It's early June and the weather is mild. Summer hasn't officially started and won't start for several days, but it certainly seems like we are in for a mild summer over the next few months. Of course, that could change with one big week of intense heat. If that happens, I'll make lots of ice cream, and smoothies, and slushes, and even some soda syrups to add to tonic water, club soda or seltzer.
This coming weekend, we have Swedish visiting cakes and Swedish oatmeal cookies on the menu. These oatmeal cookies are a bit different from what one usually thinks of with an oatmeal cookie. Trust me, though, they are really good. And they have little tiny chocolate chips in them which are an added special touch.
I just now selected and posted the menu for the following weekend. It will be blueberry cinnamon snack cake and farfalle pasta salad with salami and balsamic vinaigrette.
When I first developed the blueberry cinnamon snack cake, I had to decide first of all whether to use wild blueberries or regular domesticated blueberries. I chose wild. They are smaller and they have less water in them. Then I had to decide how I was going to incorporate them. If you put cold blueberries in a cake, that brings down the temperature of the batter and makes getting a thorough bake much more difficult. So I began to also make sure my blueberries were not just at room temperature but actually warmer than that, courtesy of a quick stint in the microwave. After warming in the microwave, they tend to release a little juice. So I spread them out on paper towels and cover them with more paper towels and gently roll them around until there is no liquid. This "no juice" is an important thing because I don't like my blueberry snack cake to be blue! I want no juice mixing in with that batter. That also means that the mixing process has to be gentle so that none of the blueberries are damaged because that would cause them to release juice. Is there sometimes a little juice that is let out? Yes! No matter how hard one can try, there are always times when things don't come out exactly as hoped.
But in the end, hopefully I have a non-blue cake with lots of wild blueberries in it.
The pasta salad is one of my favorite things to have in warm weather. It is a cold salad. And I spent a lot of time working out the balance of flavors until I had just what I wanted. A bowl of this salad is an entire meal and perfect to have on a warm summer evening.
So take a look and order what seems interesting and delicious to you.
And in the meantime, have a great week!
I've been meaning to try dried blueberries because full-size blueberries can be too bulky and wet a lot of the time, but wild blueberries don't have as much flavor, and we have a picky blueberry fan in the house. I've heard good things about making wine from dried blueberries instead of fresh, but I'm not sure about baking. Have you tried it? Do you have any opinions?
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of dried fruits. Whether eating them as a snack or baked inside something, I've never been able to develop a liking for any dried fruit. But I imagine that if they are in something that has a lot of liquid, that actually might served to hydrate them a bit, especially if the dough or batter is left to sit overnight in the fridge.
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