I have a shopping problem.  Fortunately, it’s not for shoes or designer handbags, it’s at the farmers market.  I am so enamored of all the beautiful fresh produce and artisan made foods that my eyes are often bigger than my shopping bag.  I try to go with a plan and a list, but I just get so enticed by all the wonderful things.  The fire-engine red tomatoes in every size and shape.  Electric purple and snowy white eggplants.  Rainbow collections of knobbly peppers. Pink and red and soft and fuzzy peaches.  Plums with an inner glow.  Sunshine yellow squash.   And when I see the speckled green zucchini nestled up next to their crookneck cousins, a few inevitably make it home with me.

I have a large repertoire of squash preparations, but my zucchini menu is limited. I haven’t mastered the right zucchini bread recipe.  I love them on the grill, if I have the grill going.  I’ve done a beautiful shaved salad dressed with a light vinaigrette, but found it prettier than it tasted.  So this is my solution for an abundance of summer zucchini.  A simple casserole that highlights the flavor of zucchini, beautifully set off by fresh oregano and salty parmesan. It’s rich with eggs, so it’s sort of a soufflé.  But it’s bit denser, and a lot less trouble to make.  I served this recently to some almost- teenagers, and I’ve got to tell you I was a little surprised, but they cleaned their plates.

Zucchini Sort of Soufflé

3 medium zucchini

1 medium onion

2 Tablespoons butter

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh oregano

¼ cup milk

4 eggs

¾ cup dry breadcrumbs (purchased work best)

¾ cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 2 quart baking dish.

Cut the ends off the zucchini and cut into large pieces.  With the grating disk on a food processor or the medium holes on a box grater, grate the zucchini.  You should have roughly 6 cups.  Toss the grated zucchini with 1 teaspoon kosher salt in a colander and leave to drain for at least 10 minutes.

While you’ve got the grater out, grate the onion.  If you prefer, you can dice it finely.  Heat the butter and olive oil in a skillet and cook the onion until it is soft and translucent but not brown.  In the last few minutes of cooking, toss in 1 Tablespoon of chopped oregano and stir to combine.  Remove from the heat.

Place the zucchini on a clean tea towel, roll it up, and squeeze out the moisture.  Place the zucchini in a large bowl, add the onion and stir. Measure the milk into a jug, then crack in the eggs and beat together. Add to the zucchini mixture and stir to combine.  Add the bread crumbs and the remaining chopped oregano, a few grinds of black pepper and a sprinkling of kosher salt and stir to combine.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared baking dish and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the top with parmesan.  Bake until puffed and golden, another 10 – 15 minutes.

Serves 6- 8

I like books about people who do things.  This summer I have been reading the Little House on the Prairie series, and boy do they do things.  Make their own clothes, their own food – even their own housee.  I have a list of books I have enjoyed that detail the work of women in the kitchen, baking bread, tending gardens, canning produce, collecting their own honey.  Now let me be clear, for the most part, I don’t want to do these things.  I can’t sew or build or grow.  I have a new found canning obsession, but it’s for fun, not survival.  I just like the idea of doing all these things.  I like the imagery of our foremothers carefully tending their corn crop, gratefully harvesting its bounty, shucking all those silky ears and turning them into delicious meals.  These are the women who can crank out biscuits and breads in mass quantities, by touch and feel and eye.  Again, I am not one of these women, but this recipe harks to that literary longing in me.  The combination of freshly shucked corn and old-fashioned buttermilk biscuits.

These biscuits have the loveliest buttery yellow color, with the gorgeous flecks of fresh corn shining through. Serve these warm with some fresh, rich butter with a summer dinner and your friends will swoon.  The breakfast possibilities are endless. Serve one with a slice of fresh tomato for a burst of summer flavor.  And a buttered biscuit with a slice of bacon is a real treat. I think Ma Ingalls would approve.

