FoodieTots.com

Celebrating with all-natural, fresh from the farmers market Rocket Pops!
(cherry, yogurt, blueberry)

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!

It’s not unusual for “spring” in the DC area to go from frosty cool to hot and steamy within days. But this year’s extremely hot temperatures started early and haven’t let up, resulting in summer produce flying through the markets. It’s not yet July and I’m hearing this may be the last week for cherries. We’ve already gotten blackberries and apricots, and I hear peaches, corn and tomatoes are here this week. It makes me wonder if we’ll have anything left to eat in August?!

What are the highlights at your local markets this week? Are you doing anything to preserve summer’s fleeting fruits? I’m freezing berries as fast as I can. I made a yummy whole grain cherry crumb cake that I’ll share with you later this week. And I still have a (last?) pint of gooseberries awaiting its fate.

What local eats are you cooking up?

Please join in and share what local foods you’ve enjoyed this past week!

Local Potluck Tuesday — a few guidelines:
1. Share a relevant post — a recipe, menu or pictures of a meal featuring local foods, from the farmers market, CSA, farm stand or your own garden — using the MckLinky widget below. In the link title field, enter both your post title and your name &/or blog name, e.g., “Lemon Cucumber Salad — Colleen @ FoodieTots.”
2. Bonus points if you included your kids in picking, growing, purchasing or cooking the ingredients for the meal! (And by bonus points, I mean increased likelihood of seeing your post featured in a future post.)
3. In your post, please link back to this post here at FoodieTots, so your readers can find the potluck and be encouraged to join in as well.

Of course if you don’t have a blog, you’re welcome to share in the comments.

That’s it! I hope you’ll join in and share what you’re cooking up that’s fresh & local to you!

Swiss chard is pretty much a weekly constant in our summer CSA share. I enjoy it just fine sauteed on its own — but the boy doesn’t (yet) eat leafy greens and the husband has merely grown to tolerate it over the years. Attempts to boost flavor with dried cranberries and/or bacon didn’t impress, but a recent variation with garlic and cherry tomatoes actually had the husband voluntarily eating a second helping. (No, this was still no help with my tomato-averse son, but that just leaves more for us.)

Recipe: Swiss Chard and Cherry Tomatoes

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch Swiss chard, rinsed well
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• sea salt & pepper

Instructions: Trim the ends of the Swiss chard stems. Cut the stems into 1-inch pieces, and cut or tear chard leaves into 1-inch strips. Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Cook garlic for 1 minute, then add the chard stems and cook for 2-3 minutes, until they start soften. Add cherry tomatoes, cut side down, and cook another minute. Add chard leaves to the pan, add vinegar, cover and cook until leaves wilt, about 5-6 minutes. Remove from heat, drain any excess liquid and season with salt and pepper. Makes 2-4 servings. Enjoy!

Your turn: Please join in and share what local foods you’ve enjoyed this past week!

Local Potluck Tuesday — a few guidelines:
1. Share a relevant post — a recipe, menu or pictures of a meal featuring local foods, from the farmers market, CSA, farm stand or your own garden — using the MckLinky widget below. In the link title field, enter both your post title and your name &/or blog name, e.g., “Lemon Cucumber Salad — Colleen @ FoodieTots.”
2. Bonus points if you included your kids in picking, growing, purchasing or cooking the ingredients for the meal! (And by bonus points, I mean increased likelihood of seeing your post featured in a future post.)
3. In your post, please link back to this post here at FoodieTots, so your readers can find the potluck and be encouraged to join in as well.

That’s it! I hope you’ll join in and share what you’re cooking up that’s fresh & local to you!

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.