Posted on by Camellia's Cottage · 7 Comments

Light and Easy Granola and more…

img_2477You know all of those goals I had to eat healthier? More whole grains, nuts, fruits and fiber? Granola topping fruit and yogurt is one of my favorites. That was fine for a while, yet somehow the granola started tasting too heavy and sort of like sawdust. I know, I should have been a stalwart. Still. I know myself well enough that if I’m getting tired of something, I won’t stick to my goals. So! Last year, I fiddled around and came up with this light and easy granola! And, the best part is, I still  love it! Here’s how you make –

 Camellia’s Light and Easy Granola

  • 1 1/2 cups AP flour
  • 1 cup rolled oats – 6 minute type
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup slivered almonds
  • 1 cup chopped pecans
  • 1 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine first 5 ingredients – tossing lightly. Pour melted butter over all. Spread mixture on parchment lined baking sheet, evenly and as thin as possible. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-22 minutes or until crisp and golden. Break up granola. Cool. Store in airtight container. Wonderful topping for fruit and yogurt or as an ice cream topping drizzled with caramel.

*note: Almond flour is a good substitute. Add coconut as part of the overall quantity of nuts as a nice addition. Use light and easy granola as the base for Trail Mix, adding dried fruit, seeds even bits of chocolate. And… this Light and Easy Granola as a topping on frozen yogurt with hot caramel sauce is amazing!img_3262

I truly do love eating healthy, yet occasionally my southern sweet tooth flares up! And- while a cake mix might not be quite as healthy as homemade, I do think a homemade frosting with really good ingredients like butter, pure extracts and quality cream cheese is important! Especially if you need an easy special occasion dessert. If you make a sheet cake, cut it in smallish squares ( ice the whole cake first, chill and cut- then place each square in paper cupcake liners!) Well, you’re set!img_3293

And, if your Johnny Jump Ups are in bloom, they’re an adorable addition. Top each square with beautiful and edible violas! Then, maybe pour a cup of coffee and hold your little pinkie just so… I’ll bet you won’t make a fool of yourself by eating more than one or two! Especially, if you’re in polite company! Or hosting a sweetheart party, bridal tea or baby shower. Here’s how you make an easy and really good cream cheese frosting!

Camellia’s Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 1 pound Cream Cheese – softened, I prefer Philadelphia Cream Cheese®
  • 3 Sticks of Butter (softened)
  • 1 Teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
  • 1/2 Teaspoon Pure Almond Extract
  • 3 cups Powdered Sugar- sifted

Blend Cream Cheese and Butter until very smooth and mixed well. Add extracts, mix well. Add 1/2 of sifted powdered sugar, blending well. Then add the rest of sifted powdered sugar- mix until smooth. (This should be a firm frosting, if needed add a tablespoon of powdered sugar at a time, being very careful not to make frosting too stiff). This frosting recipe makes enough to generously frost a 9×13 cake.

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Now, if there’s no time at all and you need a really impressive dessert, fast and easy too! Maybe one fabulous enough for your Valentine? All you need are –

    Frosted Vanilla Cupcakes- store bought is fine!  Microwave Popcorn (I love the Movie Butter Style)  A good brand of Caramel Sauce with a pinch of Sea Salt

Pop popcorn according to directions. Warm Caramel Sauce to pouring consistency. Set Vanilla Cupcake on a plate, top with Popcorn (spill a bit over!), then top with warm Caramel Sauce, be generous! Really, isn’t that pretty? Delicious and easy too!

There you go! A healthy snack or breakfast, if you’re caught short of time for a special event desserts or if you’re like me and your sweet tooth is crying out for attention! You ready now with a few easy recipes! Spring is a busy time, and the truth is we all need a few reliable recipes from time to time! There’s absolutely no shame in taking shortcuts or using store bought, then embellishing!

Love y’all, Camellia

*All photographs are obviously mine. And, if you just want to encourage yourself to drink extra water you need – those sweet little Johnny Jump Up’s will do the job beautifully!

