The scones we made for the tea – apricot orange on the left, and the favorite, lavender white chocolate chip on the right.

Today you’re going to get 2 recipes – for both scones Sara and I made for her tea recently. They were easy and totally different. The lavender ones used heavy cream as the fat (mostly) and the apricot ones used butter and buttermilk. Both were good, but everyone seemed to favor the lavender white chocolate chip ones over the apricot. Maybe because the texture was slightly different – they were a bit more moist – in fact the batter was really wet when Sara scooped them onto the cookie sheet. It’s hard to tell from the photo but the apricot ones were actually cut in rounds, while the lavender ones were drop scones and they spread some as they baked.

If you happen to have lavender in your garden, do harvest and dry some (providing you don’t use any pesticide on it – you’d not want to be eating that!). If not, you can buy Culinary French Lavender (1 oz) online. Lavender buds don’t keep fresh and vibrant tasting for all that long, so I’d recommend you use whatever you buy within 6 months or so. If you buy any online, unless you use it a lot, I’d buy the smallest quantity available. The one linked above offers free shipping – that’s nice since herbs don’t weigh all that much in small quantities!

The lavender scones came from an article in the San Diego Union Tribune. The recipe is from a bakery in San Diego called Cups. The buttermilk scone recipe came from a very old cook book of Sara’s, a Sunset Breakfast & Brunch cookbook (out of print). She mentioned that it’s her favorite go-to scone recipe and has been for years. I should compare it to my favorite go-to Buttermilk Scones recipe that I’ve been making for about 25 years or so.

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. . .

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Well. There are tea sandwiches, and then there are THESE tea sandwiches. Oh gosh were they delicious. As I’m writing this – and it’s breakfast time this moment – I’d eat these for breakfast if I had any of them!

Our daughter Sara decided to throw a tea for a group of her girlfriends. Her rule: no children allowed – it was going to be a time for her friends, all busy moms – to sit and relax. Since we were driving there to visit them that evening, she asked if I’d come early. Of course! I’m always up for tea! At home, I made two kinds of cookies to help her – the Baked Cinnamon Toasts I’ve already raved about here and the Moravian Sugar Cookies, although my recipe calls them Almond Spice Wafers. I also made lemon curd, and couldn’t believe it when we got all done and realized we’d forgotten to put it out! Oh, so sad. Sara made the middle cookies you can see below, rich chocolate shortbread kind of cookies pillowed with a chewy caramel layer. Sara made 2 kinds of tea – a rooibos, which is her day to day favorite decaf tea, and a pot of Earl Grey. She also put out some gorgeous spring strawberries, sugar, milk, teacups and saucers, some crème fraiche that I sweetened with a little bit of sugar (this was in lieu of clotted cream), and napkins, of course.

The COOKIES: Baked Cinnamon Toasts are on the left, Sara’s chocolate caramel filled cookies in the middle and the Almond Spice Wafers on the right. Sara thought the Cinnamon  Toasts were the hit of the cookie category. I agree. I had about 5-6 of them I kept at home and within a day they were gone – even my DH, who rarely eats anything sweet – gobbled down 2-3 of them. Guess I’ll have to make them again.

I’ll write up a post in the next day or so with the two scones we made. One an apricot-orange and the star of the show, a lavender white chocolate chip.

The winner of the tea sandwich category at Sara’s tea was this cucumber one. I mean, what would a ladies’ tea be without some cucumber sandwiches? Sara found some tea sandwich suggestions at this website. For this sandwich it said:  Cucumber-Butter – Mix 4 tablespoons softened butter, 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs. Spread on white bread and sandwich with sliced cucumber. Trim the crusts and cut into pieces.   We were making 5 whole sandwiches (which made 4 little quarters each), so we had 20 of each sandwich we made. I added minced chives, lemon zest, some salt and a teaspoon or so of fresh minced thyme leaves. I used 1 cube of butter for the 5 sandwiches and it was just enough.

Over the years, I’ve learned that you need to get just the right proportion of filling to bread.

