Early Peaches in a Pie

I've heard about the Dry Creek Peach stand for years, but it's up by Geyserville and I don't travel to that part of the county often, so I never visited. A few days ago I read that they already had peaches...about two weeks earlier than usual. I love peaches, but the ones that I get in the market are uninspiring. They tend to be hard and with little flavor. You can ripen them in a brown paper bag, but then they are ripe and still flavorless, plus they are often bruised with large dark areas from rough handling when they were hard.

So Sweetie and I found that we had the time, so we drove up the the Dry Creek Peach stand and purchased a flat of the first peaches of the season. The Dry Creek Peach folks were delightful and since they grow 30 varieties, we will likely be visiting them again and again. 

The peaches! They are heavenly! Because they were picked ripe, the skins come off easily...no need to dip them in boiling water to loosen the skins. They are also wonderfully juicy and full of peach flavor.

Of course we started eating them plain. Sweetie even ate his with the peel still on. I prefer them without the peel. Then I combined them with some other fresh fruit we had on hand...raspberries, pineapple and banana. Delicious!

The next day I made a peach pie with them and it is a really great pie. It took about 6 peaches to make the filling. I used a ready made pie dough crust for the bottom, made a filling with those slices peaches, freshly ground nutmeg, some flour and cornstarch mixed and a tablespoon of lemon juice. They were sweet enough that I didn't add any sugar. On top I put a streusel of brown sugar, flour, butter and chopped pecans. I'm afraid that the streusel  burned a bit during the first part of the baking, but I covered the whole top with foil for the 350 degree F part and it didn't burn any more. Next time I'll cover it sooner.

This is an exceptional pie, especially if you use tree ripened fruit. True peach season in most of the U.S is in June and July, so see if you can find some good peaches...and have some pie!

Peach Pie with Streusel Topping

5 cups peeled, sliced peaches, pits discarded

1/4 cup all-purpose flour mixed with 1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated if possible

few grains of salt

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup chopped pecans

8 oz. (1/2 cup, 1 stick) soft butter

one egg white

one 9” unbaked pie shell ( put into freezer until ready to fill the pie)

Mix peach slices with flour mixture,  lemon juice, nutmeg and salt. Pile into chilled pie shell that has been brushed with slightly beaten egg white. 

Make the streusel: In a medium bowl mix together the brown sugar, flour and pecans. Add the soft butter, cut into pieces, and use clean fingers to smoosh the butter into the flour mixture until combined. The mixture will be barely crumbly.

Break apart the streusel mixture into small-ish lumps and scatter evenly over the peach filling.

Bake in a preheated 425 degree F oven for 10 minutes. Place foil over edges of pie shell if they start to become too brown or if the top becomes too brown. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake about 45 minutes, or until filling is bubbly and crust is golden brown.

Let cool at least five minutes before serving. I served mine at room temperature.

My Mom's NOTES: The filling (without the streusel topping) can be frozen: Line 9” pie pan with heavy foil and put in peach mixture. Fold over and seal the foil. Put into a zip lock bag (gallon size) and freeze. When ready to bake, continue as above, putting frozen pie filling into an unbaked pie shell brushed with egg white as above. You can do the same thing with the apple pie filling. You may have to bake either pie with frozen filling 10 minutes or so longer.

Must Be Time For Berry Pie

We are enjoying the time with Raine and he seems to be enjoying the conversations, being on our 'farm' and the cooking and baking I'm doing with him, plus the woodworking that Sweetie is doing with him.

Yesterday he picked some more blackberries so that we could make a pie for dinner using the Food Processor Pie Crust dough we made the day before. To those blackberries we added some frozen raspberries and a few blueberries for a three berry delight.

Raine and I have baked freeform pies like galettes before, but this was our first pie in a pie pan together. He easily rolled out the dough for the pie bottom, seeming to know instinctively to keep the thickness even across the circle. He used a small knife to even out the overhang after I showed him how to fold the circle into quarters and then unfold that in the pie pan. Then, forgetting that we were planning to do a two crust pie, I showed him how to form the edge by folding the excess under, sort of rolling it, then fixing it to the edge and making it decorative with his fingers. By that time I remembered the two crust notion, so we changed course and decided to top it with streusel instead. Fortunately the book we're using for the pie recipe also has one for streusel.

The pie turned out pretty well. Because the frozen raspberries had a lot of juice, the filling was a bit loose, even with both flour and cornstarch added before baking, but it was still delicious and the pastry was excellent. I liked the streusel crunch as an contrast to the soft filling. We all agreed that the filling was nicely tart, even with the sweet streusel.

