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lemon-parsnip cake; a tuesdays with dorie post

Published on January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 by alisahuntsman26 Comments

The cake for today’s challenge is supposed to be a tangerine-carrot cake but after a quick check in the fridge, I could only find lemons. Then I spied the last lonely parsnip and decided that I should keep going in this direction and change it all up. We have been trying to cut back on snacking and it has been a while since I made a cake. The fresh eggs from our hens are stacking up on the counter and it was a chance to use a couple.

The change from tangerine to lemon meant that the acid level was increased and I am pretty sure that it changed the texture of the cake and made it a little denser than the description in the recipe. Even so, it was still pleasingly moist and a little firm. The parsnip mellowed during the baking and honestly, you wouldn’t know it was there unless I told you.

The only other observation I made was that the batter amount baked up just fine in my 8 inch tart pan. After greasing the ring and bottom and dusting it with flour, I set it onto a sheet pan to prevent leakage in the oven. It came out of the pan and off the bottom beautifully. This was such an easy cake to make and honestly, the potential combinations are numerous so I can see myself pulling this recipe out again when I need a quick and foolproof cake!

Please consider picking up a copy of Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan and baking along with us. To join in on the fun, visit the website and see how the other bakers made out with this recipe!

cornmeal-currant biscotti; a tuesdays with dorie post

Published on January 5, 2016January 4, 2016 by alisahuntsman3 Comments

It has been a while since I baked with the TWD gang. The holiday season is generally a hectic one for me and with all that I was baking for gifts, I just decided not to bake anything more, because baking it means eating it and I have gained more weight than I care to admit at this point. (thanks menopause…)

Even so, I am a sucker for anything that claims to be a biscotti and to make matters worse, I apparently hoard cornmeal. When I checked the pantry for cornmeal, I found a complete rainbow; white, yellow, blue, roasted yellow and bloody butcher red. A quick look at the different colors led me to choose between the organic blue and the organic bloody butcher and since the latter was more coarsely ground, it was my first choice.

Stone ground cornmeal is always more coarse than the regular grind but the bloody butcher had a large range in particle sizes and makes it very easy to see the meal in the dough. This particular batch was grown and ground right here in Virginia and it is from Blenheim Organic Gardens which is located in Washington’s Birthplace, yes, that is the name of the town and no, I did not make that up! They come to the Williamsburg Farmers Market when it is open and I look forward to the return of the Market in March.

There was a box of currants lurking in the pantry and since they were a little dry, I added several tablespoons of dark rum to them and heated them so that they would plump up. To offset the extra liquid, I cut out the extra egg yolk and that made the dough slightly drier than I would have preferred. However, now that we have our own egg laying hens, I hate the thought of wasting an egg white. The recipe calls for the dough to be formed into a log and cut into scone-like wedges. After asking one of the other TWD bakers how they worked out like that, I decided to go with a slice and bake log which is what most of the recipes I read called for. The result was a crunchy, crumbly cookie.

The weather took a sudden turn towards winter today and turning on the oven was comforting in many ways and so was the scent of cookies baking-although, I really do not need to be eating cookies at this point! The bottom line, I love currants and cornmeal but it is not likely that I would think to make these again, at least not with this recipe. Personally, I would like them to be a little sweeter and a little crispier. Either way, these cookies are a lovely accompaniment to a cup of hot tea, especially on a chilly day!

To see how the other bakers fared, visit the Tuesdays with Dorie website and consider baking along with us!

Food Bloggers Cookie Exchange 2015: Springerle

Published on December 16, 2015December 16, 2015 by alisahuntsmanLeave a comment

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Every year as the holiday season approaches, I read about cookie swaps. In person, in the mail, cookie swaps all over the country! This year I made sure I would be part of the fun and I signed up for The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap. For the last 5 years, Lindsay from Love and Olive Oil and Julie of The Little Kitchen have put this event together and all of the proceeds go to Cookies for Kids Cancer.

The process is simple, sign up, make a small donation and wait for your swap matches to arrive via email. Then you bake cookies, 1 dozen for each of your three matches, ship them and wait for the cookies to arrive on your doorstep.

Choosing a cookie recipe was easy and I made a big batch of springerle using the special rolling pin Darry brought back from Germany. Springerle are a traditional Christmas cookie from Germany, flavored with lemon and anise and rolled out with special pins or pressed into molds.

Some recipes call for sprinkling anise seeds on the tray rather than adding them to the dough. Because I was curious, I added seeds to half the dough. Once I began rolling the cookies out, I could see why it isn’t the best option; it makes it harder to get the details of the mold if seeds are near the surface of the dough.