So in this case, with our first taste test, there wasn’t enough butter. The butter needed salt too. And the cucumber wasn’t quite thick enough. Obviously start with very soft butter, add the flavorings and taste. Cut off the crusts on the bread. We chose not to make round cutouts (too much trouble), so I generously buttered both sides of the bread and placed 4 cucumber rounds on each sandwich. We chose to cut just one slice rather than use many ultra-thin slices as I knew the multiple slices would slip and the sandwich would come apart from the moisture in the cucumbers. So one slice – in our case the cucumber was about 1/8 inch+ thick. The bread used was some very, very soft white sandwich bread we bought here in our local village at a Japanese bakery called Cream Pan. They make the softest and fluffiest white sandwich bread. Kind of like Weber’s bread, but a whole lot more tasty. With the cucumber in place the other bread slice was very carefully positioned, then I gently – oh so gently – cut the sandwich into 4 squares, trying not to cut into any of the cucumbers.

The sandwiches went onto a nice serving tray and Sara covered the platter with a dampened tea towel, which kept them very fresh for the hour prior to the start of the tea. We didn’t refrigerate them – but there wasn’t anything like mayo in anything, so that worked just fine.

The other tea sandwich was just okay. I probably wouldn’t make them again, but it was certainly different. Sara really wanted sandwiches containing some prosciutto, so the website suggestion said: Pea-Prosciutto: puree 1/2 cup thawed frozen peas with 1 tablespoon each olive oil and water in a blender; season with salt and pepper. Spread inside a split loaf of focaccia and fill with prosciutto and shaved parmesan. Cut into squares. 

My suggestion had been to use ham instead of prosciutto, but Sara really wanted the prosciutto, so I bought some imported less-salty prosciutto from our local Italian deli. Sara made the pea puree, which was cinchy easy. I spread the bread with the pea puree, then we took small strips of the prosciutto and layered about 3 ultra-thin slices on each sandwich, added some shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano (very thin). My other suggestion to Sara had been that we chop up the prosciutto instead of laying it in strips (ribbons, really) in the sandwich, but Sara wanted to SEE the prosciutto. Cutting this sandwich was more of a challenge because of the grain of the meat, cut the long way it was easy, but across the prosciutto grain was difficult. For sure use a serrated knife, like a bread knife and use a gentle repetitive sawing motion. Even she agreed later that it would have been easier to eat if we’d chopped it up. Prosciutto has a tendency to be kind of stringy – very do-able if you’re eating a slice out of hand, but not so easy when it pulls apart a dainty tea sandwich! But overall, we were unimpressed with this sandwich. It needed something moist in it – like a thin-thin slice of tomato maybe, or lettuce? And I think I would have added some mayo to the pea puree. I don’t think anybody went back for seconds on this sandwich, but that’s mostly because the cucumber one was SO delicious.

What’s GOOD: well, the herb butter just “made” the sandwich, I think. And the combo of the so very soft thin white bread [it was so perfect for this . . . too bad white bread isn’t all that healthy!] with the crispy cucumber slice, and the lemon zest. It was all just fantastic!
What’s NOT: nothing at all – just know you can’t make this very far in advance – an hour or so. Enlist someone’s help with it so if you’re the hostess you can be doing other things like stirring up scones and boiling water for the tea, setting the table, etc.

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Can you vaguely see the indentations that I made before I baked these 6 gigantic biscuits, so I could more easily pull them apart? Healthy these are not. Delicious, yes they are!

Biscuits. What’s there not to like, other than the fact that they’re white food, high in carbs, pretty much empty calories (i.e. no healthy nutritional value) and high in calorie. But oh well, sometimes there’s just nothing like them. When we want comfort food, isn’t that what we turn to, things that may not be good for us, but they taste good and they just plain make you “feel” better. Kind of like ice cream. And mashed potatoes. Even meatloaf satisfies my comfort meter.

I was going to cook up some barley for dinner, but I got a little flash in my brain that said biscuits sounded a whole lot better. I have a digital cookbook in my MasterCook recipe program that is just filled with internet-found ideas.  They’re sorted by category, so it took little time to scan through all the Bread possibilities (which also included some quick sweet breads). The recipe has been in that file for awhile, but has a story.

Apparently there used to be a restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, called Lynn’s Paradise Café, and the owner, Lynn, made these glorious biscuits. The restaurant closed, but the owner gave the recipe to someone, and it’s available in a couple of places online. These biscuits are big. I mean HUGE. Usually they’re made in a 9×9 pan – and the recipe below IS for that size. I didn’t want 9 of these gigantic biscuits, so I made 2/3 of the recipe and used a bread pan instead. We ate 2 and I froze the other 4 1/2 in foil so I can pop them out for a future dinner.

