So refreshing!

Ok. So my hopes and dreams so far appear to be true about Colorado. It is, in fact, not as smoldering hot as DC. But that’s kind of like saying it’s not as hot as the sun in a microwave.

I do live in a desert now though, so it can still be pretty hot some days.

So when raspberries won last week’s poll, the first thing that came to mind was some sort of refreshing beverage.

It doesn’t have booze in it (but it could) and will chill you out on a hot summer day.

Yield: 1/2 Gallon Lemonade

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

6 large lemons, juiced (about 1 1/4 Cups)
1 Cup hot water
1 Cup sugar
6 ounces fresh raspberries (about 1 1/2 Cups)
3-4 Cups cold water
Fresh mint (optional garnish)

Helpful Equipment:
Mini food processor
Juicer
Strainer

Directions:

1) Mix the one cup of warm water with 1 cup of sugar in a small pot over medium heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is simmering. Remove from heat and let cool.

2) Juice lemons. Mix lemon juice with simple syrup mixture.

3) Add raspberries to a food processor blender and process until smooth.

4) Add raspberry pulp to a strainer. Pour lemonade mixture through strainer. It should pick up lots of raspberry color and juice. Repeat a few times. You should be left with mostly seeds in the strainer.

5) Dilute lemonade with 3-4 cups of cold water.

6) Serve with crushed ice and mint.

Making Lemonade

To start this lemonade, add the one cup hot water and one cup sugar to a small pot and heat it until it’s simmering and the sugar is dissolved. Then let it cool.

When it comes to lemonade, there’s something to be said for the quickness of a mix. But when you’re in the mood for a seriously refreshing drink, nothing beats fresh-squeezed juice.

I have just a normal $10 juicer that gets the job done okay. If you don’t have a juicer, you can also just use a fork to press on the inside half of the lemon as you wring it out. That’ll maximize your juice levels.

Depending on the size of your lemons, you might need more than six. You’re looking for about a cup of lemon juice. Six really big lemons gave me a bit over a cup which is perfect.

Fresh squeezed is always best.

As far as the raspberries go, I kind of just guessed that a small container of raspberries would do the trick. That’s six ounces of fresh berries.

I love raspberries. It might be my favorite berry.

About a pint.

Now obviously you can’t juice a berry, so you have to process or blend them to get the juice out.

You could use a food processor, a blender, or I guess a fork if you want to do a lot of work.

Just blend it up until it’s smooth!

Buzz it up!

There’s a problem with this mess though: seeds. Raspberries have tons of little seeds in them and they are just not appealing in a drink. It would feel like you had tons of little dirt pebbles in your lemonade.

Not good.

So I think one of the most important steps is to make sure you strain the raspberries.

Now, when you pour your raspberry pulp into the strainer, it’ll just kind of sit there. It’s pretty thick.

So go ahead and mix your simple syrup and fresh lemon juice together. Then slowly pour this through the strainer also. It’ll pick up the raspberry juice on the way but leave behind the raspberry seeds and any of the lemon pulp that got through also.

Seeds are no good.

I poured my juice through my strainer a few times. Just get a fresh bowl to set under the strainer and pour the liquid through again. Every time it’ll pick up a bit more raspberry color and flavor. Also, use a fork to mush the pulp around and force the juice through.

After two or three times through, you’ll be left with nothing but seeds basically.

What's left.

So you now have about 4 cups of really intense juice. If you taste it, I think you’ll find that it’s way too strong.

I recommend diluting it to about half strength. So add 3-4 cups of cold water to it and stir it up.

It’ll keep in the fridge for a few days. Not that it’ll last that long.

Gotta love the color!

I poured some of this over crushed ice and threw in a few mint sprigs.

The mint sprigs are pretty optional, but I dig them.

Mint is pretty optional

If you can’t get out of the heat, give this a shot.

And if you want to spice it up a bit over the weekend, add 2 shots of vodka or gin to a glass of this for a really solid cocktail.

The cheese is hiding you see.

For some reason I always think brownies are the perfect thing to add stuff to. It worked great when I tried brownies with beets. But when I try putting cheeses in brownies, it’s very touch and go.