Triple Berry Pie with Streusel Top Crust

based on recipe from Art of the Pie by Kate McDermott

1 recipe Food Processor Pie Dough (see below), using half the recipe - reserve the other half for another use

6 cups (680-900 grams), about one and a half pounds, equal parts blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, fresh picked or unthawed-frozen (We used about 3 3/4 cups frozen raspberries,1/4 cup fresh blueberries and 2 cups fresh blackberries)

3/4 cup (150 grams) sugar

Small grating fresh nutmeg (OK to use a pinch of ground nutmeg instead)

1 teaspoon (5 grams) fresh lemon juice and a few gratings of lemon zest

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (73 grams) all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon cornstarch 

1 recipe Streusel topping for pie (see below)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

Roll out the half recipe of pie dough, fit it in the pie pan (9-inch, deep dish), fold under excess dough to create a raised edge, then flute. Place pie pan in the freezer while you make the filling.

Put the berries, sugar, nutmeg, lemon juice, zest, salt, flour and cornstarch into a bowl and mix just to combine. If there are few juices, mash slightly with a wooden spoon to create a small amount of juices.

If not already done, make the Streusel to top the pie with.

Pour the filling into the chilled pie dough lined pan. Gently smooth with the back of the wooden spoon to make level. Filling should come up to about 1/2 inch BELOW the edge of the pie.

Top the filling evenly with the Streusel (Crumble Topping).

Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for another 25-35 minutes. Check after 15 minutes and cover streusel with aluminum foil, loosely, if topping is looking too brown. Pie is done when the filling at the edges of the streusel is bubbling and the pie crust is golden brown.

Set the pie on a cooling rack and cool to room temperature before serving so that the fruit filling can set up.

Food Processor Pie Crust from Martha Stewart Test Kitchen

makes 2 disks

2 sticks unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces, divided
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup ice water

Freeze 3/4 of the butter pieces in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet until hard, at least 30 minutes. Refrigerate the other 1/4 of the pieces. The frozen pieces stay chunky after being pulsed, creating steam pockets when baked (the key to flakiness) and the refrigerated bits get worked into the pastry, giving it a tender texture.

Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor work bowl. Add refrigerated butter (the smaller amount of the butter bits). Pulse to combine, about 10 times. Add frozen butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal, with some blueberry-sized clumps.

With the processor off, add the ice water. Immediately pulse until water is just incorporated, about 10 times. Squeeze a small amount of dough to make sure it holds together. Pulse a few times more if needed. When you squeeze the dough it should remain crumbly, but come together. Don't pulse it so long that it forms a ball. Adding water while the processor is running  and over-pulsing are bad ideas... could lead to tough dough.

Lay out 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Empty half the dough onto each piece. Bring edges of wrap together to gather dough and form a round mass. Press the dough this way to form a rough round mass, and press on top of the wrap to form a disk. The processed dough should resemble uneven crumbs. When you empty the mixture from the processor bowl out onto the plastic wrap, some pieces will be tiny, others will be in clumps. That is perfect! The gathered plastic wrap method of forming the disk simultaneously has you gathering the crumbs into a cohesive dough and shaping it.

Roll out disks, still wrapped in plastic, to 1/2 inch thick rounds, about 8 inches in diameter. Rounds this size will chill more quickly that hockey-puck sized ones and will soften more uniformly when removed from the refrigerator.

Refrigerate at least 45 minutes and up to 2 days. Dough can be frozen up to 1 month. 

Streusel (Crumble Topping)

1/2 cup (110 grams) brown sugar, packed

1/4 teaspoon salt (a pinch)

1/2 cup (73 grams) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups (144 grams) whole oats, rolled

8 tablespoons (112 grams) unsalted butter

1/2 cup (60 grams) chopped nuts, optional - We used walnuts, but pecans are great, too

Put the brown sugar, salt, flour, and oats in a bowl and stir to mix.

Dice the chilled butter into small dice and scatter in the bowl. Cut the butter in with a pastry tool or two crossed knives, or use you fingers to smear the butter into the dry ingredients.  When you are done, the mixture should look crumbly. Take about a 1/4 cup in a clean hand and squeeze - it should stick together. If that works, add the nuts and mix in. If it doesn't stick together when squeezed, add another tablespoon or so of butter and work that in, then add the nuts.

Pour the mixture into a bowl or plastic bag and chill in the freezer while you make the filling.

