Cherry Jello

Even with the last minute snow, spring is officially here. Yesterday I saw the first daffodils. It's a good sign. It's time to crawl out from under my comforter and stop watching so much television & reading too many novels. It's time to repair my bike & ride around the city. It's time to make some plans for my future & stick with them. It's the time to fight to be the person that you want to, because the long days and cool nights are on your side. It's ok to sleep a little less if you're out enjoying the sunshine and smiling endlessly. Spring is when I finally feel motivated again.
Springs also a good time to look back at the last few months and assess my position. Whatever aspect of your life, it's always a nice time to change directions and work on something new & inspiring. Just because things have been quiet around here, doesn't mean I haven't been working hard on things. I just haven't been digitally documenting them like I use too. I dropped the camera that I borrow to photograph things for this blog while photographing these macarons. Maybe because I was in a hurry to eat my Valentine's sweets but probably because I am the most klutzy (so it's actually a little surprising that I didn't drop it ever before in the last year). One time at work I dropped a five gallon glass jar of coconut oil. Of course it was summer in a bakery, so the coconut oil was molten. I cut three of my fingers and ruined a pair of jeans trying to gather up all the little shards of glass in the slippery mess. The camera was a little less dramatic, but has had more lasting effects on my life.


Winter decided to spurn me one last time by leaving me with a super swollen throat & sinusitis. I spent most of yesterday afternoon gargling salt water and craving jello. My jello of choice & what's pictured here was the unflavored Natural Deserts jel pack & tart cherry juice left over from the frozen bins of cherries I order for the bakery. In the last few months, the company seems to have stopped making their jel must to my avail. I have searched high & low and have only found two boxes of flavored powders. I found a substitute for my old standby made by a brand called Simply Delish. Their strawberry was good, and the raspberry was even better. The texture is ever so slightly tougher than Natural Desserts jellos were, but my main problem is that Simply Delish doesn't seem to offer an unflavored powder so I can control the flavors like I would prefer. I know that I can use agar powder to make what whatever flavored jello I want, but the packets are so nostalgic. And if spring makes me anything, it's wistful.


While I have waxed poetic before about my best friend Jenna and I having same-brain, she also shared some similar feelings regarding the approach of spring & talked about some of the exciting life changes she is going through on her blog Kitty Cat Stevens recently. I hope you will seek her out on the internet and encourage & help support her business if you are a book lover too. There's nothing more wonderful than giving a friend a gift that someone has poured so much of themselves into. One of my favorites gifts in the last few months was the napkins photographed here. They were a beautiful present from my housemate for feeding her cats while she was away for the holidays. I mean of course I would feed two of the best cats in the world no matter what, but the textiles screen printed by Sara Lee Parker were the icing on the cake. So if you're looking for something nice to give to a special person here are two great places to start. Here's to spring, feeling re-energized & ready to start anew.

Cashew Cream & Cherry Baby Strudel

I really intended to make a regular sized strudel. But then when I unrolled my thawed phyllo, I realized that most of it was broken in half. So I just decided to work with it and make little baby, single serving strudel. Keep your chin up, and MoFo on.
Cherries and cream are really the best combination I can think of. Tart cherries and cream is the only superior combination. I know that people have trouble finding them sometimes. Recently I have seen them in jars at Whole Foods and in cans at Giant. So you could check in those sorts of places. If you can't find tart cherries, than fresh cherries (quite the splurge this late in the season) or frozen cherries should work. If you don't use jarred/canned cherries that are already in some sort of sugary syrup you might want to toss your cherries in simple syrup so they ooze a little in baking. I'm just saying. We want the cherry juices flowing. If you happen to have cherry pie filling lying around (I am also this sort of person), than you could obviously use that here as well!
Cashew Cream
makes approximately 1 1/2 cup cream

1 cup cashews, soaked overnight
1/4 cup canned coconut milk
3 tbl agave
1 tsp vanilla extract
water as needed
Cashew cream is one of the those things that you don't need a recipe before. You really just blend and taste until it fits what you want. This is where I started. I added a bit more water to really get it moving easily in my blender, since I don't have a VitaMix and I am scared of killing my Ninja. Having it a little thinner helps to get the cream really smooth, plus since I am baking it that process thickens the cashew cream anyways.