Cream cheese is the standard add-in, but I had one massive brownie fail a while ago that involved some unwieldy mascarpone cheese. And on this go, I had a very near-fail with goat cheese!

I was using goat cheese because you guys voted for a goat cheese dish last week. I thought that it might work really nicely in a chocolate brownie with some raspberries folded in. I had dreams of these luscious dark brownies with streaks of goat cheese running through them.

It didn’t really work out like that obviously. The good news is that even though my plan completely backfired and failed, the brownies tasted really good.

I guess cooking is like poker. I’d rather be lucky than good!

Goat Cheese Brownies

Yield: 8x8 pan

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate (get the good stuff)
1 Cup sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Cup fresh or frozen raspberries (if frozen, thaw in a paper towel to absorb moisture)
Pinch of salt

Goat Cheese Filling:
6 ounces goat cheese (chevre)
1/2 Cup sugar
1 egg

Directions:

1) Melt butter and chocolate together in a saucepan over low heat. Be careful not to burn the chocolate. When melted, remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

2) For the goat cheese mixture, beat everything together until smooth.

3) Once slightly cool, stir in sugar until dissolved and then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Finally, add a pinch of salt and mix in the flour.

4) Stir in the raspberries and goat cheese mixture. The goat cheese mixture is optional honestly.

5) Add batter to a buttered 8-inch baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes (20-25 minutes if you aren't using the goat cheese mixture).

6) Let cool for 30 minutes before cutting and serving. They should be pretty gooey. If you want them firmer, you might want to add another 5 minutes onto the baking time.

The Goat Cheese

My grand vision for this dish started with the goat cheese. I thought I’d blend together some goat cheese with some sugar and an egg to give it some body and then be able to streak that into the batter.

Farm fresh eggs are orange.

The problem, as you’ll see, is that this ended up being too liquidy to work. But it does taste good. So feel free to go with it. Just use a hand mixer or fork to really mix the goat cheese up well until it’s a nice smooth consistency.

The Brownie Batter

This part of the recipe I wasn’t worried about. Good chocolate brownies are pretty straightforward to make as long as you don’t overcook them!

I don’t trust brownie recipes that start with something other than chocolate and butter.

The start of something beautiful

Melt these two ingredients together over low heat. Once they are melted and combined, let them cool for a minute and then stir in the sugar.

Pretty standard here.

The Raspberries

Ideally, you would use fresh raspberries for this, but I couldn’t find any on this particular day so I thought I’d try out frozen. The problem with frozen raspberries is that there’s a lot of liquid that will come out when you defrost them.

I solved this problem to the best of my ability by thawing them out in the microwave on low power over some paper towels. That way the towels soak up all the liquid as they thaw.

If it looks like a murder scene, you’ve done it right!

If you must use frozen...

Back to the batter

To finish off the brownie batter, beat in one egg at a time and add a pinch of salt. Then stir in the flour and your batter is ready to go!

After that, gently fold in the raspberries. Try not to over-mix it at this point or all the raspberries will just break apart.

Try to be gentle with the berries.

Then pour the batter into a buttered 8-inch baking dish and you’re ready to go. Please note that you could just bake them at this point and skip all the goat cheese business.

Butter the pan!

THE FAIL

Ok. So this is where I went wrong. I thought I’d be able to pour my goat cheese mixture onto the batter and then pull a knife through the batter to form some cool streaks.

The problem of course is that this technique only works if both batters are the same consistency. Otherwise they won’t really play nice.

In my case you’ll get something like this.

Oh dear....

If I were to toss this in the oven, I’m not sure what would happen, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. So I decided to go out on a limb and just stir the goat cheese mixture into the chocolate batter.

I grabbed an emergency fork (just a normal fork, but for emergencies) and just started whipping the two together in the baking dish. After a minute of mixing, I had something that looked pretty okay!

Here's to hopin!

Baking the dish

I added a lot of moisture into my batter (which turns out to be awesome). I knew though that I would have to therefore bake this for much longer than a normal batter.

So I baked mine at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. You could go for 35-40 if you like a firmer brownie.

My came out looking surprisingly good.

Looks good actually!

