Chocolate cake

Plain old chocolate birthday cake

Sometimes you’re not trying to impress anybody, you just need a really basic chocolate cake, like for a child’s birthday party, or for a child to make on his own. This is a very simple cake, and only takes a few minutes to throw together. You could have it all made in 45 minutes, except for frosting.

What about the frosting?

If you’re in a hurry, just dust it with powdered sugar. You can make it pretty by laying leaves on top and shaking the powdered sugar over them, then removing the leaves. But if you have time to let it cool completely, you can add buttercream frosting later.

How to make a simple chocolate cake:

In a medium-size mixing bowl, melt a stick of butter and a package of semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips in the microwave for one minute, or another minute if needed. Take it out and stir until all the chocolate is melted. Meanwhile, grease an 8×8 pan. Add a cup of sugar, one teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, one teaspoon vanilla, and mix. Add two eggs, and mix. Add 1 1/2 cups of milk and mix. Add 1 1/2 cups of flour, mix, and you’re done.

*This recipe is extremely flexible. As long as you get anywhere near these proportions with all the ingredients in, it will make a cake. Feel free to add more eggs, more chocolate, whatever. It will be fine.

Bake at 350 for about half an hour or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely if you want to ice it. The cake has to be cold or it will melt the icing.

For the icing, mix a half stick of butter (or half a package of cream cheese if you like) with two heaping cups of powdered sugar, 1/4 cup of milk, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Use an electric mixer to mix them together – go slowly at first, then faster at the end. Once made, mix in a few squirts of chocolate syrup for chocolate icing, or a teaspoon of lemon zest for vanilla icing. Use a drop of food coloring on the vanilla icing to make colored icing.

Vegetarian or vegan

Just naturally vegetarian! Enjoy! Or try this vegan chocolate mousse.

Can I keep this for later?

Sure. This chocolate cake will be fine for a week or so in the fridge.

Brownies

We always used brownie mix…

For years I kept three or four boxes of brownie mix in the house all the time, so the kids could make brownies whenever they wanted to. It was 99 cents a box, it was the simplest possible recipe, and it made something they loved. What could be better?

But now the kids are a little older, and they can cook a little better, so they’ve been promoted to making brownies from scratch. It’s actually a little more expensive than the brownie mix, but everyone thinks it tastes better. And it’s still not very hard to make.

How to make chocolate brownies:

Preheat oven to 350. In a medium-size mixing bowl, put a stick of butter and eight squares of dark baking chocolate, or a bag of dark chocolate chips. Melt in the microwave (about two minutes) and stir. Add 1 cup of sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt, and stir. Add 2 eggs, and stir again. Add 1 cup of flour, and stir again. Pour into a greased 9×9 baking pan and bake about 20 minutes.

This is a pretty small recipe, so you might want to double it if it’s for a party or to share.

Vegetarian or vegan

Just naturally vegetarian! Enjoy!

Can I keep this for later?

Sure. Brownies will keep for at least three or four days if you wrap them in a dishcloth or put them in a tupperware. If you can keep the kids away from them.

Cherry pie

Finally some fresh fruit!

Cherries are the first local fresh fruit to come ripe in the spring – if you’re really eating local, this will be the first fresh fruit that’s not apples or pears you’ve seen since the huckleberries last August! By May, you’ll be really glad to see cherries!

This is a sweet cherry pie, so you just make it with the regular cherries they sell at the store or at the farmer’s market. Canned cherry pie filling is made from sour cherries, but those are hard to find fresh.

How to make a cherry pie:

First, while you are feeling enthusiastic, pit the cherries (this is the hardest part). Use a paring knife, cut the cherries in half, and get the kids to sit and help you if possible. Even if they don’t help much, company will make the work go faster. Compost the pits and stems, and throw the pitted cherries into a bowl. You want about 5 cups of pitted, halved cherries.

Next make the crust: in a medium size mixing bowl, melt a stick of butter in the microwave. Add 1 1/2 cups of flour and mix, adding a couple of spoonfuls of water if you need to, to make the crust stick together. Turn out 2/3 of the crust into a pie pan and spread it around with your fingers to cover the bottom and sides. Leave the rest of the crust in the bowl, and cover it with a dishcloth. Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Now make the filling: in the bowl with the cherries, add 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of flour, and the juice of half a lemon, and mix until all the cherries have sugar/lemon/flour on them. Pour the filling into the pie crust.

