Sundays at our house have a familiar cadence to them developed over more than a decade of practice: sleep in – a welcome change, particularly for JR who is up at 5am during the week; coffee made on the stove top, perhaps a fried egg or a frittata with freshly gathered eggs, then the start of my own personal bake-off, which typically leads directly into some elaborate Sunday meal.
This past Sunday was no different. To a point. A little after noon, as I was pulling the cake – the cake that this post is ostensibly about – out of the oven, JR summoned me to the equipment bay of the barn. There, at the edge of the middle bay, stood what he called his “guillotine” – a make-shift wooden contraption designed to hold a chicken upside down inside a traffic cone for slaughter.
This was our first bird of eleven to be slaughtered. We lost a chick early on – perhaps the fatigue of life had already taken its toll just 4 days into what would have been a brief existence anyway, or it may just have been that it was cold and we humans weren’t doing an adequate job of keeping that particular chick warm. I collected the chicks from our local farm supply store at the end of April, and we delayed the first kill until after I had delivered the manuscript for the cookbook. It is my intent to kill one of these chickens myself, but after this first go-round, I think mine may be Number Eleven. We clearly have some work to do on our technique – the details of which, I will spare you. For now.
The chickens do some natural selection of their own. The phrase “pecking order” is an actual way of life within the walls of a chicken coop, and one unfortunate rooster had been beaten mercilessly all day long on Saturday – so badly, in fact, that we weren’t certain he’d make it until morning. He had been pinned to the ground repeatedly by the other roosters – there is but one unfortunate hen in the group – and limped around the coop, tail feathers pointing down and shaking, in stark contrast to the upright and proud tail feathers of the other men of the coop. As he attempted to get some food – bullied and pecked at the entire time – JR went to fetch a black marker. I kept a close watch on our abused rooster, to be certain we marked the proper one – though I am fairly certain there would be no way to mistake him for another, hobbled as he was. The rooster cowered as JR put a black mark on his back – the black mark of impending death – and we returned to our usual seats in the garden, only to hear the attacks continue until dusk.
Removal of the feathers from the rooster’s carcass revealed scratch marks on his back where he had been pinned by the other, stronger birds. And last night, as we sat in the garden, we could hear the squawking of natural selection beginning again.
On a less troubling note, blueberries do not practice natural selection at all – it’s really just a battle between we humans and the small, flying birds – who are also quite mean to one another, it should be noted, spend a little time watching them one day if you don’t believe me – to see who comes away with the most fruit. Our farm family neighbors grow some of the most coveted blueberries in our area, with mid-summer visitors to our house invariably asking, “are those blueberries out yet?”, the anticipation as audible as their words.
I typically make blueberry crumble with those coveted blueberries, but as I was only able to secure one pint for myself this weekend, and the crumble requires two, I devised this cake instead. Despite the coffee cake name, I’m thinking you could serve this forth as a dessert as well, and it would be a fantastic addition to a brunch. Which, of course, still falls under the coffee cake designation.
Ingredients
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup fresh ricotta (such as Narragansett Creamery's or other artisanal fresh ricotta)
- 2 large eggs
- the zest and juice of one lemon
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 pint blueberries, washed, picked over to remove those moldy or mushy berries, and any stems removed
- 2/3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
- the zest and juice of one lemon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch springform pan with unsalted butter and set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, mix the butter and sugar until well-blended. Add the ricotta and mix well to combine. Add the eggs, one at a time, until each is just incorporated into the mixture. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla extract, and mix until combined.
- In a small mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt and stir to be certain all is evenly distributed. Add the flour mixture to the sugar-butter-egg mixture. Mix until it is completely incorporated and you have a smooth batter. Gently stir in the blueberries, you don't want to make blueberry mush, here, you know.
- Transfer the batter to the springform pan, and bake in the oven until the cake is golden brown on top, 55 minutes to 1 hour. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before glazing.
