Gooseberries are one of those things I don’t think to seek out at the market, but am always pleasantly surprised to find on the table when they arrive in early summer. What’s a gooseberry? I didn’t know myself until I spotted them at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market a few years ago. They are small round berries, related to the currant, that resemble a grape with stripes. They start off tart and green and and turn reddish purple and slightly sweet. They add a great tart balance with combined with sweeter berries in any of your favorite summer desserts. (I made a delish gooseberry-cherry clafoutis the summer before last.) This batch came from Black Rock Orchard in Pennsylvania, and I’ve heard reports of gooseberries across the northeast US. A local Twitter friend reports having them in her backyard growing up, which has me pondering adding them to our planned berry patch for next year.

While we’re on the subject of lesser known berries — those you may have grown up with but never see in a supermarket — we recently discovered that the mysterious berry-laden tree between our neighbor’s house and ours was a mulberry tree. I never realized we had mulberries around here, or that they grew on such tall trees. But a well-timed Washington Post article clarified the matter. I was spoiled growing up on a mountain in Oregon, where we routinely snacked on tiny tart red huckleberries, sweet thimbleberries and wild blackberries every summer. One regional berry you may hear a lot about if you torture yourself by following California food blogs, as I do, is the olallieberry. It was actually cultivated in Oregon (a relative of our beloved Marionberries), but I’ve yet to come across it.

Berries like these are one of the reasons we frequent farmers markets in the summer — aside from exposing our kids to unique berries they might never see otherwise, they also learn to appreciate seasonality and to savor the berries and fruits in their seasons. That’s not to say we never buy grapes in the winter, but they just taste so much better when they’re fresh and local.

Do you have a favorite regional berry from your childhood?

And now, five berry-themed links for your weekend enjoyment:

1. Gooseberry Ginger Jam from Doris and Jilly Cook

2. Mulberry Pie from Herban Lifestyle

3. Olallieberry Tart from Chez Pim

4. Vanilla Bean Marionberry Caramel Swirl Ice Cream (wow!) from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

5. Maple Huckleberry Coffee Cake from 101 Cookbooks

Shared with Fight Back Friday at the Food Renegade.

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 folks behind the Meatless Monday campaign (HealthyMonday.org) have added a new weekly challenge to their menu: Kids Cook Monday. The newly-launched website contains kid-friendly recipes and videos of parents cooking with their kids. Naturally, FoodieTots is thrilled to support the cause — you can see some of our kid-tested recipes on the site already. And, in honor of the launch (and our new house!), the Foodie Tot and I made a Strawberry Cream Tart this weekend.

A tart is a fairly fool-proof pastry to make with younger kids. And if you, say, haven’t yet unpacked the food processor, a little child labor comes in handy in combining the flour and butter with a pastry blender. Since the rolling pin was also unaccounted for, I simply pressed the dough into my tart pan. Not as pretty, but it gets the job done.

As the boy notes in the video, the strawberries came from our new neighborhood’s farmers market, the Falls Church market. (He’s still a little confused on whether both Alexandria and Arlington are in Virginia.) It was the first weekend of strawberry season here in Virginia, and they were abundant at the market. And I bought the mascarpone for the tart from Blue Ridge Dairy, and the (multi-colored) eggs from Valentine’s Country Meats & Bakery.

Watch the video! (and pardon my arm in front of the boy’s face … we need to work on our camera set-up in the new kitchen.)

Foodie Tot makes Strawberry Cream Tart from Colleen Levine on Vimeo.

Recipe: Strawberry Cream Tart

Pastry

• 1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
• 1/2 cup organic butter, cubed
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2 egg yolks

Instructions: In a mixing bowl, combine flour and cold butter until small pea-sized lumps form. Add powdered sugar. In a separate bowl, whisk egg yolks with a fork. Add to flour mixture and mix until dough begins to come together (will still look quite crumbly). Press into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap; chill 1 hour before rolling out. Alternately, press crumbs into a butter tart pan. Freeze tart shell for 10 minutes. Prick with a fork and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Shell should look set but not begin to brown. Cool before filling.

Cream Filling

• 1 cup mascarpone cheese
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste

Instructions: Stir cheese, sugar and vanilla together until well combined. Chill until ready to use.

Strawberries

• 1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved
• 2 tablespoons fruit jam (we used plum), melted in microwave for 10 seconds and thinned with a few drops of water

Assembling the tart: Place the cooled tart on the counter and arrange the cream, berries and jam nearby. Your child can spread the cream in the shell, arrange strawberries over the cream, and use a pastry brush to brush the jam over the berries. Chill for an hour before serving. Enjoy!

If you’d like to join the Kids Cook Monday fun, visit the website or contact Joanna Lee at jlee@mondaycampaigns.org. And please check back the first Monday of each month for the latest Foodie Tot cooks video!

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!

As I mentioned Friday, I planned to make Jewish cookies known as hamantaschen over the weekend. Hamantaschen are triangle-shaped cookies traditionally filled with thick poppyseed or prune spread, or other fruit preserves. They are traditionally made during Purim — a Jewish holiday festival similar to Mardi Gras — but can be found year-round in Jewish bakeries if you’re fortunate enough to have one nearby. We are not, so the past couple years I’ve simply picked up hamantaschen from Whole Foods, which were fine but nothing to get excited about.

Fortunately, Ruth of Once Upon A Feast came to my rescue with not one but two hamantaschen recipes; I went with Marcy Goldman’s recipe. With all due respect to Marcy’s Bubbie, I swapped butter for the oil (I prefer not to bake with oil), and omitted the orange zest in deference to the husband’s zest-dislike. Next time I’ll try it with the zest for a little more flavor.

The dough was simple and resulted in a soft, sweet cookie. The husband doesn’t like the traditional fillings, so I took advantage of our extensive jam collection and we made an assortment of flavors: strawberry-rhubarb (courtesy of my sister-in-law), apricot, raspberry (both from local farms), and some Ficoco — a fantastic fig and chocolate spread, think a fruity twist on Nutella.

I’m pretty certain we’ll stick with homemade from now on, these were fun and delicious!

Since only one cookie unfolded into a pancake while baking, I consider myself fully qualified to offer the following expert suggestions:

• Don’t go overboard with the filling, but don’t be too stingy either — the ones my son plopped a larger spoonful of jelly on turned out best. I think the weight of the jam helped keep the center from puffing up as much when they baked. And, they have the perfect jam-to-cookie ratio.
• Don’t be afraid to fold the edges up over most of the jam — and pinch tightly. The ones folded up more tightly also held their shape better while baking.
• I brushed the outside of the cookies with egg wash — in reading other posts, it seems this may help them stay together while baking.