Fresh Corn Buttermilk Biscuits

These biscuits are best served warm to bring out the fresh corn flavor.  If you don’t eat them right out of the oven, wrap lightly in foil and heat for a few minutes in a low oven.

½ cup (1 stick) butter, divided

3 ears fresh yellow corn, husks and silks removed

1 cup buttermilk (preferably whole)

4 cups all-purpose flour (preferably White Lily), plus more for dusting

4 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line an 8 by 11 inch baking pan with parchment paper.

Melt 1/3 cup of the butter and set aside to cool. Cut the kernels off two ears of corn and place in a blender.  Puree until very smooth (you can add a drop of buttermilk to get things going if needed).  Pour the puree into a 2-cup measuring jug.  You should have about 1 cup puree.  Add buttermilk to measure 2 cups of liquid.  Return the liquid to the blender, add the melted butter and blend until smooth.

Cut the kernels off of the third ear of corn, picking out as much silk as you can, and set aside.

In a large, wide bowl, mix 3 ½ cups flour, the baking powder and salt with a fork until blended.  Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the wet ingredients.  Using the fork, blend everything together, pulling the flour into the wet ingredients until everything is incorporated.  Lightly flour your hands and work in up to another ½ cup of flour until you have a soft, cohesive dough.  Drop in the corn kernels and knead a few times until they are distributed throughout the dough. Don’t be mean to this dough or it won’t be sweet to you.

Lightly flour a work surface and turn the dough out onto it.  Lightly knead the dough a few times, then pat it out into a circle 1-inch thick.  Using a floured 2- inch biscuit cutter, cut the biscuits by just pressing down and lifting out – don’t twist the cutter.  Place the biscuits on the prepared baking sheet almost touching.  You can pat out the dough scraps to cut more biscuits, but they are never quite as pretty.  Bake the biscuits for 8 minutes.

While they biscuits are baking melt the remaining butter.  After 8 minutes in the oven, remove the biscuits and brush the tops with the melted butter.  Return to the oven for another 2 or three minutes until the biscuits are done.  They won’t brown on top, but when they are firm to the touch they are ready.

Makes 12 – 14 biscuits

I don’t really know what else I can say about this recipe.  It’s a rich, Southern version of butterscotch sauce with fresh peaches cooked right in, and a nice little kick of bourbon.  Of course, this is great over a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.  But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my favorite way to eat this is with a spoon.  A few slices of fresh peaches on the ice cream amps up the flavor, and a sprinkling of chopped pecans ain’t a bad touch either.

Peach Butterbourbon Sauce

2 large peaches or 3 small, peeled and pitted

½ cup (1 stick) butter

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

¼ cup bourbon

Cut the peaches into small chunks and set aside.

Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the sugar and stir until melted.  Carefully pour in the bourbon and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat, and add the chopped peaches.  Simmer until the peaches are completely soft and disintegrating into the sauce.  The ripeness of the peaches will determine how long this takes.

When the peaches are completely soft, puree the sauce with an immersion blender until smooth.  If you don’t have an immersion blender, mash the peaches with a sturdy wooden spoon, then press the sauce through a wire sieve.

Serve warm over ice cream.  The sauce will keep in an airtight container for up to a week in the fridge.  Reheat gently in the microwave, stirring frequently, to loosen up.

Makes about 1 ½ cups sauce

Summer food for me is all about bounty.  There is so much fresh, healthy food available, I worry about how I can enjoy as much as possible more than the idea that I might not have access to it at all.  I cook fresh meals for myself, and spend a lot of time putting things up for winter, like these simple Dilly Beans.  Not because I have to, but because I want to.  Sometimes I have so much fresh produce in the house, I have a hard time deciding what to cook next.  Making dinner is a joy, not a worry, because my choices are so vast and diverse.

But for millions of American kids and families, summer is about the opposite of bounty.  It’s a frightening time, when the school lunch program is not an option,  parents worry about how they can feed their families, kids have to skip meals and they don’t get the proper nutrition growing bodies need.  Summer is a struggle, not a carefree holiday. 

Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry Summer Meals campaign works to combat this problem.  So do your local food banks, and many food pantries are faced with empty shelves in the summer months when demand is high.  So as we all enjoy the beauty and bounty of summer cooking, please remember those who don’t have that pleasure.  Donate to Share Our Strength or your local food bank.  Organize a food drive in your neighborhood or workplace.  I think there is an idea for a fun summer project for the kids in there!  Please, share ideas you have for helping local kids and communities in the comments section.

Dilly Beans

Old fashioned versions of this always look so pretty with full heads of dill tucked inside, so if you have dill growing or a place where you can buy full dill seed heads, use about three of those with one dill sprig.

¾ pound fresh green beans (enough to fill a quart jar)

2 cups apple cider vinegar

2 cups water

4 Tablespoons canning salt or 3 Tablespoons table salt

1 Tablespoon sugar

½ teaspoon mustard seeds

½ teaspoon dill seed

2 cloves garlic

4 – 5 stalks fresh dill

Trim the ends off the beans, making sure they are a length to stand in the jar. Blanch the beans in boiling water for 2 minutes, then drain and cover with ice cubes to stop the cooking. Toss the ice around to get to all the beans.  Drain.

Clean a one quart jar with two piece lid.  Stack the beans, the garlic cloves and the dill sprigs in the jar.  I find it easiest to do this with the jar on its side, so the beans stack on top of each other and stay upright. 

Bring the vinegar, water, seeds, salt and sugar to a full rolling boil and boil for 2 minutes.  Carefully pour the liquid over the beans in the jar to cover, leaving a ¼ inch head space at the top.  Immediately put on the top and screw on the band.  Leave to cool 8 hours or so, then refrigerate.   There may be more pickling liquid than you need, just discard the remainder.

To can the beans for longer term storage, process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes immediately after pouring in the hot vinegar and screwing on the lid and band. Here are step by step instructions for canning.

My favorite summer treat is definitely fresh corn, straight off the cob. I eat more corn in summer than I ought to admit.  Usually just straight up, with a little butter and salt.  When corn starts appearing in the farmers market, I buy bushels of it to put up for the winter. I ration out those little frozen bags of golden jewels like they really are precious gems.  And when I light up the grill, I love to throw on some corn.  Usually way more than my guests and I will eat, so I can cut the leftovers off the cobs and enjoy it later.

Mexican-style grilled corn, or elote, is another one of those food ideas that I read about for years before ever actually trying it.  When I finally did take the plunge, slathering a freshly cooked cob of corn in mayonnaise and rolling it in salty cheese, I was hooked.  This is now my favorite way to eat corn on the cob.  When I started serving it at cook-outs, many friends were reluctant to try mayo on their corn, but the brave ones who did were hooked too.  Now there is an amazing Mexican deli in town that serves elote, and when I hear folks rave about it, I love to say I told you so.

When I have a smaller group of friends to serve, I grill the cobs and put them on a big platter.  Next to that I put a bowl of mayonnaise for spreading, a dish of chili powder for sprinkling, a plate of crumbled cheese for rolling and some lime wedges for squeezing.  Interactive food is always fun.  But with a larger group, that is not always practical, in part because I only have corn cob holders for six ears.  So when planning a larger gathering once, it occurred to me that maybe I could transform the idea into a salad.  It works beautifully, with all the flavor of a traditional elote.  It’s great for a crowd, but is also a great way to take fresh corn along to a party.  If you don’t have the grill going, it is perfectly fine with just-boiled kernels.

Mexican Corn Salad

Cotija cheese is a salty Mexican cheese you’ll find in with other Hispanic cheeses at most god groceries.  If you don’t find cotija, queso fresco is a good substitute.  I prefer to buy blocks and crumble it myself to get even chunks.

