Raspberry Rhubarb Pie for the Ultimate Pi Day

This past weekend was the Ultimate, Once-In-A-Lifetime Pi Day. And so I emerged from my baking hibernation to celebrate, because one only encounters 3-14-15 @ 9:26:53am once in a lifetime. It's a nerd holiday, okay?

One of my favorite pie ingredients is rhubarb, and so for the occasion, I made a raspberry-rhubarb pie--or is it a rhuspberry pie? raspbarby pie? rhupberry pie? raspbarb pie?

Whatever you want to call it, the Pi pie was divine, encompassing all the wonderful sweet and tart conundrum of flavors that rhubarb is so well-known for, accompanied by a no-nonsense, lightly vanilla-scented, flakey pie crust. And to set the scene: red tulips, for the everlasting, irrational love of pi(e).

(Pi Pie Pan is available here. This one was sent to me as a promo a couple of years ago when the company was kickstarting; but I didn't get a chance to bust it out until this year. As is always the case on this blog, I wouldn't be telling you about something unless I use and love it myself.)

Read on for recipe...

Rhubarb Jam Tart and Postcards from Seattle

I've been so horrible about posting regularly, but it's summer and there's this incredibly geeky thing called Diablo III that I've been sort of ...er... preoccupied by. *shifty eyes* I did, however, manage to dig my head out of monster-slashing long enough to make this rhubarb jam tart, which was inspired by my recent BlogHer Food trip to Seattle (p.s. If you haven't read yet seen the recap of our talk, here it is!). But first... a few foodie postcards from the city that sparked my craving of rhubarb jam.....

Seattle is a city that, for me on this trip, was characterized by three things: flowers, coffee, and seafood. These three things were everywhere you turned!, especially in Pike Place Market....

-- for breakfast --

Le Pichet

Macrina Bakery (the cookies!)

Piroshky Piroshky Bakery

Piroshky Piroshky Bakery was a place that I'd read about from Kelly's blog, and we happened to stumble into it our last morning in Seattle when we were following the wafting smells of cinnamony baked goodness from all the way down the street. There, in this teeny tiny shop, the bakers were churning out extremely large numbers of magnificent Russian baked goods pulled fresh from the oven every couple of minutes. We split a poppyseed cinnamon roll that was so hot and gooey and delicious that we had to get back in line for more to bring home to California after we'd finished.

The morning after BlogHer Food ended, Annelies managed to round us up for a brunch at Le Pichet, an adorably French French cafe close to Pike Place Market. Of course, my heart lies with La Note in Berkeley for French breakfasts, but what really stole the show at Le Pichet was when we asked for jam with our bread and butter, the server brought out not the usual strawberry or raspberry preserves but a small ramekin of rhubarb jam. Heaven! *and now cue my obsession with rhubarb jam*

-- for lunch --

Sitka & Spruce

Pike Place Chowder (excellent, excellent chowder - try the salmon one!)

Sitka & Spruce was probably the darling restaurant of BlogHer Food: I think every person I talked to that weekend came here for one meal or another. -- And with good reason, too. The space was frighteningly gorgeous and the food--served family style, so this Asian girl approves--was uncomplicated and deliciously and elegantly put together.

-- for an afternoon stop --

Victrola Coffee Roasters

Since we were in Seattle, we couldn't resist taking part in the local culture and parking ourselves at a coffee house one afternoon for a few hours of work. Victrola's was a perfect spot, with spacious tables, lots of plug space, and some really thoughtful drinks.

-- for dinner --

Crab Pot (for the seafood-crazed)

The Walrus & the Carpenter

Serious Pie (get the root beer--it's wonderfully licorice-y.)

We didn't have any means of personal transportation while we were in Seattle except walking (and forms of public transportation like buses), so we stuck mostly to the city center and places within a few-mile radius.We did manage to make it out to the Fremont and Ballard neighborhoods, though, stumbling on an awesome outdoor market in Fremont by the waterway that was super fun to wander around in. Then, I dragged Anita and Jessi on a two mile walk to The Walrus & the Carpenter in Ballard--a walk for which I'm not sure they've yet forgiven me, since I was in sneakers but both of them were in boots. Thankfully, the Walrus & the Carpenter made up for it, I think! Jessi did most of the oyster eating (I had one, and despite not normally liking the sliminess of oysters, it was really good.), while Anita and I loaded up on the other seafood small plates on the menu. Sardines and tiny spiced prawns = :)!

