First attempt at macarons. Filled with chocolate ganache.

Cinnamon rum linzer cookies (recipe courtesy of Food and Wine, with a few tweaks of my own) for Aboo.

Today was Black/Raspberry Muffin Sunday.

Recipes are really draining to write in their entirety on here. It fosters my inner procrastinator.

But it’s kind of pretty so I want to show it and if I show it I have to share the recipe. Not to mention that if I don’t write it soon I might also forget what I put into it.

Fine.

Plum Tart

MATERIALS:

Dough

pie crust or pate sucree (I just used the leftover pie crust from the blueberry pie my mom made because blanching almonds and making a frangipane for the first time is stressful enough. So this recipe is really just for pie crust….yay for Marie Calendar)

Frangipane – (adapted from Dessert First)

6 Tbs butter (room temperature)

2/3 cups sugar

¾ cup ground blanched almonds (which means maybe like ½ cup regular almonds that you blanch. Because idiots like me would measure out over a cup and be like “oh, the particulate almond meal is totally gonna be more compact because they’re smaller bits and will occupy less airspace so you better overshoot the ground amount when measuring the whole almond amount”. And then I had a whole tupperware filled with extra almond meal because duh, non-compacted meal will be MORE aerated and that’s the end of that story.

2 tsp flour

t tsp cornstarch

1 large egg & 1 egg white

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp almond extract  (although honestly, it was a little too almond-extract-y tasting. I think I would have preferred more vanilla. So if you’re into the almond extract flavor, go for this ratio. Otherwise, maybe do an even split, 1.5 each vanilla and almond? Or instead, what I sorta wish I’d done, was put some actual fruit juice in instead. So maybe, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp almond, and 1 tsp plum juice (or whatever fruit, really).

Plums

2-7 mandolinned plums (it depends on your tart size. Mine was about a 4 inch tart and used almost 2 plums. But then again I have SO much extra frangipane. I’d recommend having a bunch extra do that you can just make the larger tart)

PROCEDURE:

1. Blanch your almonds by putting them in a pot of boiling water until they look wrinkly and pruny (maybe, 5 minutes? I was being angsty and stirring the whole time, so I wasn’t really clocking it in).

2. Pour them into a colander, run them under cold water, and pop them out of the shells (it’s like edamame. Weirdly satisfying, easy to accidentally lose ‘em into the sink).

3. Pat dry, then put them in your food processor. Grind until it’s all fine and mealy. The finer, the better, honestly.

4. Remove from processor and put into a bowl.

5. Food process butter and sugar until smooth.

6. Scrape down sides, add the almonds back in and process until blended.

7. Add flour and cornstarch.

8. Then egg and egg white until totally blended and smooth (don’t over-process the eggs if possible though. We don’t need meringues here, please and thanks)

9. Add in extracts (and fruit juice, perhaps?) just to combine. It’ll be kinda liquidy, but that’s fine.

10. Preheat the oven to 375˚F.

11. Roll your crust out into a few millimeters thick, and then arrange your crust in the pie dish. Poke some holes into it with a fork (as with pie-crusts).

12. Pour frangipane in until the shell is about ½ full.

13. Roll plums! Twigg does an awesome job at showing in pictures (after all, it was the inspiration for this tart), so start with rolling as many as you can, and once it’s so big you can’t really hold it, just put it into the tart and nestle/center it in the frangipane. Place more plum slices around the edges of your flower so that the whole tart will be covered in plum.

14. Loosen the center of the flower a bit so that it won’t just be a tight bundle of plum; you want the petals to fall and wilt back into the tart. I ended up pouring a little extra frangipane in the center too, just to cover the base of the petals so that they’d connect to the rest of the tart. Don’t let the frangipane drown your plum petals!! Make sure the plums don’t sink. It’s sort of finicky. This part took longer for me than expect. If you want, lightly sprinkle some sugar atop the plum petals.

(this is PRE-adding the little bit of frangipane to the center… use your best judgement)

15. Then bake for….20 minutes for a smaller tart, 30 (about how long mine took), to 40-45 for a full size, probably.

16. Let cool. Consume.

It’s not like a have a super-secret tactic about researching recipes. It’s just, I’ve been baking long enough to know what things need to be exact, what things can’t, what can/should be substituted, and whether or not people are lying when they say 

I have the best recipe ever!!!

Since secretly they’re ACTUALLY saying

I  think this is great when actually it's overly sweet/dry/not-actually-spicy/not-actually-delicious/etc.

