Dutch Babies for Lodge's 120th!

This month Lodge is celebrating its 120th anniversary, and since I’m a big fan, I’m joining the party. And I’m bringing Dutch babies!

When you think about it, 120 years of “Made in USA” is a big deal.

Lodge hasn’t merely survived where all of the other major cast iron cookware foundries have failed, it has managed to innovate and prosper, and perhaps what’s most exciting to CI aficionados like myself is that Lodge is currently undergoing a massive expansion. I, for one, cannot wait to see what they’ll come out with next and whether they’ll bring back some favorite pieces from their past. (Like the breakfast skillet and maybe the chile-shaped muffin pan. Hint, hint, Lodge.)

Too bad 120 candles won’t fit in a Dutch baby! Because these puffy pancakes are my absolute favorite thing to make in my Lodge cast iron pans. I especially like to use their cute little 6 ½” skillets to make individual babies. I mean, who doesn’t love having a baby of their very own?

There was only a second to snap this photo before the heat from the oven started melting my phone, but this is how properly puffed Dutch babies should look.

They’re enormous! For that unbelievable puff, use high heat, preheat the cast iron skillets with the butter until the butter is nutty and brown, add the batter directly into the hot pans, and bake until the crust is set and very dark and caramelized. Go darker than you might think—they’ll taste amazing and they won’t fall when they come out of the oven.

I’ve made Dutch babies in other vessels before, and they’re not the same. A Dutch baby made in a stainless pan or a ceramic baking dish lacks the deeply caramelized crust and deflates as soon as you take it out of the oven. You’ve just got to have Lodge cast iron for Dutch baby perfection!

Happy 120th anniversary, Lodge!

Individual Dutch Babies
Printable Recipe

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs
¾ cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 450˚F. Divide the butter among 2 6 ½” cast iron skillets and bake for 6 to 8 minutes, or until browned. Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Whisk together the eggs, milk, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture in thirds, whisking after each addition until smooth. If you add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients all at once, you will inevitably wind up with a lumpy batter. As soon as the butter is brown, divide the batter among the hot skillets and bake for 22 to 25 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown. Serve immediately.

Serves 2. For breakfast, lunch, or brinner, these babies are delicious served with nothing but a spoonful of preserves or a drizzle of maple syrup or honey. Take them from simple to spectacular with a topping of seasonal fruit and lightly sweetened vanilla whipped cream. Strawberries and cream is always a hit at my house.

Sometimes I serve the babies right in the pans, sometimes I slide them out onto plates.

The cast iron keeps them warm longer, but of course it melts toppings like whipped cream faster too. For a more substantial crust that is even more resistant to falling, substitute 2 tablespoons of cornstarch for 2 tablespoons of the flour. If you treated yourself to a Lodge 120th Edition 8” skillet, you can use it to make a single large Dutch baby. It will take 7 to 9 minutes to brown the butter and 24 to 27 minutes to bake the 8” baby.

Oregon Berry Festival and a Guest Post

It’s berry season, the very best time of year! Do you love berries as much as I love berries? Then join me at the Oregon Berry Festival to celebrate the luscious little fruit. I’m thrilled to be one of the presenters this year! At noon on Saturday, July 13, I’ll be on the main stage demoing and sampling berry recipes from Flavored Butters. Then I’ll be signing books and answering your cooking questions from 1PM to 2PM at the Healthy Berry Booth. Hope to see you there!

I’m also excited to be featured on Plum Deluxe! My guest post is all about how you can use flavored butters to effortlessly wow your guests at your 4th of July cookout. It includes the Gorgonzola-Chive Butter and Whipped Chocolate Butter recipes from the book. Please check it out!

Here’s wishing everybody a fun and delicious Independence Day!

Pink Cakes and Freeze-Dried Strawberries

My ingredient obsession of the moment: freeze-dried strawberries. Have you tried them yet? You may have had them in your breakfast cereal. They're light as a feather and seem to dissolve instantly on your tongue, and they taste like…well, imagine if you crammed an entire pint of super-ripe strawberries into your mouth along with a couple of strawberry Jolly Ranchers—that's how they taste.

