29 July 2009

Double Dessert Recipes!

I haven't posted any recipes lately; this must be remedied immediately.

First we have an upside down cake I made for July 4th, followed by some rich Milo brownies.

For the Fourth of July, I wanted to make something that said summer to me. I remembered to a few years ago when I made an incredibly messy layered pound cake with peach filling. It was delicious but not quite right for this event. Besides the peaches I found at Super J were just about the sorriest stone fruit I've ever met. The whole ordeal made me really want some ripe, warm, perfect Hill Country peaches out of a paper bag. That'll have to wait a week, though. Nevertheless, people enjoyed the cake, especially fellow PCV Ann! This post is dedicated to her.

The spiced peach filling for the upside down cake can work as preserves on its own. You can put it in a sterilized jar for long shelf life, or put it in clean tupperware in the fridge to keep for a week or so.

Super Spiced Peach Upside Down Cake
Cake

3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp sugar
1-2 peaches, sliced into eighths
lemon juice

Preheat oven to 375F.

Sift flour with sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir butter to soften, then mix it with dry ingredients. Add milk and vanilla. Mix until all flour is dampened.

Beat batter 2 minutes medium/300 strokes by hand. Add eggs, beat 1 minute/150 strokes more.

In one greased 8" round pan, pour a little more than 1/2 of the batter.

Heat 2 Tbsp butter and 2 Tbsp sugar in sauce pan until bubbly, pour into second greased 8" round pan. Arrange peach slices on top of this mix, sprinkle with lemon juice. Pour the rest of the cake batter on top.

Bake for 35 minutes, you know the regular cake/toothpick stuff. Let them cool, take a lime.

Spiced Peach Filling
3-5 peaches
1-2 packets of gelatin
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water (maybe a little more)
1-2 dried cloves
1 tsp cinnamon or 1 medium stick
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
orange peel
dash (or two) cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp lemon juice

To skin the peaches, dunk them in boiling water for 30-60 seconds. Let them cool a bit, and the peel should come off pretty easily. Dice them into 1/2" chunks.

Place diced peaches in a saucepan, sprinkle with gelatin, stir over low heat. Add sugar and water. If you have cheese cloth or something like that, tie the clove, orange peel and cinnamon stick in it, and put it in the saucepan. If not, be prepared to fish those out. Add ground cinnamon (if using that), nutmeg, and cayenne. Stir. Let this cook down some, about 15-20 minutes.

Remove from heat, remove clove, cinnamon stick, and orange peel. Add lemon juice, stir. Let cool completely.


COMBINE FORCES!
This works best if the cakes have had plenty of time to rest--I refrigerated mine almost immediately after they came out of the oven, but that made them denser than I would have liked. But chilling or freezing them before assembly is a good idea.

Get your plain cake upside down onto the serving dish. If your pan is greased well enough and the cake has rested and chilled, just pick it out upside down. Spread your filling on top of that, then take your peach upside down cake, turn it upside down, and put it on top. How lovely.


Milo Brownies
Oh my you're missing out if you've never had Milo!
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup Milo powder
1/4 cup flour
pinch salt

Grease medium sized pan, preheat oven to 350F.

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, beat to combine well. In a separate bowl mix cocoa powder, Milo, flour, and salt. Slowly fold in dry ingredients to the wet. Mmm, doesn't that smell good?

Pour into your greased medium sized pan, bake 30-35 minutes, brownie/toothpick fun. I ended up having to leave it in for about 43 minutes, because my dish is deeper than I would like.

Let it cool! Oooh it smells good but let it cool. In fact, after you have some warm gooey brownie goodness, put it in the fridge, and it'll be even better the next day. Milo has vitamins and stuff, so you can pretend it's a good breakfast if you ignore all the sugar and butter in there!

21 July 2009

More work, more play

It seems I'm so busy now that school is out and I'm not going to a different school everyday!

Last week I went to Dennery to finish up the Barrier Analysis surveys (we're officially done with surveys in both locations! Hooray!) with MaryEllen and Haley. I don't exactly enjoy data collection (I'm too introverted to like it, though this is the third time I've had to contact large numbers of people--first was when I worked for the Census a few summers ago, then a year and a half ago when researching for my BA thesis), but knowing that data collection means data analysis is what keeps me going. That step is scheduled two Fridays from today :D

When I got back into Vieux Fort Town that Monday I was just in time to see the VF bands jump in our local Carnival parade. Today (Tuesday July 21st) concludes Carnival season. Several of the smaller Eastern Caribbean islands have staggered Carnival seasons, while Trinidad is the only one with the correct time (just before Lent). This is so that no one loses out on tourists.

