State Fair Results

The anticipation is over! I won two fourth-place ribbons this year.  Thousands of people enter these  baked goods competitions and few get ribbons so I am pleased. I was a little surprised the apricot almond shortbread bars didn't get anything because I had people calling me on the phone telling me how wonderful they were.  Judging at the state fair starts out a bit shallow-they pick the top 25 attractive entries in each category.  Even though you can't judge a book by its cover, with hundreds of entries in one category they can't taste them all.   I am hoping my apricot almond shortbread bars wound up in the top 25 so at least I will get a score card mailed to me from the judges showing me where I can improve next time.  One thing I have vowed to do this year: Practice baking during the winter so my recipes are nailed down before it hits 90°!!!
Here are the pictures of my fourth-place winners:

Strawberry Pecan bread

Banana Pecan brownies-need to brush up on my decorating!

State Fair Anticipation

I stood in a block-long line Sunday morning waiting to enter my tasty treats (tasty to me anyways!) into the Minnesota State Fair baking competition.  Part of the fun for me is talking to other competitors to find out what they are entering and look at their fantastic entries. Oh how I wish I could sample a little bit of every ribbon-winner's goodies! That would be about as close to heaven as anything for me!  I won't know the ribbon-fate of my entries until Thursday when they are posted online.  I don't want to wait for the results before I "post" this post because my blog is getting dusty!  I entered Strawberry Pecan Bread, Banana Bread, Brownies, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Apricot Almond Shortbread Bars.   I didn't take pictures of everything because I was just too tired after baking. My kitchen looked like a flour, nut, and chocolate studded bomb had been set off in it.   I have rejects in the freezer whose photo opportunity time may come later after the flour dust has settled!  New food at the state fair this year I want to try: Sweetcorn ice cream with caramel bacon topping, deep-fried apple pie with vanilla ice cream, pretzel dogs, Yankee apple pie with chocolate on grilled brioche, and crab fritters.     
Okay, back to some "normal" food.   Here are pictures of some of the items  I entered.

Apricot-almond shortbread bars (Epicurious by way of Sue at Basically Baked)

Cut and ready to go to "the show"

Trunk full of goodies

Banana pecan brownie decorated rejects

Non-human food post today

Monarch drinking swamp milkweed nectar in my back yard

I am currently experimenting with chocolate chip cookies for my state fair entries so I am not going to bore anyone with my not perfect experiments. Since I don't have any good food items to post, I thought I would post some pictures of my other hobbies which are butterfly and Hummingbird gardening and saving and raising monarch butterflies.  I find the eggs on the leaves of my swamp milkweeds and take a few-especially from the leaves     attached to broken stems or plants that have fallen over. The survival rate of eggs is low-the survival rate of the caterpillars is lower because they are eaten by birds and they are hosts to other bug's eggs-I found out that yucky fact this year firsthand and all I can say is ish!!  I hope you enjoy the nature pics below.

Tiger swallowtail drinking Joe Pye weed nectar.

Chocolate scented cosmos-who knew there was a chocolate flower?

 Tree frog teasing my cat from the other side of the window.

My cat Margo taking the bait 

Monarch caterpillar eating Swamp milkweed

Bumblebee in mid flight above swamp milkweed flower

No, you don't need new glasses-my autofocus was out of focus!

Enjoy the day!

Another Macaron post...though the first for me!

Being Macaron-inspired by Sue at Basically Baked , I found my way to Chez Arnaud's in Maple Grove, MN.  It was one of my first daytime work week adventures after being retired. It is a whole new world to me being able to go shopping when it is not busy! Anyways, it is a small French bakery.  Many of the desserts were expensive, but fortunately for me I was macaron hunting and those were not so expensive.  They had Lavender lemon and salted caramel macarons. I liked both of them, but I think the salted caramel was my favorite flavor. I also purchased pain du chocolat (chocolate bread).  It is basically a chocolate filled croissant.  As Sue said in her post, it was fabulous!  I will not attempt to make macarons because they are simple to buy and they are not my favorite cookie. They are worth purchasing once in a while just to taste something different.

