The Calm Before the Storm: A Snippet of Coconut Crumpet's Life

The clouds move in and summer moves out. It's the Sunday summer leaves Vancouver, wind, rain, lightening and thunder take its place. Back to living in Raincouver...

Honey Roasted Mission Figs

To contrast that gloomy mess outdoors, I discovered a new favourite treat. I've documented my love of ricotta in pancakes and muffins, and my first box of mission figs. Combine the two in an open-faced sandwich, add a drizzle of honey and there you have it, the most classy breakfast ever. Here are some more detailed instructions:

Ricotta, Honey, and Fig Tartine

To roast figs, place them cut-side up on a baking dish, drizzle with honey, add a few cracks of freshly ground pepper and bake at 400˚F for about 15 minutes. Toast a slice of bread until brown. Spread ricotta cheese over one side, taking care to spread all the way to the edges. Drizzle with honey (or mix the honey in with the ricotta before spreading on bread) and top with roasted figs. Bake at around 400˚F until ricotta cheese is browned (about 15 minutes?). Don't be impatient like me and take it out the second a browning spot of ricotta appears. Good things come to those who wait ;)

Whole Wheat Ricotta Peach Scones

After a hectic morning of teaching Sunday school to the cutest grade ones and twos, and a roll of kimbap for lunch, I kept myself occupied in the afternoon by baking up a batch of scones. Whole wheat ricotta peach scones. It's the first batch of scones I've made at home where cutting the dough into shapes was possible. For some strange reason, whenever I make scones at home (yes, it only happens at home), the dough becomes so runny I am forced to make drop scones instead. They don't taste bad at all, but it's frustrating when everyone else can cut their dough into different shapes and mine always end up being circular mounds. I am not super content with the outcome of the scones; they were a bit too greasy and not sweet at all. I'll do a few tweaks to improve the recipe before I post it. For those that are itching to try these scones themselves, I followed the recipe from Smitten Kitchen but used frozen coconut oil instead of butter, milk instead of heavy cream, and added some meyer lemon zest (makes all the difference). I think an egg wash would really benefit the appearance of these scones and some vanilla or almond extract for an extra flavour boost. The glisten you see on my scones is from a drizzle of honey I added at the end and attempted to caramelize under the broiler.

Before the thunderstorm, and where I do my food photography

So this is how Coconut Crumpet usually spends her weekends, that is when there isn't any homework to be done. We'll be watching the rain fall for the next half a year... Although the chilly season brings bad weather, I am looking forward to eating mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival (it's actually before the Autumn Equinox...) this week and pulling out those large cans of pumpkin puree I've been storing in the basement since Christmas. I have a perfected pumpkin loaf to share with you all. It's one of my faaaaavourites! Time to dig out my rain boots and that black peacoat I'm known to wear all autumn and winter long.

Love from Coconut Crumpet's Corner ♡