Showing posts with label Desserts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Desserts. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Homemade Ice Cream with no Cream !!!

A few weeks ago, I had been binging on sugar. Sugar in chocolate syrup, cake, mochas and chocolate !  I decided to put my sugar cravings at a stop by going on a sugar free diet from Monday - Friday, so apart from sugar in my coffee, I dont add any sugar any where else. Being so hard on oneself, you want to treat yourself to a sugar free dessert during the week. Here is my recipe of a homemade ice-cream made without any special equipment, dairy free, vegan and no added sugar.

Let's not waste anytime and get to the recipe, Frozen Banana & Cherry Ice Cream. I have adapted this recipe from The Simple Veganista blog. 

Ingredients:

*2  Bananas

*1 cup frozen cherries

*Chopped Chocolate

You will need to plan ahead of time to make this for dessert. If you have bananas that have browned lying on your kitchen counter, those are just perfect for this dessert. Peel the skins of, place them on a baking sheet and freeze them.

Cherry me red ;)
For frozen cherries, you can buy them frozen straight from the grocery store or freeze them by yourself. But if you will need to pit fresh cherries before freezing them.


Cherries
Cherries !

Do not buy a special pitting machine for pitting just a few cherries as I think its just a waste of money. You can use a simple pastry tip or chop sticks to remove the pits. After you pit the cherries, freeze the cherries the same way as the bananas. 

The fruits need at least 3 - 4 hours to freeze.

Bananas and Cherries
Banans and Cherries ready to be frozen !

Once your fruits are frozen. Put them in a food processor or blender and blend, if its too hard to blend let it sit for 2-3 minutes and blend again.
Pitted cherries
The consistency should be thick and creamy just like a real ice-cream. Serve with chopped chocolate !!! You need to serve this immediately, as it is a soft serve ice-cream. And is an easy dessert to serve if you have guests.

I hope you do enjoy serving this homemade ice-cream with no cream.  

Soft serve frozen banana-cherry home made ice-cream with no cream ! 

frozen banana cherries ice-cream
My bowl of ice-cream

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Strawberry- Rhubarb Pie



I have always walked across these interesting looking pink stalks in the fresh produce section at the grocery, wondering how they taste and what could be cooked with them .. Well I finally picked up a few stalks of Rhubarb hoping to find a recipe to make them. But it was a week and I still had not and they had to go to the garbage bin. So last week when I had a lot of strawberries at home, I finally found something that I would want to try and make - Strawberry Rhubarb Pie.

I have never made a pie before and am not a huge fan of them. But I did want to try making this one, and see how it tastes. I used Debs Recipe from Smitten Kitchen to make this pie. And it turned out great. Here's what you ll need to make this pie.




Pie Filling:

4-5 cups of strawberry ( cored and sliced) - rhubarb ( sliced into small cubes)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp lime juice
1/4 cup quick cooking tapioca
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter cut into small cubes.

Mix all the ingredients except the butter and keep aside. I recommend you do this while you roll out the pie dough so that, the ingredients are all mixed up and ready.

Pie crust:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 stick unsalted butter( very cold and cubed)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
8 tbsp cold water

Make the pie dough a few hours before you actually get to bake the pie. Here's how you do it,

Put all dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse till the butter is almost pea sized cubes. Remove the mixture in a mixing bowl. Add the cold water 1 tbsp at a time , and make a firm dough. Make two parts of the dough. Mix the dough and knead it till it is firm and refrigerate for at least 2-3 hours. When you remove the dough from the fridge it will be firm, microwave for 20 seconds and it will loosen up. Place the dough on a clean counter surface and knead it for 2-3 minutes and using a rolling pin start rolling. Roll the dough into a 12-inch circle, fold in quarters and transfer it to your pie plate ( 9-inch).

In the pie plate open up the quarters and make sure the pie dough sits evenly on the pie plate without forming any air bubbles underneath. Now, fill with the pie filling. Take the second pastry dough you have left aside roll out a second 11-inch circle, make decorative slits and place on top of the filling.

Make sure you have enough (not too much and not too less) pie dough to crimp and form a decorative pattern. Take a large egg yolk with a tablespoon of water and beat it really well. With a pastry brush brush egg yolk on top of the pie to give it a shiny effect.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for 20 mins, after that lower the temp to 350F and bake again for 20 mins.

The pie tastes best when eaten the next day :).. I loved this pie, though I am not a huge fan of pies. I hope you love it too !!