Perhaps it's because strawberry season is three long months away or perhaps it's because freeze-dried strawberries really are that good, but I've been grinding them up and putting them in everything. I love how they turn buttercreams and cake batters technicolor pink. It's like when Dorothy found herself in Oz and suddenly the world was in brilliant color. But with flavor! Three quarters of an ounce of strawberry powder plus a little tinkering transformed my regular financier batter into these lovely treats.


I'm thinking of making pink angel food cake or pink yellow cake frosted with pink whipped cream next.

Strawberry-Almond Teacakes
Printable Recipe

¾ ounce freeze-dried strawberries
5 ½ ounces sugar
2 ½ ounces all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the tins
2 ½ ounces almond meal
5 ounces egg whites, at room temperature
5 ounces (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing the tins

Grind the freeze-dried strawberries to a fine powder in a blender, spice mill, or clean coffee grinder. Whisk together the strawberry powder, sugar, flour, and almond meal in a large bowl. Whisk in the egg whites until thoroughly combined and then whisk in the butter until thoroughly combined. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 1 to 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375˚F. Butter and flour a standard 12-cup muffin pan or line with paper liners and divide the batter among the muffin cups. Bake for 24 to 26 minutes, or until golden brown and the edges of the teacakes start to shrink away from the pan. Let the teacakes cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. Invert onto cooling racks and finish cooling completely.

Makes 1 dozen teacakes. Both the unbaked batter and the finished teacakes have good keeping qualities.

Of Hearts and Strawberries

Strawberry season came later than usual this year, but the timing was perfect. My parents were here visiting, so we had free labor for strawberry picking! We filled up a flat in record time…


And then we emptied it in record time.

But before I proceed with the berrylicious treat made with our haul…

A big thank you goes out to Yummly for featuring my Steak au Poivre with Red Wine Sauce.

And hugs and kisses to my little brother for once again singing the praises of Seared to Perfection. Thanks, Andrew, for being my biggest fan! Word cannot express how much I love you and how proud I am of you for becoming such an amazing cook in your own right!


Coeur à la Crème with Strawberries
Printable Recipe

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
4 ounces powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
12 ounces heavy cream
1 ¾ pounds strawberries, sliced
1 ounce sugar

In a mixer fitted with a whip attachment, whip together the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla on high for 2 to 3 minutes, or until light and fluffy. With the motor running on high, gradually add the cream, stopping the mixer once or twice to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Continue to whip on high to stiff peaks. Divide among 6 cheesecloth-lined coeur à la crème molds set on a baking tray. Smooth the mixture into the molds using a spatula and fold the excess cheesecloth over the tops. Let drain in the refrigerator overnight.

To serve, unfold the cheesecloth from the coeurs and invert each one onto a dessert plate. Remove the molds, gently peel off the cheesecloth, and set aside at room temperature for about half an hour. Meanwhile, toss together the strawberries and sugar in a medium bowl and let macerate, stirring occasionally, for 15 to 20 minutes, or until soft and juicy. Divide the strawberries among the coeurs and serve immediately.

Serves 6. Use a high quality cream cheese such as Nancy's. If you can get your hands on it, use Tahitian vanilla, which has a uniquely floral character. You'll need about 2 pints of strawberries for this recipe. If heart-shaped coeur à la crème molds are unavailable, use little berry colanders instead. Finely woven cheesecloth is preferable—if you have the loosely woven kind, use several layers of it. If you like, flavor the coeurs with some finely grated lemon zest. Alternatively, substitute chèvre for a portion of the cream cheese.

Mixed Berries

This is what summer's all about.


Sweet, luscious berries.


Certainly nature's most generous gift to us.


Strawberries. Raspberries. Blackberries. Blueberries.


Each one, perfection.


But combine them, and magic happens…The individual flavor notes meld and together gain in intensity, like instruments in an orchestra.


