First off I want to say hi to all the Food Bloggers out there who are coming into Seattle for the IFBC this weekend! So excited to meet all of you…as I am sure you are excited to meet me (insert sarcastic tone here).  I promise not to wear the green sweatpants.

Second, sorry haven’t been around much, life is getting in the way. Apparently it has no idea who I am. If it did, it wouldn’t be messing with me so! I was on CNN darn it all.

I was at a BBQ the other night and a friend of mine introduced me as Peabody, then followed with she makes the most amazing desserts and is like the funniest person ever (I actually get introduced like this a lot). Yikes. Not only should my baked goods better be awesome, I somehow have to make sure I am funny. Now I know it’s a compliment, don’t get me wrong. It just means the pressure is on.

Let me start off by saying that I don’t think I’m funny. I think I say things that other people are thinking and don’t have to guts to say, and that sort of comes off as funny. It also gets you into trouble. :P Oh well.

For the BBQ I experimented with the Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake I had made awhile back. Having a ton of peaches from the Peach-O-Rama event I decided to try and make a peach cobbler-ish kind of version. I was a little nervous as to how it would turn out. Turned out a little too well. I didn’t get any photos of it too well.

So I figured I would make it again. But then I got to thinking that with all the Food Bloggers coming in I should do something a little more Pacific Northwest. Plus, no offense to peaches, but they are kind of unattractive to photograph sometimes. So I went the cherry route. Red definitely pops more in the photos…sorry peaches (don’t hate me, I still love you).

I’m calling this a breakfast treat, because if a Toaster Strudel can be a breakfast treat, so can cake. Probably the same amount of sugar…without dealing with the annoying packet of frosting that never seems to open enough and then ends up bursting and splattering all over my toasted pastry. Or I just lack all coordination. Nah.

This version is just as tasty as the peach so that was a good idea. I originally was going to add some hazelnut flour as well, only to discover I didn’t have any. Typical.

I hope everyone has a great weekend…I know I will (read be jealous). You can follow me on Twitter this weekend as I tweet about it @bakerpeabody or my facebook page for CCbP.

Cherry- Cheese Breakfast Snack Cake

Cherry Cake Batter:

2/3 cup white sugar

¼ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 egg

½ cup whole milk

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups sliced and pitted cherries

Cheesecake filling:

2 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, at room temperature

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup light brown sugar, not packed

1 TBSP vanilla extract

2 TBSP flour

3 eggs

Brown Sugar Filling:

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar

½ tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 9-inch Spring-form pan.

Cherry Cake Batter:

Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment (or hand mixer) cream together the butter and sugar for 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.

Add egg, milk, and vanilla. Beat for another minute. Scrape down bowl.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Combine the sifted and creamed ingredients together. Mix on low speed until thoroughly combined. Fold in cherries.

Spread half of the batter onto the bottom of the Spring- form pan. It will be sticky and thick so spray your hands with baking spray and press down. It will be a thin layer, but trust me it will rise up during baking.

For the Cheesecake Filling:

Using a stand mixer (and a clean bowl) fitted with paddle attachment, beat cream cheese and sugars for 2 minutes on medium-high speed.

Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl after each addition.

Add the vanilla and flour and beat for another minute.

Pour all of the cheesecake batter on top of the cherry cake batter that is in the prepared pan.

Brown Sugar Filling:

In a small bowl, combine the melted butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Drop spoonfuls of the cinnamon filling over the entire top of the cheesecake.

Take the rest of the base batter and drop spoonfuls over the entire top of cheesecake. Once finished, take a knife to swirl the ingredients together. This is hard to do as the batter is pretty thick, just do what you can. 

Bake for about 50-55 minutes, cake will be puffy and lightly browned. Let chill for 20 minutes at room temperature and then cover and move to fridge for 4 hours. Remove cake and let it warm up to room temperature just a bit.

Kindly remove your mind from the gutter. Not that O. I meant the O in Orama.

As in Peach-Orama.

Apparently my local grocery store is having one. Which of course I am a marketers dream and fall victim every time for things like that. Seriously. You put Orama, Fest, or Extravaganza at the end of something and I will be drawn in.

