Buttermilk scones with cranberries and ginger

Scones with cranberries and ginger. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 Pin It


 Another variation on scones, this time with the dried cranberries and candied ginger sent by Frieda's Specialty Produce.  The scones are especially nice served for a holiday brunch, so practice the recipe a few times and turn them out for family and friends at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Buttermilk scones with dried cranberries and candied ginger
 
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup unsalted butter, frozen
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup candied ginger, diced
Milk or cream for glazing
Turbinado, demerara or sparkle sugar for glazing

1. In a batter bowl, mix dry ingredients together. Using a regular grater, shred the chilled butter and with a light hand, gently mix the shavings into the dry ingredients. Using your hands and a gentle, quick touch, make sure the butter is evenly distributed throughout the flour mixture.

2. Pour in the buttermilk and stir gently with either a wooden spoon or my instrument of choice, a silicone spatula. If mixture seems dry, add additional buttermilk until a cohesive dough forms. The dough should be slightly wet and sticky, but not overly so.

3. On a floured countertop, press dough into a rough 12 X 6 inch rectangle (helpful shaping instruction visuals may be found on my basic scone post here). Spread dried cranberries and candied ginger onto dough, using your hands to press the fruit into the dough. Fold into thirds, letter-style. Press into 12 X 6 rectangle again and fold letter-style again. If any little fruits pop out, just press them back into the dough. Press again into a 12 X 6 rectangle and cut into 16 triangles. Place scones on a lined baking sheet. The scones can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 24 hours.

4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Carefully brush each wedge with buttermilk or cream and sprinkle turbinado sugar over the top. Bake at 400 for at least 15 minutes. They may need a bit more time, depending on your oven, convection, etc. Scones are ready when they are golden brown on top and bounce back when touched lightly in the center.

Lemon love affair continues: Lemon Ice cream

Lemon Ginger Ice Cream by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

If you're a regular reader of A Cook and Her Books, then you've already seen this ice cream - it's the melting blob in the puddle of Blackberry Doobie, a delicious old-fashioned and very Southern dessert. (Preserve a bit of Southern history and make it with the fresh blackberries in the markets now.)

Blackberry Doobie with Lemon Ginger Ice Cream by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This ice cream makes me so happy that I just feel the need to give it its own post, its own little corner of the blogosphere. Because, you know, when life gives you lemons...

You haul out the Krups, the eggs and the half-n-half and make Lemon Ice Cream!

Lemon-Ginger Ice Cream
The ginger is optional, but quite delicious. Look for candied ginger near the Asian ingredients.(You can also make your own candied by ginger by cooking sliced ginger in a sugar syrup.)


3 lemons, zested and juiced

2/3 cup sugar

4 cups half-and-half, divided

5 egg yolks, whites saved for another purpose (angel food cake!)

Pinch of salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 2-inch slices crystallized ginger, finely diced, divided

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, heat 1 cup of half-and-half, the sugar, the lemon zest and ½ of the chopped, crystallized ginger. Stir with a whisk until sugar is dissolved and let it come to a boil. Remove from heat and let cool for at least 15 minutes.

2. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks until thick and lemony in color. Slowly add the half-and-half mixture, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats a spoon. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a large bowl.

3. Add ½ cup of lemon juice, the vanilla, and the remaining chopped, crystallized ginger to the strained custard, whisking until combined. Add 3 cups half-and-half, whisking again. Pour mixture into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions. Store in airtight container in freezer.





Lemons by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.
 

Blackberry winter

Blackberry Doobie with Lemon Ginger Ice Cream by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


Spring comes early in Georgia, and like the best dinner guest, knows when to leave. We can spend Easter afternoon in flip-flops and shorts and Mother’s Day poolside, but every now and then we get a taste of what the old-timers call blackberry winter, a cold snap just as the wild blackberries come into fruit. Blackberry winter is in contrast to Indian summer, the warmish spell in autumn. The chilly temps are said to sweeten the ripening berries.

