Plum'in It.

I've been super busy this past week at a new jobbins so here's an oldie but a goodie recipe!

I've done a similar recipe here but I changed it up a bit. I used blue plums (that were in season at the time, yay!) and some clover honey from the local market. 

Blue Plum and Honey Upside-down Cake

12 Blue Plums, sliced thinly

4 TBSP butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup clover honey
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

4 TBSP butter
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 milk
1 tsp vanilla

9 inch round pan

  1. To slice plums: With a sharp knife, make a slit around the centre of the plum, all the way around the pit. Twist one half of fruit off the pit. Remove the pit. Slice up the plum flesh. 
  2. Preheat your oven to 350'F.
  3. Combine butter, sugar, honey and cinnamon in the round baking pan. Place pan in the oven for 2 minutes until butter is melted. Stir melted butter mixture in the pan together thoroughly. Arrange the sliced plums on top of the sugar mixture in the baking pan. Set aside.
  4. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. 
  5. In an electric mixer, cream butter. Add sugar and beat until butter is light and fluffy. (It will literally change colour. From butter yellow to a light white yellow.)
  6. Add pre-beaten egg. Stir. 
  7. Now combine flour and milk in with the sugar/egg mixture, alternating between adding milk and flour mixture. Mix each part until smooth before adding the next part. 
  8. Stir in vanilla. 
  9. Pour cake batter on top of the plums in the baking pan. Smooth the top so all the plums are covered. 
  10. Bake for ~50 minutes or until a fork inserted into centre of cake comes out clean. 
  11. After it's done baking, let cool for an hour before you flip it out onto a serving platter. Serve warm or let cool completely and top with icing sugar. 

De-ricious!

And hopefully I'll be able to share some of  my work-y endeavours soon! (Confidentially agreements are weird....)

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Sultry Saucy... Apples

After three pies and 2 batches of apple butter I still had about 15lbs of apples left. 

Yah. 

Next time I won't pick so many.... (But it could be argued that it worked out for the better! Shhhhh....)

So I sat down with my lovely lady Lesley and got a'peelin'! The last of the apples were allotted for apple sauce, another canning first. I got out the handy dandy Joy of Cooking book and took a peek at what making apple sauce entailed. It's probably the simplest recipe I've seen when it comes to canning. Apples, washed and cored (peeled if you want), boil 'em, mash 'em and stick 'em in a can! I tweaked it a bit: 

Apple Sauce

~7lbs apples (I used McIntosh)

Cinnamon (optional)
Brown Sugar (optional)

  1. Prepare an anti-browning solution. (Either lemon juice or dissolved vitamin C tablets or a specifically purchased anti-browning agent.)
  2. Wash, peel and core apples. Cut into quarters. Place into anti-browning solution. Repeat till all the apples are prepared. 
  3. Prepare jars for canning. See here for sterilization directions.
  4. Drain apples from anti-browning solution.
  5. In a large non-reactive saucepan, place apples and 1  1/2 cups of water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Stir occasionally and skim off excess foam into a separate bowl to discard.
  6. Mash apples with a potato masher, emersion blender or transfer apples in batches to a blender to puree. (Transfer back puree to the saucepan afterwards.)
  7. When the apple sauce is a consistency you like, add cinnamon and/or sugar to taste. (I added ~2tsp cinnamon and ~1/8 cup brown sugar.) Stir to combine and bring back to a boil. 
  8. It's canning time! Fill hot jars with boiling applesauce leaving a 1/2 inch headspace. (Remove the funnel, wipe the rim with a damp paper towel or clean damp cloth. Place a warmed lid on top. Place a screwband on the jar, then grasp the jar with the jar tongs. Tighten the screwband to ONLY fingertip tight. This literally means using your finger tips only, tighten the screwband until there is enough resistance that it stops.) Place in waterbath canner. Repeat. 
  9. Process apples sauce for minimum 15 minutes. Check your altitude though! Higher altitudes need longer! Add 5 minutes if you're 1000m above sea level and so on. 
  10. Remove apples sauce from the canner and leave to cool completely. I usually leave mine for 24 hours before handling. 
  11. Check the jars have sealed. If you can't lift off the snap lids with your fingers, they've sealed! Yay! Label and store in a cool dark place. 

My my my. What an apple-y success! 

Now what to do with a metric ton of apple sauce? Well I made the most amazing applesauce and bacon pancakes.... So good. 

But that story's for another day! ;)

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Surprise Grape-ing

Born and raised in Alberta, I find it extremely weird to find fruit trees that aren't apple trees in peoples back yards. I'm getting used to this idea that there are commonly pear, lemon, cherry, and concord grape trees throughout most neighbourhoods. Heck. I'm getting more used to it now because it means I can foray into a world of otherwise unthought-of jams and jellies! Muaha!

My lovely lady friend Gloria let me adventure with some buddies into her and her husband's backyard fruit paradise! Grape hunting and harvesting was an afternoon affair. A successful affair. We picked all the ones we could reach and there were still a grape ton high up above out heads. (Yes. Grape Tree. Mind Blown.) Next year perhaps there will be wine to be made. First step will be get a ladder! XD

We collected all we could and attempted to not nom them all. There were master plans for these grapes: Grape Jelly.