Once the cookies are rolled and cut, they need to dry for at least 8 hours and up to 24 so that the details are preserved during baking. The pin Darry brought back from Germany has 12 different molds on it.

Some day I hope to collect some of the traditional plaque molds, but until I do, I will use my vintage chocolate molds. They actually made highly detailed cookies and I wish I had made more of them…

Since I was in full holiday mode, I experimented with painting some of the cookies. If you decide to paint them, do so after the drying period and right before they go into the oven.

And because this was part of a cookie swap, lets get down to the details. For each of my matches, I packed the cookies into metal tins with tissue paper.

Here are all three of the tins waiting to go out in the mail to my three matches. The exciting part about this is that three people sent me cookies and I am enjoying them immensely!

From Monica of Pass the Cocoa, I received chocolate wafer sandwiches with a peanut butter filling.

From Stacy of What the Cupcake? came a tub of flourless chocolate peppermint cookies. Can you believe she tied each one in a little bag.

And lastly, from Laney of Life is but a Dish came some classic chocolate chip cookies.

All stacked up and ready for snacking…I may have to hide these from Darry. What I really want to know is how the three of you knew to send me chocolate?

To make springerle, visit House on the Hill and bake a batch of their Perfection Springerle Cookies. And if you are in the market for some molds or a pin, House on the Hill has beautiful molds and so do these sites; cookiemold.com and fancyflours.com.

Williamsburg Farmers Market; a fall walk of the market

Published on December 8, 2015December 8, 2015 by alisahuntsmanLeave a comment

Walking along Duke of Gloucester Street and the farmers market on a Saturday morning is something I truly missed when I was working full time. My schedule shifts included Saturday mornings and I missed most of the spring and all of summer at the market.

Late fall in Virginia means lots of greens and roots to choose from. Kale, chard, beets and turnips were abundant.

There is also no shortage of humor at the market. Look closely, it made me chuckle.

So if the knife sharpener made me chuckle, this made me laugh, a lot. If you need some worm castings for your garden, they’ve got you covered.

When in Virginia, only Virginia Peanuts will do! They are larger than most and very popular in our house.

The Middle Peninsula of Virginia is part of the Chesapeake Bay area and that means Blue Crabs, freshly caught, steamed and ready to eat.

It wouldn’t be fall without pumpkins and there was no shortage of them that morning.

One of our favorite stops is the mushroom booth. They sell a nice variety of wild mushrooms.

On this day, they had Hen of the Woods (above), Lion’s Mane, Oysters, and Shiitake.

Did you know the Williamsburg Farmers Market is a producers only market? Virginia grown and that makes it fresh and local!

These were being sold as pumpkins on branches for use in floral arrangements but the truth is, they are a variety of inedible eggplant.

It’s true, pie fixes everything, try some and see for yourself!

Lovely greens for a lovely day at the market. Most of the vendors come each week but some come monthly or every other week. For a complete list of vendors, visit the website.

gratitude and tomatillo jam

Published on December 5, 2015December 5, 2015 by alisahuntsman2 Comments

Every year at Thanksgiving, as we gathered around the table-our family and my cousin’s family together, we would ask each other to share what we were grateful for that year. Kids being kids meant that some of the answers were comical, but in the end, we were grateful for each other and the time together. This year, Darry and I found ourselves on our own, one of the downfalls of relocating. We didn’t let that stop us from having a lovely dinner and yes, it included the traditional trashcan turkey. We also had the pleasure of cooking some vegetables that we grew ourselves.

The weather was unseasonably warm this year and we spent much of the day working in the garden. We pulled out the frost damaged plants, mulched leaves with the lawn mower and layered the beds with straw, coffee grinds, compost and the leaves we had gathered. When we sat down to dinner, we were grateful to have sweet potatoes and greens from our garden on the table. It was also pleasing to know that cabbage, cauliflower, kale and broccoli as well as brussel sprouts and collards are growing in the beds and will be on our dinner table soon as well.

One of the plants we pulled out of the bales and cut up for composting was a cluster of tomatillos; one purple and two yellow. Tomatillos are one of those things that you either love or wonder why anyone would want the stupid things. They are sticky when you peel the husks off and unless you are making salsa or green sauce, they aren’t very appealing. Even so, each year as I plant my garden, I almost always sow a few tomatillo seeds.

A member of the nightshade family, tomatillos are related to tomatoes but at the same time, they are so different that you will wonder if they really are relatives. While tomatoes do not need a companion plant to pollinate them, tomatillos do so if you plant them in your garden, be sure to plant more than one. Tomatillo vines will sprawl so be sure to give them a sturdy structure to lean on. They will also produce over a long season and right up to the first heavy frost which means you can have them throughout the summer and into early fall.

