Blueberry peach crisp and the crazyness of grad school

You might be wondering where I've been... why I haven't posted in almost two weeks or I don't comment on other blogs as often. The answer is grad school. I've spent the past 10 days reading so much daily that I can't keep the headaches away. I still have time to cook, although not so much to take pictures of any baked goods, but don't worry, it'll happen. Maybe less frequently, but this blog is not closing any time soon.

Those of you who read often know that I just started a PhD in Chemistry. I don't really have that many classes, but boy, are they intense or what... Take for instance my class at OHSU, where we have about 100 pages posted the evening before our next class, which are supposed to be read for the class. I feel like hiding my head underground every time it happens. But I can't complain, I enjoy it too much. 

I'm one of those dorky girls who gets a huge kick out of sitting at a seminar and understanding what the professor is talking about. I'm thrilled about understanding relationships between metabolic processes and diseases. But more than anything I love being in a lab more than anything else in the world. 

Now that I'm a grad student, not only do I get to work in a lab, but I also get to teach a lab. I can't put into words how exciting this is. I've been waiting for this moment to come for two years. To be able to show the newbies how to do experiments, how to work in the lab, how to understand the chemistry behind what they're doing. Hopefully this excitement is contagious and my students enjoy the lab as much as I do. 

Even with the large amount of work, I still try to eat decently well, specially for breakfast. Sometimes you're not sure when the next meal is gonna be, so starting the day with abundant fuel seems like the right thing to do. On Saturday, the farmers market takes place at the PSU campus, so I just walk a couple of blocks and find myself surrounded by fresh fruit and veggies. Cold weather seems to have arrived to Portland, but I was lucky enough to find some peaches and blueberries before it did. They went into this easy and wonderful crisp, which would work with pretty much any other fruit and will warm up the cold fall mornings. 

Blueberry and peach crisp

Serves 2

1 peach

1 cup fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons brown sugar

4 tablespoons of butter

1 cup of old fashioned oats

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Peel and cut the peaches in big chunks. Mix with the blueberries and the two tablespoons of sugar. Stir it well to coat the fruit and let it sit for about 5 minutes so it releases part of the juices. With your fingers, mix together the butter and oats so they get sticky. Distribute the fruit in two oven-safe bowls, ramekins or container of sorts and cover with the butter and oat mixture. Sprinkle with a bit more brown sugar and bake for about 30 minutes, until the oats are crisp and the fruit is cooked and juicy.

Peach and mango yogurt cake

Finally summer is here, and it's so hot and muggy I'm not sure I'm so happy about the season change. If there's something I love about summer is fresh produce. Cherries, peaches, watermelons, loquats, apricots... I can't get enough of them.

For my labmate's birthday I wanted to make a cake with seasonal fruit. I was thinking of something light and more coffee cakey than anything else, since we were gonna eat it during our weekly lab meeting. After searching the net looking for a yogurt-fruit cake, I found a couple recipes that sort of convinced me, but not really. So I put my brains at work and invented my own recipe.

Soy yogurt, check.  Mango, check. Peaches, check. All sweetened with some brown sugar and honey and topped with slivered almonds. Yum!

The recipe is crazy crazy easy and takes an hour baking included. Feel free to substitute the fruits or change the soy yogurt for regular one. You might need to add a tablespoon or two of flour because soy yogurt is more liquid than regular one.

Printable recipe

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup soy yogurt
2 eggs
3 tablespoons soy milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey
1 stick unsalted butter
1 medium mango, cubed
2 medium peaches, cubed
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Preheat your oven to 350 F

Peel and cube the peaches and mango and set aside. In a bowl, cream the butter with the sugar and honey. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until combined. Mix in the soy yogurt and the milk (I added the milk after adding the flour because my batter seemed too dense, you can try not adding it if the batter seems runny). Coat the fruits with a tablespoon of flour, this prevents them from sinking in the batter. Add the rest of the flour to the batter and then mix in the fruit.

Pour the batter in a greased and floured 9-inch round pan and top with the almonds. Bake for 35 min or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.