Tag-Archive for ◊ strawberries ◊

27 Jul 2010 Strawberry Volcanoes
Author:  |  Category: Fruits, Seasonal, Sweets  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,  | 2 Comments

Everyone is making chocolate covered strawberries now. Everyone. Sooooo…, it’s time for us to move onto Strawberry Volcanoes! Just look at that picture! Am I right, or am I right?! I saw a picture of Strawberry Volcanoes on TasteSpotting a few weeks ago and knew then this was the direction in which to move. Their picture was one of strawberries filled with freshly whipped cream, but I wanted something that would hold up longer on a dessert buffet. I decided to fill the strawberries with a cream cheese dip that I have made and served with strawberries for, hmmm…, at least a few decades. I loved the name “Strawberry Volcanoes”, so I am keeping THAT. The recipe below is just a guide. Dip your strawberries in a favorite chocolate and then fill with a favorite filling. Go for it! Create your own, “signature” Strawberry Volcanoes! You can start with my version or just make them like this all the time (like I am going to do)!

Strawberry Volcanoes

Adjust the quantities to fit the number of volcanoes you want to make. Don’t worry, though, leftovers of any component should not be a problem! ( Leftover chocolate? Stir in toasted coconut, raisins and/or nuts. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto wax paper. Let chocolate harden and snack! Leftover dip? Get more strawberries and dip them in it, or use as a filling for a cake or cupcakes. Leftover strawberries? Just eat, or freeze for a smoothie later.)

About 48 very large, very ripe strawberries
1 12 oz. package chocolate chips or a favorite large chocolate bar (you’ll need at least 6 oz.) Any kind of chocolate will work … milk, dark or white.

8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla

Wash strawberries and remove the green stem and leaves. If necessary, slightly slice the strawberry so it has a nice flat bottom and sits nicely on a platter. Let dry on paper towels.

While strawberries are drying, make the filling. With an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese with the sugar, sour cream, and vanilla until smooth and creamy (no lumps). Transfer the mixture to a large Ziploc bag or a piping bag fitted with a star tip. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Line a tray big enough to hold all strawberries with wax paper and set aside.

A few hours before serving time, melt chocolate or chocolate bar in the microwave on 50% power. (You might only need 1/2 the bag of the chips, you can start with that if you want and then melt more as you go, or melt the whole bag, up to you.) First, set the microwave oven for two minutes on 50% power, stir, and return chocolate to microwave for an additional minute and an additional stir. Repeat as necessary until the chocolate is completely melted. Dip the wide top end of the dry strawberry into melted chocolate. Place on the wax paper covered tray and let sit on it’s chocolate “bottom” (stem end, really) until hard (place tray in refrigerator to speed up this process).

With sharp knife, cut an X into the pointed (non-chocolate covered) end of the strawberry. Make the cut go about halfway down the strawberry. Fill the X with the filling, letting a  little “erupt” out of the top (remember you are making strawberry volcanoes!). If using the Ziploc bag method, push all the filling to one bottom corner of the bag. Snip the corner off, and squirt the filling out of the hole in the bag. If you have a piping bag and a star tip, you know the drill!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today.  Come back again tomorrow!

23 Jun 2010 Strawberry Shortcake
Author:  |  Category: Cakes & Cupcakes, Fruits, Seasonal, Sweets  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment

This is my son’s favorite dessert and since he’s home from college, we’ve had it two nights in a row. I think this rustic, coarse, only slightly sweet biscuit-type cake base saturated with sweetened sliced strawberries and lots and lots of sweetened whipped cream is just about perfect. If you like sweet, soft, cake-y strawberry shortcake, this is not the recipe for you; ALTHOUGH, if you try it, you might be converted to my way of thinking! This is my recipe. No sources. I’ve spent years developing it. Truth be told, I only figured out the right base about two years ago. Before that I used to use the recipe off the box of Bisquick. I am so glad to be done with that! The Bisquick base was really too salty and had a slightly metallic flavor to it, too. Here’s how to make Strawberry Shortcake, a truly American dessert, RIGHT!

