Peach and Blueberry Trifle

Chef Karen: The title may sound simple but it bring a whole lot of happiness to the mouth! There are as many trifle recipes as there are chefs. That’s why Chef Jonathan and I decided to use a white cake of some sort, vanilla pudding, fruit and whipped cream and see what we could come up with. I chose to make individual trifles. I used Twinkies as the white cake; I soaked them in rum extract for a more “grown-up” taste, plain vanilla pudding and real whipped cream. Because my peaches were a bit hard, I cut them up, sprinkled some sugar on them and let them set for a few hours. This softened them up and make them quite yummy. I layered my ingredients as a true trifle is layered, added a sprig of mint in honour of great friend, and voila! A refreshing late-summer dessert. Simple but stunning, I’d say 🙂

Chef Jonathan: I decided to use angel food cake as my base for the trifle, a little unoriginal, I know, but I thought it would best to go back-to-the-basics for this week’s dessert. I then layered with creme chantilly, then roughly chopped peaches. I also whipped up a vanilla custard to go next, then more cake, cream, then the blueberries. I finished off with the whipped cream, and topped off with more blueberries. This is a nice simple end of the summer dessert, enjoy!

 

Hawaiian Luau

It’s mid-winter in Ontario and that starts to get people down. A Hawaiian Luau is a fun way to help cure those winter blahs. This week’s post is our menu and some pictures to go with it. We started with ordering in Hawaiian pizza – we concentrated on more interesting things to actually make.

Our menu was as follows:

Pizza, tropical fruit salad, mango salsa, virgin margarita, virgin piña colada, and a mango agua fresca.

Chef Karen: I made a tropical salad. I started with fresh pineapple (is there any other kind???), chopped it up into small pieces and added fresh mango and orange to it. To add some colour, I added kiwi. Just before serving I cut up some banana and put it in and also added some chopped, sweetened coconut. It was quite tasty as the sweetness went well with the salty pizza.

Jonathan: I made the mango salsa and the tropical drinks. For the salsa, I chopped up: cucumber, mangoes, jalapeño pepper, red onion, tomato and I squeezed some fresh lime juice for a zesty spin. These go perfect with lightly salted tortilla chips. For the virgin margarita: I blended 1 can of frozen limeade concentrate, the juice of: 1 orange, 1 lemon and 1 lime, and tons of ice (this is for a slushed margarita, for on-the-rocks, stir in the ingredients and chill with ice). I then rimmed the glass with sugar, garnished with a fresh lime wedge and tropical umbrella. For the virgin piña colada: I blended pineapple juice, coconut milk and ice. For the garnish: place a maraschino cherry on the tropical umbrella. For the mango agua fresca: I chopped up 2 mangoes, blended with 3 cups water, 1/2 cup sugar, fresh lime juice and ice. Add more sugar or lime depending on taste.

Credits: http://www.laurainthekitchen.com/all/episode.php?episodenumber=376&screen=5&sortby=;http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/aguas-frescas-recipe/index.html;http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/mango-salsa-recipe/index.html

 

Frozen Lemonade Pie

(This week it’s just “One Recipe, One Kitchen” as Chef Jonathan had the weekend off.)

I decided to try this new recipe for a family get together.  I’d never heard or seen it before and thought it sounded very good.  I wasn’t disappointed.  It was easy to make (I know, I keep saying that!) and very tasty. I thought it might be a bit tart due to the concentrated lemonade but it wasn’t. It was sweet with a bit of welcomed tartness. I cheated and used a ready-made shortbread pie crust. I know, I know… that’s cheating but I was short on time and patience. I made up for the “laziness” by adding fresh blueberries and raspberries to the top of mine instead of the lemon peel.  It does melt quickly so don’t be slow about serving this refreshing dessert.  It was a hit at the family  gathering. I highly recommend it!

Frozen Lemonade Pie with fresh berries

It’s from The Foodnetwork website:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/neelys/frozen-lemonade-pie-recipe/index.html

 

Strawberry Crumble

Chef Jonathan: Sometimes as experienced culinary chefs, we can get tired of following recipe after recipe, so we are forced to adapt simple recipes to our own liking. I decided to do that this week, with a delicious Strawberry Crumble recipe. It’s incredibly simple, with only a few key steps. You can actually use as many berries as you desire, as long as they just about cover the bottom of your baking dish. Also,  if you don’t feel like measuring out my carefully calculated 1 5/8 C of AP flour, you can just do 2 scant cups. If you feel like adding a little extra carmelization on top, like I did, just sprinkle some more brown sugar on top. Enjoy!

Karen:  This recipe is so good and so easy to make. (it seems like i say that every week…..)  With strawberries at their peak right now, this would be a great recipe to make and have friends over to share it on the deck as you watch the sun go down.  I made it as Chef Jonathan said it should be made, even right down to the 1 5/8 C of flour. (He did this to tease me. I have shown angst when a recipe calls for silly measurements like that!)  I left out the orange juice as I forgot to buy one when I was at the grocery store. And I didn’t measure the berries.  I used what I had left in the fridge.  I’m pretty sure it was more than 500g. The thing I really liked, though, was the after taste of ginger; it was quite unique.  I did add a bit of oatmeal, too, because I like to be different.  I highly recommend this recipe.  Try it for yourself and enjoy!

Recipe:

500 g Strawberries
1/2 C sugar
zest and juice of 1 orange

Crumble
1 5/8 C AP flour
1/2 C butter, diced and chilled
1/2 C brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger

Preheat oven to 375 F. Cut the strawberries into halves and put in oven proof dish, adding sugar, zest and juice on top.

Crumble: sift the flour into a bowl. Rub in the butter until in resembles fine cornmeal. Stir in brown sugar and ginger. Spread evenly over fruit and press down lightly with a fork.

Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes until the crumble is golden brown.