Homemade Vanilla Extract

Waiting...

After making the sunflower butter, I had 2 leftover vanilla beans. Because they are so expensive, I decided to try to make my own vanilla extract. There are a lot of recipes for this, but I followed this particular one because it makes a small, affordable batch. (http://www.abeautifulmess.com/2012/02/make-your-own-vanilla-extract.html)

It’s very simple- I took the 2 hulled vanilla beans and 8 ounces of the cheapest vodka I could find and combined them in a jam jar. This mixture should be left to sit for about 2 months, then can be used for future baking ventures.

Before 

After

Sunflower Butter

I tried to follow several recipes at once today. Maybe not my best idea, but it all worked out in the end. I’ll split them into three posts for the sake of organization. I’ll start with the sunflower spread; because that was the first recipe I tackled. This recipe came from Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks (http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/cinnamon-vanilla-sunflower-butter-recipe.html). It’s a simple sunflower butter made in the food processor, and I look forward to using it throughout the week.

Roasted Sunflower seeds --> Sunflower Butter

Here are the ingredients:

2 cups of sunflower seeds

~¼ cup of sunflower oil

½ teaspoon salt

Seeds from 2 plump vanilla beans

3 tablespoons of ground cinnamon

Preheat oven: 325º F

Roast the sunflower seeds on a rimmed baking sheet. Stir the seeds partway through; this process took me about 15 minutes in total.

Unroasted versus Roasted Seeds

Once cooled, puree the seeds with 1 tablespoon of the oil and salt. Add 2 more tablespoons of oil while the food processor is running. I found that the mixture took a while to get through the “coarse” stage to the smooth stage. I just continued adding ingredients and gave the food processor breaks when necessary. Be sure to scrape down the sides- as well as the compounded mass stuck below the blade. Add the seeds and cinnamon and continue pulsing. You really just need to keep pureeing the mixture; I found myself giving the food processor breaks and just blending everything by hand using the back of a spoon. Be patient, the butter is worth it in the end. I would highly recommend using photos as a reference, because the butter goes from course to shiny and smooth.

Finished Product

Blackberry Cobbler

I have been waiting an entire year to try this recipe again. Wild blackberries tend to ripen sometime in August here in the Northwest. I live near miles of trail that happens to be lined with Himalayan Blackberries (the non-native species that has taken over quite a bit of land, but tastes too delicious to be completely loathed). Every summer I seem to jump the gun and try to go berry picking before any are ready, but this summer I only jumped it by about a week, instead of the usual 3 weeks or so. The season started a little earlier this year, which is fortunate because I will definitely be making this dessert again, and probably some jam as well.

Freshly Picked Berries

This cobbler is one of the easiest baked desserts I make. It takes me about ten minutes to prepare and mix the ingredients, and I don’t even use a mixer or food processor. In addition to being simple it’s good. I’m giving most of the credit to the ripe berries; if you are able to pick them yourself be patient and only pick the berries that come off the plant without any hassle. These are the sweetest and juiciest, and will make all the difference later.

Enjoy this recipe; this cobbler is my definition of late summer. I got this recipe from Southern Living (http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/easy-blackberry-cobbler-10000001816143/). If you take issue with the amount of butter, it’s their fault, not mine, and totally worth the final product.

Here are the ingredients:

4 cups of fresh blackberries

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 large egg

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of flour

6 tablespoons of melted butter

Preheat temperature: 375º F

Place your washed berries in a lightly greased 8” by 8” glass baking dish. Sprinkle the berries with lemon juice and set aside. While this is happening, I recommend that you melt the butter on the stovetop. I accidentally browned mine, which changed the taste a bit, and is likely noticeable in the photos.

So much better than using the microwave

Mix the egg, sugar and flour in a bowl until the mixture has a course meal texture. I just used a fork to accomplish this. Sprinkle the dry mixture over the fruit and pour the butter over all of this. The butter will not seem to cover all of the dry mixture; this probably seems to remedy itself in the oven.