¼ cup mayonnaise (or more to taste)                                                                       

Juice of 2 limes

1 teaspoon mild chili powder

½ teaspoon ground cumin

8 ears of fresh corn, shucked and silks removed

1 cup crumbled cojita cheese (about 4 ounces)

Salt to taste

In a small bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, juice of one lime, the chili powder and the ground cumin.  Blend well and set aside.

Cook the corn on the cob. You can bring a large pot of water to the boil, drop in the cobs and bring the water back to the boil.  Remove the pot from the heat, cover it and let the cobs cook for five minutes. If you’ve got the grill going, you can then place the cobs on the grill to get a nice char on the kernels, but its fine if you don’t grill.  When cool enough to handle, cut the kernels from the cobs using a sharp knife.  Place the corn in a large bowl and squeeze over the juice of one lime.  Toss the kernels around to absorb the lime juice.  Add the cotija cheese and toss to combine.  Stir in the mayonnaise dressing to coat all the corn kernels.  Add salt to taste and mix well.

This salad will keep covered in the fridge for 24 hours.

Serves 6 – 8, can be doubled or tripled

I adore squash (or zucchini) blossoms.  Last year, I even planted some zucchini in an effort to have my own supply.  I was not successful. Fortunately, the farmers market here has a vendor or two that sell the blossoms, though they are often claimed early by restaurant chefs.  But that’s the beauty of getting to know the farmers – they will put a few aside for you if you ask politely!  During the whole season, I buy a little box of blossoms, dip them in a light batter and fry them up.  Almost every Saturday in summer, that’s my lunch.  I always plan to expand my horizons, but I love them fried crispy so much, I usually eat them all up before I have a chance to experiment.

But when the first blossoms arrived at the market this year, I bought a double batch.  I had seen a recipe for a squash blossom pasta sauce I wanted to try.  When I read it again, however, I realized it required a pound of blossoms.  The boxes I buy hold one ounce, and I doubt I could convince a farmer to sell me all his blossoms.  So I planned to fry them up again and as I gently worked to pull out the stamens, I suddenly wondered how they would work as a pesto.  I was a little reluctant to sacrifice my blossoms to an experiment, but my curiosity won the day.  I simple converted my standard pesto recipe, with the addition of saffron from the abandoned sauce recipe, and magic!  A vivid orange sauce, nutty with parmesan and pine nuts with this mysterious undernote.  Squash blossoms.  I have to say, this really felt like one of my moments of kitchen genius.

There are very few ingredients in this recipe, so each one needs to really shine.  Use a quality, real Italian Parmigiano cheese.  If you buy it in a block, just grind it up in the food processor before you start the rest of the recipe.  I like a quality olive oil, but not a green, extra virgin which can be too strong and overpower the blossoms.  This pesto is amazing over a thin pasta like linguine, or with some gnocchi.  Try it spread on a pizza base with topped with some thinly sliced squash and zucchini, or as a spread on bruschetta. If you don’t regularly see squash blossoms at the farmers market, ask any vendor that sells squash or zucchini if they will provide you with some next time around.

Squash Blossom Pesto

3 Tablespoons pine nuts

2 Tablespoons very hot water

A pinch of saffron threads

2 cups loosely packed squash blossoms, about 12 blooms

1/3 cup coarsely grated Parmigiano cheese

½ cup lightly flavored olive oil

Pinch of salt

In a dry skillet over medium, lightly toast the pine nuts until they start smell nutty and are lightly golden.  Watch them carefully so they do not get dark brown or burn.  Transfer to a kitchen towel and set aside to cool.

Pour the 2 Tablespoons of hot water over the saffron in a small bowl and leave to steep.