At the Louisville Courier’s website their recipe calls for White Lily flour (not easily found out here in the Wild West, although I have read even recently that some cooks believe White Lily is absolutely the best flour – I wouldn’t know since I’ve never tried it) and shortening. Theirs were baked at 425°. I used regular all-purpose flour and unsalted butter. And baked them at 400°. They’re a buttermilk biscuit, but rich with unsalted butter AND heavy cream. Yes. So they’re tender from the buttermilk, flaky from the unsalted butter you cut in, and rich with the heavy cream. Technically you shouldn’t need butter on them. I’ll leave that up to you.

My opinion is that perhaps these biscuits could/would be just fine with a bit less fat. The next time I make these I’m going to use all buttermilk, and no cream. Or maybe a higher proportion of buttermilk to cream. I’ll let you know how that works. I suppose I could hold off posting this recipe until I’ve tried it, but since this one below isn’t my recipe, I’ll let you decide whether to try these as is, or wait until such time as I get around to trying a revised recipe.

What’s GOOD: the biscuits are tall, no, they’re deep and extraordinarily rich. Not like a scone – just like a rich biscuit. I think I’d like them not quite so high, yet I don’t have a pan that would be just right for that. I’ll have to think on that. The texture is rich. Not flaky, not exactly dense either. Good texture, buttery texture for sure! It’s possible the substitution of butter for shortening has an effect also. Maybe I should try them with the non-hydrogenated shortening I have. The biscuits don’t need any butter, but if you take a big mouthful, they might be a bit too dry without something on them – gravy, jam, honey or gosh, butter! I splurged and had butter on the very last bite of the half a biscuit I ate. They’re also easy to make – the usual drill with dry ingredients, cut in the fat (butter or shortening) then pour in the wet ingredients. Stir and press lightly into the pan. You hardly have to get your hands dirty!
What’s NOT: they do take awhile to bake – longer than ordinary biscuits since they’re SO thick.

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A tea bread. Yes. A cake? Well, perhaps, but it’s not quite as tender as one. A traditional loaf bread texture? No, not at all. More tender than that. It’s in-between. Chocolaty, yes, indeed! Delicious? Absolutely!

Oh my. Oh my. I knew, the moment I licked the beater that this bread or cake in a bread shape, was going to be sensational. The chocolate flavor – well, it’s just there. You know what I mean? If you don’t already read the blog from King Arthur Flour, you should. They have a very astute test kitchen, and of course, all they do is bake things – sweet and savory. Crackers, to doughnuts, to cakes, pies, breads of all kinds, and things like this, a tea bread. PJ Hamel was the test kitchen cook this time. I always love reading her stories – she’s witty. Here’s what she wrote in the preface to this recipe:

I brake for chocolate.

I also break for chocolate.

And bake with chocolate.

The day I baked this had been a doozy. A little – no, a big family crisis does something to the psyche. I was feeling wrenched. At a loss. I prayed about it – have been praying about it for several days. I’m sorry, I can’t share about it; it’s not my place to share. It’s still too raw. No, it’s not about me or my dear hubby. Someone else in the immediate family. Finally, after lulling myself with some TV shows on my Tivo, and having a short glass of sangria, I just decided I should bake something. We were going to friends for dinner, so I didn’t have to cook. I thought maybe I’d get it done in time to take some to them. Also thought baking might get me out of my slump. And it did.

It had me looking back at the King Arthur blog piece because I decided to bake the loaf in the narrow tea loaf ceramic pan I have – that I love – and have only used a few times.

There was a little nugget of information on the blog about why/how we use different kinds of cocoa. This was provided in one of the comments to this recipe; it came from Frank, a pastry chef.

• It is always best to use the cocoa called for in the recipe rather than
  making a substitution, but if you need to substitute, here is the
  ratio.
• Dutch Cocoa:
  Substitute 3 Tablespoons natural cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon baking soda.
• Natural Cocoa:
  Substitute 3 Tablespoons Dutch cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar,
  lemon juice, or vinegar.
• So, when do you use each one? For recipes calling for more baking soda
  than baking powder, you use natural cocoa.
• If the recipe has more baking powder than soda, you will want a Dutched
  cocoa due to the different alkali content. Using a natural cocoa will
  give your baked goods a heavy, soapy taste.

I’m so glad I read that because had I not, I would have used a different cocoa. As it was, I dug in my lidded bin in my pantry for Penzey’s high fat Dutch-process cocoa, exactly what I needed for this tea bread.

