Creme Fraiche Rhubarb Pound Cake

The end of the school year is approaching and with it comes talk of summer plans,  classroom assessments, field trips, crazy hair day, school dances, the end of homework, and playing with rhubarb in the kitchen.  I have already created a rhubarb jam that is now my favorite topping for french toast, waffles, toast, ice cream and anything else I can think of.  So now I have been experimenting with rhubarb pound cake, playing with different flours and spices to balance the tart rhubarb.

This morning we had my most recent attempt for breakfast and at first both of my boys complained.  "It's not sweet enough.  Why is there no lemon in this.  You should have made the other one."  Once they were done complaining they both happily asked for seconds.  Personally this version is my favorite, the flavor is rich from creme fraiche and barley flour with juicy interruptions from chunks of rhubarb. The barley in the batter not only adds flavor but it also makes the crumb fine and light.  Plus, the lack of sweetness my boys complained about at first make this cake a perfect breakfast treat.

The crumb is so light the cake needs to cool completely in the pans before slicing or removing.  A fact I discovered when I tried to put one cake on a cooling rack, as you can see in the photo above.  Part of the lightness and fragility is from the barley flour, which contains very little any gluten and so does not have the structure of whole wheat flour.  With half barley flour you don't have to be so nervous about gluten formation when mixing, it would still be possible to toughen the cake with over mixing but it might take a little work. The barley also has a sweetness and rich flavor that pairs really well with the rhubarb.

Creme Fraiche Rhubarb Pound Cake

6 Tbsp butter, plus more for greasing the pan

1 cup barley flour

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat

1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp ground cardamom

3/4 cup whole milk

1/2 cup creme fraiche

1 egg

2 cups chopped rhubarb

Preheat the oven to 350°.  Generously butter a 1.5 qt loaf pan.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan and set aside while you prep the other ingredients.  Mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cardamom in a large bowl and set aside.

Add the milk to a clear 2 cup measuring cup and add the creme fraiche until the total volume of the milk and creme fraiche is 1 1/4 cups (3/4 cups milk plus 1/2 cup creme fraiche is 1 1/4 cups).  Add the eggs to the measuring cup and whisk the liquid ingredients well (I place the whisk in the measuring cup and spin the handle between my hands).

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir a few times with the whisk before adding the butter and mixing until everything is fully incorporated.  Add the rhubarb and fold in well with a spatula, making sure to fold all the way down to the bottom of the bowl.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake in the center of the oven until a cake tester or sharp knife when inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes in my oven.  Allow to cool completely in the pan before serving or taking out of the pan.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Last week was not a week dedicated to cooking.  Sebastian, my oldest was in the school play and Lewis was handling the lighting.  Dinner was about the balancing act of late rehearsals and bedtime, not experimenting with new recipes and playing in the kitchen.  However the first night of the play the boys got out of school at 11:30 am and I decided to bake cookies while they played outside.  Who needs a balanced dinner when there are cookies?  These cookies are actually low enough in sugar they could be served as a bread serving in the school lunch or CACFP (Child and Adult Care Food Program). so they could even be dinner!

When I gave both boys a cookie to eat I told them I was finally done looking for new peanut butter cookie recipes because I had found my favorite.  Sebastian, who apparently knows me well replied, "Unless you find one you want to test."  So yes, unless I find a peanut butter cookie recipe I want to test these are my new favorite.  Chewy without being crumbly, full of peanut flavor and chunks of peanut for crunch, a depth of flavor that comes from the oats and wheat flour and then pools of dark chocolate to contrast with the peanuts.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Adapted from Martha Stewart Living April 2012

These cookies can also be made with other nut butters and matching chopped nuts (or use sunflower seeds and sunflower butter for a nut free version).

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup or 12 Tbsp) butter, divided use
1 cup rolled or old fashioned oats
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 peanut or other nut butter
1/2 cup coarsely chopped salted peanuts (or other nuts)
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chunks or chips
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat
3/4 cup white flour

Preheat your oven to 350° with the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven.

Melt 1/2 stick (4 Tbsp) butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Add the oats to the melted butter and continue to cook over medium heat, while stirring, until the oats are toasted, about 5 to 7 minutes.  Remove the pan from the heat and stir for a little longer until the pan cools down a little, just a minute or 2.  Alternatively you can dump the toasted oats onto a parchment lined baking sheet to cool.