I let these guys cool almost completely before chopping them up. The consistency I had was exactly what I like in brownies: gooey.

Gooey and pretty darn good!

The official Macheesmo taste-tester (wife) had a bite of one of these and declared:

“Weird.”

But I must say, I thought they tasted pretty darn good. They’re definitely unique. The goat cheese has kind of a tangy flavor to it and the raspberries are really good folded in.

So, I was pretty happy with how these turned out given the near fail. Of course, if you want to try these, you can just fold the goat cheese mixture directly into the batter when you fold in the raspberries near the end or just leave out the goat cheese mixture and keep the raspberries.

If anyone has any ideas on how to accomplish what I was trying to do, leave a comment!

A great way to start the day!

This may come as a complete surprise to you, but I do most of the cooking in our house. I know. Shocking right?! But one area where Betsy has me crushed is in the daily breakfast department.

Before we started living together I used to not really eat breakfast at all. My breakfast started with a big cup of coffee. Of course, I was starving by lunchtime and would gorge myself on all kinds of snacks and stuff throughout the day.

Betsy on the other hand liked breakfast but she wasn’t much into heavy breakfasts. She used to eat cereal everyday.

These days, however, we are both all about the breakfast smoothie. This is her department entirely. I rarely make one. She’s been trying lots of different mixes over the last few months and she finally landed on one that I think is really solid.

We’ve been having this every morning for at least a month and I’m not sick of it at all. It gives me lots of energy. In fact, I get grumpy now if I don’t start my day with one.

Betsy's Breakfast Smoothie

Yield: 2 big smoothies

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

1 Cup orange juice
1/2 Cup yogurt
1 banana
2 Cups assorted frozen fruit (we usually use a mix of mangos, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries)
1/2 Cup tofu (silken works best, but anything will work)
1/4 Cup milled flax seed

Necessary Equipment:
A good blender (From Amazon. This is the one I've used for over a year now every day. Still runs like a charm.)

Directions:

1) Add all ingredients to a blender.

2) Blend.

3) Drink.

Making the Smoothie

Honestly, I don’t even think Betsy measures this recipe when she makes it every morning. I tried to get close to what it looks like she uses.

I know it always starts with these things though.

Frozen fruit is key.

Frozen fruit is definitely key for a good smoothie. It means you don’t have to add any ice at all. We just buy the mixed berry frozen fruit packages and use those so the smoothies have a little bit of everything. We went through a phase were we would buy the individual frozen varieties and try to perfect the mix, but it wasn’t really worth it.

On the order

I’m honestly not really sure if the order matters when adding your ingredients to the blender. I mean, after all, it is a blender. It’s gonna blend whatever you put it in unless you have a really crappy one.

We usually do liquids, then soft stuff, then frozen stuff, but I’m not sure that it really makes a difference.

Order probably doesn't matter too much.

The two ingredients that we’ve most recently added to this mix is the tofu and the flax seed. Some might say that this makes us hippies, but I say that it makes us healthy!

The tofu is packed with protein which keeps you full longer throughout the day (and trust me you can’t even taste it). Meanwhile the flax seed is one of the best sources of fiber out there.

One note on the flax seed. If you want to try it out, make sure you get the ground (or milled) variety and not the whole seeds. You can’t really digest the whole seeds.

If you’re bored, here’s the full nutritional breakdown on ground flax.

That's tofu. Not feta.

If you’ve never tried adding flax to things like smoothies, I really recommend it. And it’s not one of those hippie foods that’s crazy expensive either. You just use a few tablespoons at a time and you can get almost a pound of it for a few bucks on Amazon.

Whole flax would be pointless I guess.

Ok. So that’s the end of my flax rant. And no I wasn’t paid by the Association for the Future of Flax to say those things.

Back to the smoothie

Once you have all your stuff in the blender, just start it up! If it’s too thick add a bit more OJ and if it’s too thin, add some more frozen fruit. That’s all there is to it.

I really like my blender because it’s simple and it works. It only has two speeds: Pulse and ON. I’ve never really understood those blenders with like 12 different speeds.

Old faithful!

Pour it into a glass and serve it immediately! Actually, you can keep it in the fridge for 30 minutes or so without a problem, but it’s best right away in my mind.

