mango split with passionfruit, berries and coconut

MARCH 23, 2015

Mangoes are in full season and I’m loving everything about them. Maybe I’m eating more than I normally do at this time of year, but I’m finding them extra delicious somehow. I made a mango, passionfruit and yoghurt brûlée recently which is a wonderful dessert or sweet treat at a brunch. Here I’ve made them into a split with vanilla ice cream, fresh berries, passionfruit, a drizzle of melted white chocolate and coconut shavings. Tropical fruity flavours with a scoop of decadence.

Mango works as well as a banana for a split, perhaps better, and you don’t need a recipe here. Simply cut wedges out of mango cheeks and scatter over whatever berries you like. I spooned over the pulp from fresh  passionfruit to give it a lovely tart flavour, and mango and passionfruit are such good flavour friends. I added 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream and melted white chocolate to drizzle over. I finished off with coconut shavings to add texture and crunch to this dessert.

I’m clinging on to the last few weeks of summer as we move into autumn.

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Recipe: Iced Green Tea with Mint & Ginger

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As summer slowly winds down and with only a handful of grilling weekends left, it's time to savor some hot-weather favorites — like this twist on the classic iced tea. Kick off your Labor Day weekend with a simple and refreshing glass of iced green tea flavored with ginger, mint, and honey.

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For this batch of homemade iced tea, I chose to steer clear of flavored tea bags and opted for plain green tea sachets instead. Then I infused the tea myself with fresh, zesty ginger slices, fragrant mint leaves, and lemon juice.

This refreshing iced tea is the perfect beverage to guzzle down with your last burgers of summer.

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Iced Green Tea with Ginger, Mint and Honey

Serves 6 to 8

6 cups water 
1/4 cup ginger, peeled and sliced 
3 to 6 bags green tea (depending on how strong you like your tea) 
1/2 cup mint leaves, tightly packed, plus extra to serve
1/3 cup honey 
1 lemon, divided

In a medium-sized pot, combine the water and ginger slices. Bring to a boil. Once the water boils, remove from heat and add the tea bags and mint leaves. Cover the pot and steep for about 15 minutes.

Strain the brewed tea; separating the liquid from the mint leaves and tea bags. Mix in the honey and juice from half of the lemon into the tea. Transfer to a pitcher and cool to room temperature before refrigerating.

Slice the second half of the lemon. When ready to serve, add 1 to 2 lemon slices into each glass, along with a few mint leaves and ice cubes. Once the tea has cooled, pour it into the glasses and serve.

Recipe Notes:

• If your bags of green tea have paper tags, remove them before steeping so the tags don't fall off into the water.

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Baked Apple Cider Doughnut Holes

Baked Apple Cider Doughnut Holes

Baked Apple Cider Doughnut Holes

makes 24-48 mini muffins or "donut holes" **

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 large egg
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup apple butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/3 cup apple cider
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt (I used plain nonfat Greek yogurt)
• 2 Tbsp canola oil
• canola cooking spray
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and spray a mini muffin pan with cooking spray. 
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. 
3. In another large bowl, whisk together the egg, brown sugar, apple butter, vanilla extract, honey, apple cider, yogurt, and canola oil. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient mixture and whisk until just incorporated. Don't over-mix - a few lumps are okay. 
4. Using a tablespoon or cookie scoop, fill a 24-hole mini muffin pan with the batter; fill each hole only 3/4 of the way, or you'll end up with huge mini muffins (maxi muffins?). Bake for approximately 10-12 minutes and cool on a wire rack. 
5. While donut holes are still warm, melt butter in a microwave safe dish. Combine cinnamon and sugar in another dish. Using a pastry brush, very lightly brush a tiny bit of melted butter onto the top of each donut hole, then dip the top of the muffin in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll the donut hole in the cinnamon sugar to coat the sides and top. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Alternatively, you can dust the cooled donut holes with powdered sugar; I prefer the texture of the cinnamon sugar, so I went in that direction. You can also omit the butter - the cinnamon sugar sticks nicely to the donut holes. 

**Depending on the size of the holes in your mini muffin pan, you may get many more donut holes than I did - the mini muffins from my pan appear to be a bit larger than the average mini muffin pan. Take a look at the comments below to see how many other readers were able to make from this recipe - most get about 36-48 minis. 

