Hot Hot Hot: White Sangria Popsicles

-Tasty popsicles with booze and summer fruit.-

It's so damn hot this week I could wring myself out and fill a kidding pool with sweat. That's not too much of an exaggeration, mind you. It's been reaching the triple digits here with enough regularity that you could cook an egg to it (and probably do it on the sidewalk).

The new house has good insulation and trees so high they provide excellent shade, and while I worry that they may snap and crash into the roof one day during a winter windstorm, that's a disaster I'll worry about later. For now, shade. Glorious shade. It keeps the house under 85 degrees for the most part, which isn't too bad.

Now, we were going to do some other energy saving tricks to keep the heat down. We had glorious plans to install an attic fan to suck all the stale heat out from above, and two ceiling fans in order to move cool air around inside. Sadly, these plans were dashed when we first turned on the original furnace.

Blueberry & Sour Cream Coffeecake

A friend of mine has a small green house where she recently coaxed a bushel of blueberries out in the very early throes of March. Amazing, no? So when she offered me some, there was no way I was going to turn her down. Blueberries are one of my favorite fruits, their deep hues, summer time taste, the memories I associate with them, frenetically popping them into my mouth with such eager gusto. I decided to make some spring-y with them, a sort of baking magic spell to help coax warmer weather in a bit earlier this year.

This is a delicious coffeecake that enchants anyone who tries it. It’s a traditional coffeecake with its delicious cinnamon-brown sugar swirl, but the addition of blueberries gives it a nice burst of fresh flavor.

I know blueberries aren't in season (maybe in Chile) but really, some thawed out frozen blueberries are great, and lend itself to a nice taste of warmer days still to come.

Blueberry Sour Cream Coffeecake
Makes 20 cupcakes / 350 F oven

What You’ll Need…
3/4 cup of butter
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 eggs
1 cup of sour cream
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
Powdered sugar for garnish

What You'll Do...
1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating for 30 seconds after each.

2) Mix in the sour cream and the vanilla extract, mix well.

3) Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Mix into the batter until just incorporated.

4) Fold in the blueberries, being sure not to break or crush them. Roughly fold in the brown sugar and cinnamon, being sure it stays in large swirls of cinnamony-sugar goodness.

5) Spoon into a 13x9 pan which has been lightly greased and floured. Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350F. Allow to cool on a wire rack. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

Variations…

Feel free to switch the blueberries out for other berries. Chopped rhubarb is fantastic in this as well during spring.

A variety of other spices might work here which could allow departure from a traditional coffee cake, such as ground ginger or even a chai spice mix.

How to Prepare a Prickly Pear

Well, the prickly pear is not a common ingredient in most kitchens. Being a cactus fruit, they're quite a bit of work for not a lot of juice, but what you do get its colorful, flavorful and great for cocktails or vinegarette. It doesn't really taste like anything except prickly pear, so until you try it I can't really describe it to you. They're very fresh, can be a bit crisp and, I dunno... old world. It has a sense of history to it; a story you can only let your tongue tell to you.

When picking them out, go for the ones soft to the touch, but not rotting or massively bruised (shop for them like you would for a peach). Unless you are familiar with them, handle them with gloves so as not to get your self with the fine needles. I say fine because they don't so much hurt, but they irritate like hell and you have to tweezer the thousands of small threadlike needles out. Some stores have them pretty well scraped so you may not have to worry, but they rarely get all of them.

To prepare them...
1) Cut off the ends, then make a slit down the vertical length of the fruit.
2) Peel it apart. Think of the fruit like the earth, with a crust, mantle, and core.
Like so: [(O)]
The crust and mantle peel easily off the core, [( O )], leaving you with the seedy core.
3) Cut the core up and press and mash through a fine sieve (maybe process in a food processor first if you want). You want to get out all those inedible seeds. Afterwards, you are then left with the bright pink juice.

The juice is refreshing with a splash of tequila, gives new life to lemonade, or mix with some light red vinegar for a salad dressing. Reduce it for 15 minutes over medium heat for a great sauce for ice cream or as a glaze for pork. I've also heard of people making jam or utilizing the juice or seedless puree for prickly pear ice cream.

Maybe I'll even figure out a cupcake recipe with it someday? Hmm...

Update 3/1/07: I have gotten a lot of questions as where to buy these. Nugget Markets in the Sac and Davis areas seem to carry them. You can also go and pick them yourself if you see a nopales cactus (they're everywhere in California and the Southwest), just be just to handle them with heavy gloves until you have just the core as they won't have been cleaned of the needles like in a market. Some bushes can be found on the UCD campus across from the Chem 194 building and in the UCD Arboretum near the horse stables. Many markets will do special orders, and prickly pears are cheap so you can always go that route as well.