Strawberry Pancakes

We're definitely in strawberry season and I'm loving every bit of it. In fact, Dave and I picked up some strawberry plants from our farm in the hopes that we can create our own harvest instead of running to the farm every other day (we'll do that for blueberries instead). But until then, we'll have to settle for the grocery store gems, and since I was in strawberry overload and bought way to many on my past trip (sorry not sorry), I needed to make something with the extra bounty. So when I asked Dave what kind of pancakes he wanted this past weekend and he responded strawberry, I knew there was a reason for my berry-hoarding. I'm usually hesitant about fresh fruit in my pancakes, particularly berries, because I don't think they impart the necessary flavor to the whole pancake. And I otherwise mess them up, either resulting in mushy fruit or undercooked pancakes. But these strawberry pancakes turned out perfect. Fluffy with bites of berry throughout and a perfect tenderness without burning the berries, I'm glad I gave them a go. Now I'm getting interested in the idea of a strawberry banana pancake, so there's a whole new world of pancakes that has been opened up in my kitchen. Yum!

Strawberry Mini Donuts

After a long, hard New England winter (let's face it--it was long and hard everywhere), it's finally strawberry season! By far one of my favorite things about May is the influx of these sweet, juicy berries. They haven't hit our farm stand yet, but I know they'll be there soon. In the meantime, I'll pick them up wherever I can get them. But of course, breakfast calls and while I could eat my weight in fruit for breakfast, sometimes a donut is in order. Simple enough, just combine the two, make them mini donuts so you can eat more without feeling like a pig (hey, they're made with fruit so they have to be healthy, right?) and you've got a perfect breakfast treat. Plus, I got enough of these little guys, we dropped a bunch off with Felise and Nick so they could enjoy them as well. Yup, another donut recipe in the books and another reason to pick up some extra strawberries.

Strawberry Almond Brownies

Here's a decadent, twist on chocolate covered strawberries. Forget the cold, slimy, overpriced version and toss those chopped up strawberries into a fudgy batter, add some almonds and bake those suckers into chewy brownies. Boom. Valentine's Day classic reinvented. I took these to work for a training and everyone loved them. There weren't a lot of people there, but I still only came home with a few of these guys--everyone needed seconds. The strawberries add a subtle sweetness and the almonds are a great change of pace to the regular walnut dotted brownie. A bit of amaretto adds an extra layer of flavor that really brings these brownies together. I may never go back to dipped strawberries.

Strawberry Ice Cream Topping

For the first few weeks of our summer CSA, Dave and I got some very lovely, very sweet strawberries that we enjoyed just rinsed and sliced and in smoothies.  But they were so farm fresh that I was afraid we wouldn't be able to enjoy the whole pint (or two) before they turned.  So I looked for a way to use them without adding a ton of sugar or masking their natural sweetness.  And what better way to enjoy strawberries than on top of vanilla ice cream?  Just a little slicing and a few minutes on the stove top, and this strawberry sauce is exact what you want to top your ice cream sundae.  Dave hasn't touched the chocolate syrup or hot fudge since I made this.  And rightfully so.

Patriotic Dipped Strawberries

It's official!  Or unofficial.  Either way, today begins what we all consider the start of summer.  Let the cookouts, BBQ's parties and vacations begin.  And if you're looking for a fun and festive, not to mention quick, treat for your event today, look no further.  These cute dipped strawberries are perfect--sweet, tasty, seasonal and precisely the kind of celebratory dessert that everyone will love.

Strawberry Oatmeal Muffins

Fresh, ripe strawberries.  Nutty oats.  Greek yogurt and sugar substitute.  Combine it all together and you've got a yummy muffin for less than 100 calories.  Take that, coffee shop mega muffins.  Sometimes a girl just wants a muffin and just wants to be able to enjoy it without the guilt trip of extra hours on the elliptical to prevent said muffin from settling on her thighs.  And this little muffin is both tasty and hearty and healthy.  Gotta love that kind of breakfast. Plus they were simple to make.  Which always makes my heart sing.