So it's no surprise that the flavor of these Mixed Berry Mousse & Gelée Verrines was described as "intoxicating" and said to "taste like wine". Magic indeed.

Mixed Berry Mousse & Gelée Verrines
Printable Recipe

10 ounces raspberries
10 ounces blackberries
10 ounces blueberries
8 ounces strawberries
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 ¾ teaspoons gelatin
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons Chambord
1 cup heavy cream

Puree the berries in a food mill using the finest disc. If the puree has seeds, strain it through a fine mesh sieve to remove them. Divide evenly among 2 large bowls.

Stir ¼ cup of the sugar into ½ of the berry puree. Slowly sprinkle 2 ½ teaspoons of the gelatin over ¼ cup of the Chambord. Place the bowl of the gelatin mixture over a small pan of simmering water and heat until melted. Stir into the berry mixture. Whip the cream to stiff peaks. Stir 1/3 of the cream into the berry mixture, then fold in the remaining cream. Divide the mixture among 6 dessert cups. Refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Stir the remaining ¼ cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of Chambord into the remaining ½ of the berry puree. Measure ¼ cup of water into a small bowl and slowly sprinkle over the remaining 2 ¼ teaspoons of gelatin. Place the bowl of gelatin over a small pan of simmering water and heat until melted. Stir into the berry mixture. Divide among the dessert cups. Refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Serves 6. Serve topped with additional fresh berries, if desired. Can be made up to a day ahead of time and kept covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator.

Farewell Strawberry Season

One last hurrah before the all-too-short Oregon strawberry season is just a sweet, sticky memory—I baked up these crostatas with what was left of our second half flat of strawberries and a few stalks of rhubarb from the garden.


I can't wait for strawberry season next year…

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crostatas
Printable Recipe

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon kosher salt
12 tablespoons (1 ½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, shredded
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons, or more, cold water
1 ¾ pounds strawberries, halved
¾ pound rhubarb, sliced
¼ cup cornstarch
1 tablespoon heavy cream
2 tablespoons Turbinado sugar

Combine the flour, 2 tablespoons of the sugar, and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the water and pulse until the dough just comes together. Test the dough by squeezing a small amount together with your fingertips. If the dough holds together, it’s ready. If it’s crumbly, add up to 1 more tablespoon of water and pulse 2 more times. Transfer the dough to a work surface, bring together into a ball, and cut into eighths. Form each portion into a ball and then flatten into a disc. Wrap each disc separately in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425ºF. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each disc of dough to a 7-inch wide, 1/8-inch thick circle. As you work, transfer the circles to parchment-lined baking trays. Refrigerate for about 10 minutes.

Toss together the strawberries, rhubarb, remaining ¾ cup of sugar, and cornstarch in a large bowl. Divide the strawberry mixture among the dough circles, mounding it in the center of each one. Fold the edge of the dough over the fruit, pleating it as you go. Refrigerate for another 10 minutes.

Lightly brush the crostata crusts with the cream and sprinkle the crostatas with the Turbinado sugar. Bake for 23 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Makes 8 individual crostatas. Work quickly and with a light touch to prevent the butter in the pastry from melting. Quarter the strawberries if they are large. Strawberries that aren't perfectly ripe will require additional sugar, so add more to taste. Serve warm or at room temperature. You'll need about 2 pints of strawberries for this recipe.

Happy 4th of July!

I interrupt my European travelogue to wish you a happy 4th of July and share with you my Strawberry Shortcake recipe. Strawberries are in season, so shortcake is just the thing to serve right now. For a red, white, and blue dessert, toss in a few blueberries or blackberries.

Have a happy and fun-filled Independence Day everybody!