As we gathered all of the fruits, we realized we had enough to make a batch of something and I chose turn them into a sweet jam rather than the typical salsa. My triple batch of jam cooked up quickly and is now sealed in jars ready to be shared with friends and family, a token of our gratitude.

Tomatillo Jam

Makes 1 pint and the recipe can easily be doubled or tripled

1 pound tomatillos, washed with the husks removed

1/4 teaspoon chili flakes or 1 small fresh chili, finely diced

juice and zest of one lemon

1 1/4 cup sugar

Cut the tomatillos into quarters and place them in a heavy bottomed sauce pot with the remaining ingredients. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to prevent sticking. Allow the jam to simmer until the tomatillos soften. Using a hand held masher, press the tomatillos to break them up. Continue to cook until the mixture reaches 210 degrees. Pour the jam into sterilized jars and seal in a water bath or place it into a storage container and keep in the refrigerator.

This post is one of a series that Melissa of Corbin in the Dell and I are publishing simultaneously. To read her post, visit her blog.

stop-light tomato pickles

Published on November 30, 2015 by alisahuntsmanLeave a comment

Having a garden means you have a tremendous amount of patience. How else can you explain the process of waiting for the right time to put seeds in the ground, waiting for them to germinate, waiting for the plant to mature; wait, wait, hurry up and wait. Participating in this process also makes you an optimist. Gardeners are always looking ahead to the harvest, convinced that they will be blessed with an abundance.

Composting is a vital part of gardening. It enriches the soil and replaces what is removed every time we harvest food from the beds. As a gardener, I cannot imagine not having a few piles aging for future use. One important rule of composting is not adding seeds unless you want those seeds to sprout and grow in your garden. We do our best to follow this rule and I always compost weed plants in a pile by themselves. Usually, the only seeds that make it into the compost are from foods we eat or grow.

My love affair with cherry tomatoes falls into this category. As a devoted salad eater, I always have cherry tomatoes on hand and when they are not ripening in my garden, I pick up the little plastic containers from the store. My favorite pick is the miniature heirloom tomatoes from Trader Joe’s. A rainbow of color ranging from green to yellow and orange to brown, these beauties actually taste like tomatoes when compared to the large ones. Sadly, I usually end up with more than I can eat and some end up taking a trip out to the compost pile.

As a result, we have an endless stream of tomato seeds germinating in our compost piles. We always let a few of them grow and because we never know what they are, we generally call them surprise tomatoes. This year, we had quite the haul: miniature plums, red cherries, full sized plums and brown kumatos. As the frost approached, we made the decision to pick as many as we could. Actually, the first real frost came late here, and on November 20th, we finally had the full freeze to kill the vines.

With the holidays approaching, we decided to pickle a large quantity of the cherries so that we could give them as gifts. It was a fun way to spend a Sunday in the kitchen with Darry. With this easy recipe courtesy of my good friend Melissa of Corbin in the Dell, we gathered the ingredients and supplies.

Darry is a reluctant hand model but he also likes to humor me. Here he is peeling cloves of garlic to place in each of the jars.

We picked and sorted the tomatoes by color so that we could pack each jar with a variety of colors, just like a stop light. (Sounds better than traffic light)

Each of the jars has fresh basil leaves, lemon peel, pepper corns, chili flakes and mustard seeds to flavor the pickles.

Vinegar and water are heated with salt and a little sugar and then poured over the tomatoes. The jars are topped off with a little olive oil and then heated in a waterbath to seal them. Ours are ready to go and we are hoping that we have enough for everyone on our gift list!

hibiscus in the garden

Published on October 24, 2015 by alisahuntsman6 Comments

When Darry and I first became active with the Master Gardeners, I had an opportunity to plan a small herb garden. The beds were arranged in a circle, like spokes on a wheel and each bed featured a different collection of herbs. To fill out the wheel, I used one bed to grow edible flowers. It was then that a small obsession of mine became obvious and every year, I have plants in the garden just for the flowers.

Hibiscus Sabdariffa, commonly called Roselle, has earned a spot in my garden each year and not only are the flowers pretty, but they are easy to care for and produce many blooms. The foliage will look familiar to seasoned vegetable gardeners because hibiscus resembles another popular garden plant; okra. And like okra, and other hibiscus varieties, the flowers are short-lived and are only open for a day. While some may be disappointed by this quick life, if you are hoping to make tea from the flowers, you want them to close quickly so you can harvest the best part; the calyx.