Pull the stamens out of the center of the squash blossoms and pinch off any hard stems or green leaves at the base.  Lightly pull the blossoms apart and measure 2 loosely packed cups.  Drop the blossoms in a food processor and pulse 2 – 3 times to break them up.  Add the nuts, the cheese and the saffron with its water and pulse until everything is roughly chopped.  Turn the machine on, and drizzle the olive oil in slowly.  Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.  When all the oil is incorporated, add a pinch of salt to taste.  If your cheese is salty, be sparing with extra salt.

Transfer the pesto to an airtight container and drizzle a very thin layer of olive oil over the surface.  This version does not oxidize and turn black the way basil pesto does, so it only needs a bit of oil on top. Store the pesto in the refrigerator for up to 3.

Makes about ½ cup

If you scroll through the Sweets section on The Runaway Spoon, you may notice a host of very simple pie recipes.  Because I think pie is a perfect dessert, for the cook and the consumer.  The variety of wonderful things that can be packed into a pie crust is extraordinary.  And with little effort, you have a comforting treat that is sure to please.  Once you master a simple pie crust, you are ready for all eventualities.  But truthfully, I take no issue with a store-bought crust, though I prefer the pre-rolled kind to the already in a tin plate kind.

This particular recipe came to me by the circuitous route so many recipes seem to follow.  I bought a used community cookbook, in great condition, and as I leafed through the pages, a slip of slightly yellowed paper fell out.  On it was written: “Pie Put blkbrries in crust  Mix 2 c sugar 1 c flour 1 c milk  Bake. “ These are the culinary mysteries that intrigue me, suck me in until I am elbow deep in flour and sugar trying to figure out if this mystical scribbling can really be true.  Sometimes I find them on the pages of community cookbooks, sometimes I have to decipher my own back-of-napkin hieroglyphics, and sometimes they fall out of the sky, like this one.

So, as is my wont, I set out to decode this little gem.  It worked the very first time.  I fiddled a bit, with the amount of sugar and blackberries, and I added vanilla extract for a little depth.  But the mysterious scribbler had it right.  The filling is very sweet, but it balances perfectly with the tartness of the blackberries.  All tucked under a crackly, sugary carapace.  It is very much like one of my greatest childhood memories, blackberries fresh from the bramble, sprinkled with sugar and doused with cold milk, in convenient pie form.

Blackberry Sugar Pie

Gently rinse the blackberries, then lay them out on a tea towel to dry completely.  Discard any bruised or squished berries.

1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust (homemade or bought ready-rolled)

12 – 14 ounces fresh blackberries

1 cup flour

2 cups sugar

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat to oven to 350 degrees.  Fit the pie crust into a deep-dish pie plate.

Fill the prepared crust with blackberries, fitting in as many as you can.  In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, milk and vanilla.  Stir until the mixture is very well combined.  Slowly pour the sugar mixture over the berries in the pie, filling all the spaces in-between berries.  Roll the berries around gently so they all have a little of the filling clinging to them, and push as many under the filling as possible.

Carefully transfer the pie to the oven and bake for 35 – 45 minutes, until the pie is puffed up in the center and slightly golden.  It should only slightly wobble from side to side when you gently shake it, not jiggle all over.  Cool the pie on a wire rack.  The center will deflate, but that’s to be expected.  When the pie is cool, chill in the fridge until ready to serve.   The whole pie can be kept in the fridge for 2 days, but after it is cut, it will fall apart a bit.

Serves 6 – 8

Years ago, during my event planning days, I helped a client plan a lovely riverside party, with a good old-fashioned fish fry.  This client was very particular.  About everything.  But particularly about slaw.  He insisted on vinegar-based slaw, not mayonnaise dressed.  The caterer took copious notes on his slaw pronouncements and produced what I (and everyone else who ate it) thought was a lovely slaw.  The client was not pleased however.  He insisted it had mayonnaise in it.  It had a creamy texture, but no mayonnaise.  The caterer explained exactly how it was made – with a vinegar dressing – but he refused to believe there was no mayo.  The rest of the evening was, to say the least, tense.