So despite all of the seafood and flowers, the rhubarb jam at Le Pichet was one of the highlights of the trip, since rhubarb isn't so common in California. (Conversely in Seattle, rhubarb was everywhere! in the markets.) I was just beginning to scheme about getting my hands on enough rhubarb to make my own jam when Kate from Blue Chair Fruit mentioned to me that they had a few jars of rhubarb jam left -- score! And so I whipped up one of the quickest desserts I could as a vessel for delivering rhubarb jam into my mouth: a super simple, crumbly, and nutty rhubarb jam tart, adapted from the blitz linzer torte recipe in Alice Medrich's latest book. In addition to ground almonds, the crust also has a dash of lavender, cardamom, and lemon zest, which adds a sweet complexity alongside the tart rhubarb jam filling. (which is the best characteristic about rhubarb jam: it's not too sweet so you can spoon mouthfuls of it without the toothache. :))

Thank you all who provided recommendations for Seattle eateries! I'm really quite itching to get back to the Pacific Northwest with a car this time so that I can explore some of the wilderness and nature around the area.


Read on for recipe....

Sugared Coconut Raspberries and Rhubarb Polenta Cake

The single most important thing in this post: sugared coconut raspberries are like crack. It's sort of a long and rambling story to get to the sugared coconut raspberries, though.... (You might want to make a quick plate of them and eat it while you read.)

Anita taking a romp through the muddy raspberry tunnels.

Last weekend, the wonderful folks at Driscoll's Berries hosted a ROAD TRIP! for a bunch of us blogger types to visit one of their berry farms near Monterey and then to attend the Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival. I'm usually a bit wary about these things, but I just can't say "no" to a berry farm--it's been too many months since the last time I was in one. And, it actually turned out to be a super fun day, talking to one of the scientists who heads up strawberry breeding (yay, science! I asked statistics questions--cause I'm a geek like that), hearing from one of the Driscoll's growers, and spending the day with some of my favorite Bay Area people: Anita, Shauna, Sabrina, and Irvin. As a huge, huge bonus, Kamran flew in from New York for the event and was an honorary Bay Area blogger for the weekend, making me wish for the millionth time that New York and San Francisco weren't so many miles apart.

I discovered this weekend also that when Kamran visits, he comes bearing awesome gifts, like a copy of the brand new, hot off the presses Ripe by Nigel Slater. The morning after I received the book (thanks, Kamran!), I cracked it open and within seconds wanted to do nothing but devour the entire book from cover to cover (which is a wee tad impossible in one sitting, given how monstrous it is!). It is such an utterly beautiful book in every way--the photographs, the typography, the recipes, and the writing. The recipes are incredibly simple and appealed immediately to my Berkeley/Chez Panisse-grown sensibilities of doing as little to good ingredients as possible. And they aren't dry recipes to read, either: studded inside the instructions are small colloquial comments from Slater--like how mixing the dough by hand instead of via a food processor is a rewarding and relaxing experience if you have the time. It's personable and human in a way that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling as you read while most recipe writing these days focuses solely on the mechanical and reads like technical manuals (my own included!).

Anyways, so there I am, entranced by Ripe when I come across a rhubarb chapter and this rhubarb polenta cake. First off, I'm a sucker for any cake that has crunchy turbinado sugar sprinkled on top. I'm also a sucker for any corn-related cake/bread (I sometimes swear I should have grown up in the South). Then, I got really excited because I still had rhubarb leftover from last week to use up, so heck yes I can make this cake! :D Then, thinking about rhubarb got me to thinking about a rhubarb dessert that Chef Johnny Iuzzini had served at Pebble Beach that had adorable tiny coconut meringues on top that went really well with the acidity of the rhubarb, and then thinking about Pebble Beach made me remember how much I craved raspberries after spending time in the Driscoll's berry fields that day.... which finally gets us to the origin of sugared coconut raspberries! (I told you it was sort of a roundabout story, but that's kind of how my brain bizarrely works.)

[click on photo for a larger image]

So these raspberries: between the natural raspberry sweetness and a little extra from a bit of sugar and then the pop of flavor from the coconut, they are pretty hands-down addictive. I started snacking on a few of them and then suddenly, the whole plate was gone! and I had to make more to serve with the cake--oops! I also threw in some toasted coconut chips for a bit of crunch against the raspberries. The cake itself had a bit of crunch, too, mostly from the coarse polenta, which is perfect against the soft center of the baked rhubarb inside. It's a cake that's really nice and moist on its own, too, and didn't need any of the extra rhubarb poaching juices that Slater suggested as a serving accompaniment. Plus--sugared coconut raspberries trump rhubarb poaching juices any day (sorry, rhubarb). :)

Read on for recipe....

Rhubarb tarts with orange-honey fromage blanc

It's been insanely busy here in the studio working non-stop on a big upcoming project that I promise I'll divulge more about soooooooon, so personal desserts that I've been whipping up just for me have taken a turn for the ultra-simple and fast. But of course that doesn't mean they aren't still finger-lickingly good!

