Something to try tomorrow morning.

I love maple syrup. Everyone else in my house loves maple syrup. But sometimes it's nice to switch things up. And if switching things up means we eat a little more fruit and a little less sugar? Well, that's nice, too.

This would probably work with any berry you happened to have bouncing around in your freezer. We always have blueberries in my freezer because a certain small person likes frozen blueberries on everything. If berries are in season, you can use fresh, but you'll want to add a bit of water (maybe ¼ cup) at the beginning and mash them a bit with a spoon to encourage them to give up some juice.

Blueberry Sauce for Pancakes (and whatever else you might want to make more blueberry.)

2 cups frozen blueberries

¼ cup maple syrup

1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour

¼ cup water

Put blueberries and maple syrup in a small saucepan over low heat. Cook uncovered until the berries release enough juice to swim freely.

Mix the flour and water together to form a slurry. Add the slurry to the berries and bring to a simmer until mixture thickens. Pour freely over yummy pancakes, or maybe pound cake, or ...

Comments

Butter(less) Chickpeas

On Monday morning I got a call from a client, warning that my services would be needed soon. The threat of labor makes me pretty efficient. I filled and ran the dishwasher, cleaned the sink, took the boys grocery shopping, got the groceries put away, fed the boys lunch, emptied the dishwasher, made snack and dinner for the boys, filled the dogs' water, cleaned the dog' ears, and put the flowers in the vase. I spent the rest of Monday at the birth, watching a skilled nurse-midwife facilitate the VBAC my client wanted despite circumstances that might have sent some providers running for the operating room. It was a great birth, the baby was perfect and I'm glad I was there to witness it. But it meant that I didn't get to bed until 2:00 in the morning. When I say that I am a morning person, I do not mean 2:00 in the morning. A mere five hours later the sun was up and my children were up and my husband was getting ready to leave for work. I had a follow-up scheduled for...

Making Christmas

Years ago, when my parents married, my mother asked my father what he would like her to make for Christmas. He asked for Julekake, a Scandinavian Christmas bread. It was common in the bakeries in my father's childhood Chicago, but it was more difficult to find in the small Army towns where my father was posted, so my mother found a recipe, and baked her own. We ate it with eggs or bacon or sausage every Christmas breakfast of my childhood. My mother baked simple round loaves studded with raisins and candied cherries. When I grew up I swapped out dried cherries for the candied ones. I baked it in the oven of my boyfriend's apartment before I went to share Christmas with his family, inhaled the scent of them to make it Christmas when the traditions around me were not my own. I've discovered that the fruit is not mandatory, though I'd never leave it out. A braid is traditional, and I'll make a braided loaf when I have time, though for gift giving I ...

Brown-Butter Buttercream Birthday Cake

Brown-Butter Swiss Meringue Buttercream I have come here today to confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned. In full knowledge of the importance of birthday cakes , I did willfully try to get away with making a pound cake for a friend's birthday because I didn't want to be bothered with frosting a layer cake. My feet were only set back on the path to righteousness by a stern rebuke from my friend's husband. (Okay, not a stern rebuke, but "statement of my friend's mild preference" seems sort of anti-climactic, doesn't it?) And, as it turned out, a different friend of mine had spurred a thread about brown butter over on Facebook and I had filed away the phrase "brown-butter buttercream" for future use. So I decided that if I was going to frost a cake I was going to do it with style. The first step is to brown the butter, which is a simple matter so long as you're willing to hang around the kitc...

Bread, Wine, Salt

Search This Blog