But all the talk of slaw led to a discussion of slaw preferences among the event staff back in the kitchen.  Everyone had an opinion – mayo, no  mayo, no vinegar, carrots, purple cabbage, green cabbage, bought pre-shredded or handcut.  I was not a real slaw aficionado, so I had no idea there were this many opinions.  Everyone was swapping ideas, writing down notes on napkins and this is the one I wrote down.  The lovely lady that shared this told me, “Honey, this’ll keep crispy in the fridge for weeks.”  I’ve never left it around for weeks, but it will stay nice and crisp through a long weekend.  In fact, that’s one of the reasons I call this picnic slaw, as opposed the ubiquitous creamy barbecue slaw served in every barbecue joint in Memphis.  Because of the vinegar dressing, this slaw holds very well in a cooler or on a picnic table. The salt water soak keeps the vegetables crispy and mellows the bite of the onions and the dressing is sweet-tart with the tang of vinegar and mustard seeds.

Crisp Picnic Slaw

I buy the ingredients for this at the farmers market, and when I saw the purple peppers I knew it would add a nice touch of color, but feel free to use only green.

1 medium head green cabbage

2 bell peppers (green and purple are my choice)

1 medium onion

2 Tablespoons salt

1 ½ cups cider vinegar

1 ½ cups sugar

½ Tablespoon mustard seeds

½ Tablespoon dill seed

Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage, cut it in half and remove the core.  Cut the halves in two, then shred the cabbage on a mandolin or in the food processor using the slicing disc.  Remove the seeds and thick ribs from the peppers, cut into quarters, and slice thinly like the cabbage.  Peel and quarter the onion and finely slice like the cabbage and peppers.  Toss everything together in a very big bowl.

Dissolve the 2 Tablespoons of salt in 8 cups of water.  I find table salt dissolves best.  Pour the salted water over the vegetables in the bowl and stir to distribute everything.  Soak the vegetables for 3- 4 hours, stirring occasionally.  Leave the bowl on the counter while doing this.

Meanwhile, stir the vinegar, sugar and seeds together in a saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat.  Boil for two minutes, then set aside to cool.

Drain the vegetables, shaking out as much water as possible.  Transfer the mix to a clean tea towel, roll it up and ring out as much water as possible from the cabbage.  Rinse and dry the big bowl, then return the cabbage mix, separating it and fluffing it up with your hands.  Pour over the vinegar dressing and toss to coat all the vegetables.  It may look like a lot of dressing, but that’s fine.  Cover the slaw with plastic wrap and refrigerate. The slaw can be eaten as soon as it is cold, but will stay crispy in the fridge for several days.  Serve with a slotted spoon to drain off excess dressing.

This makes a good amount of slaw, and will serve 8 nice big side portions, but many more smaller helpings.

Vichysquash, or Squashyssoise? Yep, this all started because of the name.  I saw a recipe for Vichysquash years ago, and loved the silly name, but it called for canned creamed soup, which has never appealed to me.  The idea stuck though, and when I see the glut of yellow crookneck squash piling up at the farmers market, I always think of this soup. I’ve tinkered around with an old recipe, and finally settled on refreshing dill and a hint of tangy buttermilk, which adds such cool creaminess and a hint of Southern charm.  When I planned to share this recipe, I suddenly had the brain wave of Squashysoisse as a name.  I’ve done and informal poll, but no one can settle on which they like best.  Squashysoisse is just so fun to say.

I love soup of all kinds, but have a real fondness for cold soups.  Maybe it is my hot climate upbringing.  They are so refreshing and satisfying, cool and creamy and smooth.  I am always surprised that in the 100-degree plus summers here, more restaurants and markets don’t offer cold soups. Classic Vichyssoise is one of my very favorites, and I am also a fan of creamy Spanish white gazpacho.   There may be a little standing over a hot stove involved in this recipe (a very little), but once that’s over with, there is a lovely bowl of soup chilling in the fridge.  Serve little cups of this as an elegant starter or luncheon dish, or ladle out big bowls with a nice fresh tomato salad for a garden dinner.

