Orange You Glad You Stopped By?

I've been away from Philly Makes! for most of the summer, but if you recall my previous posts you’ll remember I love gardening. For my houseplants I’m partial to exotic flowers and succulents, outside I like to grow edibles. In my tiny yard I have an assortment of heirloom tomatoes and vegetables, over thirty herbs, figs, grapes and calamondins, a variety of miniature oranges that are similar to kumquats. The fruits are small, around the size of a ping-pong ball, and have a sweet rind with a sour inside.

I’ve had the calamondin tree shown in the photo at right for over ten years; it’s almost four feet tall and lives in the yard from April through October, then comes inside for the winter. It produces gloriously scented blossoms and fruit year-round, although every few years it takes a rest.

I made the tart in the photo above using this recipe from Epicurious.com. The top is covered with candied calamondins and the filling is made with ricotta, sour cream and toasted fennel. It was my first time making this recipe so I followed it exactly and used sugar, but next time I’ll make it my way and substitute honey or agave. I served it chilled and garnished with leaves from my tree and of course a pun: “Orange you glad you stopped by?”.

Lemon Love Cake

My middle son turned three this weekend, and here is the cake I made:

It was not without blood, sweat, and a whole lot of tears! Basically, it is a lemon pound cake that has been hollowed out on the inside & filled with cream, then glazed and decorated with homemade white chocolate polka dots (colored blue) and yellow skittles. The tears came after I finished it and tried to move it-- the whole thing fell apart! It was a complete train wreck, in at least four different pieces, not to mention the top had completely fallen off. I somehow managed to squish it all back together and cover up the rest of the carnage with candy lemon slices. No one was the wiser, and it tasted pretty good, too!

No-knead bread!

I'm not that happy with how any of my little mixed-media collage paintings are looking at the moment, so I'm sharing the bread I'm making tonight instead. The photo is actually from a time I made it a few months ago since tonight's loaf is still in the oven.

I'm more of a cooking person than a baking person, and I've had mixed results with other bread recipes. But I'm really loving this No Knead Bread recipe I got from the New York Times. Seriously, even if you think you're not a baker, give it a try! It's so good and so easy and way cheaper than buying bread from the store!

I make the white bread recipe, but I substitute one cup whole wheat for one of the cups of white flour. You just mix up your flour, yeast, salt, and water, and leave it to rise for four hours. Then you dump your dough out on a flat surface, flip it over and let it sit for another 30 minutes. Then you bake it in some sort of closed container like a dutch oven for 30 minutes. Almost no work involved, and you get a lovely round loaf of bread with a great crispy crust! The closed container is the secret to the crispy crust- apparently professional bakers have special ovens that inject steam while baking. This is very hard to replicate in a regular oven, so using a closed container is like a little steam oven inside your regular oven.

There is another version of the no-knead recipe that involves letting the dough sit for 14 hours, which I tried once. But I liked the 4-hour version much better anyway!