the dessert that outdid itself: meyer lemon blueberry pastry

over this glorious pastry as it cooled (admittedly near the unpicturesque sinkful of dishes), our friend from India leaned in and cooed, oh, I don’t know what you usually do—but you’ve outdone yourself.

in a sudden fit of late winter, Brooklyn was covered in snow.  it was getting late.  the kitchen fugged with cookery; the laughter of the folks at table in the living room where the Christmas lights are still up at the windows.  the pastry was golden and layered with sunny lemons, smelling of lemons and buttered sugar.

this dessert is the best kind of cooking, ridiculously easy and utterly delectable.   because the Russian bodega on the corner sells frozen puff pastry for a buck o’five thus making the splurge on meyer lemons and grossly out of season blueberries doable.

thaw frozen pastry dough and gently stretch it until it is about a quarter of an inch thin.  I just carefully pull it and stretch it with my fingertips like pizza dough then drape it over a towel covered chair and let it hang out.  Depending on how your pastry comes, you may need to roll it out.  If you make your own, that’s all you my friend and kudos!

melt half a stick of butter over low heat.  When just foaming, turn off the heat and grate in the peel of meyer lemon and about an inch of peeled and minced ginger.  Cut the ends off a fresh, unzested, lemon and slice thinly.

heat your oven to 375°.  On a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, lay out your pastry dough.  Spoon lemon ginger butter over the surface and spread.  Gently fold over each edge of the dough to make a rimmed rectangle of pastry and smooth the seams with your fingertips.  Brush the newly revealed surfaces with butter, and sprinkle the center with brown sugar.  Lay in the slices of lemon, touching but not overlapping.  Drop two handfuls of the best blueberries picked from a pint over the lemons.  Drizzle the whole thing with the remaining butter and finish with a bit more brown sugar.  Bake for 20 minutes to half an hour or until the edges are golden brown and the center cooked through.  Cool enough to eat, slice and serve.

i prepared this before any of the dinner and set it out on our fire escape, putting it in the oven as we sat down to eat, and it was perfectly ready come dessert time.

pineapple upside down cake deluxé

though women’s movements worldwide are local and- with love and care- sustainable, this is the opposite of a local, sustainable recipe.

Pineapple and coconut in Brooklyn? During the icy windy gusts of March? As you know, however, the Radical Muffin kitchen came into all this free fruit and has been generating a bevy of recipes seemingly out of line of the ethics of this collection.

it has been fun to indulge in a few recipes with a retro twist like the pineapple upside down cake below. As one kitchen maven writes, “It is so easy, and it makes everyone feel special.” Serving suggestion: with black patent leather peek-a-boo lady shoes.

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let ¾ cups of butter (1 ½ sticks) and three eggs come to room temperature if refrigerated. Heat the oven to 375º. While the oven is heating, toast a few handfuls of delicate coconut flakes (about ½ a cup or more or less on your love of texture in cake and coconut). Spread them on a cookie sheet and bake for a minute or two. Watch them carefully; they burn quickly.

butter a 9 inch round baking pan with a ¼ cup (½ stick) of butter. Grease the entire pan then break off dabs of butter and place them all around. Some folks line the pan with parchment paper, but I think this is one instance where the outcome is better if you suffer through the clean up of the naked pan. The sugars come to caramel more richly. There is also a camp who prefer glass over metal and those who wouldn’t back in anything other than a cast iron skillet. I used a middle-American non-stick baking pan. Next time I happen across pineapple, I am trying this in my cast iron skillet. (I will also add a few slugs of rum.)

sprinkle ¼ cup of brown sugar evenly over the bottom of the pan. Lay out slices of pineapple to cover the bottom of the pan. The pineapple up-side down cake came into its glory in the 1920s, with the blue and yellow appearance of Dole canned pineapple on the shelves of supermarkets and had a resurgence in the ’50s in the era of canned everything. The machine-cut rings punctuated with bomb shelter strength Maraschino cherries are classic PUC styling.

many recipes call for chunked or even crushed pineapple. I sliced the chunks from the fruit plate and formed a layer of more or less rectangles, sometimes overlapping corners, a little jumbled. You will need about 3 cups of pineapple or one pound; fresh recipes call for a full pineapple. Since they were on hand, I sprinkled blueberries over the pineapple.

triple sift 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour with ¾ teaspoon baking powder and ½ teaspoon of salt, and set aside.

with a large fork or an electric hand mixer, beat 1 cup of granulated sugar into the soft ½ cup of butter. Add the 3 eggs one at a time, beating each one in thoroughly. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and ¾ cup of coconut milk then beat until creamy. Gradually beat in flour mixture until combined.

gently, with a wooden spoon, stir in the toasted coconut. Spread the batter over the pineapple and bake for about an hour and 15 minutes or until the cake is golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Pull the pan from the oven, and cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Run a knife along the edge and invert the cake onto your serving vehicle.

Ciao Bella’s vanilla gelato has been my accompaniment of choice, when I can get a slice to a plate and not just break off pieces with my fingers.