Strawberry Shortcakes
Printable Recipe

For the shortcakes:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
3 ounces (¾ stick) cold unsalted butter, shredded
1 large egg
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream
2 teaspoons Turbinado sugar

For the sugared strawberries:
2 ¾ pounds strawberries, sliced
3 tablespoons sugar

For the whipped cream:
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup powdered sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Make the shortcakes:
Preheat the oven to 425˚F. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter and, using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Blend together the egg and ½ cup of the cream in a small bowl, add to the flour mixture, and stir until just combined. Transfer to a work surface and knead a few times until the dough just holds together. Pat the dough into a 6-inch wide, 1 ½-inch thick circle and cut into 8 wedges. Arrange the shortcakes a couple of inches apart on a parchment-lined baking tray. Lightly brush the shortcakes with the remaining 1 tablespoon of cream and sprinkle with the Turbinado sugar. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool to room temperature.

Make the sugared strawberries:
Toss together the strawberries and sugar in a medium bowl and let macerate, stirring occasionally, for 15 to 20 minutes, or until soft and juicy.

Make the whipped cream:
Whip the cream to medium peaks. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and continue to whip to stiff peaks.

Assemble the shortcakes:
Split the shortcakes in half horizontally and arrange the bottom of each one split side up on an individual plate. Divide the sugared strawberries and then the whipped cream among them. Replace the top half of each shortcake and serve immediately.

Serves 8. Here's my secret to the most irresistible version ever of this favorite summer dessert: I use my basic scone recipe instead of a bland biscuit as the shortcake base, and I don't skimp on the strawberries and whipped cream. The scone "shortcakes" are wonderful made with vanilla sugar. Work quickly and with a light touch to prevent the butter in the pastry from melting. Strawberries that aren't perfectly ripe will require additional sugar, so add more to taste. If you can get your hands on it, use Tahitian vanilla, which has a uniquely floral character, for the whipped cream. You'll need about 3 pints of strawberries for this recipe.

Strawberry Curd

How do 2 people eat an entire flat of strawberries in just 4 days? To the exclusion of nearly everything else. Except for maybe whipped cream. It takes lots of creativity and determination and dessert twice a day. But we did it.

We had plain strawberries, sugared strawberries, strawberries and cream, strawberry ice cream, strawberry verrines, and Strawberry Curd, which we ate by the spoonful, over pink strawberry cupcakes, and in strawberry tartelettes. Four days of strawberry bliss.


For the strawberry cupcakes, I used this cupcake recipe, omitting the vanilla bean, decreasing the vanilla extract to ¼ teaspoon, and substituting 12 ounces strawberries, pureed, for the milk.


I used this tart crust dough for the tartelettes.


Strawberry Curd
Printable Recipe

14 ounces strawberries
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Puree the strawberries in a food mill using a fine disc. Bring the puree to a bare simmer in a small, heavy saucepan. Whisk together the eggs, yolks, and sugar in a large bowl. Continue whisking while adding the hot puree in a thin stream. Place the bowl with the egg mixture over a medium pan of simmering water and heat, whisking constantly, for 4 to 5 minutes, or until thick. Stir in the butter and lemon juice. Chill.

Makes about 2 cups. Keeps for a day or two tightly sealed in the refrigerator.

Strawberry Ice Cream and the Giveaway Winner

After all I went through to get my flat of u-pick strawberries this season, I was bound and determined to make the most of every single berry. The husband requested I turn some of them into ice cream, and that’s exactly what I did. Oh, what a sweet week it’s been—I ate more than my fill of strawberries every single day!


And now, drum roll please! It’s time to announce the giveaway winner. Lone Acorn has won the set of 6 mini brioche tins! Lone Acorn, please email me at lvaserfirer(at)yahoo(dot)com with your address so that I can send you your prize. Thanks to everybody who commented on Intrigued by Tonka Beans and a Giveaway. Interestingly, it seems like most commenters would be willing to give those illicit tonka beans a try. We’re definitely an adventurous group!


