Building The Perfect Smoothie

Remember when I shared with you that I was starting to make smoothies? I promised some recipes once I perfected them and those are coming. Before I share some of my favorite concoctions I thought I'd pass along a few tips I've learned.

Above is a visual "formula" for my smoothies. I've detailed each "layer" below. Basically, I mix and match what I have (or what is in season)to come up with the daily smoothie. I love this method because I can customize it by making it low-oxalate (which I've been trying to follow recently due to some recurring GI/pain issues).

Fresh Strawberry Cake

I’m still slowing getting back into the swing of things. It took me 2 days to recover from the drive up north for my uncle’s memorial. Then, we get back and I discover I’m out of one of my medications. I spent that day going through horrible withdrawal; shaking, headaches, rocking back and forth. Not fun. The pharmacy, God bless them, expedited my refill when I explained the situation.

Needless to say, during all this food was the last thing on my mind. But now I’m finally forcing myself to get some of my posts together.

I made this strawberry cake awhile ago, I just never got around to posting about it. I strayed a bit from the original recipe and I made the cake a few times before I got it right.

The crumb and texture is divine. You could use just about any fruit. I might try it with some peaches from the farmer's market.

Fresh whipped cream tends to get runny if it sits too long. I found by using powdered sugar and a bit of cornstarch I could get a whipped cream that would last the 2 days this cake lasted in our fridge.

Vegan Berry Cobbler

My wonderful sister has once again rescued me this week with a guest post. I'm still recovering from my minor surgery last Friday. It really made my week horrible. I woke up each morning with puffy lips, it hurt to talk because the knots/stitches rub against my bottom teeth and gums. My energy is so low, I'm barely able to make dinner for Mr.Surly. And I have to rinse my mouth out with this nasty prescription rinse to keep infection from setting in. I can't wait to get the stitches out tomorrow and return to the kitchen to bake up some yummy treats; perhaps even this delectable looking berry cobbler.

There was a special on berries at my grocery store, so I didn’t have to resort using any frozen. The berries this year (especially the strawberries) have been very sweet, which made this cobbler a delectable treat.

This cobbler is nice because it is neither complicated nor time consuming. I did have some problems keeping the whipped “cream” from being too runny, but it did turn out to be a nice dairy-free alternative. We did top some of them with vanilla ice cream (not vegan) and that was good too.

Blueberry Walnut Pancakes

It’s Friday, which means (for us), tomorrow is pancakes day. These pancakes are a staple for us; I make them almost every Saturday, unless we have fried egg and cheese sandwiches.

Use this recipe as a base recipe. I change up the fruit on occasion, sometimes adding cranberries, sometimes banana, or any other fruit I have on hand. These pancakes are great because they are thick and fluffy. I love the texture of the rolled oats. The spices as well can be changed up based on what you’re feeling. Sometimes, I only add cinnamon because I’m feeling too lazy to grate nutmeg.

Cranberry Apple Walnut Crunch

I know I have talked about how my doctor has requested me to eat lots of sugary, fatty dessert and how I have done my best to follow this. But eating cakes, tartlettes, ice cream, etc gets old pretty fast when you’re eating them every day. Plus, I have to prepare and bake all these treats. Thank goodness it’s now Halloween season. I loaded up on candy and have been snacking on that all throughout the day. I bought one of those fun, plastic jack-o-lantern trick or treat holders, and I keep it on the table beside the couch so it’s near me and I can reach over and eat some candy whenever I want. But this post isn’t about candy, nor my snacking on it; it’s about me finally getting in the kitchen and baking something.

Our weather temperatures are starting to drop to a comfortable mid-70 degrees, so it’s actually starting to feel like fall (at least in the mornings and evenings). Trying to get into the spirit of the season, I thought I’d make some kind of fall-ish dessert. I love cranberries and decided to make some kind of dessert using them. I didn’t really follow a recipe, I just looked at some recipes I had for fruit crisps, cobblers, and crumbles and kind of combined some of them to make this. It turned out so tasty. I wish I would’ve have made some whipped cream or bought some ice cream for topping, that would have made it even better.

Fresh Peach Crisp

I’m not a huge fan of peaches unless they are at their peak seasonally, which is now. Over the weekend the grocery store had locally grown peaches for only 49 cents a pound! I probably bought too many of them. I liked the peach blueberry crumbles I made awhile ago, but wanted to try to make a peach crisp. I found a Cook’s Illustrated recipe that sounded good. These were so delicious, I’m going to make them again this week. I do wish the filling was a bit juicier; maybe mine wasn’t because the original recipe calls for frozen peaches,which when thawed would produce more liquid. But why use frozen peaches when fresh ones are in season? I bet if I omitted the cornstarch I would get more of a bubbly filling using fresh peaches.

Berry Gratins

I’m trying to think of new and unique berry recipes. I liked the fresh fruit tartelettes I made, especially the strawberry meringue tartetettes, but I still wanted something new and different.

Flipping through the Cook’s Illustrated Cooking for Two 2010 cookbook I recently bought, I came across this recipe for berry gratins. They looked and sounded tempting. Berries covered in cream with a caramelized sugar crust? Sign me up. I didn’t have any gratin dishes and Cook’s Illustrated recommends baking them in two Le Creuset petite au gratin dishes, which I picked up for only $9 each. The recipe is kind of involved but not difficult. I made them in advance and let them come to room temperature before sprinkling with sugar and broiling. I didn’t have any white wine, so I used sherry instead (the only alcohol we currently have is vodka, sherry, and port; I chose to use the sherry).