Now go light a fire in your fireplace, make some hot mulled apple cider, and enjoy some baked donut holes! Or just eat them on their own - they're delicious either way. 

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Blueberry Cheesecake ice cream

Blueberry Cheesecake ice cream

You know you’ve done well in life when one of your best friends is not only a fine dining pastry chef but also has her own ice cream company. My beautiful friend, Karien started her bespoke ice cream company Whisk Away three years ago after her return to South Africa from the UK. She became addicted to a certain luxury brand of ice cream over there and when she came home, she found the same brand to be too expensive here so she decided to start making her own. And so, Whisk Away was born. Karien sells her ice cream at the Hazel Food Market as well as many other restaurants and ice cream shops but for more info, check out her website.

image: Marina May photography

I asked Karien if she’d like to collaborate on an ice cream shoot with me because I have all these ideas for ice creams but I don’t have a machine and… I’m not really THAT crazy about ice cream. However, Karien’s are so drop-dead-delicious, I can eat them everyday. She said yes (YAY!) and then the creative juices started flowing. We created a few incredible flavours (some a little strange but no less delectable) and had such fun shooting them. I’ll be sharing all the recipes with you over the coming weeks.

 

So, back to the blueberry cheesecake ice cream. People, this stuff is like crack in ice cream form. So, SO delicious and absolutely addictive. I love that none of Karien’s ice creams are too sweet and with this one, the added cream cheese not only results in a ridiculously creamy ice cream, it also counteracts the sweetness from the berries. Absolute perfection.

 

Blueberry Cheesecake ice cream

 

Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

20 mins

Total time

40 mins

 

Author: Alida Ryder

Recipe type: Ice cream, dessert,

Ingredients

• 100g blueberries, fresh or frozen
• 100g sugar
• 10ml lemon juice

for the ice cream

• 100g sugar
• 5 egg yolks
• 500g cream cheese
• 300ml milk

Instructions

1. In a saucepan, cook the blueberries, sugar and lemon juice over medium heat until the sugar has a jam-like consistency. Remove from the heat and transfer to a heat-proof bowl. Allow to cool completely.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until light and frothy.
3. Heat the milk and cream cheese in a saucepan to boiling point. Slowly whisk the cream cheese mixture into the eggs and sugar. Allow to cool.
4. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream churner and churn according to manufacturer's instructions.
5. Once churned, scoop out a few spoonfuls into a container, place a few teaspoons of blueberry compote and continue to layer.
6. Place in the freezer until ready to serve.

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Cheesecake Parfaits with Blueberry Pie Filling

No bake creamy cheesecake filling layered with blueberry pie filling!

I hope you all had a great Cinco de Mayo weekend. My weekend consisted of a 12-hour sleep on Friday night starting at 7PM (I sure know how to party it up!), lots of time spent in the kitchen and catching up on a lot of TV. All in all, I would say it was productive. After all, I finally watched X-Men 2 and 3, almost 10 years after it came out, and I almost cried my eyes out when Professor X died. I was a bit devastated, to say the least.

But being that it’s Monday, my least favorite day of the week, I’m hoping I can make it a little bit better with this Pinterest contest hosted by Lucky Leaf. Just be sure to follow the prompts below for your chance to win up to $500!

And in honor of this awesome contest, I just had to share these no-bake blueberry cheesecake parfaits. With layers of creamy cheesecake upon layers of blueberry pie filling, these can be served as the perfect Mother’s Day dessert, or my dinner on some nights! Hey, a girl’s gotta eat, right?

CHEESECAKE PARFAITS WITH BLUEBERRY PIE FILLING

Prep Time2 hours, 10 minutes

Total Time2 hours, 10 minutes

Yield4

4

No bake creamy cheesecake filling layered with blueberry pie filling!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, at room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 (20-ounce) can Lucky Leaf blueberry pie filling

See a Quick Sausage Alfredo Recipe

 

INSTRUCTIONS

• In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip heavy cream until stiff peaks form.
• In another clean bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla until smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl and beaters as needed. Fold in 1/3 of the whipped cream to lighten it; then add the remaining whipped cream, gently folding until the filling is light and fluffy.
• Using 3-4 wine glasses, pour the filling into each glass, layering with the blueberry pie filling.
• Serve chilled.

