Month: September 2009

  • Berry Sweet Rolls (A recipe)

    I’ve now been in Cordova for a little over a year, and I’m enjoying being able to attend some favorite events from last year for the second time. Tonight was the Copper River Watershed Project’s Berry Festival. It’s a pot-luck dinner where everyone brings berry-themed appetizers, drinks, salads, entrées,  and of course, desserts in order to celebrate local food. Last year I brought berry-pear custard bars, this year I was imagining a blueberry cream puff, but I didn’t get to experiment with the pâte à choux – the special dough used with cream puffs and éclairs, and since I’d never made one before, I thought it might be a bit risky to test it out on a crowd. Instead, I came up with a sweet roll filled with some salmonberry-nectarine jam that my friend Becca made. You can substitute any kind of jam for the filling.

    Berry Sweet Rolls

    Berry Sweet Rolls

    Dough (made in a bread machine)

    1 c. soy milk
    1/3 c. orange juice
    3 T canola oil
    1/4 c.  butter or non-hydrogenated margarine (I use earth balance)
    1/3 c. sugar
    1 t. salt
    3 c. unbleached flour
    1 c. whole wheat flour
    1 t. cinnamon
    1 1/2 t. yeast

    Add all ingredients to your bread machine in the order listed. Set machine to the dough setting. When the dough is just about done, prepare the filling.

    Filling

    1/2 c. salmonberry-nectarine jam (or any flavor of berry jam)
    1/4 c. butter or non-hydrogenated margarine
    1 small handful of slivered almonds

    Heat jam and margarine in a small saucepan until margarine is melted and whisk to combine. Remove from heat.

    Assembling Sweet Rolls

    When the dough is ready, roll it into a large rectangle approximately 1/4″ thick on a lightly floured surface. Spread the filling evenly over the dough, and sprinkle the almonds over the filling. Roll the dough up lengthwise, as tightly as possible and pinch to seal. (The seal might not stay, and that’s ok). Prepare a pan to hold the rolls by spraying with oil and lining the bottom with parchment paper. (I used a 14″ cast iron skillet, but any baking dish should work). Using a clean piece of thread, cut 1″ rolls and place them into your baking dish. Cover the dish with a towel and set in a warm place to rest for 20-30 minutes.. Preheat the oven to 375F. Bake the sweet rolls in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until lightly browned (or until internal temperature of the rolls reaches 160F).

    While the rolls are baking, prepare the frosting.

    Blueberry Buttercream Frosting

    1/2 c. butter or non-hydrogenated margarine
    2-3 c. powdered sugar (or enough to make a thick frosting)
    1 T. vanilla
    zest of 1/2 an organic lemon
    1/2 c. fresh or frozen blueberries
    1/4 c. slivered almonds for garnish

    In a mixer, whip the margarine until fluffy, add the powdered sugar and whip until you have a smooth frosting. Add vanilla, lemon zest and blueberries, adding a little more powdered sugar if necessary to maintain consistency.

    Frost the rolls as soon as you’ve removed them from the oven. Sprinkle with slivered almonds. Serve warm. (Note: I had a bit of frosting left over-it will keep very well in the fridge for the next time you’re making sweet rolls.)

  • In which I brave a storm to take a photograph

    There’s been a mini spinning boom here in Cordova. Earlier in the summer a couple of people in town expressed an interest in learning to spin, and Dotty had a class. I dusted off my wheel which had been hibernating most of the year and started spinning a little too. Selma wanted to learn, and when The Net Loft put a couple of their old floor model wheels on super-dooper-I-could hardly-believe it-sale, I bought her one as a finishing 3rd grade with honors gift. Dotty has been giving Selma spinning lessons over the summer and she’s now doing great. I’ve been spinning at least a couple of nights a week, and I actually find that spinning long draw is good exercise for my shoulders undoing the tightness that sometimes builds up from knitting, crocheting and computer use. (Spinning as therapy, yeah!). So, when I admitted to Dotty that I don’t really use my handspun, I just spin for fun, and to look at the pretty yarn, she couldn’t believe it. My friends all admonished me too. Peer pressure can be a great thing.

    So, last week, I made this:

    Handspun - Indigo dyed corriedale w/silk noils plied with osage dyed coopworth/silk blend

    Well, two skeins of it, actually, about 220 yards, 9 wpi. The yarn is made from roving I bought at the 2008 Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It’s from Handspun by Stefania, and it’s all plant dyed. One ply is indigo dyed corriedale with silk noils, and the other is a coopworth silk/wool blend dyed with Osage-orange wood. The coopworth was a grey wool, and it, blended with the silk has given the osage-dyed yarn an amazing golden quality. The plied yarn reminds me of old maps with blue oceans and baroque golden continents. My friend Erika says it reminds her of bull kelp floating in the inlets where she likes to kayak.

    I didn’t spin the yarn with a project in mind (because I never do), but once I had finished it, I knew it had to be a hat. A slouchy hat that I could wear without smooshing my hair, kind of in the style of my Elissa hat, but warmer and more substantial. Good for rainy days–like yesterday when I had to take this picture.

    Cartography

    Then the wind really started blowing.

    Cartography Hat

    No, it’s not blurry, those are raindrops on the lens. Today, it’s sunny and bright, and I had worse luck trying to re-shoot because the shadows were so harsh, but I got this o.k. shot of the back (cropped heavily to get rid of the rotting salmon I didn’t notice was on the beach in front of me–that’s fall in Alaska!)

    Back of Cartography Hat

  • Hooked on Denise

    Wow. Where did September go? Things have been so busy around here–I spent a little over a week at the beginning of the month playing with mushrooms and lichen and fiber, and I have lots to show and talk about, but I was waiting until I had washed most of the yarn that I dyed so I could show you the finished product. So that’s my next post. I’ve also been spinning again. My wheel had been put away for almost a year, and at the end of the summer I started spinning when Selma and a few friends in town wanted to learn to spin, so I’ve got some handspun to show you in a future post as well.

    Today, I had a lovely surprise in the mail. Emily McKeon who’s part of the family that owns and runs the Denise Needle Company sent me a set of the new Interchangeable Crochet Hook set that they’ve recently released. I have played with a prototype hook and cord for several months now, and I am thrilled to see the finished set. The hooks have a lovely feel and a great taper and point.

    DSC_0009

    But you may be wondering, what you’d do with a set of interchangeable hooks and cords. The most obvious use is Tunisian crochet. Having cords of differing lengths and hooks of various sizes all in one place will make it easy to work on a variety of projects, and change gauge mid project just by changing hook sizes. (The set has 12 hooks ranging in size from 4 to 15 mm). I’m most excited about playing with mixing knitting and crochet. I think there are a lot of unexplored possibilities there. There are also uses for knitting–for instance, say you’re knitting along with your Denise needles and need to pick up stitches along the side edge of something. Pop on a crochet tip and the picking up just got easier. Or, the Denise folks suggest that using a hook tip in your right hand while teaching knitting might make things easier for a new knitter. So, I’m looking forward to digging in and figuring out things to do with this new tool.