Mess of Greens

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Fig & Blueberry Coffee Cake

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So, this post is late as fig week has been over for awhile, but I can’t resist because this was the kind of cake that was super easy and so good that I kept sneaking back to slice just one more teeeeeeny sliver. But then I had slivered so much cake that there was only one full piece left, so my boys were pretty bent out of shape with me.

It’s also so simple that I after talking about the edits to the recipe that I’d made, I left baking in the hands of my honey and little dude. Brett doesn’t LOVE cooking (and I don’t think I’ve ever known him to bake ANYTHING) but Wagner does love being in the kitchen, so while I ran to the grocery store one weekend, they made this. I came home to a kitchen COVERED in flour and two worn out fellas. But y’all….usually it takes me way more than one try to get a recipe right, (especially baked stuff) but they NAILED it. Maybe I need to turn MoG over to my boys?

Anyway, for a (probably) first time baker and his toddler sous chef, this coffee cake was a hit. I LOVED it and thought it made the perfect just-sweet-enough coffee cake for midmorning (or afternoon…or after dinner…or instead of lunch) snack time. 😉 Let me know what you think!

BTW, This cake is based on one from Food & Wine but I replaced raspberries with local blueberries (since raspberries seem to like cooler weather than what we have in south MS) and lime zest/juice with orange. You could also probably sub lemon juice since lemons and blueberries go together like batman & robin.


Blueberry, Fig Coffee Cake
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Brunch, Dessert
Serves: 6-8
What You Need
  • ⅛ Cup flour, for dusting pan
  • ¼ Tablespoon butter, for dusting pan
  • 1½ cups granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 stick unsalted butter, melted
  • Finely grated zest of 1large oranges or 3 mini ones
  • 1½ cups all-purpose flour
  • Juice of 1 small orange or ¼ large one
  • ½ pint blueberries
  • 4 figs, cut into eighths, or additional ½ pint blueberries
  • Confectioners' sugar, for dusting
What to Do
  1. Preheat the oven to 350.
  2. Butter a 9-inch springform pan and coat with flour to keep the batter from sticking.
  3. In a mixer fitted with the batter attachment, beat the sugar and eggs at high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.
  4. Beat in the butter and two-thirds of the zest.
  5. At low speed, alternately beat in the flour and orange juice until almost incorporated, then fold with a spatula until it's smooth.
  6. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface.
  7. Gently press in the blueberries and figs.
  8. Bake the cake on the bottom third of the oven for 40ish minutes.
  9. Transfer to the upper third of the oven and continue baking for about 35 minutes more, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
  10. Run a thin knife around the edge and release the springform and place the cake on a rack to cool.
  11. When you're ready to serve, dust the cake with confectioners' sugar and sprinkle with the remaining zest, then cut into wedges.

 

Spiced Persimmon Pancakes

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My little person has started negotiating. Anytime he wants something, but thinks we’ll say no, he’ll say, “Mama, let’s make a deal.” For instance, “Mama, let’s make a deal. In the morning, let’s make pancakes.” He hasn’t quite got the concept down, because there’s never a second side to the deal. Like, “If you make pancakes, I’ll let you sleep all night because I’ll stay in my own bed.” or “I won’t fight you at bath time about washing my hair.” or “You won’t have to sing every sweet song ever written until I fall totally asleep.” There’s none of that. Just the first part of the deal…the part that works out for him.

Anyway, he woke up one morning asking to make a deal for pancakes. He won, but I also snuck in a bit of extra goodness by making our standard buttermilk pancake recipe and jazzing it up with persimmon puree. And they were DELICIOUS and tasted like the holidays. Forget pumpkin spice…persimmons are where the fall and winter flavor is….

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‘Simmon Pudding with Bourbon Whipped Cream

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Oh bring us some ‘simmon puddin’

Oh bring us some ‘simmon puddin’

Oh bring us some ‘simmon puddin’

and bring it right now!

