spring Archives - A Calculated Whisk

Strawberry Avocado Salad with Candied Pepitas

May 25, 2017 By Becky 30 Comments

This post is sponsored by Cavit.

This refreshing strawberry and avocado salad with candied pepitas is a perfect way to enjoy spring produce, perhaps alongside a glass of crisp pinot grigio.

Guess what? Yesterday was my birthday, and tomorrow is the very first National Pinot Grigio Day! With so much to celebrate, I decided a really fun salad was in order. This strawberry and avocado salad is loaded with sweet and salty candied pepitas, vibrant radishes, fresh romaine, and a cumin-lime dressing. I’ve been making various iterations of this salad for a few weeks now, and when I have them on hand I also like to add thinly sliced scallions and sugar snaps and a handful of fresh cilantro leaves.

This salad pairs incredibly well with Cavit‘s pinot grigio, which is light and refreshing with a hint of fruity flavors and only a tad bit of sweetness. It’s cold-fermented in cutting edge thermo-conditioned tanks, which make it taste extra fresh and springy. I recommend enjoying a glass of well-chilled pinot grigio on your porch or in your backyard alongside a big plate of this salad.

Strawberry Prosecco Lemonade

May 8, 2017 By Becky 26 Comments

If you love a light and refreshing spring cocktail, this strawberry prosecco lemonade is for you!

It’s strawberry season! In case you couldn’t tell from my Instagram profile, I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve been picking strawberries at my CSA work share each week, throwing sliced ones onto salads, blending them up into smoothies, snacking on them plain, and making them into this strawberry prosecco lemonade.

I’m going to be sipping on this all spring and summer–it’s so refreshing and flavorful. VOVETI prosecco is made from 100% prosecco grapes and has a tempered acidity, but it’s not to sweet. In other words, it’s a perfect match for sweet strawberries and tart lemons. VOVETI has hints of pear, green apple, melon, and peach, which is another reason it goes so seamlessly with the fruity flavors of this drink. And of course, with the popping corks and fizzy bubbles, drinking prosecco always feels like a celebration.

Mango Curd Ice Cream

May 2, 2017 By Becky 32 Comments

This mango curd ice cream is rich and refreshing at the same time, and perfect for taking advantage of peak mango season!

Have you spotted any champagne mangos (also known as ataulfo or honey) in stores recently? They’re my absolute favorite. They’re the smaller, golden-colored mangos, and I find their flavor sweeter and cleaner than their larger, red-skinned counterparts. (I didn’t take a picture of the whole mangos this time, but you can see what they look like in the photos for my stuffed avocados with shrimp and mango.) Their flesh is also less fibrous than other mangos, which makes them an ideal choice for whipping up a smooth curd that will eventually become mango curd ice cream.

Making mango curd is easy, and it’s a wonderful addition to my relatively large collection of fruit curds. I start by pureeing mango chunks to yield the golden nectar you see below (an immersion blender makes cleanup super quick). The mango puree goes into a saucepan with raw sugar, a few egg yolks, a couple spoonfuls of lime juice, a splash of vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Next, I whisk it over medium heat until it’s cooked and thickened a bit. Since the mango puree is so thick to begin with, the change isn’t as dramatic as with other curds, so I like to use a thermometer to keep track. When the temperature is between 150 and 155°F, it’s done. If you don’t have a thermometer, watch for plenty of steam rising from the edges of the pan, but don’t let it actually start to bubble.

Gluten-Free Strawberry Buckle

April 12, 2017 By Becky 44 Comments

This gluten-free strawberry buckle is easy to whip up and a great way to showcase spring berries for Easter or any occasion. Thanks to Bob’s Red Mill for sponsoring this post!

Crisp, crumble, cobbler, buckle, brown betty, pandowdy, grunt, and slump…it’s easy to get mixed up with all the delicious fruit-based desserts out there! I did a bit of research, and discovered that a buckle is a cake made with berries in which the batter buckles up around the fruit, making the surface bumpy. While sometimes buckles call for the fruit to be mixed into the batter, this one is made with the strawberry slices on top for a more elegant presentation. Leave the slices of each strawberry grouped together when you cut them so you can fan them out on top of the batter.

This buckle is another super easy recipe made with Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour. (In case you missed it, last month I shared easy gluten-free vanilla cupcakes made with this flour blend that are also perfect for Easter!) This gluten-free flour blend is my go-to for converting recipes that are not gluten free. Every time I’ve tried using this in place of all-purpose flour, it has worked perfectly! The taste and texture are spot on, so no one will miss a thing.

Easy Gluten-free Vanilla Cupcakes

March 15, 2017 By Becky 59 Comments

When you need a simple but scrumptious spring dessert, look no further than these easy gluten-free vanilla cupcakes! Thank you to my friends at Bob’s Red Mill for sponsoring this post. Their gluten free 1-to-1 baking flour makes this recipe a snap!

It’s snowed twice in Chattanooga in the past three days, but I’m channeling spring with the blush tones of these easy gluten-free vanilla cupcakes. Now that we’ve sprung forward, the warm weather can’t be far behind, right?

Whether or not you’re buried under piles of snow this week, now is a great time to whip up a batch of these babies. They’re easy as can be and made with pantry staples, and are going to be on repeat around here for Easter, Mother’s Day, my birthday (hint HINT), and any old day that needs a sweet ending.

