Blackberry Buttermilk Cake

When I first saw this in Gourmet as a raspberry buttermilk cake, I made it. And it was good, but nothing that totally knocked my socks off. Quick, easy, and a perfect everyday cake. By this point, my blackberries were a week old, I was getting tired of baking with them (something I never thought would be possible), and I didn’t want anything heavy or extravagant, because I would not be bringing the resulting recipe into the lab after the previous whining over not baking enough. I decided to try the buttermilk cake again, replacing the raspberries with blackberries, for something a little lighter to have around for a weekend when Husband was visiting. And you know what? It was so much tastier. When it comes to just eating, raspberries are my favorite, hands down. But when it comes to baking, I think the verdict is in – blackberries make EVERYHING better! This cake is ridiculously simple to make, so give it a whirl! (Interesting tidbit of note: unlike the raspberries, my blackberries were so fat, they all sank straight to the bottom of the cake!). This wraps up Blackberry Extravaganza week - I hope you enjoyed it and found a recipe or two to add to your collections!

Blackberry Buttermilk Cake
adapted from Gourmet June 2009

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup fresh blackberries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Beat together butter and 2/3 cup sugar at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in vanilla and egg.
3. At low speed, mix in flour and buttermilk until just combined. Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter blackberries over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar.
4. Bake until cake is golden and a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool an additional 10 to 15 minutes more.

all the blackberries hiding on the bottom of the cake

Blackberry Peach Galette

If there is one thing you make from my Blackberry Extravaganza week, make this. Really. Make this. Now. It was amazing. A-MA-ZING. It was so amazing, in fact, that it apparently turned one particular labmate into a greedy monster who stormed up to me and verbally berated me for not bringing in more, droning on and on about how it was so unfair that I didn’t consider the number of people in the lab and that some people took larger slices and not everyone would get a “big enough” slice and it just wasn’t fair next time, could I just get my act together and bring in MORE? I just sort of sat there with my jaw hanging open, because after I brought in blackberry pie bars, berry oatmeal crumble bars, blackberry scones, and then a blackberry peach galette, I get yelled at for not baking ENOUGH? Sorry, but my Ph.D. stipend is very small, and it does not pay for me to provide your breakfast buffet! I suspect it will be a very long time before I bake for the lab again – isn’t it a shame when one rotten apple spoils everything for the whole bunch?

I really love galettes so much more than pies – I’m not sure why, but the whole rustic look really appeals to me. Plus, I love that they are filled with fruit slices rather than a soupy fruit filling and the crust tends to be thicker, so galettes can be picked up and eaten with your hands, rather than requiring a fork and a plate (perfect for consumption during lab meetings). I went with blackberry and peach because I picked both at the farm, and the flavors complimented each other together perfectly. Obviously, you can use any fruit in a galette, but I loved these together so much I would be hesitant to change it up next time; personally, I can’t imagine another combination that I would personally enjoy more!

Blackberry Peach Galette
adapted from Our Best Bites

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 11 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons ice water
• 3 large, ripe peaches, pitted and sliced
• 1 cup blackberries
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Add flour and salt to a medium bowl. Cut cold butter into small chunks and throw on top of flour. Cut the butter into the flour using a pastry blender under mixture resembles small crumbs the size of peas. Add ice water one tablespoon at a time while stirring the dough mixture with a fork. Bring dough together and put into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate.
3. Sprinkle flour and sugar over fruit. Stir.
4. Roll out pastry dough on a floured surface to at least 12” in diameter. There will be enough dough for one large and one small galette. Transfer dough to baking sheet.
5. Dump fruit mixture in the middle of dough and dot with 1 –2 tablespoons butter.
6. Pull up edges of dough and pleat. Dip fingers in water and moisten between the pleats to seal. Brush dough with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.
7. Bake for 50-60 minutes. When done, the fruit will be bubbling and the crust will be golden brown in color. Remove from the oven and cool for 10-15 minutes on a wire rack. Eat all for yourself and do not share because it is just too delicious.

Blackberry Scones

Next up in the blackberry baking adventures came some blackberry scones. I wasn’t quite sure how these would turn out, since there aren’t a plethora of blackberry scone recipes out there, the way there are for say, cranberry scones. I thought that perhaps there is a reason for that – maybe the blackberries are just too juicy to work in a scone. When I mixed the dough, it came out SO thick and SO heavy that I realized there was just no possible way that I was ever going to be able to stretch the dough out and cut it into circles. I’m not sure what exactly went wrong – maybe the blackberries were just too much – but boy oh boy was it dense. Rather than just give up, I decided to just squash all the dough into my springform pan and pop it in the oven and see what happened. Lo and behold, after baking for quite a while – scones! These were especially tasty with the blackberry jam that already happened to be be leftover in the lab from a previous scone smorgasbord brought in by our PI!