Beat one stick of butter (8 Tbsp or 1/2 cup) in a mixer on medium high with the sugars until pale and fluffy.  If you are not using a self scraping beater blade, stop the mixer occasionally to scrape the bowl.  Add the egg and vanilla, beat until well incorporated before adding the nut butter.  Beat on medium speed until the mixture is well combined.  Add toasted oats chopped nuts and chocolate, beat on medium speed until combined.

Add both flours and beat until just combined.  Scoop out dough using a 1-1/2-Tablespoon scoop or roll dough into 1 1/2 inch balls.  Place cookie dough 1 inch apart on parchment lined baking sheets.  Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden, switching the pans front to back and between racks after 6 minutes.  Allow cookies to cool completely on the baking sheets.  Be sure to eat several cookies while they are still warm.

Perfectly Cooked Brown Rice: Parboiled

I have a personal rule when planning dinner, everything I serve has to be something I am comfortable with someone making an entire meal out of.  It sounds like such an unlikely thing, for someone to make a meal out of only one thing on the table.  However not when there are children are at the table.  My children have often made complete dinners out of one dish, or even one item in a dish.  One day they might eat only the beef and the next time it is served they might eat only the peas in Chinese Hamburger with Peas (although now I am happy to say that is a dinner everyone in the family eats and enjoys).

Children are randomly picky, suddenly refusing the dish they previously ate their weight in.  They also have a natural instinct for finding which food has zero or low nutritional value.  So because of this I decided everything I serve must not be a nutritional zero.  Thus began the switch from white to brown rice, and many nights spent cursing as I once again served rice that was chewy and hard, only edible when eaten completely smothered in another dish.  I tried longer cooking times, more liquid, soaking etc and still  served rice that was not Al Dente or to the tooth but rather was hard and incapable of soaking up the sauces around it.

 I could always  make Volcano Rice and Uncle Ben's Brown Rice without fail, but I really wanted to make a simple brown jasmine rice.  I knew the Uncle Ben's Rice was parboiled so when I stumbled across this "recipe" I decided to try parboiling it first.  The only problem was the "recipe" tells you how to parboil it, not how to prepare it once parboiled.  So I experimented until I had a recipe that worked every time.  The best part is it takes slightly less boiling time overall then when just cooking it without parboiling.  If you want you can also parboil it ahead of time and store it in the fridge for a few days until you want to cook it (next I plan on trying storing it in the freezer).

Don't forget to enter my Good Meat Cookbook Giveaway.  Entry period ends Sunday February 27th at 11:59 PM.

Parboiled Brown Rice

This recipe is tested using Lundberg Brown Jasmine Rice, I am sure it would work with other varieties of brown rice, you might just need to play a little with the amount of water added in the final cooking to get it just right for your taste.

1 cup Brown Jasmine Rice

salt to taste

1 tsp butter or Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Bring a large volume of water to a boil, not as much as you need to boil pasta but enough for the rice to roll around freely in it while boiling (I would guess I used at least 6 to 8 cups for 1 cup of rice).  Once the water is boiling add the rice and boil uncovered for 15 minutes.  Drain the rice and add back to the pot with 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cup water (the smaller volume of water will give you a slightly more firm finished rice), 1 tsp butter and salt to taste if you want more.  Sometimes I also add 1 Tbsp of say sauce.  Bring to the boil and turn down to the lowest possible simmer for 20 minutes.  (My stove does not do a great simmer so I just randomly turn the burner completely off for up to 5 minutes at a time during the 20 minutes of cooking time.  Most of the time I am in the kitchen cooking another part of dinner so it is only a matter of turning the flame on and off every once in a while).

The basic recipe to cooked the already parboiled rice is 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 parts water to 1 part of rice before parboiling plus 1 tsp fat.

Browned Butter Brownies (with or without pecans)

This past Wednesday the Burlington School district had their first snow day since Sebastian (my third grader) was in kindergarten.  It could not have come at a better time for my family.  Right in the middle of a small school vacation drought.  Early in the day on Tuesday most of the surrounding school districts declared the following day a snow day before a single flake had fallen.  Burlington however has a higher percentage of poverty and in the winter school means heat and food for many children, and for that reason rarely close for a mere snowstorm.  I was sure if we had a snow day it would be declared at the last possible minute.  However shortly before 7 PM we received the robocall canceling school and I did a little dance at my seat.  (I really did, I think I might have been even more excited then my children).