It took no time to mix it up. Butter, sugar, cocoa, a little jot of espresso powder (which brings out, or enhances the chocolate flavor in the loaf), baking powder, vanilla, also some of King Arthur Flour’s Cake Enhancer. Have you heard of it? It’s a type of emulsifier, and is used a lot in professional kitchens and bakeries. It helps stabilize batters and breads and makes them or keeps them moist. So there were 2 T. of that in the batter too. Plus flour and milk. I think that was it. Nothing all that unusual, really.

Into the elongated tea loaf pan it went and baked. According to KAF, to switch to the different pan I should reduce the baking time by about 25% from a standard bread pan. It took longer than that to get the tea loaf to just the right internal temp, but it baked in about 60 minutes. I let it cool awhile, then with a little bit of rocking motion it came out of the pan easily enough. I think next time I would put a piece of parchment in the bottom. I’ve added that note to the directions.

What’s GOOD: everything about it. This is really a cake, but it’s sturdy enough (or it has a dense enough texture) that you can slice it into thin slices. But it’s absolutely NOT dense like a banana bread, for instance, or zucchini bread. Not at all. Truly it’s a cake. And delicious. If you’re a chocolate nut, it will tick all your boxes for richness, chocolate flavor, toothsome-ness, if there is such a hyphenation. In a word, this is terrific.
What’s NOT: nothing. Nary a word could I say. Hoorays for the King Arthur Flour test kitchen.

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Oh gosh, you’re going to love this bread. Or cake. Or cake made in a bread pan, masquerading as a loaf bread. Whatever it is, it’s marvelous. Easy. And better than any banana bread I’ve ever made, and I thought I had a really great one!

My radar wasn’t fixed – I mean tuned in – to making banana bread. Hadn’t even thought about it. Until I got an email from a new friend, Jerianne. A friend I’ve made as a result of my blog. This new friend lives about 25 miles from me, but we met for lunch several weeks ago. She’d found my blog somehow – I don’t recall if she told me how she happened to find it, and she started reading and she emailed me about getting together. We really enjoyed talking.  We have many common interests besides food. We are of a somewhat similar age. She loves to cook. We talked all about my blog, how and why, and we talked food for it seemed like hours. We’ve agreed to get together again sometime soon. She’s a Christian too, and she said a lovely prayer over our lunch.

Here’s a photo of Jerianne and me (J’s on the right) the day she took me to lunch (thank you again, Jerianne!). A week or so went by and Jerianne sent me an email with this recipe attached, telling me that I really, really needed to try this banana bread. She thought it was one of the best she’d ever made. Well, and it was called a prize-winning one, so why wouldn’t it be special? When I saw bananas, some very ripe ones, at the market, they called out to me and I made this bread. Oh my. Yes, yes, yes!

The recipe is in several places on the internet, and attributed to a county fair winner in 1981. It contains the standard stuff for a banana bread, with an addition of sour cream. I had light sour cream in my refrigerator, and it worked just fine. The bread also contains a lot of bananas – to get 1 1/2 cups I needed 4 medium sized ones. If you have really large bananas, probably 3 would be enough to measure 1 1/2 cups. My advice: measure!

It was all mixed up in my stand mixer and poured into a GREASED loaf pan. I had a bit too much for my loaf pan (fill the pan about 3/4 full), so I had to pour some of the batter into a smaller one (which I gave as a gift to our friend Joe who stayed with us the other night – Yvette, did you like it?). Likely you could scale down this recipe by about 1/5 and have just the right amount. It’s pretty hard to do that with standard measurements, but it could be done.

Then, you sprinkle raw sugar (turbinado) on the top of the raw batter – it adds a lovely crispy top. Don’t not do that step as you’ll be forever changed about adding that to any loaf breads. Loved it. The baking times varied a bit – some said 45 minutes, some an hour. I know loaf breads needed to bake until they reach about 205°, and it took about 55 minutes to do that. The bread MUST stay in the pan for a little while. Why? It’s a very, VERY tender bread/cake, and it could easily stick. If you want to be sure about this, put buttered parchment paper on the bottom of the bread pan. The large pan came out perfectly, but the little one was a little harder – it left a little bit stuck to the bottom.