Big Blackberries in a Cobbler

Summer is in full swing! The strawberries from the farm stand on Hwy. 12 are their usual amazing flavor bombs, there is ripe rhubarb in my friend's garden (and now in my crisper...thanks Water Woman!), the zucchini are finally large enough to harvest and were grilled for our dinner last night, and, perhaps best of all, the ollaliberries (a cousin of regular blackberries) along the road are ripe and juicy and bursting with flavor.

Like fresh apricots, their period of ripeness is fairly short, about a week and a half or two weeks, so when there are enough of them to gather and eat it is always a celebration. The regular blackberries last longer and will be ripe in about three weeks, just as the ollaliberries ar finishing. Most of those I picked a few days ago were the 'king' berry, the on in the middle that blooms first, so is ripe first. Because we had a rainy spring, the berries are full of juices, too.

I decided to bake a nice cobbler to showcase them. Our Australian friends who are visiting enjoyed the cobbler a lot. To make the cobbler, the berries are rinsed, then mixed with a combination of sugar and cornstarch. I also added a touch of sea salt and some lemon zest for zing.

For the cobbler part I used a recipe from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham for streusel topping for pie. I varied it (what a surprise!) by adding a bit of old fashioned oats since I like the added crunch The streusel is basically butter, flour, brown sugar and, in this case, oats, with the butter being very cold and being cut into the flour/sugar/oat mixture with a pastry cutter or two knives. You can also rub the butter in, which I did at the end since I wanted and almost cookie dough like texture.

I used half the streusel for another recipe, which I'll post about soon, and half I sprinkled over the berry mixture before baking it. My whole house smelled like summer once the berries warmed up and released their juices. Wonderful! Even with the corn starch this is a juicy dessert, as you can see in the photo at the top. Bowls work well for serving. I served portions with a small scoop of vanilla soy milk ice cream. A grand summer dessert and pretty easy, too.

Olallieberry Cobbler
Serves 6-8

1/4 - 1/2 cup sugar (depending on how tart the berries are)
1/4 - 1/2 cup corn starch (depending on how juicy the berries are)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
2-3 pints olallieberries, rinsed and drained
1/4 pound, 1 stick, 4 oz, 8 tablespoons butter or margarine, very cold
1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup old fashioned oats

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9 x 9-inch square pan with cooking spray. Set aside.

In a large bowl mix together the sugar, corn starch, salt and lemon zest. Add the berries and toss to coat. Pour berries into the prepared pan. Set aside.

In a large bowl mix together the flour and brown sugar. Cut in the butter until mixture forms clumps.
Divide streusel in half and save half for another use. Sprinkle remaining clumps of streusel evenly over the berries. Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until streusel in golden brown and berries are bubbly along the sides of the pan.

Cool on a rack for at least 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Garnish with ice cream, custard, or cream if desired.

Fall is Coming and So It's Pumpkin Time

Fall is my absolute favorite season. There is something about the cooler air, the leaves turning crimson and orange, gold and brown. I love the flavors of the fall from butternut squash and pumpkin to tart apples and cranberries. Many of the spices that have sat on the shelf through the summer, including cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg, are the perfect additions to fall cakes and cookies, muffins and pies.

I'm starting with pumpkin! Last Christmas my daughter brought home a recipe from Southern Living for an outrageously good pumpkin pie. It had a layer of gingersnap crumble on top of the regular pie crust, rich pumpkin filling and a streusel topping...plus whipped cream for garnish! Last winter one of our favorite restaurants served a pumpkin dessert that was delicious...a bit lighter than regular pumpkin pie, with a streusel topping and, of course, whipped cream. I looked for a recipe that would give similar results but came up empty.

Recently I borrowed a book from the library called Block Parties and Poker Nights by Peggy Allen. It had lots of dishes to bring to potlucks and poker nights, including one that sounded a lot like that restaurant pumpkin dessert. Never being one to leave well enough alone, I decided to combine aspects of the Christmas pie and the potluck pumpkin dessert by putting a gingersnap crust under the pumpkin dessert layer. I'm here to tell you that this is one spectacular and awesome and excellent dessert! Just ignore your diet when you take your serving. After having a generous portion and giving one to Sweetie I decided that we really couldn't let this dessert remain in the house.

It doesn't look like anything special in the pan or even when you put a portion in the bowl. The whipped cream makes it look more special, but it is still a timid looking sweet. Then you taste it!It is rich, spicy, light but creamy and probably addictive. The gingersnaps at the bottom gives it zing and goes perfectly with the spicy pumpkin filling. I think the walnuts on top are crucial because they add needed crunch. You can leave them out, but I wouldn't.

