Strawberry Shortcake Muffins Kicked into Dessert #Muffin Monday

With the addition of extra strawberry sauce and whipped cream, these become Strawberry Shortcake Muffins Kicked into Dessert! So easy for Sunday dinner or any day of the week, really.

My maternal grandmother was a wonderful homemaker.  In addition to running a business full-time with my grandfather, she did the grocery shopping and cooked the meals and cleaned house.   I seem to recall that they had a lady in to do the ironing once a week.  And, of course, we pitched in when we visited.  Especially my mother.

The store was in the front of their property on one of the main streets going through New Iberia, LA and their house was in the back so they were never really off-duty if someone had a major appliance emergency.   Their home number must have been given out when an appliance sold because hardly a weekend or holiday went by without a call from someone who needed help with a recalcitrant machine.  Back in the day, Maytag appliances were only sold in smaller shops, by authorized sellers who also provided service when needed.

My grandparents only sold Maytag washers and dryers (and other brands of refrigerator and freezers and stoves) but my grandfather would service anything so he was never lonely like the repairman on the television ads.  Some of my best childhood memories are riding around with him in his old truck, meeting the farmers’ wives out in the country and, trying to be an able assistant, handing him the tools he needed to make repairs. 

While my grandmother was a good cook, time did not allow for fussiness or time-consuming dishes.  She had a number of solid recipes that took advantage of seasonal fruits and vegetables and which were simple to make and always well-received.  One of her most popular was strawberry shortcake.  She would buy the little round sponge cakes at the grocery store and macerate (although I am sure she never called it that) her freshly sliced strawberries with a generous amount of sugar.  After the strawberries created their own syrup, she would whip cream and serve a good helping of strawberries on each of the little cakes and then top with whipped cream.  What could be more simple or more delicious? 

I give you these:  Strawberry Shortcake Muffins.  My grandmother’s strawberry shortcake kicked up a notch or two because 1) freshly baked at home and 2) rich cream IN the muffin AND on top and 3) strawberries IN the muffn AND on top.

Strawberry Shortcake Muffins Kicked into Dessert

This is part of Muffin Monday and the muffin recipe comes from Seasons and Suppers,  a great website if you are trying to eat more seasonal fruits and vegetables.

Ingredients

For the muffin batter:

2 cups or 250g  all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup or 170g granulated sugar

1/2 cup or 115g butter, cold and cut into cubes

1 egg

1 cup or 240ml heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

9 oz or 250g (after hulling and dicing) strawberries

For the strawberry sauce:

9 oz or 250g strawberries

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon cornstarch

For the whipped cream:

2 cups or 480ml heavy whipping cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

(Photo disclaimer:  I discovered as I started this project that my dear husband had my camera in his backpack.  And I had just put him on a plane back to Cairo.  I had to use an old tiny Canon until younger daughter’s lovely Canon SLR could charge. I apologize in advance for the dark and blurry method photos.)

Method

Preheat oven to 350° F or 180°C.  Grease or line 12 muffin cups with paper liners. 

Hull and dice your muffin strawberries.

In large bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and sugar.  Cut in cold butter with a pastry blender (or two knives) until it is in small pea-size pieces.  (Mine was more like soft sand.)

In small bowl mix the egg, vanilla and cream.  

Add all at once to flour mixture. Stir with spoon or rubber spatula until just blended.  Gently fold in the diced strawberries.

Spoon into muffin cups, making sure each muffin has some strawberries and bake for about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, hull and slice your sauce strawberries.

Pop them in a small pot with the sugar, water, lemon juice and cornstarch.

Cook over a medium heat for a few minutes, stirring gently, until the mixture thickens slightly and the cornstarch cooks clear instead of milky looking.  Remove from heat and set aside.

No food coloring, I swear!  Doesn't it turn a gorgeous red?!

When the muffins are baked, remove them from the oven and cool completely before removing from the pan.

When you are ready to serve, add in the vanilla and whip your cream with a whisk or electric beaters until soft peaks form. 

Cut the muffin into two (removing the muffin liner if used) and spoon over some of the strawberry sauce.

Add a spoon or two of whipped cream.

Enjoy!

(End note:  I should say that these muffins are divine just on their own as well!)

My five most viewed posts this week have been

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Muffins 

White Chocolate Mousse Torte with Fresh Berries

Trinidadian Rum Punch 

and

Oven-roasted Filet of Grouper

Sunny Scottish Strawberry Cake

When strawberries have been in the refrigerator a while and are "past their best," I always make this strawberry cake with ground almonds. It's beautiful with a glaze or just a sprinkling of powdered sugar. 