After about 20 minutes I gently shook both pans to make sure the breads were loose and very carefully rolled the pan over onto my other hand and forearm, then quickly but gently placed it on a cooling rack. Be extra careful doing that – I very nearly broke the loaf in half. When I tell you it’s tender, it’s really, really tender, okay? Allow it to cool completely before slicing. Jerianne, thank you SO much for sharing this recipe with me! It’s a real winner.

What’s good: every single, solitary thing about this is wonderful. A definite do again bread.
What’s not: nothing whatsoever. What a lovely gift it would make, too.

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Here’s another of those – TRUST ME –  recipes. When I tell you these are worth making, please just do it, right? Do you like vivid orange flavors? And chocolate? This positively is a match made in heaven. And they’re super easy too.

A group of women was coming to my home to attend a cooking class, and each time we meet, the hostess (me this time) provides beverages (hot and cold) and some breakfast sorts of things (croissants maybe, fresh fruit, occasionally champagne) and a bread – perhaps banana bread or muffins. Even cookies. I had nothing particular in mind, but turned to one of my favorite little tiny cookbooks. What I’ve learned over the years is that every recipe in this book, Muffins: Sixty Sweet and Savory Recipes… From Old Favorites to New is reliable. Written by Elizabeth Alston,

Our daughter Sara, and her 15 & 7/8 year old daughter Sabrina

it’s out of print, but you can still find it in a used book store. And if you click on the link there, you’ll find some used copies for a penny (plus shipping, of course). I bought it for myself in 2003, when it was new (along with the companion book about Scones – Biscuits and Scones: 62 Recipes from Breakfast Biscuits to Homey Desserts). I also gave these to my daughter Sara, because she and her daughter love to bake. She was telling me a few weeks ago that it’s her go-to cookbook for anything close to a muffin (there are all kinds from savory to sweet, and biscuits too). What’s good about this one is that every single recipe I’ve ever tried (and Sara says the same thing) has been exceptionally good.

Looking online to see what other people thought, I found several versions of this recipe, all with a few little changes. Never did find the exact recipe, so I stuck with Alston’s original, using yogurt as the dairy (you can use buttermilk too).

You might be skeptical at the amount of orange zest in the recipe – 12 muffins require the zest from 2 oranges. My oranges were very large, so I probably had more than usual – about nearly 3 tablespoons that I got using the microplane. And it uses 3 ounces of bittersweet chocolate. I rarely use anything but the best chocolate (SharffenBerger in this case), and the bittersweet is worth seeking out. I did NOT use chocolate chips, and I’m glad I didn’t because they’re too sweet and too uniform – it’s nice to have dots of larger pieces of chocolate. You know you’re eating a really good chocolate that way.

The muffins are standard as far as mixing – cream the butter and sugar, add eggs and beat until light and fluffy. Add the yogurt,  orange juice and zest, then the dry ingredients are gently stirred in with the chocolate at the last. There are two secrets to making muffins: (1) don’t over mix the batter – just stir until you don’t see any errant streaks of flour; and (2) bake them to EXACTLY 205°. In my oven that took 18 minutes. I used my fantastic Thermapen thermometer to test them and they were 204.9° exactly. Perfection. I cooled them in the muffin tin for about 10 minutes, then carefully used a plastic knife to release them and let them cool to room temp. And I’m absolutely guilty as heck – I ate one while they were still barely warm. Oh – my – gosh.  Was it ever good. Ideally bake them within an hour of serving, when the chocolate is still almost molten, but not quite. As it was, I made them the day before and kept them in a ziploc bag overnight. Reheat them if you’re going to make them ahead – but not for long as they would dry out, I’m sure.

What’s good: oh, the orange flavor and the chocolate. As they say, those are two flavors that are marriage material. Loved the intense orange flavor – much more orange-y than usual in a baked good – but it wasn’t over the top (as in bitter). And the irregular pieces of chocolate were such a sweet surprise as you eat it. Definitely a make-again muffin.

What’s not: absolutely nothing at all.

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I know, I can hear it now – Carolyn has lost her marbles. She thinks we don’t know how to make cheese bread or cheese toast? No, that’s not the case. But it’s never been quite so easy or so flavorful as this one made with a cheddar cheese powder you can buy. Read on.

