Strawberry Vanilla Blueberry Ice Cream #foodieextravaganza

Sweet summer strawberries, juicy blueberries and vanilla bean ice cream bring a little red, white and blue to this week’s Fourth of July celebrations.

Let’s talk about obsessions. At our house, we are a little football crazy. Some of us, more than others. My husband came home from work last night a little early, just so he could have a short nap and stay up till midnight (Dubai time) for the START of the USA-Belgium World Cup game. I have no idea what time he came to bed. I checked the news first thing this morning though and read through the play-by-play of the game and some of the social commentary - Best quote: Tim Howard is the American Jesus! He saves! - and I couldn’t help laughing at all the Tim Howard jokes. It almost made me wish I had stayed up to watch. Almost. Darn this time difference!

There’s an English idiom that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. So I should even the score by admitting that I am throwing football rocks in my own ice cream glass house. I’ve got an obsession for making ice cream. But you probably knew that already after this post, and this post and, just yesterday, this post with an ice cream cookbook giveaway. (And those are just the ones I’ve shared!) With the churn, without the churn, it’s all good.

Truth is, I was hoping that this red, white and blue ice cream would be a celebration of a football victory so our two obsessions would dovetail so nicely.  After all, isn’t that what marriage is all about? The best advice books say to find something in common that you can enjoy together, right? Right?!

Today, I’m joining another great group of bloggers in an event we are calling Foodie Extravaganza and the ingredient for this month is blueberries. So how about let’s just celebrate blueberries and call it a day well spent! Make sure to scroll on down to see the whole list of blueberrilicious recipes. Many thanks to Alexis from We Like to Learn as We Go, our organizer for July’s extravaganza.

Ingredients
3 1/2 oz or 100g blueberries
3 1/2 oz or 100g strawberries
1 2/3 cups or 400ml whipping cream
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
2/3 cup or 200g sweetened condensed milk
1 whole vanilla bean
2 tablespoons homemade vanilla extract (split vanilla bean infused vodka) or 1 teaspoon normal vanilla extract and two tablespoons vodka or alcohol of your choice (The alcohol helps keep the ice cream from freezing solid, which makes scooping easier.)

Method
Hull and chop your strawberries into pieces about the same size as your blueberries. Spread the strawberries and blueberries out in a single layer on a baking pan lined with cling film. Put the pan in the freezer until the fruit is frozen. This doesn’t take long so set a timer for about 25-30 minutes.

Once your fruit is frozen, split the vanilla bean with a sharp knife and scrape out the tiny little seeds. (Pop the empty bean pod in a couple of cups of sugar in an airtight container to create fabulous vanilla flavored sugar or add it to your vanilla extract.)

In your stand mixer or with electric beaters, whisk the cream, cream of tartar and the vanilla bean seeds until the cream thickens. Add the condensed milk and the vanilla extract. Whisk until stiff peaks form.

Reserve some blueberries and strawberries to decorate the top of the ice cream.  Ever so gently, fold the rest of fruit into the cream mixture.

Pour in an airtight container, top with the reserved fruit and freeze for several hours for soft serve or overnight for firmer ice cream.

Warm your ice cream scoop in a mug of hot water and serve.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the Foodie Extravaganza!  

We are a group of bloggers who love to blog about food! And each month we all incorporate one main ingredient into a recipe. This month the ingredient is blueberries. We hope you all enjoy our delicious blueberry foods this month and come see what next month's new ingredient is. If you would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook page Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you!

Make sure to check out these great recipes from our group! 

Blueberry Lemon Breakfast Cake @ We Like to Learn as We Go

Blueberry Orange Muffins @ Forty Eighteen

Homemade Blueberry Poptarts @ Our Thrifty Ideas

Blueberry Cheese Cake Pastries @ Summer Scraps

Lemon Blueberry Sandwich Cookies @ From Gate to Plate

Panna Cotta w/a Blueberry Compote @ The Freshman Cook

Strawberry Vanilla Blueberry Ice Cream @ Food Lust People Love

Blueberry Pie Ice Cream @ Love in the Kitchen

Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake @ Keep it Simple, Sweetie

Banana Blueberry Muffins for #MuffinMonday

I’m always on the lookout for ways to use the last two bananas in a bunch that have turned brown and are therefore disdained by my family. Banana muffins answer this need beautifully. Add another fruit, like blueberries to jazz them up a bit.