Strawberries & Cream Ice Cream
Printable Recipe

12 ounces strawberries
2 ½ cups milk
6 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Puree the strawberries in a food mill using a fine disc. Bring the milk to a bare simmer in a small, heavy saucepan. Whisk together the yolks and sugar in a large bowl. Continue whisking while adding the hot milk in a thin stream. Place the bowl with the yolk mixture over a medium pan of simmering water, and heat, whisking constantly, for 8 to 10 minutes, or until it thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Immediately strain through a fine mesh sieve into a clean bowl and whisk in the strawberry puree, cream, and vanilla. Chill over an ice bath until ice-cold. Transfer to an ice cream maker and churn until frozen. Transfer to a container and freeze for 4 to 6 hours before serving.

Makes about 2 quarts. For the best texture, enjoy within a day or two of churning.

Strawberry Picking and Red, White, and Bluish

Somehow the idea of strawberry picking in a fleece jacket seems all wrong. Strawberry picking slogging through muddy fields does not compute. The calendar said it was strawberry season, and the masses had converged upon the Sauvie Island strawberry fields, but I wasn’t feeling it. To me, strawberry picking is an activity that takes place on a warm, sunny day. An activity that takes place in shorts and tank tops and sandals and with plenty of sunscreen. I turned around empty handed and headed for home—I would wait another week.

The next weekend: still cloudy, still not feeling it. Lots of rain during the week would’ve diluted the sweetness of the strawberries anyway. I would wait impatiently yet another week.

And the next weekend: a few clouds and a few optimistic rays of sunshine. Starting to feel it. I made it half way out to Sauvie Island, and out of the blue, the skies opened up. The world did not want me to have u-pick strawberries, and it told me so with a torrential downpour, complete with flooded streets.

Now at this point, I should point out that I live for strawberry season. I look forward to it all year long. I’m in an area that, especially in good years, produces some of the most fragrant, sweetest, intoxicating strawberries I have ever known, and I am determined to take advantage of it. But I do not want to buy my strawberries at the store. They’re not the same. They come without the fresh air, the sun on your shoulders, the strain in your back, and the stained fingers and lips. Without the laughter and strawberry fight with your husband. They come without the magic.

But I gave in and headed to the market to buy some local strawberries. Their aroma lured me in, they looked good, they were only twice as expensive as u-pick. I was all ready to buy a couple pints, and then I tasted one. It was cold and barely sweet. I just couldn’t go through with it.

The clouds finally dissipated, and not a moment too soon—the strawberries were bearing their last fruit of the season, tiny berries no bigger than a thumbnail. The taste of strawberries still warm from the sun was definitely worth the wait!

We came home with an entire flat of strawberries. And between the two of us, we managed to polish of said flat in 4 days flat. My husband said the Vanilla Panna Cotta, Strawberry & Lavender Gelée Verrines I made looked like a collection of marbles.


Between bites, he proclaimed that they were perfect for the 4th of July since they were red, white, and bluish.

So here’s wishing everybody a happy Independence Day!


Vanilla Panna Cotta, Strawberry & Lavender Gelée Verrines
Printable Recipe

1 ½ cups milk
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon gelatin
1 ½ cups heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
2 ¼ cups water
2 tablespoons dried lavender flowers
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 drops red food coloring
2 drops blue food coloring
1 pound strawberries, diced

Measure ½ cup of the milk into a small bowl and slowly sprinkle over 2 ½ teaspoons of the gelatin. Combine the remaining 1 cup of milk, cream, and ¼ cup of the sugar in a small saucepan. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise, scrape out the seeds, and add both the pod and the seeds to the pan. Heat to a bare simmer. Whisk in the gelatin mixture and discard the vanilla bean. Chill over an ice bath until just beginning to thicken. Divide among 6 dessert cups. Refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Measure ¾ cup of the water into a small bowl and slowly sprinkle over the remaining 1 ½ tablespoons of gelatin. Combine the remaining 1 ½ cups of water, remaining ½ cup of sugar, and lavender in a small saucepan. Heat to a simmer. Whisk in the gelatin mixture, lemon juice, and food coloring and strain through a fine mesh sieve. Chill over an ice bath until just beginning to thicken. Transfer to a 9-inch square cake pan. Refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Divide the strawberries among the dessert cups. Dip the bottom of the cake pan with the lavender gelée into hot water for a few seconds, wipe dry, and invert onto a cutting board. Dice the gelée and divide among the dessert cups. Serve immediately.