Posted on by Camellia's Cottage · 12 Comments

Aunt Mary Sue’s Lemon Cheese Cake

3AF218EB-F82A-4832-9094-8DAD05EB30A5My Aunt Mary Sue’s Lemon Cheese Cake was not a cheesecake, it was not a very well behaved cake nor was it a particularly beautiful cake. Mary Sue’s Lemon Cheese Cake was… a special occasion cake for our family, it was a cake we dearly loved and  a unique cake that frankly I have only found three other recipes for Lemon Cheese Cake! Believe me- I have tried! Lemon Cheese Cake may be specific to my home state, Alabama. All four recipes were recorded by Alabamians! Two famous chefs, who originated in Alabama-  Scott Peacock and Virginia Willis, fondly recall this delicious cake and included it in their cookbooks; then- I found a very similar cake named White Moon Cake in an obscure church cookbook that was compiled by church mothers, fairground workers, military cooks and domestic cooks.

So, what is Aunt Mary Sue’s Lemon Cheese Cake? It is a white layer cake, filled and frosted with a thick Lemon Curd. I fully believe the ‘curd’ was exchanged in terms- to ‘cheese’ since this recipe is well over 75 years old, perhaps older than that! Now, Aunt Mary Sue was actually my great aunt, she was my grandmother’s younger sister. I loved her, she was fashionable and had an incredible sense of humor- she was also the keeper of this recipe and the designated baker of Lemon Cheese Cake.  Mimi also, in a rare departure of recording recipes, actually wrote down the recipe for the Lemon Cheese Filling  and added my aunt’s shortcut of using a white layer cake mix – with a few tweaks Mary Sue apparently made. You need to know that Mimi was a purist when it came to her own baking, the recipes she wrote down rarely were recipes she never intended to use, and believe me- she never planned to bake a Lemon Cheese Cake herself! That was Mary Sue’s specialty. And! Here’s what I know for sure… Mary Sue’s recipe for the Lemon Curd or Lemon Cheese Filling has never failed, not even once! I’ve used it to make Lemon Curd without even baking the cake! So! Here’s how you make-8B48E839-FBE5-4F59-8592-2C4A16D68DB1

‘Aunt Mary Sue’s Lemon Cheese Filling’

  • Butter – 1/2 cup or 2 sticks
  • 2 cups granulated Sugar
  • 6 Egg Yolks (use large eggs)
  • Zest of 2 Large Lemons
  • Juice of 2 Large Lemons

In a double boiler, mix all ingredients over hot water (not boiling) until thick. Stirring often. This process may take up to 30 minutes. Lemon curd will generally thicken at 200 degrees F on a candy thermometer. Store tightly sealed until chilled.

* For filling and frosting a Lemon Cheese Cake, up to one extra stick of butter may be added, while Lemon Curd is still warm- cut butter into small cubes and add gradually. This recipe may be doubled, yet it takes a good bit longer- therefore I generally make two batches. To use the lemon curd or filling as an icing…it is enough to spread on two 8 or 9 inch layers and I suppose because the egg yolks were used in the filling- the cake was always a white layer cake. 425E2FAD-E423-4103-AE8E-F03A1C2D29A3

To assemble the Lemon Cheese Cake is a matter I’ve struggled with and apparently so did Chef Peacock and Chef Willis- they say to insert wooden skewers on the cake as it tends to shift and that is oh so true! And Chef Willis may have altered it a bit for a more stable cake.

What I did differently was- I put the two 9 inch layers of white cake in the freezer and actually iced the frozen layers with the lemon filling still chilled slightly.

Why did I freeze the layers? Well, my Uncle Charles had an ice house… his sister Mary Sue would keep the Lemon Cheese Cake in the ice box at home and if the special occasion was at Uncle Charles’ house- the cake was held in the Ice House until we were ready to serve it. I recall that the cake didn’t languish on the sideboard- it was cut into slices waiting to be served and I still recommend it that way. (It might also be wonderful made into one layer cakes as well, to avoid the landslide effect! )

Lemon Cheese Cake was almost always served with a seasonal fruit- strawberries or peaches were a summer favorite, in the winter when citrus fruits were available, Aunt Mary Sue’s Lemon Cheese Cake was served alongside a simple citrus ambrosia of orange sections with fresh grated coconut; this cake and my grandmother’s pound cake were our family’s favorites. I have to say, my grandmother kept a tight rein on who added dishes to the meals, so I strongly suspect that Lemon Cheese Cake was a recipe she and my Aunt Mary Sue may have learned from the cooks in the childhood home. How and why this cake hasn’t survived to become a southern classic may be due to the difficulty of leaving this wonderful cake on a sideboard to be admired otherwise it is a mystery to me! I’ve seen variations that come close, yet with the exceptions of these two wonderful chefs and the church ladies’ cookbooks whose recipes are very close to Aunt Mary Sue’s this is considered by me to be an heirloom recipe and one I’m thrilled to have. If you don’t make the cake- at least hang on to the Lemon Filling…it’s the best Lemon Curd I’ve ever tasted!

