Grandma’s Cherry Snowballs

My grandma is an awesome lady — I wish I knew her better.

She’s still alive n’ kicking, but my grandma has Alzheimer’s disease and hasn’t recognized me  for a long time now. I visit her occasionally and I see her at family dinners, but I could and should visit her more often.

Especially since my grandma has one of the kindest hearts and sweetest dispositions you could ever hope to find in a person — she loves animals and people and I remember someone in my family once telling me that the most terrible cuss they’d ever heard her say was “hell’s bells”!

From what I know from the stories she’s told me, she grew up just a block from where I grew up and attended the same school (back when it was a high school — by the time I went there it had been switched to an elementary school and the high school had been moved to a bigger building down the hill).

I went to the same university as she did, but she majored in social work while I did an English degree.

My grandma even belonged to a sorority (back when sororities did charity work instead of drinking with frat boys) and worked with the YMCA to help underprivileged children.

I remember once she gave me a bottle of pale green glittery nail polish for Christmas, and, upon seeing it, my teenage self exclaimed, “Grandma, this is wicked!”

“Oh… well,” she said, “If you don’t like it, I can always take it back.”

Then I had to explain to her that wicked meant awesome, kind of like how bad can mean good. I think she was a little perplexed, but accepted the fact that I liked her present after all.

Haha!

Black Plum & Bing Cherry Galettes

It’s August already… whew.

Seems like yesterday I was in my last semester of school, then I was getting scorched in the Mexican sun, then I was standing on stage during my graduation convocation, then I did a whole whirlwind of Japanese desserts while neck-deep in full-time work.

And, yet, I expected to do more this summer!

The countdown to pastry school has begun, but I’m still racing towards my goal of posting 100 recipes on my blog before mid-September, and working to drop another 10 pounds before class starts.

D’ya think eating fewer treats and drinking less beer would help?

The secret to losing weight it pretty easy, actually — all you need to do is eat less and move more.

Trouble is, with it being a lazy summer n’ all, half of the time I swear I’m only moving to either go to work or grab another handful of berries! Or cherries.

I’ve been eating Bing cherries ’til my stomach hurts ever since a friend brought me a bucketful from her road trip through orchard country.

Anyways, in other news: one of my recent posts was featured on Epicute! Squee!

Cherry Clafloutis

I’m back! I had a long, much needed, semi-forced hiatus.

Between catching a serious case of the flu (which then developed into a respiratory infection, antibiotics, lovely stuff) and having my Internet cut off (some kind of rewiring issues in my apartment building), I didn’t have much of a choice.

But there’s good news, too — it’s finally warm and sunny in Vancouver!

Seriously — I was beginning to think that I missed the memo on summer being cancelled!

Summer is my favourite time of the year. It’s a season of sandals and sunburns and fruit stands.

But, as much as I like wearing sandals (and loathe sunburns) on sunny summer days, I definitely like fruit stands even better.

Nothing beats fresh, local cherries and strawberries — not to mention all the peaches, plums, apricots, and apples from the Okanagan. It gets better, too, since August brings blueberries and blackberries to the markets!

The eight months of grey skies and wet weather of Vancouver are a bummer, sure — but I’ve always felt that waiting for the berry bounty of summer is totally worth it.

Cherry Buttermilk Cookies

I love the tangy taste of buttermilk.

The problem is, though, that I always seem to either have too much, or too little, or some in my fridge that’s about to go bad.

Which is one of the reasons why I’m constantly on the prowl for new buttermilk recipes… ’cause, y’know, wasting food (even buttermilk) is bad, so grab that half-empty bottle and heat up your oven!

Buttermilk makes these morsels deliciously light and airy — they’re more like a drop cake than a drop cookie.

All that tangy dairy, vanilla, lemon wasn’t enough for me, though — I had to throw in some dried cherries into the recipe, since I’m getting kind of desperate waiting for the summer fruit harvest around here.

Walnut Rum Bundt with Sour Cherry Glaze

I’ve been a little nutty lately.

Err, I mean, I’ve been nuts for nuts.

I mean, I’ve just been on a mad nut streak! You know what I mean!

Okay, maybe you don’t.

Let me explain: first there were sneaky pecans in my cookies. Then I went overboard with peanuts and I didn’t even try to hide it. Today I’m all about the walnuts, and next week I’m going to get all hazelnut up in my kitchen.

I think this must be some kind of fresh fruit withdrawal.

See, I try to eat local as best I can, and it’s about this time of year that I really start to moan and begrudge winter.

I go to the supermarket, I stare at glossy plastic packages of imported berries, and can’t overcome enough of my eco-conscience to buy them. It’s terrible.

So, I tide myself over with nuts and jam and check the 5-day weather report for sun and high temperatures 10 times a day — and that’s my sad, sad life.

Cherry Bourbon Blondies

When I mentioned to some friends that I was planning on making some booze-spiked blondies, nearly every single one of them asked the same question: “What’s a ‘blondie’?”

It’s not a band, it’s not a comic strip, it’s a dessert bar — quite simply, a brownie sans chocolate.

A well made batch of blondies should be sweet and moist,  just like brownies, and even have that “fudgey” texture that we all know and love. The thing is, though, that without the over-powering flavour of cocoa to charge in and take centre stage, one can add more subtle flavours to a blondie and have them come through, loud and clear.

So, what I’ve really been wanting to do is put a bottle of Jim Beam Red Stag that I bought to good use! Cherry bourbon? So good, especially with cola.

If you can’t find cherry bourbon, then regular bourbon will work, too. If you’re a teetotaler, then you have my sympathies — I can’t imagine my life without the luxury of alcohol, let alone anyone else’s!