Now make the top crust: mix the remaining crust with crumbled hazelnuts or almonds. (You can pound them in a mortar and pestle, or put them in a plastic bag and roll the rolling pin over them.) Crumble the nut-crust over the top of the pie, and put four or five pats of butter on top of that to help brown the top crust. Bake with a baking sheet under the piepan to catch any leaks. When you put the pie in, reduce the heat to 350 F, and cook at 350 for about 40 minutes or until the filling is thick and bubbly. If the crust doesn’t brown, run it under the broiler for a couple of minutes, but watch it carefully so it doesn’t burn.

Vegetarian or Vegan?

Vegetarian, but you can make cherry pie vegan by using coconut fat instead of butter in the crust, and leaving out the pats of butter on top. Really there’s enough oil in the crushed nuts already.

Will it keep?

Yes, for a day or two on the counter covered with a dishcloth, or for a few more days in the refrigerator, if you keep it sealed up, wrapped in plastic.

Cheesecake

Alpha House cheesecake

In Ithaca, drug addicts were frequently remanded to a place called Alpha House where they were supposed to be rehabilitated. The addicts were supposed to support themselves during the process, and learn to work a steady job, by baking lots of cheesecakes. Alpha House cheesecake was ubiquitous all over town, and it was excellent cheesecake.

It later turned out that this regimen did more to line the pockets of the owners than it did to rehabilitate the addicts, and that the owners were abusing the residents. Alpha House closed down. But it was still an excellent New York style cheesecake. This is my version.

Try serving this with strawberry sauce or rhubarb sauce. If you want.

How to make cheesecake:

Preheat oven to 325 F. In a piepan, melt 1/3 cup of butter in the microwave. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs. Mix this together with your fingers, and spread it out so that the crust covers the bottom and sides of the piepan.

In a medium size mixing bowl, mix three 8 ounce packages of Philadelphia cream cheese, 1 cup of full-fat Greek yogurt, 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and four eggs. This is too hard to mix by hand; use an electric mixer if possible. If you like cheesecake a little lemony, add 2 teaspoons of grated lemon peel.

Pour the filling into the crust. Use a rubber spatula to get the last of it. Bake for 55 minutes, or until the pie is set all the way to the middle and the top browns and cracks. Let cook at least ten minutes before serving, or refrigerate until it is cold and serve cold.

Vegetarian or vegan

Just naturally vegetarian! Enjoy! If you want a good vegan cake, use this recipe instead.

Can I keep this cheesecake for later?

Sure. This cake will be good for a week after you make it. If it lasts that long.

Celery ice

A fancy early-spring dessert

The first edible plants that grow in the spring are stems – because stems are what plants grow first – like chives and celery. This is a simplified version of a New York Times recipe: a dessert made out of nothing much more than celery and sugar. It requires practically no cooking skills, and it tastes like springtime itself.

How to make Celery Granita:

Wash the dirt off a bunch of celery, and chop about half a bunch into small pieces. Save the other half for celery-mushroom soup, setting aside one stalk for garnish. Put 1 1/2 cups of sugar in a small bowl with 1 1/2 cups of water and microwave for a minute or two, until the sugar is dissolved, stirring occasionally.

Pour the sugar and celery in the blender with the juice of one lime and a pinch of kosher salt. Blend (working in batches if necessary).

Spread the celery mush out in a glass pie pan and put it in the freezer. Stir every half hour, breaking up the ice crystals, until it is all frozen – about two hours. Serve in small mounds. Use a vegetable peeler to shave off long curls from the remaining celery stick as garnish on top of the granita.

Make figs and goat cheese balls to go with it:

Put 1/2 cup sugar, 1 cup of water, and the zest of half a lemon in a bowl and microwave for one minute, or until the sugar dissolves in the water, making a sugar syrup. Put a cup of dried figs in the bowl and set it aside while the celery granita freezes. When the celery is almost done, drain off the sugar syrup from the figs and pour 1/2 cup of balsamic or wine vinegar over the figs, and let them sit until you’re ready to serve the granita. Serve two or three figs on the side of each serving of granita.

Metate

Stone metate to grind the nuts

In another small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of honey, 1 tablespoon of water and a pinch of salt. Microwave until the honey melts. Sprinkle one packet of gelatin powder over the hot honey and stir until it dissolves, heating again if necessary. Mix 1/2 pound of goat cheese with the gelatin mixture. Form the cheese mixture into balls about the size of superballs.

Put 1/4 pound of hazelnuts or walnuts in a stone metate and crush into crumbs. (Or, put them in a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin). Roll the cheese balls in the nuts, put the cheese balls on a plate, and refrigerate until the celery granita is done freezing. Serve one cheese ball with each serving of granita.