My husband played hooky from his work as well and we got to steal a midweek day in the snow.  We began, shortly after a breakfast of Liege Sugar Waffles, by stepping out our front door to X-county ski to the park with our sleds.  We returned home starving and snowy, which for most families means breaking out mugs and making hot chocolate.  The only problem is Sebastian only likes the idea of hot chocolate. When faced with a mug of his own, even when I make it with milk, melted bittersweet chocolate and sugar,  he only takes a few tentative sips before allowing his brother, the liquid chocolate addict, to finish his share.

These brownies can happily satisfy a post snow adventure for my whole family, and you can even take them with you as an easily transportable snack.  I like that they rely on cocoa powder, which for most people is far more easy to stock then bakers, bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate.  Somehow I still needed to rely on my neighbors pantry for some of the cocoa powder called for.  Brownies aside, it was a great snow day.  After the sledding we played monopoly and then the boys went outside with a neighbor flopping into patches of untouched snow.   The editing of memories are already whitewashing any whining of overtired boys that happened and focusing only on the day spent playing. I am sure my boys will remind me of this day for long to come, "remember the snow day when we skied to the park, played monopoly, ate sugar waffles for breakfast...?"

One more note on these brownies, which I am not going to say "Are the best brownies ever" as was stated by many commenters on Bon Appetite's website.  Personally I have many brownie recipes that I love and I refuse to trouble myself with declaring a favorite.  Instead I choose to make whichever recipe suits my mood at any moment.  These are suitably rich and decadent even though they use cocoa powder in place of chocolate because of the browned butter.  Browned butter is nutty, richer and sweeter because the sugars have been caramelized and the flavors intensified.  However given my deep love of brownies and love to play, next I am going to try these olive oil brownies.  Maybe I will make my friend Heather's decadent mint layer brownies instead...

I made the browned butter brownies in 2 pyrex loaf pans so I could make half of the batch with pecans and leave the other half naked for my heathen children.  If you enjoy nuts in your brownies they really do help balance the richness of this recipe.  Although neither of my boys complained once about their version without the nuts.  They did not even notice how much less height, and therefore deliciousness there was without the nuts.  I made these using only whole wheat pastry flour as I realized several years ago a good brownie recipe has enough chocolate to allow you to use any flour you want without anyone knowing the difference.  Not that these can now be classified as health food, but I see no reason not to add more whole grains to my diet any time I can.

Browned Butter Pecan Brownies

Adapted from Bon Appetite

Nonstick cooking spray (I used Reynolds release foil and eliminated this step)

10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 1/4 cups sugar

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (spooned into cup to measure, then leveled)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs, chilled

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat

1/2 to 1 cup pecan pieces (I used 1/2 cup for half of the batch, use 1 cup for all nut brownies)

Preheat to 325°F with a rack in the lower third.  Line either one 8x8x2-inch pyrex dish or two 8x4.5x2 inch pans with foil, pressing foil firmly against pan sides and leaving 2-inch overhang. Coat foil with nonstick spray (or don't bother if using nonstick foil). Melt butter over medium heat in a medium saucepan (my pan was 3 qts).  Cook the butter, stirring often, until it becomes golden brown and smells nutty, about 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat and immediately add sugar, cocoa, 2 teaspoons water, vanilla, and 1/4 teaspoon (generous) salt. Stir to blend and then allow to cool for 5 minutes.  Butter/cocoa mixture will still be hot, add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one until no signs of egg are present before adding the next one.  When mixture looks thick and shiny, add flour and stir until blended. Beat vigorously 60 strokes.  If making some with and some without nuts pour half of the batter into one prepared pan before stirring in the nuts and adding the rest of the batter to the second pan.  Otherwise add the nuts to the whole batch and pour into prepared pan.

Bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out almost clean (with a few moist crumbs attached), about 25 minutes (I think mine were more like 35 - 40). Cool in pan on rack. Using foil overhang, lift brownies from pan. Cut into up however you want. 

