Thyme Chèvre Blackberry Muffins #MuffinMonday

Savory muffins with fresh thyme, goat cheese and blackberries, these thyme chèvre blackberry muffins make a most delicious breakfast or tea time treat. They are also perfect with a glass of wine!

My younger daughter has been with me all summer, which has been such a joy.  We have spent time together shopping and cooking and traveling and just hanging out.  I am thankful that neither she nor her sister ever went through that awkward teenage time when some children just want to pretend they sprung wholly formed from the earth and their parents don’t exist.  We’ve always enjoyed each other’s company.  But summer comes to an end soon and I know she needs to go back to school.

As I commented on my friend, Marilyn’s blog the other day, I am always relieved that I did something right when my girls can take care of themselves and deeply sad that they don’t need me in the same way any more.  So I send them out in the world and pray!  Part of me would just like to keep her home and safe where we love her.  But the larger part of me feels secure knowing that she is strong enough to be independent and will have a fabulous year of growth and learning.  Besides that, I think she would be bored silly if this were a long-term arrangement.  She absolutely needs the creative atmosphere of art school!  

Meanwhile, though, as her father travels around the world on business, the two of us have been making fancy salads and eating whatever we want for dinner.  Fancy salads, by our definition, are a full meal and must have pretty greens, fruit, nuts and special cheese.  The combinations are endlessly delicious!

Thyme Chèvre Blackberry Muffins

Inspired by recipe on a blog I love called Annie’s Eats for a salad with blackberries and goat cheese that turned out wonderfully, these muffins go equally as well with a mug of coffee, cup of tea or a glass of wine.

Ingredients
7 oz or 200g chèvre or aged goat cheese
Several sprigs fresh thyme
3 oz or 85g fresh blackberries
2 1/2 cups or 315g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup butter or 115g, melted and cooled
1 cup or 240ml milk
2 eggs

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin tin by lightly rubbing it with oil or use non-stick spray to coat or lining it with paper liners.  When I am baking with cheese, I tend to forgo the papers because the cheese sticks to it.

Snip the tender ends off of your sprigs of thyme for garnishing your muffins before baking and set them aside.  Pull the leaves off of the rest of the sprigs.

Cut the goat cheese into cubes and crumbles and set aside.  I leave the rind on but you can cut it off if you prefer.  Reserve some cheese for topping the muffins before baking, if desired.

You can totally drink wine with these.  It's not just a breakfast muffin!  Or have wine with breakfast.  I won't judge.

Cut the large blackberries in half or thirds, leaving the little ones whole.

Whisk the cool, melted butter, egg and milk in a smaller mixing bowl.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together your flour, salt, sugar and baking powder.

Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ones and stir a couple of times.

Add in the thyme leaves, blackberries and goat cheese and fold to combine.

Divide the batter between the muffin cups and top with the reserved cheese and tender bits of thyme.

Bake in your preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes or until the muffins are golden and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Allow the muffins to cool for a few minutes in the pan then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

You may need to run a knife around the edge to get the melted cheese loose.  Any little melted cheese that falls outside the muffin area is yours to eat immediately.  Baker’s privilege.

Enjoy!

                                       .

Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Tart

So yesterday I was hanging out on Facebook with my friend, Pastry Chef Online, Jenni Field, and she shared a caramelized onion jam link her fan Leah had shared with HER – because that’s the way Facebook WORKS, you all.  I call it research.  Anyway, I got to thinking that I hadn’t made caramelized onions into a tart for a very long time.  And then, that was all I could think about until I made them for dinner.  (And it was a busy day!)

If you are a fan of sticky onions and goat cheese and puff pastry, this will be your thing.  And best of all, it’s easy.  My daughters say I say that all the time, which apparently diminishes the sentiment (Not.) but it is true here.  It takes a while for the onions to slowly caramelize and get golden and sticky but if you know how to stir using that tricky, tricky implement, the spoon, you will be fine.  Also, can you fold a piece of paper?  Cut a reasonably straight line with a long knife?  Cool.  Then you can make the crust.  Follow along.

