One of my coworkers celebrated a birthday a couple weeks ago, and I tasked myself with making her birthday dessert. It was a small challenge, because she can't have anything with dairy in it, even if it's baked. Fortunately, this sponge cake recipe from The Savannah Cookbook has no dairy. In fact, it's so simple, it has only four ingredients.
It would be beautiful topped with a dusting of powdered sugar, but I wanted to be a bit more festive. So I decided to whip up some strawberry-rhubarb compote (you might remember me mentioning in when I made the meringue cupcakes - a.k.a. Cupcakes of Doom - in May). And since I had some strawberries and rhubarb tucked away in my freezer from this summer's crop, it seemed the perfect combination.
Aren't they cute? They come in four sizes - 1 teaspoon, 1 tablespoon, 2 ounces and 1 ounce. Plus they next together for easy storage.
The fill lines are well below the top of the beakers, which means no spills, and if you overfill, it's very easy to pour the liquid back into the container.
Aside from using them to measure the lemon juice for this sponge cake, I've also used them to measure flavor extracts while baking my Christmas cookies this year. I love them.
Anyway, would you like to learn how to make the cake and compote?
This is OXO's "Good Cookie" Spatula, a special product designed in conjunction with Cookies for Kids' Cancer, a non-profit organization started by two OXO employees dedicated to raising funds for pediatric cancer research.
You can be a good cookie and help in two different ways. The first, possibly the easiest, is to buy one of these adorable little spatulas for yourself. It's available directly from OXO and also on Amazon, and 50% of the proceeds from each spatula's sale goes toward pediatric cancer research.
But helping doesn't have to stop there. Cookies for Kids' Cancer has a way you can get directly involved in the fundraising efforts. All you have to do is host and register a bake sale! What's particularly cool is that, up through the end of 2012, OXO is going to match the funds raised and/or donated through registered bake sales which mention OXO, up to $100,000. (And there are lots of other corporate sponsors too.) Your bake sale doesn't have to be huge. It can raise as little as selling 2 dozen cookies at your school, office, or church.
I was hoping to get my own little bake sale up and running - the faculty room at my school is a great place when it comes to fundraisers and baked goods. Combining them would be brilliant. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to set anything up, so I'll have to hold off until after New Year's. But that doesn't mean I don't have some cookie ideas!
White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups packed brown sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
2 and 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup white chocolate chips
Method:
Cream butter and sugar together until light. Beat in vanilla.
Add flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.
Blend in oatmeal, cranberries and white chocolate chips to create a stiff cookie dough.
Drop by heaping teaspoon (or by cookie scoop) onto either an ungreased or parchment lined cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. (You may have to adjust for your oven.)
It's not too late to register a bake sale with Cookies for Kids' Cancer and mention OXO. Get out those baking tools and cookie sheets, and be a "Good Cookie"!
Wow, I've kind of fallen off the wagon with posts over the last couple weeks. I apologize to my loyal readers. To make it up to you, let me share a delicious new pie recipe and tell you about OXO's new cherry pitter design.
To make this pie...
...which involves delicious homegrown sweet cherries, blackberries, and blueberries...
...you need one of these.
But the design of the above pictured cherry pitter is awful. I'd been using it for about three years now, and I never liked it. The grip was too far apart to be comfortable for my hands, it wouldn't really come clean in the dishwasher and was a slight pain to wash by hand. Plus it splattered cherry juice everywhere - on my counter, down my arm, across my (apron-clad) front...
You get the idea.
But fresh cherry pies are so awesome, so you need a decent cherry pitter to make the pitting part easy.
I received OXO's newly designed cherry pitter recently and I have to say, it's pretty awesome.
For one thing, the distance between the hand grips is far, far smaller than on my old cherry pitter. It's more ergonomically designed and thus more comfortable for pitting quart upon quart of cherries. The overall design is a lot smarter too.
The prong (the thing that pushes through the cherry, I don't know if it has an actual name) is made of metal - probably stainless steel. The little "cradle for the cherry is also a little more secure - I had no fears of the cherry falling out, which was a bit of a problem on my old pitter. Plus, see that little plastic sleeve on the bottom there? That's a splash guard.
