Mint-Infused Strawberry Biscuits

It's summer. It's beautiful outside. With bright, summery days, I start wanting to cook differently.

No more big, baked casseroles. I'll pass on pizzas. My apartment doesn't have central air, so it's getting too warm to heat up my apartment for as long as my pizza stone requires.

Instead, I'm craving those light summery salads. Fresh vegetables. Stove-top cooking. Raw foods.

These biscuits don't really fit with that. I know. They're filled with heavy cream. I had to turn on the oven to make them, even if it was only for 30 minutes or so.

But they taste summery, I promise. They're stuffed with fresh-picked, local strawberries, so much so that you end up with a strawberry in pretty much every bite. Through the cooking process, the strawberries really release their sugars and almost start to resemble jam.

Mint lingers behind the strawberries. I infused it into the cream, heating heavy cream and allowing mint leaves to infuse their flavors in it for about an hour.

There's no green coloring. No worries. That's only for the fake mint you can get at the store.

These biscuits LOOK like strawberries and cream biscuits, but they've got a light taste of mint hiding in the background. With each bite, the mint lingers behind a bit. It's subtle, but it's definitely there.

And who doesn't love strawberries and mint together?

I made these biscuits just for me, with no occasion in mind and no company. I made two fresh, and I froze the rest. I'll bake them up straight from frozen, adding just a minute or two on to the cooking time.

I've got weeks of fresh-baked biscuits ahead of me.

So excited.

Fresh Fruit Fraisier

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.


Daring Bakers brings cooks from across the world together once a month to create a common dish and try out recipes they might not have dared attempt on their own. The thing about Daring Bakers is that you never quite know what your challenge will be. Last month, bakers were challenged to make baklava by making their own phyllo dough. When I saw Jana's choice this month, I considered myself lucky.


A fresh fruit fraisier.

The fraisier Jana challenged us to make had a chiffon cake base, split into two parts, soaked with simple syrup to create a sponge, and then filled with homemade pastry cream. The finished cake could be topped anyway we desired (I opted for hulled, halved strawberries glazed with a cherry-orange marmalade) and had to stand without any supports. A trio of fruits--strawberries, blueberries and fresh picked black raspberries--finished the cake off perfectly. 

Not only was the Fresh Fruit Fraisier she challenged us to make adorable, it was also the perfect dessert to serve at the shower my mom and I threw earlier this month.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

I think brown butter is my new fascination. Butter is delicious to begin with, but when it's browned over heat for a few minutes, it takes on this complex, nutty flavor that elevates dishes to a whole new level. Ravioli with brown-butter and sage sauce. Chocolate chip cookies with brown butter. And these dishes are just the beginning.

I promised my friend Yana a brunch with strawberries and rhubarb. I could have made pie, but after a strawberry-rhubarb pie, blackberry pie and a Tuscaloosa Tollhouse pie recently, I needed a break. I also needed the recipe to be finished by brunch at noon, and I couldn't get strawberries and rhubarb until I went to the farmers' market on Saturday morning.

I found a strawberry-rhubarb crisp recipe in Williams-Sonoma's Essentials of Baking cookbook that just looked delicious, but Cook's Illustrated recent feature on how crisps are often just so-so had me worried. I had to dress this crisp up a little. I know the topping would make or break the crisp, and I wanted it to be richer. I swapped the melted butter for brown butter, reduced the flour, added oats and mixed in pecans to add some complexity.

Biting into this crisp made me glad I had not made a pie. The crisp was light. It felt very healthy since the filling wasn't surrounded by pie crust.

I like any dessert I can justify having two servings of in one day.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie in the Park

I signed up to bake a pie and bring it to a Pie in the Park picnic at Smorgasburg last weekend, but I had trouble determining what type of pie I wanted to make. I kept finding tarts I was interested in (Do tarts count as pie? They're included in the same cookbook sections, but I couldn't be sure.). I considered a Tuscaloosa Tollhouse Pie, kind of like a big chocolate chip cookie in a pie crust, and a chocolate pecan pie, but it didn't seem like the right season. I was dying to make a Mississippi Mud Pie, but that included ice cream, not the best for an outdoor picnic. I avoided pies that required whipped cream to be just perfect. I searched for that pie that could stand on its own.

Finally, I went to the Union Square Famers' Market on Monday for inspiration. I saw the first blueberries of the season (they still needed some time), last year's cellared apples and honey. Then I rounded the corner. There they were. Beautiful pints of rosy New Jersey strawberries and bright red stalks of rhubarb, just calling out my name.

