Crispy crepes

Crepes with Nutella and  Biscoff. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I think Winnie the Pooh is a first-rate snacker. When Pooh Bear gets a little rumbly in  his tumbly, he goes searching for the hunny pot and bread. Here's a variation on bread and honey, just right for elevenses and teatime, crepes smeared with Nutella or Biscoff (you could even use peanut butter), and toasted quesadilla-style in a pan. The tender crepes crisp up, becoming cookie-like with a molten sweet filling.


Frieda's Specialty Produce recently sent me a package of their crepes, as easy to use as tortillas and every bit as versatile. This recipe is two-ingredient simple. Just open the package.

Crepes. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Spackle with Nutella or Biscoff (or peanut butter).

Crepes with Nutella. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Fold in  half and toast in a skillet set over medium heat. When the edges are warm brown, remove from heat, cut into wedges and serve.

Crepes. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I  occasionally review products that my family likes and uses. 

Thanks to Frieda's for sending the crepes. The opinions here are my own. 

Text and images copyright 2013, Lucy Mercer.

Dessert fit for a princess

Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I’m surrounded by princesses. Decked out in plastic tiaras and shiny, synthetic ball gowns, my little girls are princesses to a T. Or is that tea? We occasionally have dress-up teas in our house – pulling out the china tea cups and plates, serving up a bit of cake or cookies, and tea. Filling up the sugar and creamer, because it doesn’t matter if the tea is already sweet, the primary point of a proper little girls’ tea being to stir sugar into liquid while wearing a fancy dress.


Celebrating the royal wedding this week, I confess to a fascination with the British royal family, beginning with Princess Diana’s wedding in 1981 (isn’t it funny how it’s not called Prince Charles’ wedding?). I was a teenager, and missed the wedding because I was at summer camp in the mountains of Tennessee. To tell the truth, I didn’t see the full movie-length version of the wedding until just a few years ago, on a September weekend TV marathon memorializing Diana’s death. I still have the Life magazine with the pictures of the wedding - the coach, the dress, the tiara, the veil, the flower girls.


Maybe it's just me, but Diana's wedding dress is iconic. I saw it last year when  Diana: A Celebration came to Atlanta. The dress gets its own glass case, with the train fully extended and flower girl's dress alongside. Diana's dress seems so girly compared to the sleek wedding dresses of today. Her dress had those puffed and ruffled sleeves, the embroidered bodice and cascading skirt. My youngest daughter was four at the time, and still talks about seeing the princess' wedding dress. Here she is with her big sister demonstrating how to act like a princess under the gaze of Diana.

Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Back at home, we take tea some days, and every now and then, I'll make Sticky Toffee Pudding, supposedly Kate’s favorite dessert. In the realm of English desserts, I’m more of a fan of bananas-and-cream banoffee, but sticky toffee is divine in its own way. Don’t let the name "pudding" throw you off – it’s just the British-ism for dessert. Sticky toffee pudding is a spicy date cake topped with a luscious caramel toffee sauce. I adapted a recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook to make individual puddings, using muffin cups, so the princesses don't have to share at teatime. It’s ugly when princesses squabble.

Sticky Toffee Pudding by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Sticky Toffee Puddings for Perfect Little Princesses


Yield: 18 muffin-style puddings


Pudding

2 cups (10 ounces) pitted dates

2 2/3 cup water

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar

3 eggs

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla

1 ¾ cups self-rising flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

1. Combine dates and water in a 1-quart saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn off heat. Let cool to room temperature.

2. Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400. Grease 18 muffin tins.

3. Beat butter and brown sugar in bowl with an electric mixer, until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition, scraping down the bowl after each egg. Stir in vanilla, then flour.

4. Add baking soda to date mixture and process in food processor. The mixture will be very wet. Add to butter mixture and stir until combined. Divide batter into muffin tins, filling ¾ full.

5. Place muffin tins on baking sheet and bake 15 to 20 minutes, using the toothpick test – a toothpick (or a bamboo skewer) inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool puddings in tins for a few minutes, then turn out on a wire rack.


Toffee Sauce

½ cup sugar

7 tablespoons unsalted butter

6 oz. heavy cream


1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine sugar and butter, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Gradually incorporate cream, using a whisk, until mixture is thick and creamy.

