It’s freezing. Like literally. I tried to go out for a long long run this morning and I ended up cutting it to a medium long run, because 5 miles in my legs were so frozen that they weren’t moving. No good.

So for the rest of the day, I’ve been cocooning in the house. Cuddling on the couch, watching football, and of course, baking. Okay, that sounds way more blissful and relaxing than our afternoon actually was. We were really stressed out watching the Ravens game and trying to keep Noel from breaking things at the Broadkill Beach Club. Yikes!

But there was baking! And what better thing to make on a cold day than some warm and hearty muffins so keep you warm and satisfied on a cold January day? And these muffins are so easy, you can whip them up during a commercial break from the football game!

Cranberry Oat Muffins

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup regular oatmeal
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 stick melted butter
1 cup milk
1 egg

Toss cranberries in granulated sugar to coat.

Combine dry ingredients well. Stir together milk, egg, and melted butter. Combine liquid ingredients with dry mixture. Add cranberries. Bake 15 to 20 minutes in 12 well greased muffin cups at 425°F.

This is the story of our perfect Fourth of July dessert.

Or rather, it’s almost a non-story. Shockingly, I didn’t put a ton of time or energy into planning every single meal for the Fourth weekend beforehand. Yeah, I’m usually sort of a planner. But since we had 11 house guests at the beach this past weekend (plus the normal 6 of us!) and everyone was instructed to bring what they wanted to eat, every meal was sort of an ad-hoc experiment. Meat was seasoned and put on the grill, followed by an assortment of veggies. It was wonderful, delicious, and relaxing. I brought a few dessert-like things to the beach for munching, including a tray of whole wheat brownies and a (coming soon) batch of chocolate chip cookies. Along with smores, these were just enough dessert for the first half of the weekend.

The only two things we knew we were absolutely cooking this weekend were a ridiculously huge pork loin and cupcakes. We bought the pork loin at BJs the weekend before, and the cupcakes…well, I fell in love with some ridiculously cute festive liners in the King Arthur catalogue back in May, so I HAD TO make cupcakes.

We had also taken our often neglected ice cream maker to the beach, mostly in the hope that it would see a bit more love down there than it saw at home. Add these two ingredients together–cupcakes + ice cream, and throw in some fresh berries (straw and blue) for some extra fun, and you’ve got a perfect summertime dessert! The cupcakes were vanilla pound cake with red, white and blue sprinkles, and the ice cream was one of our new favorites, a creamy Philadelphia Style. Perfection.

And in case you’re wondering about all those house guests, no, the Broadkill Beach Club is not a mansion. We had some portable bedrooms, aka tents, that folks slept in!

Philadelphia Style Vanilla Ice Cream
Adapted from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop

I cannot lie, I made the cupcakes, Noel made the ice cream. And since he wasn’t really fond of the idea of standing over a hot stove to make a custard on an already hot day, he went Philadelphia Style. We may never go back!

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk or half-and-half
¾ cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
¾ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:

Pour 1 cup of the cream into a medium saucepan and add the sugar. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod into the saucepan and add the pod to the pot. Warm over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.
Remove from heat and add the remaining cream, the half-and-half, and the vanilla extract.

Chill mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, for at least eight hours or overnight.

When ready to churn, remove the vanilla pod (reserve the bean for another use), then freeze in your ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

You all know I have a tendency to get a little bit excited about local produce. Maybe sometimes too excited.

Like last weekend. Instead of our normal Sunday Baltimore Farmer’s Market run, I decided to go to the uptown Waverly Market on Saturday. Because, you know, I had other stuff I was doing on Sunday morning. After becoming thoroughly disoriented on my way to Waverly and then further confused by the market setup–they practically let you park in the MIDDLE of the market!–I was overly excited by the produce.

There seemed to be more and different things than I had seen just a week before downtown, including strawberries, my favorite early summer seasonal item. Okay, maybe it’s a tie between peas and strawberries, but I do LOVE strawberries. I excitedly snatched up some strawberries and took them home.

But then when I went to eat a few. And it was not good. They weren’t bad per se, they were just early season. So instead of letting them die a slow death in the fridge, I went to look for recipes. I had a strawberry loaf in mind. But then I found these muffins, and they seemed the perfect compromise. The bready treat I was looking for, but without two sticks of butter! Bonus!

Strawberry Muffins
Adapted from Whole Living

These muffins aren’t too sweet and don’t have too many strawberries–so they’re just right! Because they’re not overly sweet, they make a good breakfast item or afternoon snack!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups sliced strawberries
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup low-fat buttermilk (I used 1 cup skim milk with 1 tablespoon vinegar)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners. Toss together strawberries and 1/3 cup sugar. Using a potato masher, lightly mash berries; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In a glass 2-quart measuring cup or a medium bowl, combine buttermilk, oil, egg, and vanilla; whisk to combine.

Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the buttermilk mixture and the berry mixture (with juice). Fold just until combined. Using an ice cream scoop, divide the batter among the muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with remaining sugar.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 17 minutes. Cool 5 minutes in the pan, then transfer muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.

Food allergies suck. Big time. Especially when you’re try to come up with good on the go food.

Before I was aware that soy was the enemy, I used to eat granola bars like it was my job. They were easy, and as a grad student, and then a young professional, they were super easy to stick in my purse and eat on the go. But then once I eliminated soy last year, granola bars were off limits, since they all contain soy. Boo! When I finally did find a brand that didn’t have soy, I bought them, excited to think I had found a replacement. And then I discovered that they tasted like sugared cardboard. Yuck.

So when Wendi suggested that we try making granola bars together because of our shared issues with packaged granola, I was in. A delicious soy free granola lurked. I was ready to find it.

Well these weren’t just a success–they were a homerun. These are our new granola bars, and I’m seriously thinking about making a batch a week for Noel to chow down on. They’ve got the texture of a Quaker Chewy, but with a thousand times more taste! We’re sold, and I’m never going to miss packaged granola again!

Chewy Granola Bars
Adapted from Bon Appetit Hon

Like I said, these were a hit as we made them, which is the recipe below. But I’m anxious to try mixing up the ingredients in these–Noel is practically begging for a peanut butter version–so I can’t wait to see how many types of bars we can make! I would also like to try to make these with all honey.

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup rolled oats, processed in food processor until finely ground
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger (or a bit more to taste)
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup honey

Directions:

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line a 8 or 9 inch square baking dish with a parchment sling.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, oat flour, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, cranberries, and ginger. In a second bowl, combine the corn syrup, vanilla, butter, and honey and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined (hands are great for this). Dump the granola in the prepared baking dish and press it to an even thickness.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Our granola was also a bit bubbly in the middle. Cool the granola in the pan completely before cutting into bars.

Serve as bars. Store leftover granola in an sealed zip top container.

Something about these bars–they make a great post run snack! I enjoyed one after the Kelly’s Shamrock 5k on Sunday, where I also enjoyed a new PR of 27.12! Yahoo!

So the only thing that didn’t go swimmingly in our whole Maine wedding cake baking process was the math. Math? Yes the math that we did to figure out how much of each ingredient we would need to make enough cake batter to fill our pans.

We thought we would need WAAAAY more batter than we did to make our cakes. Like 7 times the original recipe instead of the four times it actually took. I’m still not sure how we messed up that one quite so badly, but we did. At least we didn’t UNDERcalculate. That would have been bad news with the nearest grocery store 40 minutes away.

So instead of the 8 cups of fresh picked Maine blueberries we actually needed, we had 14. And you can’t just let fresh, wild Maine blueberries that you picked IN THE RAIN go to waste. So there was only one answer–coffee cake. And luckily King Arthur had a solution that appeared on their facebook page just in time.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Coffee Cake
Adapted from King Arthur Flour

This was as close to a perfect coffee cake as I think I’ve ever had. The blueberries with the lemon steusel were just perfect! Since we’re going through a whole wheat kick, we decided to substitute half of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat, and I used yogurt instead of sour cream. It was still amazing! If you’re not feeling the lemon, try this with your favorite crumble top.

Ingredients:

Lemon Streusel

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon lemon zest
6 tablespoons butter, softened
juice from 1/2 lemon

Cake

8 tablespoons butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup yogurt or sour cream, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries, well drained

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9″ x 13″ baking pan or two 8″ x 2″ round pans.

For the lemon streusel: In a medium-sized bowl whisk together the sugar, flour, and salt. Gently toss the lemon zest until it is well coated. Using a fork or your fingers, work the softened butter into the flour/zest mixture until it resembles granola, some larger chunks, some smaller. Sprinkle on the lemon juice and toss again to combine. Set mixture aside.

For the cake: Cream the butter and sugar until light colored and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat after each addition. Be sure to scrape down the bowl well each time. Beat in the yogurt/sour cream and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to the batter, mixing until combined. Avoid over-beating or the cake will become tough.

Gently fold in the blueberries until well distributed throughout the batter. Pour into the prepared pan(s) and spread evenly. Sprinkle with the lemon streusel until the batter is completely covered.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 15-20 minutes before serving.

So where were we? Oh yeah, I had a cake to share with you!

After a major furniture rearrange in our rental house and the better part of a day, we had one beautiful cake. It’s amazing what 18 sticks of butter and 7 pounds of powdered sugar can turn a humble blueberry cake into!

