Rhubarb, strawberries and Father's day. Oh, also new blog title!

Well hello! I have changed the look and title of the blog! You are now reading "Evil Sarah Bakes"! If you followed The Bakeress, you'll have to "re-follow" Evil Sarah.

"Why Evil Sarah?" you ask, confusion writ large on your precious face. Well, when I was a gainfully employed, productive member of society, I used to work at a local business as a wage-slave manufacturing printed circuit boards. (I know, how did I ever leave the glamour and sexiness of that lifestyle?) Anyway, there came a time when there was another Sarah who came to work with us. She was very young and pretty and sweet, while I was old(er), more *ahem* "mature-looking" and (let's face it) bitchier. So, she became known as "Good Sarah" and I was "Evil Sarah" in order to differentiate references to the two of us. I wholeheartedly approved of this system. (I'm not sure how Good Sarah felt about it, but she didn't protest, so I'm sure she was OK with it.) Soon, my moniker was shortened to just "Evil". It really saved time establishing that I wasn't going to take any crap from new people and it was funny. Once, my supervisor was looking for me and she poked her head into a room and asked "Is Evil in here?" Someone answered "No, she's in the other room." in a very matter-of-fact tone, totally confusing and probably scaring the trainee that was sitting next to him. Ha! In fact, a lot of the people there still refer to me as Evil Sarah and when I call my husband at work, I always tell whoever answers the phone that "This is Evil Sarah, is Jonathan there?"

Ok! Enough about hilarious nicknames! Let's bake!

So, when was Father's day? Like a hundred years ago? Oh! It was like 2 weeks ago. Great! I'm not as behind the times as I thought I was! Yay!

As I mentioned above, with school out for summer, I am really just a bum until the fall. This causes the household budget to be pretty tight during the summer months, so I decided to bake for my dad for Father's day. I think he was pretty happy about it:

There's m'dad! Ken Schaefer, the best dad in the world, posing with the rhubarb crisp bars I made! Since the bars are in the picture, we'll start with these!

It's farmer's market season here in northwest Wisconsin, so there was lots and lots of rhubarb right away and I snapped up as much as I could. There are many 1-cup portion bags of it in my freezer. My dad loves rhubarb (as do I). I got the recipe for these beauties here, at Tasty Kitchen. Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmmmm, Tassssssssssssssty Kitchen indeed. As a matter of fact, "Tasty Kitchen" was my nickname in high school. They are kind of like if a pie and a crisp had a baby, somewhere in a lab. A piesp. Or crie. I like piesp better.

I substituted whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose flour. This was just an experiment to add texture and to see if it would make a structural difference. There is nothing you can do to make these "healthy". Sure, the whole wheat makes it just a tad healthier, but there is enough butter in this recipe to choke a horse (which is as it should be and just the way I like it.) There's also a lot of brown sugar. Brown sugar and butter. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Huh? Wait....what? What was I saying? Oh! Piesp! The whole wheat pastry flour (which is also called graham flour, a little fun fact (an ff) for you there) worked very nicely. I had made these for a potluck for the old man (my husband) for work and I used A.P. flour. I thought that the w.w. pastry flour gave it more texture and body than the A.P. Anyway, these bars have a bottom crust (like a pie) with a wonderful crumbly topping (like a crisp). I like a crisp with a bottom crust. I don't know why, but when there's just crumbly topping over fruit, it just seems like there isn't enough "crisp". I always put a bottom crust on my apple crisp and I would never make it another way. You could use this recipe for apple crisp, but I would maybe add some cinnamon and nutmeg to both the topping and the apples.

Anyway, dad and I ate this bitch up, yo. It was soooo good. The rhubarb is tart and the crust is warm and sweet. Some people don't like the tartness (or celery-like texture) of rhubarb by itself. That's why you see a lot of strawberry-rhubarb stuff out there. Strawberry rhubarb stuff is good, don't get me wrong, but sometimes you just need the contrast of the tart with the sweet.

Next up! Rhubarb cookies!

