I made up a cake recipe. Well, I started with a recipe and tweaked it so that it now bears little resemblance to the original. I have a fruit dessert thing going on this summer, I think I'm on dessert four for four consecutive weekends. 

This week at the grocery store the plums looked especially nice. I love upside-down cakes. You don't have to frost them, and I love the caramel-ly, fruity goodness on top. I had some almond meal that needed using, and I figured that this is the kind of cake that could benefit from the dense, moist texture. I made two cakes, one for Independence Day and the second for a potluck at work. The first one (above) I made in a springform pan, which resulted in a big, sticky mess on the bottom of my oven despite the fact that I wrapped foil around the bottom and outside. Oops. The second time I made it in my cast iron skillet, and it was a tight fit, there was still a little bit of overflow. Luckily, I put a big roasting pan underneath to catch any drips. 

Plum Upside-down Cake

12 T. Butter (a stick and a half)

1 c. packed brown sugar

5 plums, cut in half, pit removed, and each half cut into wedges

1/2 c. all purpose flour

1/2 c. white whole wheat flour

1/2 c. almond flour

2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. salt

1 c. sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 t. vanilla extract

1/2 c. cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Melt 6 tablespoons of butter in a 9" cast iron skillet. Add the brown sugar, and stir until sugar is melted and syrupy. Arrange the plum wedges in concentric circles in the bottom of the pan (or transfer the butter/sugar mixture to a 9" cake pan). Set aside. 

In a large mixing bowl, beat the remaining 6 tablespoon butter with the sugar, until fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat until smooth and fluffy. In a smaller bowl, combine the flours, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Whisk to combine. 

Add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture, alternating with the cream. Stir just to combine after each addition. Spread batter over plums, and bake for 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. 

Cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes or so, then place an inverted plate on top and quickly flip it over. It should come out nice and cleanly. It's good slightly warm or at room temperature. Top with dollop of whipped cream, if you like, although we had it plain, and it was delicious!

Let me know if you try it, and what you think! 

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Hello to everyone visiting as they make the pin it forward rounds! I'm so glad I got to be near the end, so I could see and be inspired by everyone else. 

Now that summer is finally, really here, my thoughts of home turn to the outside, more than the inside. I live in a rather tiny house, in a little mountain town east of San Diego. We are lucky enough to have a wrap-around porch, something pretty unusual for Southern California. Over the years I've furnished it with a little of this and a little of that, I've let the clutter pile up until it was a total embarrassment, and I've not really taken full advantage of what was one of the main reasons I wanted to live in this home in the first place. I'm determined to remedy that this summer. 

I love to be outside, watching the chickens and ducks and spending time with Winston and Bear. I have big dreams for an enormous vegetable garden one day, but this year I'm concentrating on the porch. Our porch is really another room in our home. It's covered, and gets the early morning sun, but is pleasantly shady and cool on hot summer afternoons. I want it to be a colorful, comfortable, relaxing space. I want to be able to lounge and read a book and share a meal with friends. 

I'm dreaming big here, but I'm off to a good start with a corner rocking chair and foot stool (I posted this here just the other day, but I'm going to share it again anyway). The next project, which is well underway, is a table and set of four chairs. Painting and seat recovering/re-making are involved, but I'm quite pleased with the color combination.

A daybed will make the porch a place to really feel at home. And then of course I will want to fill it in with lots of plants. Climbing vines, window boxes, and maybe even a vertical succulent garden, don't you think?

To see more porch and garden inspiration, view my whole pinboard, and be sure to visit the source links there!And be sure to check out yesterday's pin-it-forward blog, rouge blanc noir, and then go visit tomorrow's blog, Cyder with Eloise for some delicious looking recipes.   

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You might want to make this very soon. And be sure to get some vanilla ice cream to have with it. 

Here's the story: I basically used this recipe (scroll down for the English version). I actually used the shortbread crust recipe from The Joy of Cooking, which I used for the jar pies I made at Christmas. It's pretty similar, just with the ingredients halved and the addition of a little lemon zest. I think the original crust would have been too thick in my tart dish, so choose which recipe to use based on the size of your dish. I only had cherry and blueberry preserves, but lots of fresh apricots, so I made a little fresh jam by cooking down some peeled, chopped apricots, with a little brown sugar (because I like that brown sugar flavor), and a dash of vanilla. Once it was cooked down I dissolved a little cornstarch in some water and added that to thicken it. The recipe doesn't mention putting the tart back in the oven once you arrange the apricot halves, but since it's called a Roasted Apricot Tart, that's what I did. It took a good 25-30 minutes for the apricots to cook through and get a little soft. The apricots aren't peeled, so if you have pre-made jam, this is a pretty quick and easy recipe. It was about as good as you would think, which is to say Holy Cow that is one tasty tart! I will be making it again, and soon. Next up, I think I may need to try this recipe. 