2. Serve toffee sauce over individual puddings.

Text & images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

Time for tea, and lemon



Lemon Tea Loaves by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


I have a long-standing love for lemon, as witnessed by my recipes for Lemon Pound Cake and food-of-the-gods Lemon Pudding. When I was a little girl in pigtails, scooter skirts and Keds, I loved Sunshine lemon cookies, the kind with the powdered sugar that would leave white chalky sugar dust at the corners of my mouth. I would pull out my childhood tea set, a collection of mismatched "Made in Nippon" teacups and saucers, fill with tea and serve the cookies alongside.

Now, I'm all grown-up, completely over the pigtails and scooter skirts, (but still loving my Keds). To get my lemon fix, I sometimes bake this Lemon Tea Loaf, a rich, citrus-scented cake with a tart lemony glaze. If it's been awhile since you've used your wedding china, pull out a few cups and saucers, make a pot of Earl Grey and slice up this lovely cake. Invite a neighbor over to share the tea, then send them home with the second loaf. Or, be very strong and wrap both loaves up to give as gifts - a hostess gift on Easter or Mother's Day, or perhaps the upcoming end-of-school. Your lemon-loaving friends will be grateful.


Lemon Tea Loaf

Yield: 2 loaves

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened


2 cups sugar

4 eggs

Zest of 2 lemons

3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

For glaze: ½ cup sugar dissolved in juice of 2 lemons

1. Preheat oven to 350. Prepare two loaf pans using baking spray or greasing with butter.

2. In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until fully incorporated. Add lemon rind. Sift together dry ingredients, then add alternately to the batter with milk. Pour batter into prepared baking pans.

3. Place pans in 350 oven and bake for 45 minutes. Bake until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool on wire racks.

4. While cake is cooling, dissolve sugar in the juice of two lemons. Slowly pour glaze over cakes and let cool.

Lemons by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

A version of this story also appears on Examiner.com.

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.

A Proper Southern Punch

Spring is in the air, and while young engagees dream starry-eyed dreams of wedding day bliss, friends of a certain age and responsibility dream dreams of bridal showers and luncheons. The at-home shower, I fear, is becoming as antiquated a notion as pagers and pantyhose, to be replaced by catered affairs in charming locales or, on the more familiar end of the spectrum, the round table in the corner at a local chain restaurant and the promise of all you can eat.

My generation is probably the last that will remember the showers given to her and the showers I gave my friends. I remember especially a bridal shower I gave my friend Julie in which the menu was taken from Southern Living. I know I still have copy of this article tucked somewhere in an attic memory box. As I recall, the menu featured something fruity, something cheesy, something savory, something chocolate, and a cake. We held the shower at my mom's house and invited Julie's friends, especially women from her church. It was a Sunday afternoon in July and we all wore our Sunday best, which I'm sure included pantyhose and heels.

I mentioned the food, but didn't think of the beverage, the most important aspect for a Sunday afternoon in July. In fact, I can't even remember what punch I used, because I've since found a real keeper, a tea punch recipe from a Junior League cookbook, so you know it's good.

This is from Main Street, published by the Junior Auxiliary of Franklin, Tennessee, which, if you have never been there, is the heart of God's country and pretty high in the list Top 3 Places I Could Contentedly Spend the Rest of My life.

Tea Punch

3 cups brewed tea
3 cups orange juice
3 cups pineapple juice
1 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
2 cups sugar
6 cups ginger ale

Mix the tea and juices in a large pitcher. Stir in the sugar until dissolved. Add the ginger ale just before serving. Pour over crushed ice in tall glasses.

Yield: one gallon

This is the recipe as written. Since I happen to own not one, but two punch bowls, I would rinse out a punch bowl, surround it with lovely cut flowers at the base and pour the punch into it. Serve with your grandmother's monogrammed sterling punch ladle (which is never to be confused with the soup ladle, for goodness' sake, people will think you are ill-bred and a heathen), which you have polished for this occasion. Put out a silver tray with all those cute punch cups, freshly washed. And know that you are part of a rite, a memory and a passage from one life to the next, marking the end of a single life and entering a partnered life. And I won't breathe a word if you decide to go sans pantyhose.