This worked especially well for my mother growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I fell for helping out at Laundry-Fest. Which, FYI, there is nothing festive about folding laundry. Sigh. Now a days I call them Laundry parties but my husband is too cleaver and catches on before I can sucker him into it. Tom Sawyer I am not.

So falling into the trap of Peach-Orama I ended up with a lot of peaches. Which just like all other fruit for some reason doesn’t want to sit around on my counter and in the fridge for 3 weeks while I leisurely get to it.

I went with a simple biscuit topped peach-raspberry cobbler (somehow ended up with a half flat of those as well). You definitely want to eat this with some ice cream. A biscuit top is usually a little on the plain side. But I love them because you can really taste the fruit. And well, that’s kind of the point of fruit desserts.

Peach-Raspberry Cobbler-Orama

4 cups peeled and cored peaches

1 cup raspberries

¾ cup granulated sugar

1 tsp peach schnapps

5 TBSP unbleached flour

for topping:

1 ¾ cups all purpose flour

½ cup granulate sugar

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

6 TBSP unsalted butter

½ cup cream

Decorative sugar for top

Pre-heat the oven to 375F.

I used individual ramekins, but you could use a 8-x-8-inch pan.

In a large bowl toss together the peaches, raspberries, sugar, schnapps, and flour. Set aside.

Evenly distribute peach mixture among ramekins, filling them almost full.

Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. Add the cold butter and milk and stir until mixed. Spoon the biscuit mixture over the peaches. I used a mini ice cream scoop for this.

Sprinkle decorative sugar on top of the cobbler. Put into the oven and bake until the top browns, about 35-45 minutes depending on size of ramekins. Cool for about 20 minutes and serve with vanilla ice cream.

I am normally quite the laid back person. Even when I get into an argument with someone I don’t raise my voice. When I taught school I never yelled at the kids. In fact, the opposite, being completely quiet seemed to scare the crap out of them more than a stern cut it out ever could. But I have this one person. This one person that gets on my very last nerve (no, not my husband ) that causes me to blow up and yell.
I always feel bad after I do it, but It really seems like it is the only way that I ever truly get my point across to him. For example he asked to do something (I wont go into specifics) and I said no. He kept re-asking in about 15 different ways. All 15 times I told him no. Just when I thought he had got the point he basically went behind my back . So I blew up at him. The funny thing is he is a nice guy. He just doesn’t seem to get it. He’s like a salesman that just wont give up. Which after awhile you want to say, if you were the last person selling water on this Earth and I had to buy from you, I would rather just get dehydrated than give the sale to you.
When I was fuming about the situation my friend told me that they hadn’t seen me keyed up like that ever. I immediately thought, keyed? Key lime. I had already made these pies, but I thought hey, something I can write about. This is basically frozen key lime pie. So if you love the key lime pie, you will be loving on these.

Now for the survey portion of the post. I have considered coming out with some e-books and was wondering what people’s thoughts were on those?

Mini Key Lime Ice Cream Pies with Raspberry Sorbet Middles
12 mini graham cracker shells (you can make them but I was lazy and bought them…save yourself the time)
Key Lime Ice Cream (recipe follows)
Raspberry Sorbet (recipe follows)

Key Lime Ice Cream
1-1/2 cups heavy cream
6 large egg yolks
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2/3 cup key lime juice

Bring the cream to a boil in a heavy medium saucepan, then reduce to simmer.
Temper eggs by slowly beating the hot cream into the egg yolks in a medium mixing bowl. Pour the entire mixture back into the pan and place over low heat.
Stir constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon until the custard thickens slightly. Be careful not to let the mixture boil or the eggs will scramble.
Remove from the heat and pour the hot custard through a strainer into a medium bowl. Allow the custard to cool slightly, then stir in the sweetened condensed milk and key lime juice. Cover and refrigerate until cold or overnight.
Follow the manufactures directions for your ice cream maker.
You don’t want the ice cream to actually get to thick as you are going to need to pour into pie shells.

Raspberry Sorbet
1 1⁄2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/4 lb. fresh raspberries (about 5 cups)
2 tbsp. fresh lime juice

In a 2-quart saucepan, bring 2 cups water and sugar to a boil, stirring to dissolve. Reduce heat to low and simmer, without stirring, to make a syrup, for 5 minutes.

