use real butter

Recipe: french silk pie

I was packing a few last kitchen items Tuesday evening when I looked up to see a nice rosy glow on James Peak. It’s been a while since I’ve had the leisure to notice sunset because our time has been sucked up with a project of sorts.

sunset on james peak

Early Wednesday morning, we piled a bunch of stuff, ourselves, two mountain bikes, and the dog into two cars and headed west because we had an appointment at noon. Jeremy took Kaweah in the Outback (Subie) and I followed in the WRX (Roo). He told me later that she faced backwards for the first 30 minutes to see where I was before she settled down for the 4.5 hour drive.

the view from the gas station at copper mountain

road trippin’ through colorado

we closed on a great little place in crested butte!

i celebrated with a raspberry lime fizzy drink avec umbrella

This post is coming to you from the new Crested Butte branch of use real butter! Butter headquarters remains in Nederland (near Boulder), but I’ll be working periodically from the CB office too. We’re still unpacking stuff, but Kaweah really digs the new place and every window has a view of a towering snowy mountain (because we are surrounded by towering snow-capped mountains). So let’s celebrate with some pie – some French silk pie. It’s super smooth which might be why it has “silk” in the name, but if you’ve ever chomped on silk (which I have), it’s got NOTHING on this pie!

am i right?

Start with the crust. I made a chocolate cookie crumb crust. Actually, I originally crushed a bunch of organic chocolate graham cracker bunnies (Annie’s brand), but the color was too light for what I had in mind. Those crumbs went into a bag for later projects and I resorted to an organic Oreo cookie (Newman-O’s). You know the drill, split the cookies open and scrape off the cream filling, then introduce the chocolate cookies to the food processor.

for the crust: organic oreos, butter, sugar, vanilla extract

scrape away the cream filling

combine cookie crumbs, sugar, vanilla, and melted butter

press into a pie plate or baking pan and bake

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pistachio almond cake

Mother’s Day is coming up this Sunday. Don’t freak out or anything. I’m telling this to you now so you can get your act together with a couple of days to spare. My mom called Monday and sternly warned that under no uncertain terms, she would be very very upset with me if I sent her anything for Mother’s Day. She couldn’t see my furrowed brow and sideways scrunched mouth as I looked at the shipping receipt on my desk. Both she and my MIL are getting some amazing Helliemae’s caramels (jasmine and classic salt, if you must know). Hey, at least I listened to her sage advice on retirement accounts when I was 21.

flowers for all of the moms out there, because they make the world a better place

Last month, Courtney posted a photo on Facebook of a slice of cake she had gotten at a bakery. It was an almond pistachio cake with whipped cream and it looked incredibly good. I said as much and she confirmed my suspicions. I have a slight love affair/obsession with pistachios because they have such a beautiful flavor and they are green, which is the best color ever. So of course, I went looking about the interwebs for a good pistachio cake recipe. I died a little bit with every recipe that called for instant pistachio-flavored pudding mix, but eventually I did find one that appealed to me and I thought it fitting to post a cake before Mother’s Day in case you wanted to bake something special for Mom.

kaweah kept creeping around during the shoot

Ultimately, I converged on the idea of two layers of pistachio cake and one layer of almond cake, all frosted with whipped cream. You are welcome to add jam layers, chocolate ganache, soaking syrups (mmm, amaretto soaking syrup!), swap the whipped cream frosting out for buttercream frosting. The point is – make a cake that you (or Mom) will love. The first step for me was to make pistachio paste because I can’t source it easily and I was delighted to find a recipe for it on Ellie’s blog. If you can purchase Love’n Bake’s pistachio paste, that will save you quite a handsome chunk of time.

pistachios, corn syrup, sugar, water

blanch the pistachios and remove the skins (time-consuming task)

blender it all up (actually, I recommend a food processor over a blender)

a beautiful green paste

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: strawberry frozen yogurt

Another week, another snow storm. There was a December a couple of years ago when we had snow storms hit every Friday for the entire month (which was awesome). Except this is now May. Better late than never, I say. And it’s still very awesome! In true Colorado fashion, the big dump snow day always has a sunshiny chaser.

wednesday afternoon

dark-eyed gray-headed juncos clowning around (sequence: 6 photos)

thursday morning in all her glory

I love snow as much as the next gal (okay, more), but let’s be realistic here… come August, I will be whimpering and wilting under the summer sun. I don’t do well with the heat despite having grown up in the wet, hot blanket of southern summers. It’s not even all that hot here in the mountains, but I still shrink from the sun for the fifteen hours of the day it is up in the sky. One of the best ways for me to cope with the heat is to drink a lot of ice water. That can get a little dull after a while, so I like to mix up my cool downs with fruity frozen treats. Ice cream is the obvious choice, but it upsets my stomach. Frozen yogurt, however, doesn’t bother me.

strawberry fro yo: strawberry vodka, sugar, yogurt, lemon, strawberries

You don’t have to use vodka in the recipe at all, but I like to include it otherwise my frozen yogurts and sorbets becomes giant blocks of fruity ice. I use strawberry vodka because I happen to have some in my freezer, but regular vodka works just as well. My initial intention was to use Greek yogurt, but as I approached the yogurt section of the store I saw Noosa, which is my favorite yogurt (made in Colorado!). Noosa doesn’t make a plain yogurt, so I chose the next closest thing which is the honey yogurt. Since it is already sweetened, I reduced the sugar added in the frozen yogurt recipe.

slice the strawberries

add the sugar

and the vodka (if using)

**Jump for more butter**