“In my opinion, it is a tight and dense crumb that makes a good pound cake great.  That and lots of butter.” — Dana Wootton, food-blogger, Dana Treat, Treat Yourself

Welcome to SAVOUR September where each week this month we’ll be spotlighting a local food-blogger and selling one of their remarkable homemade creations in our store.  SAVOUR will be the one and only place in town you can get a taste of these goodies!

This week we are featuring local food-blogger Dana Wootton, of Dana Treat, Treat Yourself.  Dana has a passion for delicious and healthful food and her recipes highlight vegetarian cuisine from all corners of the globe.  A personal chef for years, she has long been challenged to get very creative in her kitchen and always try new things.  She shares that on her blog, as well as a very poignant glimpse into her beautiful family’s life.  Dana also teaches regular cooking classes out of her home in Seattle’s Greenlake neighborhood.

And don’t forget the treats!  Dana can be counted on for incredible sweets and treats, and is sharing a special favorite, her Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze. Servings of this wonderfully moist, perfectly sweet cake will be available for purchase this week at SAVOUR.

Read the recipe below and posted on her blog, and we’ll see you at SAVOUR this week to savor a slice of this luscious pound cake.

We wish to thank Dana for sharing her treat and blog with us and our customers, and for partnering with us during SAVOUR September.  We excited about being more closely involved in the local Seattle food community and partnering with talented people like Dana.

Brown Sugar Pound Cake

Dana Wootton's Brown Sugar Pound Cake 2

Adapted from Cakewalk
Makes two 8×4-inch loaves

You can make this cake in one 9 or 10-inch tube pan, but I love the idea of having two cakes out of one recipe.  I served one cake the day I made it and wrapped and froze the other one.  The cake should be frozen unglazed, so if you do this, be sure to cut the glaze recipe in half.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup whole milk
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 325ºF.  Butter and flour two 8×4-inch loaf pans, knocking out excess flour.  Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.  Set aside.

Beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed for 3 minutes, until whipped looking.  Slowly add the sugar and beat for another 3 minutes, increasing the speed to medium-high.  The mixture should look very light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time, beat well after each one.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat again.

Combine the milk with the vanilla.  Add the flour in 3 portions alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour.  Fold the last flour addition in by hand with a rubber spatula.  Turn the batter into the prepared pans.  Bake for 1 to 1½ hours, checking after 55 minutes and every 5 to 10 minutes thereafter, until a toothpick inserted near the center of the cake comes out with just moist crumbs attached.  If the cake is very brown after 55 minutes but not yet fully baked, cover the top with a sheet of aluminum foil.  When done, the cake will be springy to the touch and pulling away from the sides of the pan.  Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before glazing.

Brown Sugar Glaze

Remember, this amount will glaze both cakes.  If you are only glazing one, cut the recipe in half.

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
¼ cup whole milk
¼ tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 to 1½ cups confectioners’ sugar

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat, then add the brown sugar and raise the heat to medium.  Boil, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes.  Add the milk and return to a boil, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and stir in the salt and vanilla.  Let cool for 10 minutes.

Sift 1 cup of the confectioners’ sugar over the mixture, stirring with a whisk until smooth.  If the glaze is thick enough for your liking, you can stop there.  If not, sift the additional ½ cup sugar in.  Place the cake (still on the wire rack) over a wax paper lined baking sheet.  Pour the glaze over the cooled cake and allow it to drip down the sides.  Allow the glaze to set completely before slicing and serving.  Wrapped carefully, this cake will keep for several days at room temperature.  If you happen to have some homemade caramel sauce on hand, it is amazing poured over top.

It’s almost September, which for me means regretfully letting go of summer and the promise of warm weather. However, it also means crisp, beautiful autumn days and fall meals that include crunchy apples, dark green kale, and hearty soups accompanied by rich, red wine.

To celebrate the bounty of this fall season we have invited some local, renowned food-bloggers to partner with us and to bring their delicious creations to SAVOUR for you to enjoy.