Love y’all, Camellia

*All photographs are obviously mine! *Some recommend straining the lemon curd after it’s made- I personally enjoy the lemon zest in it!

Posted on by Camellia's Cottage · 10 Comments

Camellia’s Peach Cobbler…

2B4D3DFE-7190-4BCD-B195-353C858BA799When we see Chilton County Peaches have arrived … we know something special is about to happen! The first peaches of the season are generally not Free Stone peaches- which are far easier to peel, slice and eat! The early peaches are still delicious and thin skinned- so, leave on some of the peeling when eating or cooking with them.  While a bowl of fresh peaches is perfectly wonderful, making a Peach Cobbler was on my feeble mind!6EB3CD5F-00D5-4436-B3C5-C27A62D52840

Now, I have to complain a little… the cobblers I see in perfectly good magazines or cookbooks aren’t the way we made cobblers! No ma’am… ours had a top crust and scraps of pie crust dough were hidden in the fruit mixture to thicken the whole thing up! You can see how’s it’s done for a BlackBerry Cobbler…it’s the same method regardless of what kind of fruit Cobbler we make-1449EB81-495A-4C27-88F5-2403B2149A8E

Those globs of biscuit dough you see on other folks’ cobblers might be alright to some, yet I can tell you without a doubt- Mimi wouldn’t have let it pass from her kitchen to her table! Believe me, when cobblers are made like this- you won’t have time to take a beauty shot before someone has started serving it up!406B5D1B-F55D-46F2-9886-637FF175CB44

Here’s how to make- Camellia’s Peach  Cobbler

  • 8 cups of fresh peaches- cut in uniform size pieces  (6 cups peeled and 2 cups unpeeled)
  • 1 cup granulated Sugar mixed with 3-4 Tablespoons Corn Starch
  • 1/2 – 3/4 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 stick Butter (melt 3/4 stick- cut 1/4 stick in small pieces) plus more to butter the baking dish
  • Pie crust for single crust pie
  • Pure Cane Sugar ( for dusting top of Cobbler)

In a medium bowl, toss fresh peaches with sugar/corn starch mixture and allow to macerate for several hours. * preheat oven to 350 degrees. There will be excess juice- drain and reserve juice. In a buttered oven proof 1 1/2 quart glass baking dish put macerated peaches and 1/3 of the reserved juices. Add spices and gently combine. Roll out single crust dough 1/4 inch thick. Cut dough to size of baking dish leaving 1 inch excess. Trim extra crust into pieces; with a fork or spatula submerge dough pieces. Dot mixture with butter. Set aside. Place pie crust round on top of peaches, cut slits in top so that steam can escape. Pour cooled melted butter over top crust. Then sprinkle pure cane sugar over crust. (Granulated Sugar may be substituted) On a parchment covered sheet pan, place unbaked Cobbler to catch any juices that might overflow during baking. Bake Cobbler for 45 minutes to one hour, until bubbly and the crust is browned and golden. Allow Cobbler to sit until cool, as fruit filling continues to thicken as it cools.

If you’re wondering why that Cobbler is so pretty and pink- it’s those unpeeled peaches! Serve with whipped cream or an all time favorite- a scoop of good vanilla ice cream! Cobblers are wonderful all year round, yet when the peaches are ripe? It might be the easiest and best dessert for any occasion!

01C44C29-11CA-4629-80C7-597024457180Now, if you’re in Alabama, head for Clanton, and start looking for a water tower shaped like a big ol’ peach! The Peach Park is an exit or two down the highway, you’re in Chilton County- where these beautiful peaches were grown…in fact in farm stands all over the state you’ll find Chilton County peaches! I love them almost as much as the ones pulled from my Uncle Charles’ peach tree!

Love y’all, Camellia

* All photographs are obviously mine!