Better than buttercream

Sometimes, there isn't time to make cheesecake. Or I simply don't want to get every pan in the house dirty and heat up the kitchen. The fruit is piling up and attracting fruit flies. My family is tired of my seasonal fruit obsession, but I know how good it is, and how sinful it is to waste it.

And still that relentless, generous, sweet, epic garden keeps pumping out fruit. Berries, and plums, and now the pears are ripening, and soon the grapes will suddenly change color, and the figs will droop down in that ugly but delicious way they do when they need to be eaten.

 The acid juices are seeping into tiny cuts on my fingertips from the plum pits scraping my fingers as I pit them to go in the drier. My hands are stained with berries and ache from milking and my shins are bruised from leaning into the rungs of the orchard ladder.


I love trees, but I'm tired of getting bits of twig in my hair and spiders stuck to the sides of my face as I harvest. I'm tired to looking down the ladder at the hungry goats hoping a bucket of ripe plums might fall raining down on them.

 Buckets and flats of fruit, as far as the eye can see, and it's boring. I just want everyone to eat it now. I wish I had some shortcake. I wish I had an angel food cake. I want to make the fruit seem special, because it is, but right now it doesn't feel very special.

Meanwhile, the goats' milk keeps coming. I mechanically turn gallons of it into chevre, the very simplest recipe I know. To a gallon of milk, add 1/4 cup buttermilk, a drop of rennet in water, and let it sit at room temperature till it forms a curd. Drain in a cheesecloth bag. That's all there is to it.

David is bringing home boxes of honey. Soon it will be harvest time for that, too, and bees will come looking for the enticing smell. Jar after sticky jar, or if there is enough, buckets and barrels of it.


All I can think about is ordering pizza. I need to get a grip.




These are the times to pull out the mixer and make the best goo on earth. I call it buttercream, because honeycheese sounds a bit weird, and this should be comfort food.


Take chevre, or very dry yogurt cheese. Process, blend or stir to completely soften and break up any clumps. Add honey till it's sweet and completely combined.  I add about 1/3 cup honey per 2 cups of cheese. You could also add up to 1 t vanilla, but I usually don't. I prefer the texture when mixed with a paddle blade in my Kitchenaide mixer.

Chill. Serve. The texture should be velvety smooth, opulent and plush. The flavor should be slightly tangy, floral, milky, and evocative. Whenever we eat this, my son starts speculating on what blue whale milk tastes like. We've heard that it's thick as whipped cream, rich with butterfat and sugars, and makes baby whales gain three pounds an hour. This butter cream evokes such thoughts, but the ingredients are really no more decadent than putting cheese on a sandwich and a few spoonfuls of honey in your tea!

Everybody loves parfait

If it's too thin, it's called cream sauce and I drizzle it over fruit, or add it to oatmeal.

If it's just right, it's called butter cream and one could frost cakes with it. It won't stay perfect for long. It will eventually weep and separate, so don't use it for a birthday cake. This is daily fare, meant to eat now. Mostly we use it as a layer in a parfait, with fruit of any kind, or dip large fruits into bowls of it.

I've never had a batch that was too thick, but maybe you will one day. If you inhabit such a parallel universe, no fears. Add coco powder and call it a truffle.

However it turns out, it is a great emergency dessert. It tastes special without being hard work. There's plenty of work to go around without trying for more!

The harvest season is one of those strange times, when we complain about the things we love the most. I've heard kids do this about video games (Oh, I hate this level where you get stuck trying to rescue the princess) and adults whine about rock climbing and about solving jigsaw puzzles and about weaving in the loose ends in knitting.

When people say they 'hate' some element of a beloved activity, they are searching for some other meaning. Something akin to 'my passion for what I'm doing is being proven  by this most tedious or difficult task.'

In this century and community, it is a privilege and a choice for me to grow so much of my family's food. I know that, and I never regret the choice or compare myself to those who rely on farming without the fallback of a day job. Not just that - the harvest is a time of solemn gratitude, of wonder at the abundance around us. But the sheer work of it does knock me on my backside every time. 

Thanks to butter cream I have a little more backside to cushion the fall!

Shared on:frugal days sustainable ways, gastronomicalsovereignty, spain-in-iowa simple lives Thursday , littlehouseinthesuburbs

Cheesecake from our own goats

By popular demand, the recipe for goat cheese cheesecake, for those times when you have too much of everything.

A dairy goat in full milk can produce more milk than a family of three to drink or pour over cereal. Meggie has been very generous all summer, and we are getting creative. The garden is going full force. We are eating   our fill of fruits and vegetables; though we love it, we sometimes crave a treat. I wanted a dessert that felt indulgent and that  balanced out a dinner of fresh, raw foods.

This cheesecake uses honey, yogurt, cheese, and eggs from the farm. If you have a milk goat and chickens, and are comfortable making yogurt, this is pretty standard fare. But outside the farm, you won't run into this cheesecake. Its texture is denser, less lush, and slightly grainier than restaurant cheesecake. Although still very rich, it doesn't have the creaminess I am used to. I think of it as more like a custard in a graham cracker crust. My friend Sally has her own name for it - maybe she'll post it as a comment.

I apologize in advance that either this dessert tastes better than it looks, or I simply was not creative enough to take a glamour shot of it.

Cheesecake recipe



6 graham crackers
3 tbsp butter
1 Cup chevre or well drained yogurt cheese
1/2 cup yogurt (preferably goat's milk)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp honey
1 or 2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp flour (if using yogurt cheese instead of chevre)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Assemble a spring form pan.

Melt the butter, and crumble the crackers, either by hand or in a food processor by pulsing 8 to 10 times. Mix the melted butter into the crumbs with 2 or 3 pulses. While making this recipe, I noticed that all the other buttons on my processor are new, but the "Pulse" button is worn out. Things tell their own stories, don't they?

Pat the crumbs out onto the bottom of the spring form pan. Bake the crust at 350 for 10 minutes, remove and cool while mixing the filling.

Reduce oven to 300.

While the crust is cooling, wipe the inside of the processor to remove crumbs. Place all the other ingredients in the processor, in the bowl of a mixer, or in a large bowl, and mix well. The flour gives the cheesecake a stronger set - if you use chevre from the store, omit flour for a more ethereal texture.

If you mix by hand, start by stirring the chevre until its well broken up. Then beat in the sugar till fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, then the other ingredients. However I find a kitchen appliance with a powerful motor is a big help with this!

The filling will have a very unpromising texture. It resembles eggnog in thickness, and if it didn't contain raw eggs I'd be tempted to taste it. It's probably yummy. But it looks like it will fail. Don't despair! Remind yourself again that this is sort of like custard.

Pour the mixture into the spring form. Place a cookie sheet on the bottom of the oven in case it drips, and slide the pan onto the middle rack. Bake 45 minutes and test. The center should jiggle like gelatin when you gently tilt the pan, but not slosh. A knife inserted in will displace the filling but should not come out clean. It should still be quite tender. If it's too gloopy, put it back for another 5 minutes, check again and repeat as needed.

Allow it to cool fully, then refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving. (Author's note - this never really happens. It's actually fine after an hour). Unmold the spring form, and set the bottom out on a plate.

You can top this with fruit or jam. Quince paste is one of our favorites, but it's pretty good on its own, too.

Tonight we are serving slices with a choice of blueberries, raspberries or blackberries. It's a very substantial dessert, almost like a second dinner. Late summer at Several Gardens Farm feels pretty good.

Harvesting the hazels

You need to stop reading this and go outside right now. Find the nearest hazel or filbert hedge, and break off one of the clusters of nuts.

Hazelnut in the husk

If you live in the Pacific northwest, it won't be hard to find one. Any planting with trees and shrubs probably has a few. If you live elsewhere, you might have to search. That's ok. The journey is what matters, right?


If you don't break of this cluster, the squirrels will in a matter of days, so don't feel too guilty. Of course, don't do anything that will get you in trouble, either!

The cluster of hazelnuts in their cases will be jade green and frilly, a group of lacey collars enclosing green or tan seeds. Put a thumb on the tannest nut, and try to move it. If it roles free from the husk, it's ripe enough to eat, though perhaps not for long-term storage. If not, it doesn't matter for what you are going to do. Peel back the husk instead.

Insert nose here

Now smell the husk, and the green stem of the nut. Isn't it divine? It could be a mens' or womens' cologne, or a laundry product, but it's too pure really for either. It smells like, of all things, spring. Funny in early September.















I have no idea why hazelnut husks smell so wonderful. Maybe to help attract squirrels? Though they consume many nuts, squirrels greatly benefit the few that survive. By dragging them off and burying them, squirrels serve as the distribution system for the seeds, allowing them to grow far from the tree. That is idle speculation, though. Seriously I have no clue. But seriously, they smell great.

We are trying to harvest hazels this year, for the first time. Usually by the time I decide they are ripe, the squirrels have taken them all. This year I am picking them green but loose in the husk. It will be a few weeks before I know if the meat shrivels up and is ruined or if it is edible. Good nut and seed crops are one of the big gaps in production at Several Gardens Farm. We will never meet our caloric needs with our nut crop, but a harvest will help us make at least a few more meals from entirely farm-grown food

Litter of nut husks - a squirrel has been here!

 Note - squirrels leave lots of apparently intact hazels scattered around the lawn. Nearly all are "blanks", hollow  inside. 

It is a total waste of time to gather these dropped seeds and open them.The good ones are either eaten in situ, the empty shells dropping down to form a mulch beneath the plant, or dragged off and  buried, where they will sprout a few years later.

A good nut

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