Earlier this year I visited a local Savory Spice Shop, and among lots of other things I bought and saw, they had this little packet of bright orange powder – cheddar cheese powder. Since I’d not too long before needed some of the little packets out of a Kraft macaroni and cheese box to make a replica of a particularly tasty bread called Smoke House Garlic Bread, I was intrigued and bought some. So the other night I decided to try it – I mixed the powder with some butter and fresh chives from the garden and made something similar. Unlike the garlic bread linked above, this one doesn’t have garlic in it (it would have overwhelmed the Soupe au Pistou I’d made) and it also didn’t contain any fresh, grated cheese. Just butter, the powder (which is cheese, but it’s so fine it’s almost like talcum powder and will go puff and disappear) and chives.

It was really simple to mix up. I mean EASY! All I did was toast some thick-cut Italian bread on one side, turned them over and spread the cheese mixture all over and broiled again just long enough to get the bread hot and bubbly. I served it immediately. I mean immediately. It will cool off so fast – so do have everything else ready. The Savory Spice stores also have a Romano cheese powder, a nacho flavored one, and yet another with blue cheese. All powdered.

What’s good: it’s just SO easy. Quick. And delish. Cheesy.
What’s not: nothing – maybe just that kind of artificial orange color – it’s really bright. It’s a vegetable dye, I suppose.

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When I begin writing “October” on checks or notes, I know Fall is almost here. In Southern California Fall doesn’t always arrive until it’s creeping into November. We’ve had an extremely hot summer, so I’m thinking maybe Fall will come a little earlier. As I’m typing this (a week or so ago) the weather has been blissfully cooler. So cool that this morning when I woke up at 4:30 am and couldn’t sleep, I put on my robe and tip-toed downstairs. Once I’m down, I could probably move furniture and Dave wouldn’t hear it. The TV doesn’t wake him. Anyway, I made my first pot of tea and just savored every sip. I opened up our patio door and in came to much cooler air. It really did feel like Fall. I loved it.

The next morning I was expecting friends to come play Scrabble (we play once a month, usually) and we meet at 9, so I need to serve something that’s not breakfast, but not lunch, either. We decided we weren’t going to “do” lunch with this group – just coffee and tea, fresh fruit and some other something to nibble on. Like nuts, banana bread, or Mimi’s Buttermilk Spice Muffins. But I’ve made those before. Aha, and the light bulb went off – it’s October. Time for pumpkin. I’ve made Harvest Pumpkin Scones before. Those were a recipe from King Arthur Flour. This time I thought I’d try a different one and looked in all 3 of my pumpkin cookbooks. I chose one from a 40-50 page booklet I bought some years ago at the grocery store called Libby’s Pumpkin Recipes.

These did require 2 bowls to mix (one for dry ingredients, one for wet), and a variety of measuring cup sizes, spoons, spatulas, and I had to plump-up the raisins. They were a little over the hill. I’ve learned, over the years of making umpteen varieties of scones, that an easy touch is the best when it comes to scones. The less you handle them the better. And leaving visible specks of butter makes for a more flaky biscuit. But other than that, these were very easy to mix up, cut and bake. I liked the golden raisins in them. I might even add some walnuts or pecans next time.

What I liked: everything about them – the golden raisins added a bit of texture – I liked the spices (I added more than the recipe indicated) and the moist biscuit-like chew to them. If you don’t serve them immediately, I’d recommend freezing them and just defrost them for 15 minutes or so before serving. You could also reheat them very gently in a low oven and for no more than about 10 minutes.

What I didn’t like: nothing whatsoever. Very delicious in every way.

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Before asparagus goes out of season this year, make time to prepare this soup. And make a batch of the delicious savory cookies (cheese, thyme and Parmesan) to go along with it. Neither recipe is difficult – you can even make the soup the day ahead and the cookie log could be made weeks ahead and frozen – then sliced and baked before serving.

Oh yes, this is worth making. Definitely! Worth making 2-3 batches of it and freeze for a later date – when we won’t have asparagus at all. A “batch” of this requires 1 1/2 pounds of asparagus. So I’d buy 3 pounds and make one big soup pot of it, then freeze in 1 or 2 cup portions. This isn’t the kind of soup you’d use as a full meal – it’s light and there’s nothing of the stick-to-the-ribs ingredients. There are a few peas in this, just to give the soup a little more of a green-y color, but unless someone told you there were peas in it, I’m not sure you’d know. This would make a lovely lunch dish!

Do make sure you have some tarragon on hand – it’s an important flavor ingredient here. We’ve been unable to grow tarragon in our garden, gosh darn it – so nearly every time I’m shopping I look for a little plastic box of it. More often than not, it’s not there. When you need tarragon, well, you just need it. Dried tarragon will work in an absolute pinch, but it doesn’t have the flavor components (to me, anyway) that fresh has.