Each week in September we will host a featured food-blogger who will make one of their favorite recipes and bring it to SAVOUR to be purchased exclusively by our customers. Along with a biography of the writer, we will post their featured recipes on our blog and provide a copy of it at purchase so you can duplicate their tantalizing creations at home!

Check out our blog postings starting Monday, September 6, where we will feature the first of our food-bloggers, Dana Wootton, of Dana Treat blog and her recipe. Then come to SAVOUR that week to try her creation.

We’re excited to share our blog space with some very talented people, and to be able to offer you access to their dishes in person as well as in the written word.

So goodbye summer and welcome fall!

*Correction: Ashley and her blog Not Without Salt will be featured in our second week of September, not the first as previously posted.

Within the world of incredible foods there exists the exciting realm of an ancient lush and verdant oil; olive oil. But the shear variety of olive oils available on the market today can make the process of finding the right olive oil seems overwhelming. However, with just a little information you can procure a perfect olive oil for your needs and tastes.

First think about what flavors appeal to you. Peppery, grassy, mild, bitter, fruity, spicy, and buttery are all adjectives used to describe different olive oils, and you may need to taste a variety of oils to decide which appeals most to your palette.

Then consider how you wish to use your olive oil. Will it be for everyday, heated cooking, for finishing fish, meat, and vegetable dishes, or for using in vinaigrettes?

How much you have to spend is also obviously important and something you’ll want to consider before heading to the store. Olive oils come in a variety of prices from inexpensive to very pricey, so have somewhat of a budget in mind as well as flexibility so you can match your tastes with what you can afford.

A great place to start your search is by tasting a good many olive oils. Good quality olive oils should maintain a balance between bitterness and peppery pungency. Depending on the variety of olive and the time of harvest, the oil will either be more or less fruity. Olives harvested at the beginning of the season, October, will be a brighter green in color and have a very fresh, grassy, and peppery flavor. Olives pressed at the end of the season, December through January, will have a milder yellow-green color and a fruity flavor and aroma.

Always look for first cold-pressed olive oil, as it is made from olives that were pressed immediately after being picked, which minimizes oxidization and preserves the flavor integrity of the fruit. It also means that no hot water was added to the extraction process, which dilutes the flavor. It’s very important to be sure that the olive oil was not cut with other oils, a common practice for low quality producers, which taints the flavor and nutritional value of the oil.

With this information in mind we invite you to try our samples of our small and thoughtfully hand-picked selection of olive oils, a few of which we list here. We carry oils from California, Spain, Italy, France, Morocco, Tunisia, and New Zealand that range from pungent to mild, buttery to peppery, and value to higher priced.

Merula Olive Oil, one of our top sellers, is from Spain and boasts soft, fruity, buttery, and luscious flavor that is excellent for drizzling on your salads and everyday cooking.

We carry a couple of organic olive oils, one of which is Olemun Viride from Spain and is greenish-yellow in color, fresh, fruity with hints of almonds, apples and tomatoes, and finishes with a soft bitterness and pungency.

Les Moulins Mahjoub Organic and unfiltered olive oil from Tunisia is cloudy and robust with fresh fruit flavor which is due to the hand decantation pressing process. This is unique and special oil whose flavor will vary from one harvest to the next.

A L’Olivier, French oil, is lighter, soft and fruity and sure to tantalize your palate!

Alili is a pure Moroccan olive oil made from the Picholine. Its green color and peppery kick make this an excellent choice to use as finishing or sauté oil.

I Love Olive Oil from New Zealand is a cool-climate oil boasting fruity flavor and aroma, which is created by the long ripening season.

For those of you looking for the best quality value we carry California based Lucero’s Arbequina Olive Oil, as well as their traditional styled balsamic vinegar, in bulk. Lucero’s olive oils are high in quality and affordable as we buy and sell it in bulk sizes.

There’s so much you can do with a quality olive oil and once you taste the better oils it will be hard for you to go back to a mass produced, inferior oil, and we’re here to help you with that!

