Have you ever wondered why blueberries get all the coffee cake glory? Yeah, they’re good … but cherries are bigger, brighter and perfectly sweet. I’ve been eating too many soulless Starbucks coffee cakes lately and had a craving for a real, homemade crumb cake this past weekend. I remembered reading about Smitten Kitchen’s “Big Crumb Coffee Cake” and decided to start there. I added some whole wheat pastry flour to up the whole grains, and paired nutmeg with my cherries instead of her rhubarb and ginger (not that those wouldn’t be good, but alas rhubarb has already come and gone here). The cherries came from Black Rock Orchard (PA) at the Falls Church Farmers Market.

Recipe: Whole Wheat Cherry Crumb Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s Big Crumb Coffee Cake

For the filling:
1 1/2 cups sweet cherries, pitted
1 tablespoon tapioca starch (or corn starch)

For the crumbs:
2/3 cup organic light brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

For the cake:
1/3 cup whole milk yogurt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup demerara sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, softened

Instructions: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish.

Toss cherries with tapioca starch and set aside.

To make crumb topping, melt butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Add brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and stir until combined. Fold in flour and set aside.

For the cake batter, whisk together yogurt, egg, egg yolk and vanilla. In the bowl of a mixer, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Gradually add yogurt/egg mixture and mix until smooth.

Pour the batter into the baking dish. Spread cherries over the batter, then spread crumb mixture evenly over the top. Bake 45-55 minutes, until crumb topping is lightly browned and cake is cooked through. Cool before cutting, and serve with a dusting of powdered sugar. Makes 9 servings. Enjoy!

I probably don’t have to tell you it’s strawberry season — in fact, we’re getting down to the final weeks here in Virginia, and there were reports of the first cherries of the season at the FreshFarm Penn Quarter market yesterday. We had friends over last weekend and I wanted to make strawberry cupcakes for the kids. (Ok, for all of us.) I found this recipe using fresh berries from famed Sprinkles Cupcakery via Martha Stewart, and it turned out wonderfully. The frosting, a semi-cream cheese twist, is my new favorite frosting — the husband, who doesn’t typically like cream cheese or buttercream frostings, even approved. And of course the kids were big fans, too.

Recipe: Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting
(Adapted from Sprinkles’ recipe; get the cupcake recipe at MarthaStewart.com.)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), room temperature
• 4 ounces cream cheese (1/2 package), room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons strawberry puree
• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste (or extract)

Instructions: Cream cream cheese and butter in mixer bowl on medium speed until fluffy. Gradually add powdered sugar, mixing on low at first, then medium until smooth. Add strawberry puree and vanilla and mix another minute. If your frosting is really soft (as tends to happen when working in a warm kitchen), chill in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or so before frosting cupcakes. Makes enough for 1 dozen cupcakes. Enjoy!

And now, a few links for your holiday weekend … have a great one!

1.  I’ve spotted a few spring panzanellas around the food blogs. Typically made with late summer’s ripe tomatoes, these versions use what’s in season today, like asparagus and arugula panzanella from In Jennie’s Kitchen and spring panzanella from Sassy Radish – perfect side dishes for Memorial Day cook-outs!

2. Speaking of cook-outs, Borderstan has a round-up of bbq-ready recipes from DC food bloggers.

3. If you’re running out of ideas for all that spring asparagus, here are Five Ways to Eat Asparagus from Food & Think at Smithsonian.com (including my crustless asparagus quiche).

4. It’s officially soft shell season here in the Chesapeake Bay region, and Coconut & Lime has a helpful tutorial for cleaning fresh crabs if you’re brave enough to cook them at home. (Buster’s Seafood at the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market usually has them for sale this time of year.)

5. If you’re staying in town this holiday weekend, catch Chef José Andrés and his daughter Ines cooking another giant paella at the Dupont Circle FreshFarm market, 11am.

The DC Food Blogger Bake Sale for Share our Strength, held this past Saturday at Eastern Market, was a great success. We got off to a slow and chilly morning, but business picked up as the crowds grew throughout the morning. I’m pleased to report that we raised $612 to fight child hunger right here in DC — plus a sizable donation of leftover goodies to The Carpenter’s Shelter in Alexandria. And overall, the National Food Blogger Bake Sales raised … over $16,500!

We had about a dozen bakers providing tasty treats that included cookies, cake balls, biscotti, pound cake, whoopie pies, lemon bars, pretzels, cupcakes, granola and even dog biscuits. Here are some of our volunteers as we set up in the morning:

Ken of Indoor Garden(er), Colleen of FoodieTots, Sally of Come to the Table, Cathy of Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen, Martha of A Measured Memory, Amber of Live Love to Bake

My contribution was lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting. I had a hard time finding a simple lemon cupcake recipe, but the Barefoot Contessa came through with a cake recipe that was easily adapted to make yummy, moist, pound cake-like cupcakes. I got too late a start baking to put the Foodie Tot to work in the kitchen, but he contributed his artistry on our signs.