Now that I’ve discovered the incredible flavor that is wild persimmons,

That’s how I imagine that this Christmas carol would go if it had been written in the south. img_4562

My mama and I made some plum (figgy) pudding a couple of years ago and it was such a fun, nostagic project that had plans to make it every Christmas from then on, but honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of how it tasted. But this, y’all. Oh this. It turns out that European American settlers made this pudding all winter with the tiny squishy persimmons that grew wild (and that Native Americans had been gathering and eating all along) and, in my opinion, it’s SO MUCH more divine than the one they make across the pond. I tampered a teeny bit with a Saveur recipe and added some bourbon whipped cream, and well… I’d say it’s a holiday dessert MUST MAKE. Plus, although it takes a little time to cook, it is EEEEAAASSSY.

Note: If you don’t relish the job of foraging and then scooping out 2 cups worth of wild persimmon pulp, you can cheat and use store bought persimmons. I won’t tell.

Oh bring us some 'simmon pudding
 
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Serves: 1 9"x13" pan
What You Need
  • FOR THE PUDDING:
  • Pulp from enough ripe persimmons to make 2 cups (about 5 hachiyas or Fuyu, OR about 3 pounds of wild very smushy ripe persimmons)
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1 1⁄2 cups buttermilk
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 1⁄2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1⁄2 tsp. cinnamon
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • Pinch salt
  • 1⁄4 cup heavy cream
  • 4 tbsp. butter, melted
  • FOR THE BOURBON WHIPPED CREAM
  • 1 Cup whipping cream
  • 3 Tablespoons powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon bourbon
What to Do
  1. Preheat your oven to 350°. Place a large roasting pan filled with water ½ way or other way to create a water bath into the oven to warm. (Using a water bath will keep the center of the pudding moist. You can also use a traditional plum pudding mold that is then steamed...google that if you want to know more!)
  2. After you've gotten the fleshy pulp from the persimmons (if you're using wild, you'll need to skin them and also strain the pulp for the large seeds) add it and sugar into a large bowl.
  3. Beat in the eggs.
  4. Add in the buttermilk and baking soda into a separate medium bowl, and stir. Add to pulp, and mix well.
  5. Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt into the medium bowl (i like to reuse bowls when I can). Slowly add the flour mixture to the pulp, stirring until it's totally and thoroughly combined.
  6. Add heavy cream, and mix.
  7. Grease a 9'' X 13'' baking dish with a small amount of the melted butter
  8. Stir remaining butter into batter.
  9. Pour batter into dish.
  10. Place the baking dish into the water bath that's been warming in the oven, bake until dark brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 1 hour, 20 minutes. OR bake according to your traditional plum pudding mold directions.
  11. Set aside to cool. Serve with bourbon whipped cream. (recipe below)
  12. FOR THE WHIPPED CREAM:
  13. In a COLD bowl and with a COLD whisk implement on your mixer (or your hand held emulsion blender) mix the cream, extract, bourbon, and sugar until frothy and until it has peaks. If you over mix it will turn into butter.

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Wild Persimmon & Bourbon Breakfast Bread

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Wild Persimmons: Bourbon Breakfast Bread
 