So I got the grapes home and (eventually) set to work. 

Grape Jelly

5 cups juice
1 packet pectin (I used Bernardin)
6 cups sugar

Making the juice is first on the roster! Wash and de-stem the grapes. In a non-reactive pot with a lid, place grapes inside and fill the pot with water till the grapes are Almost covered, usually about 1  1/2 cups of water. Bring this to a boil over high heat. Using a potato masher, mash the grapes. This releases juice. Cover the pot with the lid and boil the grapes for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Watch it! So it doesn't boil over and make a sticky charcoal-y mess of your stove top.... She says from experience.  Once the fruit is done being a boiling mash, take it off the heat. It's straining time! There are a couple ways of straining out the juice from this mash: There are actual sieves you can buy; there is cheese cloth; and there is the old school clean pillowcase method. I opted for the makeshift cheese cloth strainer method, although the pillowcase method makes for the clearest jelly. Let the juice drain from the mash for about 2 hours. Don't press the mash down or squeeze it or the resulting juice and jelly may be cloudy. 

Success! Homemade grape juice made! =D It's jelly making time! (Unless you drink it all... and have to start over.)

As per all my canning shenanigans, prepare, prepare, prepare! Clean all the utensils needed (ladle, wooden spoon, plastic spoon, plastic funnel). Also clean the jars and sterilize them in a boiling water bath canner for about 10 minutes. Keep this canner boiling! I usually keep a kettle of boiled water on stand by in case the canner needs to be topped up. Clean and set the screw bands in an accessible place. Set cleaned snap lids in a saucepan filled with water on low heat on the stove. This will soften the waxed rims and make for a better seal. Also measure out the sugar into a bowl and set this in an accessible place too. Ready! 

In a non-reactive pot, add 5 cups of your homemade grape juice. (If you don't have enough you can add apple juice or some other acidic juice.) ***If the juice takes up more than half the volume of the pot it's tooooo small. Get a bigger one. Bigger is better in this situation.*** Stir in the pectin until it's all dissolved. (Add 1/2 tsp of margarine too. It cuts down on the foaming.)

Bring this to a rolling boil. That's a boil that won't stir down. Wait for it. You'll know it when you see it. 

Add the sugar all in one go and stir quickly to mix it all together. Bring this back to a rolling boil and boil hard for 1 minute. 

Remove the pot from the heat carefully. Molten sugar goo is not skin friendly. Skim the formed foam from the top of the jelly with a slotted spoon as good as possible. The foam can go in the sink. Bye bye proteins! 

It's jar filling time! Remove one jar at a time from the boiling waterbath. Empty water in the jar back into the canner. Place the funnel a top the jar and ladle jelly slowly into the jar, leaving a 1/4 inch headspace. Using the plastic spoon, get out any air bubbles. Wipe the rim of the jar with a damp paper towel or clean damp cloth. Place a warmed snap lid onto the jar rim. Screw on a screw band until JUST Fingertip tight. As soon as there is enough resistance to your thumb and forefinger that the band won't turn anymore, Stop. Into the canner! Repeat!

When all the jars are filled and in the canner, boil the jars vigorously for at least 10 minutes. Check the altitudes though! Higher altitudes need longer. Most pectins will come with a sheet that say how long to process the jars. 

Remove the jars from the canner and set down in a place where they won't be disturbed. Let them cool completely. I leave mine fore 24 hours before handling them. After they're cooled, check that the jars have properly sealed. The snap lid should have a divot inwards and also should be securely suctioned to the jar. Don't worry if they haven't sealed! They just get to live in the fridge and get eaten first! Lucky them!

That was quite the grape adventure. Great - grape - great.... Eh?? =D =D =D

..... 

Shhhhhh. It's funny. Really. 

Also! I made some not purple grape juice! Essentially just take out the grapes skins when making the juice. =) Yuuuuum.

Also! I made some not purple grape juice! Essentially just take out the grapes skins when making the juice. =) Yuuuuum.

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Peaches, All of the Peaches!

An apology to all peaches for the 1995 Peaches song. I can't get that song out of my head. It's been over a month since I canned these peaches and still, every morning, Plenty of Peaches, Peaches for Me!

Anyways! Here's a how-to (or more like a How-I-do):

As per every canning episode, the first step is always Prepare All the Things! Having never canned peaches before, I read up on it. Canned peaches requires: Peaches (surprise!) and a canning liquid, either water or a sugar syrup. There seems to be a dearth of agreed upon ratios of weight of peaches to number of jars so I ended up having to guess a lot during this process. I had 14lbs of raw peaches, which supposedly meant that I should be able to get around 7 500mL jars of peaches out of them - 2lbs of peaches per jar. When it comes down to it though, the limiting factor (whoo chemistry) is the number of cans that can go in canner. You can prepare all the fruit and syrup you want, but per round of canning, there's only so much room in the canner. 