Sometimes Betsy has one waiting for me when I get back from a morning run and that’s when I know I’m a lucky fella.

Great flavor and texture.

I’m not sure that I would attribute it entirely to these smoothies, but I’ve lost ten pounds this year which conveniently matches the amount of time we’ve been making smoothies for breakfast every day.

Get on the smoothie train people. Seriously.

Smoothies can be so varied I really struggled for awhile on how to present a wide spectrum of recipes in one post. That was, of course, until I saw a guy riding a bike last weekend with a rainbow sticker on his backpack. When I saw the rainbow I thought, now those would be some awesome smoothies!

Anytime I think of a rainbow, I can’t help but think of the mnemonic device for remembering the order of the colors: ROY G. BIV!

After some tinkering, I present to you, the ROY G. BIV Smoothie Team!

Pretty.

Each of the recipes I used are below, but before that, there are a few quick notes on smoothies that I think are important.

First, smoothies are all about balance. You want to combine some sweet with some bitter. You want to make sure that your acids are balanced. Really if you do that and taste as you mix, you can’t go wrong. These recipes should all be seen as jumping off points. Mix and match and find your own, well, rainbow. (I should be a motivational speaker with lines like that!)

Second, whenever possible try to use frozen fruit instead of fresh. I usually use mostly frozen fruit just because it’s easier but some fresh fruit is fine. The thing to remember is that if you use fresh you have to throw in some ice which waters down the smoothie a bit.

Third, keep some juice (orange, apple, cranberry, pomegranate, etc) on hand as well as some milk or yogurt. Those can smooth out your smoothie…

So let’s take a trip through Roy G. Biv!

All of the smoothie recipes in this post are adjusted for 2 Cups of smoothie which is about enough for one big serving. The cups in this post hold about 1 cup of liquid so I halved the recipes for this post because I didn’t need 7 cups of smoothies floating around.

The Red Smoothie. This is pretty straightforward. After I tasted it, I added a pinch of sugar because it was just a bit too bitter for my tastes. I also used frozen raspberries, but if you use fresh you’ll need to add some ice.

Other options: beets?

The Orange Smoothie. This one is just like a shot of vitamin C. It’s refreshing and delicious and if you’re afraid of flavor mixing, this is the one for you! If you can’t find clementines, you can use any orange-like fruit. Tangerines for example would be awesome.

For those that need a shot of Vit. C.

The Yellow Smoothie. This one seriously tasted like a milkshake. The banana and milk made it really creamy and the mango was nice and sweet. If you served me this blind, I’d guess there was ice cream in it.

Very sweet actually.

The Green Smoothie. Ok. I was a little worried about this one. Basically I just picked out a bunch of green stuff and threw it together! At first, it tasted kind of funky (some would say it tasted healthy), but then I added a pinch of sugar and a tiny pinch of salt and that totally mellowed out the flavors. The sugar and salt are not optional in this one if you want it to taste decent.

Shockingly, green was pretty good!

The Boozy Blue Smoothie. Ok. It turns out that there are no really blue foods. Sure there are some flowers and stuff, but there’s just nothing that pops with blue color. Blueberries are totally mislabeled. They are purple, people.

So I figured if I couldn’t find a food that was blue, I might as well making something with booze in it! This was actually really tasty and I could imagine sipping a few of these on a beach somewhere.

Maybe not for breakfast.

The Indigo Smoothie. This one is a really basic one, but the Pomegranate juice has huge flavor. Sometimes Pomegranate juice can be a bit bitter though and so the yogurt smooths it out nicely.

Delicious.

The Violet Smoothie. Ok. So this one was maybe my least favorite of the seven. It was pretty strongly flavored. I thought about maybe adding some plum to the mix which I think would keep it pretty violet but might mellow it out a bit.

In other news, I’m not entirely sure what the difference is between violet and indigo. It’s possible I’m slightly colorblind.

Violet = Indigo - Yogurt...

The Equipment. Of course, to make smoothies you’ll need a good blender. Now you could spend hundreds of dollars on a blender, but I’m not sure that’s really necessary if you’re just getting into the smoothie thing. I’ve had this really excellent professional Oster model blender for almost a year now and I use it almost daily. It’s nothing fancy but it has all metal parts and only two speeds: pulse and GO. What else do you need?!