And you know what? This cake was fun to put together! Amazingly not stressful for such beautiful results! Eileen and I just hit a rythmn with this one and everything fell into place. In the morning I manned the mixer making batch after batch of Martha’s beautiful buttercream while Eileen crumb coated. Then in the afternoon, we iced finished layers and assembled in record time. We were so not stressed, we took a lunch and shopping break midway through the process. I think that low stress level upped the love in the final product.

Adorable (homemade!) fondant turtle cake toppers. I know someone is going to ask, so I’ll tell you, they were a request from the bride. There’s a story out there about the turtle pond and the couple’s love!

After the ceremony, I couldn’t wait for the cutting! Ryan and Eli were nice enough to bring us up and introduce us to their guests before taking the first slice…

…and sharing it nicely.

After that first piece, it was all a blur for me. The cake went so fast–with many, many people coming back for seconds before we were even done cutting–I had to have Noel snag me a piece and hide it to make sure I even got one! I’m glad he did, since the cake was delicious–moist with tiny Maine blueberries sprinkled throughout, a crumble between the layers, and a wonderfully thick coating of buttercream.

All night long Eileen and I had people coming up to us telliing us how delicious the cake was, with several people saying it was the best wedding cake they had ever had. There were no sad pieces left on tables at the end of the night–all of it was eaten!

So, all in all, I would say this cake was a smashing success! We went, we baked, and we shared one fantastic evening with a great couple. Thanks again to Ryan and Eli for letting us be a part of your big day! We wish you all the happiness in the world as you start out your lives together!

And for you dear readers, here’s the link to the first part of this story (in case you missed it!).

So you all know I went to Maine for my summer vacation (as evidenced by the lobster sightings) but I don’t know if I ever told you why.

They’re why. They are Ryan and Eli. Ryan is one of Noel’s oldest friends. Eli is his rockin fiancee wife. And they were getting married, at Eli’s family’s house in Maine. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!

And guess what else? They asked us to bake their wedding cake! SQUEE! So Eileen and I packed up our mixers, 25 pounds of flour, a ridiculous amount of powdered sugar, half of the rest of our kitchens, oh, and our husbands, and headed off to Maine for the week!

Baking a wedding cake from scratch is always an adventure, but baking one in an unknown kitchen is extra fun. Like when you get there and realize you have an apartment and not a kitchen oven. That doesn’t work so well for a 14 inch round–thanks again to Sue and Jon for letting us steal their oven for an afternoon, or otherwise, this story might not have such a happy ending!

But luckily, it does have a happy ending, one full of butter, sugar, fresh, hand picked wild Maine blueberries, love, friends, and fun. Thanks to way too much overplanning on mine and Eileen’s part, the cake went off without a hitch. We had the perfect recipe, good upper arm strength, and a delightful buttercream. And it all came together beautifully.

I’m sure right now you’re ready for a picture of the cake. But you know what? Good things come to those who wait. So come back later this week to see us put it together and the final product–but as a preview, I think it may be the most beautiful cake we’ve ever made!

On this past cloudy Saturday, Noel and I had a little adventure.

We headed west out of the city into the green Howard County farmlands. Our destination–Larriland Farms, my favorite pick your own spot. Although Larriland is just 22 miles outside of Baltimore, it feels like a different world out there.

I had only ever been to Larriland before to pick apples, which is one of the things the farm is famous for. During apple season, the farm is packed, and they have a month long apple festival set up at their barn, where they sell apple turnovers, cider, the works. I think there are even hayrides. It’s a happening apple place.

We went on Saturday on a mission for peaches, and on such a cool cloudy day, the farm was very calm and peaceful. Only a few other cars were in the lot when we arrived, promising a day of quiet picking. I had read a rumor online that Larriland still had some blueberries hanging around–a rarity in mid-August. And when I saw the blueberry sign up on the board at the farm Noel had to keep me from running to the field!

Yeah, the blueberries weren’t super plentiful, and they were a bit small, but they tasted delicious. After about an hour of effort Noel and I had about 4 pounds, more than enough to make another batch of my beloved blueberry jam.

After blueberries, it was on to the main event–peaches! It took us a few tries to find the right field, but after we did, the peaches were plentiful and the picking was good!

This sign shows the best thing about pick your own–the prices!!

There were so many ripe peaches on the trees, the fruit was literally FALLING off. Noel kept wanting to pick up the ones on the ground, and I kept making him leave them. Needless to say, with fruit like that, the peach picking went MUCH faster.

So it was a very fruitful trip out to the near west(ern) counties. Noel was a little skeptical about what we were going to DO with all of this fruit, but in the end I think he was amazed with the results!

Come back on Friday to see what happened to all of that fruit! Any guesses?

Since my junior year in college–after the ill-fated first year of college and the dread freshman 15 + the bonus sophmore 15–and the need to work it off, I’ve been kind of a fitness nut. Some even like to use the term gym rat, although as a person who has had actual real life encounters with rats and at least one nutria, I take offense at that label.

