Autumn Leaves Cake

For Thanksgiving, I was in charge of making a cake. So I made a Chocolate Almond Flour/Meal Cake, and then went to town decorating it.

I used the Wilton Leaf Tips #67 and #352. The Green leaves are #67 and the Red and Yellow/Orange leaves are #352.

Fresh Garden Tomato Salsa

I have a little garden in our backyard that is producing a massive amount of tomatoes. My plum tomato variety plant is going crazy. So I made salsa tonight with the tomatoes.

What you need:
Recipe
3 plum tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup each packed fresh cilantro and parsley
1 green onion, chopped
2 jalapeño peppers
juice of 1/2 a lime
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper

Put tomatoes, lime juice and green onions in a bowl. Either chop the cilantro, parsley and jalapeño peppers really fine with a knife, or use a food processor. I have a mini hand-held food processor which works great. When chopping the jalapeño peppers, chop them so they are still in chunks.
Add the oil, pepper and salt, and stir.Serve with tortilla chips.

Layered Blackberry-Bluebery Crisp

I found this recipe in The Joy of Blueberries: Nature's Little Blue Powehouse by Theresa Millang. I love this book. It tells you how to grow blueberries, pick blueberries, and most of all, tons of recipes.

The recipe's tag is "A flavo[u]rful graham cracker-layered blueberry crisp." Well, I don't have graham cracker crumbs, but I had a bunch of Oreo baking crumbs. So I modified it. I also added blackberries to it. Both the blueberries and blackberries are farmer market fresh, so I was pretty stoked about it.

What you need:


Recipe (with adaptations)

2 cups Oreo Cookie baking crumbs (called for 1 cup graham cracker crumbs)
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

5 cups fresh blueberries and blackberries (mixed)

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves (or roughly 4 shakes)
1/2 teaspoon salt (kosher salt)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons water

First, mix in bowl first three ingredients. I found that 1 cup wasn't enough, so I added another cup.
Press 1/3 of the mixture into the bottom of a 2 quart baking dish. (I sprayed it with baking spray - 2 seconds, and then used a paper towel to spread it around.) Sprinkle 2 cups of mixed berries over the crumbs.

Mix brown sugar, spices and salt together, and stir in vanilla. Sprinkle 1/2 this mixture over the blueberries. Then sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of water.Repeat layers, with 1/3 crumb mixture, remaining berries, brown sugar mixture and lemon juice/water. Top with remaining crumbs.
Cover with tinfoil and bake 40 minutes in a 350 F oven. Increase temperature to 400 F and bake another 10 minutes.