I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: If I were to ever open a bakery, I’d name is The Cheeky Little Tart. For some reason, I just find that funny. 🙂 And today, I made this cheeky little tart. My roommate has been working crazy long hours and I thought thought that maybe she would appreciate a little pie in her life. And she loves blueberries. Pie cures most ills, as I always say (although in her case, maybe sleep would be good too!)
I seem to have a crazy overabundance of cherry tomatoes and basil this year. My god, the basil! More on that some other time, today I was focused with doing something with the 2 pints of cherry tomatoes that I picked in the last few days. Seemed like an excuse to make this tomato pie. No, it isn’t a pizza, though I guess it might as well be. Sort of like a caprese salad, only warm and in a pie. Lunch was awesome! 🙂
A few weeks ago, I made Red Currant Crumble Bars. They were delicious. They were originally adapted from a Raspberry Crumble bar type, so I thought, what the heck, this must work with pretty much any fruit or berry, so I gave it a shot with apricots. Added the hazelnuts on a whim, and they added a nice crunch.
This post is not about muffins. OK, maybe a little bit about the muffins, because these Cherry Peach Muffins with Vanilla Cinnamon Streusel are really good. It is more about the muffin hardware. The pan. The tin. The vessel in which the muffins were made….
As you can see, this muffin pan looks a little different than your standard muffin pan. It looks like a big, somewhat organized amoeba. Not like the usual, rectangular sort. It was touted as “a better muffin pan” so me being me, had to try it out. Apparently because of the alignment of the cups (closer together) and because it is made out of heavy gauge, coated aluminum (vs normal steel construction), your baked good get better heat distribution, thus better baking. So far, so good, as I guess the muffins came out well, though I honestly can’t say that they are a million times better than my normal muffins. Nevertheless, it’s a cool pan and so far, I like it.
(PS: It’s pricey at $35, compared to a normal muffin pan at $6-$12, but I had a gift certificate so I splurged. Who? Me? Slurge on bakeware? Never!)
We interrupt this summer of fresh flavors do to a year-round recipe: Roasted Cashew Chocolate Heart Cookies. Based on a recipe for peanut butter cookies, I thought I’d swap out the type of nut butter. This does not always work well. Some nuts have greater protein or more or less oil than others, so it’s not exactly a precise science. In fact, I ended up having the add an additional half cup of flour to make this come together correctly, and even so, they spread more than I would have liked. That said, they *taste* even better to me than peanut butter cookies. Yum Yum!