Monday, February 9, 2015

Strawberry Yo-Nana Smoothie

Strawberry Yo-Nana Smoothie // One Lovely Life Strawberry Yogurt Banana Smoothie // One Lovely Life Strawberry Yo-Nana Smoothie (GF, Vegan) // One Lovely Life
Strawberry Yo-Nana Smoothie
 
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This makes a big batch (about 4 cups) of smoothie. If you want less, you can certainly halve the recipe, or freeze the leftovers in popsicle molds for an easy treat later.
Author:
Serves: 4 cups (4-6 servings)
Ingredients
  • 1 cup unsweetened almond milk (or coconut milk or dairy milk)
  • 1 (6oz) container plain yogurt (dairy or non-dairy -- we use So Delicious plain coconut milk yogurt)
  • ½ cup applesauce or apple juice
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cup frozen strawberries
  • 2 frozen banana, diced into large pieces
Instructions
  1. Place ingredients in your blender in the order listed. (with the frozen fruit on top). Blend until smooth, scraping down the sides of the (stopped) blender or adding more almond milk as necessary.
  2. Serve immediately!
3.2.2925
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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Homemade Thin Mints

Grain Free, Dairy Free Thin Mints // One Lovely Life Grain Free, Dairy Free Thin Mints // One Lovely Life Paleo Thin Mints // One Lovely Life Paleo Thin Mints // One Lovely Life
Thin Mints
 
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Serves: 20-25 cookies
Ingredients
For the cookies:
  • 1 cup blanched almond flour (I use Honeyville)
  • ½ cup arrowroot powder (or tapioca starch)
  • ¼ cup unsweetened baking cocoa
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 egg
  • 3 Tbsp pure maple syrup
  • 3 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • ¼ tsp peppermint extract
For the chocolate topping:
  • 1 cup dairy free chocolate chips (I use Enjoy Life brand) or 6oz chocolate
  • ½ Tbsp coconut oil
Instructions
For the cookies:
  1. In a large bowl, whisk together almond flour, arrowroot, baking cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Stir in egg, syrup, coconut oil, vanilla, and peppermint. The mixture might take a minute to come together, but just keep stirring and you'll get there.
  2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll out 1" balls of dough and gently pat them out into a disc. They won't expand much when you bake them, so pat them out to the thickness and width you're looking for. Mine were a bit over ¼" thick.
  3. (You can fit 12-15 on a baking sheet. Just do what you can without overcrowding.)
  4. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a cooling rack. Repeat with remaining dough and bake the rest of the cookies. Allow them to cool completely before coating with chocolate (this will help the chocolate set better).
For the chocolate coating:
  1. Place the cooling rack on top of your now empty parchment-lined baking sheet (to catch any chocolate drips).
  2. In a small saucepan, gently melt the chocolate chips and coconut oil together over low heat until just a few small lumps remain. Remove from heat and continue to stir until completely smooth.
  3. Carefully dip the tops of the cookies in the chocolate and place back onto the cooling rack. If desired, you can dip both sides of the cookie. I prefer to dip all the tops then re-dip the tops with any remaining chocolate. (or drizzle/pour any remaining chocolate over the cookies).
  4. Refrigerate or freeze until the chocolate is set (this is where that baking sheet set-up comes in handy). Transfer cookies to a container and enjoy!
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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Discover the best gourmet experiences 2014

With so many places, each with their own journeys and adventures of tempting foods can be difficult to decide where you would most like to go. Since you can not be everywhere at once, here we share some of the best foodie strong experimenting with the MasterChef journey in 2014 collected by our experts.

South Africa - Discover Cape Malay cuisine.

 

South Africa is an ideal destination for travelers seeking an exotic destination foodie experience. In this small group tour MasterChef travel, spend quality time with Whitney Miller, winner of MasterChef Season 1, southern cuisine with a modern twist is as colorful and exciting as the famous Cape Malay cuisine in South Africa. Expand your culinary horizons with convenient classes and wine tasting gourmet cuisine at the world famous Winelands region hosted by Whitney. Your tour will also take him to Cape Town for the most delicious adventures!