Mine performs just like it did on day one!

Roy G. Biv!

Day to day though Betsy and I, surprisingly, don’t make our smoothie choice based on color. Like I said at the beginning of the post, we normally do a mix between the indigo, red, and yellow varieties.

Just one more...

It’s very possible that I had more fun making and writing this post than any post in Macheesmo history. There were moments when I had to just stop, look at my counter full of crazy colors and ingredients, and laugh out loud. It was so much fun.

I hope you all try some of them out and pass along this post to your friends. Also, leave a comment obviously and let me know which one you want to try or if you happen to know a blue food that I missed!

As far as I can tell that’s the difference.

Even with all of that, I had no idea whether this fig thing I made was a pie or a tart. It was made in a pie dish, and I used a pie crust recipe, but it had a very tart feel to it. So I’m not really sure what to do about it. Anyway, it’s a tart for now. But feel free to call it a fresh fig pie if that makes more sense to you.

Whatever you call it, it’s really tasty.

The prettiest thing I've ever made?

It’s kind of hard to find fresh figs unless you happen to be in California where they are pretty abundant during the summer months. Don’t fret though if you can’t find any good ones at your store. You could substitute any berries I think for the figs. If you don’t use figs though, you might want to up the sugar in the filling a bit. The filling is not particularly sweet because the figs are really sweet.

Fresh Fig Tart

Yield: 1 tart.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

8-10 fresh figs, cut into sixths
6 ounces (approximately) of fresh raspberries
1 Cup heavy whipping cream
1 Cup ricotta cheese
3 Tablespoons sugar
1 Teaspoon vanilla
1/2 Teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 Teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Rum Butter Sauce:
2 Tablespoons butter
1/2 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup dark rum (I used light rum and I think it would be better with dark.)
1/4 Cup water

Almond Pie Crust (Adapted from Simply Recipes version)
1 Cup all-purpose flour
1/4 Cup almonds, ground into flour
8 Tablespoons (1 Stick) butter
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1/2 Teaspoon sugar
1 - 3 Tablespoons very cold water

Directions:

1) Grind your almonds into a flour in a food processor or you could use a mortar and pestle.

2) Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

3) Cut in the butter and slowly add the water.

4) Roll this into a ball and then stick it in the freezer for 10 minutes.

5) Roll it out onto a lightly floured surface.

6) Transfer dough to a normal pie pan, poke a bunch of holes in the bottom and around the sides with a fork to make sure the crust doesn’t puff up while baking.

7) Put a layer of parchment paper in the bottom of the pie and filled it up with black beans. The helps keep some weight on it so it stays nice and thin.

8) Bake this at 400 degrees for about 20-25 minutes until the edges are golden brown. As soon as you pull it out of the oven, gently lift the black beans out of the pie. If the bottom is still kind of soggy, bake for 5 more minutes. The crust needs to be completely cooked before filling it.

9) After it comes out and is golden brown, make sure to cool it completely before filling.

10) Add the cream to a large bowl and whisk until it begins to turn stiff.

11) Gently stir or fold in the ricotta and all the spices.

12) Once it is all mixed up, you can fill the pie crust with the mixture. Make sure the pie crust is completely cool before filling it.

13) Wash the fruit and dry them thoroughly. Make sure to use only very ripe figs for this.

14) Roughly chop fruit and arrange around pie on top of filling.

15) Melt the butter in a sauce pan and stir in the sugar, rum, and water. Let that simmer together and reduce until the sugar is completely dissolved. Maybe 5 minutes. It should be slightly syrupy.

16) Let it cool before coating the dessert. Just drizzle it on the fruit-topped dessert.

Forming the crust

This is very much a pie crust recipe which really shifts the debate toward “pie” for this dessert. To start, grind your almonds into a flour in a food processor or you could use a mortar and pestle. You can also buy almond flour in some specialty stores. Combine all your dry ingredients in a bowl.

Pretty dry.

