An Open Letter to Quinn Farms

Dear Quinn Farms,

I am truly sorry for all the berries I ate off of your bushes today instead of putting them in my basket. I understand that I was only supposed to nibble while I picked but I couldn’t resist, they were so very tasty.

Yes I know, we left with two huge baskets of blueberries and raspberries but you should have weighed me before and after to find out how many really left in my belly.



Ian and I came across blueberries the size of quarters that burst with sweet ripe juice when you bit into them. Brilliantly bright red raspberries hid beneath thousands of deep green leaves, just waiting to be picked. Every time we found a raspberry you could hear my roommate and I yelling "ohh a piece of candy!"



Once again Ian was a real trooper considering uncooked berries don’t sit as well in his stomach as they do in mine. I guess I ate his portion eh. It turns out he is a master blueberry picker who devised plans to find only the ripest berries and doesn’t get detoured by eating them.




Really, you are all so nice so to make it up to you Quinn Farms I will bake my little heart out. I will bake raspberry custard tarts and blueberry pies for Ian; I will make berry sorbet and eat blueberries in milk for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.


Sincerely,
Christie

P.S. There are probably a ton in my roommate Adam's belly too. Sorry.
Check out his post for another account of Ian, Christie, and Adam's great berry adventure!

Peanut Butter Jelly Time...umm.. I mean Bars

Before I met Ian I was a real wild child. Eccentric to the bone. No one could stop me. OK, really, how much trouble could one little molecular biologist in training get herself into. So I wasn't as much of a renegade as I like to think I was. BUT, I did enjoy running around (at 23 years of age) singing 'peanut butter jelly time... peanut butter jelly time' (sing it Jen!!!) to anyone and anything that would listen. I have no clue why, I guess I am just 6 years old at heart and my roommate was totally into the childish song too. Now three years later, I am a tame and mature woman who still finds herself singing 'peanut butter jelly time!'

So even though I was in a baking stupor yesterday and did not want to go near the kitchen I was pulled in once again by "The Cookie of the Day" on the Martha Stewart website. It didn’t help that there was an 8x8 glossy photo staring back at me when I went searching for the recipe in my Martha Stewart Cookie’s Book. And the kicker that really did me in was that I know one of Ian's favorite things in the whole wild world is Peanut butter and Jelly Sammie's.

So girls, if there is one easy way to a man's heart, it is to make their favourite dish into a dessert (not that I don’t already have the key to Ian’s).

As one of Ian's best friends put it "they are like eating the PERFECT toasted and buttered peanut butter sandwich." Actually, I didn't totally make these just for Ian; I made them so that I could sing Peanut Butter Jelly Time.....


Peanut Butter Jelly Time Bars
adapted from Martha Stewart's Cookie's Book

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups smooth peanut butter
1-1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups raspberry jam
2/3 cup salted peanuts, roughly chopped
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9-by-13-inch pan with parchment paper. Whisk butter and sugar in a bowl until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs and peanut butter; beat until combined. Mix in salt, baking powder, and flour till combined, then add vanilla. Transfer two-thirds of mixture to prepared pan; spread evenly with offset spatula or fingers. Spread jam on top of peanut-butter mixture. Drop pieces of remaining third of peanut-butter mixture on top of jam. Sprinkle with peanuts. Bake until golden, about 45-55 minutes, turning half way through. Cut into about thirty-six 1 1/2-by-2-inch pieces and refrigerate for 30 min.

Raspberry Lemon Almost No-Fat Mini Muffins

I'm still on my health kick today so in keeping with the whole grain aspect I baked these wonderful little Raspberry Lemon muffins. And guess what... they have almost NO fat in them! How amazing eh!

They do sport a lot of baking powder and apple sauce to bind everything together which makes the batter light and fluffy. Not to mention all the berries I jam packed into them creates a melt in your mouth muffin. I love the berry right on top just like a beautiful jammy jewel.

Since raspberries are almost five dollars for a half pint right now I would advise buying the frozen ones. I was afraid that they would suck, but they actually really did the trick! Just don’t buy the ones frozen in their own juice or else you’ll end up with red muffins (which is not appropriate since Valentine's Day was a month ago).

Raspberry Lemon Almost No-Fat Mini Muffins
adapted from www.ilovemuffins.ca
makes 24 mini muffins

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tbsp. lemon zest
1 egg
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries

Preheat the oven to 400° F. Put 24 mini muffin papers in a mini muffin tin.
In a large bowl, mix together the all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, sugar, baking powder and lemon zest. In a small bowl, beat the egg until foamy. Stir in the buttermilk, applesauce and vanilla. Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and stir just until moistened. Gently fold in the raspberries right at the end and don't stir too much or the batter will turn red. Spoon the batter into the prepared cups and place one raspberry right on top of each muffin. Bake for 15 minutes.