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Bread

There's something about the combination of chocolate and strawberries that just seems decadent.  Even in this quick bread, a few sliced strawberries and a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips brings a regular morning treat to a whole new level.  Strawberry bread isn't very typical-- you don't see it in a lot of coffee shops or hear about people making it, but it's such a seasonal and lovely twist on quick bread.  And the chocolate chips add a great flavor element for a different sweetness.  Moist, tasty and easy to make, this is perfect for sharing with coworkers, making for a bake sale or pot luck, or gifting to a neighbor or friend in need of a pick me up or a quick breakfast option.  I brought this to work for a meeting and it was a big hit.  One attendee turned to me during the meeting and said, "Excuse me, but I'm going to make a pig of myself on this if you don't mind."  Ha!

I've been following Christina at Sweet Pea's Kitchen since last fall--she hooked me with her tailgate recipes. But I really like her baked goods and how she makes subtle changes to classic recipes to come up with whole new flavors and the shear abundance of beautiful desserts to choose from is like a wonderful day of window shopping for me..plus a little drool.  So when I wanted to make a quick bread because I was short on time, I took a spin through Christina's archives.  I had strawberries in the fridge, so this recipe called out to me. I added 2 Tablespoons of cake enhancer because I wanted to test it (it's supposed to make my breads "softer, moister, and stay fresher longer"--I think it did the first two, but the bread didn't stick around long enough to test the third) and decreased the sugar just a smidgen because my strawberries were very sweet already.  Otherwise, I followed Christina's instructions, which were spot on.

Strawberry and Vanilla Mini Cupcakes with Strawberry Glaze and Lime Buttercream Frosting

After being challenged by Cindy in the cupcake department, I certainly couldn't let the shower go by without serving a few cupcakes for good measure.  And I made simple fruit flavors to satisfy Cindy's more simplified dessert preferences.  Making the cupcakes mini made them that much more fun and allowed everyone to sample different desserts rather than commit to a full sized cupcake (or feel like a little piggy by having a couple of big desserts).  Plus, this way I got to mix and match the flavors and provide a wider assortment, which is always fun.  The strawberry mini cupcakes had a strong strawberry flavor already, so to pair them with the strawberry glaze made the flavor intense, which is great if you love strawberries!  The lime buttercream was a perfect compliment to the strawberry mini cupcakes.  Likewise, the vanilla mini cupcakes were the perfect palette for both the glaze and the frosting.  Even though Dave and Cindy were both sitting in the kitchen watching me pipe the lime frosting, I kept the beater for myself--this frosting was delicious!  Tasty and cute, mini cupcakes are definitely the way to go.  Plus, I loved the little polka dot mini cupcake liners I found to match the shower's polka dot theme.

Peanut Butter Crunch Cookies

I'm so excited for this post!  Today is my first post for the Secret Recipe Club (SRC)!  If you haven't heard about it, you can learn everything you need to know here, but basically each Monday a group of bloggers post a recipe they've made from another blogger's repertoire, but nobody knows who's featuring their blog until that morning, hence a secret club!  It's a fabulous opportunity to check out new bloggers and force yourself to try new things.  I hope you'll take a look at some of the other bloggers in my group by checking out the blog hop at the bottom of this post.

I had the privilege of baking from Andi's blog, The Wednesday Baker.  Andi felt like a kindred spirit as I read her blog subtitle "One cookie at a time..." With a heading like that, I knew immediately that I'd be baking one of Andi's cookie recipes--to the point that I didn't allow myself to look at any of the other yummy things on her blog until I committed to a cookie recipe.  And by committed, I mean choose three and made Dave pick one, thus ensuring that I had to make them since he'd expect them.  Be sure to check out Andi's blog and take a spin through her sweet treats and good eats.  I already have a few other recipes from Andi that I plan to try and post.

Strawberry Margarita Mini Muffins

You know how for the past week you've been wondering what to do with the rest of that strawberry drink mix you bought for the Strawberry Margarita Cake (by the way, the definitive answer is add tequila and ice)?  Well you're in luck because I used up some of that mix to develop this tasty recipe for a wonderful batch of mini muffins that are the perfect size for this intensely flavored batter.

