Peach, plum, and berries crisp

Does anyone not like fruit crisp with ice cream?

Fruit mixture

• About 7 cups of fruit in all ~ chopped peaches, plums, all sorts of berries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 TBS flour

 Crisp mixture

• 1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup granola
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter

• vanilla ice cream

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Butter square baking dish. 

Toss fruit, sugar and 2 tablespoons flour in large bowl and pour into baking dish. Bake fruit until juices bubble, stirring occasionally, about 40 minutes.  Remove from oven. Increase oven temperature to 400°F. 

Mix  3/4 cup flour, granola, and sugar in medium bowl to blend. Add butter and mix with your hands until  moist clumps form. Sprinkle topping evenly over hot fruit in dish. Place onto a heavy duty baking sheet. Should  the juices bubble over as they sometimes do, they will not end up in your oven.

Bake crisp until topping is golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Cool slightly. Serve warm with ice cream.

Rum Cake

This is a slightly altered version of the original Bacardi rum cake.  The glaze has twice the amount of rum originally called for.  

Although I don't like to use cake mixes (or anything prepared), I cave in every once in a while.  This cake is delicious and moist, full of rum flavor, and will actually get better as the days go by. 

Ingredients:

Batter:

1 package yellow cake mix 

1 package Instant Vanilla Pudding (4 servings size)

½ cup cold milk

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup dark rum
4 eggs

Glaze:

1 stick unsalted butter

¼ cup water

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup dark rum

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Generously grease a 10 cup Bundt pan with butter or shortening, and dust with flour.
   
   Batter:
2. Sprinkle the nuts over the bottom of the prepared pan.
   
   
3. In a large bowl of an electric mixer, combine cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, water, milk, vegetable oil, and rum; beat until thoroughly mixed. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula so the mixture blends evenly. Spoon the batter over the nuts and smooth the surface with the back of a large spoon.
   
   Bake:
4. Bake 1 hour or until a long toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place pan on a wire rack to cool. Do not remove from pan.
   
   Glaze:
5. In a small heavy saucepan over low heat, melt the butter. Stir in water and sugar; bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes stirring constantly so mixture does not burn. Remove from heat. Stir in the rum.
   
   
6. Use a long toothpick or skewer (I use a knitting needle)  to poke several holes in the cake. Slowly pour the warm glaze over the cake in the pan, and allow to soak in. Invert onto a  plate.  I like to serve it with rum raisin ice cream and a dollop of whipped cream.  Decadent!

Summery Blueberry Cake

from the Smitten Kitchen blog,
http://smittenkitchen.com

Cake
2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt
1 cup (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk
4 cups blueberries


Glaze
2 cups powdered or confections’ sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, very, very soft
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Generously grease a 10-cup Bundt pan, either with butter or a nonstick spray. Sprinkle with a little flour.  Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk or sift 2 1/2 cups flour (leaving 2 tablespoons back), baking powder and salt together and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer or large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and lemon zest until light and impossibly fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Then, with the mixer on a low speed, add your eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl between each addition. Beat in vanilla, briefly. Add 1/3 flour mixture to batter, beating until just combined, followed by half the buttermilk, another 1/3 of the flour mixture, the remaining buttermilk and remaining flour mixture. Scrape down from time to time and don’t mix any more than you need to. In the bowl where you’d mixed your dry ingredients, toss the berries with the remaining 2 tablespoons of flour. With a silicon spatula, gently fold the berries into the cake batter. The batter will be very thick and this will seem impossible without squishing the berries a little, but just do your best and remember that squished berries do indeed make for a pretty batter.
Spread cake batter — you might find it easier to plop it in the pan in large spoonfuls, because it’s so thick — in the prepared baking pan and spread the top smooth. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, rotating the cake 180 degrees after 30 (to make sure it browns evenly). The cake is done as soon as a tester comes out clean of batter. At 10 minutes before my baking time was up, a tester was totally wet with batter and I was certain it would never be done in the estimated time. 7 minutes later, the same tester was clean as a whistle, so fret not.
Set cake pan on a wire rack to cool for 30 minutes, before inverting the cake onto a serving platter to cool the rest of the way. Cool completely. Once cool, whisk together the powdered sugar, lemon juice and butter until smooth and very, very thick. (If you’d like it thinner, add more juice, but I like the thick drippiness of it, seen above.) Spread carefully over top of cake, letting it trickle down the sides when and where it wishes. Serve at once or keep it covered at room temperature for 3 to 4 days.