A Deliciously Simple Jam Crostata for Fall

Summer overstayed its welcome this year.  It just wouldn't end.  Even now, as the cool undertones in the breeze whisper "fall", summer is struggling to stay just.. a.. little.. bit.. longer.  This is why I had to buy the dozens of late summer yellow peaches.  It simply just hit me, when I saw the pears and apples crowding the market stalls, that summer would eventually loosen her grip and I'd have to wait another year to make my jam.  So you see, I had to buy the peaches.

Luckily I found a good use for my pantry of jam (my jamtry if you will...)  You can use a combination of flours for the crostata crust.  It is delicious with a traditional buttery all-purpose flour crust.  I like addition of almond flour, the crumbly texture balances out the the chewy jam.  If you find  the crust too sweet for your taste, try using a more acidic jam or marmalade.  The Blue Chair Jam always balance out their fruit recipes with a good amount of acid so for me, the peach jam was delicious and not too sweet.

End-of-Summer Yellow Peach Jam//recipe from Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

Now for the recipe-

Jam Crostata for Fall

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup almond flour

3/4 cup cane sugar

1/2 tsp. baking powder

Small pinch of sea salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter

3 eggs, separated (save the whites for later use)

12 ounces of jam or marmalade

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees and butter a 10 inch tart pan.  I used a slightly smaller 8 inch tart pan for this recipe because I like a thicker crust and having extra crumble topping to use for other desserts later in the week.  If you prefer yours to be thinner, use the larger pan.
• In a food processor pulse together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter until the mixture is crumbly and resembles soft sand. Add the three egg yolks and pulse until mixture just begins to hold together.  Press 3/4 of dough mixture into your tart pan.  Reserve the remaining mixture.  This is your crumble topping.  There is no need to blind bake the crust first.
• Spread your jam of choice over the dough.  Be sure to go all the way to the sides.  The parts touching the pan turn out chewy and good!
• Sprinkle the remaining crumble mixture on the top and bake for 30-40 minutes.

Crostata Crust//photography by Amuse Me

Jam Crostata//photography by Amuse Me

Welcome Fall, Another Sale

We are excited to welcome Fall with 35% off all of our Adult and Children's reversible Apron styles.
Children's Aprons, originally $45.00 are now $35.50 and Adult Aprons, originally $65.00 are now on sale for $45.50.  As always we offer $6 flat rate USPS shipping on all orders.

Happy shopping and let's get cooking!

Only 4 days left to shop the sale! We still have a few pantaloons left at 50% off.

Flash Sale happening now at Amuse Me Shop

Exciting things are happening in the shop this month.  We are clearing the decks to make room for our new Fall Basics Collection.  This means that all of our cheerful pantaloons need to find good homes.  Shop all styles and sizes now for 50% off through October 1, 2014.  Click here to visit the shop or click on the image below.

Midsummer Sale!

Waterfall Bagging in Oregon

It has been said that the road trip is a right of American passage.  For some it is the thrill of endless possibility, the rush of the open road and a pervasive sense of freedom.  For others it is literally Hell on wheels.  Visions of being cramped in a car, with endless miles of road, each more or less indistinguishable from one another, took me back to the days of driving across the country with my family.  We would drive for hours on end without stopping.  Bathroom breaks and were frowned upon and McDonalds was mandatory.  With this in mind, I hoped that this trip might just heal my childhood cross-country trauma.

As we traveled a definite theme emerged without any planning at all.  We knew that Oregon was home to several fantastic waterfalls, after all we HAD done our research well.  What we didn't realize was how addictive "waterfall bagging" can be.  After a few days or driving around central Oregon we'd already bagged 7 beautifully photogenic falls and all we could think of was finding just one more.  Just when we'd thought that we'd seen the most beautiful one, another would surpass it and we would have to amend our rating scale once again.  By the end of the month (aided by a drive to "Waterfall Alley" near the Columbia Gorge) we'd bagged our 17th one.

Here are a few of our favorite ones.  By the way, hiking to them made them that much more spectacular so some of our choices are most definitely influenced by the effort exerted to reach them.

Bridal Veil Falls on the Historic Columbia River Scenic Highway.  An easy 1 mile round trip hike to this small but lush rainforest falls that empties into the Columbia River

Tokatee Falls is one of the most famous in Oregon and we agree that it is spectacular. 1 mile roundtrip.  It was at the end of a very long day for us that started in Crater Lake, so we didn't take as long as we would have liked here.

The two-tired falls are fantastic but we were more excited by the two bowl shaped pools at the top of the basalt falls.

Elowah Falls was a hidden gem.  We hiked a bit further to get to it but who cares when you are hiking through rainforest, lush with green and wildflowers booming all around you.  The falls had a distinctly Hawaiian feel to them and were very peaceful.

Our Chow thought so too.

The last falls that I will share with you are Salt Creek falls in the Willamette National Forest.  It is the second highest waterfall in Oregon and a great starting point from which to explore more falls.

Drawn in by the name Too Much Bear Lake, we went on to Diamond Creek Falls from here and hiked through thickets of rhododendron loaded with blooms and buds.  We were the only people on the trail and enjoyed the many bridges and streams along the way.

Without question the best road trip yet...and not a McDonalds in sight.

#Oregonorbust, Let the adventure begin

After the initial excitement of picking our spring family road trip destination cooled, we realized that Oregon, although much smaller than our own California was still an ENTIRE state and without family to stay with or knowing the area very well,  we still needed to pick a town as our home base from which to explore.

After an attempt to do research on the internet and being inundated with information and destination reviews that held no context for me, I needed to get my bearings. I decided to take a less tech savvy approach.  I went to the bookstore for a huge road atlas, an old school folding map (that I can finally fold properly)  and some good guidebooks, the kind you can highlight, dog ear and stick general within reach items into to mark a must see attraction.

Books in hand, we read everything. Anything that even remotely interested us, we highlighted on our map.  Lonely Planet Pacific Northwest's Best Trips gave us day trip ideas for the whole state and our  Moon handbook for Oregon helped to fill in the planning details. 

We decided early on that renting a house made the most sense for us. We would be there a month and a dog friendly home would gladly accommodate our furry traveling companions, but where to go?   What if we chose somewhere  far from the places we wanted to visit?  We wanted to be remote but what if that meant we were 20 miles from a grocery store?  We were about to be rewarded for our efforts though, our abundantly highlighted map would tell us tell us clearly where we needed to be. There at the epicenter of the neon pink ink, would be our answer.  There was only one problem.  We had two answers.  It was very clear that we had a number of attractions on our wish list to see along the coast and an even great number in central Oregon.  

So we did both, allocating three weeks to Central Oregon where we found a great house on the river in La Pine (near Bend) and a week in Florence on Mercer Lake.  Our drive to our first destination in La Pine was a long one, so we found a third house in Jenner just north of San Francisco, to help break up the drive.

Houses booked, bags packed, bikes, paddle boards and animals loaded, with our now well work guidebooks and maps and Oregon playlist set to go, our adventure was ready to begin...