I've been waiting so, so patiently for rhubarb to finally hit the markets in my area, so when I at long last saw them at the grocer a few days ago, I pounced. (My apologies to the poor innocent bystanders that I must have trampled in my race to the rhubarb!) Given the mad success of rhubarb in pie form last season, I really wanted to make a rhubarb tart of some sort this year and settled on something super simple and yet surprisingly good: rhubarb puff pastry tarts with orange honey fromage blanc. I love how in the oven, the rhubarb stalks create this bubbling tart filling all on their own, melting into the puff pastry below. There isn't anything else in the tart itself except a dash of vanilla bean and some turbinado and brown sugars to add a bit of rustic sweetness. I served these with dollops of orange and honey-scented fromage blanc on top and a few more drizzles of honey--the tart sourness in the fromage blanc is a really fun alternative to plain old whipped cream, and the orange and honey softens the kick from the cheese. I love simple desserts like this that demonstrate how mixing just a few really good ingredients can make something absolutely divine.

Speaking of news, in all of the Italy excitement, I forgot to say that I'll be at BlogHer Food again this year (in Seattle! Yay!) talking (again) about food photography with Anita Chu of Dessert First. I hope I'll be seeing at least some of you there!


Read on for recipe....

Blueberry Rhubarb Deep Dish Pie

Someone please tell me what day and hour it is because I honestly don't know.  Last week was sort of this whirlwind of get-on-a-plane, get-off-a-plane, give-a-talk, get-back-on-a-plane, get-back-off-a-plane, meet-new-people, get-back-on-a-plane... and rinse and repeat and so on and so forth.  Hence, I have no idea what day it actually is right now!  One moment I was in Scotland, then the next in Manchester (UK), and then in Atlanta (Georgia), and then back in California, and my head is still spinning from it all, and I can't really stomach the thought of another long plane ride, like, ever again.  Or at the very least, for a few months, please I just want to stay in one place and time zone, thankyouverymuch.

Not to say that the trip wasn't incredibly fun.  I love getting away from my daily life every now and then, and even though this was a work-related trip, it still felt like a much-needed vacation.  Shaking up your 'normal' routine is so helpful every now and then, and seeing new places and meeting new people is refreshing after endless daysweeksmonths of the office-home-office routine.

The trip wasn't all work-related though.  I managed to make it to BlogHer Food in Atlanta on my way back from Europe to the West Coast (you know, cause it's, like, totally on the way), and it was so wonderful to meet so many of you in person and to see those of you I've met before again!  The best part of these conferences is being able to put faces to names/avatars, and I always enjoy that.  It just makes the whole blogging community much more human and tangible.  At BlogHer Food, Tami, Aran, and I gave a panel on "Finding your visual voice," during which I myself learned so much from listening to Tami and Aran speak--I just wish it could have gone on much longer because there were so many things to learn and so many great questions to discuss!  For those of you who couldn't make it to BlogHer Food, I believe the audio recording of our presentation should make its way onto the conference website sometime soon, and I'll make sure to let you know when it does.

I'll post more about my trip in the coming week after I sort through my thoughts and photos much more thoroughly--and after my body finally figures out what time zone it wants to be in again!  In the meantime, I came home wanting a simple and down-to-earth dessert, something hearty and uncomplicated to ease myself back into the swing of things (and something to accompany the long hours of wading through my email back-log that's built up over the past week or so).  Pie, for some reason, always fits the bill of the "homey classic."  For the past few weeks, I've been seeing the combination of blueberry and rhubarb together, so I put together this blueberry and rhubarb deep dish pie, with a healthy hint of orange zest and a generous splash of heavy cream. ... and deep dish because you can never get enough fruit into pies.  After eating this one--sweet, straightforward, bursting with blueberry flavor and a dash of rhubarb tartness, I have to say that I'm liking the blueberry+rhubarb (aka: "bluebarbberry") combination much better than the classic strawberry+rhubarb!  For some reason, blueberry+rhubarb just hits the right balance of sweet and tart and juicy for me in a way that strawberry+rhubarb doesn't.

One last piece of news:  desserts for breakfast finally has its own Facebook page!  It took a lot of nudging and convincing from friends, bloggers and non-bloggers alike, but now it exists, if that's your preferred mode of keeping up with posts and feeds and news.  So 'like' desserts for breakfast on Facebook!  Also, now that we have this little Facebook-based space, I want to open it up to you readers, too.  Have you made a desserts for breakfast recipe before?  Have you photographed it or blogged about it?  If so, shoot me an email (s [at] dessertsforbreakfast [dot] com) and tell me about it, and I'll share it on the new desserts for breakfast Facebook page.  I'm excited to see what you all have done!  :-D


Read on for recipe....