Next, cut in your butter and slowly add your water. I found that this dough came together really easily. Easier than a normal pie crust. I think it might be because the almonds are kind of oily and they give a bit more moisture to the dough than just flour.

At some point you’ll end up with a mixture that will easily hold together if you press it.

Kind of crumby.

Roll this into a ball and then stick it in the freezer for 10 minutes. That will keep the butter into nice chunks. Then roll it out onto a lightly floured surface.

Again, I found this pie crust recipe to roll out very easily which may mean that my version was too moist. I thought the final product was very good though.

A very easy dough to roll out.

I used just a normal pie pan for this because that’s what I had on hand. I poked a bunch of holes in the bottom and around the sides with a fork to make sure that it doesn’t puff up while baking.

Poking prevents puffing.

After doing that, I was still worried that it was going to puff up while baking so I put a layer of parchment paper in the bottom of the pie and filled it up with black beans. The helps keep some weight on it so it stays nice and thin.

Helpful??

Bake this at 400 degrees for about 20-25 minutes until the edges are golden brown. As soon as you pull it out of the oven, gently lift the black beans out of the pie. If the bottom is still kind of soggy, bake for 5 more minutes. The crust needs to be completely cooked before filling it.

After it comes out and is golden brown, make sure to cool it completely before filling.

As an aside, this bean thing may be unnecessary. I read somewhere that it helps and so I thought I would give it a try. It worked well, but I also think that it may have worked fine just by poking some holes in the dough with a fork.

The Filling

This filling is really simple. Add your cream to a large bowl and whisk until it begins to turn stiff. Also known as whipped cream people. Don’t over whip it or you’ll be staring at a bowl of butter.

Then gently stir or fold in your ricotta and all the spices. Adjust this to your tastes, but I found this to be a good balance. The filling was really light but still had some spice to it. When mixing in the ricotta and spices try to keep it really light. Gentle is good here.

Kind of winged this.

Once it is all mixed up, you can fill your pie crust with the mixture. It should fit perfectly.

Very important

Make sure your pie crust is completely cool before filling it. In fact, I put mine in the fridge so it was actually cold. If it is at all warm, your filling will just melt like ice cream on asphalt.

Filled up.

The Fruits

Wash your fruit and dry them thoroughly. Make sure to use only very ripe figs for this. I actually bought more than I needed so I could be sure to only use the best ones in the bunches.

Left over figs are usually not a problem.

Figs are good.

As you can see from the first picture I got a bit carried away with arranging my fruit on the dessert. Feel free to throw them on there however you want.

The Rum Butter Glaze

There is a very light glaze that goes on top of this dessert. Basically, just melt the butter in a sauce pan and stir in the sugar, rum, and water. Let that simmer together and reduce until the sugar is completely dissolved. Maybe 5 minutes. It should be slightly syrupy.

Let it cool before coating the dessert. Just drizzle it on your fruit-topped dessert.

Very refreshing!

This was very good and at the end of the day it reminds me much more of a tart than a pie which is why I called it a tart.

Thanks very much to reader Bethany for sending me the idea for this recipe. It was kind of an original idea and we went back and forth on crust options and fillings before I settled on this version.

The next morning I was looking for something quick to make because, after all, I had a kitten to play with all day. I also happened to have a few cups of granola left over from the last batch of homemade granola I mixed up.

Add some vanilla yogurt and these were an obvious choice:

It's all in the levels.

Parfaits are fantastic. They are pretty, easy, and healthy. What more could you want in a breakfast meal?! I like to get the tallest glasses I can find and make as many levels as possible, but you could just do one level of each ingredient if you wanted.

I probably don't need to give step by step photos for these...

Berries. Yogurt. Granola. Repeat. That’s it! I use vanilla yogurt which has plenty of sweetness. If you only have original, you can of course use that. If you want to make it sweeter, just mix in a bit of honey before you layer it.

You get the idea. I'm going to stop now.

Ultimately, I think what makes a good parfait is the granola. I’m such a huge proponent of homemade granola. I make a huge batch at a time about once a month and it keeps really well.

While some of the ingredients are a bit pricey, I’ve ran the numbers and it is definitely cheaper to make it yourself. Plus you can customize it to your tastes so it is really the best of both worlds.