The remaining dessert was taken to the lovely folks at the local library...after all without the library I would never have found the recipe! Besides, they are always a pleasure to speak with, always helpful, knowledgeable and hard working, too. Now they want my recipe...and who can blame them?

So for Jennifer and the other lucky librarians who had a taste of this dessert, and for anyone who wants a wicked good pumpkin dessert that will feed quite a few people, here it is!

Pumpkin Dessert with Gingersnap Crust– Better Than Pumpkin Pie
Inspired by Block Parties and Poker Nights by Peggy Allen

40 gingersnap cookies, finely crushed (about 2 cups)
½ cup finely ground nuts (I used walnuts, but pecans work well, too)
½ cup butter, melted
2 ½ cups (28 oz can) pumpkin puree
2 cups milk
6 large eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1.2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 (18-oz) package yellow cake mix
¼ pound (1 stick) butter
½ cup chopped nuts, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl mix the gingersnap crumbs, ground nuts and melted butter. Pat into the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

In a mixer bowl, combine the pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, and spices. Beat at medium speed until blended. Pour the mixture over the gingersnap crust in the 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

In a separate bowl, pour the dry cake mix. Cut the butter into the cake mix until it is crumbly (or use a food processor).

Sprinkle the crumb mixture over the pumpkin mixture. Top the crumbs with the chopped nuts, if using.

Bake until the crumbs are golden, about 50 minutes to 1 hour .

Serve this dessert warm or cool. Can be garnished with whipped cream or ice cream.

Serves 18

Spring Coffee Cake with Cherries

Spring is fully here. The birds are everywhere singing their sweet songs. Most of the spring bulbs have finished blooming and are being followed by the first flush of roses in pink, red, white, yellow and coral. The wild flower seed I sprinkled on bare earth in January actually germinated in a few places. I’m not actually sure of their names, but they are pretty with blue, yellow, white and pale lavender blossoms showing their cheery faces.


The veggies are being planted in the garden, the grass has been mown yet again, and all of the fruit trees have finished their bloom. The blackberries along the road are in bloom now and soon the grapes will break bud as well.


Although the cherry blossoms have come and gone, it’s still a bit early for fresh cherries. Fortunately good sour cherries can be found at the store put up in glass jars in a light syrup. When you drain them, reserve the syrup for other uses…like making a cherry sauce for ice cream.

This recipe is a variation of one that my mom gave me. It used a pre-mixed biscuit mix along with yeast. You get the ease of using a quick mix along with the wonderful down home fragrance and taste of yeast. Takes a little longer than a coffee cake made just with the biscuit mix, but the flavor and tenderness are worth it. It doesn't rise very much, but the crumb is light and tender.

This is my entry in Meeta’s Monthly Mingle. It’s a cake and used a spring fruit and is delicious. Do stop by Meeta’s blog in the next little while to wish her bon voyage for a few months. Better yet, join in the Mingle!

It's also this week's entry in the Yeastspotting event, Susan of Wild Yeast's excellent collection of recipes using yeast or yeasted ingredients.





Sour Cherry Coffee Cake

1 pkg (1/4 oz.) active dry yeast
¾ cup warm water (105-115 degrees F.)
½ cup sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons olive oil (I used Meyer lemon flavored)
½ teaspoon almond extract
4 ¼ cups biscuit mix (like Bisquick)
24 oz jar sour cherries, drained
Streusel Topping (see below)

Dissolve yeast in the warm water and proof (let sit 10 minutes to make sure yeast is active).

Combine sugar, egg, olive oil, and almond extract. Beat until thick and lemon colored, about 5 minutes. Stir in dissolved yeast and 3 ¾ cups of the biscuit mix. Knead until smooth, kneading in the rest of the biscuit mix as you go, about 25 times of kneading. Cover and let rest in a warm place for 15 minutes.

Roll out and place in a buttered 10” X 13” rimed jelly roll pan, pulling an pressing the corners to form a rim of dough.

Arrange the drained cherries on the dough in a pleasing pattern.

Sprinkle with the streusel. Let rise in a warm place 35 minutes. Bake in a preheated 350 degree F. oven for 40-50 minutes. Cut in squares to serve. Serve warm or cooled.

Streusel Topping
Mix ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup flour, ¼ cup graham cracker crumbs, ½ cup chopped almonds, ¼ teaspoon cardamom, ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg. Cut in ½ cup cold butter with pastry blender or two knives until crumbly.

Note: I used canned sour cherries, but if you have fresh ones that would be even better. Just make sure to remove the pit, then cut them in halves and arrange on the dough, leaving some space between the cherry halves.