 

Northern Spain - Taste your way through the heart of Spain.

 

Enjoy this pleasant journey MasterChef private tour of Northern Spain Wine and cuisine inspired by MasterChef. Travel through the heart of the gastronomic regions of Spain, experience the best of what the Basque Country and La Rioja has to offer, including a tasting tour of San Sebastián specialties. End your trip to Barcelona, one of the most fascinating and iconic cities in Spain!

 

Vietnam - a variety of styles of traditional and modern cuisine.

 

Traveling with a small group this culinary journey Cox & Kings in Vietnam, where you have the opportunity of a lifetime to interact with award-winning MasterChef Christine Ha. Travel from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City through Da Nang and Hue and learn about the amazing Vietnamese dishes influenced Christine while cooking courses and upscale food shopping street is staying.

 

Northern Italy - Truly a merger in Europe with local influences.

 

Do not miss this rich culinary journey MasterChef Voyage in Italy, with guided tours around. Traveling with a small group of famous Valley Food and Tuscany where you will meet your host, Manfe Luca, winner of MasterChef Season illustrates wine country 4. Discover Italy through native eyes Luca in a full day of wine tasting food site and be inspired by its unique cuisine with strong European influences during practice cooking classes, will host. Buon Appetito!

 

Hawaii - View of Hawaii as never before; a variety of culinary delights.

 

Embark on a journey of Hawaii MasterChef culinary journey and explore the natural wonders of the natural Maui. On the way, he meets MasterChef star native, Felix Fang to enjoy culinary activities specially organized in the comfort of a small group of nannies as travelers. Your tour includes a visit to a local organic farm, plus the chance to try their luck in mastering the art of "Hawaiian Sling" Fishing with Felix. Also diving in their world of cooking in a special cooking workshop is an inspiring experience not to be missed!

Monday, February 2, 2015

Goodness on the Go: Easy Snack Time Pairings

Goodness on the Go: Easy Snacktime Pairings // One Lovely Life Goodness on the Go: Easy Snacktime Pairings // One Lovely Life Easy Snack Time Combinations // One Lovely Life Snacktime Pairings // One Lovely Life Easy Snack Time Combinations // One Lovely Lifepost from sitemap

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Shortcake

What better way to conjure up memories of the joys of youth than strawberry shortcake? Strawberry shortcake consists of sliced strawberries that have been macerated with whipped cream served over a white cake or biscuit.

I’m from the camp that insists that strawberry shortcake is made with a biscuit, not a cake. Growing up we always made the shortcake biscuits with Bisquick baking mix, which now, thankfully, has a zero-transfat version of their product.

The best of course are biscuits made from scratch, using butter and cream. I’ve included recipes here for excellent homemade biscuits, the Bisquick biscuits, and also wheat and gluten-free biscuits for those who don’t want to give up strawberry shortcake just because they can’t eat wheat.

Strawberry Shortcake Recipe

  • Prep time: 15 minutes
  • Cook time: 25 minutes
Yum

Ingredients

Strawberries and whipping cream:

  • 3 baskets of fresh strawberries (about 6 cups)
  • 1/2 cup white granulated sugar for the strawberries
  • Whipping cream
  • Vanilla
  • Powdered sugar

Method

1 Cut the stems away from the strawberries and discard. Cut the strawberries in half, and then either quarters or thick slices. Put the cut strawberries into a large bowl and sprinkle with sugar. Start with 1/4 cup of sugar and then add up to another 1/4 cup depending on how sweet your strawberries are. Gently stir the strawberries until they are all coated with some sugar. Let sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes, until the berries soften and begin to release their juices.

2 After 20 minutes or so, mash about half of the berries in the bowl with a potato masher and stir to mix. You don't want to mash all the berries, just enough of them for their juices. Let sit while you bake the biscuits.