The flowers start out yellow with a hint of blush on the tip of each petal and as the day wears on, they darken to a beautiful shade of peachy-pink.

The plants bloom in succession starting at the bottom of the stalk moving towards the tip of the branch. If you remove each blossom as it closes, you will encourage the plant to bloom more. It takes a lot of blooms to make jam or syrup but for a cup of tea, you will need just a handful. The calyx needs to be picked before it forms a seed pod so you will have to check each day for the spent blooms. When I pick the blooms, I lay them on a tray and place them in the oven to dry using the heat generated by the oven light.

Finding seeds for these lovely plants is not hard, if you know a gardener who is growing them, ask them for a fully formed seed pod. Each year I save a few pods for the next year. Otherwise, my favorite source for seed is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. To learn more about hibiscus, read about them on the wikipedia website,

vanilla-peach panna cotta; a tuesdays with dorie post

Published on July 27, 2015 by alisahuntsman14 Comments

The intense heat of summer subsided a bit this week and I spent some time baking at home again. One of the things I am enjoying about preparing the recipes from Baking Chez Moi as well as Baking with Julia is the diversity; sometimes we bake and sometimes we cook and this week, the panna cotta was prepared on the stove top. The recipe calls for a mango puree to be poured into the bottom of the cup but I had a basket of ripe, local peaches sitting on the counter and I could not help myself.

Panna cotta is an Italian dessert made from sweetened cream and milk that have been set with gelatin. Usually, the cream mixture is poured into a mold, chilled to set and then turned out onto a plate so that it is a free-standing dessert. This recipe calls for pouring the mixture over a puree and serving it in the cup. The only problem; my husband cannot eat dairy products. Because he is such a sweet freak, I decided to make it with coconut cream and almond milk rather than the heavy cream and milk called for in the recipe. On my last trip to the grocery store, I saw local peaches being sold by the basket and I am a sucker for fresh peaches!

Trader Joe’s sells an extra thick and creamy coconut cream which stood in for the heavy cream beautifully and while it added a lovely flavor, it was not at all over powering. While I also substituted almond milk for the whole milk, it did not add a tremendous amount of flavor that I could detect. Overall, it was okay. Perhaps it is just that I am not much of a Jell-o fan and this recipe reminded me of a milky jello but the peach part was tasty.

While the weather was pleasant (in as far as it can be in the south mid-July) this week, it was awful last week, truly awful and I did not make any effort to bake the Swedish Oatmeal Hardtack from Baking with Julia. When the weather cooled off this week, I mixed up a batch and I am happy to say that this recipe is a keeper!

The ingredient list calls for quick cooking oats which are something that I never have in my pantry. Oatmeal is a favorite ingredient of mine and I use it in cookies, breads and of course, hot cereal on cold winter days. At least I did until I discovered the multi grain blend that Trader Joe’s sells. The blend is made from rolled, whole rye, barley, oats and wheat and it looks just like oatmeal but it has a lot more flavor from the different grains. Hardtack is essentially a cracker and typical for cracker recipes, this one called for mostly shortening with a little butter added for flavor. Because I was making just half of the recipe, I opted for just the shortening, substituting the single tablespoon of butter with additional shortening however, I do not keep white hydrogenated shortening in my pantry either. To make these crackers, I used virgin coconut oil which was solid in my kitchen and I loved the flavor it added. If I make these again, I think a sprinkle of coarse salt over the top would be perfect.
Think you would like to bake along with us? Visit the Tuesdays with Dorie website, pick up a copy of either book and get baking! To see how the other bakers did with these recipes, visit the LYL pages for the panna cotta and the hard tack.

milk and honey bread; a food52.com community pick

Published on March 28, 2015 by alisahuntsmanLeave a comment

It’s no secret that maintaining a food blog means doing some serious time in the kitchen. Whether you create your own recipes or just use recipes you find, if you want to be considered a credible source, you have to spend time in the kitchen preparing food. And everybody knows that a blog post about food without photos is pointless so do not forget about the time it takes to style the photo and get the shot. On a typical blogwork day, I can easily spend 2-3 hours from start to finish and if you count the time I spend just perfecting a recipe, it can easily be spread out over several days with as much as 10 hours spent just on the recipe. We won’t even mention the cost of ingredients or the fact that I have not monetized my blog and earn nothing for my efforts. Seems like a pointless activity, doesn’t it?

