Bourbon Panna Cotta. Run, don’t walk.

/0 Comments/in /by

I don’t know what sounds more Southern than Bourbon Panna Cotta, do you?

Mmmmm, ramekins. šŸ™‚

Therefore, since I can’t seem to keep my hands off anything from A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen (a delicious little blog by Kim Morgan), here’s a recipe I found there for this delight, which came originally from Frank Stittā€™s Southern Table:

 

Bourbon Panna Cotta

1 cup plus Ā½ cup sugar
Ā½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons water
4 cups heavy cream
Ā½ cup pecans, toasted and chopped
3 tablespoons good bourbon
2 cups whole milk
2 envelops unflavored gelatin

Directions

Set aside eight or ten ā€“ 8-ounce custard cups or ramekins.
Combine the Ā½ cup sugar, lemon juice, and water in a small heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat, boiling until the sugar dissolves. Reduce the heat to medium, brushing down the sides with a wet pastry brush to remove any sugar crystals, and cook, shaking the pan to swirl the caramel, until the caramel is a mahogany in color 10-20 minutes. Do not stir the caramel mixture.

 

When in doubt, bake some Cuttaloosa Carrot Cupcakes

/0 Comments/in /by

“A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen” is a sweet, homegrown blog filled with amazing recipes that are easy to follow and produce ridiculously fine results. Let’s hear it for this one:

 

Cuttaloosa Carrot Cupcakes!

1 3/4 cups finely grated carrots
1 cup crushed, drained pineapple (save liquid)
1 1/2 cups finely chopped walnuts or pecans- optional
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup corn oil
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Mix above ingredients together till well mixed.
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda

Mix above ingredients together till well mixed, then add to carrot mixture mixing well. Divide into 3-8ā€³ cake rounds that have been well greased or 18-24 well greased muffin tins.

Bake cake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or till knife comes out clean. 20 minutes for cupcakes.Ā  Cool on rack for 10 minutes then remove from pan.

For the entire post and the butter cream icing for these beauties, click here to go to ā€œA Yankee in a Southern Kitchenā€

Profiteroles. Enough said.

/0 Comments/in /by

Yep, more from the mistress of the delectable Southern Coconut Cake (The Cake Slice)

Profiteroles

Recipe here

“…Pate a choux, the basis for these profiteroles, cream puffs, eclairs, and gougĆØres, is a dough that is first cooked on the stove, then piped on a baking sheet. Once in the oven, this magical dough transforms into light and airy pastry puffs that are just slightly crisp on the outside and almost hollow in the middle…”

For the complete and totally amazing recipe for making your own profiteroles that will blow everyone you know away and cause them to worship you wholeheartedly and for all eternity, please click here.

(How, you may ask, are profiteroles Southern? Well, let’s just say that they’ve been makin’ them down South since the 1800’s.)

Benne Wafers with Blueberries and Cream

/0 Comments/in , /by

I can’t keep my surfing fingers off of “A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen” – here’s yet another recipe hot off that delicious spot in the bloggosphere:

I think you may agree that benne wafers with blueberries and cream sounds like the most delicious summer treat ever conceived. Also, benne wafers are extremely Southern!

facebook link

By Kim Morgan

A ā€œBenneā€ seed is the old Southern name for ā€œsesameā€ seeds. They were brought to the Lowcountry in 1769 by African slaves. They are still called Benne seeds to this day in the South, and frankly I would be surprised if that ever changes. It is part of the charm of the South. Southerners hold fast to traditions, refusing to budge, especially when it comes to food and entertaining. This is something we all can be grateful for, especially if you have the chance to try these wonderful buttery morsels.

Legend says that eating Benne seeds will bring you luck and good fortune. I am not one who subscribes to the notion of luck. Instead I prefer to hold to the belief that, ā€œthere are no coincidencesā€ and that Benne seeds and the good fortune from eating them, are simply another of Godā€™s great blessings.

There are countless ways to make Benne wafers and you will find that no two recipes are alike…

 

Southern Coconut Cake. It’s Worth It.

/0 Comments/in /by

I feel lucky to have randomly found Tender Crumb, a well-named baking blog with recipes and photos so compelling it makes one want to rush to the kitchen to preheat the oven. The mistress of Tender Crumb, Linda, is involved in a wonderful mass-baking-hysteria called The Cake Slice. This month’s installment of The Cake Slice features Southern Coconut Cake.

From Linda/Tender Crumb:

So far, every recipe that I’ve made out of Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes has exceeded my expectations, and I highly recommend that you go out and treat yourself to this cookbook.

Impossibly moist white cake layers are subtly flavored with unsweetened coconut milk, enveloped by a cream cheese buttercream frosting (I gained 5 pounds just typing those words) and covered with sweetened flaked coconut (oops, another 5 pounds).

With all of the cake-making happening in my kitchen this month, I cut the recipe in half and baked the cake layers in two 6″ round pans. The instructions for the cake were pretty straightforward, and the layers were baked without a hitch.

For the coconut cake recipe and a whole lot more, please visit Tender Crumb here.