- While the cake cools, combine the sifted confectioners' sugar with the lemon zest and lemon juice, stirring until you have a thick, lemony liquid. Spoon the glaze over the top of the cake, covering the entire top surface. Cut yourself a slice, decide that all baked goods - or at the very least, all coffee cakes - need ricotta and lemon, and then serve a slice or two forth to your loved ones. Attempt to keep as much cake as possible for yourself while also trying not to appear Scrooge-like, then give up, and start planning for a second Blueberry-Lemon Coffee Cake. It's the only way.
Estimated cost for the whole cake: $7.77, which is 10 to 12 servings, so we’re looking at 78-cents per slice on the high end, 65-cents per slice on the low end. So here’s the deal: Sugar costs around 1-cent per tablespoon. We’re using 16-cents’ worth here. The butter costs 70-cents for the one stick. The ricotta cheese costs $5.99 for 1 pound, and our 3/4 cup costs around $2.25. The lemons cost $1.00 total. The vanilla costs around 6-cents. The flour costs 36-cents at 19 cups for $4.49. The baking powder costs less than 2-cents, but we’ll call it two for the sake of rounding up. The blueberries should cost no more than $2.99, and the confectioners’ sugar costs $1.29 for 15 (1/4 cup) servings, therefore 2/3 cup costs around 23-cents.
Dinner tonight: Please don’t groan or cringe, because dinner tonight is that poor abused rooster. The meat chickens we bought are mutants – next time, we’ll see if we can’t find a heritage breed to raise instead of these that are bred to grow to enormous size, and quickly, at that. This runt of the group weighed almost six pounds gutted and feathered. There will be chicken salad, this is for certain. Estimated cost for two: $8.66. I am going to make a brown sugar barbecue sauce to go with Poor Rooster, and that will cost $2.32. I sense that I will eventually have 9 similarly named birds, resulting in an inadvertent similarity between me and George Foreman or the late Michael Jackson. He died, you know. The barbecue sauce is enough to feed four with ease, so we’ll divide that cost in half as we’ll be saving the remainder for a later use. I am also going to serve an acorn squash from our garden, the cavity of each half filled with fresh ricotta and topped with toasted walnuts. We’ll figure $1.50 for the half cup of fresh ricotta I estimate I’ll use, and 54-cents for the walnuts, plus 48-cents for olive oil used for roasting the squash. Our squash is small – no more than 2-pounds, so to purchase it would cost around $1.60. If you were buying a chicken, rather than killing one in the equipment bay of your barn, I would advise you to avoid 6-pound mutant-type chickens, and stick with a 3 to 4-pound roaster, which should cost you no more than $6.76. If you’re only two people, you won’t eat more than half of that, and that cost is $3.38. You will use the remaining $3.38-worth to make chicken salad for tomorrow’s lunches, right? Yes. But of course, for we do not waste food, no we do not.
this post was both fascinating and disturbing for me. i thoroughly enjoyed your story about the roosters but it kinda made me sad and i think scared? in africa my father played farmer and had a hen and rooster, my sister and i used to chase the little chicks around the yard. the rooster used to annoy me in the early morning. that’s the kinda picture i’ve always had in my head about chickens and roosters. your story is so different and it’s throwing me for a loop. Realistically, i know it’s real and it’s a part of nature’s cycle but it’s so close, you know? it’s one thing for me to eat meat, it’s another to be the one to kill it for consumption. i look forward to reading more about your experiences!
I really enjoyed reading this snippet of life, cake, and chickens. I have had some experience hatching chickens and have seen how they can be quite mean. I am a school librarian and we hatched chickens from egg to chick in the library through an ag coop. Quite a learning experience for me (and the kids), it was my first time seeing a chicken hatch from an egg. They were so cute in the beginning, but of course, they can stink to high heaven. Whew. It must have been very hard to hear the others being so torturous to Poor Rooster. Did you intervene or separate him, or aren’t you supposed to? On a side note, I know exactly the type of cones you are talking about for slaughter. I saw Food, Inc. and they showed Polyface farms on slaughter day. On a somewhat related note, have you read Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle?
