Thursday, February 11, 2010

Cranberry Coffee Cake

Several people asked me for the cranberry coffee cake recipe so here it is: Yes it does have 3 1/2 sticks of butter!


Cranberry Coffee Cake
From: Melissa Carr and Cuisine

For Struesel-
½ stick unsalted butter
2/3 cup flour
1/3 cup toasted pecans
1/3 cup dried cranberries
¼ cup sugar
2 TBSP orange zest

For Cake:
1 cup fresh cranberries
2 ¼ cup sugar divided
Zest of ½ - 1 orange
2 cups flour
1 tsp each salt and cinnamon
½ tsp baking powder
4 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
3 sticks unsalted butter softened


Preheat oven to 350 and coat a 9 inch square pan with cooking spray. Line pan with parchment so it hangs over edges and spray again.
Melt ½ stick butter and stir in all streusel
Pulse fresh cranberries, ¾ cup sugar and orange zest in food processor; set aside. Whisk together flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder in a bowl. In another bowl whisk together eggs and egg yolk; set aside
Using a hand mixer cream 3 sticks butter and 1 ½ cups sugar in large bowl
Add flour mixture and egg mixture alternately to butter mixture beating well after each addition. Transfer half of batter to pan; top with cranberry mixture and then top with remaining batter. Use a knife to swirl batter and cranberries. Top cake with streusel
Bake 55 – 60 minutes..

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Unit 5 revisited

OK, better late than not at all. I have subscribed to more than three newsfeeds and I am completing Unit 5! Thanks to Elinor and others who pointed the way to the great food sites I have subscribed and I am enjoying the information from:

http://www.orangette.blogspot.com/
http://www.bakingandbooks.com/

I also subscribed to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BubbleRoom
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibraryJournalNews

In addition, I subscribed to the Tribune and Missourian just in case I don't have time to read the papers at home.

I think all of these will keep me busy for a while.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Bibliocommons!!

Congratulations to Pat and everyone that worked on this exciting new product! Our patrons are going to love it. It was so very easy to place a hold that I was concerned I had not actually placed the hold--but Bibliocommons let me check my account in one key stroke and my hold was placed. I also enjoyed reading the reviews by several of the staff. It was fun to see who had read what I was just finishing and what they thought. I still think the main downside is that people are going to spend so much time on the catalog that their families will complain--it is too fun.