Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

A lovely friend and neighbor recently graduated with her Masters.  When I received her evite for a berry themed party, I was very excited about all the wonderful strawberry possibilities.  We have a respectable number of strawberries coming from our little garden.  I started searching for more ways to enjoy.  

This neighbor never lacks for wonderful food at any of her shindigs, but, one of the best ways I know to show some love is to bake.  The cupcakes ended up fitting right in.  When we entered the house, we were served freshly picked beautiful, locally grown strawberries w/ either champagne or powdered sugar.  Beautiful and delicious.  Doesn't that sound like a fabulous greeting?

I'm a baking blog junkie--my little baking blog is small potatoes compared to the many wonderful options out there...have you ever heard of the Daring Kitchen?  Take a look at all the amazing bakers that participate.  Many of them are oh so inspiring.  I'm not a participant.  Just an admirer.

I like to look at blog after blog and see who some of my favorites follow.  Anyway, I stumbled across a new blog:  Love & Olive Oil, from which this ingenious little recipe came.  Doesn't it just sound delicious.  

I've had a lot of baking firsts this past year -- making the buttercream for this recipe was one of them.  I had always thought making a buttercream was a little out of my league.  It wasn't!  The main mistake I made was using my hand mixer.  It would have been so much easier if I had taken the extra effort to use my stand mixer.  A lot of mixing of the egg whites/butter.  

Check out the recipe linked above.  There's lemon juice and zest in the batter; the recipe also calls for full fat coconut milk.  It's so neat that they don't taste very 'coconutty'--it just results in a decadent, dense, moist cupcake.  Lemon, vanilla, and pureed strawberries go in the butter cream.  Yum.  I want to invest in a larger star-tip.  I'd like more practice piping too.  You'll see the Love & Olive Oil iced cupcaked look a bit more professional than mine.

These cupcakes were delicious.  I think I'm going to have to try this recipe again.  Maybe I'll have enough strawberries from my own garden for another batch.  We'll see.

Strawberry Pistachio Tart

Learning from mistakes....I should have done what Ina Garten suggested and stuck w/ the small 4 1/2 inch tart pans.  I decided I could make into a large 9 inch tart.  Maybe if I had done a little better w/ the pastry cream, it would have worked.  I had never ever made a pastry cream before - not the easiest, but it was delicious.  The tart would have held together much better in small rounds.  It was difficult to slice in this larger size.  

My husband and I had just returned from visiting my folks a few weekends ago in Travelers Rest (I'm behind on my blogging--I made this tart as soon as we returned - about 3 weeks ago).  My mom took us to the Cider House and we ended up bringing home a flat of "Sweet Charlies" grown not far up the road at Strawberry Hill, USA.  I was determined to make a strawberry tart.  I settled on Ina's recipe because I already had most of the ingredients.

The tart was delicious.  I loved the pistachios mixed in w/ the beautiful strawberries.  The sweet apricot jam made the plump strawberries glisten so beautifully.

The next day, I mixed some of the pastry cream w/ Grand Marnier and served spooned over more of the fresh strawberries.  This was almost more delicious than the tart.  I should know better than to stray too far from such a recipe.  Ina's pastry dough was very easy and I look forward to using again sometime soon.

Cracked Wheat-Honey Bread

I've been making Deborah Madison breads from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone quite a bit recently.  Primarily, I've been using the classic white sandwich bread or mixing that w/ some spelt flour.  I've been sticking w/ this great recipe mainly because it's so easy.  

A while back I did try Madison's Cracked Wheat-Honey Bread.  I'm not going to reprint the entire recipe this time.  The recipe was quite similar to the classic sandwich bread, it just had slightly longer rise times.  

Madison suggests adding 1 cup of either cracked wheat or bulgar.  I used bulgar and thought the texture was fantastic.  I also chose to use molasses given Madison's suggestions of either that or honey.  

All of the Madison breads I've tried so far make great sandwich bread, but even better toast.  I'm a huge fan of breakfast--the cracked wheat-honey was delicious toasted w/a  little butter and honey.  

All of the recipes I've tried so far make two 4 1/2 x 8 1/2 inch loaves.  Works great for giving one away (always a nice option), or I've also enjoyed slicing and freezing.  I find that if I slice before freezing, it's so easy to pull out however many needed slices and just leave on the counter for about an hour to thaw.  Not as good as fresh, but still very delicious.  Again, the frozen slices make great toast.