Makes 6 generous servings. Feel free to add sugar to taste to the strawberries if they aren’t very sweet.

Sweets for Your Sweet

Everybody knows that nothing says “I love you” like chocolate. But making a dreamy chocolate treat for your special someone is infinitely more romantic than buying a heart-shaped box. And what could be more dreamy than warm, silky chocolate fondue with a just a hint of chile to turn up the heat? Here’s wishing everyone a sweet Valentine’s Day.


Chocolate Fondue for Two with Strawberries
Printable Recipe

½ cup heavy cream
1/16 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped or scant 2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pound strawberries

Combine the cream and chipotle in a small saucepan and heat to a bare simmer. Place the chocolate into a medium bowl, add the hot cream mixture and vanilla, and whisk until smooth. Transfer to a fondue pot and serve with the strawberries immediately.

Serves one couple. This recipe is quick and easy and takes only a couple of minutes to make. Dark chocolate makes for the most intensely flavored fondue, but you can substitute milk or white chocolate if you prefer. Be sure to give the fondue a stir every time you dip into it to keep the chocolate from scorching. If you don’t have a fondue pot, you can serve the fondue in a large ramekin or a small bowl, and it will stay fluid for about an hour. You can also try it with banana slices, tangerine segments, dried apricots, cookies, cubes of pound cake, pretzels, you name it—everything tastes great coated in chocolate. Even lips or other exposed skin, if you know what I mean.

Berry Picking

We drove out so Sauvie Island for the second weekend in a row, crossing our fingers for ripe and ready-to-pick strawberries.


The berries weren’t quite ripe last weekend. In a good year, the bushes are so heavy with fruit, you don’t know where to start picking. The strawberries practically jump into your mouth, they’re so irresistible, and you just can’t stop eating. Their fragrance is intoxicating. The strawberries are warm from the sun and sweet like sugar and so juicy. The juices stain your lips. Last year was one of the best in recent memory.

U-pick strawberries are about a dollar a pound. My husband likes to say they should weigh us before and after we go into the field, because for every berry that goes into the bucket, we eat two or three. But they haven’t caught on yet.

I can hardly wait for strawberry season every year. We usually make it home with about twenty pounds of fresh berries. This year I planned on making strawberry ice cream and popsicles, strawberry shortcakes, chocolate-dipped strawberries, strawberry charlottes, lavender-strawberry verrines, strawberry lemonade, frozen strawberry soufflés, strawberry panna cottas, and a strawberry tart, to name a few.

But this wasn’t such a good year for strawberries. And by the time we got to the field, they had been picked over. The strawberries didn’t taste like sugar. They were resistible, I didn’t feel an uncontrollable desire to eat every last one of them. We only picked a couple of pounds.


Just enough to make strawberry mousse cakelettes.


It turns out that a bad season for strawberries can be a good season for raspberries. And lucky for us, the farm we go to has both. We came upon the raspberries quite by accident, as we wandered around wondering what to do about our meager strawberry harvest. These were the best, most aromatic raspberries I’ve ever tasted. So we picked lots.


Behold, my strawberry tart turned into a raspberry tart.