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The most time consuming part of this process is getting the persimmon pulp, but I assure you, the flavor is like NOTHING else and it's even more exciting because it grows wild and is connected to native peoples and early european settlers.
Author:
Recipe type: Breakfast or Dessert
Serves: 4 loaves
What You Need
  • FOR THE BREAD:
  • 2 cups sifted cake flour
  • ½ teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 cups sugar
  • ½ cup melted unsalted butter or vegetable oil
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
  • 1 Tablespoon Bourbon
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 cups persimmon puree (about 3 cups of wild persimmons)
  • FOR THE FROSTING:
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 18 oz package cream cheese
  • 2½ teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp bourbon
  • 4 to 5 cups confectioners’ sugar
What to Do
  1. FOR THE BREAD:
  2. First things first: you have to get the persimmon puree'. A note about wild persimmons... you know they're ripe if they've fallen off the tree or are SUPER wrinkly and soft... like a deflated helium balloon. Once they're at that stage, and you've got a food mill, the you can use it to separate the skin and the seeds from the pulp. If not, then peel the skin away from the pulp and squeeze it into a wire strainer over a bowl. Using the back of a spoon, push the pulp through the strainer and into the bowl, leaving the large seeds. The pulp can be frozen for use later.
  3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  4. Prepare your bread or cake pans by coating the insides with butter and lightly flouring the inside.
  5. Mix all of the dry ingredients/spices except the sugar (flour, baking powder, soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon) together in a separate medium sized bowl. You may wish to sift this so they are combined consistently.
  6. Then, in a large mixing bowl, combine the puree', the butter or oil, and the sugar until it is entirely incorporated.
  7. Mix in the eggs, the vanilla, and the bourbon.
  8. Cup by cup, mix in the dry ingredients into the puree' mixture. Fold in until just mixed together.
  9. Pour the batter into 2-8" round cake pans, or 2- 9" bread pans, or 4-5" bread pans and bake until a toothpick can be inserted and comes out clean. (somewhere about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your pan).
  10. FOR THE FROSTING:
  11. Using an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until its all creamy.
  12. Add cream cheese and vanilla and bourbon, and beat until it's totally incorporated.
  13. Gradually increase the speed and beat until the cheese and butter mixture fluffy, scraping down the sides of bowl if you need to.
  14. Add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, scraping down if you need to until everything is fully incorporated.
  15. PUTTING IT TOGETHER:
  16. Once the cake has cooled, frost it, slice it and serve it with a cup of coffee. it is even good at room temperature or straight from the fridge.

How perfect are persimmons? The gorgeous, peachy-oranged fleshed fruit that ripen into wrinkly, sweet pulp are not only the most lovely subjects for still life paintings ever, but also have been used in foods from puddings to beer for generations (read more about its history at American Food Roots). Until my friend Joseph brought me some that he’d found in the woods I’d never tried one and didn’t know that they’d played a large role in the diets of native people in our part of the world AND my southern ancestors. But now I know why.

When I saw the perfect little rosy “sugar plums” I couldn’t resist biting into one….but boy did I regret it. The skin of wild persimmons, dispyros virginiania (small, peachy fruit with smooth skin that’s a bit smaller than a golf ball and has several large, hard seeds) is VERY, VERY bitter and made my mouth feel like I’d covered it in a dry, awful tasting powder. But the inside flesh was soft, very sweet, and super fragrant.

In fact, when I just got a taste of the flesh I was in love. It was divine! And so different! Eventually I’d like to make a beer or vinegar using this lovely little fruit, but to start, I made something I felt pretty comfortable with… persimmon bread loosely based on James Beard’s version but with the added ah-mazingness that is cream cheese buttercream. I also made another batch and shaped it into a cake, which was brown like pumpernickle bread but was something like carrot cake. It really was PERFECT for breakfast, and super easy. If you’ve got folks staying over for Thanksgiving, then this is a nice change from the ubiquitous holiday sweet rolls for breakfast, especially since it makes use of local wild fruit you can find in the woods AND harkens back to the earliest settler’s food.

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Foraged Beauties: Beautyberry Jelly

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Y’all, we got our first Free State Feasts virtual cookbook published and then things got really crazy really fast in life. I started a job that I just couldn’t turn down, our house started coming along really quickly and decisions had to be made about finishes and paint and light fixtures and stuff,  my little one got a cold and started school, AND I got an opportunity to start writing a food essay each month for a magazine. Cooking ended up taking a bit of a backseat for the past two weeks or so, but I’m back and I’ve got some awesome things to share! My friend, Joseph brought me a sack of wild persimmons, beautyberries, and chestnuts, and a sweet friend’s mama has been REALLY good to her basil plant this fall and she brought me a huge bouquet of it. All that is to say I’ve had some pretty incredible local ingredients to work with this weekend. Stay tuned for some stuff you’ll want to make yourself!

img_4364First up, beauty berry jelly. …

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Free State Feasts, Volume 1

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Oh wonderful friends,

I’ve been working on something that I’m FINALLY able to share with you as of RIGHT NOW because it’s finally ready.

