Missing My Mazurkas

Back when I lived in Utah, there was a bakery called Great Harvest.  Well, not only did they have fabulous bread, they had one called savory loaf that had artichokes, sundried tomatoes, parmesan… sorry, I digress.  In addition to those fabulous breads, they also had delicious baked treats.  My favorite was something they called mazurka bars.  Basically, it’s a buttery, chewy, oatmeal cookie bar topped with sweet, juicy berries.  Anyway, I doubt they’ll actually give up the details of their recipe, so I did some playing and came up with my own. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• ½ cup butter
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ cup flour
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup oats
• 1 cup raspberries
• 1 cup blueberries

As always with cookies, make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature.  If you’ve forgotten to pull something out ahead of time, here’s a tip to get you baking right away anyway.  Before you get started, go ahead and turn your oven to 350°.  Put your softened butter into a mixing bowl along with the sugar. 

Cream those together until they’re nice and light and fluffy.

Add the egg and vanilla.

Mix until the egg is thoroughly incorporated, scraping down the sides at least once. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.  A lot of times I don’t bother doing that with cookies, but because there is such a small amount of flour in this, it’s necessary.

Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. 

Mix just until combined and stir in the oats.  The dough will be very soft and somewhat sticky.  That’s just how you want it. 

Glop the dough into an 8x8 pan.  Don’t worry about greasing or parchment or anything. 

Spread it around until it’s all the way in the corners and level on top. 

Now here comes the fun part.  Sprinkle all those beautiful berries on top.  Yay colors! 

I know you’re thinking that is way too many berries, but trust me, it’s not.  Bake at 350° for about 40 minutes.  You want the bars to be dry on top and a beautiful golden brown.  I’m telling you, magic happens in the oven. 

Now comes the hard part.  Cool them completely before cutting.  If you don’t, they’ll just fall apart.  With the sweet and tart of the berries, the buttery, chewy base and just a hint of cinnamon, these are to die for.  They’re even worth turning on the oven in the summer. 

What special treat does your local bakery make that you just can’t pass up? 

Blue Corn Berry Muffins

Well, I had to do it. I had to make something else in the muffin tin to see if it was totally bitched.

And one of the small veggie places that seems to specialize in local and as-close-as-possible foods had giant vats of blueberries on sale. So of course, blueberry muffins. And blueberry smoothies. And blueberries with yogurt and granola...

Just the muffins in this post.

Now, those of you who've never seen me in meatspace propbably don't know that I have some issues with colour. For a lot of years I wore a lot of black because I'm just not good at matching things. Warm colours? Cool colours? Wut? Eventually I gave up and just started wearing green pants with a blue tshirt and red sneakers. Monochormatic outfits are my friend.

And so I decided to make blueberry muffins using blue masa. Monochromatic breakfasts.

Don't worry, Canada Customs didn't know what blue masa was either when I brought it back across the border.

Masa is nixtamalized cornmeal. It's cornmeal treated with an alkali in order to make the vitamins in the cornmeal available. It also make the proteins in corn usable by humans. And if you mix corn, squash, and beans in one dish, you end up with a perfectly complete source of protein.

Of course blue masa is just masa made from blue corn. If you've never had it, it's totally awesome. Tastes mostly the same, but dude! It's freaking blue!

Think about it... naturally occuring blue stuff is pretty rare. Even moreso is naturally occuring blue food.

Blue Corn Blue Berry Muffins

What You Need

• 2 c blue masa
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 c cream and or milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 c honey
• 1/2 c melted butter
• plus a bit more butter for greasing the muffin tin
• blueberries!

What you gotta do:

So, we're going to start this off by souring our cream and or milk. If you have buttermilk, use it, and skip this step. I never have buttermilk. For some reason the smallest container I can find of it is 1 litre, and I will never use 1 L of buttermilk before it manages to go bad. Hell, half the time I can't use a litre of regular milk before it sours.

You can sour your milk / cream by adding lemon juice to it.

Then, in your biggest bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and add the lemon zest.

The rest of this goes pretty quickly, so preheat your oven to 400 and melt some butter to grease your muffin tin (or line it with papers).

To your soured cream, add the vanilla and honey.

1/4 cup isn't a lot of honey, no. But you'll be loading these muffins with super sweet berries so you don't really need the sugar sweetness. You can add more if you'd like, but these work for me.

Plus, if you only use 1/4 cup in the batter you have an excuse to drizzle the muffins with honey when you eat them. ;)

Add the eggs and the melted butter. 

Beat this liquidy stuff all together and then pour it into the dry stuff.

Mix the two until they're just combined and then dump in the berries. At least 2 cups.

Fold the blueberries in gently and then fill your cups with them.

You should be able to generously fill all 12 spots with fabulously blue batter.

Bake them for about 20 minutes, but maybe start checking around 18. You don't want these overdone. Cornbread can seem really dry if it's overbaked.

Nothing a little butter and honey won't solve though.

Full of explodey blue goodness.

Let them cool a good 10 minutes in the pan before you try extracting them. If your pan is fine, you should have no problems.

Mine was not. They totally stuck to the sides and the bottom. Just as bad as the quiches did. Pan is bitched.

But, I'm damn good at getting stuck things out of pans, and with my trusty paring knife and spoon, I was able to do this.

Not pretty, but it's out.

These are best eaten the day they were made, as with all cornbread, but if you do package and freeze them, just remember to bring along some butter and honey to go with them.

I've got honey in my desk drawer at work.

What have you got stashed in your drawers at work?