Happy May Day! My middle sister spent her college years at a small Seven Sisters school known for both its academic rigor and its fondness for Anglophile-ish, slightly archaic traditions (lots of teas there). On May 1st, the president of the college would ride into campus on a white horse, and students wore flower crowns and white dresses and sang hymns to the May before having strawberries and cream for breakfast.

White horses, sadly, do not have full representation in my part of Temescal. But the strawberries from just south of here are finally starting to get sweet (all that rain delayed the season somewhat). If you look, you can probably find some rhubarb, too. Any new kind of fruit is very welcome right now, during this season when the weather feels like spring but winter's kales and citrus are still hanging on.

Rhubarb

Remember that rainy scene in the beginning of Animal Vegetable Miracle, when author Barbara Kingsolver, in the first week of her locavore experiment, is despondent at the thought of returning home to her banana-less household with no fruit? Drenched by a spring downpour, she splashes through the farmers' market and is rewarded at last with a beautiful bundle of red-stemmed rhubarb.

Unless you're a gardener and an old-fashioned pie-lover, you've probably never seen rhubarb growing, and you might not recognize it even if you did. A perennial plant, it forms a low, leafy mound, with wide spinachy leaves the size of a hat. Look under the leaves and you'll see long, reddish stalks coming up from the ground. Grip one firmly and pull it out. Trim off the mildly toxic leaf, and there you have it, a sour, sour stalk of what used to be called pieplant.

Still, it doesn't take much sweetening to bring out its lovely tangy fruitiness, one that matches incredibly well with both strawberries and orange.

Lots of recipes tell you to put the rhubarb through all sorts of elaborate machinations before putting it in the pie. What a bunch of, well, rhubarb! Just cut it up, toss it with sugar and a little cornstarch, and you're on your way to pie heaven. The only caveat is that rhubarb contains a lot of water, which the sugar will pull out, so you want to make your filling just before you're ready to bake your pie. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of small pieces of fruit floating in a big puddle of syrupy liquid.

Don't go overboard with the cornstarch; being juicy is one of this pie's homemade charms. Vanilla ice cream is the perfect accompaniment.

Because this is a very juicy pie, it's good to use a lattice crust to let the steam out. Yes, making a proper lattice does take some concentration and a little finger-dexterity, but I find the few minutes' effort to be well-rewarded by the amazement this fancy-pants basket weave inspires. If, for some smart reason, your utensil drawer contains a little crinkled-edged pastry or ravioli wheel, now's the time to use it. It will make your pie crust look incredibly 1950s-cute.

So, this is how you do it: Lay your longest strip of dough across the middle of the pie. Then lay another long strip crosswise across the middle. Lay another strip down next the first. Then lay down another crosswise strip, only weave it under the first strip and over the second one. Keep doing this, alternating vertical and horizontal strips, lifting the strips as necessary to get that cute under-and-over pattern. If your strip breaks, just jam the pieces back together or hide the broken parts under another strip.

You can make this either as one pie or six three- to four-inch tarts. In order to get the right crust-to-fruit ratio, I would use tart pans or ramekins that are at least two inches deep.

Kara's Cupcakes, Strawberry Cream

I never really got caught up in the whole "cupcake craze." Magnolia? Sprinkles? Meh. I've always been more of a cookie gal myself. Or cheesecake. Yeah, cut me a fatty slice of cheesecake any day.

But that's just me. I knew my guests visiting from out of town would go ga-ga over Kara's Cupcakes, and it would be the perfect pick-me-up as our sightseeing brought us to Ghirardelli Square.

Because who can choose just one?

Jennifer proceeded to purchase a dozen cupcakes…because who could choose just one? I was pretty blasé about it all…until the Strawberry Cream filled cupcake rocked my world.

Strawberry Cream Dream

The Strawberry Cream is one of Kara's seasonal flavors, and is only available until August (So go get one now! Seriously, go. Now.). It is a vanilla cupcake filled with organic local strawberries and cream, and topped with a cream cheese frosting. Yom!

So what about this particular cupcake converted this disbeliever?

1. The cake was surprisingly moist, and incredibly light. Like sweet, delicious fluffy clouds. Maybe that's the key. This cupcake is baked by angels.
2. The filling. Real strawberries and cream. It was like biting into a bit of unexpected sunshine.
3. Cream cheese frosting. Always a win in my book, and in this case, even more so. Not too dense, but still appropriately decadent, and a great play on the classic strawberry jam/cream cheese combo.
4. Apparently, if you slice it in half, the revealed filling and fondant decoration looks like a strawberry! How precious is that?

This cupcake was unreal. Like grandma's strawberry shortcake, but better, and in adorable cupcake form.

Other cupcakes of note: Sweet S'mores, a chocolate cupcake with graham cracker crust and toasted marshmallow frosting; Fleur De Sel, a chocolate cupcake with caramel filling, dark ganache frosting and fleur de sel; and Chocolate Velvet, a chocolate cupcake with a mound of velvety bittersweet chocolate buttercream.

Kara's proudly states that they continue baking throughout the day so they can offer cupcakes that have been baked within hours, if not minutes, for your enjoyment. I believe it. They are amazingly fresh and absurdly delicious. I see why they have such a following in all five of their Bay Area locations.

So, am I about to go on a cupcake bender? Probably not. (Besides, from what my pilates instructor tells me, Kara's reigns supreme. She holds a horizontal cupcake tasting of all the cupcake shops in the area, and she says Kara's wins hands down every year. It's not even a contest anymore.) I do, however, have a whole new respect for the Cupcake, and Kara's will be seeing me again, at least once, before the Strawberry Cream goes out of season.