Why, yes, I did say I developed this recipe.  Earlier this year I picked up a copy of Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman.  This is a great book for bakers and cooks in general.  Ruhlman breaks down standard foods into their basic structures (i.e., muffins are just a combination of flour, liquid, egg and fat) and provides you with the ratio of each ingredient for a particular item. Then he tells you how to use those basic ratios to come up with your own recipes, using your own flavors. It's actually less of a recipe and more of an equation.  And for geeky bakers like me, it explains why I can add flour, milk, eggs and butter one way and get bread and then add those same ingredients another way and get pancakes.

Strawberry Margarita Cake

Look! I made a cake!  My difficulty with cakes has come from two areas: 1) removing from the pan (despite trying various tips and tricks) and 2) frosting.  I can never get it as smooth and pretty as my mom and sister do, so instead I'm just focusing on other yummy treats.  But last weekend we had friends over for dinner and I wanted a light, fruity treat to share with them.  This recipe had been in my stack since May, and now was the perfect timing.  The light cake has a lovely strawberry sweetness and the lime whipped topping was a refreshing change to thick buttercream.

The recipe is based on a boxed cake mix, but as we head into the rigorous schedules of fall (back to school, no more vacations, and all that), consider this a time saver.  It comes from Betty Crocker and was featured as a fun twist on dessert for Cinco de Mayo, but it's pretty much perfect whenever.  I choose to make the standard 9 x 13 inch pan, but you could do 2 round pans, cupcakes or whatever your heart desires by following the baking instructions on the box.  For a split second, I considered adding lime juice to the whipped topping as well, but didn't.  After tasting it, Dave and I both agreed it was good, but a little more lime in the topping would have sealed the deal.  A squeeze of lime juice (maybe 2 teaspoons) would be worth the effort.

Strawberry Bread

Possibly the quickest quick bread I've got.  Besides being delicious, this came together very quickly and as long as you've got strawberries, you probably have all the other ingredients on hand as well. It would be a great loaf to bake up for a Sunday brunch or even to take to a friend in need.  At first I was skeptical of the cinnamon and strawberry flavors together but it was wonderful.  Very flavorful, moist and makes the whole house smell good.

This recipe comes from the Penzey's Spice catalog, but since I only have the page and not the whole catalog, I don't know who it's from or when I found it.  The only alteration I made was using less sugar on my strawberries.  Since I'd picked them straight from a local farm and they were super red and sweet, I didn't feel the need to add all the sugar to the berries, but I listed the original recipe below.  Use your judgement.  You could probably make this bread with frozen berries, but I'd use whole berries, thawed and sliced, rather than sliced berries in syrup.

Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

They're like personal, portable little strawberry shortcakes!  Perfect for a picnic or party.  And super easy to make.  I love the biscuit-textured dough--gently sweet and flakey--paired with some deliciously sweet strawberries.  They come together quickly and make sure to eat them right away--they only store well for about a day or two in an airtight container.  I didn't try freezing these, but I'll make them again to test a few.  I imagine these would be a great with blueberries as well.  You could even put a dollop of whipped cream on the bottom of one, sandwich it with another one and freeze for 15 minutes for a more accurate shortcake taste.

This recipe comes from the Beantown Baker who has plenty of delicious treats and was one of the bloggers behind the organization of the Bloggers Bake for Hope bake sale.  The only slight change I made was to use a smaller scoop and thus baked the cookies for a slightly shorter time.  Oh, and I used light cream instead of heavy cream.

Strawberry Blondies

Remember when I made a bunch of lemon stuff?  Yeah, it's time for strawberries.  Because Dave and I went to pick them in a strawberry field.  And they are delicious, but I had 12 cups of them and didn't want them to go to waste before we could eat them all.  (Except this recipe doesn't use any of those strawberries.)  You're welcome.