So you don't spray yourself and your kitchen with cherry juice.
It works like a dream.
Plus, that little plastic guard comes off for easy cleaning - and like most OXO products, the whole thing is dishwasher safe.
And perhaps my favorite part (aside from the dishwasher safe thing) - there's a little locking mechanism that lets you lock the pitter closed for easy storage. Takes up way less space in my drawer!
So, armed with this awesome OXO cherry pitter, what did I decide to make?
Well, that mixed berry pie, of course!
It was one of a dozen pies I made for a friend's wedding recently.
(This, by the way, is one of the reasons I haven't blogged much in the past couple weeks. The other reason is getting my classroom ready.)
Anyway, the mixed berry pie was amazing, if I do say so myself. Want to know how to make it?
For the shortbread crust, I used the recipe that goes with the lemon squares in The Savannah Cookbook, and I halved the maple caramel sauce recipe I found at ChefShop.com. But when it came to the pear and pecan filling, I used my standard pecan pie recipe as a base point and then sort of winged it.
This is the sort of recipe requiring "phases of baking", as you have to make and bake the shortbread crust, then bake the tart with the filling, then make the caramel sauce. It took me about two hours in the end, but the result was worth it.
I realize not everyone likes brandy, so if you fall into that camp, just double the amount of vanilla used.
A few months ago, I was combing the internet for ratatouille recipes, and came across Smitten Kitchen's version of the baked ratatouille featured in Disney's Ratatouille. You know the one: the spirals of colorful eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red peppers that cause the cynical food critic to recall the carefree days of his childhood, when a dish of warm ratatouille, made by his mother, had the power to sooth all ills.
Thanks to the acquisition of an OXO Good Grips Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer (for free from OXO, I might add) and the opportunity to test said mandoline slicer as part of OXO's Healthy Eating product promotion, I had the perfect tool to make the thin slices required for this baked ratatouille dish.
I was pretty excited to get my OXO hand-held mandoline slicer in the mail. I love my chef's knives and am very proud over my steadily improving skill with chopping and slicing. But I'm not very good at uniformity, and had been sort of wanting a mandoline slicer for a while now. I hope my readers are excited about this product, too, because OXO actually sent me TWO slicers - one for me to test and keep, and one to giveaway to a reader in the United States (more on the giveaway in a moment).
There are a lot of great things about the OXO hand-held slicer. It has an ergonomic handle to reduce strain and fatigue in your wrist. There's a non-slip edge on the top of the slicer, so it won't go sliding around your cutting surface - plus there's a little "notch" in this edge so you can set it over a bowl and slice directly into salads, sauces, or what ever else you might be making. It has a food holder to protect your fingers. There are three settings for the cutting edge, and you can lock the slicer so the sharp blade isn't hanging out for all and sundry to accidentally cut themselves on.
Perhaps my favorite part is the fact that it's dishwasher safe. After my foray into ratatouille, and later sweet potato fries, there was a little bit of staining on the white plastic, but it came off pretty easily with just a touch of "elbow grease."
While the pros of this product are vast (easier to store than a traditional mandoline slicer, the non-slip features, the bent handle to reduce wrist fatigue), it's not a perfect product. Though, to be perfectly honest, I only had one major complaint. The food holder has plastic pegs that don't really stick very well in the food you're trying to slice, so unless you're using somewhat small pieces of vegetables or fruit, you're going to have trouble keeping the holder on the food. It would have been a better design to have stainless steel pegs that would actually puncture the flesh of the vegetables I was trying to slice. I had to hold the vegetables in my hand until they were small enough to use the food holder.
Check out this little YouTube video of mine (I apologize for the somewhat bad sound and video, my microphone and camera aren't the best quality) for a demonstration.
I'll get to the recipe for my ratatouille after the jump break, but first, let me tell you about the giveaway!
One lucky reader in the United States (sorry, international fans!) will become the owner of the second OXO Good Grips Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer in my possession! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post, telling me what you like about the mandoline slicer and what you would use it for if you won.
The winner will be chosen via a random integer generator. The giveaway will end at midnight, Eastern standard time, on Monday, May 21st. Only residents of the continental United States are eligible for this particular giveaway.
Now, keep reading for the scoop on that ratatouille!