SAVOUR’s Facebook page is officially up and running and we’re having fun planning Facebook SAVOUR fun for you! “Like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and gain access to social-media only specials, discounts, and prizes. Get quick updates of our happenings and be the first to know when new shipments arrive!

We want to hear from you too! Check out and add to our Facebook Foodie Foto Album to get and give inspiration for that next meal, picnic, or party. Watch interesting and educational videos about the foods we love to eat. Of course we always love to see you faces, but if you can’t make it in person to SAVOUR, you can still be a part of our online community.

Have you ever put a paper-thin, round slice of cured meat on your tongue, closed your eyes, and experienced the salty explosion of sweet, smoky pork?  We have and are humbled by every bite of delicately powerful cured meat!  To that end we continuously search for flavors of pork goodness that make us pause and relish our taste buds and our brilliant ancestors who faced with lack of refrigeration, who refused to sacrifice good eating!

A selection of beautiful Charcuterie

Cured meat; it’s charcuterie in Paris, salumi in Rome, and always delectable in your mouth! The art of curing meat was born out of the need to preserve meat without refrigeration. The techniques were and remain simple. Add salt and other spices, maybe add smoke, and hang the meat in a dark, cool place for an extended period of time until the desired flavor and texture are achieved.

The term charcuterie was derived from the French word “chair” meaning flesh, and “cuite” meaning cooked. In addition to the cured meats, charcuterie also encompasses pâtés and rillettes, which are heavenly concoctions of finely ground meat, herbs, spices, and fat that are cooked in terrines, pastry dough, or ramekins. Salumi encompasses dried cured meats as well as some cooked meats like mortadella.

By now you’re probably thoroughly craving a platter of charcuterie, and we have quite the selection!

The fine crafted meats of Creminelli

In December we introduced the incredible meats of Creminell, an award-winning artisan charcuterie producer whom you may remember from our Fancy Foods article. Currently we rotate between three of their cured salame: Tartufo, Wild Boar, and Barolo, all of which have been enthusiastically welcomed by our customers.

Fra Mani is a Berkeley based charcuterie creator who is obsessed with providing American pallets with the flavors of traditional salumi. Make your next sandwich with one or all of these little treats! Salametto is a small, coarsely ground, garlic scented salame.  Its rich color and full flavor will prove great for picnics! Salame Toscano is a deep burgundy color with salt slightly more pronounced in the Tuscan tradition of pairing foods with unsalted breads.

Proscuitto Parma is cured in the traditional fashion of Northern Italy and is so tender that it instantly melts on the tongue. We often pair it with cheese and other elements from our deli case to create sublime savory tarts or sandwiches, and it’s a must for a true antipasti plate.

Fermin Serrano Jamon is the Spanish cousin of Italian procuitto, and is perfectly matched with Spanish Manchego or Mahon, and a bottle or Rioja. We use this Spanish ham in our top selling sandwich, the Jamon y Queso, where we pair it with a spanish cheese and fig jam. Yum!

Zoe’s Meats are a local favorite, and we carry a whole slough of creations from this Seattle-based producer. For thier beautiful and rich flavors Zoe’s Sweet and Spicy Coppas, Pepperoni, and Chorizo. Zoe’s Finochionna Salami packs a mild and satisfying flavor of meat and fennel.

No charcuterie plate would be complete without an excellent pâté! Fabrique Délices is a California- based company run by a family of French artisans committed to offering traditional charcuterie to Americans, and we are offer their Truffle Mousse Pâté, Duck Liver with Fois Gras Pâté, and Farmer’s Rabbit Pâté. Additionally we carry the very popular Trois Petits Cochon’s Black Pepper Pâté.  Pair any of these delisious creations with a good dijon mustard, cornichons, fresh bread and a hearty, red wine and you have the ultimate snack!

A Unique Antipasti Plate from SAVOUR

Can’t decide which meats to try? Let SAVOUR create a tasting platter for your next indulgence! We offer cheese and meat plates with either three cheeses with condiments (olives, fig jams, bread, nuts) for $12, or three of the meats above for $10. With such a great deal, you can try them all!!! Call us or stop by to order yours today!