NOTES

Adapted from That Skinny Chick Can Bake

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Cantaloupe Popsicles

You won’t believe how easy these are to make. And it only needs 3 ingredients!

Have you ever had Melona bars? It’s a popular Korean-type popsicle that has a really smooth and rich honeydew taste. It was a childhood favorite of mine, especially during the summertime, but it’s been years and years since I’ve had one of these bad boys! 

See a Sausage Gnocchi Recipe

 

Now with the Melona taste in the back of my mind, I tried to recreate these bars with cantaloupe. So with much recipe-testing and various batches of popsicles and sweetener testings, which I’m not complaining about, I think I’ve finally nailed it with just 3 ingredients –cantaloupe, heavy cream and sugar. With a simple blend of these 3 ingredients, these bars turned out to be incredibly refreshing and oh-so-creamy. Plus, these homemade versions have absolutely no artificial additives – it’s all fruit! The only mistake I made when making these was not making enough because believe me when I say, these popsicles are addicting!

You can get the full recipe here over at Imperial Sugar!

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Imperial Sugar. All opinions expressed are my own.

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Blueberry Crumb Bars

Oh-so-crumbly blueberry crumb bars bursting with fresh blueberries with a hint of refreshing lemon goodness!

I’ve had this blog for almost 2 years now and I realized that I really love being a food blogger for so many different reasons, like…

• I love how my life revolves around natural lighting.
• I love how I have to spend 20 minutes finding the perfect lemons as food props, only to have it blurred out in the final edits.
• I love taking 50+ photos of these blueberry bars, only to use 1 in the final post.
• I love having to taste test a dozen cookies, only to go work it off at the gym right afterwards.
• I love the epic fails in the kitchen, like forgetting the sugar in your cornbread, even though you made the same mistake a month ago.
• I love writing my posts past midnight and then having to polish it up the next morning because apparently there were about 10 sentences that made absolutely no sense but was perfectly clear to me the night before.

I’m sure you caught my sarcasm in there somewhere but my point is, food blogging is incredibly tough work but in the end, I love it. I really do. Every second of it. And I love it even more now that I’m part of The Leftovers Club.

See, my good friend Jen over at Savory Simple created this club as a way for food bloggers to connect and exchange our baked goods with one another. The only requirement is that it must be a sweet or savory baked treat with a good shelf life and can be easily shipped.

That being said, I couldn’t help but bring these blueberry crumb bars to the party.

These crumb bars have been on my culinary bucket list for at least a year now and I finally got around to it. I’m not sure why it took me so long to make these because it really was so simple to whip up. It doesn’t even require a mixer!

And these crumb bars are seriously the best – that crumbly topping with the crunchy turbinado sugar and the sandwich blueberries paired with the tart lemons… Yeah, it sure is a party in your mouth when you bite into these. And they’re perfectly acceptable breakfast food, letting you indulge just a tiny bit before starting your day! Now who wouldn’t want the leftovers of these babies?!

BLUEBERRY CRUMB BARS

Prep Time15 minutes

Cook Time45 minutes

Total Time1 hour

Yield9 bars

Oh-so-crumbly blueberry crumb bars bursting with fresh blueberries with a hint of refreshing lemon goodness!

INGREDIENTS

• 3/4 cup sugar, divided
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 cups blueberries
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 1 1/2 tablespoons turbinado sugar

See a Quick Sausage Gnocchi Recipe

 

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly coat an 8×8 baking dish with nonstick spray.
• In a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup sugar and cornstarch. Stir in lemon juice. Add blueberries and gently toss to combine; set aside.
• In a large bowl, combine flour, remaining 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder and salt. Add egg yolk, vanilla, lemon zest and cold butter, using your fingers to work the butter into the dry ingredients until it resembles coarse crumbs.
• Spread 2/3 of the batter into the prepared baking dish. Spread blueberry mixture evenly over the bottom layer. Sprinkle with remaining 1/3 of the batter and turbinado sugar.
• Place into oven and bake until lightly browned, about 35-40 minutes. Let cool slightly before cutting into bars.

NOTES

Adapted from Cooking Classy

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