Salted Caramel and Lavender Lemon

The gooey, delicious middle

Musings about Browned Butter

I'm in MN State Fair baking frenzy mode now.  Anna from Cookie Madness turned me on to her browned butter pecan pie a couple of years ago.  I have to say it is the best pecan pie I have ever tasted. Not just me, but everyone who tried it said it was the best pecan pie they ever tasted.  For those of you who don't know what Browned Butter is and how to make it, see this excellent Allrecipes site:  Browned Butter  It adds a nutty, toffee-like flavor to the dough.  I got to thinking about browned butter when thinking about what could be a State Fair chocolate chip cookie ribbon-winning recipe. There are a few browned butter recipes out there that are similar. Seeing as I  just could not help myself, I tinkered around with a few regular and browned butter chocolate chip cookie recipes and came up with what I am going to enter into the state fair this year. For the regular contests the recipe does not need to be your own, but it does need to be made from scratch. I will show you pictures, but I am not going to give out my secret recipe yet! I will tell you it is a combination of white and brown sugar, all-purpose and bread flour, and you guessed it: Browned Butter.    I still can't figure out how to make my cookies come out round each time.  Dana has a good idea on her blog Dana Treat.  I will have to try rolling the dough into logs, refrigerating it, and then slicing it next time.   I do not have a cookie scoop, but I am considering investing in one. If anyone has opinions about good scoops, please, please let me know!
Here is a picture of the browned butter cookies with the dough only refrigerated for 1 hour--2 hours didn't make a difference.  refrigerating overnight produced thicker cookies.

Flag Cake

Just a prepared yellow cake mix (I added a 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract), cool whip, and fruit.  So easy! You can use any type of fruit for a summer dessert.  Pears, nectarines, peaches, raspberries, even grapes and plums would be good!  If you have not tried a yellow cake mix,  you should.   It is my favorite cake to use for whipped cream and fruit. I'm not fond of other boxed mixes, but yellow cake mix is special.  I used Duncan Hines for this cake, but I've used other brands as well.

Blueberry Sour Cream Pound Cake and Happy almost 4th of July

I know there is a cake doctor out there, but I also enjoy doctoring.  I doctored Blueberry Sour Cream Pound Cake, a recipe found on Taste of Home .  It is excellent for the 4th of July desserts lineup.

For the red, white, and blue theme, the only time-consuming part of this recipe is drying the raspberries, but they are easy to use because you don't need to cut them or core them like strawberries.   I line a cookie sheet with paper towels and set them on it.   I used an 8x8 pan for 1/2 the recipe, but I think 9x9 would have been better-the cake was too thick for the 8x8 so the edges were done long before the high center.   

Drying raspberries.

I used an 8x8 pan for this, but I think a 9x9 would have been better.

Finished product (I sampled a corner-can you find it?)



Recipe for 9x13 or 10 inch tube pan:

1 cup salted butter, softened

2 3/4 cups sugar

6 large eggs

1 cup sour cream (I don't skimp on this..I use full fat...it is a pound cake!)

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups AP flour and 1 cup Whole Wheat PASTRY flour)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries-you could probably use 2.5 cups also

Optional:  Extra sugar or cinnamon sugar to sprinkle on top before baking

Topping:

2 regular 8 oz size containers of cool whip or one large container
1 pint fresh blueberries washed and dried
1 pint fresh raspberries washed and dried

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter until fluffy; gradually add sugar and mix well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in extracts.  
2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking soda.  Add alternately with the sour cream to  wet ingredients.  Gently fold berries into batter.
3. Spoon into a greased 10-in. tube or 9x13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50-70 minutes or until cake tests done. (In my 9x13 pan this took about 52 minutes.)
4. Cool cake completely.  Frost with cool whip.  Add fruit in whatever design you like. Refrigerate.

Footnote:  If using frozen blueberries, don't thaw them.  A few minutes before the batter is ready for them, put them in a bowl and sprinkle with flour to coat them.  Mix them gently so all have a flour coating.