Sweet Sunday

After days and days of rain, I decided we needed some summer cheer, so tonight I made strawberry-rhubarb crisp with local fruit from Lull Farm in Hollis, NH--our favorite farm stand of all time, and they have now expanded to mind-boggling proportions while still retaining their old-fashioned appeal.  Dreamy food, flowers, and cool cats who hang around while you shop.

I bake a lot, and I often experiment with proportions and ingredients, so nothing in this recipe is written in stone.  The nice thing about crisps is that you don't have to be as exact as other kinds of baking.  Cherries would be nice in this, too.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

~Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
~Toss about 6 cups of washed and cut strawberries and rhubarb in a baking dish.

~Make your crisp topping:

• 2/3 cup unbleached flour (I like to use 1/3 cup white and 1/3 cup wheat, but all white flour is fine, too)
• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• about 3/4 cup to 1 cup white sugar (depending on how sweet you like it)
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon 
• zest of one lemon (or one orange, whichever you have)
• (Sometime I toss in a handful of chopped almonds, especially if I'm using cherries)

~Stir all these dry ingredients together, then with a pastry blender (or just your fingertips), cut in:

• 8 to 10 tablespoons of cold, diced, unsalted butter

~Work the butter in until it is coarse and crumbly.  

~Sprinkle the fruit with the crisp topping and bake 40-50 minutes.
~Serve warm (I can't wait more than a minute) with vanilla ice cream on the side.

~Tuck in and enjoy!