Blackberry Scones
adapted from America’s Test Kitchen

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
• 3/4 cups blackberries
• 1 cup heavy cream

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425F.
2. Add flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse six times. Distribute butter over dry ingredients. Cover and pulse 12 times, each pulse lasting 1 second. Add blackberries and pulse one more time.
3. Transfer dough to a large bowl and stir in cream with a rubber spatula until dough begins to form, about 30 seconds.
4. Transfer dough to countertop and knead by hand until it just comes together in a rough, sticky ball.
5. Press dough into a 9-inch springform pan, scoring the dough into 8 wedges with a knife.
6. Bake dough in springform pan until tops are light brown and dough is cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes. Cut through immediately before cooling, then cool on wire rack for at least 10 minutes before serving.

Berry Oatmeal Crumble Bars

After making the blackberry pie bars, I decided to tackle the remaining pile of freshly picked blackberries with my personal favorite berry recipe, berry crumble bars. I’ve tried these with all sorts of berries – blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and combinations of all of the above – and they have all turned out delicious. The crunchy oatmeal topping, the sweet jam-like filling… these are the perfect summery treat! (And I think my lab agreed.) Of course, between the blackberry pie bars and these blackberry crumble bars, I still had roughly 2/3 of my initial blackberry pile remaining in my refrigerator…

Berry Oatmeal Crumble Bars

Ingredients:

• 3 cups fresh berries of choices
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup butter, softened and cut into large chunks
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. To prepare filling, stir together berries and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat until fruit is tender, about 15 minutes.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together sugar and cornstarch. Stir into fruit mixture. Continue cooking until mixture comes to a boil. Boil for 1-2 minutes until thick. Remove from heat.
3. Preheat oven to 350F and lightly grease a 9”x13” baking pan.
4. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, oats, brown sugar, butter, baking soda, salt, and vanilla extract. Cut ingredients together with pastry blender or two knives until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Set aside 1 1/2 cups of mixture in a medium bowl.
5. Pour remaining crumb mixture into the bottom of the dish, spread evenly, and pat down. Place filling in dollops over crust and carefully spread to cover entire surface.
6. Squeeze reserved crumb mixture into large clumps with fingers and sprinkle evenly over the top of the fruit filling.
7. Bake until golden brown, about 30 to 35 minutes. Cool completely before slicing.

Blackberry Pie Bars

The blackberry picking adventure confirmed the fact that I am absolutely useless at estimating anything with the U.S. measurement system.  Want to eyeball 50mL?  No problem.  Need to weigh out approximately 180g of guanidine hydrochloride?  I’m your girl.  Looking for three cups of blackberries?  <chirping crickets>  I just kept picking and picking while we were there to try to ensure that I would have enough to bake a recipe or two, but I just wasn’t sure that I had enough.

When I returned home, I looked through my collection of recipes in Evernote.  Since I was bringing this in to the lab, I wanted to avoid any kind of pies and cakes – anything which involves forks and plates.  Food to share in lab is far easier if it can be picked up with the hands on the way out the door to a seminar or to drop by and ask the PIs a question.  When I stumbled across the concept of putting blackberry pies into a bar form, I was sold.  The only potential problem?  The recipe calls for six cups of blackberries, which seemed like a LOT… and I wasn’t sure that I had enough from my day of berry picking.  Before I started mixing together any other ingredients, I pulled out my measuring cups and started doling out blackberries, one cup at a time.  However, the six cups required for the blackberry pie bars barely made a dent in the box of blackberries I bought home.  I never intended to be baking for a full week… it was just a U.S. volumetric estimation FAIL.  But a very, very yummy fail at that, since I couldn’t let all those blackberries go to waste, could I?  These were a fantastic hit, but very rich, so cut the bars small!  Stay tuned the rest of the week for what I made with the massive heap of leftover blackberries…

Blackberry Pie Bars
adapted from Joy the Baker

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour (crust)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar (crust)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sugar (filling)
• 1 cup sour cream
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (filling)
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• pinch salt
• 6 cups fresh blackberries

Directions;

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.  Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.
2. To make the crust, combine the sugar, flour, salt, and butter in an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.  Beat the ingredients on medium speed until the mixture looks dry and crumbly.
3. Reserve 1 1/2 cups of the crust mixture to use as a topping.  Press the remaining mixture into the bottom of the pan with fingertips.  Bake the crust for 12 – 15 minutes until golden brown.
4. While crust is cooling, prepare the filling.  Whisk the eggs in a large bowl and add the sugar, sour cream, flour, lemon juice, and salt.  Fold in the blackberries.
5. Spread the mixture over the crust.  Sprinkle the crust mixture over the filling.
6. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until the top is lightly browned.  Cool for 1 hour before slicing and serving.

Berrypicking!