Kara's Cupcakes, Ghirardelli Square

Kara's Cupcakes

Ghirardelli Square -- San Francisco, CA
Plaza Level
900 North Point
San Francisco, California 94109
415-351-CAKE (2253)

Marina -- San Francisco, CA
3249 Scott Street (at Chestnut)
San Francisco, California 94123
415-563-CAKE (2253)

Town & Country Village -- Palo Alto, CA
855 El Camino Real, Suite 50
Palo Alto, California 94301
650-326-CAKE (2253)

Santana Row -- San Jose, CA
3055 Olin Avenue, Suite 1010
San Jose, California 95128
408-260-2222

Oxbow Market -- Napa, CA
610 First Street, Suite 19
Napa, California 94559
707-258-CAKE (2253)

Steph Squared Cafe: Stephanie Rosenbaum and her wares at the InDIYpendent Culture Faire. Photo by Stephane von Stephane

Total strangers--pleasant people all, I'm sure, but still, to me completely unknown--are waking up this morning and starting their day with jam from my kitchen. Lemon Lady Marmalade on their scones, perhaps, or Citrus Commotion on their whole-wheat toast, perhaps a little Strawberry Beautiful stirred into their goat-milk yogurt.

Before, you had to know me pretty well to score a jar of jam. I made my jams and jellies in very small batches, often from backyard or foraged fruit (blackberries from China Beach were a particular favorite), and bestowed them on holidays and birthdays to family and a few select pals. I wasn't above snooping through the recipients' cabinets a few months later; if the jam was still there, dusty and unopened, they were off the list. There were too many other people (mostly my blood relations, but still) who inhaled the stuff and promptly returned the empty jars, nudging for a refill.

But what Moliere said about writing is just as true for jamming: First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money. After the second Underground Farmers' Market, I had to send a rather abashed note to my circuit of jam fans. "Remember that jam I gave you for Christmas? I hope you liked it, because there isn't any more. I sold all the rest to strangers. For money."

This week's foray into jam-commerce was a fun and funky one, the first-ever InDIYpendent Culture Faire up in Napa. Organized as a benefit for local arts organization Wandering Rose, the Faire is a two-day event continuing today from noon to sundown. On a small-town scale, it's part Burning Man, part Maker's Faire, part all-ages, hands-on, anything-goes art class.

Just look for the spray-painted signs and the skate park set up on one side of the parking lot, next to a taco truck (a real one, not a hipster-ironic one) doing a brisk business in tortas and carne asada burritos.

Along the walls of the old furniture warehouse there were murals being painted, a bike-repair workshop in progress, a local community garden demonstrating easy backyard composting with buckets of leaves and lawn clippings, a guy drawing an elaborately detailed eight-foot-tall Egyptian mummy in colored chalk, and loads of spray-paint, chalk, and markers to share. A girl in a top hat, looking like Emily the Strange, dreamily marked a pentagram in blue chalk by the entrance. Another pair of girls chalk-traced the outlines of their sneakers, writing "Have Fun!" with an arrow pointing inside, and "No Fun" with an arrow pointing away.

Inside, a dozen tables were loaded with art supplies from feathers and tissue paper to paints, markers, crayons, and ink stamps. A woman sat on the floor in one corner, gluing scraps of cardboard and colored paper onto a panel labeled "Garbage Art". Jewelry makers displayed their necklaces draped over old baby dolls and mannequin torsos. There were zines--zines!--and poetry chapbooks, and kids lying on the floor with their arms sleeved in sock puppets. Upstairs, in a warren of small rooms, was a more formal gallery show of paintings photographs, and video art. Of course, there were bands, and teens Dumpster-diving every aesthetic: 80s punk, 90's grunge, guys with Jesus-in-Godspell hair and superhero tights.

And among all this art was the Steph Squared Cafe, offering homemade jams, cool gypsy art furniture painted by Stephane von Stephane, and copies of my honey and astrology cookbooks. And yes, the jam did sell, and I hope everyone that bought some is a little happier this morning because of it.

But the real sleeper hit of the fair was our last-minute brainwave: bowls of whipped cream and organic strawberries, dished up for $3 a pop.

Who wouldn't like strawberries and cream? For such a punk event, there were a whole lot of regular moms and kids, and we were the only dessert in town, and an organic one one at that. The inspiration was a simple one: a kitchen full of too many berries, no room in the fridge and not enough time to turn them all into jam. Enter a half-gallon of cream, a handy whipped-cream dispenser, and sticky-sweet happiness for a whole lot of kids and their parents.

While it's hard to improve on the simple perfection of strawberries and cream (the folks at Wimbleton do know their stuff), adding a biscuit and turning the affair into strawberry shortcake is the way to do it. Now, first off: to me, a true strawberry shortcake is based on a biscuit, gentle and flaky and just barely sweetened. You may think that strawberry shortcake is rightly made with those puffy yellow spongecakes sold six to a package in the supermarket, but you'd be wrong. The biscuit's buttery sturdiness of the biscuit against the intense sweet-tartness of the berries, all under a sliding avalanche of real cream just barely whipped: that is what beckons in summer with a true flourish.

