Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

Tis the time of the year where my parents garden begins delivering they're wonderful treats to us who are waiting.  First for us, comes the rhubarb.  I love rhubarb.  My parents always grew rhubarb when I was a kid and we would eat it like celery (after trimming the leaves obviously, since we're all still alive.)   So, when I went over to their house with the little birthday girl, I took as much as I could get.  Originally I was going to make  a pie, but I don't have a rolling pin at the moment.  So I thought maybe a crumble.  I don't have any rolled oats!  So I settled on a Cobbler!

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

• 1 cup  + 1 tsp Flour


• 2 tbsp sugar


• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder


• 1/4 tsp salt


• 1/4 cup butter


• 1/2 cup milk


• 2 1/2 cup fresh rhubarb (trimmed, and cut in to 1 inch strips)


• 2/3 cup sugar


• 1 1/2 tbsp quick cooking tapioca


• 2 tsp lemon juice


• 2 tbsp water


• 1 tsp rum extract


• 2 1/2 cup strawberries (trimmed and cut in pieces)

Preheat the oven to 425

First mix up your cobbler dough.  Put the flour, 2 tbsp sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl.  mix it up, then cut in the butter until it takes on a coarse crumbly texture.  Stir in the milk afterwords.

In a saucepan, combine the rhubarb, 2/3 cup sugar, tapioca, lemon juice, water and rum extract and on low heat bring it to a boil.  Stir it often, sugar is nasty if it burns.  Once its come to a boil let it simmer for 2 minutes covered.  This will let the rhubarb soften up nicely.  Once that's done take it off the heat and put in the strawberries.  Mix it until its coated and put it in a buttered pan or glass baking dish.   This recipe yields about an 8X10 baking pan so if you have company coming you might think about doubling up the recipe.

Put the cobbler dough on top and spread it as best as possible.  It won't be perfect, and it won't cover the entire wet mixture but it will be pretty close. Bake it for 25 to 30 minutes and you got cobbler!

Canneles

An easy at home variety of the wonderfully delicious french Canneles!  I've made these a few times now and every time I have to fight myself from eating the entire pan!  I'm working on finding variations to this recipe which i will share after I test a few things!

• 1 cup milk


• 2 tablespoons butter


• 1/2 cup flour


• 1 tablespoon sugar


• 1 egg


• 1 egg yolk


• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1/2 tablespoon rum

heat the milk and butter just to a boil.  while doing this mix the flour and sugar, then add the eggs, then add that mix to the hot milk.   You're going to want to strain it after this.  It will make a very thin mix, like a crepe batter almost.  Add the extract and rum (or rum extract whatever works yer fancy) and refrigerate it overnight.    Pour it in to mini budnt pans, preferably silicon ones but I have yet to find them.  I haven't seen any silicon baking sheets as of late! I wonder if they've been pulled off the market?  Oh well.  Preheat the oven to 450, bake for 15 minutes.  This makes the outside nice and crunchy.  It will be very dark so don't be worried about that, its supposed to look near burnt.  After 15 minutes, lower the head to 350 and bake for another 45 minutes.

Hello, Cupcake!

I went to the local bakery supply store last night with a good friend because I wanted to pick up some mint wafers to make a chocolate mint cookie recipe  While we were there I we saw this book with the cutest Westie cupcakes on the front.  We though, OMG  LOLA! (her dog is a westie named lola l-o-l-a- Lola).   I stopped and flipped through this particular New York Times bestseller and we marvelled at these amazing cupcake ideas in the book, and how easy they actually were to create!  I just had to have it.  We then sat in the car drooling on these pictures while we picked one design in particular and proceeded to pick up the needed supplies to bake it!



We made the cupcake batter from scratch and probably should have made the frosting from scratch as well but we were on a limited time frame.  We baked, we decorated, we ate! It was a ton of fun and the smile on my daughters face this morning when she saw her breakfast was a full fledged panda bear make out of entirely edible contents was worth the effort.