Homemade granola.

These ended up being much larger than I was thinking.

These could be breakfast for two days.

I ate mine just barely and Betsy saved half of hers for breakfast the next day. Once they are made, you can chill them in the fridge for a day or two without a problem. The granola might lose a bit of its crunch, but it will still be tasty.

From up top.

These gave us plenty of energy to make it most of the day playing with the new cat. I feel like it added a month or two onto my life.

I try very hard to post breakfast/brunch dishes on Saturdays. You can be sure not to miss them by getting Macheesmo updates for free via RSS or your email.

About the tart, he says “it is literally child’s play.” To Mr. Bittman’s credit I then, of course, skipped over the part about how while it is easy, it still has to be “learned.” But I had the confidence I needed. This thing is child’s play.

This attitude led to me breaking one of my golden rules in the kitchen: Stay humble. Because the one time you think you can master something, it will fall apart all around you because you become careless. And that is more or less what happened to this:

Ready. Start. FAIL.

I’m posting the recipe for the crust, but not the filling because, well, you will find out why. The recipe for the crust is solid though and it goes like this:

Tart Crust (From How to cook Everything)
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1.2 teaspoon salt
- 2 Tablespoons sugar
- 10 Tablespoons butter: unsalted, very cold, and cubed.
- 1 egg yolk
- 3 Tablespoons sugar

I know I did this part right.

As with any crust, you want to start with extremely cold butter, cubed. In fact, if you are using a food processor, you can even use frozen butter. I used a food processor here and I don’t think I’m ever doing it again. I’m just not satisfied that you can get the right butter distribution with a food processor. The problem is that you don’t want the butter processed. You want it clumpy but yet distributed. That is how you get those small peas of butter that lead to that really flaky crust.

When I use a processor though, I just spin away and end up with a butter flour meal of sorts that isn’t what I want. This is what I got this time and I knew right away that I over processed it a bit.

I here by resolve to never use a processor again for crust.

Now, I know plenty of people who stand by the processor and I think they can work as long as you have restraint with the pulser. Go slow and try not to over do it. I am incapable of doing that so, for me, it’s back to mixing in the butter by hand with a pastry cutter or even a fork.

Anyway, so assuming you do that part right, you will be much better off as that is one of the most important parts. What is frustrating is that I knew it was the most important part and yet I was so confident, I just plugged ahead rather than taking the time to redo my obvious mistake. Anyway, onward and upward!

Now slowly add your yolk and your water. You should be able to form clumps with the dough now that stick together very nicely.

It clumps and then it crumbles.

Now just take your dough and form a nice ball. Wrap this in plastic wrap and chill it for at least an hour. You can freeze it for days and days, but you want to make sure everything is nice and cold.

So then you form a ball. This part is easy.

The method I like to use for rolling this dough out is to put it between two pieces of parchment paper and just slowly roll it out with a rolling pin. After you roll it a few times, turn it 1/4 of a turn so as to make sure you have a nice circle and that you are rolling evenly.

This part I knew I could do, but the dough would not be as flaky as I wanted due to my previous error.

This gave me some confidence, which was of the false nature.

Ok. Now for my even larger mistake. THE FILLING. I was trying to get all fancy with this thing so I took some fruit that I had around (cranberries and raspberries which was a great start) and put them in a sautée pan. But then I just got too cocky. I added: 2 Tablespoons of jam, 2 Tablespoons of brandy, honey, and sugar. Was I drunk while I was doing this? No. I’m not really sure what I was thinking.

This is where I got even more cocky though: The filling tasted awesome. It was a bit tart but yet had some sweetness and had a nice texture. So, with chest puffed out, I emptied the entire pan onto my crust. What could go wrong?!

I knew something was wrong, but did that stop me?

I should have known something was going to be wrong right after I took the above photo because the filling continued to flow out from the center. But I was way past the point of no return. So I clumsily folded all the sides up on the tart. (CHILD’S PLAY!)

Ready for exploding pie time!

Do note that I did one thing correctly, which was to sprinkle sugar under my tart dough so when I folded it up there was some sugar on the top and also it makes it easier to get your tart off the baking sheet.

