Forgive me for branching out from lipstick
I have a confession to make: I hate putting on lotion. I know, I know, I'm afraid they're going to take my black card away too. But I'm always in a rush in the morning, and it takes like, two extra minutes to put it all over my body, and then wait for it to dry off enough to put clothes on, and for someone who has gotten her morning routine down to a tight fifteen minutes (thirteen if I'm running late) those extra two minutes make a big difference. Plus, I hate the smell of most lotions -- I would rather control my scent by a perfume of my choice, not add whatever's in that day's lotion. However: I have dry skin and abhor being ashy, so I've had to figure out how to moisturize well despite my hatred for lotion. Enter Lush's Buffy bar. (It used to be called Buffy the Backside Slayer, but they changed the name, I imagine not to get in a legal dispute) You rub it on in the shower, and not only does it moisturize, but it exfoliates at the same time. And while it does have a smell, it doesn't linger so much on your body that you notice it. It's too expensive for me to indulge in it all the time, but it's such a treat when I do.
I've been feeling really off this week about all of the books I'm in the middle of (I'm always in the middle of at least two books at once). They're all either sad or stressful, and there's already a lot of sad and stressful stuff out there in the world, and I'm at one of those points where I can't handle more in my leisure reading. I need a book that just makes me relaxed, and feel like everything is going to be okay, even if it isn't. So I reached for a book I reread at least once a year, Jane of Lantern Hill. If the only Lucy Maud Montgomery (the OG LMM, sorry musicals people) books you've read are the Anne books, you're in for a treat. I love Anne, don't get me wrong, but Jane is a lot less precious than Anne. Jane lives with her mother (a beautiful spineless woman) and her grandmother (one of the great villians of all of literature) in a mansion in Toronto, when she gets a letter from her father out of the blue, demanding her to spend the summer with him on Prince Edward Island. The rest of the book is about Jane about learning to cook, and to enjoy learning, and to stand up for herself, and it's the perfect book to read on a warm summer day, preferably with a tall glass of lemonade and a baked good or two next to you.
I often used to do a thing that I know many people do: do a riff on a recipe, or just make one up, love what I made, and have no idea how to recreate it. After years of this, I finally started writing down more or less what I did when I was making something new that I didn't have a specific recipe for, which has served me very well. Sure, sometimes I write down instructions for stuff that turns out terribly, but who cares, that's what the delete button is for. (I always "write things down" in the notes app on my phone, I probably have thousands of them at this point, this is how basically everything I write has ever started, including my books). I did last week when I was making a birthday cobbler for a good friend, and because it turned out great, you guys will benefit from this. A benefit of this dessert, other than being delicious, was that it took probably ten minutes to throw together, which makes it perfect for any last minute dessert for a dinner party or just for yourself on a summer evening.
Blueberry Cobbler
I know, this is the second blueberry based dessert I've sent you, it's not my fault that blueberries are so delicious, in season, and easy to cook with! But this would absolutely work with other berries or stone fruit, just cut stone fruit into smallish chunks and proceed. I got the two halves of this recipe from here and here (when I made it, I reduced the fruit and only did 4 cups of blueberries and less sugar etc., but next time I'm going to use the full 6 cups).
For the cobbler topping:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
8 tablespoons or 1 stick of cold butter, cut into small cubes
3/4 cup buttermilk
Preheat the oven to 350. Mix together all of the dry ingredients, then rub the butter in with your fingers until it's mostly integrated. Pour in the buttermilk, and stir until it's a coherent dough. I baked this at my friend's house, but to make it easy to throw together there, I mixed together all of the dry ingredients at my house in a plastic container -- you could even use a plastic baggie for this -- brought the stick of butter and a mason jar with buttermilk in it to her house, and combined everything when I got there.
For the fruit:
Six cups of blueberries
1 cup of sugar
3 tablespoons of flour
zest of half of a lemon, juice of all of the lemon
Mix together all above ingredients in a bowl, and pour into an 8x8 pan. Grab golf ball sized chunks of dough, pat them into circles, and put them on top of the fruit. Bake for 50 minutes, let cool for about 10 minutes, eat with vanilla ice cream.
Have a great weekend, everyone! Feel free to forward this to a friend if you think they'd like it, and pre-order my book (there, or anywhere else books are sold) if you think you'd like it!
Jasmine