Wheew, what a harrowing tale! My family raised chickens & turkeys for a time & one or two made it to the chopping block, but I was far, far to, ehherm, chicken (excuse the pun) to take part. In fact, being the budding childhood activist that I was, I refused to eat them too.
Hello there Lan,
I have been fascinated with the fact that you lived in Africa and your father farmed some there since you posted this comment. That must have been amazing and interesting. Honestly, the chicks are really adorable, but then these meat birds grew up to be mean. It’s a huge difference between our laying hens – who do have a pecking order, but they are far less violent – and the meat chickens, who are primarily roosters. They’ve selected the next one – he cowers in the corner trying not to get beat up. It’s quite sad, really.
Hi Square Librarian,
My first experience seeing chicks hatch from the shell was in school in my second grade class. I think the whole year was farm-themed, actually, but, then, my mind could be playing tricks on me – it was a long time ago. I think it’s a great thing to do in schools, so I’m glad to hear that you did it at yours. But, oh, yes, the stink! Not so good! Especially indoors.
We didn’t separate the Poor Rooster because we knew we were going to remove him first thing the next morning, but we are thinking that we will remove the remaining Poor Roosters, just so that they can have a night of peace before it’s their turn at the guillotine. Poor Rooster was incredibly delicious, though, and we were very appreciative of our meals from him. Despite the unpleasantness of slaughter, it’s a good experience to really know where your food comes from and what it takes to get it to your plate. It’s been eye-opening for me, I have to say.
I do have “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”- a friend dropped it off about a month ago – but haven’t read it yet. I think that I’ll start that this weekend – it’s certainly timely, as I understand it!
Hi Laura,
I totally understand! I would never have had the gumption to do this when I was a child, and at one point in my high school career, I was vegetarian, though I quickly slipped into a no-red-meat-but-chicken-is-fine place. I wasn’t terribly dedicated to vegetarianism, but, still, I wouldn’t have been able to see any animal be killed for my consumption. I also have to give you credit for the pun-usage – very nice!
Hello,
We bumped into your blog and we really liked it – great recipes YUM YUM.
We would like to add it to the Petitchef.com.
We would be delighted if you could add your blog to Petitchef so that our users can, as us,
enjoy your recipes.
Petitchef is a french based Cooking recipes Portal. Several hundred Blogs are already members
and benefit from their exposure on Petitchef.com.
To add your site to the Petitchef family you can use http://en.petitchef.com/?obj=front&action=site_ajout_form or just go to Petitchef.com and click on “Add your site”
Best regards,
Vincent
petitchef.com
It’s better the break them up than leave them – cellulitis is a big problem in commercial barns for just this reason, and you don’t want to eat a rooster than is all full of E. coli (the most common isolate) – it doesn’t necessarily confine itself to skin scratches.
Also, having killed a lot of birds, cervical dislocation is the way to go. Buy a pair of burdizzos (used for castrating) and they work well for larger poultry, even turkeys. Fast, painless and relatively atraumatic for the bird.
Hi Anonymous (I feel somewhat strange typing that, but feel there must be a salutation!),
Thank you so much for the advice. JR hasn’t slaughtered a chicken since his youth, and, as you might imagine, that consisted of the tree stump-axe method. This week, we used the neck-breaking method, which worked well, but I will look into the burdizzos. And we WILL be separating them from now on. Roosters are an angry lot!
Thanks again!
Amy
Hi Amy!! Blueberry-Lemon C.Cake is one of my favorites!!! I'm always making it and trying to think of ways to make it a little lighter- This is it!!!
I just quickly looked at your website- are you a farmer? Bill and I have just gotten into slowly becoming "Locavours" (buying locally)- Are you part of this scene??
Love, your "first -second" mother- Jan
Hi Janet,
So nice to hear from you! I consider JR more of a farmer than I am – though we have somehow, inadvertently, become small-scale chicken farmers! We will always have laying hens, and next year, we'll try a different breed of roasters, plus we plan to raise the Thanksgiving turkey. I think I'm more of a gardener, really. JR worked on a farm when he was younger, raised Black