Ingredients for two large personal tarts  (Remember personal pizzas?  Like that but nicer.)
2 large onions
1 red chili (optional but highly recommended)
Olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
Several sprigs fresh thyme (plus a few small ones for garnish)
3 1/2 oz or 100g goat cheese (more or less – your package size may vary)
2-3 tablespoons dry red or white wine
2 sheets ready-made puff pastry (about 15 oz or 425g together)

Method
Preheat your oven to 425°F or 220°C.  Line your cookie tray with parchment paper.

Peel your onions and slice them as thinly as you can.  If you have a mandolin, go ahead and use it but a sharp knife works just fine too.

Slice the red chili too.

Put the onions in a non-stick pan and give them a good drizzle of olive oil.

Stir them around and then add the salt, sugar, chili and the thyme leaves off of all but four little sprigs, which we will use to decorate the tarts when baking.

Keep the fire low on the onions so they don’t burn but you do want them to start browning a little.  Stir frequently.  Put the lid on if you’d like, for the first 10-15 minutes. But keep checking on them and stir occasionally.

Meanwhile, fold over two sides of your puff pastry sheets.  Then fold up the opposite two sides.

Now fold the original sides one last time.  And then fold the second sides one last time.

Cut a skinny margin off of all the sides.  This should help the tart crust to rise fully in all its layers because a freshly cut edge seems to puff up more successfully than a folded edge.  Save the little scrappy bits.

Dock or pierce the insides of the raised sides with the tip of your sharp knife.

Transfer the tart crusts to your prepared cookie sheet.

Add the wine to the onions and keep the lid off now so the wine and onion juices can evaporate.  Keep an eye on them because this is where they start getting sticky and you don’t want them to burn.  Cook them down until they are fairly thick and look like photo two.

Cut your goat cheese log into eight circles. Or whatever shapes your cheese allows.

Divide the caramelized onions between the two tarts and try to spread them just inside the raised sides.

Lay four pieces of goat cheese on each tart and top with two small sprigs of thyme and the trimmed bits of pastry.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the puff pastry crust is puffed and golden.

Aren't they pretty?  

Serve, if desired, with a side salad.  Or just on their own.

Enjoy!

Zucchini Flowers stuffed with Fresh Goat Cheese

Homemade goat cheese is stuffed into tender zucchini flowers, which are then dipped in a light batter and deep fried until crispy. These Zucchini Flowers stuffed with Fresh Goat Cheese are a beautiful and tasty appetizer.

 

My first farmers’ market of the summer!  We arrived early at the Urban Harvest Market (for those of you in Houston, it is on Eastside just off of Richmond between Buffalo Speedway and Kirby) and I was overwhelmed by the number of vendors and the quality of the fresh produce. 

The primary objectives were fresh vegetables and pastured meat and chickens, along with some pastured eggs.  I found an abundance of all three.  Until recently, I wasn’t familiar with the term “pastured” so perhaps you aren’t as well. Legally, any chicken called “free range” only has to have access to the great outdoors. Many chicken farms interpret this in the narrowest sense and provide a small opening through which a chicken might somehow find its way outside but only by hurdling thousands of other chickens and traversing one hundred yards of shed floor, littered with the bodies of its fallen comrades. 

Pastured chicken is what we think free range should be. The chickens genuinely live and forage outside, with shelter available from weather and predators. My chicken and eggs came from Olde World Farms in Montgomery, Texas.  I’m not sure exactly where the farm is but Montgomery is less than an hour’s drive away so certainly under my 100-mile parameter set by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.   This morning we enjoyed sausage patties formed from the sausage meat I bought from Olde World Farms and their freshest ever eggs fried over easy, along side my newly baked bread. But I get ahead of myself.

Among my purchases was a bag of zucchini flowers from the Utility Research Garden stall. (They also had mixed bunches of different colored carrots for sale, so I had to buy some. Of course. Who could have watched Jamie Oliver’s At Home and NOT wanted to roast a load of different colored carrots?  Not me.)  It looks like Utility Research Garden is outside the zone but I figure it was still better than the supermarket stuff. 