A few tricks when reading recipes:

1. Just because it’s a blog/chef/author/person you like, doesn’t mean it’s going to be a delicious recipe READ REVIEWS like it’s your JOB. (If you don’t, I’ll personally fire you)
2. If it’s a blog, the blogger will likely give in-depth descriptions to why they like it. If you (like me) like chewy cookies, and the purported “Best Cookie Ever!!!!!”’s Blogger is like “I like crisp, crunchy cookies” you know it’s time to escape. Immediately.
3. Good bakers often own good cameras. Or, geez, at least a smartphone that can take a good photo. I never trust those hooligans with fuzzy/nonexistent photos posted of their recipes. Maybe I’m just a sucker for presentation. Or maybe bad bakers actually make bad photographers. Whatever.

Anyways, I’m usually a cupcake person (as my friends and family know), but yesterday after eating a bowl of cereal I decided that instead of eating that for breakfast I would’ve rather eaten a warm blueberry muffin.

Do I still have blueberries in my fridge?

Yes?

…and moments later I was at my computer doing my whole research-thanggg looking for a blueberry muffin recipe.

THANK YOU AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN FOR LISTENING TO ALL OF MY RULES ABOUT RECIPE SELECTION AND DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMESTIBLES. You make me smile.

Except no thanks for hiding your recipes to non-subscribers.

At which point, I then paid my thanks to the interwebs, as of course some random lady mah girl Judy had already posted it up.

Except where I didn’t actually follow any of her substitutions, halved the recipe, used buttermilk powder, measured minimally when making and using the lemon-sugar topping, and baked the six muffins in flower-shaped-baking-cups for maybe 14, 14.5 minutes.

Lauds, Judy.

These are moist, very blueberry-y, and the lemon-sugar topping is a nice addition. I probably would have benefitted from baking them another minute or so, but didn’t want to overbake them. I think 15 minutes of uninterrupted oven-time, and then 5 minutes cooling time would’ve been fine.

BTDubs: If I do write recipes, I’m going to write them like I’d write really informal science labs. Deal? Deal.

Blueberry Muffins (my version of America’s Test Kitchen)

MATERIALS:

Blueberry ‘Jam’

1 cup blueberries

1&½ tsp sugar

Lemon-Sugar Topping

1/3 cup sugar

1&½ tsp. lemon zest

Muffin

2&½ cups all-purpose flour

2-½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp sea salt (Don’t be picky. Sea? DONMATTAH. Kosher is probably better than table salt, just for quantity’s sake. I just pinched and was like 'ehhhh, that’s about right’)

2 large eggs

1&1/8 cups (8 oz.) sugar (I eyeballed this. Honestly, go for 1&¼ cups. It could use the extra sweetness)

4 Tbs unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

4 Tbs vegetable oil

1&½ tsp pure vanilla extract (Pour it innnnnn)

1 cup buttermilk (Don’t be afraid to use powdered stuff. Saves my butt regularly)

1 cup fresh blueberries

Jam

1. Grate zest into the bowl you’ve already measured the sugar into. Mix berries and sugar in small saucepan over medium heat, scraping down sides so it doesn’t burn, and squishing the berries with your spatula. Cook down until it looks like this:

I’m borrowing photos today. Hopefully in the future, when I’ll be more on-my-game and not ghost-posting (posting about yesterday’s muffins? EEEEK. Pure phantom-ery) I’ll use my own photos.

Topping

1. Grate zest into the bowl you’ve already measured the sugar into.
2. Mix with spoon and set it aside.

Muffin

1. Heat oven to 405˚F.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in large bowl.  Set aside.

3. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until it looks light, like this:
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together melty butter, oil,vanilla, and buttermilk.
5. Add egg mixture and whisk well until combined.
6. Add wets into drys, mixing gently with a spatula. It’s gonna be a tad lumpy, and that’s quite alright.
7. Stir in blueberries.
8. Line a 12-muffin muffin tin with baking cups (I chose yellow flower ones. Hadn’t used them yet. They were super cute), and pour/spoon the batter into each one about 4/5 of the way up the sides (leave about 1cm of room from the top).
9. Spoon equal amounts of jam onto tops of the muffin batter cups, and swirl the jam into the muffins using a skewer or chopstick (the chopstick method was excellent. Don’t overmix! Marbelize-it!
10. Sprinkle muffins evenly the lemon-sugar mixture (you don’t have to use it all, but don’t be concerned when some of it absorbs into the batter).  
11. Bake for 15-16 minutes, or until the muffins are set, are slightly browned, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out basically clean.  Cool in pan 5 minutes before transferring to rack to finish cooling.

NOM.