The recipe states these can be made 2 days ahead, perhaps that is the longest they were able to resist them in the test kithcens.  I was able to hide mine and store them for at least a week.

Dark Chocolate Rosemary Muffins and Schools

I was not originally planning on posting this recipe here.  The recipe it is based upon has already appeared on several food blogs but got mixed reviews from my family.  Lewis and I both thought it was pretty good but neither of us loved it, that might be because we are not huge rosemary fans.  Sebastian and Julian both felt it was a complete waste of chocolate, I think they questioned my sanity.

The day I served them for breakfast, there was a potluck to celebrate the last day of preschool for Julian's class.  I looked at the 14 muffins that remained after breakfast and decided to take them as our contribution for the many adults who would appreciate them.  The muffins where a huge hit with the staff, one of them "stealing" one to bring home to his wife and asking hopefully if I was going to feature them here.  I told him how to get the recipe and then listed most of the changes I had made.  I liked them better the next day as a snack instead of breakfast.  The rosemary is really very subtle, hard to even pinpoint what it is.  I know I will be playing with the recipe even more later.  For this week though I will be spending time away from my family and kitchen to attend interviews for a school principal at an Elementary school in Burlington.

The principal who is being replaced is stellar and she does not want to leave her job, the school, school board and superintendent do not want to replace her either.  She has no choice and neither does the school system thanks to federal legislation that desperately needs to be rewritten.  We need legislation that will help our schools instead of penalizing schools who serve the populations most in need.

The short story is please call your congressmen and senators and demand that No Child Left Behind and ESEA do not penalize schools for low test scores, especially as the legislation does not take into account individual student growth, home language or in the case of a child with an individualized education plan (IEP) the students actual goals.  How can a child who has moved to this country a year ago and does not speak English at home score well on a standardized test?  What if that child's home language is Mai Mai, which is not a written language?  Why are the tests administered in the fall when children's learning often loses ground over the summer?  Why are we expecting all students to reach the same goals at the same times, rather then looking for each child to make progress in their learning based on where they started.

If you are still here for this rant, thank you.  Now that you have read all the way through please make your voice heard before this legislation requires another top rated principal be replaced.  I attended a town meeting about this legislation with Senator Bernie Sanders where he was saddened to hear she needed to be replaced.  After the meeting his chief of staff, Huck Guttman spoke with myself and 2 friends and described her as,  "One of the top ten principals in Vermont."  She spent her free time working to improve her school, she helped in the cafeteria at lunch every day to help the students make healthy choices, because she understands how nutrition impacts learning.  She spent forty minutes on a parking lot telling me about her school and the exciting changes they have done as one of 2 magnet schools in Vermont.  Changes that will take years to show up in the test scores because children are not cars built in a factory.  When you change what you are doing on a factory floor the new products will be rolled off the line right away.  A school has to start where students are and help them to achieve more.

And now, if you are still there, let me reward you with the muffin recipe.

Dark Chocolate Rosemary Muffins
Adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce (I still don't have a copy so feel free to send me one, perhaps as a belated 40th birthday present.  I actually found the recipe on The Wednesday Chef.  You should go check out her post as well, she has the recipe posted as written, with spelt flour.  I would have used the spelt if I had it on hand.  Although I would have then subbed in white whole wheat flour for half the white flour.)

3 eggs
1 cup extra virgin olive oil or olive oil (the better the oil the better the cake)
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp fleur de sel (I am currently out of kosher salt)
1 1/2 Tbsp fresh rosemary very finely chopped
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp unbleached all purpose flour
6 ounces bitter sweet chocolate chopped into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces (the original recipe calls for 5 ounces but I did not want to save the last ounce from the bar)

Preheat the oven to 350° and place liners in 18 or fewer muffin cups (I made 18 muffins with this recipe but wished the muffins were larger.  Next time I will make 16 muffins.

Whisk the eggs with the olive oil, milk, vanilla and rosemary until thoroughly blended.  Add the sugar, baking powder and salt and whisk to blend.  Add both flours and gently fold them in until just combined and then stir in the chocolate.

Divide the batter (it will be thinner then most muffin batters) between the prepared muffin tins and place in the oven.  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a tester comes out moist but without any wet batter clinging to it.