Every summer that I am able, since the year 2000, I have visited my friend, Jacky, in Aberdeen, Scotland.  I’ve missed the occasional year and, sadly, this is my second year in a row to miss this time.  Which makes me very sad.  Despite its usually gloomy weather, even in Summer, Aberdeen is one of my favorite places because Jacky is one of those upbeat people who radiate sunshine.   We met in 1996 when we were both living in the little oilfield town Macaé, Brazil and she confessed years later that I scared her initially and she thought to herself that she could never be friends with me.  I can be a bit overwhelming at first, it’s true, but I guess I didn’t turn out to be so frightening after all.  We’ve been fast friends ever since.

Way back in the Summer of 2005, I was sitting around in Jacky’s lovely warm kitchen, reading the daily newspaper, the Aberdeen Press and Journal, or the P&J as we (almost locals) like to call it, and found this recipe.  Scottish strawberries are some of the best in the world (my other Scottish friend, Gillian, says they are THE VERY BEST and I have learned not to argue with Gillian, who can also be a little scary at first.) during their short season so we had been buying them and eating them in a frankly prodigious manner.  This recipe for strawberry cake was supposedly the answer to what to do if you have some strawberries that haven’t been eaten but were getting “past their best.”   Of course, we had to go out and buy some more to bake this cake! 

Since then, I have made it with various berries in different stages of ripeness (read: over ripeness) always with great success.  The buttery crumb of the cake, heightened by the natural richness of the almond meal is superbly and perfectly complemented by a cup of tea or coffee or a glass of cold milk.  And, if you are using berries that are slightly past their best, you can feel virtuous for not wasting them. Win-win. 

Ingredients

3 tablespoons plain flour (for coating baking pan)

6.35 oz or 180g ground almonds

3/4 cup or 180g soft unsalted butter

3/4 cup or 180g caster sugar

1 1/2 cups or 180g self-raising flour (or the same amount of plain flour plus a scant 2 teaspoons of baking powder and a good pinch of salt)

2 medium eggs

2 tablespoons milk

14 oz or 400g strawberries, plus a few for decoration, if you like.

(Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries or a combination can be substituted for the strawberries.)

To serve: Icing or powdered sugar

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.  Spray your baking pan of choice with non-stick spray or butter it well.  Tip in the plain flour and turn the pan all around, shaking carefully to make sure that it is well-coated with flour.  This is not as important in a regular, flat baking pan where just buttering would probably work as well, but in a Bundt pan, this is essential to get the cake to come out nicely, without leaving bits stuck to the pan.

Hull your strawberries with a sharp knife by cutting into the berry just under the green hull.  Press your thumb on the knife and the hull and pull the hull out of the strawberry.  This leaves more strawberry behind to eat that cutting the whole top off would do.  

Rinse the strawberries well and let them drain. Cut the berries into smaller pieces.   Set aside.

Place all the ingredients except the strawberries in a mixer and mix to combine.

Carefully stir the cut strawberries through the batter. 

Spoon the batter into the pan, leveling off the top.  

Place the tin in the middle of the oven for an hour, checking after 40 minutes and covering with tin foil if it is getting too brown.

Remove from the oven, cool slightly then loosen the edges with a knife and turn out onto a serving plate.  

Serve warm or cold, decorated with extra strawberries, if desired, or sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar.

Enjoy!

Roast chicken with Almost Never-Ending Pesto

My first cousin, Misty, came to visit from the spiritual home of food lovers, Louisiana.  (You want to refute that and nominate your hometown or state or country for the position, write me a comment. I have to admit that Malaysia is close behind.)  She loves to eat, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at her.  Fortunately, I love her so I can overlook that enormous fault.

Her first night here, I decided to roast a whole pastured chicken from Olde World Farms with pesto stuffed under the skin, since I still have homemade pesto.  (The Olde World Farms website is sadly out-of-date, but, if you are in Houston, you can buy their products at the Eastside Market of a Saturday morning. Looks like the Urban Harvest website is a bit out-of-date too but at least you can still get directions. What’s with these people?)

Ingredients

1 whole pastured chicken

1/2-3/4 cup or 120-180ml pesto

Sea salt

Black pepper, freshly ground

Method

Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C.

