Strawberry Buttermilk Cake with Lemon Glaze

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Strawberry Buttermilk Cake

My grocery store has been doing a very good job of catering to my need to immerse myself in all things spring, stat.  I walked in a few days ago and was greeted by a huge tower of daffodils.  Behind them was an equally large tower of asparagus, and behind that, a sea of red strawberries.  Needless to say, I wound up leaving with a cheery bouquet of daffodils, a couple of bundles of asparagus, and more strawberries than I could ever (reasonably) eat fresh so I simply had to bake a treat.

I’d like to call this strawberry-lemon buttermilk bread, mainly because I’m eating a slice with my morning coffee as I write this, but it’s really more of a cake and I’ve got to say, it’s everything I wanted it to be: light, bright, optimistic, and tasting delightfully like spring.  The crumb of the cake is tender and moist, there’s a strawberry in nearly every bite, and the lemon glaze is a much-needed pop of sunshine.

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Balsamic Strawberry, Mozzarella & Basil Crostini

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Strawberry, Mozzarella & Basil Bruschetta

My favorite hot weather dinner is a Caprese salad.  Nothing too elaborate, just perfectly ripe tomatoes, fresh, milky mozzarella cheese, a few leaves of basil, and a drizzle of good olive oil.  It’s the one thing I could eat that every night, June through August.

There’s just 1 problem though.  There’s always got to be something, right?  So what is it this time?

I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  We had snow until May.  It rained all through June.  I think summer really just began last week.  All this translates to a tomato season that won’t truly begin until mid to late August.  I’ve got at least a month to go before I can actually start making my Caprese salads morning, noon, and night.

But it’s hot now and that’s what I’m craving.  I guess we’ll just have to improvise with what we do have.  Okay, let’s see, we’ve got the basil covered.  Mozzarella?  No prob.  And we have strawberries.  Good, ripe strawberries.  We can work with this.

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Chilled Strawberry Soup with Vanilla Ice Cream

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Strawberry Soup with Vanilla Ice CreamSummer always brings about lots of food memories.  There are so many tasty things that only come once a year and so many traditions that make me recall past years.  I’ll make a s’more over a campfire and remember the s’more I made last year (added peanut butter–oh, yeah!) and every s’more I shoved in my face as a kid.  I’ll see kids selling lemonade and remember the hundreds of summer afternoons I passed selling kool-aid on the corner with the neighbor boy.  I think back to summer vacations and remember the amazing lobster I ate in Maine or the spit-roasted pork I gorged on in Croatia.  I’ll pass a roadside stand selling home-grown, super ripe, red, glossy strawberries and think about all the times my mom packed me up in the station wagon and drove to the patch to pick pound after pound of berries.

And then I’ll remember the most epic trip I ever took to the berry patch, the trip that solidified my destiny to become obsessed with eating well.  It was also the trip that, twenty-some-odd years later, helped me come up for a name for my blog.

Sarah & Mommy at the Berry Patch

This berry-picking adventure is one of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories.  I was a chunky, bow-legged 3-year-old, dressed for action in my Osh-Kosh-B’Gosh flowered  shortie overalls.  My mom and dad packed me and my brother up into our old boat of a Chevy and we headed out to the country to load up on strawberries for freezer jam, shortcakes, and pink malts.  At some point in the journey, my parents informed me that it was okay to try a few berries as we picked, you know, test the product and make sure the berries were up to snuff.

Well, I know exactly which part of the instructions I tuned out–“a few”.  My mom, dad, and brother picked for hours, filling up pails and boxes.  And I picked right alongside, it’s just that none of my berries made it into my bucket.  Nope, they all went straight down the hatch.  Berry after berry.  Needless to say, the car ride home was not terribly pleasant.  Seems my 3-year-old belly couldn’t quite handle the gallon of berries I had so greedily eaten.  My mom rode in the backseat with me, stroking my tummy.   My big brother sat shot-gun, wishing he was still an only child, and my dad drove home in silence, thankful that his car upholstery was the same color as my ruby-red strawberry puke.

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Strawberry Apricot Cobbler

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Strawberry Apricot Cobbler

We’ve gotten to know each other well enough that I feel I can be completely honest with you.  Want a dose of full-disclosure truthfulness?

I don’t dream in chocolate.  You’re probably never going to find a brownie archive on my site.  Sure, I’ll choke down a chocolate chip cookie from time to time and I’m not above eating nutella by the spoonful, but a really good fresh fruit cobbler or pie is the kind of dessert that actually makes me weak in the knees.

Here’s a good one: warm, just-sweet-enough baked apricots and strawberries, with a rich biscuit topping, dolloped with a spoonful of whipped cream.  Ahhhh…it was my first cobbler of the season and I was taken aback by how much I enjoyed it.  Over the winter, you forget just how good ripe stone fruits and berries are.  Then you encounter a display of fruit you haven’t seen in almost a year, throw together a cobbler, and quickly remember.

This whole cobbler was sort of an accident.  I had thought the apricots were destined for Saturday morning scones, but Saturday morning turned into Saturday afternoon, turned into Sunday evening, turned into OMG–I better do something with these apricots before it’s too late.  I snapped into action and turned them into dessert.

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Strawberry Almond Crumb Coffee Cake

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Strawberry Almond Crumb CoffeecakeWeekends are so much more enjoyable when you start them with something amazing for breakfast. You suddenly have a reason to linger over the paper, make a second pot of coffee, and delay your trip to the hardware store.  What more could you ask for?

This weekend it’s an ultra-moist strawberry coffee cake smothered in a ridiculously good, I-want-to-pick-it-all-off-and-eat-it-right-now almond crumb topping.  It goes together quickly and depending on how many people you choose to share it with, it might be around long enough to perk up your back-to-reality Monday morning breakfast.

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