For Memorial Day, coming a couple of weeks, or the 4th of July, you can add a sprinkle of blueberries for the patriotic red-white-and-blue effect. Biscuit cutters shaped like stars or hearts can give the whole presentation a little whimsy with no more effort than cutting simple circles or triangles. As for the exact layering of the berries and cream, it's up to you. Berries first (to soak the fluffy split biscuit innards with juice), a dollop of cream, then the biscuit top precariously balanced and topped with more cream and berries would be my modus operandi, but really, there's no way of not to get it right.

Do go to the farmers' market for your berries, and taste around to find your favorite variety and grower. Right now, I'm in love with the organic Albion berries from Yerena Farms, a family operation that sells at the Ferry Plaza, Civic Center, and Alemany markets in San Francisco. But I wouldn't kick the flavorful organic Chandler and Seascape berries from Tomatero Farms out of bed either. You can find them at Oakland's Grand Lake, Marin's Civic Center, and San Francisco's Alemany Markets, among others.

Look for berries that are red from stalk to tip (white shoulders and white tips are sure signs of underripeness). And take a deep whiff before you buy: strawberries that smell good, taste good.

Strawberry Shortcake
Assemble just before serving, so the biscuits don't get soggy. You can also pass the biscuits, cream, and berries separately and let each person divine their own perfect proportions of biscuit to cream to berries. If desired, you can play around with flavoring for the biscuits. Orange rind? Cardamom? Whatever you like.

Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients
For the biscuits:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 tablespoons butter, very cold, cut into cubes
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup heavy cream or half-and-half, plus a little extra for brushing tops of biscuits

4 cups strawberries, hulled and sliced (2 to 3 pint baskets)
2 tablespoons sugar

For the cream:
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 to 2 tablespoons powdered sugar, to taste, optional
1 tsp vanilla extract, optional

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 425F. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

2. Using a pastry blender, a pair of butter knives, or your fingers, cut butter into flour mixture until the butter bits are pea-sized. (You can also pulse briefly in a food processor--faster, but more stuff to clean afterwards.)

3. Add egg and cream and stir lightly until mixture just holds together. Knead gently two or three times. On a floured countertop, pat out into a round about 1 inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a knife, cut out into rounds or other shapes. Place on a baking sheet and brush lightly with cream.

4. Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until pale golden. Remove to a rack to cool.

5. While biscuits are baking, mix strawberries and sugar, crushing a few of the berries with a fork, and set aside. As the berries sit, the sugar will draw out the juices to form a garnet-colored puddle that you can dribble inside the biscuits as you go. Lovely.

6. Once biscuits are warm, not hot, to the touch, whip the cream until just thickened. If desired, add sugar and vanilla to taste.

7. Split each biscuit and place on a plate. Add a spoonful of berries, with juice. Dollop with cream. Top with the other half of the biscuit, some more berries, and more cream. Serve.

Since this is my first go around with BAB I wanted to introduce myself with something short, creamy, cold and sweet. As for me, I'm simply a cook with food dreams and an active imagination. And lucky for me, cooking is also my profession.

Like clockwork, as local strawberries start to trickle in, so do the slew of seasonal recipes that appear in print and in tons of blogs. Timeless dishes such as trifle, shortcakes, pie, creams and custards consume the majority of the recipes indexes. Yes, of course, they all have merit and nothing beats a perfectly ripe strawberry, but what drives my imagination as a cook is coming up with something new and innovative. This concoction came to my mind while recently looking over an image for a strawberry milkshake.

As much as I love fruit milkshakes they sometimes taste weak as the fruit gets lost in sweet dairy notes or in heaps of sugar. So, how do you make something more pronounced and less diluted? Or better put, how do you get a particular ingredient to come to the surface. In the cooking world the techniques we usually apply are centered towards reducing, roasting or dehydrating; this makes foods more complex and sharp. With vegetables and fruits roasting and dehydrating extracts the natural sugars making them more intensely sweet. My good friend Chef Roger Feely turned me on to slow roasting strawberries years ago as something spectacular to garnish desserts with. I have been consumed with them ever since! And just like that, while glancing at that image for the strawberry milkshake this shake idea was born.

I give credit to our pastry chef Juliann for the malt ball idea. She suggest malted chocolate as a complimentary garnish with good symmetry for the shake, but when the words soy lecithin and foam came into the conversation I shut down and decided to go conventional. Great flavor combo, so thanks for the suggestion Juliann!

I'm pretty sure this is an original so I'm very happy to bring it to you fresh on BAB!

Slow Roasted Strawberry Milkshake with Crushed Malt Balls

Makes: 2-3 servings

Ingredients:

For the Strawberries:
1 pound strawberries, tops removed and halved
¼ cup sugar
1 fresh vanilla bean, seeds removed
Pinch salt

For the Shake:
1 pint, super premium ice cream (16% fat, low air)
¾ cup whole milk
¾ of the roast strawberries; save some for garnish

Garnish:
2-3 roast strawberry halves
1 tablespoon of crushed malt balls

Preparation:

1. Turn on oven to 250 degrees, Fahrenheit
2. Scrape out the seeds from the vanilla bean
3. Break up the clump of vanilla seeds with finger tips.
4. Toss the berries with sugar, salt and vanilla bean.
5. Slow cook in oven for 2 hours, uncovered, pull and let cool
6. Crush 6 malt balls with a mallet or heavy pan
7. Place ice cream in blender with milk, strawberries and some reserved syrup. Blend until just mixed. Thin it out with milk if too thick.
8. Pour into glasses and garnish with reserved strawberries, syrup and crushed malt balls

Photo by Stephane von Stephane

Range through the jam shelves of your local fancy-food shop (or your own pantry), and you'll find a lot of fancy-pants jam. You know the kind I mean: the ones with four fruits and three spices and a couple of liqueurs thrown in, the kiwi-lime-guava preserves, the blueberry-tangerine-coriander-gewurztraminer jellies. These are especially prevalent in tourist areas with gourmet pretensions (hello, Napa!) where the desired clientele is looking for pricier thrills than the usual fudge and hot sauce.