Evening temperatures usually hover in the 50s in late April, rising to the 60s in May, just enough chill in the air to make you grab a sweater before leaving for work in the morning. Every now and then the white witch of winter will sweep her frosty gaze across the land in May, and we scurry to locate sweatshirts and long pants and only recently forgotten socks. In addition to the wardrobe change, blackberry winter can put a hurting on tender annuals and other blooming glories of spring, like azaleas and rhododendrons, turning their vibrant blooms to brown mush.

Blackberries by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Blackberry winter visited us last week, two nights of temps in the upper 30s, which meant making a place inside for the herb seedlings I’d left in pots on the porch. Down went a bathmat by the front door, and I placed upon it pots of chives, basil (both sweet and purple ruffle), Italian parsley, rosemary and thyme. (I will consider myself a true gardening success if I can get the thyme and rosemary to grow – both plants can put up with the suffocating heat of July and August in north Georgia, but I need to get them through a frosty May first.)

Blackberry, the plant, and I are old friends. I don’t have the barefoot memories of picking berries as a youngster, but since we cleared the land for our house, I know a lot about the thorny vines. We pull on our long pants and long sleeves and gingerly approach the fearsome plants, more afraid of the chiggers, (some call them red bugs), than the skin-piercing thorns. My granddaddy used to dust his ankles with stinky sulfur powder to keep the chiggers away when he went hiking. On our scrubby, woodsy acres, we’ve pursued the wild blackberries, pulling them up by the roots, until they’re nearly gone. To be honest, I don’t miss the tiny, seedy berries, and I certainly don’t miss the thorns and red bugs. I do, however, like to pick a couple pints of fat blackberries from the market and make Bellwether’s blackberry doobie, an old-fashioned stewed fruit dessert with buttery dumplings that soak up the sweet, tart berry juice. I serve this bubbling fruit stew with frosty lemon ginger ice cream – a month of weather extremes reflected in dessert.




Bellwether's Blackberry Doobie with Lemon Ginger Ice Cream by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books




Bellwether’s Blackberry Doobie
Bellwether Vance is a wonderful, witty writer and cook on the Florida Gulf Coast. Her stories appear on Open Salon every couple of weeks and I look forward to her posts as much as I do my children's artwork (that is to say, very, very much - they are treasures). This is her Blackberry Doobie recipe taught to her by her grandmother.

For the blackberry broth:

2 (12 oz.) packages fresh blackberries

Water to cover

½ cup of sugar (or more, depending on the sweetness of the blackberries)

Juice of ½ lemon

1. Place the berries in a medium saucepan and add enough water to cover the blackberries. Stir in the other ingredients. Simmer over medium heat for fifteen minutes - tasting and adjusting the sweetness and acidity along the way. Set aside to steep and cool slightly, about 15 minutes. Strain using a fine-mesh strainer, and return the strained juice to the saucepan. Heat to a low boil.

For the dumplings:

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small cubes

½ cup buttermilk (whole, if you can find it)

1. Combine the dry ingredients. Cut in the butter with your fingers until it resembles coarse meal. Add the buttermilk, kneading it into a ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and press out to ¼-inch thickness. Using a knife, cut into strips that measure about 1 ½ inches wide and 2 ½ inches long.

2. Drop the dumplings, one at a time, into the bubbling broth. Once all the dumplings are in, lower the heat slightly and let it simmer at a slow bubble for 10-12 minutes, stirring gently every few minutes. Remove from the heat and let it sit for at least 20 minutes to cool and thicken. Serve warm with a scoop of lemon-ginger ice cream.



Lemon-Ginger Ice Cream

3 lemons, zested and juiced

2/3 cup sugar

4 cups half-and-half, divided

5 egg yolks, whites saved for another purpose (angel food cake!)

Pinch of salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 2-inch slices crystallized ginger, finely diced, divided

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, heat 1 cup of half-and-half, the sugar, the lemon zest and ½ of the chopped, crystallized ginger. Stir with a whisk until sugar is dissolved and let it come to a boil. Remove from heat and let cool for at least15 minutes.

2. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks until thick and lemony in color. Slowly add the half-and-half mixture, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats a spoon. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a large bowl.

