Red velvet, white frosting, blue berries.
Photo courtesy Wholesome Sweeteners.

These festive July 4th cupcakes combine popular red velvet cake with red and blue berries and white frosting (cream cheese!) Thanks to Wholesome Sweeteners, purveyors of organic and Fair Trade sugar, for the recipe. It makes 24 cupcakes.

JULY 4TH CUPCAKES: TAKE A BITE OF RED, WHITE & BLUE

Ingredients

*You can make your own buttermilk by adding a tablespoon of lemon juice or distilled white vinegar to milk and letting it stand for about 10 minutes. If you buy a quart, check the bottom of this article for other ways to use buttermilk.

Preparation

1. PREHEAT. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cream the sugar and butter with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl frequently throughout this recipe’s preparation.

2. COMBINE. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until each is fully incorporated. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure even mixing. In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Resift twice, making sure that the dry ingredients are well blended.

3. BLEND. In another bowl whisk together the buttermilk, red food coloring and vanilla extract. Add ¼ of the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and beat on low until just blended; then add a third of the buttermilk mix. Being careful not to overmix. Add another ¼ of the dry mix, then 1/3 of the wet mix, until all are incorporated.

3. BAKE. Place cupcake papers into a cupcake/muffin tin and fill each about 1/2 to 3/4 full with the batter. Bake for 15 minutes, then rotate the pan and bake for another 3-7 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

4. COOL. Allow to cool for a minute or two in the pan, then transfer the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. FROST. Frost with cream cheese frosting. Sprinkle with fresh red and blue berries for July 4th. For Valentine’s Day, dust with cocoa powder or top with a chocolate kiss or other chocolate garnish.

Makes about 2½ dozen cupcakes–depending on the size of the cupcakes, of course.
 
OPTION FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

Use a heart-shaped muffin pan.

Recioe © 2011 Wholesome Sweeteners.

On Saturday we provided fish-buying tips from chef Scott Leibfried of Arch Rock Fish restaurant in Santa Barbara.

Today, Chef Scott provides some fish-cooking tips to turn home cooks into chefs de poisson.
INITIAL DECISIONS FOR COOKING FISH

Olive oil poached salmon, skin off. Here‘s the recipe. Photo courtesy Pom Wonderful.

BREAKING DOWN A FISH

If you like to wield a knife, you can save money by purchasing a whole fish rather than fillets.

There are two groups of fish: round fish (bass, salmon, snapper) and flatfish (flounder, halibut, sole). The different shapes mean different skeletal structure. Chef Scott explains how to break down the more popular round fish:

Ingredients For 4 Servings

1. TURN grill on; you want it to be fairly hot, so the fish cooks quickly. Oil the grill with a cloth: This avoids sticking and breaking.

2. OIL the fillets and season with salt and pepper. Don’t drench the fish with oil, just brush it. Otherwise, the grill may flare up from the excess oil. Place the fillets on the grill and leave them there. Don’t play with the fish; let the grill marks set in.

3. FLIP fish with a spatula once, halfway through cooking. Be gentle: Fish is delicate, unlike a burger or chicken. If the grill is hot enough and oiled correctly, the fillets should neither stick nor break. This, of course, takes practice!

4. COVER and let the fish finish grilling. The process shouldn’t take longer then 8 minutes. The fish will continue to cook when taken off the grill. If undercooked you can return it to the grill (in restaurants they finish it in the oven). But try the undercooked fish: The flavor is more elegant and never “fishy.” The greatest sin is dry, overcooked fish.

5. ADD sauce and serve. Plate it chef-style: Place the fish atop a bed of starch (noodles, potatoes, rice) or green vegetables (kale, spinach, zucchini) and drizzle the sauce around the circumference of the plate.
 
Preparation: Sauce

1. COMBINE onion, garlic and jalapeño in a pan with oil; sweat them over medium high heat.

2. ADD tomatoes, olives, capers, thyme and cilantro.

3. SEASON with salt and pepper.

4. GARNISH with cilantro; or for something more special, fried capers.

 
Chef Scott likes to serve this dish with a sweet potato hash.
 
FILET VS. FILLET

Filet (fee-LAY) is French, fillet (FILL-let) is British. They mean the same thing: a boneless cut or slice of fish or meat.

Serve a sorbet “cocktail” or mocktail, which in its simplest version combines a scoop of sorbet with sparkling wine or ginger ale.
 
You can use spirits, too, and weight the recipe toward either more sorbet or more alcohol.

A sorbet cocktail is an ideal use for “sherbet Champagne” glasses.

Purportedly designed by Marie Antoinette, who had them molded after her breasts, the wide mouth glass is not appropriate for sparkling wine—it lets the bubbles escape that much more quickly.

But they’re just fine for serving sorbet, fruit cocktail and other foods, or this cocktail.

A sorbet cocktail is an easy, delicious and refreshing dessert. Photo courtesy Talenti Gelato.

TIP: Instead of using one flavor of sorbet, you can use mini scoops of two or three different flavors.

Add the alcohol first, then the sorbet, because pouring liquid over the sorbet balls will make them melt faster and diminish the initial appearance of the drink.
 
 
RECIPE #1: SORBET COCKTAIL WITH SPARKLING WINE

Ingredients Per Cocktail

 
Preparation

1. SCOOP balls of sorbet and reserve in freezer until ready to use.

2. POUR sparkling wine into glass. Gently add sorbet ball. Garnish as desired and serve immediately with a dessert spoon.

This recipe uses higher proof spirits (40% A.B.V.) instead of the much lower in alcohol sparkling wine (5% to 7% A.B.V.).

So unless you’re a liquor-loving crowd, dilute the spirit with juice instead of using it straight. Scroll down for an explanation of A.B.V. versus proof.
 
Ingredients Per Cocktail

 
Preparation

1. SCOOP balls of sorbet and reserve in freezer until ready to use. Prepare citrus curls and zest.

Be prepared: Guests may want “seconds.”
 
 
A.B.V. VERSUS PROOF

A.B.V., alcohol by volume, is the percentage of alcohol in any product. Wines typically vary from 10% to 14% A.B.V.; fortified wines like port can have 18% A.B.V. Beer can range from 3.5% to 9% or higher, depending on the style and the brewing process. “Proof” is double the A.B.V. Most spirits are distilled to 40% A.B.V., 80 proof (some are higher, some are lower).

Why is it called “proof?” Beginning in the 1700s until January 1, 1980, the U.K. measured alcohol content in terms of “proof spirit,” defined as a “spirit with a gravity of 12/13 that of water, or 923 kg/m3, and equivalent to 57.15% A.B.V.” The term originated when payments to British sailors included rations of rum.

To ensure that the rum had not been watered down, it was “proved” by dousing gunpowder with it and then testing to see if the gunpowder would ignite. If it did not, then the rum contained too much water and was considered to be “under proof.” Gunpowder would not burn in rum that contained less than approximately 57.15% ABV. Therefore, rum that contained this percentage of alcohol was defined to have “100° [one hundred degrees] proof.” (Source: Wikipedia.)
 
 
FIND MORE RECIPES AND INFORMATION IN OUR COCKTAILS & SPIRITS SECTION and by pulling down the drop down menu at the right.