Someone, maybe you, is buying these, opening the jar once, and then consigning it to a sticky eternity behind the tarragon-Riesling mustard in the fridge door. And short of being dug out once more to glaze a chicken breast, there it stays, while on the front shelf the plain old jar of Smuckers strawberry is replaced again and again.

How do I know this? Because I'm insatiably, sneakily curious about everyone's eating and shopping habits. Lately I've been doing a lot of house-sitting for friends (and friends of friends), and I'll admit it: if I'm sleeping in your house, whatever is under your bed or stashed in your medicine cabinets is safe from me. Furry pink handcuffs, the leftover magic mushrooms from Burning Man, leather whatever: I'll never even bother to look.

By the time you get back, however, I will be able to give you a full inventory of your kitchen. I will know if you have a muffin pan (and puzzle mightily for hours if you don't), whether you drink tea or coffee, and where you keep the grater and the whisks. Is your baking powder is this year's vintage or bought 3 boyfriends ago? Did you even know there was a unopened package of candied ginger at the back of the cupboard next to the fridge? I won't drain your special single malt or break into the $10 Scharffenberger baking bar, but I'll know you better by the company your pantry keeps.

And what you're not eating are those fancy jams. I also know this because, like most beginning jam makers, I used to make those kinds of jams, and give them to you as lovely house presents at any opportunity. The rum-brown-sugar-peach-nectarine preserves, I was so proud of them! The Meyer lemon chutney from food writer/novelist Laurie Colwin's recipe, carefully aged for a couple months just as she recommends. Blueberry with Cointreau, plums with Bordeaux: I made them, you accepted them with grace (thanks, Mom!) and then you hinted, ever so gently, that maybe you didn't want rum anything on your toast in the morning. What you wanted was what everyone wants: Strawberry jam. Apricot preserves. Blackberry jelly. Raspberry jam, straight up and tasting of summery sun-warmed fruit, with just enough sugar to round out the fruit's natural sweetness.

So these are the jams I make now, and if you want the recipients of your jam-making largesse to actually devour your wares with pleasure, rather than sadly leaving them on the shelf, testaments to more good will than good mornings, this is what you will do, too.

Start with the best and most-loved, strawberry jam. But not the easiest. For all its gingham-y, morning-in-America, come on in and sit right down and make yourself at home aura, the strawberry actually has some fussy little habits. For starters, pectin. Or the lack of it: strawberries are right up there with cherries in the low-pectin pantheon. Which means that unlike its high-pectin friend, the blackberry (which practically jams itself given a little sugar and a quick, frothing boil), strawberries need a little persuasion to form anything like a gel.

You could, of course, get a bottle of Sure-Jel or a packet of powdered pectin and make perfectly bounceable strawberry jam every time. I never do. There's nothing wrong with packaged pectin; it's a natural product, usually derived from apples or lemons. But a fruit mixture gels when the pectin is exposed to a particular ratio of sugar to acid. When you bump up the amount of pectin in the mix, you have to add a correspondingly large amount of sugar to make the science work. You'll get a firm set, but the resulting jam will be, to my taste, unremittingly sweet.

Anyway, there's no need. In my experience, you can make jam from just about anything using nothing more than fruit, sugar, and a lemon or two. Simple, easy, and spontaneous, depending on what's ripe in your backyard, your neighbor's yard or at the market.

So, back to our little diva princess, the strawberry. Her real friends are the best and oldest ones: sugar and time. But let me introduce her newest BFF, tart to her sweet, rosy pink to her ruby red. Yes, I'm talking about rhubarb, the prettiest pink stalk you ever did see. It's a perennial plant, growing from a crown and sending up long, celery-like stalks every spring that start out green and flush pink-red as the weather warms. The broad leaves look like spinach, but are mildly toxic and should never be eaten.

Sometimes called pie plant, rhubarb is one of the happiest harbingers of spring, arriving just as the first strawberries begin to appear in the market, a welcome tang of fruity pink at a time when the delights of local cherries and apricots are still a good month away. You can match rhubarb with strawberry in any ratio: a lot of rhubarb with just a few berries for sweetness, or plenty of strawberries with just a little rhubarb for texture and tartness. Which reminds me: if you've never had rhubarb before, you won't forget your first taste of it raw. Like sorrel, another lively spring arrival, it's tongue-twistingly sour.

Crunchy-firm when raw, rhubarb collapses when cooked into what can only be described as a lush stringiness. The easiest way to cook it is as a simple compote: chopped rhubarb tossed with sugar, left to sit for 15 minutes or so, then gently simmered until tender. If you're adding strawberries, just toss them into the rhubarb off the heat and let them soften in the residual warmth. It's good hot, cold, by itself, spooned over ice cream or mixed into yogurt.

After years of loving strawberry-rhubarb compote every spring, it seemed only natural to try adding some to my strawberry preserves. This would thicken up the runniness that these preserves can be heir to, while adding a dimension of fruity tartness.

