"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!
It was a great Father's Day! I think I at 95% of the piesp myself. It was gone in a couple days. I took my time to make it look good. It was great as were the cookies. I ate some of the strawberry cake but Sharon and Amanda took care of most of that. Strawberries are great but next to rhubarb-well rhubarb rocks. Thanks Sara! I won't ever forget those goodies as when I go for my next check up my doctor won't let me forget either.
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