Last weekend, I was home visiting my family in Harrisburg for Labor Day, and my mother had picked up some delightful blackberries from her local farmer’s market.  This reminded me that I never posted about my own berrypicking trip – and the several recipes that resulted.  Since blackberry season is rapidly diminishing, but there are still some floating around out there, I thought I’d dedicate this week as Blackberry Week, and get all my berry-related posts resulting from the berry picking trip out all at once.  Kind of like one last tribute to summer (weather appropriate, seeing as how it snuck back up to 86 degrees today), before all the berries disappear off the shelves for another 10 months!

 
Every year, our lab piles up in a car or two and drives out to a pick-your-own farm in Maryland where we pick the fruit of the season.  In the past, I was never able to go, because I always had to babysit the old, crappy, protein-eating AKTAprime.  This year, however, courtesy of a far more cooperative AKTAexplorer, I am able to leave my purifications unattended, and was able to participate for the first time.  And I had a blast!  The general routine is eat one, pick two, eat one pick two, until you are so stuffed full of berries that you can barely move…. and then you roll yourself down the orchard to the peach trees and eat/pick peaches.  And the prices are unbelievable – I came home with 5.5 pounds of blackberries, 8 humongous peaches, 4 tomatoes the size of my head, and a dozen hand-cut zinnias for under $20.  Yes, please!

 
If you are interested in more pictures from the berrypicking adventure, you can check them out here <cue segue into new blog>.  I always have good intentions for posting pictures, and never get around to it.  I always feel like I need to explain things on here because personally, I don’t dig personal blogs that post without pictures or that whole ‘Wordless Wednesday’ thing.  There are photography blogs I love for the photography… and then blogs I enjoy because I like the person writing.  I will confess to being disappointed when I click over to one of my favorite blogs and just find a picture or two.  So now, some of my favorite photographs have a home – drop on by and visit some of my favorite events (my honeymoon, the Inauguration – all the things I meant to write about and never actually did).

Thinking about how I like order in my life and separate divisions in my Google Reader also made me wonder what everyone else prefers.  I know this started with a large group of fellow graduate students and scientists – would you prefer if I had the recipes on a separate blog so you didn’t have to sift through them?  Likewise, I know many food bloggers now drop in on a regular basis; are you entirely disinterested in my battles with imidazole and would rather have somewhere to go to see only the chemistry that goes on in my kitchen?  Would I be better off turning this into two separate blogs, or do you like dropping by for the general mishmash variety show?  Comments and (constructive) criticism welcome… and stay turned tomorrow for the berry extravaganza!

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?!

As you all know, I bleed black and gold.

So, I am sure it comes as absolutely no surprise whatsoever that I was ridiculously excited for Thursday’s NFL season opener between the Steelers and the Titans.

As it turns out, a particular PI whom I have befriended on Twitter happens to be a Titans fan, which resulted in quite a lot of trash talking throughout the entire day and evening. During the game, this appeared in my Twitter feed:

And, of course, the Steelers always prevail. Which means that, for the next week, the following is located on the laboratory homepage of one particular losing Principal Investigator.

Bow down, BethAnn, bow down… because the Steelers rule the field. (Okay, so maybe ‘ruled the field’ is a bit of an exaggeration. but at least Jeff Reed has a golden toe, which is obviously more than can be said about Rob Bironas on Thursday…)

And, my offer still stands… I’ll let you borrow my Terrible Towel if you need somewhere to dry your Titan-sized tears. I’ll even throw in some homemade baked goods to make up for all the food that PreppyChemist Twittered about that you didn’t get to eat.

Also, is anyone else extremely excited that it is FOOTBALL SEASON?? Thursday night I had a group of friends over to watch the Steelers game, I spent all day Saturday watching college football with PreppyChemist, went to Capitals practice (don't worry, still hate the Capitals and love the Peguins, but hockey is hockey) with PreppyChemist on Sunday morning, and then spent the entire rest of the day Sunday (and still am) sitting on the couch watching NFL games. Fall is here and I couldn't be happier!

Harumph

I have things I’ve been meaning to post about, but instead, in light of my current situation, I leave you with this:

Do you see the giant cavernous slump in 5th year? That is exactly where I am right now. And right at the very lowest point, it should say “All experiments that were working have suddenly inexplicitly stopped despite weeks worth of troubleshooting”.

I have fallen into the Fifth Year Pit of Despair.

Even one of the PIs of the lab recognized the Pit of Despair, acknowledged that no one could possibly be motivated in this situation, and told me to take the rest of the day off and eat ice cream. And who I would I be to argue? (Okay, well, instead of ice cream I had non-dairy, fruit-sweetened Soy Delicious, which is possibly my Favorite Thing Ever, but same idea.)

Anyone have some rope to start dragging me up the giant peak of motivation to lead towards my defense?

***UPDATE***

One of my favorite Twitter followers, @bam294, who always provides a hilarious PI-point of view of situations, sent me this SNL clip to describe my current situation.  Indeed, there was a light at the end of the tunnel… but… alas…. it’s broken.  I guess I just need to “fix it”. (Fast forward to ~2:05.)