For the first step, you'll need to macerate the strawberries in sugar for anywhere from 4 to 8 hours, i.e., overnight. You nip off the green hulls and cut up the berries--halves if small, quarters or smaller if large--and put them in a large glass or ceramic bowl. Sprinkle on the sugar, mix gently, cover and walk away. If it's very hot where you are, put them in the fridge, but otherwise, room temp is fine. Every couple of hours, if you think of it, give them a gentle stir to make sure the sugar is dissolving evenly.

By morning, the sugar will have draw out much of the liquid trapped inside the berries, and you'll have some slightly shrunken-looking berries floating in a lot of cough-syrup-red liquid. Add the juice of a lemon and the chopped rhubarb, then dump the whole thing into a non-aluminum pot. Bring to a simmer and let cook for 2 or 3 minutes, then pour back to the big bowl.

Cover again, this time with a clean dish towel so steam can escape, and let sit for another 4 to 6 hours. Look again, and you'll see some now majorly shrunken berries and cubes of rhubarb bobbing in even more, now slightly darker, red liquid. You're getting close now!

Now, here's the trick, and credit goes to the sublime Helen Witty, whose books Fancy Pantry and Good Stuff (now both out of print, but available at amazon.com or the library) are infallible resources for all kinds of pantry-stocking recipes.

So, put a colander over a large, preferably wide and short (rather than narrow and tall) non-aluminum pot. Dump in your strawberry mixture and let all the liquid drain into the pot. Set the fruit-filled colander aside, and bring the liquid to a boil. Let it boil vigorously for some 10 to 15 minutes, until the liquid has darkened and thickened to a syrupy consistency.

By subjecting the liquid, not the fruit, to the bulk of the boiling, the fruit stays fresh and vivid. Once the liquid has thickened, add the fruit and cook, stirring frequently, for another 3 to 5 minutes, until mixture has thickened and looks like jam. It's that simple, really.

Good as they are on toast, these preserves also make a wonderful addition to French toast. Take a thick slice of challah bread and cut a pocket into the side. Beat cream cheese until fluffy, adding honey and vanilla extract to taste. Spread a spoonful of cream cheese and a spoonful of preserves inside the pocket, then dip in a mixture of egg and milk. Fry in butter over medium heat until golden brown and gently puffed on each side. Serve with maple syrup or powdered sugar.

Photo by Stephane von Stephane

Strawberry Rhubarb Preserves

Makes 4 to 5 half-pint jars

Ingredients:
4 pint boxes strawberries, rinsed, hulled, and halved or quartered
2 to 2 1/2 cups sugar
1 lb rhubarb, trimmed and chopped
1 lemon, juiced

Preparation:

1. In a large ceramic or glass bowl, toss berries with sugar. Cover and let rest, stirring occasionally, for 4 to 8 hours.

2. Add chopped rhubarb and juice of 1 lemon to strawberry mixture. Pour into a large, shallow non-reactive pot. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2 or 3 minutes. Pour back into bowl, cover with a clean dishtowel and let rest for another 4 hours or so.

3. Set a colander over the same pot. Pour strawberry mixture into colander and let drain. Remove colander and set aside.

4. Bring liquid to a boil and let boil, stirring occasionally, for 10-15 minutes, or until liquid has thickened to a syrupy consistency.

5. Add fruit, reduce heat, and cook, stirring frequently, until fruit looks glossy and translucent and mixture has thickened to a softly jammy consistency, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

6. Spoon into sterilized canning jars and top with two-part canning lids. Place filled, sealed jars into a pot of boiling water to cover, and let simmer for 8 minutes. Remove jars and let cool undisturbed. Check for seals and store in a cool, dry place. Or, spoon preserves into clean, empty jars and top with lids. Let cool at room temperature, then refrigerate for up to 1 month.

Summer is a tricky thing in San Francisco. A morning in July here often feels like a morning in February, much to the consternation of shivering tourist. We grab what sun we can two days here, three days there, until the fog rolls in and we're grabbing our sweaters and pashminas instead, shrugging our pasty shoulders all the while. If one never leaves the City, one has but few clues as to what life is like on the hot, sticky Outside. And I like that just fine.

I always know it's summer when I see berries flooding the markets. I grab baskets of them-- strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, snozberries-- and challenge myself to eat them all before they rot in my fridge, which happened last year, much to my shame. I decorate my cereal with them, never quite looking as well-placed as on the cereal boxes I never buy. I pretend I'm putting them in the wood chipper as I drop them into my blender to make smoothies. I sprinkle them over ice cream. I eat them out of hand.

If I want to put a little effort (and I do mean little) into doing something with berries, this year, I'm making berry pudding, one of the easiest and reasonably healthiest desserts around. If I were forced to give this dish human form, I would vote for Betty White. Rose Nyland-sweet, Sue Ann Nivens-tart, and just about as quick and clever as all Miss White's snappy answers on The Match Game. Put a little whipped cream on her and she's good to go. She's always good to go.

This is a recipe that is wonderfully simple in both preparation and outlook. Berries in, berries out. I was going to say it was easy- breezy but, unless eating raw fruits has a certain effect on your G.I. tract, it is merely easy. The only real time involved is the time the berries and bread must spend in the refrigerator, getting to know each other.

Berry Pudding

Many of the recipes I've read for Berry Pudding call for the berries to be cooked with sugar. I strongly object. Not to the sugar, mind you, but to cooking the berries. One might as well be using frozen fruit, and that, my friends, is a capital "C" crime in my book-- at least in high season.