Then there are the little savory cookies. These are so good – rich and crumbly, and they go perfectly with this soup. Do start them a few hours before you need them (or even bake them a few hours ahead). They could easily be made a week ahead and frozen. Slice off what you need and bake them. If a cookie contains a goodly amount of butter, you’ll not have trouble slicing them when they’re frozen. That’s the case here. The savory cookies are almost like shortbread, but instead of sweetness, they contain cheese and thyme. These are the kind of “cookies,” if you will, that could always reside in the freezer for times when you suddenly need an appetizer. Years ago I used to have plenty of those things, that lived in the freezer, always at-the-ready for impromptu guests. I think today most people don’t do impromptu dropping-in on people.

Both of these came from Linda Steidel, a cooking instructor, although she got the recipes from Food & Wine magazine in 2011.

What I liked: the asparagus flavor – and it seems like the addition of the frozen peas just enhances the asparagus – the same kind of affinity that chocolate desserts have when you add a little jot of coffee or espresso. An easy soup to make, for sure. The cheese shortbread cookies are sensational too. It’s all delish. The soup could be a vegetarian one if you substitute vegetable stock for the chicken stock.

What I didn’t like: absolutely nothing. Will be making again. Both of them.

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The minute I spotted this recipe I knew I wanted to try it. Fresh thyme in a sweet muffin? It sounded so interesting. Plus some fresh blackberries, which are available in our markets almost year ‘round now. And lemon – we have an abundance of them on our trees, although in this case it was only the zest that was needed. The recipe is in the most recent issue (March, 2012) of Bon Appetit.

Since I love to bake, it was a no-brainer to try this – read the recipe through first (something I often forget to do) – and begin. The crumble topping (cake flour, butter, fresh thyme baking powder, sugar and an egg yolk) is made first and chilled (even a day ahead is okay). The muffin batter has several steps – and in fact this particular batter requires lots of stand-mixer time – 2 minutes of just butter, 2-3 minutes once you add sugar, another 3-4 minutes once you add the eggs and vanilla. Then everything slows down – you add the buttermilk, then the dry ingredients. What it made was a really, really light batter

Meanwhile, the blackberries are halved – that’s not something I’ve ever done before I must admit – and you actually want some of the berries to macerate a bit in the batter to give it some dark berry color. The berries are just folded in, then plopped into lined muffin cups. The recipe indicated using those fancy paper liners – the tall, waxed paper type that makes a very large muffin. I just used regular muffin liners and my regular muffin tin. The chilled crumble is sprinkled on top (about a tablespoon per muffin) and into a 325° oven they went for 40 minutes. I ended up with quite a bit of topping leftover – I suppose I should have made 18 muffins, or even 20 of them so I used up all of the crumble. Don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with the rest of it. It’s too nice to throw out . . . any ideas for me, kind readers?

Since I now have a Thermapen Instant Read Thermometer (wow, is that thing a real beauty – expensive – but it does register temp within about 3 seconds) I use it at any and all occasions. I quickly looked up online what temp the interior is supposed to be of a baked sweet muffin – it said 210°, and at 40 minutes that’s exactly what they were. They cooled in the tin for about 10 minutes, then I took them out and onto a rack while I baked the remaining 4 muffins (the recipe makes 16).

My DH has just planted a new herb garden for me – in two deep and long raised flowerboxes that sit outside on a short wall in our patio, and we have new, tender thyme in one. I chopped up two teaspoons of it (one went in the crumble topping, the other in the muffin batter itself – next time I’d add more).

What I liked: well, I liked the thyme. A lot and I’ve upped the amount in the batter by half (from 1 tsp to 1 1/2 tsp). Loved the blackberries. I’d also add just a bit more sugar. Maybe because an insufficient amount of the topping ended up on top (where there was some sugar) the muffins were just a bit too savory. I’d have to try them again to know for sure. I’ve increased the sugar in the recipe below or serve with a sweetened butter. I liked the silky cake-like texture (from the cake flour and all the long mixing). I also liked that each muffin had just 11 grams of fat! Surprising, when there was a cube of butter in the batter and 3/4 of one in the crumble.

What I didn’t like: really nothing – all the flavors were delish, and the cake so very tender. I might add some toasted walnuts? More vanilla?

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