Bring It On: Blue Cheese Pecan Bread!

/1 Comment/in /by

There’s been a lot of sweet stuff on here lately and so it’s high time for some savory. Kim Morgan writes about food on her blog A Yankee In a Southern Kitchen and here is yet another brilliant Southern delight from her long list:

Wanting a change of scenery and something savory to smell in the house and only having an hour to do the trick, I opted to make this bread, which I have had my eye on for some time. It is a snap to make; the house smelled wonderful all morning, and my daughter adored this bread. It is a light bread in texture and the flavor is very interesting, you donā€™t expect the blue cheese and pecans inside which are paired with crushed pepper on the top of the bread…

For the recipe (not to be missed!) and many, many excellent southern food articles and recipes, please visit A Yankee In a Southern Kitchen, here.

Banana Pudding Tart (on a porch, in summer…)

/0 Comments/in /by

Something about banana pudding tart seems so supremely summery. I think this sort of fruit tart should be eaten in the twilight of evening while sitting on a porch with a tall glass of very cold milk. I can hear the crickets already…

Southern Banana Pudding Tart

Banana pudding is a classic, homestyle Southern dessert made with layers of vanilla wafer cookies (Nilla Wafers), sliced bananas, and pudding or custard. Sometimes the dish is also topped with meringue or whipped cream to finish it off, as well. The dessert has actually been around for quite a while, as cooks around the turn of the 20th century looked for ways to use the then-exotic bananas in desserts and other dishes. Creamy bananas worked well with creamy custards. The Nilla Wafers were added somewhere along the line, probably to contribute a bit of extra texture to the dessert, and the recipe was made even more popular once it was printed as a standard recipe idea on boxes of the cookies…

For the recipe and the complete post from Baking Bites, please click here.

Lavender and Vanilla a Go Go!

/0 Comments/in /by

A Southern Peach Cobbler Recipe with a Lavender and Vanilla Twist

Cobbler and the South are like bread and butter, peas and carrots, hook ā€˜em and horns, and other natural combination. This is not to say that they donā€™t have cobbler in the North, but when I think of the many ubiquitous foods in my Southern heritage, cobbler is a stand out. When I was growing up our family would visit Tennessee and South Carolina with stops along the way in Georgia to acquire bushels (or maybe pecks) of peaches that weā€™d take home to El Paso to peel and freeze. And while those carefully stored peaches would find their way into other dishes, their main reason for finding their way half way across the country was as filling for cobbler. Thereā€™s just nothing quite like a peach cobbler overflowing with juicy, ripe peaches, particularly when the preaches are so sweet they donā€™t even need more than a pinch of sugar. Of course Texas isnā€™t too shabby in the peach department either…

For the recipe and complete post from Fete & Feast (and for their food blogger’s guide to Austin!) please click here.

Sweet Tea Made Simple

/0 Comments/in /by

Let’s put aside baking for just a moment (put aside what?, you say) – yes – yes – we simply must switch our focus for just a moment to…

Sweet Tea.

And let’s not fool ourselves, sweet tea is the perfect summer partner for anything else made Southern. Is there such a thing as too much sweetness? We think not.

On the Plate: Iced Tea in an Instant
By CAROLYN MAYNARD-PARISI

“For those unfamiliar with this supremely Southern invention, sweet tea is a staple of Southern kitchens. And let me tell you, when they say ā€œsweetā€ down there they do not lie. Some recipes call for enough sugar to make a spoon stand up on its own…Make homemade iced tea instantly with some concentrate, a little simple syrup and lots of lemon.”

Read the rest of this piece on sweet tea from The New York Times, here.

Bakeries: Kiss My Bundt

/0 Comments/in /by

Chrysta Wilson, chef-owner of the West Hollywood bakery Kiss My Bundt may not be a southern baker, but her inspiration came straight from the south. All I know is no matter where these cakes came from, I want one HERE right now!

Watching in awe as her Southern aunt baked cakes and confections, an 8-year-old Chrysta Wilson wanted to use the oven like a “big girl.” When her mother and aunt gave her an Easy-Bake Oven that year, Wilson began her love affair with desserts.

These days, the owner of Kiss My Bundt makes all of her confections from scratch, using hand-selected ingredients from the local dairy and farmers markets. The sassy 30-year-old also gets a kick out of giving the students in her baking academy one mischievous piece of advice: “Go say bundt hole to someone you know tomorrow,” she tells her class.

It is everything except the hole, however, that keeps customers coming back to the Mid-City bakery.

“It has sexy curves like a woman, and the glazes hug those curves,” Wilson says. During one of the 22 classes she teaches each month, named “Bundts and Booze,” one student fumbled with an ingredient. “Inventions are created by mistake, right?” he jokes.

“God knows, that’s how this store was created,” his instructor responds.

In the past year, the statuesque baker has taught roughly 1,300 people how to bake a proper bundt. And since her bakery opened, in August 2008, Wilson has been commended for her nontraditional cake flavors, such as maple-bacon, Tecate and lime-basil…