Morning, friends.

How are all of my lovely readers? Anything crazy happen recently? I have been running around like crazy, adjusting to a new lifestyle. Figuring out a new normal. And mostly living  out of my car. The classic college kid lifestyle going on over here.

But, I made these today. It was a great terrible decision. The pan is almost gone, they probably won’t last the evening. They feature a shortbread crust, moist berries and peaches, and finished with almost a custard top.

So indulge, and transition into new seasons.

Ever slightly adapted from Bill.

1 3/4 cup flour

scant 3/4 cup butter, cold, cut into small cubes

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup brown sugar

about 1 cup good quality canned peaches, sliced

1 cup frozen raspberries

1 egg

3/4 cup whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Heat oven to 350. Line a 11×7 inch baking pan with parchment paper.

In a mixing bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt, and butter together. Using your fingers cut the butter into the flour mixture until the mixture looks like cornmeal. Add the sugars and mix. Press 1/2 the mixture into the prepared pan. Arrange the fruit onto the pressed crust.

Whisk the egg, vanilla, and milk into the remaining flour sugar mixture. Pour evenly onto the pan.

Bake for 1 hour.

Why can’t coffee be a picnic? After all it is the best meal of the day. Pack a basket, and hit the hills with a yeasted coffee cake.

I just heard about yeasted cakes from SK, this is my first ever attempt with the concept. So far so good. I love the shape the bunt pan makes with this cake, it’s sturdy and would travel well.

Some yummy links for you:

Coffee understands 

Puppy Cake!

Don’t underestimate the amount of time it takes to ice a cake 

NY Times Spring cooking Pinterest board

Feel free to buy me this flatware set in black

I have always loved Not Without Salt, follow her!

James Beard Foundation recipes

Jello recipe! (Lemon & basil, YUM!)

Duh.

B.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l.

Portland: Macaron class on May 11th!

From Mark Bittman How to Cook Everything

4 cups flour

3 teaspoons yeast

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 cup sugar

6 tablespoons butter

2 eggs

1 cup whole milk

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped nuts

Dissolve the yeast in 3 tablespoons warm water, set aside. In a food processor place the flour, salt, 2 tablespoons sugar, and dissolved yeast. Pulse to combine. Add 2 tablespoons cold butter, and eggs, Mix to combine. Turn on the machine and drizzle 1/2 cup milk though the feed tube, until the mixture forms into a ball. Add more milk or flour as needed. Turn the dough into a floured surface, kneed for a couple of minutes. Turn the kneaded dough into a greased bowl. Cover with a damp towel, and let rise for 2 hours.

Grease a bunt pan. Use a spoon and mixing bowl to combine the rest of the butter, flour, and cinnamon, put into the prepared bunt pan.

Heat the oven to 350.

Punch the risen dough down, kneed a couple of times. Divide the dough into 6 balls. Put them on top of the cinnamon mixture in the bunt pan. Cover and let rise for 45 minutes.

Uncover and bake for about 45 minutes. Remove from the pan, and serve warm.

Last week I babysat my little brother, and cooked for two posts. This is while we were shooting strawberry rhubarb pie. This is the reality of shooting a dish.

A new series is here! So excited to share this with you guys! So here’s the plan, I want to write about my favorite spots to eat while I am  in Portland, as well as when I travel. I will be highlighting a new restaurant, bistro, cafe, or coffee shop once a month. I am so excited to photograph and write about my favorite spots to enjoy great food and coffee. Hope you are as excited as I am about this!

I met my siblings at the Alberta Barista location. We swung by Petit for a baguette for dinner, it was a quick in-and-out, but I wanted to linger and taste the insane looking pastries in the case. The cool thing about petit it that it has a formal restaurant, as well as the grab-and-go pastry and coffee bar. I was able to finally return to Petit for a real lunch, it didn’t disappoint. I was able to get a table quickly, and the food and service were both exceptional. Keep this in mind: French Onion Soup.

(Ratings done on a scale of 1-5, 1 being, “ok, I mean it’s fine.” 5 being, “Oh, wow. Just wow.”)