Yesterday was my mother’s 76th birthday. Of course, we celebrated with food. It was Mexican for lunch at a new (to us) restaurant she discovered hidden away in a neighborhood not far from my house in Houston. It is appropriately called La Hacienda Escondida and is part of a family group of Houston restaurants, all called La Hacienda but ours is the only one that is escondida or hidden in a residential neighborhood.

For dinner, we prepared one of my mom’s favorite meals. Smothered pork chops, creamed potatoes, sweet potatoes and fancy salad with tres leches cake to finish. I brought these muffins with me and left them for my brother-in-law and nephews who would not eat a brown banana to save a dying puppy but have a devoted love of banana bread. The boys are in their final week of school and suffering through final exams so I figured they deserved a treat. Also, now no one has to make them breakfast. I got to use my old bananas. Win-win-win!

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/3 cup or 80ml canola or other light oil
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
2 ripe bananas
6 oz or 170g fresh blueberries

Optional for decorating: pearl sugar

Method
Preheat your oven to 350F° or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing or lining with paper muffin cups.

In a large bowl mix together your flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.

In a smaller bowl, add your milk, canola, vanilla and eggs, along with the two ripe bananas. Mash the bananas with a fork and then whisk all the ingredients together with that fork.

Set aside 12 blueberries for the tops of the muffins.

Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients and stir until just combined. There should still be flour showing.

Now fold in the big pile of blueberries.

Evenly distribute the batter among the muffin cups.

Top with one reserved blueberry each.  Sprinkle with a little pearl sugar– optional, but look how pretty!

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.  Remove the muffins from the muffin pan and finish cooling on a rack.

Enjoy! How do you use up old bananas? Please leave me a link in the comments to your favorite recipes. Thanks!

Triple Booberry Muffins #MuffinMonday

I love flavoring muffins with jams and fruity yogurts because I almost always have both on hand.  This recipe is easily changed to suit whatever is in your cupboard or refrigerator, with or without the addition of extra fruit. 

A couple of weeks back, I made a normal blueberry muffin.  Some cinnamon, a beige batter, a dusting of powdered sugar – simple but lovely.  This week, with our ingredient of choice actually being blueberries, I knew I had to kick it up a notch or two.  Make it the blueberriest possible.  So, I stirred in some blueberry jam, blueberry yogurt and whole blueberries.  Which left me with a distinctly purple batter.  As I browsed through my embarrassingly large collection of paper muffin cups, the Halloween ones seemed like the perfect match.

It's a sickness, people! Send help!  (Or more muffin cups, as the spirit moves you.)

So then I had to change the name from Blueberriest Muffins to Triple Booberry Muffins.  Yeah, I know.  Corny.  But if you are looking for a relatively healthy addition to your Halloween party table, these babies are it!

Ingredients
For the muffin batter:
2 cups or 250g flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 cup or about 120g blueberry yogurt
1/2 cup or about 150g blueberry jam (Mine was “no sugar added” – if your jam is really sweet, you can adjust the amount of sugar or you may like a sweeter muffin – up to you)
1/3 cup or 80ml canola oil
1/2 cup or about 65g fresh or frozen blueberries

For the glaze: 1/4 cup or 75g blueberry jam (optional)

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin tin by greasing it or lining it with muffin papers.

In a large mixing bowl, combine your flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda.

In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, blueberry yogurt, blueberry jam and oil.

Pour your wet mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until they are just combined.  There should be some dry flour still showing.

Check out that deep purple! 

Fold in the whole blueberries.

Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups.

Okay, so it's not a pretty color - but the taste! Blueberrilicious!

Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle.  It’s hard to see when a purplish blue muffin is golden so the toothpick test is best.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.  Remove the muffins from the pan and cool further on a wire rack.

If you want to glaze them, stir your extra jam around to loosen it a little bit and then brush it on your muffins while they are still slightly warm.

Enjoy!

Peach Blueberry Muffins #MuffinMonday

There is always a certain tone to his voice.  A little excited, a tad bit nervous even.  “Guess what?”  And I give him a long, penetrating look.  And I know.  And a shiver of anticipation runs up my own spine.  “Where to this time and what’s the timeframe?”  So much planning to do, starting with how and when to tell our daughters.  It’s the WE-have-been-transferred conversation.  Because when you are an expat family, it’s not just the worker that is being transferred, we are all moving on.  As with most things in life, there is bad and there is good.  Bad is leaving behind the home you know, the friends and family you love, the community you’ve become an integral part of, where people know you and love you and you can contribute.  Good is a fresh start with new places to explore, sometimes just within yourself.  Can I do this again?  Can I make a new place home, find new friends, fit in again, have fun exploring and be happy?