As you can imagine, when I took this thing out of the oven, the filling had completely exploded all over the place. This was because my filling was way too moist. There was all the liquid from the additions I put in PLUS all of the natural liquid in the fruit and it just seeps right out once it got hot.

This was actually not half bad.

So, while it was not something I would want to remake (and the photos didn’t turn out great), I did learn plenty from it:

1) No more food processor for me when it comes to pie or tart dough.
2) Keep it simple with fillings. Why did I think complicated was better? Just the fruit tossed in a bit of sugar would have yielded better results
3) Stay humble. There were a bunch of signs during this baking experience that should have made me put on the brakes, but I just plowed ahead.

Now for the shocking part – or at least it shocked me. The tart wasn’t bad. It actually tasted nice. It wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever tasted, and the crust wasn’t the best, but in general it was pretty darn good. Still better than store bought! So even if things aren’t going perfect, you might still make a decent dish and at least you will learn some things along the way!

Sometime shortly I will be trying this again with hopefully better results and better photos. Hopefully, I can learn from this and maybe the next time I try this I can say that it is, in fact, child’s play.

Because I care about your Thanksgiving success, I’m only posting Thanksgiving recipes until the big day which means you will get at least 4 and maybe 5 wonderful Thanksgiving recipes to use.

I know that salad is not the first thing that people think of when they think of Thanksgiving and it shouldn’t be. But I guarantee you that if you make this salad, it will be the star of the pre-turkey show. It only includes 4 ingredients and a dressing, but it is mouthwatering.

This is the perfect pomegranate salad:

Healthy and Tasty.

Perfect Pom Salad
Serves 4 – 6
- Greens. I like to use baby romaine for this, but I’ve made it before with spinach as well. You want something nice and green.
- 1 pomegranate.
- 6 oz. goat cheese.
- 1/2 cup walnuts (toasted). You could also use almonds or cashews.

Dressing:
- 1 heaping cup raspberries
- 3 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
- 2 Tablespoons honey
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- Pinch of salt

Very simple salad dressing

I like to make the dressing first which is actually very easy. Just put your raspberries in a food processor:

Don't worry. This won't hurt... FOR LONG!

And then add all of your other ingredients!

All Raspberries go to Heaven.

Anytime you are making a sauce or dressing or anything really, you should get in the habit of tasting it before you add it to anything. This is a key part to the dressing as the flavors can vary a lot based on your raspberries, balsamic, and honey. If you taste it and it is too sweet, add a dash more balsamic vinegar. If it is really bitter, add a bit more honey. It should be flavorful, but have some tang to it.

If you don’t have a food processor you could mash up the berries with a fork and then mix in all of the other ingredients or you could probably just go buy a raspberry vinaigrette, but it might not be as good.

Next on our list is to take apart a pomegranate. What a mystical fruit the pomegranate is. It is almost like Mother Nature said, “I’m going to give the world the most delicious of treats!” But then maybe she had a migraine or something so she changed it up: “Oh yea. I’ll give you that treat, but I will embed each little nugget of yummy in an impossible to decipher maze of CRAP.”

Luckily, the code has a key and the key is a big bowl of water. Just quarter your disaster fruit and pick it apart submerged in water. The kernels will sink and the crap will rise. Then you can just pour off the water and you are all set.

Breaking the Pomegranate Code.

Now take that dressing that you’ve tasted and perfected and add it slowly to your greens. I keep a big bowl around for this and mix them up well. You want to make sure you have plenty of dressing, but be weary of over-dressing it. When in doubt, I like to put on less dressing and then put a small bowl of it on the table that people can use.

This is pretty good just like this actually.

Next, just pile on your walnuts, pomegranates seeds, and crumbled goat cheese and you are in for a treat!

Sorry. I don't deliver.

I am posting this as a Thanksgiving recipe because it is light and easy, but appears very decadent. It is also beautiful on the table and would goes well with other Thanksgiving foods. Obviously, this is not a Thanksgiving specific recipe though. I make it anytime I can find a good pomegranate.

If you liked this recipe and don’t want to miss out on future posts (including more Thanksgiving!) you can get Macheesmo updates delivered piping-hot for free to your RSS door or email window.