Name: Petit Provence | French Bistro & Bakery

Location: NE Alberta st, Portland, OR

What I ate: Monte cristo and French onion soup

Atmosphere: Chic

Bread rating: 3

Pastry rating: 3

Favorite things: I love the decor in this cafe, its so very chic, it reminds me of The Grand Cafe in Oxford.

Waiting for a table: I have been here when the wait has been a couple of hours, but this past Saturday, I got a table in 15 minutes. But, if you’re just wanting a pastry, you can always just grab and go from the pastry counter.

I am contemplating weather or not to tell you the truth, do you want to know the truth about this banana bread? The thing about blogging is that you can lie with both your words, and your pictures. But, I am an honest kind of person, I will tell you the real story of this recipe. I forgot the sugar. It wasn’t intentional, I’m not on some health kick (at least, not at the moment). I wasn’t going to tell you, I was going to fake it, and make you think I am that cool, but it’s good to tell the truth and get that off my chest.

At least I remembered the flour. I make these kind of mistakes way too often, and why when I forget an ingredient is it something curtail like, flour, sugar, or baking powder?

But really, you won’t  miss the 1 cup of sugar that I was originally going to add to this bread. The bananas have enough sugar content to make up for it. I wish I had some Nutella to smear on a warm slice, luckily, I was out. Butter and honey is pretty wonderful as well.

Dark chocolate chunks are mixed into a moist crumbed bread. Warm with butter, or the next morning for breakfast with peanut butter is drool-worthy.

Some other banana recipes: Banana pots de creme, Nutella and banana crepe cake

If you must add sugar, add 1 cup in the banana/butter mixture, and increase the baking time 15 minutes. But don’t do it, it’s not worth it.

(I know, 2 banana posts in a week, get over it.)

Adapted from, Bill Granger’s Choc Banana Bread

a heavy 1/2 cup butter, softened

4 ripe bananas

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

a pinch kosher salt

1 cup chopped dark chocolate

Mash the bananas in your mixer. Add the vanilla, eggs, and butter, mix until well blended.

In a small mixing bowl mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture, mix until just combine. Do not over mix.

Pour the batter into a greased 4×9 loaf pan. Bake for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserts and comes out clean.

Butter, of course. And fruit, of course.

I had actually never had the famous combo of strawberry and rhubarb before, and most defiantly have never made anything containing the magical combination. But the other day the stars aligned, and I made strawberry rhubarb pie. I wanted to make one of those classic fold over stand alone tarts, but with a butter pastry. So I did, and it was brilliant. Boom-chicka-boom-boom.

Some fun things to look at:

3 reasons to travel while you’re young. Listen and obey.

I want this dog.

Build your own pizza oven!

Paris.

Lightbulb. 

I want this kitchen so so so much. And this one too. 

What a lovely way to serve eggs.

Pastry:

1 1/2 cup flour

3/4 cup butter, chilled, and cut into small cubes

a dash of salt

2 tablespoons ice water

Put the flour and salt together in a mixing bowl. Use your hands  to cut the butter cubes into the flour mixture until it looks like corn meal. Add just enough water to make everything old together toss with a fork (really, it doesn’t take much). Shape the dough into a ball, and flatten into a disk. Wrap, and chill for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, make the filling.

Filling:

2 cups strawberries, washed, and cut into medium sized chunks

2 cups of rhubarb, washed, cut into slices

3/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

Mix everything together in a mixing bowl.

To assemble:

Heat the oven to 375. Grease a cookie sheet.

Roll out the chilled pastry into a 16″ circle. Fold into 4ths, and put on the prepared pan. Unfold, spread the filling to within 4″ of the edge of the pastry. Fold the edge around the whole of the pastry, leaving a large hole of uncover fruit in the middle. Bake for 45 minutes, or until golden brown.

Always chewy, never crunchy. Made with chunky peanut butter, spotted with chocolate chips. Baked to perfection. What could be better?

Maybe I should have called these “crappy day cookies” or “worst day ever cookies”. This is that recipe that you can turn to when your day, well, didn’t go as planned.Throw yourself a proper pity party, make these cookies, and be happy. That’s what’s up with these cookies.

Oh. Also, I made a notes page on my menu bar. It explains some of the ingredient I commonly use, like coconut oil, and pastry flour. Hopefully that’s helpful!

Recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour

1/3 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter

1 1/2 cups wholewheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

scant 1 cup chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350.

Cream the cocoanut oil, sugars, and vanilla together. Beat in the egg, and peanut butter. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix to combine. Add the chocolate chips, mix just to combine.

Drop by tablespoon full on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes.

Pots de creme are the best. The French got a hold of pudding and, of course, made it better. Here we have a basic vanilla pots de creme with real vanilla bean caviar scraped into the scalded milk. Thickened with marigold colored egg yolks, and topped with brown sugared banana slices.

Pots de creme recipe adapted from NY Times

Vanilla Pots de Creme:

1 cup cream

1 cup half and half

3 vanilla beans, cut in half caviar

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

Heat oven to 300.

Split the vanilla and scrape out the cavier,  put it in a 4 quart pot as well as with the empty pods. Add the half and half and cream, heat until it steams, turn off the burner, and cover and let it steep for 10 minutes.

In a mixing bowl beat the egg yolks, and sugar together until pale.

Remove the vanilla pods from the milk mixture. Whisk 1/3 of the scalded milk into the egg yolks, add the rest of the scalded milk, whisk again. Pour into 4, 6oz ramekins.

Put the ramekins in a baking dish that will hold them all. Put enough water into the baking dish to cover half-way up the ramekins. Bake for 45 minutes. The custard will be soupy, that’s fine.

Banana topping:

3 bananas, sliced

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

Melt the butter in a skillet, add the sugar. Let it bubble for about 3 minutes. Turn off the heat, and add the bananas, let the remaining heat cook the bananas slightly.

Salmon is flaked together with crab meat, seasoned lightly with onion, salt and pepper, and finished with lemon. Grilled to a crispy perfection in cocoanut oil.  My brother and I made these for Sunday dinner. Cooking and talking, mostly about Michael Jackson in my parent’s kitchen. Dancing, singing, and making these cakes. We served them with mashed potatoes, and seasoned cucumbers that I am planning on sharing with you later this week. My family and I sat and stood around the end of the bar eating and talking.

5 oz cooked salmon

3 oz cooked, and picked crab meat, good quality canned would be fine

1/2 onion chopped, very finely

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 eggs

1 slice of good quality bread, artisan would be ideal

salt

pepper

cocoanut oil

Put the bread in a food processor. Grind until you have bread crumbs, set aside. In a large mixing bowl mix everything together, season with salt and pepper, mix using your hands if needed. Scoop a scant 1/4 cup of the mixture into your hands, shape it into a ball, and flatten it until it’s about 1/2 inch thick. Shape all the cakes and set aside.

Heat enough oil over medium to generously cover the bottom of a cast iron skillet. Brown the cakes, flip and brown on the other side. Serve warm with a wedge of lemon.

Honey in my coffe is one of my favorite ways to drink coffee. It’s a nice change from the plain coffee with just a little bit of half-and-half that’s my normal go-to. Besides being so much healthier then plain sugar, the flavors of the honey play so nicely with the coffee. Do you have any sugar alternatives that you put in your coffee? I’m always looking for new ways to enjoy my morning cup.

Strawberries, honey, butter, and lemon are mingled together then spread on warm toast. The butter melts into the toast while the flavors sing a spring song.

Some links for your weekend:

Humming Bird Bakery. A bakery in London with “authentic American cakes”

I got a wonderful email from a reader, she sent me a link to her blog. I just have to share it! It’s so beautiful! Local Haven

Other toast recipes: Poached eggs on toast, avocado toast.

Obsessed with copper

Pinterest obsessed? Me too. Follow this recipe board. Here I am on Pinter]]]]]]]],

as well.

For the toast:

4 slices good quality bread

1 pint strawberries, washed

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons honey

1 lemon

Toast the bread. Put the strawberries, honey, and butter together in a small mixing bowl. Use a knife to cut the strawberries and mix everything together. Spread on the toast. Finish with a squeeze of lemon.

For the honey latte:

For each cup:

A good French press or even stovetop espresso

Half and half, to taste

about 1 teaspoon good quality honey

Make the French press (directions here). Serve with honey and half and half.