This recipe is from the May 2011 Food Network Magazine.  And it's better when I make it properly.  And by properly, I mean when I don't double the flour by accident because I can't read.  Or read in a straight line.  I made these and kept going back to the recipe to make sure I was measuring the right amount of flour.  I must have checked it 3 or 4 times.  And each time, my eyes skipped the line and instead of measuring out 3/4 cup of flour, I measured 1 3/4 cups of flour.  Oops.  And I didn't notice until after they were in the oven.  Except, the thing is, the resulting bars were actually pretty good.  They were dense and I couldn't get the jam to swirl in the batter the way I wanted, but they were still tasty.  When made correctly (as below), they were even better, with a more chewy and moist inside but thick and crunchy edge.  The butterscotch and walnuts blend nicely with the strawberry to give a sweet, nutty flavor.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Cookie Tarts

These are so good.  And pretty.  But mostly let's focus on how good they are.  I took these for dessert when Dave and I went to dinner at his parent's house and they were a big hit.  My father-in-law actually couldn't eat the second one for a few minutes because he "just needed to savor that for a little while."  Yup, they're good.  The cookie dough is sweet and the strawberry cream cheese has a sweet but light flavor.  Top it all with a fresh strawberry and it's the perfect spring treat.  These would be great for a bake sale, Easter dessert, or a baby shower. (Do they make blueberry cream cheese?  Because that would be cute with blueberry's for garnish and then you can cover both sexes.)

I found this recipe on the Better Crocker website.  I thought I was going to make cheesecake but then realized I didn't have enough time.  So I had to think fast and find something using ingredients I already had in the house.  It almost worked.  I thought I could do this with regular cream cheese and flavor it (either vanilla or orange).  Turns out you really do need the whipped flavored cream cheese to get the consistency you want.  I suppose if I had whipped the regular brick of cream cheese first it might have worked out.  But alas, I ended up sending Dave to the grocery store (again).  The price he has to pay to get yummy treats.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Cookie Tarts

Ingredients

1 pouch Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix
1 stick of butter, softened (as called for on cookie mix)
1 egg (as called for on cookie mix)
1 8-ounce container strawberry cream cheese spread (pretend the brick in the picture is a tub of strawberry cream cheese)
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 Tablespoon milk
1/2 cup fresh strawberries, washed and sliced

Make cookie dough as directed on package (mix together cookie mix, butter and egg until a soft dough forms.)

Roll dough into 1 inch balls and place in a greased mini muffin tin. 

Press each ball into the bottom and up the sides of the muffin cup.  I used my handy tool (the mini tart shaper from Pampered Chef), but a slim shot glass may also work.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 12-15 minutes or until edges are brown.  Remove from oven. 

My cups started to puff up, so I pressed them down again (while still warm in the pan), indenting the "cup" shape with my tart shaper.

Cool slightly and then remove from pan and cool completely on wire racks.  Repeat with remaining dough (the original recipe says this makes 32 cups, but I got 40; my mini muffin tin only has 24 cups).

While cups are cooling, mix cream cheese, powdered sugar, and milk in a medium bowl.

Mix with a mixer on medium speed until smooth. 

Transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a star tip.  Pipe cream cheese mixture into each cup.

Garnish with fresh sliced strawberries.  Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Makes 32-40 cookie tarts.

Happy Baking,
The Cookie Princess

Strawberry Cheesecake Pops

A little Valentine's treat for your sweetie.  I actually made these for my friend Cindy. She was in need of a little cheering up and was craving cake.  And my friend Kate wanted me to make them just because, so I figured this would be win-win.

Cake pops are cropping up all over, but my inspiration for them comes from Bakerella and her beautiful blog.  She has infinite more patience than I do for the decorating, but the standard cake pops dipped in chocolate are super delicious.  And even though this was my first time, I didn't follow Bakerella's recipe exactly.  The cream cheese worked great and definitely made for a cheesecake style consistency.  But I'll try these Bakerella's way soon and let you know how they turn out.


Strawberry Cheesecake Pops

Ingredients

1 packaged strawberry cake mix
vegetable oil, as called for on box
water, as called for on box
eggs, as called for on box
8 oz cream cheese, softened
milk chocolate for dipping
white chocolate for dipping
sprinkles for garnish (not pictured)

Prepare cake mix according to instructions on box. 

Bake in any size pan or pans you like. 

After baking, allow cake to cool completely and remove from pan.  This is yet another reason why I don't do cakes.  I can never get them out of the pan in one piece.

But in this case, it doesn't matter because we're going to crumble it up anyway.  Because I really wanted the light pink to be the color of the cake pops, I trimmed off the browned edges and crumbled the rest of the interior of the cake into the food processor.

