Mango Moufflet

Okay, this has to stop.

Just kidding.  It's only the beginning.  Which means one of us is going to be spending a lot more time in her walking shoes.

Mangoes were gorgeous and cheap this week - a sure sign of their juicy readiness.  Two of them got chopped up and stirred them into this happy (i.e. not unhealthy) recipe from Eating Well magazine.  Cinnamon and brown sugar played nicely with the piney sweetness of the tropical fruit, and pecans gave it crunch.

What's that in the middle, you say?  For a dozen muffins, an 8 oz. package of cream cheese got softened with the zest and juice of one lime and sweetened just a bit with powdered sugar.  These moufflets got only one middle layer instead of two because the mango chunks tended to make slicing a bit more challenging.  Again, piping is the easiest way to apply the filling.

Looking at the recipe, I was put off at first by their use of the dry ingredient "mix" but quickly realized it's just all the dry ingredients you'd usually assemble in a separate bowl. - and kind of handy if you're a do-ahead or Once-A-Month-Cooking kind of person.

1 batch of Quick-Bread Dry Mix (below)

2 large eggs

1 cup nonfat buttermilk

2/3 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons butter, melted

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups diced mango

1/2 cup chopped

Dry ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour, (see Ingredient note) or whole-wheat flour

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400°F.  Place papers in a 12-cup muffin tin.

Prepare dry ingredients/mix in one bowl.  Whisk eggs, buttermilk, brown sugar, butter, oil and vanilla in a separate bowl until well combined.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Add mango and pecans. Stir just to combine; do not overmix. Transfer batter to the prepared pan. Top with additional pecans, if desired.  Mine were ready in exactly 22 minutes and I think would bake just as well at 375, depending on your oven.

After cooling for at least 20 minutes, split them and pipe the cream cheese into the middle of your moufflet sandwich.  Then, take yourself outside for a lovely walk because, in case you haven't noticed, it's Spring!

Banana Pecan Moufflet

So, do you love to spread cream cheese on your banana bread too?  Have a bit more fun with it by piping sweetened cream cheese between layers of banana muffin!  I call this a moufflet because some believe that French word is the origin of our word, muffin, AND it reminds me of a muffaletta with all those levels of goodness. The real credit goes to my brother Ben, however, for suggesting the structure. Love ya - mean it!

I use the Williams-Sonoma banana-nut bread recipe, which my dad said reminded him of his mother's banana bread.  That being the family equivalent of a Michelin star, I added only cream cheese whipped in the mixer with lemon juice and sugar.

Later in the year, when my peeps are trying to find homes for their excess zucchini, I'm going to do the same thing.  In the autumn, it's like a mini pumpkin roll, all to yourself.  But more on that later.

Williams-Sonoma Banana-Nut Bread

Ingredients:

6 Tbs. unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 or 3 very ripe bananas (about 1 1⁄2 cups)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1⁄2 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1⁄2 tsp. salt
3⁄4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, pecans
 or hazelnuts- I used some of my stash of southside Virginia pecans

Preheat oven to 350°F. I put papers in 15 muffin tin cups.  You can also make this in a loaf pan and bake about an hour.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat together the butter and sugar on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Add the bananas and eggs and beat until smooth. Add the buttermilk and beat just until combined.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, salt and nuts. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and beat just until combined. The batter should be slightly lumpy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  FYI, today I used self-rising flour as an experimental shortcut, omitting the leavening agents, and it worked fine.

Pour the batter into the muffin tins, only about 2/3 full, and bake 30 minutes or, as usual, until golden brown.

While the muffins cool for about 20 minutes, I put an 8 ounce package of cream cheese into the mixer and whipped it into creamy goodness.  To that, add about a teaspoon and a half of lemon juice and a 1/2 cup of sugar and whip some more.

Place a muffin on its side and, using a serrated bread knife, cut it into 3 disks, leaving the muffintop as the last third.

For me, piping was the easiest way to apply the cream cheese mixture and avoid crumbs.  Also, it looks kinda pretty from the sides.

  

I might even send some to my little brother.

Cobbler, the humble pie.

I don't know about where you live, but in the Blue Ridge, we've had a lot of this lately:

I admit to having grown weary of driving in the snow, but when I saw this beautiful old barn in my recent travels, out came the camera. Later, I would want to pull up that photo of claret-colored boards and heavy silent snow and remember how scenic the Tennessee mountains were that day, how much I enjoyed having lunch with my boy, and the drive home to Virginia with my thoughts and gratitude for company.

Sometimes a recipe card is like a piece of history or a photo, with its memories attached. Take this one, for example.

It is written in my former mother-in-law's hand, butter-stained and well used. The recipe outlives her and belonged to her mother-in-law. It reflects a thrift that comes of feeding many mouths with few resources, but also a dependably good flavor. Great-Grandma Speaks raised her family on cobblers and such, but mostly a large pan of biscuits baked every morning to get them through long days of farm work. As humble as her recipe, I still remember the tears she cried when we delivered a new range to replace her worn-out old one. I like to think about all the homegrown and canned fruit she added through the years - peaches, apples, berries - and my own compromise version with one fruit on each side of the baking dish, to please any divided household.

The recipe really could not be simpler and starts with a stick of butter melted in a 1-1/2 quart casserole or 8 x 8 baking dish while the oven preheats. Then, make a batter of:
1 C. sugar
3/4 C plain flour
2 t. baking powder
1 t. vanilla (my addition)
1/2 t. cinnamon (my addition)
pinch of salt
3/4 C. milk
Pour this over the melted butter. Stir 2 cups of fruit with 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar, as desired, and pour the fruit over the batter like this:

Today, I chose tiny, wild Maine blueberries and, because they're so sweet and I'm trying to be good, I did not add any sugar (though I sneaked in several raspberries looking for a home).

Bake at 350 for one hour, until golden and bubbly. I found these adorable heart-shaped baking dishes on another trip to Michael's for an unbelievable 99 cents and note that I divided one recipe in half and cut the baking time to 45 minutes:

Now, as if this wasn't sweet and warm and gooey enough, I took a quick Google trip, looking for chocolate cobbler recipes and found the amazing and mouthwatering blog: http://cherryhillcottage.typepad.com/cherryhill_cottage/
Go there now - it will make you smile. But come right back, because there's more.

Anyhow, I'd always fancied trying chocolate cobbler and their proportions were close enough to Great-Grandma Speaks' recipe that I felt comfortable taking it for a spin. I therefore substituted Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips, leftover Madagascar milk chocolate, and some southside Virginia pecans instead of fruit, plopped in a tablespoon of Nutella for good measure, and about that, let me just say this: