Peach and Blackberry Shortbread Cobbler

Last summer, my bike commute ran past a veritable wall of blackberry bushes. 

Over the course of two months, I picked around 8 litres of blackberries. I did make a couple of pies over the summer and fall, but I froze most of the berries for the winter. 

Which is now. Today, I made this:

Peach and Blackberry Cobbler with Spiced Hazelnut-Pistachio Shortbread. At what point are you supposed to stop naming ingredients in the title of a recipe? Anyway. 

I make this a lot, because I'm not a fan of the more biscuit-like toppings on traditional cobblers. It's based on this recipe from Fine Cooking. 

I also froze just-on-the-edge-of-rotting peaches. Blanched, peeled, and sliced before freezing so I could throw them right into a colander with the blackberries, like this:

I'd say there's five cups of frozen fruit in there, but it sinks down to three with all the moisture it loses during maceration and thawing. 

I want the fruit filling completely thawed before it goes in the oven, but I like mixing the sugar/spices in while the individual bits of fruit are still frozen, so everything can get evenly distributed and I don't mash the fruit to a pulp. Putting the mix in a strainer collects all the juice that drips out, which I also use. But that's for later. 

A quarter-cup of sugar, tablespoon of lemon zest, a cut-up vanilla bean, and a teaspoon of kosher salt go into the frozen filling. 

Mixed up!

Now the topping. Starting here with a half-cup each of butter and brown sugar in the pot.

I do not have an electric mixer of any kind. I could get one, but then I think I'd go bankrupt from making too many desserts, so it's best to keep it the way it is. 

Mixing by hand is not fun, though. That "light and fluffy" stage of creaming butter and sugar together rarely happens in my house. 

This is as good as it gets. 

With the addition of three egg yolks...

...And also flour, finely ground toasted hazelnuts and pistachios, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.

Fully mixed in:

What is now essentially cookie dough gets dumped onto plastic wrap (or in my case a large ziplock because I don't have any). 

Trying to just touch the plastic, roll the dough into a log. Kinda like sushi? After rolling up, tie the ends and throw it in the freezer for two hours.

This is what the filling looks like after thawing. 

The red liquid on the right is the blackberry and peach juice, plus a bit of the sugar, lemon, and salt in the filling, which drained out as everything came up to room temperature. I boil this down into syrup, which you can put on top of ice cream on top of the cobbler. Or just eat with a spoon, whatever. 

After not-quite-two-hours because I am very impatient, here's what the cookie-log looks like after slicing, about a half-inch per slice.

These get placed on top of the peaches and blackberries...

...And baked for 30ish minutes at 375 until the cookies display cracks on top and start to brown. 

Summer in the middle of winter, ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa.

Okay, so winter here isn't that bad, but still. 

Kabocha Squash Cinnamon Rolls

I did a lot this week. 

I finished a book (while trying to ignore my messy apartment).

I officially switched from working at a winery (and occasionally a food truck) to working at a pasta restaurant. Glamour shots from my ride back from work below.

Last night, I made myself go out after work to shake out some worries and loosen up. I danced so much that my neck, shoulders, knees, and hamstrings all ached this morning. 

So I made cinnamon rolls and used up the last bit of squash in the fridge. 

This has happened before, if any of you remember this post from a while back. There's a definite correlation between how frequently I go dancing and how frequently I make cinnamon rolls. In any case, this time I remembered to take pictures during the actual mixing and rolling process. 

Hello, Pot. 

We start with the squash. In case you aren't familiar with Kabocha, here's a handy guide. I find the sweeter, orange kabocha the absolute best squash to puree because its flesh seems to have very few strings. 

Since we're making cinnamon rolls, I don't care how much butter goes into the greasing of the squash for the roasting. Not that I usually care how much butter I consume. That happens to be a weakness of mine.

Clean up the apartment while the squash is roasting. 

Gorgeously roasted, time to sieve it!

This is what happens when you mash roasted Kabocha through a fine sieve. How cool is that??

Okay. Squash sieved. Now the dough. 

I'm working from this recipe from Joy the Baker, and this one from the Sprouted Kitchen. JTB for the basic roll recipe, and SK for adjusted moisture amounts. 

First up, milk, butter, and sugar: heat on the stove until warm and sugar is dissolved.

Then yeast. 

Is that the milky way? No? Are you sure?

Then flour. (Wait - I need to talk about this flour.) 

I am so excited about this. For months I've been mixing store-bought all-purpose flour with the rougher, grainier soft and hard red wheat flours from Longspell Point Farms. BUT, now I've got my hands on their fine, lovely, red wheat pastry flour. I love buying local. 

Now squash! In!

And a little more flour! Possibly I didn't follow directions to the letter, but I needed a little more than four cups to get my dough to Joy's consistency in her recipe. This could also be due to the flour's lower water-retension capacity.

Find a warm spot... hmmm, this'll do. Now wait an hour. 

After an hour, it didn't really look too risen, but that's okay. I forged ahead anyway and mixed in the rest of the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Onto a surface, and knead, knead, knead!

Smack and roll flat, 

 butter up, 

and sugar that dough.

(1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg)

Now roll!

And slice and place. Nobody slices in perfect rounds, don't worry.

If you want perfectly round rolls, I suggest putting individual slices in the cups of muffin tins. 

There's butter, brown sugar, and honey in the bottoms of these pans, by the way.

A sprinkle of chopped walnuts, and they're ready for some heat.

In the oven at 375F for 20ish minutes. 

Ta-daaaaa! 

Enjoy, folks. Have a piping hot roll, wrap up, go out, visit a vineyard, birdwatch, be merry.

Walnut Pudding

The weather has turned rainy and cold up here. Thank goodness I managed to make the most of the last sunny days. 

If you haven't been to Kejimkujik National Park, I recommend it.

 It's really a great place for the soul to start hunkering down and getting warm for the winter.

Walnut pudding is good for that too.

Pudding often gets a miss these days, since I think most people only get it in plastic cups in packs of twelve for school lunches. I love it, though. It can be warm or cold, thick or thin, savory or sweet. 

In this case, I wanted a Fall dessert for right after Thanksgiving. I'm mostly combining a whole bunch of Joy the Baker's many pudding recipes, the main one of which is this one. No cornstarch here, though, because I forgot to get some.

Here's what you need: whole milk, an egg, honey, salt, vanilla, and walnut butter.

Farms making cameos here include:

Jordan's Natural Acres (eggs)

Foxhill Cheesehouse (milk)

Limerock Orchards (walnut butter)

Brandt's Bees (honey)

Amounts are as follows:

2 cups milk

1/3 cup honey

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup nut butter

1 egg

 If, as in my case, you don't have quite enough walnut butter (you need about half a cup), you can always put some walnuts in the blender with a little of the milk and blitz until smooth.

Throw all the ingredients into your one big pot and whisk like your life/autumnal happiness depends on it. When the mixture is smooth, switch to a wooden spoon or spatula, whatever will get into all the corners. 

Taste occasionally. I added more honey. 

When the mixture is glossy and your chosen stirring implement starts to leave a trail behind it, you can call it quits and stop stirring. The pudding may still look runny, but will thicken as it cools. 

This is so good with nutmeg on top. I like mine warm, but it's good chilled as well.

 Here's to mist, rain, sleet, and spiderwebs.