Cashew Cream & Tart Cherry Baby Strudel
five tiny strudel

10 sheets phyllo dough
2-3 tablespoons Earth Balance, melted
1 1/2 cup tart cherries
one batch cashew cream above
Preheat oven to 375. Take your phyllo sheets and cut them in half, so you now have 20 pieces. Place two sheets on a clean work area and lightly brush with melted Earth Balance. Add another sheet and brush either Earth Balance. Top with a final 4th sheet. Add a few tablespoons of cashew cream and spread it over the lower fourth of your phyllo. Add a thick row of cherries, approximately a half cup. Starting from the end with the filling roll the phyllo up tightly. Set on a parchment lined baking sheet with seam on the bottom. Brush top with Earth Balance and sprinkle with a bit of sugar if you desire. Repeat 4 more times. Bake 20-25 minutes until the phyllo is golden and crisp. Serve with whipped cream.


This is probably one of the easiest things I have made this month, but also easily one of the most satisfying. It's got all the right flavors and textures. And it's a dessert that you can eat a large portion of without feeling sick, because there isn't too much sugar. Maybe it's just my love affair with cherries. I am considering also making this with an almond cream, because that sounds like it would be super dreamy as well!

Cherry Cornmeal Cookies

This week's theme is cookies! Cookies of all sorts. I bookmarked a Martha Stewart recipe for cornmeal-cherry cookies at least two years ago. I have made a lot of cookies since then, but I've somehow never made it to that recipe. Now is the time! I'm going through my bookmarks and deleting all the things I hated and reminding myself of all the things I've never made. So cherry cornmeal cookies it was. There's also ribbon in these photos because I was also cleaning out my craft drawer & noticed it matched the cookies. Fall cleaning is totally a thing right? Once a spring isn't quite enough for me.


Cherry Cornmeal Cookies
adapted from Martha Stewart

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
6 tbl Earth Balance
1/4 cup sugar
1 Ener-G egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2-3 drops natural orange extract
1/4 cup dried tart cherries, finely chopped

In a bowl whisk together all dry ingredients. In a mixer beat the Earth Balance and sugar until creamy. Beat in ener-g egg and extracts. Add flour, and allow to beat until thick dough forms. Fold in cherries. On a piece of parchment, shape dough into a rectangle about 2" tall and 3-4" wide. Twist ends of parchment and chill dough for one to two hours. Preheat oven to 350. Cut dough into 1/3" thick slices and bake for 12-15 minutes until golden and firm to the touch. Let cool.


To be totally honest, I didn't love these cookies. The cornmeal added more of a graininess, than the crumbly-ness I was promised. I almost backed out when I was making the dough and added corn flour instead. I really wish I had, because I think the texture would be much more appealing. Between the tiny bit of sugar in the dough and the unsweetened tart cherries, I could have used a little more sweetness too. Greg must have really liked these cookies, because I think the only two he didn't eat were the ones I nibbled on while I was taking the photos.

Cherry Cheesecake

I have been incredibly nostalgic these last few weeks. Ever since I graduated college it feels like time just slips by at a faster & faster pace. It was just winter, and all of a sudden I can't walk outside without smelling honeysuckle. Every time I catch a breath of it I am reminded of growing up in Tennessee, reading books in little swings made of grapevine hooked between the trees & playing in the the ravine we affectionally called FernGully. I grew up in a place very different from my friends. For most of the life that I remember we lived on a 20 something acre piece of land that mostly consisted of forest. I went to a public school that had less than 300 children enrolled. The kindergarteners were just down the hall from the high schoolers. I was always a little out of place in that school, and though I wasn't really bullied or tormented by anyone, I also didn't have very many good friends.
Once I got to college and was surrounded by more people, it wasn't difficult to find my niche. But I often think about how much quieter and more solitude my growing up was and how that has probably shaped me to have different expectations of life than most people. I am quite comfortable being alone. I really only need a book or a kitchen at my disposal, and I will be content for most of the day.


In college it seemed so easy to fit it all in. I took fifteen or more credit hours a semester, worked part time in a laboratory, and still managed to spend an indecent amount of times with my friends. These days I feel like no matter how little I sleep it's never quite enough to do everything I want. I am sure that a fair part of it is being "an adult". There's always errands to run. There's doctor's visits to schedule & bills to pay. But goodness do I miss having a whole summer to just do whatever I wanted to. I didn't think twice about buying a place ticket to visit a friend in another state or hopping into a bus with ten of my friends to drive across the country. How do we find the balance in that fun spontaneity and the responsibility of keeping up with our lives? Even though I love my job, spending so much of my life working is also a fairly disappointing thing.