Vegetarian or Vegan?

This dessert is entirely vegetarian; it’s vegan and lactose-free if you leave out the goat cheese balls. Instead, sprinkle the crushed nuts on top of the celery granita.

Will it keep?

Not really.

Blueberry pie

Unlimited dessert

The first term I was at college, once I realized that at college you could just take unlimited desserts and nothing else at dinner, I pretty much lived on blueberry pie and lemon meringue pie. The cafeteria blueberry pie was nasty, gluey stuff though, and once I gained fifteen pounds eating it, I pretty much went back to eating like a normal person. This homemade blueberry pie is much better, but still not something to eat every day!

Melted butter in the crust??

I know, all the recipes say it’s vital to use cold butter and cut it in with a knife. This is supposed to make the crust flakier. Well, maybe it does, but it makes it a lot harder to make a pie. In my experience, nobody will complain about a blueberry pie (or an apple pie) made with a melted butter crust, and you’ll be much more likely to actually make one.

Update: I recently also noticed that it’s not that hard to use cold butter. Slice it into pats, and mix them with the flour. Use your fingers to squish the floury pats of butter until they are all in little bits. It really only takes a few minutes. Then use white vinegar or white wine in place of the spoonful of water. It will make a better crust, if you have the extra time.

How to make blueberry pie:

First, make a pie crust. In a medium size mixing bowl, melt half a stick of butter. Add 1 1/2 cups of flour and mix with a wooden spoon until the dough holds together in a ball. If it won’t hold together, add water a spoonful at a time until it does. Take about 2/3 of this dough and put it in a piepan and spread it with your fingers until it covers the bottom and sides. Put the piepan in the refrigerator to chill.

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Now make the top crust. Put the other 1/3 dough on top of a piece of floured waxed paper, and use a rolling pin to roll it out until it is big enough to be a top crust.

Now make the filling. In the same bowl, mix 3 pints of blueberries, half a cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest, and the juice of 1/2 a lemon. Take the pie shell out of the refrigerator and pour the filling into it. Lift up the waxed paper to fold the top crust in half. Lift the folded dough and flip it on top of the pie, then unfold it and remove the waxed paper. Use your fingers or a fork to press the top and bottom crusts together. Or, if this seems too hard or isn’t working, just crumble the dough in a layer on top of the filling.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Vegetarian. To make blueberry pie vegan, just use coconut fat in the crust instead of butter.

And will blueberry pie keep?

Yes, you can keep it on the counter or in the refrigerator, covered, for several days.

Blackberry cobbler

Pick them yourself!

Blackberries grow everywhere in Oregon – they’re invasive Himalayan blackberries, and if you don’t keep fighting them they’ll eat your house in a few years. But they do grow big, delicious blackberries in July. When I made first blackberry cobbler of the season, a couple of years ago, the kids were so happy to see it that they ate the whole thing for snack, and I didn’t even get any!

How to make Blackberry Cobbler:

Put five cups of blackberries in a saucepan with 2/3 cup of sugar and one egg. Heat over medium heat but do not boil.

blackberry cobbler

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 425 F. Now make the dough. In a medium mixing bowl, put 6 tablespoons of butter(most of a stick), and melt it in the microwave. Then add a teaspoon of salt, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, one more tablespoon of sugar, and 3/4 cup whole milk. Mix. Add 1 3/4 cups of flour and mix again.

Grease a pie pan with butter and turn the heated fruit into the pie pan. Layer the dough over the top. It will be gloppy and uneven; that’s okay. Put several pats of butter on top and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (mix 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon with 1 teaspoon of sugar). Bake for half an hour.

Vegetarian or vegan?

This is vegetarian, but not vegan. For a vegan summer dessert, make raspberry granita.

And will blackberry cobbler keep?

Not in my experience – the kids will eat it all up!

Biscotti

Delicious cookies

Biscotti are a kind of Italian cookie. They’re called “biscotti” because you cook them twice (“bis”) – once to bake the loaf, and again to toast the slices.

How to make biscotti:

Preheat the oven to 375. Grease a cookie sheet with butter. In a medium mixing bowl, mix 1 3/4 cups of flour, 1/2 cup sugar (or less if you don’t like things sweet), and a heaping teaspoon of baking powder. Grind or crush about 1/4 cup of fennel seeds and a pinch of black pepper and add those. Mix, and add 2 eggs and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Mix until it forms a ball.