3. Add ½ cup of lemon juice, the vanilla, and the remaining chopped, crystallized ginger to the strained custard, whisking until combined. Add 3 cups half-and-half, whisking again. Pour mixture into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions. Store in airtight container in freezer.

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

Random (and sweet) acts of kindness

Christmas and cookies are synonymous in my house. I bake throughout the year, but when the frost is on the pumpkin, the unsalted butter and eggs go on the counter for a day (and ok, maybe a week) of cookie baking. Each holiday season, I make my mom's buttery, crisp Christmas cut-outs and the cookie of my childhood, spicy ginger with jam.

This year, I got a head start on my baking thanks to a fun program sponsored by Imperial Sugar Company, makers of Dixie Crystals sugar. The program is called Bake It Forward and begins with a tin that you fill with your favorite baked goods then give to a friend who in turn can fill it and send it to another friend. Each tin is marked with a code that can be tracked online; tins may be purchased for $5 from Bake It Foward.

I baked two kinds of cookies for my tin - the favorite ginger cookies and all-purpose second runner-up, oatmeal raisin. I mailed them this morning to a fellow cook, baker, friend and blogger from Open Salon. This has been a year of blessings, and I treasure the community of friendship that I've found on Open Salon.

Spicy Ginger Cookies with Strawberry Jam

2 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup pecan meal

1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/8 cup unsulphured molasses


1/8 cup honey

1/2 cup granulated sugar for coating the unbaked cookies

About 1/4 cup good-quality strawberry jam

1. In a bowl, stir together flour, pecan meal, soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves; set aside. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In mixer bowl, combine butter and brown sugar; beat until well blended. Beat in egg, then molasses and honey. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until blended.

3. Spread granulated sugar in a shallow pan. Drop cookie dough by heaping tablespoons into sugar. Roll cookies to coat well, shaping them into balls as you roll.

4. Place about two inches apart on parchment-lined cookie sheets. With your thumb, make a small depression in the center of each cookie. Fill each thumbprint with about a 1/4 teaspoon jelly. I find that a baby feeding spoon, the narrow kind with the long handle, is just perfect for scooping the jelly and placing it on the cookie.

5. Bake the cookies until they are brown and feel firm when touched lightly, about 15 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 30 cookies.

The oatmeal raisin cookies are just homey perfection - buttery, cinnamony, somewhat rustic, and if you underbake them slightly, they will maintain just the right amount of chew. The recipe can be found here - it's from Susan Purdy's "Family Baker."

A note: as I researched this story, I found another "Bake It Forward" that doesn't appear to be a part of the Imperial Sugar program. The other Bake It Forward pops up first in a Google search.  Here's the link for the Imperial Sugar Bake It Forward program. Be sure to check out its Facebook page, too. I'll keep you posted about the tin's progress across the country!

Text & images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

French toast with a funny name: Bostock

Pumpkin bostock. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 I’m a half-hearted gardener at best - each spring, I clear out the weeds from the flower bed by the driveway and hand the girls seed packets and let them go to town. This year, we planted zinnias and daisies for the bright flowers, pumpkins and watermelons for the kid-pleasing factor (note: Burpee's Cut and Come Again Zinnia is always a winner). They all combined to yield a crazy quilt of blooms and vines in the garden. We faithfully watered through the summer, and in August, the vines got serious and shot out like Audrey II, taking over the garden bed and sending forth  blooms. I wondered if pumpkin blossoms could be stuffed like squash blossoms, with goat cheese, then battered and fried. (and indeed they can, here's a visit to the future: Stuffed Pumpkin Blossoms)

In September, a fruit formed, and here she is, our own little pumpkin buddy:

 Pumpkin is the flavor of fall and I use it to flavor Bostock, the French toast with the funny name. Using Francis Lam’s formula, I infused Challah slices with maple syrup, slathered them with seasoned pumpkin butter, broiled them and topped them with snappy crystallized ginger.

I didn't harvest our homegrown fruit for this treat, instead using canned pumpkin.

