And here's how I did it.

Blueberry Cupcakes

adapted from Baking from My Home to Yours

1 pint blueberries

2 cups plus 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

2/3 cup sugar

Grated zest of 1/2 lemon plus more for garnish

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

2 large eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 tablespoon lemon curd (recipe below)

scant 1/2 cup milk

1. Using your fingertips, toss the blueberries and 2 teaspoons of flour together in a small bowl just to coat the berries. In another bowl, whisk the rest of the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together. In a measuring cup with a spout, mix the milk and lemon curd.

2. In the bowl of your stand mixer, rub the zest into the sugar until incorporated and fragrant. Beat the butter in until light. Add the eggs one by one, mixing 1 minute after each. Add the vanilla and mix. Add the flour in three parts and the milk in two parts, alternating beginning with the flour. Gently stir in the berries.

3. Fill lined muffin tin 3/4 the way full and bake in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes, until golden on top.

Lemon Whipped Cream

from New Southern Cooking

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

Grated rind and strained juice of 3 lemons

3 eggs, beaten well

1 cup heavy cream (to be folded in to the lemon curd)

1. Place the sugar, butter, lemon rind and juice, and eggs in a heavy saucepan, and cook gently ove low heat until the mixture is thick but still falls easily from a spoon. (do this with a whisk) Do not boil or let the mixture separate. (I strain my curd so it's silky smooth, especially if I get a little bit of scrambled eggs in it) Refrigerate.

2. Whip the cream to stiff peaks. Fold half of the lemon curd into the cream and top the cupcakes.

There it is. Enjoy!

And here are the prizes:

Our June ETSY PRIZE-PACK is from artists:
A sweet cupcake ID bracelet by INSANEJELLYFISH, http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5021935
A groovy linocut piece from BLOCKHEAD PRESS http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6108705
a sweet surprise from Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Cupcakery, http://www.acupcakery.com/
PLUS, IronCupcake:Earth can not forget our good friend, CAKESPY, http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5243382, who is now going to be doing a piece for our winner each month until further notice - sweet!

Last and certainly not least, don’t forget our corporate prize providers: HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS, http://www.fiestaproducts.com/, HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, http://blog.hellocupcakebook.com/, JESSIE STEELE APRONS http://www.jessiesteele.com/; TASTE OF HOME books, http://www.tasteofhome.com/; a t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM http://www.upwithcupcakes.com/. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers, http://www.1800flowers.com/ .