Whole Wheat Berry Danishes

One very delicious blog I follow called Seven Spoons recently posted a recipe for a rhubarb danish. Naturally, I had to begin baking immediately. With no rhubarb in the house, all markets and grocery stores closed, and my beloved rhubarb plant abandoned at our old house (along with my berry patch and perennial herbs - waaaah!) I had no choice but to use the berries in my fridge.

The blogger who created the danish recipe apologizes that it is tricky and time consuming but I didn't have much of a problem. I made a few adjustments and am very pleased!

Whole Wheat Berry Danishes

6 T milk, warmed
1 egg
1 tsp dry yeast
1 drop almond extract
1 heaping cup whole wheat flour
1 pinch sea salt
1 pinch cane sugar
1/2 cup very cold butter or coconut oil, diced up
coarse sugar for finishing

In a small bowl, mix milk, egg, yeast and almond extract together.
In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, sugar and butter together. Cut the butter, using two knives, into smaller and smaller pieces until it's basically lumpy sand.
Pour the wet into the "dry" and mix.
Place in the fridge, covered, overnight.

In the morning, preheat oven to 375.
Place dough on the floured surface and roll into a rectangle. Fold in half, and roll back into the same shape. Fold again and roll, repeat.
Cut the rectangle into 4 equal servings. For each, place a handful of blueberries and raspberries, a pinch of sugar and a dash of lemon juice down the middle line. Alternatively, spread a line of berry jam down the centre. Then, like you're making a soft taco, roll the edge with the berries inside until you have a large cigar shape. Make 3 large cuts along the top, and bend into a barely "C" shape. (This danish style is called a Bear Claw and it reminds me of working at Starbucks.)

Place on a lined baking sheet and sprinkle with coarse sugar. (These have a tendency to stick so buttering the tin foil or parchment may be a good safety net.) Bake until golden (about 20 - 25 minutes).

Yogurt for Breakfast

It has always surprised me that people don't like to eat breakfast.

I go to bed dreaming of what I'm going to eat and wake up ravenous and anxious to get cooking.

It doesn't bother me that thinking of a yummy, healthy breakfast takes some creativity. I usually start with a base of eggs or fruit, or both.

Today Oliver located our stash of frozen berries (dang these easy to reach freezer drawers). From there we added plain yogurt for protein and minerals and probiotics, flax for fibre and fats and maple syrup for sweetness and more natural minerals. The maple syrup my family's batch from this year; you can read about how to make your own maple syrup here.

But that's just one way to do yogurt.

1. Locate your yogurt. For an easy tutorial on how to make your own go here. If you want to buy it look for no added sugar or sweetener and don't get sucked into the fat-free ploy. Go dietary fats go!

2. Fruit. Bananas (+ peanut butter!), apples (+cinnamon!), peaches, pears, raspberries... the list is endless. No, really, check out the Wikipedia list of edible fruits. If that doesn't inspire you, I don't know what will. You can find some really cool fruits at your local Asian grocer; if you live in London check out Super King in the Westmount Mall plaza.

3. Sweetness. My go-to sweeteners would be maple syrup or honey. I also like brown rice syrup, agave nectar, stevia and sucanat. You can read my blog post about sweeteners here.

4. Add ons. As mentioned above, peanut butter and cinnamon are great on yogurt. My addition was flax seed this morning, but chia seeds and hemp hearts are great too. Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds are awesome, as are cashews, pecans and pine nuts. I love cacao nibs in my yogurt. I love allspice in my yogurt. How about some whole-grain cereals? A homemade granola would be wonderful. Go crazy!

If you're not in a yogurt mood, there are plenty of other options for breakfast and once you chose one, let your imagination run wild:
- A breakfast wrap
- Homemade oatmeal
- A smoothie
- A baked frittata
- Fresh muffins

There's totally no excuse for skipping breakfast when these options are at your fingertips. Try one today... or tomorrow morning I guess.

Mini Blackberry-Oat Scones

I have been a die hard devotee of Heidi's recipe feed - 101cookbooks.com - for a long time. But like any blog-fan, I only manage to try the recipes every so often.

Today I knew I needed a scone recipe for the day care that I work as a dietary planner so, so I pulled up her Orange and Oat Scone recipe. I swapped the fruit and made them minis, and they were a huge success.

Mini Blackberry-Oat Scones

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 pint blackberries, chopped
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup coarse sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Combine the flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and pulse 15-20 times or until it looks like sandy pearls. (If you are working by hand, cut the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter.) Transfer the dough to a bowl and stir in the oats and berries. Stir in the buttermilk until just moistened.

Bring the dough together with your hands. If the dough is still too crumbly, stir in more buttermilk a tiny splash at a time, but try to avoid over mixing. After bringing the dough together, gently pat it into small rounds. Cut with an apple corer/slicer yielding 6 small triangles and 1 small-circle (baker's treat) per round. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet with some room between each scone. Sprinkle the tops with coarse sugar. Bake for 10 to 13 minute or until the bottoms are deeply golden.

Makes many, many mini scones.

Wild Foraging

Forage: To wander in search of food or provisions.

It's unbelievable what delicious bounty our city has to offer for free if we'd only look for it. My friend Brad has a secret spot for wild asparagus. A nature hike near my cottage turned up fiddlehead ferns long before I knew they were one of my favourite vegetables. Almost every forest contains copious amounts of rhubarb. And you'll find an unreal variety of edible berries within our city. You can eat dandelion leaves, sorrel and nettle to name a few.

Yesterday I picked a quart of saskatoon berries from a tree outside my work. I ate a few and then made the rest into jam. The only tricks to eating wild edibles are finding them and confirming that they aren't poisonous. Sources tell me that all wild berries with a crown are edible. Typically if I see animals eating them it's a pretty good sign - but a quick check at the library and a test on my lip a few hours before the big chow down is my standard protocol.