Buttery, sweet, and tart. These scones are a nice way to kick off a cold morning. You can make these ahead and freeze them for up to a month, making it a snap to have a warm breakfast.
You can swap out the trio of add-ins with just about anything in the same amount. Try pecans, chocolate chips, and caramel bits. Or chopped dried apricots, sunflower seeds, and cinnamon chips.
I don’t like baking. I don’t like cake. And I really don’t like turning on my oven in the summer. Why then, did I recently find myself making this peach cake twice in the same week? Let me tell you why. It is freaking delicious.
Every summer since I discovered my favorite farmer and his one-man market, I have gone a little peach crazy. Each week beginning in mid-July, he sets aside a box of bruised, super-ripe or otherwise slightly inferior peaches, which I then purchase at a deep discount, typically about 80 cents a pound. I usually buy 10-15 pounds at a time. People ask me what I do with all these peaches—can them or freeze them or something? But here’s my guilty little secret: I really just eat them all, with substantial help from my husband and son.
Somehow, though, a few weeks ago, I ended up with a bowl of cut-up peaches in the fridge that were a little ripe to eat raw, even for me. So, I got it in my head that I would use them to make a peach cake. I even went so far as to purchase a little bottle of buttermilk so that I could follow the recipe, which I have now slightly adapted from Lisi’s Luscious Desserts. Company was coming, so I figured that I better do this up right. And it. Was. Good. So good, in fact, that a few days later, with my new crate of peaches on hand, I made another one for an Olympic-themed party. Apple pie may be the quintessential American dessert, but the peak of apple season is still a month away, so peach cake was it. And let me tell you, there was no complaining about my substitution.
You may have noticed the lack of chocolate in my ice cream recipes. It’s not that I don’t like chocolate. I just forget about it sometimes. I found a few bars of Green & Black’s stashed away in my cupboard, so I figured it was time to break out a chocolate ice cream. This ice cream is a riff on a recipe I came across in Tea with Bea for a milk chocolate sesame tart topped with cherries. I was intrigued by the though of chocolate and sesame together. This ice cream does not disappoint—it is incredibly rich and chocolatey, the sesame right along side it giving it a depth often lacking in your typical chocolate ice cream. A quick note about the ice cream base: since it is made with buttermilk, the base absolutely must be thoroughly chilled before churning, otherwise the buttermilk will break and separate the custard.
Chocolate Sesame Ice Cream
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Stone fruit season is starting. My first indicator was the tray of two dozen ripe, juicy apricots at the grocery store for $2. So in the spirit of seasonality, here is my take on apricot ice cream.
Stone fruit is great for ice cream. Their high levels of fruit pectin mean you don’t need to add a thickener like egg yolks or syrup. The only cooking required is the roasting of the apricots. You could also substitute peaches for the apricots if that’s what you have on hand.
Pretty much all I think about is breakfast. Okay, I might think about more than that. However, I would call myself a breakfast freak. Flapjacks are among my favorite breakfast foods. On a quest for the “no foolin’, best pancake recipe ever,” I stumbled up this little gem that is too good not to share. It is pretty basic, but why fix a squeaky wheel if it isn’t broken…wait…
With a little tweak, I think this pretty much puts Bisquick in a corner for a permanent time out. Who uses Bisquick anyway? It contains solid hydrogenated oils which means it doesn’t need refrigeration and can keep on a shelf for ages. Anything that can keep on a shelf for ages kind of grosses me out. Mmmmm…trans fats. Delicious!
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