Pour the syrup into a medium bowl, stir in vanilla extract, and transfer to the freezer to let chill for 15 minutes.

Purée 1 lb. of the raspberries (about 4 cups) with the syrup in a blender or food processor until smooth. Scrape the purée through a fine sieve into a bowl; discard the seeds. Stir lime juice into the raspberry purée and pour it into a 2-quart ice cream maker. Freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions until almost set but still a little slushy, about 25 minutes.

Add remaining raspberries (about 1 cup) and continue freezing in the ice cream maker for about 5 minutes. Transfer the sorbet to a plastic container and freeze until completely set, about 1 hour.

Sorbet recipe adapted from www.saveur.com

MAKES ABOUT 5 CUPS

Assemble:

You can use just a spoon or if you want a more uniformed look like mine, I used a small round cookie cutter to cut out the sorbet. Or you just jam it into the cookie cutter and pop it out.

Place the sorbet in the middle of the pie shell. Carefully pour key lime ice cream around the sorbet. Or if you are lazy, like I was on most just cover it up. If your ice cream is too thick you can spoon it in, instead of pouring.

Freeze for another 2 hours and serve.

Glad to see so many of you agreed with me in the last post, and if you didn’t that’s cool too. But one thing several people said, and I agree, is that sometimes being a good baker is a curse.
You can’t ever just bring store bought cookies to a party and be done with it because you had a busy day. People look in horror at you when you do that. It’s perfectly fine that they always pick up the Albertson’s fruit platter, but God-forbid if you slack out. And it’s not even just that it can’t be store bought. I have people actually get disappointed when I “just” bring cookies or brownies. “I was hoping for something from your blog”. Well, those cookies or brownies were probably on the blog. Somewhere in these people’s minds the ability to bake means you also have the time to bake, which as you know is well, NOT THE CASE!
Recently I’ve been strolling though the beginning of this here blog. Most of my current readers have really only been with me over the last two years (with some die hard exceptions of course). So many of the quality recipes from way back in the day have long been forgotten. We flashback to this unusual style cobbler that I made back originally in 2006. I was intrigued by the fact that you roll it up and cut it like cinnamon rolls and then poor simple syrup over the whole thing. It looks scary dreadful when it goes into the oven and you get a little worried, but then it comes out awesome. Over the years I have made a ton of these. While staring at my flat of blackberries I decided it was time for you to get reacquainted with this cobbler.
This is a slightly different version of the original one I made. I used my mom’s peach jam instead of sprinkling cinnamon on the inside of the rolls. I personally love the taste of peaches and blackberries together so I thought it would be a nice pairing, and it is.

Why Do I Always Think I Can Eat a Whole Flat of Blackberries Before they Spoil Blackberry-Peach Jam Cobbler

4 ounces unsalted butter, divided

1 cup water
1 cup plus 2 TBSP granulated sugar

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour

1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 TBSP cornstarch
2 TBSP brown sugar
3 cups fresh blackberries (about 1 pound)

5 TBSP Peach Jam (preferably homemade)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a medium sized bowl, toss blackberries with cornstarch and brown sugar. Set aside.

In a 10-inch glass pie plate or baking dish melt 1/2 stick (2 ounces) butter in oven.

In a small saucepan combine 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar and heat over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is completely dissolved.
In a food processor pulse together flour and remaining 1/2 stick butter (cut into dime size pieces) until mixture resembles fine meal. Add cream, vanilla, cinnamon and salt, and pulse just until a dough forms.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and with a floured rolling pin roll into an 11- by 9-inch rectangle.

Brush peach jam on top of dough evenly and scatter blackberry mixture evenly over top.

Beginning with a long side roll up dough jelly-roll fashion and cut into 1 1/2-inch thick slices. (Slices will come apart and be messy…really messy).
Arrange slices, cut sides up, on melted butter in pie plate or baking dish. Pour sugar syrup over slices, soaking dough, and bake cobbler in middle of oven 45 minutes. Sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over cobbler and bake 15 minutes more, or until golden.

Serve cobbler warm with ice cream…vanilla is the best.

Serves 6 normal people, or 2 Peabody’s.

Adapted from: Gourmet June 1996 Denise Maguire: Saint Petersburg, Florida