I might suggest letting your berries ripen a bit before making them into pudding. They will thank you for it.

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

1/2 cup strawberries, chopped
1/2 cup blueberries, whole
1/2 cup raspberries, whole
1/2 cup blackberries, whole
2 tablespoons sugar, taste the berries to determine their sweetness before adding sugar. Adjust accordingly.
8 one half-inch slices of white bread, brioche, or other neutral starchy vehicle, cut to the shape of whatever molds one is using.
A splash of complementary booze (blackberry brandy, Cointreau, etc.) Complementary as in "will complement the flavor of the berries", not complimentary, as in "free". Of course, if your alcohol is both complementary and complimentary, I say bravo to you.
A pinch of salt

Preparation:

1. Wash berries well, but gently. Chop strawberries to the approximate size of the other berries. Place all berries into large bowl and sprinkle with sugar, salt, and booze. Let sit for five or so minutes.

2. After the berries have macerated a bit, lightly crush them. I feel I was a bit too excited when it came time to inflict harm upon mine. Stir.

3. Cover the bottoms of your molds with your most attractive bits of berry, since this will be the top of the dessert when it is unmolded. Place one piece of bread on top. Add more berries, a second layer of bread, then more berries.

4. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, pressing gently down upon the filled molds to remove any major air gaps.

5. Refrigerate for at least four hours or overnight.

6. To unmold, gently run the tip of a sharp knife between the outer edge of the filling and the inner edge of the mold. Hopefully, you have been clever enough to have removed the plastic wrap before doing so. Place serving plate over the top of the mold, invert, and gently giggle the pudding free of its form. Repeat with the remaining puddings, if you are serving them all at once.

7. Top with whipped cream, ice cream, or bacon. Whatever makes you happy.

Summer is a great time for cold fizzy refreshments. And drinks made with champagne, prosecco, or sparkling wine always seem the most elegant. Sangria Blanca -- a Spanish sparkling wine drink infused with fruit -- is just this type of libation (I love that word). And, with berries and mint, it's really the perfect tonic for a hot summer day.

Although I adore Sangria Blanca now, it took a while for this love to bloom. For years I resisted sparkling sangrias. When offered one, I turned up my nose, thinking it was a cousin of the lowly wine cooler. This isn't to say I never liked wine coolers. In high school, I drank my fair share (but don’t tell my mom). They were sweeter and more drinkable than the Bud Light and Lucky Lager served at Friday night parties in my small San Diego County town and always seemed to be on hand. My girlfriends and I would down our California Coolers (does anyone else remember those?), feeling quite urbane. Later, when I was a little older and "wiser," I learned to disdain coolers in much the same way a six-year old feels too mature to watch Sesame Street any longer. It was only when I was in my 30s that I returned to sparkling wine concoctions. By this time, I was secure enough to admit I really loved their refreshing and slightly fruity taste and so started experimenting.

Following is the result of one of these experiments: my recipe for Sangria Blanca. I use cava, a Northern Spanish sparkling wine, although any type of bubbly will do. The great thing about this recipe is that you don't need to break the bank. Although a nice champagne wouldn't hurt the outcome, it seems an extravagant addition for a drink that includes fruity soda, thereby drowning out any nuances you would gain. A moderately-priced cava is my bottle of choice, although you could also use sparkling wine or prosecco. Just don't use anything you wouldn't drink plain. Served with some ripe berries, a sprig of mint, and ice, it's the perfect way to cool off on a hot summer day in Spain, San Diego, or the Bay Area.

For a discussion on red wine sangria, see Sangria, the Ultimate Summer Refresher.

Sangria Blanca

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients:
1 bottle chilled cava or other sparkling wine
1 cup fruity soda, Passion Fruit and Mango Juice Squeeze or Orangina
2 Tbsp brandy
2 Tbsp sugar
½ cup raspberries
½ cup sliced strawberries
Mint leaves
Ice

Preparation:
1. Clean berries and slice the strawberries. Set aside.
2. In a large punch bowl or pitcher, combine the sugar and brandy until the sugar dissolves.
3. Add the cava, or other sparkling wine, along with the soda.
4. Add the berries and ice.
5. Serve with mint leaves as garnish.

I've never understood how a fruit as delightful and sweet as a raspberry could have inspired the term "blowing a raspberry." How could such a sweet and luscious plump red berry get such bad rap? Out of curiosity, I looked up the term. From what I can tell, it all started sometime in the late 1800s when some witty Brits thought the sound they produced when making derisive spitting noises sounded like flatulence. As "raspberry tart" rhymes with "fart" (a word that never ceases to incite giggles with my daughters and I'm sure was hilariously funny back then as well) the term was born. Makes no sense to me, but apparently it's part of a British rhyming tradition. As my family is originally from New York City, I'm more able to understand the reasons behind why someone would blow a raspberry (or give a Bronx cheer) than the etymology behind it.

So what does this all have to do with shortcake and berries? Well, not much other than I adore raspberries and have been contemplating how wonderful they are, particularly now, when they're in season and reasonably affordable. My mind also has a tendency to wander into etymological corners -- a trait I once assumed was charming, but now fear makes people nod off -- and this is where it led me as I stared at a beautiful mountain of raspberries in Whole Foods the other day.