Clean the chicken thoroughly and cut off all extraneous fat.  

Slip your finger under the skin at the point of the breast, up to the wishbone on both sides.  Spoon a large scoop of pesto under the skin and use your fingers to push it up towards the wishbone. 

Add another scoop on the other side and do the same.  Turn the chicken over and make a small slit in the skin of the thigh and run your finger around over the thigh meat. Add a little pesto and stuff it under the skin. Do this on both sides.

Pop the chicken into a roasting pan, breast side down and liberally sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper, making sure to get some inside the bird as well.  Turn the chicken over and liberally salt and pepper the top of the bird.  Put it in the oven.  After 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 350°F and drizzle a little olive oil over the bird. Return him to the oven for about one hour or until a thermometer stuck into his thigh reaches 190°F.

Upon reflection, I decided that we probably really needed some extra breasts to roast alongside the first bird since a couple in our party won’t eat anything but breast meat and I wasn’t sure about the rest of them.  Leftovers never go amiss when they are roasted chicken so off we went to Whole Foods to choose some breasts.

I was gratified to see that Whole Foods has a rating system for showing the treatment of their butchery items, including chicken.  The chicken breasts were rated at a lowly two, while the whole chickens were a pastured four.  The choice was simple.  I would roast two whole chickens.

At that point, while I had plenty of basil, I was out of already made pesto.  I decided to do something different with bird number two: Sun-dried tomato pesto.

Ingredients

1 oz or 30g Alessi sun-dried tomatoes

1 3/4 oz or 50g Parmesan

 1/4 cup or 56.7g butter 

2 cloves of garlic

Enough olive oil to loosen into a basil pesto-like consistency

Method

Soak the tomatoes for about 15 minutes in enough hot water (from the tap hot, not boiling) to cover.  

Drain the liquid.  Add the garlic, the butter and a glug of olive oil and mix with a hand blender.  

Grate your cheese with a fine grater and add to the container.  Mix again with the hand blender, adding a little more olive oil if necessary.  This is going to be a thick paste, like the basil pesto, so you may have to keep removing the paste from the hand blender blades and bearing down upon it again in the container till everything is smooth.   

Now you follow the directions above for putting the pesto under the chicken skin and roasting the bird.

I put them both in the baking pan together and the juice they created as the basil pesto bird and the tomato pesto bird roasted was sublime.

The finished chickens were lovely and juicy and delicious.

Side dishes seem like such an afterthought now, but, I can assure you, they were not. I made Johnson Stuffing from Baked Bree with help from younger daughter.  We also made a simple salad of tomatoes, bell pepper, feta cheese and romaine. 

And roasted golden and purple beets.

For the beets

Ingredients

3 purple beets with greens

3 golden beets with greens

2 cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Cut the greens off the beets and trim the stalks, leaving just the leaves. 

Rinse the leaves several times in a full sink of water until you are sure all the dirt and sand are gone.  Scrub the beets and rinse as well. Any dirt will make for a gritty mouthful so you want to clean these suckers longer than you would think necessary to make sure.  Cut the beets in half and put them in a bowl big enough to allow stirring and/or tossing.  

Drizzle with olive oil, white or dark balsamic vinegar, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  By stirring or tossing, make sure the beets are completely coated.  

Grease a baking tray with more olive oil and tip the beets onto it. Turn them to expose the cut sides and roast them in a preheated oven at 400°F or 200°C.  

Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil in a skillet and gently fry the sliced garlic. Add the beet greens and let them cook just a few minutes until they wilt. Add a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and cook a few minutes more.  Spread the greens around on the serving platter and put the garlic slices on top.

After 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 350°F or 180°C and cook the beets until they are fork tender, turning halfway through so that the cut sides face the pan.  I ran out of time for the beets because my chicken needed to be on a middle shelf.  It was browning much too quickly up higher, with the beets down below, so I ended up taking the beets out after about 45 minutes and putting them back in their mixing/tossing bowl which was glass and microwaving their already well-roasted selves into fork-tenderness.  Then I arranged them lovingly on the bed of greens. 

I am a lover of purple beets but had never tried golden beets. They reminded me of parsnips and I would definitely buy and cook them again. And roasting seems to bring out the best in both colors. 

For dessert, we had two special recipes, made by younger daughter, quite a whiz in the kitchen from a young age:  Divinely moist brownies and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  Words are not necessary with photos like these.

It was our wonderful pleasure to have Misty over and we hope she comes back soon!