A Small Treat with Summer Berries

I've made Financiers before, but it's been a while. Not sure why I've waited because these are delightful little treats that showcase summer berries and fruit. They are perfect with tea or coffee. They were named after the financial men of Paris (I believe). They are just the right amount of pastry and very rich! This recipe by David Lebovitz is a good one, as his recipes usually are.

One of the wonderful thing about these is that they use browned butter. It's not difficult to make browned butter, but you do have to keep an eye on the pan and focus on how browned the milk solids are getting. Stop when you get a whiff of toasted nuts from the pan, but before the solids get dark brown.

When I first made this I used slivered blanched almonds and ground them in the food processor. This time all I had to do was weigh some almond flour from Costco. I still used the food processor to mix the sugars and the almond flour, but it was like three short pulses!

You can use any kind of fruit in these, but I like fresh berries, especially blackberries. I made these on July 17th and in honor of Max. When he was a little guy he used to go with Sweetie in the morning to walk our dog Shogun around the block. When it was blackberry season (about now) he would come home with his hands stained with blackberry juice...and there were usually similar stains around his mouth since the joy wasn't just picking the berries, but eating them right away. 

For this batch I used blackberries in some, halved tiny strawberries in others, and a few had pieces of nectarines. The ones in the muffin cups also got a sprinkle of sliced almonds. I made five in the muffin cups and a dozen in a cast iron mold I have. They become fairy cakes and are quite cute, plus a better size for snacking. The photo at the top of the post shows one of the small ones that has nectarine and blackberry.

Summer Fruit Financiers with Almond Flour
makes about 12 small cakes in muffin cups
Based on a recipe in Ripe for Dessert by David Lebovitz


7 tablespoons unsalted butter
157 grams almond flour (about 1 1/2 cups)
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup powdered sugar
5 tablespoons flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 large egg whites
½ teaspoon almond extract
one 6-oz basket blackberries

Position the oven rack in the center of the oven and pre-hear to 400 degrees F. Butter a 12 cup muffin tin.

In a skillet, heat the butter until it begins to sizzle. Continue to cook over low heat until the edges begin to darken and the butter gives off a nutty aroma. Remove from the heat. (The butter may sputter and splatter while cooking. If you want, place an overturned colander over the pan to protect yourself.)

In a food processor, grind the almonds with the granulated and powdered sugars. When fine, add the flour and the salt and pulse to mix. While the processor is running, gradually pour in the egg whites and add the almond extract. Stop the machine, and add the warm butter, pulsing as you pour until the batter is just mixed.

Divide the batter evenly among the buttered muffin cups Batter will come up about 1/3 of the way. Poke 3 or 4 blackberries into each cake.

Bake for 18 minutes, until puffy and deep golden brown. Watch so they don’t burn. Let stand a few minutes, then remove them from the pan and cool on a rack. Store cooled cakes in an airtight container for up to a week.

Variations: Substitute peach, nectarine, or plum slices for the blackberries, peeling first if desired. Cut the fruit into ½ inch slices or chunks and lay them over the top of each little cake or push into the batter if a chunk, like with berries, before baking. You can also sprinkle the top of each cake with untoasted sliced almonds before baking.

Salad with Nectarines and Pecans

 I was talking with my older sister a few days ago and we were talking about inherent talents...our own and those of people we know and love. One of the things that we agreed on was that very often we are unaware that something that we are good at is also something that not a lot of people are good at...but because we have always been good at it, we just assume that everyone is good at it. Why is it hard to admit to ourselves that we have something that we have always been good at that we just take for granted?

A good example in my world is making salads. I rarely include salads in posts because I've always considered salads something that everyone can just throw together. Wrong. It's something that is easy for me but not so easy for a lot of people.

Tonight I made a really delicious salad, better than my usual pretty good salads, and it included a nectarine, an avocado, some blue cheese, toasted pecans, and two kinds of lettuce mixes, plus a bottled blue cheese dressing. I was worried that it would miss the mark because when I was making it, it seemed to have too much nectarine. When it came time to eat it, however, the amounts were just right, so I don't know everything about making salads!

So it turns out that part of my talent is having a sense for the proportions of the different ingredients. Since I never measure, this recipe is a lot of guessing. Hope that it works for you! If it doesn't taste right, just try adding a bit more of one of the ingredients. Still not right, a bit more of another. Save the 'bit more' of the blue cheese for last. It's such a strong flavor, you really just need a small amount to have a big impact.