Pumpkin Butter

This makes quite a large amount. You may halve this quantity, or make the whole and freeze it until Christmas - a jar of pumpkin butter is a coveted gift.
1 cup apple cider or apple juice

1 ½ teaspoons ginger

1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon

¼ teaspoon cloves

1 tablespoon orange zest

2 tablespoons orange juice

1 ¼ cup sugar

Pinch salt

2 (15 oz.) cans pumpkin puree

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine apple cider, flavorings and sugar. Stir and let come to a boil. Lower heat and stir in pumpkin puree. Let cool. Place in plastic container and keep in refrigerator.

Maple Glaze

½ cup maple syrup

½ cup water

½ teaspoon vanilla

Pinch salt

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and let cool.

Pumpkin bostock with maple and ginger. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Pumpkin Bostock with Maple and Ginger
Makes 6 sevings

1 recipe Maple Glaze

½ cup Pumpkin Butter

6 slices Challah bread, 1 ½ inches thick, stale or left at room temperature for a couple hours

1 tablespoon crystallized ginger, finely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare a sheet pan with foil and a nonstick grid, if you have one. Dip bread slices in maple glaze and squeeze out extra liquid. Place on grid-covered baking sheet.

2. Spread each toast with pumpkin butter. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes. Your kitchen will be unbelievably fragrant at this point.

3. Remove toasts from ovens and sprinkle with chopped crystallized ginger. Serve with hot, black coffee.

Text and images © 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Heaven is a gingery pineapple scone for breakfast

I made these scones this morning, on a whim and a prayer. I intended to make apricot scones, but found only dried pineapple. Turns out, pineapple and ginger are a luscious scone combination. This recipe is limited only by the dried fruit in your pantry. What combination strikes your fancy? Cranberry and orange? Apricot and almond? Dried cherry and chocolate? Let me know in the comments. All reasonable requests will be honored.

Gingery Pineapple Scones

1/ 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (optional, but quite nice)

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, and grated on the coarse side of a shredder

4 ounces dried pineapple, chopped

2 ounces crystallized ginger, chopped

1 egg

1/2 cup buttermilk (whole, if you can find it)

Extra buttermilk, or cream, for brushing the tops

Demerara or sparkle sugar, for tops

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 425. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. Pour in the grated butter and using your fingers, smush until the butter is incorporated, forming coarse crumbs with some the size of peas. Add in dried pineapple and ginger.

3. In a mixing cup, stir together egg and buttermilk. Add to the dry ingredients and using a spatula, stir just until combined.

4. Lightly flour the counter and turn dough out. Shape into a an 8-inch round and use a knife to cut out 8 wedges. Place the wedges on the baking sheet. Brush with cream or buttermilk and sprinkle with sugar.

5. Bake in oven for 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, let cool and serve warm.

Text and images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Best Cookies in the World, Scout's Honor

The Girl Scout cookie boxes arrived, I opened them, inhaled that sharp mint and chocolate aroma and dove right in. It’s the same story each year, but I’ve come to realize that nothing will ever taste as good as that first Thin Mint from 1970-something. I remember thinking it was the best cookie ever made - chocolatey, minty, crispy. I continue to buy the boxes each year, hoping that the cheap waxy chocolate against my teeth will take me back to those days of peasant tops, bell bottoms and tri-color Keds, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The cookie that does pull me back to my red clay childhood is the soft ginger cookie, a chewy disc, crackly with sugar, fragrant with cloves, cinnamon and the eponymous ginger, anointed with a puddle of raspberry jam in the epicenter. Is it overstating things too much if I say this is Proustian? Perhaps no literary reference is appropriated as much as Marcel Proust's contemplation of the madeleine in "Remembrance of Things Past." Considering that "Remembrance" is seven volumes long, I have doubts that so many cookbook writers have truly read the book. I won't pretend that I've read it, either (I keep a copy of the first volume, "Swann's Way," beside my bed, currently it’s underneath a John Dunning mystery.). If Girl Scouts sold these ginger cookies, not only could they send millions of girls to camp, they could build a retirement village on the proceeds from this cookie alone.