Crumbly mixture

Crumbly mixture + berries + questionable amount of browned butter

Bake the cobbler in the oven for 35 minutes, or until the topping is browned and the berries are bubbling. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes.

Finished product- nice and golden

It's getting eaten rather quickly....

Brown Sugar-Cinnamon Cookies

I’m back again. It’s been a bit too hot to bake lately, so I’ve been focusing on all the fresh fruit in season. I recently fell in love with apricots, and have been trying to master broiling them. The first recipe I tried came from here: http://prouditaliancook.blogspot.com/2011/08/easy-labor-day-weekend-ideas.html. The pistachios and apricots tasted wonderful together, but the honey did not sweeten the apricots enough for my family’s tastes.

Attempt No. 2 came from Joy the Baker (http://joythebaker.com/2011/06/simple-roasted-apricots-with-honey-mascarpone/). The flavors were far simpler, but the apricots came out of the oven wonderfully caramelized, almost like marshmallows initially. In addition, adding the mascarpone after broiling still allowed for some wonderful ooziness. I loved this recipe so much; I might have repeated it with my lunch three days in a row…

So, the seasonally available goodies have stolen away my attention for a while. I went Marion berry picking last week and will probably pick blackberries in the coming weeks. I’ll try to post some jam recipes as I have time.

Wonderful summer flavors!

Without further ado, here is my newest cookie attempt from Tina Casaceli’s book Milk & Cookies. I tried her Brown Sugar-Cinnamon Crisps. Mine turned out a bit chewier than the recipe indicated they should turn out, but I also struggled with the dough expanding in the oven. Overall, they were large and delicious sugar cookies with a slight kick of cinnamon.

Here are the ingredients:

3 cups (12 ounces) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon backing powder
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
1 ½ cups (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature*
1 ¼ cups (8 ¾ ounces) brown sugar
2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk
½ cup (3 ½ ounces) granulated sugar
*Due to a shortage, I had to mix unsalted and salted butter. I just left out the salt in the dough.


½ cup (3 ½ ounces) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat temperature: 350ºF

Before I jump into the recipe, I’d like to acknowledge some mistakes. First of all, if you are going to crack your eggs ahead of time like me, crack each egg into a separate container. Otherwise, you will struggle to add each yolk individually. Second, I think I did not chill the dough long enough, as the heart shaped cookies looked a bit more like hearts from someone who suffers from high HDL, not normal, Valentine’s Day friendly shaped hearts.

Mistake No. 1

Now to the instructions.

Combine the flour, salt, baking soda and cream of tartar in a medium sized bowl and set this dry mixture aside.

Put the butter into your mixer that is fitted with a paddle. Beat it on low, increasing the speed to medium and keep the mixture going for 3 minutes. The butter should be very light and smooth.
Add the brown sugar in ¼ cup intervals. Once all of the sugar has been added, beat the mixture for another 2 minutes.

Add the yolks one at a time. Have a rubber spatula out to scrape down the sides of the bowl after each egg is added. Add the vanilla and beat the mixture for another minute.

Keep the mixer running as you add half of the flour mixture and the milk. The milk allows you to keep the mixture from getting too tough to be mixed. After these additions add the rest of the flour and mix by hand with a kneading motion, being careful not to overwork the dough. Just make sure that all of the ingredients are blended together.

Mixing Montage 

Make a large disk out of the dough, and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for 1 hour to 3 days, until it is firm.

When it’s time to bake the cookies, make sure the oven has been heated to 350ºF. Line baking sheets with parchment paper for easier clean-up.

Unwrap the dough from the plastic wrap and place on a floured surface. This is the point in the recipe where I veered off course. I rolled out the dough, cut it into heart and circular shapes, dipped it in a cinnamon-sugar mixture and dropped it on the cookie sheets. I baked the cookies for about 10 minutes, removing them once they were brown along the edges. That is a little harder to gauge with these cookies due to the darker colored dough from the brown sugar. Allow the cookies to cool on wire racks and store in an airtight container for up to a week, if you don’t eat them sooner.

Golden and not over-expanded