Now that raspberries are in season, I want to gorge myself on them, sucking up their potent antioxidants and sweet juiciness. Earlier this year, I stopped buying raspberries (and all berries) when they're out of season because they're usually grown in Mexico, often with the help of strong pesticides that end up killing off song bird populations. Out of a sense of environmental responsibility and guilt, my family and I have gone a long hard winter without berries and we are ripe (excuse the pun) for indulging ourselves.

To celebrate raspberry season, I decided to indulge in a dessert where the raspberries are fresh and uncooked. I wanted to pay tribute to their sweet unadulterated plumpness, and so paired them with a slightly-sweet (but not too sweet) shortcake with whipped cream. As I love the flavor of almonds with raspberries, I added some nuts to the shortcake. The result was everything I had hoped for: a fresh burst of raspberry flavor atop buttery shortcakes, finished off with pillowy whipped cream and a hint of almond crunchiness. It was really the antithesis of a Bronx cheer.

Raspberry Almond Shortcake

Serves: 6

Ingredients for shortcakes:
2 ½ cups flour
½ cup sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¼ cup chopped toasted almonds
6 Tbsp cold butter
1 cup whole milk
½ tsp almond extract

Ingredients for topping:
4 cups raspberries
½ cup sugar
½ tsp lemon juice
2 cups whipping cream
½ cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Toasted almond slivers for garnish

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Add flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and almonds in a large bowl. Whisk to mix thoroughly.

3. Cut in the butter (you can either do this by hand with a pastry cutter or with your fingers. If you have a food processor, just pulse about ten times).

4. Add the almond extract to the milk and then add to the flour mixture.

5. Gently incorporate the milk into the flour. Be sure not to over mix as doing so will make the flour rubbery. If the mixture remains too wet to properly handle, add a little more flour until you can pat the dough firmly into a round disk.

6. Cut with a biscuit cutter (if you don't have one, you can use a jar or ramekin) and place onto a baking dish or large cast iron pan.

7. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 – 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

8. Mix berries, sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and set aside for at least 10 minutes.

9. Beat cream with powdered sugar and vanilla until whipped (but not too long or you'll have butter).

10. When ready to serve, slice each shortcake in half. Top the bottom with a healthy dollop of whipped cream and then cover with berries. Top with more whipped cream and lay the top of the shortcake against the berries. Serve.

Lemon Buttermilk shortcake alternative:
1. Substitute buttermilk for the milk.
2. Remove the almonds and almond extract.
3. Add 1 Tbsp lemon zest.

Strawberry shortcake alternative:
1. Use strawberries instead of raspberries.
2. Use the buttermilk shortcake alternative for the pastry.

Although the calendar says it's only May, it feels more like July this week. My kids are begging to go to the pool every day and I'm craving ice cream. Strawberry ice cream to be specific. Strawberries are in full season in all their sweet glory and what better way to stave off the heat than to indulge in icy cream and fresh berries.

I have often made strawberry ice cream using heavy cream, berries, sugar and not much else. Although these desserts have been creamy and sweet, they were a bit lacking. Without eggs, ice cream just doesn't have the full body and character I'm looking for in my dessert. I have hunted for years for the perfect strawberry ice cream recipe, but most use between 6 and 9 egg yolks. Now I love egg custards (and ice cream made with eggs is essentially just frozen custard), but the more eggs included in a custard, the richer the flavor. Although this can often be a very good thing -- such as with vanilla, pecan or chocolate ice creams -- the richness of too many eggs in custard can detract from the natural sweetness of any fruit you add to it, flattening the flavors. Plus eggs are high in cholesterol and fat, so if I can, I try to avoid them in abundance. What I wanted was a lighter strawberry ice cream with the depth of flavor eggs provide, without overshadowing the strawberries and casting them out of the limelight (or raising my LDL levels).

I recently read a NY Times article that used a pudding recipe for ice cream. The problem is that it uses 8 egg yolks (yes, 8!). I remembered that my pudding recipe is thick and creamy and only uses a couple of eggs, which seemed much more reasonable. I decided to tweak it a little, however, using strawberries instead of chocolate. I also added one extra egg yolk to help bind the ice cream as I was worried the strawberries -- which naturally have a lot of water in them -- would make the custard runny. Heavy cream also seemed a better choice than the whole milk I use in my pudding as this is ice cream we're making, not ice milk. My final alteration was to include some lemon juice and zest to help brighten the strawberry flavors. Finally I plopped everything into the beautiful ice cream maker my husband's aunt bought us a few years ago (thank you Aunt Susie!) with excellent results. The final product had a deep strawberry taste, a rich and creamy texture, and a more complex flavor than the plain cream strawberry ice cream I've made for years. It also allowed the strawberries to star, unlike some custard ice creams I've tried. And best of all, it helped cool us off during this heat wave.

Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream

Makes 4 - 8 servings

Ingredients
3 cups of fresh strawberries (cleaned, hulled and chopped)
½ cup plus 3 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
Zest from one medium lemon
3 large egg yolks
3 Tbsp corn starch
Dash of salt
2 cups heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation
1. Puree 2 cups of the strawberries with 3 Tbsp sugar and the lemon juice. Cut up the third cup of berries, mix them with the 4th tablespoon of sugar, and set aside.

2. Heat the heavy cream on medium-low until it starts to steam with small bubbles around the edge. Turn off the heat.
3. Whisk egg yolks with ½ cup sugar in a bowl until the mixture is a light yellow color.
4. Add the lemon zest, corn starch, and salt to the egg mixture and whisk thoroughly, making sure there are no lumps.
5. Add about a half cup of the warmed cream to the egg mixture, whisking vigorously to temper the eggs.
6. Add the egg mixture to the cream and incorporate thoroughly.
7. Cook on medium-low just until the mixture starts to bubble. Be sure to frequently stir or the mixture will start to burn at the bottom. I used a whisk, but a spatula would also work.
8. When the mixture becomes thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, turn off the heat and add the strawberry puree.
9. Stir in the vanilla.
10. Chill in an ice bath.
11. Cover with plastic wrap, being sure to let it sit directly on top of the pudding to avoid a skin forming.
12. Refrigerate until fully cooled.
13. Place mixture in your ice cream maker, along with the last cup of berries you set aside in Step 1, and then let it do its thing for about twenty minutes.
14. Place in a container and place in the freezer. Stir every hour or so until firm so it evenly freezes.
15. Serve.

Tips:
1. If you do not have an ice cream maker, you can still make homemade ice cream. David Lebovitz shows you how to make ice cream without a machine.

2. This recipe would also be great using peaches, nectarines, plums, or any other type of berry.

Teaching kids to eat and drink healthfully requires much more than admonitions. After carting away the vending machines and abolishing the Big Gulps, we can't leave the kids empty-handed. Rachelle Boucher from Generation Chefs is working hard to fill the void. From the popular Pizza Smack-Downs at COPIA to her weekly cooking classes (free to high school students) in the beautifully outfitted kitchen at the Marin Youth Center (MYC a.k.a. "Mike") she's bringing fresh, whole, homemade food generously flavored with reaffirming messages and lots of common sense to a wide and diverse group of kids.


A visit to one of her cooking classes reveals her consummate skill in converting teens to the cause of healthy eating. Endowed with humor, warmth, and endless energy, she's a master of choreographing 25 wary bundles of apathy and hormones into productive teams of excited, skilled, fruit-and vegetable-loving cooks.

Rachelle hefts up 20 pounds of refined sugar so the kids can see how much the average American teenager consumes every six weeks.

Her class this past week highlighted our favorite fruit of the season--strawberries--along with one very shiny, red bike blender. The lesson for the day involved putting down sugary drinks and sipping fruit smoothies instead. In addition to fresh strawberries, melons, and bananas, the teen chefs could choose from a colorful array of juices, frozen fruit, yogurts, and natural flavorings. Most importantly, they learned that not a single grain of added sugar was needed to create a delicious drink.

A rainbow of sweet goodness just before the pedal action.

Mike Graham-Squire from the Youth Leadership Institute joined the class to show the teens how to select ingredients, calculate food costs, determine servings sizes and overall yield, and--most importantly of all--operate the bike blender. As representatives of schools and local community organizations, the kids were also learning how smoothies can be a healthful, interactive, and effective fundraising tool at large events.

From the Country of Marin's Nutrition Wellness Program, nutritionist Ellen Szakal taught the class how to read product labels to determine the number of teaspoons of sugar in each serving. A chart listing their favorite snacks and a hands--on exercise counting out a disconcertingly large pile of sugar cubes helped them understand just how much unnecessary sugar they were consuming each day.

It's a skill adults could use, too.

Calculating How Much Sugar Is In A Container
Looking at the Nutrition Facts label on the side of the package, find the number of grams of sugar. Then divide that number by 4. For example, ingesting 65 grams of sugar in a 20-ounce drink bottle (considered 1 serving) means swallowing 17 individual teaspoons of sugar.

So much youthful energy, it takes extra hands to hold the jar still.

Berkeley-based Juice Peddler sells kits for retrofitting bikes to become human-powered blenders. From the first-generation's endearingly clunky tricycle platform and antique hand-drill to the fifth-generation's sleek, high-density polyethylene design, the company has been at the forefront of DIY bike blender technology.

The kids took turns pedaling their fruit concoctions and proudly shared tastes of their icy treats with other teams. Lined up for judging, the smoothies created a rainbow of delicious fun: Monkey Melons, Fruit-A-Palooza, Pink Panther, Go Mango, Fruit-A-Licious, and Pink-A-Licous Strawberry.

I'm glad I didn't have to judge, as it would have been a tough call to pick just one winner.

Sammy and Brittney confer on the formulation of their team's smoothie.

Pinkalicious Strawberry Smoothie
The members of Team Pinkalicious decided to celebrate the happy coincidence of their clothing colors with an appropriately hued smoothie.

Serves: 6

Ingredients
10 ounces strawberries, hulled
1 banana, chopped
1 cup frozen berry medley
1/2 cup yogurt
1/4 cup orange mango juice concentrate

Preparation
1. Place all ingredients in the jar of a blender.
2. Blend until completely mixed.
3. Serve immediately.

Minted Strawberry Agua Fresca
Another excellent recipe from Generation Chefs that highlights the current season's bumper crop.

Serves: 6

Ingredients
2 cups ice cubes
3 cups strawberries, hulled
2 small mint leaves, optional
1 1/2 cups cold water
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime or lemon juice
3 tablespoons sugar, or to taste
6 whole strawberries, split 3/4 up from the point, for garnish
6 mint sprigs, for garnish

Preparation
1. Place all ingredients in a blender in the order listed.
2. Blend until completely mixed. Taste and adjust for sweetness or tartness as desired.
3. Pour into chilled glasses, garnish with mint sprigs, and slide a berry onto the rim of each glass.