These were good, very rich, at least to me. I was unable to eat the whole thing, because of my stomach. I definitely want to make these again.

Fresh Fruit Tartelettes

I made these a while ago and debated on whether or not to post the recipe, mainly because it’s long and I’m lazy. This recipe was really involved and I just didn’t feel like typing it all out. But these have a fantastic taste with the berries and the cream, and they look beautiful when assembled. I will definitely make them again, so I finally decided to bite the bullet and post them. It's not really hard, it just takes a lot of time to put together.

I made the pastry cream and tart dough in advance and assembled the tarts the next day. It was my first attempt at making pastry cream, which is why I chose a Cook’s Illustrated recipe; they take a lot of the guess work out of things.

I wound up with A LOT of extra pastry cream. I froze it, so it wouldn’t go bad until I could think of a way to use it up. I ended up just making some fruit parfaits with Grand Marnier whipped cream and quinoa clusters.

The pastry cream tasted fine after being frozen for a week or so; the texture was a bit off, but mixed with fruit and whipped cream you couldn’t really tell. Next time I will scale down the pastry cream recipe so I don’t have so much leftover.

Peach Blueberry Crumbles

This week I had peaches to use up along with some blueberries. I love Cook’s Illustrated berry crumbles, but I thought I’d try a new recipe. A quick search on Food Network produced this highly rated Ina Garten recipe. The recipes are pretty similar, a few minor differences, one being more sugar in Ina's topping.

I have a soft skin peeler that I used to peel my peaches. It has a serrated blade that does an excellent job peeling fruit with soft skins, like peaches and tomatoes. I think it would be fine, if you don't want to peel the peach, to just dice up the peaches. I also have this multi grain cereal that I added to the topping to get some whole grains.

Strawberry Meringue Tartelettes

The end of the local strawberry season is almost here, so I’m trying to think of all the strawberry recipes I can make while they are still at their peak. My mom used to make strawberry meringue pie in the summer that I always liked. I didn’t want to make a whole pie for just two people, I thought individual tartelettes would be better. If I had more than I thought we could eat, I figured I could freeze a few of the tartelettes. However, we had no problem polishing these off in a matter of days. A perfect recipe for summer; the better the strawberries, the better the taste. The local berries I bought were so sweet that I only needed to add 1 Tbl sugar to the berries. My favorite part of this dessert is the layer of meringue, I don’t know why, I just love it. If you want to make a 9" pie instead of tartelettes, simply double the filling ingredients.

Mini Vanilla Cheesecakes with Raspberry Topping

Berries are on sale at the store and I went a little overboard buying them because they were so cheap (only $1.99/each!). Mr. Surly requested berry crumbles, which I made a couple times. But I wanted something different, something new to try that involved berries. It’s been awhile since I’ve browsed through my Jamie Oliver cookbook so I decided to look through it and see what kind of recipes he had involving berries. I came across this cheesecake recipe. It sounded yummy, I had all the ingredients, and it looked simple. Also, the fact that you don’t have to bake this was also a plus for me. Our temperatures are already in the mid-80’s to low 90’s and I hate turning the oven on because it warms up the kitchen. Jamie's recipe calls for a large 9” cheesecake with 3 blocks of cream cheese. There is no way Mr. Surly is going to eat anything with that much cream cheese, especially raw cream cheese, so I had to cut down the recipe to use only one 8 oz block of cream cheese. I only made a few minor changes and used two 4 ½” springform pans. Jamie’s cheesecake is completely raw, only the oatmeal gets toasted. Since I was making two cakes I decided to experiment; I bake one crust and left the other one uncooked to compare them. After sampling both, it was hard to tell a difference. But if you plan on keeping it in the fridge overnight, the baked crust might be a better choice. The unbaked crust has the potential to get soggy if it sits in the fridge too long (my unbaked crust started to get soggy after two days in the fridge). I know it's unusual to have such a small cake go uneaten for that long, but I have been sick the past couple days and have been unable to eat much.

Berry Crumble

I really haven’t done much cooking recently because I have been too sick to eat, let alone cook. I have wanted to post this crumble recipe for awhile, but haven’t because I can’t get a good picture. So here is a half-hearted post with a ho-hum photo. Once I’m better I’ll replace this version with a better post and picture. These are so good; I wish the picture did them justice.

I’m so glad spring is here and the weather is warming up. I love fresh berries and will be making these crumbles a lot. The topping makes too much, and I usually store the remainder in the fridge in an airtight container and make 2 more crumbles the next night. Or, sometimes, I’ll reduce the amounts in the topping to cover just the two crumbles. I left the original proportions in the recipe below.

I had trouble finding 12 oz ramekins. I have some Emile Henry ramekins (I think they are technically called soufflé dishes) that were only 10 oz. After much searching, I finally found 12 oz ramekins at Williams-Sonoma. They are Apilco #3. I had to ask a sales associate for the 12 oz size and he found some in the back for me. I could not find them on the website, but if you go in to the store they should have them in the tableware section with the other Apilco porcelain. Again, I think it may be called a 12 oz soufflé dish. Just look for the #3 on the bottom. Of course you could just divide it among smaller ramekins and have smaller portions if you don’t want to buy new ramekins.

The lemon/lime zest is optional, but it really brightens up the flavor. In the future I may experiment with an orange. I top with either ice cream or freshly made whipped cream. Delicious.