Strawberry-rhubarb pie. The market determined it for me.

I just needed a recipe. Previous strawberry-rhubarb pies I've made turned out delicious but runny, and the filling didn't really stay together after the first slice was cut. Those pies tended to use cornstarch as a thickener, but I remembered my mom using instant tapioca that came in a bright red box to thicken her fruit pies.

Deb from Smitten Kitchen had come to the same realization that tapioca worked wonders as a thickener. She'd also incorporated brown sugar into the pie filling and used less sugar so the tartness of the rhubarb would stand out. I knew I had found my recipe. Deb never lets me down.

The pie picnic? It was certainly enjoyable. I ate three slices of delicious pies, made by both amature and professional bakers. My favorite was a Nutty Monkey Pie, loaded with toasted walnuts, dark chocolate bits and banana chips (though I could have left those out). Unfortunately, there were A LOT of strawberry-rhubarb pies. I was encouraged to see so many bakers going for the seasonal ingredients, but it meant that my little guy just wasn't the star of the show.

Oh well. The little bite I had of my pie was delicious.

And, Pie in the Park sent us home with these beautiful custom recipe cards.

New York State Upside-Down Ice Cream Cupcakes (for the 2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest)

I can honestly say I've been dreaming of entering a cooking contest since I was 10. I'd pour over every issue of the Lowell Ledger, our very local newspaper, and I'd imagine what recipe I'd make for the chili contest at the Kiwanis Club or the pie bake-off at the local fair. Last summer, I considered entering the Pie in the Park contest but never quite got around to it. The desire to enter a cooking contest never faded away.

This week, I finally took the cooking contest plunge (although in a slightly different, more virtual venue that 10-year-old me couldn't have imagined would be possible). I decided to participate in the 2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest created by Cupcake Project and Scoopalicious. The challenge: create a recipe for an ice cream cupcake (that combines cake and ice cream), photograph it and blog about it. I committed, but I just had to make my creation.

Then, the New York Times posted this recipe for rhubarb upside-down cake. The recipe has you create a quick brown sugar and butter sauce to spread in the bottom of the pan, add chopped rhubarb (uncooked) and top it with cake batter. The recipe promised a delightful layer of tender pink rhubarb atop a moist cake.

I created these New York State Upside-Down Ice Cream Cupcakes as a testament to this season's New York state produce. Rhubarb came into season first, and strawberries just joined it. After a winter of eating root vegetables and cellared apples, I was ready to celebrate! Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in the Hudson River Valley provided the dairy products I needed to make the complete project a success. 

I adapted the rhubarb upside-down cake into cupcakes that were loaded with rhubarb topping. I greased and re-greased the pans so the cupcakes wouldn't stick. Each cupcake was given a spoonful of brown sugar and butter, a full layer of rhubarb and then filled about 2/3 of the way full with batter.

As the cupcakes cooked, the brown sugar and butter mixture bubbled up a bit over the sides. The baking pan I placed underneath the cupcakes as they baked was a life saver and saved me from scrubbing burnt caramel off the bottom of my oven.

I still had a batch of roasted rhubarb ice cream, using some of the beautiful local rhubarb I picked up during a trip to the farmer's market. I sliced fresh strawberries and whipped up a quick batch of whipped cream.

Assembling the ice cream cupcakes was the fun part. There are countless ways you can assemble your cupcakes (Stef from Cupcake Project has a great list of options), but I decided to go with the slice-and-stuff idea. I sliced the cupcake in half, being careful to avoid the delicate rhubarb layer. I added a layer of strawberries, topped it with spoonfuls of rhubarb ice cream and put the top back on. A spoonful of whipped cream finished it off perfectly.

Strawberry Shortcakes: The Perfect Serving Vessel

As my roasted rhubarb vanilla ice cream churned away in my ice cream machine, I knew I had to figure out the perfect way to serve it. I also knew that I had leftover half-and-half from making the ice cream that I needed to use up.

The New Basics Cookbook didn't let me down. When I opened it up, I found their new basic (sweet) biscuit recipe, which not only sounded delicious but would allow me to use up the remainder of my half-and-half. A win-win situation indeed.

The biscuits came together in a flash (less than five minutes from starting the process to putting them in the oven), and I whipped up a quick strawberry topping with chopped strawberries and a sprinkling of sugar.

A sweet biscuit, topped with a scoop of roasted rhubarb vanilla ice cream and chopped strawberries. Perfection.