If you’ve ever had a glass of cherry limemade, you know what a good combination cherry and lime can be. I used that combination as inspiration for this Cherry Lime Bread. This quickbread is sweet, and zesty, with flavors that you don’t see too often together. It is moist and tender, with a texture that hints at that of a pound cake.
There are two keys to getting a good result from this bread. The first is to use fresh lime juice. Fresh limes are going to give you the most vibrant flavor. I find that a lot of their tartness is lost when you use bottled juice, so make sure to pick up some fresh fruit to juice to make this loaf. The second is to use a good cherry preserve for the filling. I used Orchard’s finest Michigan Red Tart Cherry Preserves, an all natural cherry preserve made by Smuckers. It’s not too sweet and has a lot of big chunks of cherries it in, adding both a nice cherry flavor and a good texture to the bread. This jam is so tasty that I was tempted just to eat the whole jar on toast (and I did eat a lot of it that way, don’t get me wrong), but I’m glad I ended up putting some of it in this loaf because it went so well with the bright, zesty lime.
This loaf is equally good for breakfast and for dessert. It will keep well for a couple of days, so you can bake it on the weekend and enjoy it during the week – at least, you can enjoy it for the few days that it will last in the kitchen – or bake it a day ahead and serve it during brunch on a Sunday morning.
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One very common phrase in baking is the direction to “bake until just set.” This phrase tends to mean slightly different things for different baked goods, although you’ll see the same instruction for brownies, cookies, cheesecakes and custards.
For cookies, baking until just set means that the edges of the cookie should be slightly firm or dry to the touch and the top of the cookie should no longer look wet. In other words, it shouldn’t still feel like raw cookie dough if you gently touch it with your finger. This instruction is most often given with chewy cookies, or fudgy and brownie-like chocolate cookies where you want to make sure that the finished cookie is not overdone and the amount of browning around the edge does not necessarily give you a definitive result on how done it is.
For cheesecakes and custards, where the term is used even more frequently, it is a little more difficult to determine when something is “just set,” although with a little bit of practice, you’ll be able to spot it very easily. Cheesecakes and custards are never cooked until they are firm. Instead, you need to jiggle the pan slightly and see how the batter moves. It will jiggle slightly and evenly over the whole surface, not just at the center. If you’ve ever made jello and seen how it firms up more quickly at the edges than at the center, use that as a reference because that is exactly how cheesecakes and custards set up – from the outside to the center. So, watch to see that the center doesn’t look significantly looser than the rest of the cheesecake when you give the pan a nudge and you’ll have a cheesecake that is done perfectly when you take it out of the oven.
Cakesicles are popsicle-shaped cakes that bake in a unique pan and, when finished, can be skewered with popsicle sticks to give the cakes (or cookies) you bake with the pan a fun look. Norpro’s Heart-Sicle Pan offers another variation on this unique type of cake. This nonstick pan features heart-shaped molds that are a similar size to the popsicle molds, and the cakes baked in it can be mounted on popsicle sticks and presented in just the same way as the popsicle-shaped cousins. Hearts are good all year round, but they are particularly nice around holidays like Valentine’s Day, as well as during anniversaries and birthdays.
Cookies and brownies hold up very well in a pan like this one because they are sturdy enough to support their own weight when on a stick. Cakes will hold up quite well, too, thanks to the size of the pan. However, for the sturdiest cakesicles you should sandwich two together with some frosting, insert your popsicle stick into the center, then dip the whole thing in glaze or melted chocolate to hold everything in place and rally create a finished popsicle look.
Chicken and dumplings is classic American comfort food. It’s one of those dishes that you just want to curl up with on a cold winter night since it’s hearty, flavorful and can be very easy to make. If you’ve never had it, chicken and dumplings is a lot like chicken soup (very heavy on the chicken) with steamed biscuits floating in it. The chicken and broth portion of the dish already has a comforting, homey flavor to it and adding steamed biscuit dough makes the dish filling and lends a nice buttery flavor to everything.
This version of chicken and dumplings – and you should know that there are as many ways to make this dish as there are ways to make a chocolate chip cookie – is a quick one-dish meal that you can make in less than an hour from start to finish. I start with a whole rotisserie chicken and shred the meat. I make a chicken soup base using onions, carrots, celery, garlic and chicken stock (storebought, but homemade is good if you have it) and add the shredded chicken into it. I make homemade biscuit dough, drop it in small chunks into the boiling soup, then put the lid on the pot and cook everything until the biscuits are soft and tender.
I think that the homemade biscuit dough is the key to this dish. The finished dumplings are so buttery and flavorful, and they even have a bit of a flaky texture to them that you’re not going to get from a can of biscuit dough dropped into the soup. It’s worth noting that you’re not going to get the same kind of rich, buttery flavor from canned dough, either, since most are made with shortening. The dumplings will be done when they are cooked through and fluffy, no raw dough in the center; you will probably have to cut one open to double check and can cook the whole dish a few minutes longer if you need to. It reheats well, but is best fresh!
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