One great group of older women started wining in line, and ended up falling down all over each other!

Tuesday and Wednesday last week I volunteered at Camp Lajwa ("Joy" in Creole), a retreat for children with disabilities. Tuesday was for the families in the south of the country, and Wednesday everyone met up (including those from the north that held their regional camp the Sunday prior) at George Odlum Stadium in VF. Honestly I didn't expect to have nearly as much fun as I did, despite the disorganization on Tuesday and the late meals both days. Seriously, it was a great time.

Friday I went with Fae up to the Gros Islet area. We originally intended to go to "Outrageous: Sexy in Black," a Carnival fete that featured all this year's big Soca finalists, a party to last until sunrise. Then we found out that it cost much more than we were previously told, so along with Fae's lifelong friend Tricia we hit up Rodney Bay and the Gros Islet Jump Up (the best time I've had at the Jump Up, with all the top Soca songs thumping until 2. Though I'm sort of sad we missed out on the real Carnival events, we totally had a blast! We got a free round of drinks from a bartender where Tricia sings sometimes, because it was her birthday (for true!).
A couple of their friends joined us, including Jason (a Rasta version of King Julian from "Madagascar"). The best part of the night was when all five of us were piled into Tricia's small SUV, and Jason realized that the CD playing was Jason Mraz. He flipped out--because he loves Jason Mraz so much! Each song he would listen for 30 seconds, and demand the next song be played, "Pull up, pull up!" At the next bar we went to, he went so far as to request Jason Mraz songs be played instead of the typical Soca or Dancehall songs that dominate St. Lucian night life. Just before we took everyone home for the night, a trip to a chicken and fries stand was necessary. While Fae and Tricia stood patiently in line, Jason called out to the server repeatedly "Ten dollars backs, five fries!" Chicken backs are popular here because they're cheap, and as a Rastafarian Jason is a vegetarian, so he was giving the order for the two ladies and himself, of course!

Sunday I went all the way upstairs to my landlady's apartment for her grandson's birthday party. I forgot to get a picture of the card I made for him; I didn't get a gift because I didn't find out until the evening before. Thomas turned 5, and everyone wins!

Great food, delicious tamarind juice (it's my favorite local juice, it has so much flavor), lots of sweets--ice cream and cake of course!
The past couple days I'm just using to wind down and get serious work done on things I've been needing to type up, like my reviews for the IBG Phonic Programme and the After School Programme, both at VF Infant School. This week will be another very busy one, with a meeting tomorrow, minor surgery on Thursday, and an overnight farewell beach bash for EC77 (the PC group before ours). So it was definitely nice to take a couple days to stay at home in cocoa-tea-with-dumplings weather (lots of rain, a small tropical wave) and just watch the final Carnival Jump parade on the local TV stations.

Bonus: Dancing to "Suzette" at Camp Lajwa!

12 July 2009

July, a month of work and celebration

School ended either last Friday or the Friday before, depending on who you are. For me it ended July 3rd, but there are several projects I have to work on organizing regarding school. Another work day to be scheduled, a meeting this week to discuss the afterschool program at Vieux-Fort Primary next year, perhaps a summer camp with the Lions preschool.

In addition to school projects, I've been working on Barrier Analysis interviews in Soufriere and I'll go to Dennery tomorrow to do the same. We're very nearly done with this stage, so analysis is next. That's the exciting part for me. This week I'm also helping out at a summer camp for disabled children.

Of course, you cah have July without fun! Last weekend of course was 4th of July, so 4 PCV cohort groups got together with staff at our Country Director's house for a party.

EC77, 78, and 79 represent, but also EC2! Peace Corps who served here 40 years ago came for a reunion, and we got to learn from each other about how St. Lucia and our service has changed over the decades.

And of course plenty of food!

The next day was Jess's birthday, so she organized a great camping trip. We got to stay in this nice roofed pavillion looking out to the sea.

Andy resuscitated the fire to make homemade pizzas and smores--with graham crackers and Hershey's chocolate (a rare find here)!

On Wednesday I joined Sam and his family, along with Eric, Jeff, and Fae, to tour the brewery down the road from my house. It was pretty neat, and I got a free shirt (plus drinks of course)!

Within the next week and a half I'm looking forward to going to different Carnival events! I'll be sure to post plenty of pictures.