Monday Night Dessert

Our Monday nights have change a bit from the normal, mainly we have afternoon activities. Nicolette’s Karate has being taking most of the free time we had. That being said not sure about my monday coffee run I decided to bake. This is a very easy recipe to follow and a breeze to whip it up. Luckly I had some frozen raspberries to do the job. I did had to go to the store to get ricotta but it was worth it I had few other items that I need to get anyways. 

I don’t know about the dinner plans for sure I know I have a big salad, few hard boil eggs, and salmon patties. We also have some bread that will be our dinner. We are planning to splurge the dessert and more room for dessert would make every one happy.

I know I promised that I will be posting more healthier options but after eating salads and fiber for a long time it was time to enjoy some sweets but not overly sweet desserts. I am planning to serve this with a dollop of whip cream I love the lite whip cream very much.  

I hope you will make this wonderful recipe as well, becase I loved making it. 

Ingredients 

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

1½ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

3 large eggs

1½ cups ricotta

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

1 cup frozen raspberries or blackberries, divided 

Do Ahead:

         Preheat oven to 350°. Line a 9”-diameter cake pan with parchment paper and lightly coat with nonstick spray. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

         Whisk eggs, ricotta, and vanilla in a medium bowl until smooth; fold into dry ingredients just until blended. Then fold in butter, followed by ¾ cup raspberries, taking care not to crush berries. Scrape batter into prepared pan and scatter remaining ¼ cup raspberries over top.

         Bake cake until golden brown and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 50–60 minutes. Let cool at least 20 minutes before un-molding.

Recipe by Alison Roman

Baked Salmon

 

We enjoy salmon a lot for dinner and at times breakfast as well. 

There is nothing like smoked salmon, red onions, few salty capers, bit of salt and pepper on a cream cheese toasted bagel. Typical New York breakfast, thanks to few New Yorkers which I hang out with. 

There is nothing like a great salmon steak baked at home with very simple blend of garden herbs and generous portions of lemon juice. 

This is my favorite one way to enjoy salmon:

a generous bunch of chopped parsley
few sprigs of fennel 
1/4 cup of light mayo
salt and pepper to taste
2 lemons 1 for serving
baking dish

Chopped herbs and mix it with mayo. Add salt and pepper to the mix. Finally add a juice of one lemon. Bake for 30 min for 400 F until salmon is flaky yet moist. Serve this with lemon wedges we like to have a lot of lemon in our fish. Enjoy this with nice, salad, or vegetables

This summer I baked!

This summer, I decided to work on creative frosting. In other words I want to know all about frosting and making it white and fluffy, frosting a cake with no crumbs, and finally to know all about frosting patterns. It was a success with almost every week baking a cake. The heat was so high somedays and I was thinking why did I came up with this crazy idea to bake during summer, but there is always little people who loved my baking. Licking the cake batter off of the spatula to taste testing and running around when I finished decorating a cake was heart warming to see and experience with my little girl. She wanted to frost a cake so much! I promised her that I will be helping her to achieve her little goal soon!

My favorite was the little sunflower that I frosted and decorated with simple frosting recipe. It was fun to see how everything came together! We are planning big for next spring with mini cakes to celebrate with tiny sandwiches which I feel like a long ways to plan. Our backyard welcoming summer was a huge success with our neighbors this past summer.

The hydrangea cake was definitely fun creating, May be next time I might work on covering the entire cake with little flowers. At the end  really liked how it turned out. Varigated frosting was a winner! It was an orange cake with strawberry preserve in the middle with almond flavored frosting! It was the most flavorful cake ever, I have to admit!

Finally the very first cake which includes transferring patterns was fun to make and frost. Little Nicolette was so confused which to eat first. Everyone enjoyed summer baking hopefully we will continue this into fall with few exceptions. Perhaps we will try to bake during weekend so it will be ready for the busy school nights!

Zuchini Bread

 

When I planted the zucchini seeds this spring, I did not expect to have much because of the shade we get from the trees in our yard. However, I was happy to have decent amount of zucchini crop this summer. Did not plant any yellow squash this year, but zucchini was able to make up the yellow squash crop. 

I managed to make two loafs of zucchini bread past week and it was delicious. Used olive oil instead of butter and it is a great healthy option and it did not comprise the taste at all. Both my older and the younger enjoy it very much and not  single loaf left the house.

Fresh eggs to bake from a co -worker

I got this wonderful recipe to make coffee cake and the rest was history. I had too much to catch up this weekend with friends and I think I over baked the  coffee cake but it was gone. 

It was so good and I might bake this again but don’t know about the fresh eggs. I might get lucky again but they were the best eggs I had after a long time. I use to buy fresh eggs from the farmers market in Leesburg, VA.

Blueberry Muffins

Little Nicolette loves to have bake goodies at home. She loves to help me to make them when possible. Opportunity to bake with her is always fun. Her measuring skills are getting better and coordination has improved a lot. From getting ingridients to seriously taking part in assembling the final product has become her favorite part of the weekend. I am planning to do more during the coming weeks. 

Lately, going to starbucks has become a habit. I wanted to take control over. When I go to coffee shop I had to buy a treat for little one too. I wish many times I am preppared with a afternoon snack when I  pick her up. I am getting better but it does take effort. Past few weeks I have been cutting fruits and placing them in containers so she could have something on the way home. 

She loves the blueberry muffing at the coffee shop and the morning buns. This was a great recipe I found and they were delicious everyine enjoyed them. This summer we will be freezing some of the blueberries from the local farm. 

