Sour Cream Cranberry Coffee Cake

     Coffee cake holds a bit of nostalgia for me. When my mom would have company over, she'd eventually ask if anybody wanted "coffeeanne." At least that's what I heard as a child. What she was talking about was a spot of dessert. She was serving coffee and a light dessert. That dessert was usually a coffee cake. The coffee cakes were almost always the packaged Entenmann's ones. I can't have coffee cake without thinking of a group of adults at the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee while eating coffee cake. Nostalgia aside, this is a moist and tasty coffee cake. The cranberries give it a hell of a zing. I would be happy to serve this with my next coffeeanne. As always, notes and changes are in blue.

Sour Cream Cranberry Coffee Cake
via Taste of Home Everyday Light Meals

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1 cup (8 ounces) reduced fat sour cream
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce (we used sweetened, since it's all we had in the house)
• 3 tablespoons canola oil (I figure vegetable oil is close enough. That's what I used, anyways)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (The Wife suggested we use the frozen cranberries lurking in the back of the freezer before they achieved sentience and attempted to take over the house)
• Topping
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup quick-cooking oats 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons cold butter

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine the first five ingredients. In another bowl, combine the egg, sour cream, applesauce, oil and vanilla (why did they specify these ingredients and not just say "the next five ingredients? Do they think we're stupid? Probably. Screw these people.) Stir into dry ingredients until just moistened. Fold in berries. Pour into a 9-inch square baking pan (we used a 9"x13" Pyrex dish) coated with nonstick cooking spray.
2. For topping, in a bowl, combine the brown sugar, oats and cinnamon. Cut in the butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over batter. 
3. Bake at 350F (180C Gasmark 4) for 40-45 minutes or until toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean (ours took the full 45 minutes).

Good times!

Zucchini Boats

     I do most of the cooking in the house. This is by design. The wife doesn't approve of my cleaning methods, which consist largely of wiping everything off the counter on to the floor. We have struck a bargain. I cook, she does the bulk of the cleaning apart from my non-stick pan and cast iron skillet. There was an incident years ago in which her enthusiasm with a scouring pad resulted in the untimely demise of my Emeril non-stick egg pan.

     There are times when I insist the wife step up and cook. I have a couple of meals that, even though I am fully capable of cooking them myself, I prefer that she make them. I consider them her recipes. She made them first. It's only right that the onus of cooking them always fall to her. Among these recipes are a wicked good tuna casserole, zucchini bread, potato casserole and zucchini boats. She found the recipe for these zucchini boats on an ancient CD-ROM: "Easy Chef's One Million Recipes." She actually made a couple of modifications (a girl after my own heart); the changes and notes will, as always, be in blue.

Ingredients

• 3 lg. zucchini
• 2 tbsp. onion, minced
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 1 c. soft bread crumbs (she uses an equal amount of dry Italian bread crumbs. You know, the ones in the cardboard tube)
• 1/2 c. tomatoes, cooked and chopped (she just sauteed them in a little olive oil for a few minutes)
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 1/2 lb. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded (she subs in cheeses at a whim. Hardcore. Sometimes she'll use Mozarella. This time she used a 6-cheese Italian mix.)

Directions

1. Cook zucchini in boiling salted water 10 minutes. 
2. Cut in halves and scoop out centers. Mix pulp with remaining ingredients. 

   

   Don't completely gut the zucchini.
   You're just scooping a trench down the middle to hold the filling.

3. Fill zucchini and top with cheese. 
4. Bake in 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. 

These are great served with marinara sauce!

Serves 6.

Good times!

Food In Literature: The Redwall Books

     I know this is a seemingly odd topic, but I've been without NHL hockey for a while now, and it's making me crazy. Bear with me. I read a lot of fantasy books. In that reading I have found one trope in almost every fantasy book: excessive descriptions of food. Not just simple stuff like "the hot ham and cheese sandwich sat steaming on the plate." I'm talking food porn. Crazy stuff like "the trays of sweetmeats lay splayed on the table like the sweaty thighs of a nubile young concubine." Lavish descriptions of food and drink go on literally for pages.

     One of the guiltiest perpetrators of fantasy food porn is not surprisingly one of my favorite authors. Brian Jacques is best known for his Redwall series of books, which delve into the lives of anthropomorphic animals that live in and around Redwall Abbey in the Mossflower wood. I can really only describe it as Watership Down meets Saving Private Ryan.  The books feature whimsical characters, clever riddles, fun songs, heroic deeds and mortifyingly graphic descriptions of animals being run through with spears or shot through the neck with arrows.

See that guy in the background? Decapitated.

     As much as I enjoy reading about little fuzzy animals hacking each others limbs off, what really keeps me coming back to the Redwall books is the food. Feasting is an integral part of Redwall life. When the Redwall Abbey throws down a dinner party, you're looking at like half a chapter of reading. Here's a smaller excerpt of Jacques' classic fantasy food porn from the book Redwall. 

"Brother Alf remarked that Friar Hugo had excelled himself, as course after

course was brought to the table. Tender freshwater shrimp garnished with 

cream and rose leaves, devilled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and 

carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg."

Even simple meals left you gnawing at the pages. Take this quick bit from Mariel of Redwall.

"Friar Alder and his young assistant, Cockleburr, had made crusty country pasties,
and these were being served with melted yellow cheese and rough hazelnut bread."

     Every single Redwall book is like this. All the characters eat these tremendous feasts until they are fit to burst, then they wander off and start hewing off each other's limbs. Come to think of it, Redwall is a lot like Asgard. The food in the books has its own fan following. The internet is chock full of fan sites dedicated to replicating the classic recipes from the book. It got big enough that Brian Jacques actually released The Redwall Cookbook in 2005. In addition to having a fairly cute story devoid of animals murdering each other, it does give recipes for some of the fan favorites. Deeper'n'Ever Turnip'n'Tater'n'Beetroot Pie? It's in there. Shrimp'n'Hotroot Soup? It's in there. October Ale In The Skull of a Murdered Stoat? The October Ale part is in there. As soon as I have the time, I'm going to have my own Redwall feast. Pictures shall be posted.


Good times!