Raspberry Tart
Printable Recipe

1 ¾ teaspoons gelatin
1 cup heavy cream
1 large egg yolk
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces mascarpone, softened
1 fully baked 9-inch Pâte Sucrée Tart Crust
1 ¼ pound raspberries
2 tablespoons Chambord
3 tablespoons seedless raspberry jam

Measure 1 tablespoon of water into a small bowl and slowly sprinkle over ½ teaspoon of the gelatin. Heat ½ cup of the heavy cream to a simmer in a small saucepan. Whisk together the yolk and 2 tablespoons of the sugar in a small bowl. Continue whisking while adding the hot cream in a thin stream. Transfer the mixture back to the saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, over low heat for about 5 minutes, or until it reaches 160˚F and thickens. Stir the gelatin and vanilla into the cream mixture and strain through a fine mesh sieve. Let cool to room temperature. Stir the cream mixture into the mascarpone, a little at a time. Chill over an ice bath until just beginning to thicken. Transfer to the tart crust and refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Puree 8 ounces of the raspberries in a food mill using the finest disc. If the puree has seeds, strain it through a fine mesh sieve to remove them. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar. Slowly sprinkle the remaining 1 ¼ teaspoons of gelatin over the Chambord. Place the bowl of the gelatin mixture over a small pan of simmering water and heat until melted. Stir into the raspberry mixture. Whip the remaining ½ cup of cream to stiff peaks. Stir 1/3 of the cream into the raspberry mixture, then fold in the remaining cream. Transfer to the tart crust and refrigerate for about an hour, or until set.

Arrange the remaining 12 ounces of raspberries atop the tart in a decorative pattern. Combine the jam and 2 tablespoons water in a small saucepan and heat until melted. Lightly brush the raspberries with the hot jam mixture. Cut the tart into portions and serve immediately.

Makes 1 9-inch tart, serving 8.

Apricot Floats

Oregon strawberries are amazing. They’re so soft, red all the way through to the core, and bursting with juicy sweetness. Each year, I look forward to strawberry season, it’s my favorite time of the year. My husband loves strawberries too. We like to pick our own, and we eat so many before we even get out of the field, we make ourselves sick. Yesterday, we drove all the way out to Sauvie Island for u-pick strawberries, but the strawberries weren’t ready yet. I almost cried. I had even called ahead to check, and I was assured that they were ripe. Several eager strawberry eaters were stooped among the rows, picking. But thanks to some unseasonably cool weather, the strawberries were tart, and most certainly not ripe. Almost ripe, but not ripe. Unlike all of those other people, I am willing to wait for the perfect strawberries and will go back next week.

But the farmers market did have apricots. My consolation prize. How is it that the strawberries weren’t ready, but they had apricots at the farmers market? Never mind that. Their aroma was so intoxicating, I just had to have some. Many of the apricots were already bruised and mushy. I took my time picking through the pile looking for perfect specimens, ripe but still firm. I got about a dozen before I sensed my husband’s patience wearing thin. He was already at the front of the line to pay. I didn’t plan on making anything with the apricots. I just like to eat them fresh, out of hand. And anyway, I figured they needed a day or two to get sweeter.

I didn’t plan on making anything, but I guess I had baking and, more likely, dessert, on the brain. It’s a good thing I keep homemade tart dough in the freezer. Before I knew it, I had made apricot-custard tartelettes.


The happy byproduct of the making the tartelettes was the apricot poaching liquid. And to think, I wasn’t even sure if I would bother keeping it. Until I tasted it. It was even more delicious than the tartelettes. I put soda water and vanilla ice cream on the shopping list.

Miraculously, the unseasonably cool weather cleared up and the sun smiled on us just in time for us to drink our floats!

Apricot Ice Cream Floats
Printable Recipe

1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla bean paste
4 small apricots, ripe but firm
1 quart vanilla ice cream
2 cups soda water, chilled

Combine the sugar, vanilla bean paste, and 2 cups of water in a small saucepan. Heat until the sugar dissolves. Halve the apricots and remove the pits. Add the fruit and pits to the pan, bring to a bare simmer, and simmer gently for about a minute, or until tender. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Discard the pits. Puree the apricots in a food mill using the finest disc. Add the poaching liquid to the puree and chill.

Scoop the ice cream into 4 chilled glasses. Blend together the apricot mixture and soda water and divide among the glasses. Add straws and enjoy right away.

Makes 4 servings. Apricots that are slightly tart are perfect here, as their acidity will balance the sweetness of the syrup and ice cream.