Put the ball of dough on the cookie sheet and use your hands to shape it into a log almost as long as the cookie sheet. Squash it down until it is about 1/2 inch thick and about four inches wide. Let it slope down at the sides, as biscotti do. Bake at 375 for about half an hour, or until browned.

When you take it out, slice the hot biscotti with a pizza slicer or a knife, into slices about 1/2 inch wide. Turn those slices on their sides and bake another 15 minutes, or until toasted. You might need to turn them over to toast them on the other side, but I didn’t. Take them out of the oven and let them cool.

If you want to dip some of them in chocolate, put half a cup of dark chocolate chips in a small bowl with a pat of butter and microwave on half power for two minutes. Stir until melted, and dip the biscotti in (you can use a spatula to help spread the chocolate). Leave in a cool place until the chocolate is hard.

Vegetarian or vegan

Sorry, not vegan because of the eggs and butter, but they are vegetarian. For a vegan dessert, try this vegan chocolate mousse.

Can I keep this for later?

Sure. Biscotti will be fine for a week or so in the fridge, or even in a bag on the counter.

Baked apples

Fairly healthy dessert

Baked apples aren’t health food – if you want that, just eat an apple, which is also good! But they are better for you than pie and certainly better than cookies or ice cream. And baked apples only take a few minutes to put together, cook while you are eating dinner, and are a very cheap dessert too.

How to make baked apples:

Get five or six good-sized apples. I like to use Fuji or Gala; the Red Delicious don’t have enough flavor or texture, and the Granny Smiths are too tart. But if you go to the farmer’s market, you can ask the person in the stall which apple would be best for baked apples.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Use a small sharp knife to cut out a small circle around the stem of each apple, and then dig deeper to get out all the seeds and the hard core. It doesn’t matter if you miss a little bit.

Put the apples into a casserole or roasting pan, and pack the holes with brown sugar. Put a pat of butter (about a tablespoon) on top of each apple, and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (or just sprinkle on some cinnamon). Use a cup measure to pour water into the pan until it comes halfway up the apples. Roast for about half an hour to 40 minutes, while you eat dinner, until the apples are soft. Serve warm.

Vegetarian or vegan

Baked apples are vegetarian, but the butter keeps them from being vegan. If you want vegan baked apples, use crushed walnuts or hazelnuts instead of the butter.

Don’t have time for this recipe?

Try quick baked apples – dice the apples, sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon and butter over the top, and use a microwave – same great taste in about two minutes!

Applesauce

Put up applesauce for the winter

Apples are new and exciting in September, but you’ll be getting tired of them by February, and there still won’t be any decent fresh fruit available until the end of April. Applesauce is a great way to eat apples when you’re tired of apples. Plus, you can use applesauce instead of oil in all kinds of nut breads and cakes.

So take some rainy afternoon in September or October and cook down a whole bushel of apples into applesauce. Put the applesauce in small tupperwares or plastic bags and freeze it. Then next winter and spring, you’ll have applesauce to eat with your blintzes. Or try applesauce right away with corn pancakes or noodle souffle.

How to make applesauce:

Cut up about twenty apples and cut out the cores and seeds. You can peel them if you like, but we usually don’t. Put the apples in a large stewpot and add enough water to about half cover the apples. Cook over medium heat for about half an hour, or until the apples are soft. Drain off any extra liquid, let the applesauce cool a little so you don’t burn yourself mashing, and mash with a potato masher or an immersion blender.

A lot of people add sugar or cinnamon, but first of all apples are already sweet and there’s no need for that, and second, if you’re going to use some of your applesauce to bake with, you don’t want it to already have a lot of sugar in it.

Canning applesauce

Canning applesauce is a lot easier than you might think. You’ll need a set of canning jars. I like the half-pint size, because you can always open two but a half-used open one goes bad after a while. Put on a big pot of water, with the glass jars inside it, and boil them for ten minutes to sterilize them.

Meanwhile, soak the lids in hot water to soften the rubber seals.

Take the jars out with clean tongs and stand them on a clean dish towel. Use a funnel to fill them with hot applesauce up to 1/4 inch below the rim. Wipe off the rims with a clean paper towel. Put on the lids and the rings (not too tight), and use tongs to put the full jars back into the boiling water for another ten minutes.

After ten minutes, fish them out again, and let them stand on the towel and cool. They should seal up. (You can often hear the pop.) Some may not seal, so eat those first, and save the sealed ones for later.

Vegetarian or vegan

Applesauce is totally vegan, because there’s nothing in it but apples.