3 Bake the biscuits using one of the recipes below.

4 While the biscuits are baking, whip the cream, adding a drop or two of vanilla and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. Cover with plastic and place in the refrigerator to chill until ready to serve.

To serve, break up one biscuit per person into big pieces into a bowl. Ladle strawberries over the biscuit. Add a dollop of whipped cream.

Biscuits from scratch

  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 3 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 12 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large bowl, vigorously whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut the butter into the flour mixture, either using your fingers, a pastry cutter, a fork, or a food processor, until the largest pieces of butter are the size of peas. Mix the vanilla and cream together. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour the cream into it. Mix with a fork until the mixture is just combined. It should look rather shaggy and feel a little dry. Gently knead by hand a few times to form a loose ball of dough.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and form it into an 8-inch square, about 3/4-inch to an inch thick. Place it on a parchment or silicone-lined baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 20 minutes. Heat the oven to 425ºF. Remove the dough from refrigerator. Cut the dough into 9 even squares and spread them about 2 inches apart from each other on the baking sheet. Bake until the biscuits are medium golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes.

Makes 9 biscuits. (Adapted from Fine Cooking Magazine, July 2003)

Bisquick biscuits:

  • 2 1/3 cups Bisquick baking mix
  • 3 Tbsp butter, melted
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 3 Tbsp sugar

The strawberry shortcake biscuit recipe used to be on the side of the Bisquick box. For some unfathomable reason, the company has started to print the recipe on the inside of the box. Talk about not understanding your customers! If you can't find the recipe, here it is:

Heat oven to 425°F. Stir baking mix, melted butter, milk, and 3 Tbsp of sugar in a mixing bowl until soft dough forms. Drop by 6 spoonfuls on to a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 6 biscuits.

Gluten-free biscuits:

  • 1-1/2 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour (Bob's Red Mill)
  • 1 Tbsp. Sugar
  • 2 tsp. Baking Powder
  • 1/4 tsp. Baking Soda
  • 1 tsp. Xanthan Gum
  • 1 tsp. Guar Gum
  • 1/2 tsp. Salt
  • 1/4 cup Shortening
  • 1/2 cup Milk
  • 1 large Egg White

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or grease lightly.

In food processor, pulse dry ingredients (flour through salt) with shortening until mixture is consistency of small peas. Add milk and egg white. Blend until dough forms ball, scraping down sides with spatula, if necessary. Dough will be somewhat soft.

Place dough on parchment-lined or greased baking sheet that’s been lightly dusted with rice flour. Gently pat to 3/4-inch thick circle with hands or spatula. Lightly dust dough with rice flour. Cut into ten 2-inch circles with floured biscuit cutter. Shape remaining dough to 3/4-inch thick and cut again. If dough is sticky, lightly dust with more flour. Arrange evenly on baking sheet.

Bake 12-15 minutes or until nicely browned. Best when served warm or gently reheated in microwave oven. Serves 10. (Recipe from Bob's Red Mill)

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Strawberry White Chocolate Mousse

Strawberry White Chocolate Mousse (photo)

We recently came across an intriguing recipe for strawberry mousse cake in Martha Stewart Living and decided to skip the cake part and just make the strawberry white chocolate mousse. It was fabulously cool and rich, just the dessert for a warm spring evening.

The following recipe is modified slightly. I found we didn’t need as many strawberries as the magazine’s recipe suggested. Also, we served the mousse with some remaining strawberry purée on top. The purée is not sweetened and adds a lovely mildly tart balance to the rich mousse.