Joseph Hosey of Wild Woods Cuisine, the wonderful friend and forester who’s been dropping exciting foraged goods my way for a few months now and I have collaborated on something that I think you’re going to love.

We’ve written the FIRST in a series of cookbook-slash-guidebooks dedicated to helping you forage for local foods all around the deep south and then learn how to cook, eat, and share them in ways that feel familiar to southern palates. (Think, wild mushrooms meet pot pie, or wild greens cooked with turkey necks!) And we’re very excited to share it with you.

We’d love to email you a FREE PDF copy of the first edition of Free State Feasts, which focuses on chanterelle mushrooms, with recipes ranging from BBQ’d Chanterelles with Sweet Corn grits to Crispy Deep Fried Chanterelle Fritto Misto. You DO NOT want to miss this chance to get the FULL cookbook for free.

All you have to do is use THIS LINK to sign up for Mess of Green’s newsletter, (and also, if you haven’t already go to both Joseph at Wild Woods Cuisine & Mess of Greens Instagram accounts and follow us, too, and if you’re feeling as excited as we are, leave one of us an Instagram comment on what you’d like us to collaborate on in the future).

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Don’t forget, to get your copy of this exciting collaboration that you can use to take advantage of chanterelle season, sign up here and check out our Instagram accounts.

 

Mississippi Chanterelle Risotto

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I’ve not always had great luck with risotto… when I was first married, we had my VERY gorgeous friend who is a SUPER accomplished home cook and hostess over for supper while her fella was on an adventure to the other side of the world. She was (and still is) one of the coolest, prettiest, nicest, funnest people I know in real life. So, you know– I wanted to bring my A-game.

In an effort to impress her with my own cooking skills (insert eye roll here) I tried to make a bacon, lemon, English pea risotto and ACK! It was awful. So bad. Too much bacon, too much lemon, hardly any peas. And the RICE! Oh, it tasted like grains of sand were lodged in the middle of each piece.

Flash forward to a couple of years ago: Rice pudding & Risotto were two recipes I decided I wanted to perfect since Rice is a major, MAJOR Mississippi crop. I’m still working on the rice pudding (but I’ve got a lead!) but the risotto has come a LONG way since that first big huge failure and is something I’m finally willing share. Then, of course, when you combine Mississippi grown Delta Blues Rice (Rice GRITS, no less!) and Jones County golden chanterelles from Wild Woods Cuisine, well, how can it be bad?

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The easiest Pizza Dough alive, plus a rad chantrelle/bacon topping

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IMG_3194Ok lovelies, its time for me to share a secret with you.

 

I have the easiest, fastest, most delicious pizza dough recipe and I’ve been keeping it from you. I know. It’s terrible and mean and horrible that I haven’t already shared this because it’s so darn amazing. And to top it off, I made pizza this weekend with fresh chantrelle mushrooms, bacon, ricotta cheese and arugula. Do you hate me?

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Free State Foraging: Mulberry Scones

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When I was a little girl, we lived in a little house in Laurel with the BIGGEST mulberry tree in the backyard. In the late spring, I’d gorge myself on the tart-sweet berries and stain my fingers reddish-purple. I also sat down in the ditch behind the house in my clothes and caught crawfish with nets, made up a very short lived and ill-fated “Recycler’s club” with the other neighborhood kids, and got my only two spankings for misbehaving in that yard.  Oh, Memories. 😉

I honestly hadn’t had a mulberry until this week when Joseph Hosey, also known as the Free State Forager, a member of Newt Knight’s #squad in the upcoming Matthew Mcconaughey movie, and founder of wild woods cuisine dropped a quart off by my folks’ house….

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