We save the blueberry muffins for this week more baking adventures to come soon

Cooking Turkey a Quicker way...

I enjoy baking a stuff turkey during Thanksgiving but that’s about it. I am not a turkey person; however, this year during November holiday, I told Panduka, We could cut the cooking time almost in half if we cut the turkey before cooking. Of course their would be no carving at the table. 

Well, there was a bit of carving involved, when you bake a cut up turkey.

I love this recipe which uses onions, apples, and maple syrup. You cannot go wrong with that combination. It did smell great while baking. I used same recipe that I would use for stuff turkey but I did cut the turkey into pieces. We cooked it in less time and according to kids it tasted great! There is no change in taste, but I did brine the turkey and that goes a long way. 

I used few sprigs of sage, and thyme. It looks so yummy. I simply served it with mashed potatoes.  

Sharing and Baking...

I started off my vacation with plenty of baking and cooking and some to give away for neighbors. I was overwhelmed from baking I am going to bake less next year.

Kids enjoyed their vacation with more munching and drinking hot coco. 

Little Nicolette ate banana bread for breakfast until, I could not serve anymore for her. We end up only doing two batches of cookies this year and for sure they are gone!

pears with honey and balsamic vinegar

I love honey, and this was a testimony for it! This is a very sweet and a simple desert after a heavy meal. 

I will make this everyday if I can. 

Melt some butter, scoop the inside, place them face down, pour honey and balsamic vinegar mix over pears, and bake them for F. 400. 

Serve warm with your choice of ice cream! Lovely. 

Cultural Influences in Sri Lankan food

I have no idea how a country that indulge many spices have this as a part of its breakfast. Well that leads to believe the other cultural influence in Sri Lankan history such as the Dutch, Portuguese, and the Colonial has made a significant influence. I may not have these in order but at least these are few I can remember with regard to invasions in Sri Lankan history. 

I remember growing up in Sri Lanka, it was a kind of a special treat for me to visit the pastry shops. some are still to this day do exists. I enjoyed having beacon and eggs with tomato sauce in other words ketchup. 

This well known pastry consist of beacon, hard boil eggs, caramelized onions, green chilies (cuban peppers) not too spicy but has a milder chili flavor in this pepper. Arrange all this in a square of a puff pastry. Then bake according to the package directions and eat with ketchup. 

I did make these for my entire family, I had mine with caramelized onions and hard boil eggs. However, some of the pictures are missing of the final product. Because it was all gone before the photo opportunity!

Yes, it was that good!

A treat to come home...

I always look for bargains when I am at the grocery store. Officially, kids goes back to school this coming week. Keeping that in my mind I was looking for ways to make few things ahead crazy schedule. 

Banana bread goes well in our house at least among kids. I guess bananas that were bruised were on sale for about .99 cents. I meant only the skin, I bought two of these packages home.

We decided to make a banana cake instead of bread. cream cheese frosting with this delicious banana cake was an ultimate treat for my older one who is just getting the hang of getting back to school. 

Few roasted walnuts chopped to tiny pieces adds a bit of crunchiness to this wonderful cake. I know my older one comes home, after school and cross country practices and treat himself to a slice of this goodness. Totally worth it!

Homemade Granola

Now that we know how to make yogurt at home we needed to be more creative to find ways to consume all that delicious yogurt. We did made sweet vanilla yogurt. Which was delicious but we want to add granola which was not at home. 

I found this wonderful recipe from a friend. Now we can make this at home and can have a fresh batch always. I love this more than the Trader Joe brand because this had toasted almonds and coconuts yummy. Kids loved it, this was a perfect treat for them in the afternoons. 

It was so easy to made. I did add some dried cranberries to make it a little sweet!
To make it healthy I add olive oil instead of butter few changes to the original recipe but it was GREAT! 

Healthy Fruit Tart...

This was my to do list for a while. I always wanted to make fruit tarts main reason behind was to incorporate the abundance of fruits that is available during summer. 

Tart is baked as usual way but filled with cold creamy cheese with a hint of vanilla. This is a lovely refreshing tart. 

I love painting the canvas that was fun. I cut up the fruits and loaded it with all the fruits I had in hand. I made this for a small gathering but they loved and we loved it as well. 

I try to take few photos of this tart before it left our home. 

Those ribbons are made with cantaloupe using the vegetable peeler

Quote of the day “use what you have” 

Enjoy!

Lemons and Tart Shells...

Lemons reminds me of summer. Tangly flavor wants me to sit down by a warm side walk with bare feet to absorb the sun. 

Lemon zest add so much flavor for many treats...

See how I make my shells.

Its already taking shape. Lemon juice, zest, and sugar.

 Looks yummy. Simple pleasures in life.

Quote of the day "compliment everyone you deal with"

Enjoy!

Asparagus, Goat Cheese, and Tart Shells...

I love asparagus they are delicious and some times could be pricey. I know a local farm that you can go and harvest your own asparagus. I would love to go there one day for a picture day. I got mine from the grocery store. I like the skinny kind because i feel they are packed with taste.

Well this bunch needed garlic, sea salt and olive oil. 

Look the grill marks marks are remarkable already...

Goat cheese this is very soft Yummy with crackers with a little bit of crushed black pepper...

Add eggs, milk, onion, black pepper, a little cayenne pepper, and salt. Top it off with goat cheese.

Yummy with a side of Salad...

Can't wait for have this for dinner...

Quote of the day "sit down for your meals"

Enjoy!