Strawberry White Chocolate Mousse Recipe

  • Yield: Serves 6-8.
Yum

Ingredients

  • 1 ½ pounds of strawberries
  • 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice, divided
  • 8 ounces white chocolate, finely chopped
  • 1 ¼ teaspoon unflavored gelatin (about half a small envelope)
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 2 Tbsp powdered (confectioner's) sugar

Method

strawberry-mousse-2a.jpg
1 Clean and hull the strawberries. Starting with about half of the strawberries (3/4 pound), quarter them and purée them in either a blender or food processor. Then press the purée mixture through a mesh sieve with the back of a spoon into a bowl. You want to end up with 1 cup of purée. Stir in 1 Tbsp of the lemon juice and set aside. With the remaining 3/4 pound or so of berries, slice as many as to fill up 2 cups, and set aside.

strawberry-mousse-3a.jpg
2 Melt white chocolate in a double boiler, or a stainless steel bowl set over simmering water (make sure the simmering water doesn't actually touch the bottom of the bowl.) Stir until smooth, set aside.

strawberry-mousse-4a.jpg
3 Put 1/4 cup of cold water into a small bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin powder over the water and let sit for 5 minutes.

strawberry-mousse-5a.jpg strawberry-mousse-6a.jpg

4 Put 1/4 cup of the cream into a small saucepan on medium heat. Whisk in 2 tablespoons of the powdered sugar and bring to a simmer. Stir in the water gelatin mixture until dissolved. Pour this mixture into the bowl with the melted white chocolate and whisk until smooth. Stir in 3/4 cup of the puréed strawberries, reserving the remaining 1/4 cup.

5 Using an electric mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the remaining 1 3/4 cup of cream on medium-high speed until medium peaks form. (It helps if your cream is very cold.) Stir a  third of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. Using a large rubber spatula, gently fold the remaining whipped cream into the mixture. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

6 Stir the remaining 1 Tbsp of lemon juice into the reserved sliced berries. Fold the sliced berries into the mousse. Spoon mousse into serving cups and refrigerate for at least another hour, preferably several hours, or even over night (cover with plastic wrap).

7 When you are read to serve the mousse, pour a dollop of the reserved strawberry purée onto each serving. Add a few slices of strawberries as garnish.

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Rhubarb Crumble

Rhubarb Crumble (photo)

When my father was a kid growing up in Minnesota, in the summer he used to love to chew on rhubarb that grew like a weed around there, RAW. That’s right. Raw. (The stalks, not the leaves which are poisonous.) Have you ever tried biting into a piece of raw rhubarb stalk? I dare you. It’s like a hundred times more sour than a lemon (okay maybe a little exaggeration here). It’s screaming tart. It’s “what was I thinking?” tart. Anyway, rhubarb is not safe around this house. The refrigerator half life for rhubarb is a couple hours at best. This last bunch we put to work into a lovely rhubarb crumble, based on a recipe dad found in Oprah magazine (yes, I had to get over the shock of that too, my dad, reading Oprah? then again she does have good recipes). Taking a tip from The Flavor Bible, I added a touch of cardamom to the vanilla and rhubarb in the filling, rhubarb+cardamom+vanilla being one of those match-made-in-heaven flavor combinations.

Another favorite combo with rhubarb that I love is ginger and orange zest, which would also work great with this crumble. Feel free to experiment. The only thing you need to really keep an eye on is making sure you have enough sugar to balance out the tartness of the rhubarb. The ratio of rhubarb to sugar in this recipe is perfect for us, but if it ends up being too tart for you, add a little more sugar, or just eat with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or even straight cream.

Rhubarb Crumble Recipe

  • Yield: Serves 8.
Yum

Ingredients

Filling:

  • 2 lbs rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 1 1/4 cups white sugar
  • 1/4 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

Crumble Topping:

  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick or 4 ounces), cut into cubes

Method

1 Preheat oven to 375°F. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the rhubarb, white sugar, 1/4 cup of flour, the vanilla extract, and the ground cardamom. Spoon into a 9 x 13-inch baking dish.

2 In a food processor, pulse together 1 cup of flour, the salt, and the brown sugar. Add the butter and pulse until the pieces of butter are pea-sized. (Alternatively, mix the dry ingredients together and cut the butter in with two knives or a pastry cutter.) Spread topping mixture over rhubarb mixture.

3 Place in oven and cook for 35-45 minutes, until the filling is bubbly and the topping is lightly browned. Let cool for at least a half an hour before serving.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

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