So why would someone pursue blogging as a pastime? Personally, I enjoy the process of creating recipes and then photographing them. Keeping a blog also makes sharing these recipes so much easier too. When I get a request, I can simply send a link via email. But the biggest plus, the sense of community that comes from sharing recipes. How can that be? It is a fact that using computers and the internet tends to isolate us but they also give us the opportunity to communicate with others around the world. Of course, you do need to have readers to truly get that sense of belonging and luckily, there are many online groups and websites that bloggers and even non-bloggers can join. While some websites that allow users to post recipes freely cannot always be trusted, there are plenty of them that can.

One of my favorite websites to search for recipes and information as well as post my own recipes to is food52.com. Many of the articles posted on the website are written by well-known cookbook authors and chefs. By creating an account, anyone can upload recipes to the website and create personal collections of recipes found on the site. For a person with little interest in blogging but a desire to get their recipes online, this is a great way to gain exposure. The website features a theme based contest regularly and anyone with an account can participate, something I have done on numerous occasions. The theme changes each time and you never know what it will be; canned fish, beer, Thanksgiving pies and honey are a few past themes that come to mind.

After the submission period ends, the editors of the website cull through the recipes and select a group of recipes that they title “Community Picks” and give the members a chance to test them. On a recent afternoon, I signed up to test a bread recipe that had been chosen as a Community Pick from the “Best recipe with honey” contest. While the website does offer a prize for the two finalists of each contest, the testing does not but if you follow through and send in your testing notes, they may get included in the for the recipe.

Since I am a member of the website, I chose to make the Milk and Honey bread. When I saw the photo, I immediately thought of Hokkaido Milk bread and was reminded of all of my trips to the Korean Bakeries in Atlanta that sell a similar bread. Tall, narrow loaves with fluffy interiors that make divine toast. However, this bread was actually more like a loaf of brioche; tighter crumb, richer flavor but delicious toasted.

My notes went off to the editors and while they did not use them, I am including them here:

A quick glance at the ingredient list for this recipe might have you questioning the seemingly random numbers but to an experienced baker, it means that the amounts are exact and precise. The truth is the art of baking is steeped in math and science and serious bakers know that a scale is a necessity, not a luxury and when weighing in grams, there is little room for surprises.

The shape of the resulting loaf reminds me of Hokkaido Milk bread but that is where the similarity ends and it is actually produced in a manner more like a brioche dough. It yields a rich bread with a tight crumb, lightly scented with honey and perfectly suited for any number of uses. Toasted with marmalade or drenched with custard for French toast, this bread is a wonderful addition to your baking arsenal.

For those of you that do not have access to a scale that weighs in grams, here are a few conversions for you. The 278 grams of milk is slightly less than 1 1/4 cup while the rye flour and the toasted wheat germ are 3 tablespoons each. The 420 grams of bread flour translates to nearly 3 cups but do yourself a favor and hold back 1/4 cup, you may not need it, I didn’t. Keep an eye on the oven, I dropped the temperature to 375 and the loaf baked in 40-45 minutes but I had to use a foil tent after 20 minutes.

My results with the recipe were a little mixed and I actually prepared the bread twice. Does this mean the recipe is not good? Absolutely NOT; my second batch of bread was spot on and quickly devoured by my coworkers. There are so many things that can cause different results that I would say this recipe is worth preparing and to get the proper results, follow these two suggestions; hold back some of the flour and lower the oven temperature. Flour is one of those ingredients that can vary from region to region and I don’t mean just by the growing region, the area you bought it in can matter too. Here in the south, we tend to use softer wheats while up north, hard wheats are more common so knowing what your favorite brand is milled from helps. And as always, oven temperatures can vary greatly because of calibration or due to elevation and just because my oven set to 350 works for me does not mean yours will work for you. My suggestion to home bakers is to always use an oven thermometer and a timer and if you live in a higher elevation, knowing the needed adjustments is crucial for success.
As I mentioned, I have entered contests on the site. A couple of my recipes have reached the finalist stage:

Masala Spiced Pear Pie, Best Thanksgiving Pie

Blackberry Cornbread Buckle, Best Buckle, Slump, Grunt, Crumble, Cobbler, Crisp, Sonker, Pandowdy, and/or Betty

Some of my recipes have also been chosen as Community Picks and to see that list, here is a link. But the best news of all, I actually won the Best recipe with Beer contest, and of course, it was with a bundt cake recipe! Yes, you can have your beer and cake it too…

Gingerbread Beer Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze

Now for those of you who are wondering, no I did not get paid to write this post, I also did not receive a shipment of kitchen gadgets or ingredients for posting it. In the past, I have received some lovely gifts of Oxo kitchen gadgets for making it to the finalist stage. However, I am just grateful for the chance to belong to a “community” of food lovers who enjoy sharing recipes and information as well as a little friendly competition.