Nectarine and Pecan Salad with Blue Cheese
Serves 4

4 cups mesclun (mixed filed greens)
1-2 cups romaine (mine came mixed with a small amount of purple cabbage shreds)
1 avocado, peeled, pit removed, and cut into bite sized pieces
1 nectarine, cut into 1-inch wedges, then each wedge cut into thirds, pit discarded
1-2 tablespoons blue cheese crumbles (start with the smaller amount)
12 pecan halves, toasted, cooled and broken into small pieces
Enough blue cheese salad dressing (I use Boat House) to just moisten the salad mixture

In a large bowl place the mesclun, romaine, avocado pieces, nectarine pieces, blue cheese crumbles, and broken toasted pecan pieces. Toss with clean hands to mix. Add less blue cheese dressing than you think you need and toss well with salad tongs or servers. Add additional dressing, if needed, a little at a time. Be sure to toss thoroughly to coat the lettuce leaves.

Serve at once and enjoy!

Strawberry-Nectarine Galette with Raine

The tree of us visited the Pacific Coast Air Museum near the Shultz Airport in Santa Rosa. We took Fulton towards home, but did a few errands. We stopped at the farm stand on Hwy 12, just west of Llano Rd. outside of Sebastopol for some freshly picked strawberries. There is often a line because lots of locals know that these are some of the best strawberries anywhere. They are grown just up the drive and over the hill in the land that gets richness from seasonal flooding some years. They must throw in some magic, too, because they are juicy and ripe and so fragrant, plus sweet enough that you don't need to add any sugar...which is what we did with this freeform pie.

Raine took off the greenery at the stem end and then quartered the berries while I cut the nectarines into slices and then pieces to roughly match the size of the berries. After that it's really easy.

We put a baking stone in the oven and started the oven pre-heating to 425 degrees F. If you don't have a baking stone, you could try and upside down cast iron skillet or just put in an upside down sheet pan. The reason for the upside down instructions is that we are going to slide the galette sitting on parchment paper into the oven, so we can't have any sides of pans sticking up getting in the way.

Next we cut some parchment to roughly a square, about  12" wide and long. Some pre-rolled pie dough from the refrigerator case in the market (I use Pillsbury ReadyCrust) had been sitting out of the fridge long enough to soften. It was a simple matter to roll it out onto the parchment, use a rolling pin to flatten it about another inch all around to about 10.5-11 inches in diameter.

Next we took the prepared fruit and added a teaspoon lemon zest and a tablespoon all-purpose flour, then used clean hands to mix it gently into the fruit. When you want to do gentle but thorough mixing, clean hands are your best tool!

Raine poured the floured and flavored fruit into the center of the dough round. He left about 2.5-3 inches bare around the outer edges and mounded the fruit in that center area. Then he pleated the edge dough up and over the mounded fruit filling all around.

Time for getting this beauty into the oven! I have a long-handled bread baking peel so I used that to transfer the pie laden parchment from the counter onto the hot baking stone. We set the timer for 10 minutes. After that 10 minutes when the hot oven was crisping the bottom and starting to cook the dough, we turned it down to 350 degrees F and baked it another 20-25 minutes...I confess I didn't time it, but took it out when the top was browned and the filling was bubbly...plus the crust and sprung a leak and I needed to get it out before any more juice headed to the oven bottom! With fresh fruit it's hard to know how much flour to add to thicken up the juices...should have used 2 tablespoons!

It made a beautiful rustic pie and it was so delicious. No sugar was needed...it was plenty sweet from the ripe fruit.

Strawberry-Nectarine Galette

Serves 4-6

1/2 box ReadyCrust pie dough (1 round), at room temperature
1 pint fresh strawberries, hulled and cut in quarters
2 nectarines, washed, sliced, pit removed, and cut into smaller pieces (to match the strawberry sizes)
1 teaspoon lemon zest (from about 1/2 a lemon)
1-2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
sugar if needed...if your fruit isn't ripe add a tablespoon or so
parchment paper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. If possible add a baking stone, pizza stone, upside down cast iron skillet (12" diameter), or upside down baking sheet.

Place a parchment paper square, about 12 inches wide and long, on a baking peel or on the counter.

Roll the pie dough out onto the center of the parchment paper. Use a rolling pin to increase the size all around so that it becomes about 10.5-11 inches in diameter.