When my husband found out about our second to last move, the talk came as a phone call.  “Guess what?”  And I could hear the tone.  “Will I like it?” was my first question.  “I think so,” he responded, “It’s Cairo!”  And he was right.  “I’ve always wanted to go to Cairo,” I responded, “but not as a tourist.”  I just had the feeling that Egypt was the kind of place that wouldn’t let a mere tourist in.  Sure, you could see the sights and sites, but to get the deep down feeling for the place and people, it wouldn’t do to scratch the surface with a tour guide.

Truth is, I’m not a very good tourist.  I’m not crazy about tour guides and seeing all the hot spots.  I want to go to the local market and buy new ingredients and cook the food.  I want to sit in a corner café and watch the people go by and sip whatever the locals are drinking.  I want to immerse myself and make friends from all over.  I want to learn about the culture and the people.  I want greet the folks at my nearby grocery store and get to know them.  I want to become a familiar friendly face to them as well.

All of this is a very long way around telling you that Egypt became that home, despite our short time there.  In a little less than a year, I made friends.  I volunteered at the community center.  I visited orphanages and charity clinics.  In short, from my very first impressions, I fell in love with the people, Muslim and Christian alike, for their warm hearts and expansive giving natures.  Everything is done in wide-open gestures.  Normal conversations are often shouted, which I must admit I found alarming at first.  But I soon realized that the raised voices were normal in that culture and didn’t mean animosity or even anger.  Just enthusiasm.  Such was the elated optimism before the first-ever democratic election that I almost cannot bear to watch the news right now.  And all I can do is pray.  For peace, for reconciliation, for wisdom, for the leaders of Egypt and the world to find a quick resolution to the strife.  As lovely as Dubai is, a big part of me wishes I were still in Cairo, peacefully baking my muffins every Thursday, in readiness for the Muffin Monday post, and, as I always did, sending them home with my sweetheart housekeeper, Reda, and wishing her and her family a restful weekend.

If you haven’t met my fellow blogger and friend, Marilyn of Communicating Across Boundaries, she is in my blog roll of Favorite Blogs up there in the left column, but, since Egypt’s on my mind, I’d like to share her post from yesterday: Egypt – a Call to Prayer.  Marilyn grew up as an expat child, lived in Cairo as an adult and also has a heart for Egypt.  If you are the praying sort, they can use all the prayers they can get right now.   Or you could just bake muffins for someone you love.  Because this world could use more love in the form of muffins.

Ingredients
1 medium peach
3 oz or 1/2 cup or 85g blueberries
1 3/4 cups or 220g flour
3/4 cup or 170g sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 egg
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin tin by greasing it or lining it with muffin papers.

Cut the peach in half and remove the pit.  Cut 12 thin slices out of one half, set them aside for garnish, and then chop the rest of the peach in small chunks.  Set aside 12 blueberries as well for garnish.

In a large mixing bowl, combine your flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.

In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, milk, vanilla and oil.

Pour your wet mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until they are just combined.  There should be some dry flour still showing.  Don't worry about how dry this looks.  The juicy peaches will make up for that while baking.

Fold in the peach pieces and blueberries.

Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups.

Top each muffin with a peach slice and a blueberry.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until the muffins are golden and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Remove the muffins from the pan and cool further on a wire rack.

Enjoy!

Cherry Blueberry Cheesecake Bundt for #BundtaMonth

While I was in Houston for a week visiting family, I decided that it would be a good time to bake my Bundt for April’s BundtaMonth because 1. Time would be short when I got back to Dubai and 2. I had been invited over for dinner and 3.  I found this lovely Bundt pan in my cupboard.

As I might possibly have said to my BundtaMonth friends, you know you have too many baking pans when you forget you own something as pretty as that!   (Disclaimer:  I will completely deny even possibly saying that if anyone brings this to my husband’s attention.  Because: One can never have too many baking pans.  Am I right?)

Our BundtaMonth hosts, Lora and Anuradha decided that our theme this month is cherries!  Since they are frankly hard to find fresh at this time of the year in Houston, I decided to go with dried cherries and add in some fresh blueberries to join them.  This Bundt has three layers:  Cream cheese pound cake batter, followed by a cream cheese filling based on the cream cheese layer in this great recipe from fellow BundtaMonth member, Anita from Hungry Couple,  and then another layer of the pound cake batter.  Then, to top it all off, a drizzled cream cheese glaze.  I took it over to my little sister’s house for dinner and her youngest son fawned over it lovingly until it was time for supper.  Then they all had healthy (not healthy!) slices for dessert.  I tell you true:  Like baking pans, there is no such thing as too much cream cheese.  