Strawberry Shortcake

For the Shortcake Base

2 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons butter, chilled/frozen, cut into cubes/grated
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray a pretty 8 or 9 inch-diameter pan with nonstick spray for baking. (You will be baking and serving the strawberry shortcake in the same pan, that’s why I specified a pretty pan (if you don’t have a pretty pan, don’t stress, just use the best you have). I use either quiche pan. If you don’t have one, a pretty pie dish will work.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in large bowl to blend. Add in butter (cut it in, if you know how, or just grate it in–grate the frozen butter as if it were cheese! Trust me, this works like a charm!). Using fingertips, rub butter into dry mixture until a coarse meal forms.

Make well in center of flour mixture. Add buttermilk, stirring with a fork (yes, a fork!). Gradually stir dry ingredients into milk to blend. Keep using the fork until the dough clumps together. Using floured hands, shape dough into ball. Transfer to prepared (pretty) pan. Using fingertips, stretch dough to fit pan. Bake until golden brown and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Transfer to rack to cool completely.
While shortcake is baking, wash slice and sweeten the strawberries.

For the filling

2 – 3 baskets strawberries (as many as you have or want, really)
sugar to sweeten berries (to taste)
1 pt. whipping cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. sugar

Rinse, drain, stem, and then slice the berries vertically (depending on the size of the berry, you can probably get 2-5 slices from each berry). Sprinkle sliced berries with sugar, to taste. Let sit for awhile to sweeten. Stir before using.

Up to one hour before serving, whip cream, vanilla and sugar until thick and creamy. Use immediately, or refrigerate until ready to assemble.

To assemble Strawberry Shortcake

Remove shortcake from pan. Carefully split in half horizontally (if the bottom half splits, no problem, if the top half splits it’s a bit more of a challenge to cover–but don’t stress). Place bottom half of shortcake back in pan. Top with 1/2 of sliced and sweetened strawberries. Top berries with half of whipped cream, smooth out to level. Replace top half of shortcake, press slightly. Top with remaining berries (and all of the juice). Pipe remaining whipped cream decoratively around the edge of the shortcake. Serve immediately.

Leftovers don’t keep well. Shortcake can be made early in the day, and strawberries can be prepared early in the day also, but the actual assembly should be done as close to serving time as possible.

This is actually an individual shortcake, not the big one described above (and it had too much whipped cream…, even for me!). To make individual shortcakes, cut dough with round biscuit butter, and bake as above. Recipe above makes 8 rather large servings.

03 Jun 2010 Polly’s 3-2-1 Smoothies
Author:  |  Category: Breakfast & Brunch, Drinks, Fruits, Seasonal  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,  | Leave a Comment

I’m pretty sure I was one of the first people ever to taste a smoothie. There was a smoothie man on campus at San Diego State University in 1976. He had a blender, fresh pineapple, fresh bananas, and a bunch of fruit juices. Every smoothie consisted of a large slice of fresh pineapple, half a banana, ice, and juice. The juice determined the flavor of the smoothie. They smelled divine, tasted divine and the memories lasted…

I’ve been making smoothies at home for a long, long time. Probably since 1977. I have spent 33 years perfecting this recipe…, it’s GREAT, better than the smoothie man’s, and it’s simple. Even I have this one memorized: 3 cups of frozen fruit, 2 cups of juice, and 1 cup of yogurt with an optional squirt of honey or spoonful of jam. (I use honey or jam only if the yogurt is plain and the fruit tart–usually the sweetening is not needed.) The recipe makes 4 cups of smoothie goodness. Enough for a 2, 3, or 4 people for breakfast. Just making one for yourself? Get out the blender (you don’t even have to measure)… Pour in one to one-and-a-half cups of frozen fruit, 3/4 to 1 cup of juice, and a small container of yogurt. Whirl on high for about a minute. Done. What a way to start a summer day!!!