So you tell me- Vichysquash or Squashyssoise?

Vichysquash

Cold Crookneck and Buttermilk Soup

6 yellow crookneck squash (about 2 ½ cups)

3 Tablespoons butter

1 small white onion, diced

1 bunch of dill, to yield 4 Tablespoons chopped

4 cups chicken or vegetable broth

1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

salt

Wash the squash and slice into discs about ½ inch thick.

In a Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium-high heat.  Drop in the diced onion and sauté until soft and translucent. Stir in half of the chopped dill (about two Tablespoons) and cook for a further minute. Season with salt. Add the sliced squash to the pot and gently stir to coat with butter, onions and dill.  Cover the pot and leave the squash to stem for a few minutes.  Pour in the broth, stir well and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pot and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring a few times, until the squash is completely soft.  Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

When the squash is cool, transfer the squash and broth to a blender, in batches, and puree each batch until smooth.  Pour through a strainer into a large bowl  When all the soup is strained, chill in the fridge until nice and cold.  Whisk the buttermilk and the remaining dill into the soup and season with salt to taste, then return to the fridge until thoroughly chilled.  Serve cold.

Serves 6 large bowls, 8 small

We are on the cusp of berry season, strawberries are just finishing up, but a few blueberries and blackberries are hitting the stands.  We’ll get some raspberries around here, but not too many.  And of course, there are the other fruits like peaches and plums just starting to make an appearance.  All the hues from the fruit add so much color to the farmers market, coming out of the green of early spring crops to the rich blues, purples, pinks and oranges of the start of summer. 

In preparation for berry season, I thought I’d pull out a recipe from my files that is the perfect showcase for good berries.  I’ve been making this for years.  Versions of this appear in all sorts of community cookbooks – I don’t know where mine came from originally.  But this simple cake is moist and rich with almond flavor, and very easy to whip up.  You can keep the ingredients around easily, and any time you pull in a big berry haul from the farmers market, you’ve got an elegant dessert minutes away.

I made this again recently to photograph and triple-check the recipe and served it to my official tasters.  I explained that I wanted to post it as a vehicle for the upcoming berry season, and they, unprompted by me, immediately began to rattle off the many, many ways this cake could be served.  Of course, the berries and cream alone, or the berries slightly cooked and mashed with sugar or honey as a sauce.  Topped with ice cream.  Drizzled with chocolate syrup and sprinkled with toasted almonds.  Sliced peaches macerated in sugar to let the juices flow. Sliced strawberries tossed with a little amaretto.  And in the fall, stewed pears or apples, or dried fruits poached in wine.  Not only was I impressed with my friends’ creativity, but I inadvertently made my point – one simple dessert, with a million variations, is a treasure of a recipe to have in your back pocket.

Simple Moist Almond Cake    

You’ll find almond paste in a can in the baking aisle.

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

¾ cup granulated sugar

8 ounces almond paste

3 eggs

¼ teaspoon almond extract

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1/3 teaspoon baking powder

Powdered sugar

Almond Whipped Cream (see recipe below)

Fresh berries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Crumble in the almond paste, add the eggs and almond extract and beat until smooth.  Add the flour and baking powder and beat until thoroughly combined.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top and bake for 25 minutes, or until lightly browned and puffed and a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Cool for 10 minutes, the carefully remove from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve sprinkled with powdered sugar, topped with whipped cream and berries.

Serves 8

Almond Whipped Cream

You can substitute any liqueur to complement the fruit you are serving with the cake.

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 Tablespoon Amaretto

2 Tablespoons powdered sugar (or to taste)

Pour the cream and the amaretto into a large bowl and begin whipping with an electric mixer.  Drizzle in the sugar and whip until stiff peaks form.