I got the recipe for these on allrecipes.com. They tasted really good, but they were a little structurally unsound. I'm not sure why, but they really didn't hold together very well. I decided to bag the cookies, sans frosting, and frost them at my parents' house. While they were in the bag, they kind of turned into a kind of cookie-mass. That might have been because they should have been in a hard-sided container or I should have let them cool more before bagging them. I've had problems with softer cookies in plastic bags before, so maybe I should just stop doing that. BUT THEY'RE SO HANDY!

Anyway, these cookies are topped with a wonderful, tasty cream cheese frosting. Seriously, I will eat anything if there is cream cheese frosting on it. Broccoli, toast, mashed potatoes, my shoe. Anything.

The cookies had a good flavor, if not the best texture. The rhubarb is just mixed in with the dough, so the tartness isn't as strong as it is in other applications, like pie or crisp. The frosting and the coconut do give the cookies a nice sweetness for people who don't like the tartness of rhubarb in pie or crisp. I probably wont' make these cookies again, since they didn't send me over the moon and there are many more rhubarb recipes to try.

Alright. Since my mom and sister aren't all that crazy about rhubarb, I made a little something for them as well. Strawberries just made their appearance recently *cue "Hallelujah Chorus" here*. The availability of local strawberries is an occurrence to which I look forward almost as much as the local peaches become available in August. So yummy! I wanted something easy and easily thrown together since I was flagging fast with the rhubarb-a-palooza above. So, I got this Strawberry Summer Cake recipe at Smitten Kitchen ( lovely blog). The picture on the SK site looks different than mine (and I'll try to explain that here in a minute):

Notice how the strawberries have all hidden in my cake, while they are all visible and beautiful in the SK picture. The only reason for this that I can think of is that I used a 9 inch pie pan. The SK says that, if you use a 9 inch pie pan, it will overflow. Mine did not overflow (thank God.) However, it did make the cake part thicker, so the strawberries were enveloped. The larger pie plate will spread the batter out more and the strawberries will be easier to see. It might not have been as pretty as the SK cake, but it was REAAAAAALLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYY good. I mean really really really good. There is no frosting or glaze on this cake and it really doesn't need one. The cake is moist and the strawberries stayed very sweet and tender. My sister, Amanda liked it so much, she asked for it to be her birthday cake in August. This makes me happy, since it's a really easy cake to make. Here is a picture of Amanda's piece covered in whipped cream (which I personally think is gross, but lots of people like whipped cream, and I understand it was good on this cake):

Amanda is helpfully pointing to the cake with her fork.

Well, there you have it! Three fun summer dessert recipes to try with seasonal local fruit!

Questions? Comments? Please leave them below and I'll get right back to you!

Granola!

Hello everyone! I am so sorry it's been a million years since I last graced you with some tasty musings. First, it was end of the semester and I was running around trying to get everything read and written and suchlike. Then Jonathan and I suffered the loss of our 15 year-old cat, Claude. Here he is, nonchalantly lounging on the counter (where he is NOT supposed to be). It was just so funny, I had to take a picture before I shooed him off. Silly boy. We will miss him a lot.

Now for some food!

I have lots and lots of stuff to tell you about, but I'll start out with some GRAAAAAAAANOLAAAAAA!(imagine me shouting this a lot like the guy in the Ricola commercials).

I like to eat granola in the morning with yogurt. Yum yummy. However, buying granola at the store is either a)expensive, b) full of ingredients that I cannot pronounce or c) both. Making your own granola is delicious and easier than falling in love.

An extreme close-up of the crunchy goodness.

This is a fun recipe and you can really tailor it to your own tastes and preferences. You need to get the liquid proportions and sweetener proportions pretty close, but other than that, go nuts.

I like to use rolled oats and quinoa (uncooked) for the base and brown sugar and real maple syrup for the

sweeteners.

You want a relatively low oven temperature for this, so the brown sugar gets a chance to caramelize and make the granola nice and chewy as well as crispy.

I use canola oil in my granola, but you can use any light oil you wish. A light olive oil might be nice as well. (The "canola/granola" rhyme above is not lost on me. It was accidental and therefore more awesome.)

The recipe below is roughly what I use when I make granola. It varies from time to time depending on my mood and what I have on hand. I will put the more open-ended, general amounts in italics.

Granola!

2 cups quick-cooking rolled oats (this is kind of a must. It's a good

base and makes up the "chewiness" of the granola. You can use

3 cups of oats if you don't want to use any quinoa.)