Lately, I’ve been getting into running. I needed something to mix up my workout routine and I didn’t want the constraints of a class setting at the land of the beautiful people Merritt, and I certainly couldn’t afford a regular trainer. So running seemed like a natural fit, especially since for the past few years I’ve been fascinated with the Baltimore Marathon, and dabbled with the idea of trying to do a half marathon myself. I know, it’s possibly crazy, but as you may have guessed from reading this blog, I like to attempt the possibly crazy.

The funny thing about running is that after a typical 4 mile run I’m either one of two things–insanely energized or totally exhausted. Weird right? I could see being somewhat tired or totally exhausted, or even slightly energized or high octane, but such totally opposite reactions? To any runners out there, do you have this same reaction, or is my body just strange?

After my Monday night run this week, I was in the zooming place. I was chat, chat, chatty during dinner. I was cleaning. And I wanted to bake. So when I spotted these muffins in the new King Arthur catalog as I flipped through it during dinner I was hooked. I had everything in the house to make them and they seemed deliciously healthy–low oil, carrots, zucchini and whole wheat flour. I was not dissapointed and neither was Noel–who although skeptical at first–has been eating these for breakfast all week.

Carrot Zucchini Muffins
Adapted from the King Arthur Catalog (the page with PJ, one of my baking heroes!)

I changed a few things from the catalog, mainly to fit with what I had in my pantry and because I don’t really care for nuts. I also doubled the recipe (to the size you see below) to make a full 12 muffins. But still, they were delicious. A totally satisfying way to get a few more summer veggies in your daily diet, disguised as a sweet!

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2 cups grated zucchini
2 cups grated carrots
1/2 cup dried fruit (I used craisins)
2 cups white whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 and line muffin tins with paper.

Whisk together the sugar, oil, salt, and eggs. Add the grated veggies and the dried fruit.

Whisk together the remaining ingredients in another bowl. Add to the veggie mixture and stir until just combined. Divide the batter evenly among the cups, then let the muffins rest for 10 minutes before placing in the oven.

Bake the muffins until the edges are browned and they feel firm if gently pressed, 18-25 minutes. Cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then complete cooling on a rack.

Ah, cobbler. One of my first, and favorite, summertime food memories.

First and favorite, because you see, my mom’s family is from the South. And there are few things southerners enjoy like fresh fruit covered with tasty biscuit dough–aka cobbler. Okay, maybe they enjoy stuff fried in bacon grease more, but trust me, cobbler is WAAAAY up there on the list.

As a result, there was rarely a summertime gathering in my childhood where a cobbler didn’t make an appearance. Our family was particularly fond of peaches, so it was often peaches with a Bisquick top. Just cut them up, add some cinnamon, a quick drop top and it was instant summer!

Hot dogs, potato salad, slip’n'slides, sprinklers and cobbler. Summertime–oh my!

I can feel the sticky from the cobbler on my arm and the cuts and stuck-on grass from one too many trips on down the slip’n'slide. My hair is a crazy mess with barrettes. Must be summertime!

So is it any surprise that when the food restrictions were lifted I went straight for this cobbler, with all the memories it triggers? Absolutely not, especially since it has cornmeal biscuits on top. And you know, cornbread, ain’t nothing wrong with that!

Peach and Blueberry Cornmeal Crusted Cobbler
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

This deliciousness hadn’t been in the oven for 10 minutes before I knew it was going to be a stellar, knock it out of the ballpark, one of my favorite things ever, hit. And I would be lying if I didn’t admit to having two servings the night I served it for dessert, and then two servings the next day too. And did I mention I’m making it again this weekend? Oh yeah. I’ve doubled Deb’s recipe for cornmeal biscuits, because you can never have enough biscuit top.

Ingredients:

For the fruit
1 1/2 (about 4 cups) pounds peaches, pitted and cut into slices
1 pint (about 2 cups) blueberries, rinsed and dried
2/3 cup packed dark-brown sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the biscuit topping
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup fine stone-ground cornmeal (yellow or white)
6 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup buttermilk or 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon vinegar

Preheat oven to 425°F. Place peaches and blueberries in a large shallow dish, the add sugar, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon and salt and stir gently (or use your hand to mix) until the fruit is well coated.

Make the biscuit dough: Stir together the flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into the dry mixture with your fingertips, a fork or a pastry blender. Stir in buttermilk with a rubber spatula until a wet, tacky dough comes together.

Plop spoonfuls of the biscuit dough over the filling (I used a cookie scoop and it worked great). Bake until the cobbler’s syrup is bubbly and the biscuit tops are browned, about 25 to 30 minutes. Cool slightly then serve, or cool completely and reheat before serving.

But who am I kidding, I ate it cold too!