Summer

I love pound cake. I love peaches. I love cooking and baking with buttermilk. Need I say more about my Peach Buttermilk Pound Cake? Not really. It’s a Peach Buttermilk Pound Cake, y’all! But then at the same time, I could elaborate volumes upon volumes simply on the amazing nature that is a pound cake! Oh, the dilemmas of Southern culinary literature! I digress...

Buttermilk is my “go to “ baking liquid for cornbread, biscuits, pound cakes and cakes too. There’s chemistry involved with the acidity and dairy quotients but I shan’t bore y’all with that. I just know that buttermilk is awesome. Instead of further elaboration on buttermilk and its baking prowess, I’ll tell y’all why I love it in this cake in particularly – the zippy tang. It is not strong but there is a slight undercurrent that keeps the cake from being too sweet. A perfect pairing with sweet to tart peaches!

From the LA Times

Nothing celebrates summer quite like a fresh pie. It's as if we're taking the best the season has to offer — vibrantly colored produce practically bursting with flavor and nurtured to ripeness under a hot sun — and wrapping that bounty in a tender, flaky crust. Like a gift.

It's hard not to get excited at the sight of a great pie, whether piled high in a deep-dish plate or beautifully arranged in a shallow tart pan. Though I have to say, lately I've been leaving out the plates and pans entirely and opting for something a bit more casual with a galette. Because sometimes, or maybe always, simple is best.

Think of a galette as pie's free-form cousin. Roll the dough out, pile in the filling and gently fold up the outer edges of the dough to hold it all together. Some recipes use a type of tart dough — a sweeter, more cookie-like short crust — for the pastry. Me? I stick with a flaky pie dough — rich, buttery and not so sweet — worked a little more to give it the strength to hold the filling without the support of a dish. Rustic yet beautiful, a galette is perfection simplified. Nothing fussy about it.

Read article...

If you've ever had a meringue, then you know how ethereal it can be. But combine it with cream and ripe strawberries and you have an exquisite dessert. Eton Mess takes these ingredients and jumbles them together in a mess, hence the name. The dessert hails from England's famous Eton College. As the story goes, it was either created by cheeky boys who mixed all their desserts together—and one day it happened to be strawberries, cream, and meringue—or it was invented by a crafty shopkeeper at the local food shop. However the dessert was founded, I'm glad it was invented in the first place.

I'm a big sucker for desserts with whipped cream and I'm a big fan of British desserts like trifle, so Eton Mess is easy for me to adore. The traditional way of making this "mess" is to mix all the ingredients together, but I like to layer the dessert so you can see the berries through the glass. I also tend to use more cream than other recipes specify, making this a very plush dessert. There's nothing like billowy clouds of cream enveloping crunchy cookie bits and sweet, mushy berries in this easiest and most pleasing of desserts.

I'm still thinking about the smell of the sweet Virginia hay - wishing there was a way to bottle that scent. We couldn't bring the hay home, but we did bring other treasures back to remind us of our trip: honey, old frames and fruit from various farmers markets.

On the drive home, the dark red plums were on my mind while they sat on the console of the car. Each time I glanced at them, I could almost taste them.

They were tart...so very sharp in that first bite and the bright red inside had a sweetness that was intensely satisfying - a perfect compromise to the sour skin.

We came home to rain and knee high grass and with too many things I needed to do to count. Yet again, those plums called to me.

Dane held them in her hands. I could see it was their size that excited her, as if they were grown just for her small inquisitive hands.

She played and I rolled dough beside her - a perfect way to be home.