Yes, it was already cut!  Because I had to take photos.  I gave the cut slices to my elderly neighbor
who was sick with bronchitis and needed love and sugar. 

Ingredients

Cake batter:

2 cups or 250g flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup or 225g unsalted butter (at room temperature)

6 ounce or 170g cream cheese (at room temperature)

2 cups or 450g sugar

4 large eggs, room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla

Zest of a lemon

Cheesecake filling:

8 oz or 226g cream cheese (room temperature)

1 egg

1/4 cup or 55g sugar

1/4 cup or 30g flour

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup or 100g dried cherries plus a few extra for decoration

1/2 cup or 75g fresh blueberries plus a few extra for decoration

Glaze:

2 oz cream cheese

1/4 cup or 30g icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

3-4 teaspoons milk

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your Bundt pan by spraying liberally with non-stick spray and then coating with a little flour.

The filling is very easy.  Add all the ingredients, except the cherries and blueberries, to your mixing bowl and beat until smooth and lump free.

Fold in your cherries and blueberries.  Cover with cling film and refrigerate until needed.

For the cake batter, in a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth.

Add the sugar, either a third at a time, beating well after each addition, or in a slow continuous stream as you are beating.

Continue beating on medium-high speed until light and fluffy (about 3 - 5 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Add the vanilla and lemon zest and beat until incorporated.

Add in half the flour mixture and beat again.

Add the rest of the flour mixture and beat just until incorporated.

Pour half the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Spoon on the cherry blueberry cream cheese filling and spread it around the pan.

Top with the remaining cream cheese batter.

Bake for about 55-65 minutes in your preheated oven or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool in the pan for at least 15- 20 minutes before trying to remove it.  It should start to pull away from the sides of the pan as it cools.

To remove it, place a wire rack upside down on the cake and invert the cake pan to release the cake.  Allow to cool completely before adding the glaze.

While your cake is cooling, chop your extra decoration cherries and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine your first three glaze ingredients and then add the milk, starting with just 1 teaspoon.

Continue mixing well and adding milk one teaspoon at a time until you reach drizzling thickness.  I ended up adding only 3 teaspoons to mine.

When your cake is completely cool, add the cream cheese glaze to a small baggie and cut the corner off.  Squeeze out the glaze slowly and drizzle it all over the cake.

Stud it with bits of cherry and whole blueberries to decorate.

Enjoy!

And check out my fellow bloggers beautiful cakes:

• Black Forest Mini Bundt Cakes by Kim at Cravings of a Lunatic 
• Chocolate Cherry Bundt Cake by Anuradha at Baker Street
• Cherry-filled Bundt Cake with Chocolate Cherry Drizzle by Heather at Hezzi D's Books and Cooks 
• Cherry Bundt Cake by Veronica at My Catholic Kitchen 
• Cherry Kirsch Bundt by Tara at Noshing With The Nolands 
• Cherry Pecan Bundt Cake by Renee at Magnolia Days 
• Chocolate Cherry Bundt Cake by Lora at Cake Duchess 
•  Chocolate Cherry Coke Cake by Jennie at The Messy Baker Blog 
•  Chocolate Cherry Dream by Kim at Ninja Baking 
•  Coconut Cherry Chip Bundt by Anne at From My Sweet Heart 
• Lemon Cherry Bundt Cake with Lemon Glaze by Anita at Hungry Couple 
• Mahlab Vanilla Bundt Cake by Laura at The Spiced Life 
• Spicy Cherry Yogurt Bundt Cake by Paula at Vintage Kitchen 
• White Chocolate Black Cherry Yogurt Bundt Cake by Karen at In the Kitchen With KP

If you'd like to add your cherry Bundt for April, here are the rules:

- Simple rule: Use any cherries (or any part of the cherry) – and bake us a Bundt for April
- Post it before April 30, 2013.
- Use the #BundtAMonth hashtag in your title. (For ex: title should read #BundtAMonth: Chocolate Cinnamon Bundt)
- Add your entry to the Linky tool below
- Link back to our announcement posts.

Follow Bundt-a-Month on Facebook where we feature all our gorgeous bundt cakes. Or head over to our Pinterest board for inspiration and choose from over 350 Bundt cake recipes.