Recipe: Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
adapted from Ina Garten/Food Network

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• zest and juice of 1 large lemon (1/4 cup juice)
• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3/4 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract

Instructions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare cupcake liners in lightly greased muffin tin. In bowl of mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and lemon zest and mix until combined. In a large bowl, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, combine buttermilk, lemon juice, vanilla and lemon extracts. Gradually add flour and buttermilk mixtures to the mixer bowl, mixing until batter is just combined. Bake 17-20 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in muffin tin for 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack. Cool thoroughly before frosting. Makes 2 dozen.

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting (Organic)

Ingredients:

• 2 8-ounce boxes of organic cream cheese, at room temperature
• 4 tablespoons organic unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract

Instructions: Cream butter and cream cheese in bowl of mixer until smooth. Add sugar, mixing at medium speed until smooth, then add vanilla and lemon extracts and mix another minute. Add additional sugar if needed to reach desired consistency. Frosting will be soft, so you may want to refrigerate for 30 minutes before frosting cupcakes. Makes enough to frost 2 dozen cupcakes, and then some.

Here are some of the other treats shared on Saturday: Cathy from Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen’s Fregolatta and Nutty Fruity Granola; Martha of A Measured Memory’s Oatmeal Cherry Pecan Cookies; Dskco of Lunching in the DMV‘s Pound Cake; lemon bars and whoopie pies from Sally of Come to the Table; and the strawberry rhubarb jam that filled Jenna of The Modern Domestic’s oatmeal cookie sandwiches. Thanks everyone who baked, shopped and helped spread the word!

There are few things better than the scent of cinnamon on a Saturday morning. While these waffles aren’t quite as decadent as fresh cinnamon rolls, they do offer more instant gratification. I had some toasted hazelnuts left over from another recipe and added them on a whim — turned out delicious. A little sweet, and warmly satisfying. (On yet another snow day.)

Recipe: Cinnamon Hazelnut Waffles

Ingredients:
2 cups unbleached flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts, finely chopped

Instructions: Preheat waffle iron.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk eggs until frothy. Add milk, sugar, butter and vanilla and stir to combine. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined (you may have some small lumps still). Stir in the hazelnuts.

Cook on hot, oiled waffle iron. I use about 1/2 cup of batter per 4-inch-square. Makes 10 4-inch waffles. Enjoy! (Leftover waffles can be frozen and then popped in the toaster for quick breakfasts during the week.)

Cooking with Kids note: Waffle irons can be highly tempting to curious preschoolers … particularly ones who feel compelled to touch and see when you tell them it’s really hot. So for best results, I recommend letting young children help with the whisking, but distracting them in another room for the actual cooking. My son also likes to help garnish for the photographs (as seen above).

Like many others around DC, I turned to baking to stave off boredom during the Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse blizzards of 2010. And with all that time on my hands, I decided to take the plunge and bake the bagels I’d skipped over in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge. You see, the book goes alphabetically and there was no way I felt ready to tackle bagels on just my third attempt! Especially not when I’m married to a New Yorker with rather high bagel expectations.

These bagels were much more labor intensive than my previous breads. The dough quickly becomes stiff and tough to mix, so much so that my KitchenAid gave up before the final addition of flour. I mixed the remainder in by hand and began to knead, but it was so stiff that I ignored the warnings of other BBA bloggers and put it back in my KitchenAid … when the motor began to smoke three minutes later, it was back to kneading by hand. I probably kneaded about 15 minutes in total, letting it rest for several minutes midway through. After letting the balls of dough rest, I shaped them into bagel shapes and let them rest again. After 20 minutes, you’re supposed to plop them in a bowl of water and hope they float. Mine did not. Not after another 20 minutes, and not an hour plus later. I gave up and stuck the bagels out in the (non-heated) sunroom over night — our fridge was a little too full with blizzard supplies.

The next day, they didn’t seem to have risen at all. I let them sit on the dining room table for a couple hours, tried the float test again, and they still failed. I wasn’t going to give up at this point, so I went ahead and put a large pot of water on to boil and preheated the oven. This time they finally floated (I’m sure the boiling helped) and after boiling 1 minute on each side I placed them back on their trays to be topped. Of course, I discovered then I was out of poppy seeds, so I used a sea salt, sesame seed and garlic powder blend for most of them. I added caraway seeds to a couple, and cinnamon sugar on the last three. Then they bake in the oven, at 500 degrees, for 10 minutes. Now this is probably obvious to most people, but 500 degrees is HOT. I had to put my husband’s ove-glove (he’s a sucker for infomercials) on under my oven mitt to handle the trays while I transferred the bagels to the cooling rack.

bagels!

We had the first round for lunch, topped with cream cheese and my mayo-free salmon salad. A little lettuce and tomato would’ve been nice, but, well, we were running low on fresh produce. (See aforementioned Snowmageddon. And, being February, I would’ve passed on those bland winter tomatoes anyway.)

Next time I might boil a little longer for a chewier crust, but these were pretty darn close to the real deal. My Jew-from-Flushing husband, who had skeptically asked if I wanted him to be honest or polite when he tasted them, actually liked them! I doubt we’ll stop going to Slim’s when we’re in New York, but these are a pretty good substitute … as long as you have a few hours to devote to baking them. I do want to try them again in the summer to top with fresh tomatoes and lox.

And as you can tell, the boy was perfectly content with his (with a hearty schmear of cream cheese, hold the fish!):

Shared with Friday’s Feast on Momtrends – go check it out!