Sluggers' Strawberry Slushies

Okay, I'm aware that summer is officially over... the rain and dreary skies have set in here in Vancouver and the days are starting to get shorter. But I must share this delicious, icey drink with you today!! This is the perfect Friday night drink to celebrate the start of the weekend. Despite being a slushy drink, it isn't sweet - it has a grand total of 2 tablespoons of sugar! So for those of you who don't like sweet, this is the drink for you! And for those of you who do like sweet, sweeten this drink to taste!

I have to apologize though... no pictures of this one. I took a photo of the mixture in the blender before I blended it, but then I got wayyyy too excited to drink this one and suddenly it was gone and I had no photos... oh well, just gives me an excuse to make it again. Wooohooo!!

Sluggers' Strawberry Slushies
Recipe from Bon Appetit magazine, August 2011 Issue

Ingredients:

• 2 cups hulled strawberries
• 1 750 ml bottle dry Riesling
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 tbsp sugar

Method:

1. To make this drink without an ice cream maker, put 1 cup of the wine, covered, in the refrigerator and chill. Puree the remaining wine with all remaining ingredients in a food processor. Pour mixture into ice cube trays and freeze until solid. When you're ready to serve, just puree the ice cubes with the remaining wine in a blender.
2. To make with an ice cream maker, puree strawberries, Riesling, lemon juice, and sugar in a blender until liquified. Process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Divide among six cups. Serve immediately with straws, or transfer to a container and freeze.

Hope you enjoy this delicious drink!! I can't wait to make it again. :) Thanks for hanging in there despite the fact that my blogging has dropped off to only once or twice per week... hoping that by the beginning of October things will have settled down a little around here! Until then... once a week it is.

Cheers!

The Daring Bakers Challenge - July 2011 - Fresh Fraisiers!!!

This month has been crazy... I know, I know I've been on vacation so how can things be crazy? I will save the boring excuses for later. I just returned from Mexico late on July 24th realizing I hadn't yet started the Daring Bakers July 2011 challenge... so yesterday, the day before the deadline, I made all of the components then ran out of steam and didn't assemble the dessert. Thus, on the due date (today) I was madly assembling the desserts this morning so I could photograph them this evening and still post within the deadline! How is that for crazy? I have NEVER saved a challenge this late and likely never will again. I should have rebaked my cake... it was gross, but more on that later!

The end result was quite pretty (in my opinion any way) and tasted pretty darn good too. For those of you wondering what I'm crazily rambling on and on about, Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers' host and she challenged us to make Fresh Fraisiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

I'm not going to reproduce the recipe this time because I think you would be better off using the recipes exactly as provided by Jana on her website. So please hop on over to her blog and use those recipes if you decide you want to attempt this delicious dessert.

So, my pastry cream element was AMAZING!!! So delicious and it set up beautifully! I overwhipped the cream a tad bit, but I think that actually helped with the stability of the cream mixture, so in the end it worked out. I doubled the amount of vanilla in the recipe which I think was a good call! It gave it a delightful flavour that stood in with the strawberries very nicely.

The problem lies with the cake in my case... pretty bad!! Instead of following the recipe and the suggested alterations to arrive at a coconut chiffon cake, I decided to make my own creative adaptations to the recipe. A friend had given me some coconut flour which I was very excited to use... so excited in fact that I substituted it 100% for all of the regular flour in the recipe. Rookie mistake!!! My friend had even cautioned me against doing that very thing! Any way, the coconut flour absorbed moisture like crazy, so I just continued adding coconut milk until the batter was what I thought was the right consistency. WRONG!! The cake baked all the way through but was very wet; so wet that I couldn't cut it in half and transfer half back to the springform pan for molding. So to salvage the cake, I cut out shapes to fit in my ring molds and popped them in the freezer to firm up prior to handling them and putting them in the molds. It worked out well, but I still didn't like the texture of the cake for eating, though it was alright as long as all of the other components were included in that particular bite.

Despite my cake issues, the dessert turned out well and tasted delicious! The pastry cream is to die for!! I made some additional parfaits with fresh strawberries and pastry cream and boy were they good! I've already eaten one tonight and I would really like to eat another... but I will restrain myself!

Thank you Jana for hosting a wonderful challenge and introducing us to Fresh Fraisiers. They are so delicious and the perfect summer dessert. I can't wait to try it again and hopefully this time perfect the cake component as well. :)

Happy Baking my Friends!

Salad with Strawberries, Feta & Homemade Croutons

Alright, no show-stopping pictures tonight or elaborate recipes... just plain simple and tasty. Back to the basics! Here is a great salad to serve any time - slice up a grilled chicken breast, fan on top and drizzle with a nice balsamic dressing and you've got a quick, healthy and yummy weeknight dinner. No, your husband probably won't be crazy about it, but once a week won't kill him right?! He might even, *gasp* start to like "healthy" dinners! But, please don't hold your breath... I wouldn't want you to pass out from waiting for that to happen. ;)

Any way, I'll keep this post short so my attempt at humor doesn't drive you crazy and so you can get on with your evening. :)

For the salad: place some baby spinach in a bowl, top with some toasted sliced almonds, sliced strawberries, crumbled feta cheese and homemade croutons. Drizzle with a nice balsamic vinaigrete and enjoy!

To make your own croutons:

Take some day old bread or scones. Cut into 3/4 inch cubes. Place in a large bowl and drizzle with olive oil. Season with 1/2 tsp each of ground cumin and oregano and 1 tsp of minced garlic (or a little garlic powder). Toss to coat the bread cubes with oil and seasoning, then place croutons on a cookie sheet ina single layer and oast in a 400F oven for 10-15 minutes, until golden and crisp. Season with a little salt and set aside. Croutons keep well in a plastic bag at room temperature.

*Crouton making instructions are courtesy of Cinda Chavich from the Girl Can't Cook cookbook. Feel free to use whatever spices you like though!

Happy Cooking my Friends!

Celebration - 100th post!

I am celebrating with sparkling wine & delicious cake tonight! Tonight marks my 100th blog post since starting A Tale of One Foodie's Culinary Adventures in June. I can't believe I've completed 100 posts already - I feel like I just started my blog. I hope you have had as much fun reading my posts as I've had writing them. I wasn't going to do much to celebrate, but I decided to make a cake today and decided to try my hand at doing a bit of basic decorating. Definitely need lots of practice, but it was fun to have a theme and something to celebrate, so here we are!

I've included some step-by-step photos of making the cake. Making the cake didn't require much technical skill, but it did have a number of components, but it was definitely do-able in an afternoon. I used frozen strawberries so my cake isn't as beautiful as it would have been had I used fresh berries, but it still tasted delicious. I also substituted cream cheese for the mascarpone cheese because that was what I had on hand. This cake is a great way to use up lots of whipping cream if you have leftovers!

Since I'm celebrating tonight, I'll keep this post short. You can find the recipe for the cake here. The ingredients are quite basic - I had everything on hand I needed to make the cake. No pesky trip to the grocery store required today! Basic ingredients also result in being able to make this cake on a budget which is always a nice bonus.

For sparkling wine we decided to go with Yellowtail Bubbles from Australia. It is a nice, medium-dry sparkling wine with a lovely finish. It is really reasonably priced - about $15 per bottle in the BC Liquor stores. Nothing too upscale, but it still tastes delightful and the bubbles are just so fun!

So lets raise our glasses! Thanks to all of my great readers for following my blog and providing feedback to me. I've had a great time posting all 100 of my posts and hope for many more posts to come in the future.

Happy Baking my Friends! See you soon.