Cut up cream cheese and add to crumbled cake in food processor.  Pulse until crumbs and cream cheese combine.  You should end up with a uniform ball of yumminess.

Now the fun part.  Roll the dough into roughly one inch balls.  I used a small cookie scoop and then formed the balls with my hands. 

Place balls on a tray or pan and repeat until full or you fun out of dough.  Then put the tray or pan in the freezer for about an hour or until the balls are firm.

Melt the chocolate and stir until smooth.  Melt the chocolate in batches as you dip the pops.  And use a narrow container. The little bowls I used were too shallow, so I had to work to get the chocolate up to the stick.

Place a lollipop stick in each of the cake balls.  Push it through as far as you can--you don't want the ball falling off in the chocolate, and as the balls come back to room temperature, they'll be more likely to fall off.

Take one pop and roll it in the chocolate, trying to get a thick coating all the way around.  Keep turn the stick and keep the pop against the edge of the container to finish it off.  Dip quickly in sprinkles.

Here's where the problem was--I didn't have a place to put them after I dipped them.  So I had to put them top down, like caramel apples.  I put them in a container lined with waxed paper and it turned out fine.  And the ones dipped in sprinkles camouflaged the flattened tops.  Dave was working on the styrofoam ball I bought for presenting the pops (he pre-poked holes in it for the lollipop sticks because it was too thick). In hindsight, I would have bought another piece of foam--like a brick or something--to use after I dipped the pops. 

After I dipped them and placed them on the waxed paper, I did chill them for about 15 minutes so the chocolate could set.  You could also forgo the sticks and just have cake balls. Use two spoons or two forks to ensure even coating of chocolate and place on waxed paper to set.

Makes 40 pops.

Happy Baking,
The Cookie Princess

Strawberry Sour Cream Muffins

Well, you spoke and I answered.  It seems a lot of you are interested in muffins and breads.  So I'll start there, but I also have some cake, brownie and sweet treat recipes in mind.  I spent much of my Saturday afternoon scouring my dessert recipes for things I love to make and some I haven't even tried yet.

Like these.  I was flipping through my go-to muffin cookbook (Jean Childress' Country Kitchen Muffin Cookbook) to find a different recipe and these caught my eye.  So I pulled out the muffin tin (er, muffin stone?) and here we are.  These aren't very sweet and will get a lot of flavor from the jam you use.  I chose strawberry preserves, but you could make these with anything--raspberry jam, apricot preserves, orange marmalade.  I don't see why you couldn't use grape jelly if you were so inclined.  The one change I would make to the ingredients would be to add a teaspoon of extract to punch up the flavor.  The muffin looks light and airy, but is deceivingly dense, which was a surprise since I sifted the ingredients.


Strawberry Sour Cream Muffins

2 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons butter, softened
1 egg
1 cup sour cream
1 1/3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup strawberry jam (or jam/preserves of your choice)

Cream butter and sugar.  Add egg and sour cream and mix together.  In a separate bowl, sift dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) together.  Add to butter/sour cream mixture and gently combine. 

Divide half the batter among a greased 12 cup muffin tin.  I used a medium cookie scoop, putting about one scoop of batter into each muffin cup.  Shake the muffin tin gently to spread the batter into the pan--it's a stiff dough, so you may want to use a spatula to encourage the dough to fill each cup.

Drop 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of jam into each muffin cup. 

Top with remaining batter (another medium cookie scoopful).  Sprinkle with struesel topping (below) and bake at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes.

Muffins are done with a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or they are firm, but spring back when touched and are gently browned. 

Allow to cool for a few minutes in muffin tin (this give you crunchy edges), then remove to cooling racks.  Serve immediately or store in an airtight container for up to a week or freeze.

Struesel Topping

1/3 cup butter, softened
13 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Place all ingredients in a small bowl and using a pastry blender, mix together by cutting in the butter.  the result will be a crumbly mixture of butter bits.  Sorry I don't have a picture--I spaced on this one.  Which is unfortunate because I actually thought this made way too much topping, so I saved the remaining and used in on my banana bread recipe (yes, I'll share it with you!).  So that means I forgot to take a picture of the bowl twice.

Makes 12 muffins.

Happy Baking,
The Cookie Princess