Most of the recipe books and blogs agree that canning peaches in a sugar syrup is the best way to do it. Sold! Sugar: good. Peaches: good. Can of peaches in sugar syrup? Sounds good to me! 

My cookbook recommended a way to make a "percent" sugar syrup. Essentially, for a 25% sugar syrup, measure 1/2 cup sugar into a 500mL jar and then fill the jar with cold water. (Or if you like it 'cloyingly' sweet, 1 cup/500mL jar.) Mix the sugar in until it dissolves with a plastic or silicon tool so the glass doesn't get chipped. My canner, luckily, has room for 7-ish jars at a time, so I did some math, 3/4 cup of syrup per jar meant about 5 jars of prepared sugar syrup - extra just in case, right? This ended up being totally wrong. Of course. But it turned out in the end! 

Now on to prepping the fruit! This takes a bit of doing. (<-Understatement.) First, removing the skins. Then on to pitting and quartering. To get the skins off, I used a technique called blanching. Essentially, dipping the clean peaches into a pot of boiling water for about 30 seconds. Then dunking the peaches in cold water to stop any further cooking. The skins now slip right off! Easy Peasy! To pit them, run a knife around the pit starting at the top of the fruit. Then, slide a thumb or finger into the gap and the peach halves with come apart. (The firmer the peach, the better this works.) Remove the pit, scrape any tendrils or pit bits away with a plastic spoon and slice the halves into quarters. 

Most recipes will say to soak the fruit in an anti-browning solution at this point. I bought an actual product meant for this purpose but vitamin C pills and lemon juice also works to stop the peaches going mooshy. So in a giant bowl, plop the newly cut peach quarters into the prepared anti-browning solution. (Give is a stir every now and then so all the quarters get a chance to be submerged. 

Almost ready to actually Can the peaches. Phew. If it's not boiling already, now is the time to get those jars sterilized! 

First thing is to get that sugar syrup into a non-reactive pot. Also, drain off the peaches from their anti-browning bath.  Depending on how many peaches there are, slip in just enough peaches to be covered by the syrup. (I ended up doing about half of my giant bowl of peaches.)

Make sure all the items are set up now! Screw bands are clean and in a easy place to reach, ladle and slotted spoon, plastic spoon for getting out bubbles, boiling canner, warmed snap lids, etc. Time to fire blast 'em peaches!

Bring the peaches and syrup to a boil. Once boiling, it's peach ladling time! Use a slotted spoon to get the peaches into the jar first, fill it as much as possible, but below the screw band threads. Push them down a weeeee bit. But don't moosh them! Then ladle the hot syrup into the jar, leaving a 1/2 inch headspace. Repeat! 

When the cooked peaches run down, add the rest to the hot syrup and bring them back to a boil. Repeat filling all your jars until your canner is full. I ended up having to keep 2 jars worth of peaches simmering in my non-reactive pot while the full canner did it's thing. Boil the peaches in their jars for ~20 minutes. 

It turned out to be a good thing that I had made a butt ton extra syrup! I actually canned it for cocktails use. Peach Whiskey Drops and Peach Lemonade Spritzers. Sploosh. 

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Tart the Second

Previously, I never understood the real desire to make a tart when you could easily make it be a pie instead. Pie > Tart; Or so I thought. 

The first tart I ever made was a raspberry tart with a crumble topping for my bestie Jess' 25th birthday. It was splendiferous, made from fresh raspberries that I'd picked late that summer. So when my buddy Lesley came and stayed with me, bringing a bag of fresh wild strawberries she'd picked, the call for tart echoed softly in my brain. (-taaaart taaaaart taaaaart-)

Wild Strawberry Chocolate Tart

Chocolate Press-in Pastry:

1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cups cocoa powder
2 TBSP sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter (cold)
1/4 cup margarine (cold)
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vinegar

  1. Oil and flour a ~9 inch tart pan. Set aside.
  2. Combine flour through salt in a bowl. Stir together.
  3. Add cold butter and margarine. Using a pastry blender or fork, cut butter and margarine into dry ingredients until smaller that pea sized lumps remain. 
  4. In a cup, add egg yolk and vinegar. Using a fork, whisk egg and vinegar together. Pour liquid over tart mixture and stir to combine. 
  5. Form pastry into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 
  6. On a floured surface, roll out pastry to ~1 cm thick. The pastry is Very Soft. It will tear when you go to move it to the tart pan. That's ok. Just pat the pieces together. (Also, start pre-heating the oven to 375'.)
  7. Pat the pastry evenly into the tart shell. (If you kept the separated egg white around from the egg that was used, brush it onto the surface of the pastry.)

Strawberry Filling:

2 cups wild strawberries, headed and sliced
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 TBSP flour

  1. Combine all filling ingredients together in a bowl. Stir together.
  2. Pour filling into prepared tart shell.
  3. Bake at 375' for about 40 minutes.

While I think I will always have a preference for pie, tarts will now have their place seated at the what-to-do-with-fresh-berries table in the Conference Hall A of my brain. 

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist