Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen

It was the best of times.  There is nothing like spending a long weekend with the family enjoying the end of summer on the lake.  We had cookouts, a birthday to celebrate, a wine tasting and some firsts.  Unfortunately I took very few pictures of the food but will share some of the images from the weekend.

Granddaughter Rachel has been taking swimming lessons and this was the first year that she jumped into the water from the dock.

It was Grandson Cameron’s first visit to Lake Lure.

Uncle Jeff got a chance to wakeboard.

We had a blind wine tasting of Pinot Noir wines from California.  The unanimous winner was a Hendry Vineyard Napa Valley Pinot Noir 2008.  Thank you Dave A. for always bringing a case of Hendry wines to the holiday get together.

The kids had their own blind fruit juice tasting.  The winner was Simply Lemonade.

David smoked two pork butts for our pulled pork dinner.  It was better than any barbecue restaurant in North Carolina.  He made a ketchup based sauce and a vinegar based sauce.

My friend Lyla suggested I try Trisha Yearwood’s recipe for Crockpot Macaroni and Cheese.  In the interest of keeping it real here, I have to tell you that this is not my picture.  I did not remember to take a picture.  The picture came from this site.  The adults absolutely loved the mac and cheese and it was easy to put together.  The kids liked it, but did not love it.  It has something to do with that little box of powdered cheese, if you know what I mean.

We also celebrated our DIL Kristen’s birthday.  I made a Lemon Layer Cake with Raspberry Curd.  I made the cake layers and the raspberry curd ahead of time and frosted the cake on the day that we served it.  The cake layers are split in half and the raspberry curd is spread between the layers.

The raspberry curd  filling was delicious.  The recipe came from a book called Luscious Berry Desserts by Lori Longbotham.  Here it is.

LEMON LAYER CAKE WITH RASPBERRY CURD

Cake:
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 tablespoons lemon zest
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup whole milk
5 large egg whites, room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Raspberry Curd:
1 stick unsalted butter
12 ounce package frozen raspberries, thawed
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
pinch salt
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Frosting:
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 tablespoons lemon zest
3 1/2 cups sifted confectioners sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice

Curd Directions:
Melt butter over medium heat.
Add raspberries, yolks, sugar, and salt. Mash raspberries. Cook 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Pour through a strainer, pressing to extract as much as possible.
Cool to room temperature then stir in lemon juice. Chill.

Cake Directions:
Heat oven to 350. Prepare two 8×2 round cake pans. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
Pulse 1/4 cup of the sugar with lemon zest in food processor until finely ground.
Beat butter and zest mixture with electric mixer on medium-high speed until fluffy. Add remaining sugar and beat until smooth.
Add 1/4 cup milk and beat until just blended. Reduce speed to low and alternately add flour and milk in 3 batches. Beat only until blended, no longer.
Beat egg whites in a large bowl until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat to stiff peaks.
Fold the egg whites into the batter carefully.
Divide batter between the two pans and bake about 35 minutes.
Cool 10 minutes in pan then remove and cool completely.

Frosting Directions:

Beat butter and zest until fluffy.
Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
Add lemon juice and beat for one minute.

Assembly:

Cut each cake into two layers.
Spread curd in between layers, leaving about a 1/2 inch border.
Spread frosting on sides and top

Printable recipe

OK.  There is a story here.  My Mother was an artist.  She never had any formal training, but her talent was evident from an early age.  I remember as a child loving the smell of linseed oil and the vibrant paint colors on her palette.  She was a typical housewife of the 50’s, but there was never anything typical about her.  She was a joyful person who loved her husband and her two beautiful (excuse the narcissism) children.  But there was always her talent that she could not hide even if she wanted to.  Her art teacher in high school  encouraged her to attend college and hone her exceptional skills.  But she had fallen in love with my Father who was a brave Marine during WW II.  Their life together was one of the most beautiful love stories that I have ever witnessed.  She was happy.  But she was also creative.  Imagine Van Gogh’s painting of Starry Starry Night.  That is what I thought of when I made this cake which is very similar to something my Mother used to make.

My Mother embraced all styles of art but her talent was in realism.  She painted what she saw and wanted it to look as realistic as possible.  I have never seen anyone with a more precise eye to detail than my Mother.  Because I have four of her paintings I can marvel at her brushstrokes and the way she made flat canvases come alive with images.  Her portraits are amazing.   Here are three that are in our living room.  In the case of Andrew Jackson she copied the portrait by Thomas Sully.  I always wondered why she had never completed it, but this was the way Sully had left it.  It is also the image that is on the twenty dollar bill.

The only one of her paintings that I don’t have, that I would love to have, belongs to my Brother Bill.  He has her Hemingway.  It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece and I applaud Bill for grabbing it first.  “Right!”

Mom was also a talented cook.  What I am today I credit to her example.  She cooked food, as she painted, with both creativity and love.  My SIL Barb recently sent me this recipe for chocolate cake.  Barb said  “Do you remember your Mom’s Blackbottom Cupcakes?  This is a cake recipe that is very similar.”  It is a recipe that I’m sure you can find on the internet as a Blackbottom Cake, but I choose to call it Starry Starry Night Cake in honor of my Mom.  She would have appreciated it’s beauty and loved it.

STARRY STARRY NIGHT CHOCOLATE CAKE

1 1/2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. cocoa
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 c. water
1/3 c. oil
1 tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla

FILLING:

1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese
1 egg
1/3 c. sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 c. chocolate chips

Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, soda and salt. Add water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Pour into 9×13 inch greased and floured pan. Combine cream cheese, egg, salt, sugar and chocolate chips. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto batter in pan. Swirl knife through batter to create a ribbon effect.  Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Sprinkle with chopped walnuts and confectioners’ sugar if desired.  Mom would have sprinkled it with plain sugar.
 
Printable recipe
 
I will see you after the holiday weekend.  We have lots of family visiting.  Have a fun and safe holiday.  More recipes are coming from our cookout.

There are numerous recipes for brownies out there.  This just happens to be one of the good ones.  I have joined a new website started by one of my blogging buddies Dave of My Year on the Grill.  His website is erecipecards.com.  You have probably seen the eRecipeCard button on the left of my text.  Here it is.

A simple buttermilk cake topped with fresh Georgia peaches is what summer is all about in the South.  I remember crossing the border into Georgia for the first time driving down I-85 years ago.  The sight that greeted us was a giant peach looking almost real in it’s fuzzy plumpness. “Welcome to the Peach State” it said.  I thought immediately of Gone With the Wind and the peaches and cream complexions of Scarlett O’Hara and all of the other southern belles.  I declare,  I have looked forward to the Georgia peach crop ever since.

I make a great peach cobbler which is such a tradition in our area.  It goes well with barbecue and is served in many of the barbecue joints in the south.  But I was looking for a more refined peach recipe this time.  I saw a recipe in Bon Appetit for a blackberry buttermilk cake and just knew that I could adapt it to peaches instead of blackberries.

It is an easy cake to put together, but you have to be sure to sift the cake flour and measure before the final sifting with the baking powder, soda and salt.  The results will yield a tender flavorful cake that is delicious in it’s subtle nuances of buttermilk, orange, vanilla and peaches.  Dust with powdered sugar.  Add ice cream or whipped cream if you must, but I like it as is.

Cherry pie has been on my mind lately.  We had a wonderful cherry pie at The Inn on Crippen Creek Farm on our vacation.  My friend Lyla commented on the fact that I failed to get the recipe for it and drats, it is true.  While shopping the other day I picked up some sweet cherries with the intention of baking a pie.  While laboriously pitting the cherries yesterday David said “what are you going to do with them?”  I said “make a pie”.  He said “You can’t make a cherry pie with sweet cherries!”  “What!”  I said.  You have to understand that I trust what he is saying, in this case, because he grew up on a farm.  A fruit farm.  With cherry trees.  His Mom was a great cook.  Their cherries were sour.  Grumbling, I went to the internet and searched for recipes for sweet cherry pie if there were such things.  I found one and it was from Deb at Smitten Kitchen.  If you can’t trust her authority, one who is under contract with Knopf for a cookbook coming out next Spring, who can you trust.  So there.  As I expected when making a cherry pie with sweet cherries, just use less sugar.

I feel pretty confident about pie crust.  Even back in high school when I didn’t know how to cook anything else, I knew how to make a pie.  I had grown up watching my Mom and Grandma make pies.  As a matter of fact when David and I were first dating I decided to impress him with a homemade apple pie.  I worked on it all afternoon taking extra care to flute the edges of the crust just so.  David picked me up for out date and we went to a movie.  Now you have to understand that there were two people in our family who loved pie crust;  my Dad and me.  While we were gone, my Dad started nibbling on the edges of the pie by breaking off small pieces, a little here a little there.  He couldn’t help himself.  By the time we got home, my beautiful pie looked like a family of mice had gnawed their way through the edges leaving crumbs of pastry scattered everywhere.  It was a disaster.  David laughed.  I was furious.  Later my Dad apologized, but it was not as heartfelt as I thought it should have been.  He thought it was the funniest thing that he had ever done and over the years the story was told over and over again with great mirth.

So to this day, when I make a pie, I always make it with a thick crust with the edges fluted just so.  Just for Dad.

For the recipe for sweet cherry pie and a really great all butter pie crust check out Deb’s Smitten Kitchen blog post.