Cherry Cheesecake
filling adapted from Emily Manquist's Sweet Vegan

Crust
13 ounces graham crackers or speculoos cookies
1/2 to 3/4 cup Earth Balance margarine.
Crush the cookies to crumbs in a food processor. While those are being pulsed, melt the Earth Balance in the microwave. Pour over the cookie crumbs and mix with hands until the butter is fully incorporated. Start with 1/2 cup of melted Earth Balance. If the cookie crumbs still aren't wet enough to hold together when you squeeze it in your hands, then add the remaining spread. Press into the bottom and up the sides of a 9 or 10" springform pan.

Cheesecake Filling
24 oz non-dairy cream cheese, I prefer Tofutti
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbl vanilla bean paste or scraping from 3 vanilla beans
2 tbl Ener-G beaten into 1/3 cup hot water
Make your cheesecake filling by beating the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and Ener-G together until smooth. Pour into crust filled pan. Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes until the cheesecake appears set. Allow to cool for at least 4-6 hours before attempting to slice the cake.

Tart Cherry Topping
24 oz tart cherries
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup cherry juice
1/4 cup cornstarch
In a sauce pan combine cherries, 1/2 cup of cherry juice, and sugar. Allow to come to a boil over medium heat. In a small bowl whisk together cornstarch and remaining juice to create a slurry. Whisk the slurry into the boiling cherries and reduce heat to low. Allow to cook until mixture is thickened. Allow to cool before spreading on top of cheesecake


One of my favorite things about baking at home is taking time to do everything. I am not worried about multi-tasking in the way that I normally am. Instead of sifting powdered sugar while Earth Balance is creaming in the mixer and and whisking something every few minutes as it cools, I can really focus on what I am doing and enjoy it. I can look at the patterns the vanilla bean makes as it is stirred into the batter. I can anticipate actually serving the food to people I care about & seeing them enjoy it too. Those are the things we remember in a few years, the things we become nostalgic for.

Cherry Chocolate Chip Madeleines

My love for Valentine's Day is still overflowing. I wanted so badly to sneak in one more holiday relevant post before the fourteenth, but I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. My partner got sick earlier this week and gave me his cold as an early gift. I am still not sure if it pairs well with a little black dress, but at least we didn't make any major plans for tomorrow night. After a wave of exhaustion hit me at lunch today, I worked my schedule out to leave a little early. I got home before dark and was even able to snap pictures of the remaining madeleines before I napped and drank a few cups of ginger tea. It's back to the bakery in the morning. I have a few dozen more pounds of strawberries that I need to dip in chocolate!
I had seen a chocolate dipped cherry madeleine a few weeks ago, and it sparked my interest. I knew Hannah had a much more animal-friendly recipe for a lemon lime version, so I tweaked it to make it all pink and chocolatey. I opted for mini chocolate chips in the batter instead of a ganache to keep the cakes a little lighter. I used tart cherries but maraschino would work as well. If you are reading this in the future and it's pleasantly warm out, you might even be able to use fresh cherries. You could just use additional non-dairy milk in place of the juice, and you might want to add a bit of cherry extract to boost the flavor.



Cherry Chocolate Chip Madeleines
Adapted from the Lemon Lime Madeleines in Vegan Desserts: Sumptuous Sweets for Every Season

1 cup flour
2 tbl tapioca starch
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup Earth Balance, melted
6 tbl non-dairy milk of preference
2 tbl cherry juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbl mini chocolate chips
9 whole cherries, chopped

If using jarred cherries, pat dry and allow as much juice to be removed as possible. Chop into small pieces & set aside. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly oil & flour your madeleine pan.
In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients from flour to salt. In a small bowl combine milk, melted Earth Balance, vanilla and cherry juice. Whisk until combined. Fold gently into dry ingredients. When almost combined, add chocolate chips and cherry pieces. Spoon into madeleine pan until all wells are even. Once in the oven, lower the temperature to 375. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the edges are browned.


Without another holiday for a month, I am hoping to bake more elaborate things at home. I know I want to experiment with cannoli again. Third times a charm, right?! I will also never be over donuts. I feel like there are probably some other things bookmarked away that I will have to dig up. Is there anything fun on your list of sweets to make?