In a large bowl combine the prepared strawberries, prepared nectarines, lemon zest, flour, and sugar if using. Use clean hands to gently but thoroughly mix the ingredients together for the filling.

Pour the filling into the center of the prepared dough circle. Mound in the center, leaving about 2.5-3 inches along the outside edge with no filling. Fold that outer edge of dough up and over the mounded filling, pleating as needed, until all around had had the dough folded over the filling.

Use the peel, or an upside-down baking sheet, to transfer the parchment and galette to the oven, sliding the parchment onto the baking stone/skillet/baking pan already in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 350 degrees F. Bake for another 20-25 minutes, until filling is bubbly and crust is browned.

Remove to a cooling rack and let cool at least 10 minutes before serving. The filling will be firmer and less drippy as it cools. In our photo we hadn't even waited the 10 minutes, so it was messy...but delicious!

Fruit Basket Coffee Cake

Summer certainly brings lots of kinds of fruit. Right now we have ripe peaches, luscious dark cherries, olallieberries right off the vine, and raspberries, plus green grapes and some plums that are almost ripe which are turning a lovely shade of red-gold on the tree down the hill. The plums and olallieberries are the only local fruit, but the cherries, peaches and raspberries are certainly seasonal.

Yesterday I made a lovely coffee cake to showcase the peaches, cherries, olallieberries and raspberries. It's a variation of the Nectarine Cake in Lauren Chattman's Cake Keeper Cakes book, one of the great cookbooks we baked from during my time with the Cake Slice Bakers.

I made one and a half times the cake batter because the original recipe only makes a thin layer of cake and I wanted one thick enough to absorb all the fruit juices. I also added some almond extract, while keeping the vanilla extract. For the topping I used brown sugar, pecans and ground nutmeg instead of white sugar and cinnamon...they recipe gave two choices for nuts and pecans were one of them.

I baked it in a nine-inch springform pan instead of a ten-inch one. Because I had such a wonderful choice of fruits, I used cherry halves around the outer edge, then peach slices, then olallieberries and raspberries in the middle.

Do watch this cake because the nuts might get too brown...just tent with foil if that happens. Because  the batter is deeper than the original, it took a while to bake, but came out moist with a nice crumb and browned crust. We actually enjoyed this cake for dinner dessert, so I served it with soy vanilla ice cream and that was a great choice. Sweetie added some whipped cream to his, and you can always add extra prepared fresh fruit.

I've never been a big fan of summer, but sitting outside for dinner because it's still warm by 7 o'clock makes summer a bit easier to take. All of the beautiful flowers that are blooming in the garden also are a benefit of summer. Too bad it gets so hot!

Do try this cake, especially if you have some ripe fruit on hand. You can use all one kind of fruit or two kinds, or three if four is too much. With most kinds of fruit, push them down into the batter a bit to allow the juices to soak into the cake. Enjoy!

Fruit Basket Cake with Nutmeg Nut Topping
based on Nectarine Cake in Lauren Chattman's Cake Keep Cakes
serves 8-10

For the Topping:
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped

For the Cake:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks, 6 oz.), unsalted butter or non-dairy margarine, softened
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups assorted stone fruit and/or berries or one kind or fruit, ripe - peel plums or peaches and pit them, pit cherries, pit nectarines or apricots, wash and dry berries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease the insides of a springform pan, 9-inch or 10-inch preferred.

Combine the brown sugar, nutmeg and chopped nuts in a small bowl. Set aside.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl or on a sheet of waxed paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter together on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape bowl and beaters as needed.

With the mixer on low, add the eggs, one at a time, beating to combine the eggs with the butter mixture after each addition. Scrape bowl and beaters as needed.

Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. With mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture, a 1/2 cup at a time. Scrape bowl and beaters as needed and at the end. Use scraper to give batter a final stir to make sure all is combined.

Scrape batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top of the batter. Carefully place the prepared fruit, pushing down a bit into the batter. If using more than one kind of fruit, you can create a pattern.

Sprinkle with the topping. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45-55 minutes. Cool cake in pan for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides, unhinge the springform and cool cake on wire rack until tepid. Remove from the springform bottom and place on a serving plate.

Serve with more fruit, ice cream, whip cream or just as is.

Store uneaten cake, if any, in a cake keeper or wrap in plastic and store at room temperature for up to 2 days.