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I have a whole bunch of recommendations for you in this post, but mostly I want to talk about the book in the photo up there. I was quite lucky to be offered a copy from the publisher to read and review quite a little while ago, and I finally managed to site down and read last weekend. 

The Butcher and the Vegetarian was written by Tara Austen Weaver, author of the lovely Tea and Cookies blog, which I don't know how I've missed all this time, but it's now bookmarked in my cooking folder. In her book she tells her story of her encounters with meat (recommended by her doctor to help her overcome some health issues) after a lifetime as a vegetarian. There are a lot of books out there these days about our food supply and eating responsibly, and I've found some of them to be rather preachy and alarmist, but this was much different. Tara is very balanced in her book, and she writes with warmth and a little self-deprecating humor that I really connected with. I have actually been thinking about eating less meat, and eating better, more humanely raised meat when I do. I especially liked the sections  where she visited some smaller farms where the farmers are doing just that, and I definitely want to start looking for some sources for those types of products in my area. I was just the sort of thing I've been wanting to learn more about.

I think a lot of this thinking on my part has come from having my chickens for the last three and a half years. I love gathering and cooking their eggs, knowing that they spend their days wandering wherever they please, pecking and scratching and eating a diet with such variety. Those girls are spoiled, I tell you. They get fruit and vegetable scraps from the little café at work, all sorts of bugs, a handful of scratch every morning, and also their regular chicken feed. When I hear about factory egg farms, and how the birds are treated I know I never want to have a store bought egg again. 

So anyway, I highly recommend The Butcher and the Vegetarian, it's a good read, particularly if you are thinking about improving the way you eat.

So here are some other things I recommend right now:

• In my continuing quest to drink more water, I've started filling a pitcher with water filtered in our Brita filter and then adding ribbons of cucumber sliced lengthwise and a few sprigs of mint. So much better than plain! I'm not sure why, but I think it is much more thirst quenching.
• Netflix has all eight seasons of McLeod's Daughters, and I've been totally addicted. It's an Australian series about a bunch of women ranchers. I have to say, however, it went downhill into soap opera territory the last couple seasons. I loved the first three seasons the best. 
• I've reviewed a lot of cooking apps for the iPhone over at APPlesauce, and now that I've been trying them all out for a little while, the Epicurious app seems to be winning as my favorite. It's free, which of course earns it bonus points, but I would have paid for it if I had to. 
• My current favorite podcast (well, videocast, really) is Working Class Foodies. They're quick, just six or eight minutes, and full of all sorts of delicious recipes and tips, and everything is fresh but also cheap.

  

 
 
I bought some tiny Forelle pears, just because they were so pretty. 

 

 

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Oh how I love summer fruit. Most of the time I just like eating it as is, but I seem to have developed a weekend baking habit. Actually, I made one of these cherry tarts on a weekday, but that was for a farewell lunch at work, so it's not really the same thing at all, right? So, about these cherry tarts…the first one I made following this recipe exactly. It was quite good, although not spectacular, and was quickly consumed by my co-workers, much to the disappointment of Mr. HeyLucy. So I promised to make another one for him, only this time I decided to make it even better. I used mascarpone instead of cream cheese, and added a little lemon zest and juice to the creamy filling at the very end. I also brushed the cherries with cherry preserves, rather than raspberry, because that's what I had and it just seemed to make more sense. Strangely, the original recipe called for a six ounce package of cream cheese. Silly Martha, everywhere I looked, cream cheese is usually in eight ounce packages. I thought the mascarpone version was pretty perfect, very light and creamy. The lemon added a nice bit of tang. I am quite pleased with my adjustments. Also, it's just really pretty, no? 

   

Our air conditioner is currently refusing to come on before 8:30 pm, so I've been busy cleaning up the porch and making it into a couple extra rooms. It gets the morning sun, but it's lovely and shady the rest of the day. Things will be re-arranged throughout the summer, but I spent a good part of my afternoon here, reading a good book. I planted some lavender and mint in the pot in the corner. The chickens haven't discovered it yet. I'm also working on painting a table and set of chairs. One day I'd love to find a daybed, so we can really stretch out and relax.

 

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