1/2 cup white quinoa, uncooked (if you buy your quinoa at the grocery store, sometimes

it's pre-rinsed. The stuff I buy at Target is pre-rinsed. If you buy your

quinoa in bulk, you'll have to rinse it and spread it out to dry

before adding it. When I buy quinoa at Weavers in bulk, I rinse it

myself. If you don't, it'll taste bitter.)

1 to 1 and 1/2 cups of nuts, seeds, fruit and other sundry items ( the last time

I made this, I used 1/4 cup roasted sunflower seeds {divested of their shells}, 1/4 cup

pepitas {which are shelled pumpkin seeds}, 1/4 cup flax seeds,

1/4 cup unsweetened coconut and 1/4 cup chopped pecans. You can

add raisins, dried cranberries, really any dried fruit you like. You

can also add different kinds of nuts and seeds. Sesame seeds

are tasty, I hear, and cashews are AWESOME. You can really

just use your own preferences here as to amounts. If you add more than

about a cup and a half, you might want to add a little more oil or liquid sweetener.)

2 Tablespoons wheat germ (obviously, if you can't have wheat, skip this.

It does add a nice toasty flavor and crunch to the granola, though. Also, more

fiber! Nothing like a shotgun blast of fiber to put a spring in your

step and a song in your heart.)

3 Tablespoons dark brown sugar (I will never make granola without

brown sugar again. It really adds a nice depth to the flavor.)

1/4 -1/3 cup real maple syrup (I only use a quarter cup. If you

want your granola sweeter, then add more. I like to use real maple

syrup since it doesn't scream "MAPLE!!!!" it just give it a nice sweetness.

You can also use honey, or both. If you're using only honey, make sure

to keep an eye on the granola in the oven, since honey browns faster than

the maple syrup. Honey is just a little too sweet for me. )

3 Tablespoons Canola oil (or some other sort of oil. This will help the

granola clump a little bit and make it a little chewy.)

A dash of cinnamon (completely optional)

1 teaspoon vanilla (or other liquid flavoring. Almond extract, or coconut

extract or whatever strikes your fancy. This, too is optional.)

Mix everything together in a bowl, except the maple syrup/honey, oil, and liquid flavoring. Be sure to add the brown sugar at this point, so it has a chance to get all mixed up with the dry ingredients. If you wait and add it with the syrup and oil, the brown sugar will get all clumpy. After everything is nicely mixed, add a little salt, if you want and then add the oil, syrup and or honey, and vanilla (or other liquid flavor). Mix it all together and spread it out on a parchment-lined, rimmed cookie sheet.

I took this picture when I was using the foil and not parchment.

Let's pause a minute and talk about the preparation of the cookie sheet. When I was working out this method, I at first used that non-stick foil on the cookie sheet and then sprayed it with cooking spray. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the non-stick foil. I use it whenever I bake or roast something in the oven, from tater tots to asparagus. It saves a lot of clean-up. However, the foil does not work well for granola. Even when sprayed with cooking spray, the granola (particularly the quinoa) sticks to it. I don't know why, I'm not a physicist. So! Use parchment paper, and no sticking. Just for good measure and to make stirring easier, I add cooking spray to the parchment paper as well.

Once you have everything on the lined cookie sheet (and it has to be a rimmed cookie sheet, or all of your granola will fall off in the oven, and it'll be just an appalling mess.) Put it in a preheated 250-300F degree oven. The low temperature bakes it slowly and helps the flavors meld. I set my timer for 10 minutes, then I stir the granola, set the timer for another 10 minutes, and stir and so on. You might want to set your timer for 5 minutes at first, until you know how your oven will work with this recipe. It usually takes 30 minutes total when I make it in my oven, with 2 stirrings. If you don't stir the granola, the edges will get really done and the middle will remain raw. If you don't keep an eye on it, it will burn and that's no fun for anybody.

Once the granola is browned to your satisfaction, take it out of the oven and let it cool on the pan on a cooling rack. When it's cool, I put mine in a gallon size zip-top bag and store it in the pantry. When I'm making granola for others, I divide it up into two smaller zip-top bags.

If you have any questions/comments, please let me know! I promise it won't be so long until I write again!