Well, to show you how these things snowball, once I had zucchini flowers in my Ikea shopping bag, I needed goats’ milk. I managed to buy the last quart from Swede Dairy Farm. The lovely young lady who helped me had a cooler full of two-quart jugs still but they were for pre-orders. Goats’ milk is great for babies who are allergic to cows’ milk so they have a steady list of orders, in fact, she informed me that there is a waiting list. But one quart would do me fine and I was delighted to be there just in time to claim it. The plan was to make goat cheese with which to fill my flowers, in order to dip them in a light batter and deep fry them.

So I made my cheese. Easiest thing ever. 

Simple Soft Goat Cheese

Ingredients

Goats’ milk

Vinegar

Salt

Other seasonings optional: minced garlic, black pepper, green onion tops, etc.

Method

Just bring your milk to a boil in a non-aluminum pot. (If a fridge magnet will stick to your pot, you are good to go.) Turn off the fire and add any seasonings you wish to include (I added about a quarter cup of very finely chopped onion tops and a goodly pinch of Maldon flaky sea salt) then add 1/3 cup of vinegar for every two quarts of milk. Having only one quart, I had to do a few quick calculations and ended up figuring out that 1/3 cup is five tablespoons and one teaspoon. So I put eight teaspoons of vinegar. Actually two tablespoons and then a further two teaspoons. Oh, the math comes in handy now and again. Stay in school, children.

After just a minute or two, the milk separated into cheese and whey. I put my cheesecloth into my strainer, over a clean, empty bowl and poured the whole mess into the lined strainer. You should too. The whey collected in the bowl and suddenly, the snowball effect took place once more. 

I couldn’t possibly throw all that lovely warm liquid down the drain, not after paying five dollars for the quart of goats’ milk, so I had to make bread.  So I poured the whey into a measuring pitcher and I created a cheesecloth contraption out of a wooden spoon, some rubberbands and a pitcher, which I popped into the fridge so the cheese would continue to drip and dry.

I used a Jamie Oliver bread recipe and replaced a quarter of the white flour with whole wheat and used my whey instead of the tepid water. I also ended up adding more whey to make up for the brown flour which seems to need more liquid to get the dough to the right consistency.  Following instructions, I let it rise once, punched the dough down, then formed it into baguette shapes to try out my new baguette baking tray ordered from King Arthur’s Baker’s Catalogue. If you have a weakness at all for kitchen equipment that you are trying to control, do NOT go to this website. Fair warning.

 

And then on to the actual initial recipe as promised in the post title.

Zucchini flowers stuffed with fresh goat cheese

Ingredients

10-12 zucchini flowers

Canola oil for frying

For the stuffing:
4 oz or 113 g soft goat cheese (if you buy plain at the market, add your flavorings when mixing the stuffing)

1 oz or 28g finely, freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 fresh egg, preferably pastured, of course

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the batter:
1 cup or 125g plain flour

3/4 - 1 cup or 180-240ml sparkling water or soda water

Method

Fluff your goat cheese apart with a fork. It should be crumbly. Add the other ingredients and mix until well combined. Taste before adding the salt as the Parmesan can be quite salty and none may be necessary.

Break off the stems and the sepal (those little green leaf-like things that hug the flower) and cut off the stamen if they are still inside. 

Using a teaspoon and your finger, stuff a little of the filling into each flower, squeezing the petals together gently to make sure the stuffing is enclosed at the base.

 

 

Mix your flour and sparkling water with a whisk, adding the water a little at a time until the mixture is the consistency of thick cream. You want it to stick to the flower but you also want the excess to be able to drip off.

 

Heat your oil and drop the first stuffed flower in. It should start to crisp and brown almost immediately. If it doesn’t, let the oil get a little hotter before dropping the rest of the battered stuffed flowers in. You will probably have to do a few at a time to make sure they won’t stick together in the pot.

Turn them as needed to brown both sides.

Drain on paper towel and sprinkle with a little more Maldon salt and perhaps a few minced onion tops before serving. 

Enjoy!