I like using the frozen fruit because then there’s no need to use ice–which dilutes the intensity and the goodness of the smoothie. Now don’t be using packaged frozen fruit this time of year. I know you want to buy all those fresh berries from the market. Go ahead! Freeze the leftovers. When the strawberries get a bit past their prime…, rinse, pull the stem off, freeze. Same with peaches nectarines, apricots, plums, and bananas. No need to peel them. Just wash, slice, and bag. Leftover fresh pineapple? mango? Slice, freeze, and bag along with some blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. (OK…,it’s best to ‘open freeze’ the fruit first. Place the sliced fruit on a tray, freeze as is, then remove to a Ziploc bag. If you freeze wet fruit it tends to freeze into a solid ball. Starting out the morning with a cleaver and a ball of frozen fruit can be frustrating…). By the end of the summer you will have a wide variety of frozen fresh fruit for your smoothies and think how great you’ll feel having had a few healthy servings of fruit each day for breakfast.

I made our first smoothies of the season yesterday. Frozen strawberries (all the frozen fruit we had, usually I have more of a variety), orange-mango juice, plain yogurt, and a squirt of honey.One for me, one for my nineteen year old son and his friend, and one for my eighteen month old grandson. My son, texting away, drank a third of his and said, “Can you make more of these?” I said, “Sure. Are you that hungry”. He said, “Yeah, I’ll have another one…, but my friends are driving by and they want to stop by and have one. I told them how good they were.”!

Tonight for dinner my grandson and I had smoothies made out of frozen strawberries and raspberries, orange juice, and blueberry yogurt. Delicious (even though the picture is one of the worst pictures I’ve ever posted). My son’s favorite is frozen peaches, peach yogurt, and any kind of juice. I like to jazz his up with some frozen raspberries or raspberry yogurt. My daughter likes a citrus smoothie–frozen pineapple, sometimes with some mango and banana, lemon or plain yogurt and grapefruit juice, orange juice, or lemonade. I like frozen raspberries and blueberries, plain or berry yogurt, and any kind of juice…, but orange-passion fruit is to die for…

Let me know your favorite flavor combination! Enjoy!

Polly’s 3-2-1 Smoothies

3 cups of frozen fruit
2 cups of fruit juice (start with orange…then experiment)
1 cup of yogurt (any kind)
optional squirt of honey or spoonful of jam

Put frozen fruit in blender. Cover with juice. Add in yogurt. Blend until thick and frosty. Add in a squirt of honey or jam, if desired. Whirl again to blend. Makes four cups of smoothie goodness. Pour into 2, 3, or 4 glasses. Add a straw…, and maybe a squirt of whipped cream. Serve. YUM!

02 May 2010 Strawberry Oatmeal Scones
Author:  |  Category: Breads, Breakfast & Brunch  | Tags: , , ,  | Leave a Comment

My daughter Abby insisted I post these.  She said they are delicious.  She’s a wonderful girl, but unfortunately suffering from dormfooditis.  Nevertheless, these scones are good, and they do look pretty.  They’d be good with a mother’s day cup of tea, don’t you think?

Scones are not supposed to be sweet, and not supposed to resemble a muffin, and these don’t.  They have the right texture for a true English scone. Next time though, I will put a bit more sugar in them, and a bit less nutmeg.  (I love nutmeg, so I was a bit overgenerous, and the scones ended up with a bit of an unappetizing yellow tinge.)

Here’s where I found this recipe… Adapted from Joy the Baker, originally from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

Strawberry Oatmeal Scones

1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup sugar (next time I might use 1/2 cup)
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Pinch of ground nutmeg
1 cup fresh strawberries, chopped
1/2 cup plus 2 T unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with a Silpat or parchment paper.

Whisk together the egg and buttermilk and set aside. Combine the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg in a mixing bowl. Add the cold butter pieces and cut in with a pastry blender or your hands, until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add in the chopped strawberries. Pour in the buttermilk mixture and stir with a fork until the mixture comes together in one hairy ball (be careful not to squish too many strawberries). Place the dough on an ungreased baking sheet and pat into a disk about the size of a dinner plate and  1 1/2 inches thick. Cut the dough, like a pie or a pizza, into about 8 or 12 wedges.  Pull wedges apart, so there is about 1 inch between each slice.

At this point scones can be refrigerated to bake later, or frozen to be baked much later.  Place in preheated 400 degree oven  and bake for approximately 20 minutes until golden brown (25 minutes if frozen–do not defrost before baking). Transfer to a wire rack to cool about 10 minutes before serving.

Thanks for visiting!

Next Entries »