I first tasted ginger cookies at Becker's Bakery in Nashville, Tennessee, the Bakery of My Childhood. I still remember the wood floors, glass display cases and fake wedding cake. While my brothers and I plastered our sticky hands on the glass cases and shouted out the names of the treats, Mom would purchase pastel butter cookies, spritzes in green, yellow and pink. We could each pick out a waving gingerbread man, one arm up and one arm down, sprinkled with red sugar. And no fewer than two dozen ginger cookies would come home with us. Or at least make it to the car, because I doubt they lasted more than 15 minutes with my sugar-crazed brothers (and me).

Becker's is still in Nashville, although the store I remember near Brentwood is now closed. When I travel home, I stop by the store for a dozen or two. I've tried a few ginger cookie recipes searching for one to equal Becker's, and this is the closest. It’s based on a recipe in California Culinary Academy Cookies, copyright 1987. The recipe calls for ground pecans, which I don't think are in Becker's, but make for a tasty cookie. The texture is not quite as soft as the original, either, and I find that they are better after sitting for a day. These cookies are lovely on a winter day, when you can sit with a cup of chamomile tea and curl up with a book, Proust perhaps, in a chair by a roaring fire. Enjoy that moment until the Girl Scout knocks at your door.

Ginger Cookies with Raspberry Jam

2 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup ground pecans

1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup unsulphured molasses (like Grandma’s brand)

1/2 cup granulated sugar for coating the unbaked cookies

About 1/4 cup seedless raspberry jam (I use Polaner’s)

1. In a bowl, stir together flour, pecans, soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves; set aside. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In mixer bowl, combine butter and brown sugar; beat until well blended. Beat in egg, then molasses. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until blended.

3. Spread granulated sugar in a shallow pan. Drop cookie dough by heaping tablespoons into sugar. Roll cookies to coat well, shaping them into balls as you roll.

4. Place about two inches apart on parchment lined cookie sheets. With your thumb, make a small depression in the center of each cookie. Fill each thumbprint with about a 1/4 teaspoon jelly. I find that a baby feeding spoon, the narrow kind with the long handle, is just perfect for scooping the jelly and placing it on the cookie.

5. Bake the cookies until they are brown and feel firm when touched lightly, about 15 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 30 cookies.

Jazzy, Gingery Carrot Soup

Autumn approaches the middle South on Eliot's cat's feet,

"And seeing that it was a soft October night,
curled once about the house, and fell asleep."

And before you know it, nothing but soup will do. This carrot-ginger soup is an improvisation and an in-between. Not quite warming enough for brisk days in winter, just right for those evenings when the temperatures are beginning to dip into the 50s and 40s. It's satisfying and light and full of beta-carotene goodness, thanks to the pound or so of carrots and the red bell pepper. You see, this isn't a real recipe, it's just what happens when I listen to too much jazz and the vegetable drawer overflows with color and the phrase "carrot-ginger soup" spins around in my head. I would use a recipe, but just looking through the usual suspects in my cookbook collection doesn't turn up a Carrot Ginger Soup recipe. Crescent Dragonwagon's Carrot-Orange Soup from "Dairy Hollow Soup and Bread" comes close, so I followed her lead and then tossed some ginger in to the food processor as the vegetables blitzed.

So, for all you cats out there, here's how to make Carrot-Ginger Soup.

1. Place your favorite soup pot or Dutch oven on the stove over medium heat. Put a couple of tablespoons of unsalted butter in and saute one chopped onion. Add one chopped red bell pepper (roasted is ok, if you have an open jar in the fridge). Add some salt and pepper to the onion mixture and continue stirring.

2. Take a pound or so of peeled, chopped carrots and add them to the soup pot. Stir, add a half cup of water, cover and let steam for about 15 minutes, or until very soft. At this point, you can add either water or vegetable broth or chicken broth, just enough to cover the vegetables. Add a 2 inch piece of peeled fresh ginger, roughly chopped. Season to taste and when mixture is cool, puree in batches in a food processor (for vulgarians like me who prefer a rustic texture) or a blender (for those who like an exceptionally smooth puree).

3. This soup can be dolled up with all sorts of green tender herbs, such as parsley or cilantro. A contrasting sprig floating in the middle of the bowl looks particularly pretty. I suppose you could add some cream to the soup, just be sure to amp up the seasoning to compensate for the dairy.