I use Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour from Bob’s Red Mill for these cupcakes. Bob’s Red Mill’s flours have always been my go-to. I usually bake with a mix of their super finely ground almond flour and tapioca flour, but this flour blend has won me over recently because it’s so convenient. You only need to measure one kind of flour, and it works as a cup-for-cup replacement for wheat flour in all sorts of recipes. Bob’s has also recently come out with a paleo flour blend that I can’t wait to try in this recipe. And if you don’t follow a gluten-free diet, you can just use their regular flour here!

For these easy gluten-free vanilla cupcakes, I took an old family recipe for “little one-egg cakes” and made just a couple of substitutions: Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour instead of regular flour and butter instead of shortening. Boom! Easy and delicious vanilla cupcakes. No one will know that these are gluten free!

Grain-free Lemon Cake with Whipped Cream Frosting

March 13, 2017 By Becky 36 Comments

This grain-free lemon cake with whipped cream frosting is made for Easter dinner, spring birthdays, or any other special occasion. It’s super lemony thanks to lemon zest, juice, curd, and extract!

It’s the roughest Monday of the year, but I brought cake to ease the pain! If springing forward has taken some of the pep out of your step, this grain-free lemon cake will put it right back in.

When my future sister-in-law asked for a lemon cake to celebrate her birthday, I was excited. A few months ago for a styled wedding shoot, my friend Lindsey and I made a lemon layer cake with blood orange curd and blood oranges on top. I’d been wanting to try something similar with a lemon curd filling, and this was the perfect opportunity. For this cake, I adapted my lemon olive oil Bundt cake recipe to create two round layers. (Before you can even ask, no, you can’t taste the olive oil! It’s just a super healthy, easy to work with fat for baking that creates a wonderfully tender crumb.)

I used homemade lemon curd for the filling, and then frosted and decorated the cake with stabilized whipped cream. The result is a festive, richly lemon-flavored cake with tart curd and pillowy clouds of cream. It’s so good, and was a huge hit with my entire family, including my three young future nieces. I can’t wait to make it again next month for Easter!

Strawberry Panna Cotta with Balsamic Vinegar

February 28, 2017 By Becky 8 Comments

This strawberry panna cotta with balsamic vinegar is an easy but gourmet spring dessert. With dairy-free and paleo-friendly options, more people can enjoy it!

Are you thrown off by the idea of vinegar in a dessert? Don’t go away yet–let me explain. First of all, you won’t actually taste the balsamic vinegar in this strawberry panna cotta unless you decide to drizzle extra on top to serve. Second, balsamic pairs really well with strawberries, enhancing their flavor and sweetness without asserting its own taste in any noticeable way.

Years ago when I was living in Houston, I threw one of my first dinner parties. I think everything I made that night was from the first cookbook I ever bought myself, Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics. A friend of a friend brought vanilla ice cream for dessert, along with a bottle of chocolate balsamic vinegar. He explained that he’d been to a vinegar tasting, and had learned about how balsamic can enhance desserts. Although skeptical, I drizzled a bit of the heady syrup onto my ice cream, and was totally blown away. The tang of the vinegar made all the other flavors in the dessert pop in the best possible way. I was sold.

Spring Farmers Market Salad

May 17, 2016 By Becky 12 Comments

This spring farmers market salad highlights the best of May’s produce, including beets, strawberries, and sugar snap peas, plus local goat cheese and quail eggs.

After suggesting the other day that you roast a bunch of chicken and potatoes, I’m here with something truly seasonal: this spring farmers market salad. All of the produce and the quail eggs are from Big Sycamore Farm in Decatur, TN and the goat cheese is from Rafting Goat Cheese in Old Fort, TN, so everything except the dressing is a local ingredient that I got at the farmers market or at the farm itself.

Getting my produce from nearby makes a huge difference for me in several different ways. First of all, let’s talk taste. The flavor of local fruits and vegetables is so much better. Pretty much every time I try something new from my CSA box, I say to myself, “These are the best _____ I’ve ever eaten,”. It’s happened with carrots, squash, beets, strawberries, and countless other things. When you’re thinking about vegetables that were picked today or yesterday at a farm in your area and produce from the grocery store that’s already traveled across the country or even the world before getting to you, there’s really no comparison. Fresher fruits and vegetables taste so much better.

Also, when you get your goods from nearby, you have the opportunity to go see exactly how everything works at the farm, or at least hear all about it directly from a farmer at the market. You won’t have to wonder just exactly how free-range the chickens are or what the crops have been sprayed with.

If you read my blog often, you’ve probably heard me talk about my Big Sycamore Farm CSA. (Wondering what a CSA is? It stands for community-supported agriculture and is also known as a farm share. Find out more and search for one near you here.) Right after moving down to Chattanooga in September, I met Initia and Bertus at the farmers market and bought a leftover box from their summer CSA. I was hooked by how amazing everything tasted, the wide variety of produce they included, and how convenient it was to get one big box of fruits and vegetables for the week in one fell swoop. I soon after signed up for their winter CSA, which has a short season running from October to December. It’s like a breath of fresh air during the colder months, and the vegetables in my boxes led me to create things like this winter vegetable gratin that I never would have made otherwise.

Mole-Spiced Hanger Steak with Strawberry-Avocado Salsa

April 18, 2016 By Becky 6 Comments

Hanger steak is seasoned with an irresistible mole-inspired dry rub with a hint of chocolate and served with a refreshing strawberry-avocado salsa. Thank you so much to ButcherBox for sending me grass-fed meat for this post!

Wouldn’t you be thrilled if a giant box with of a wide variety of cuts of grass-fed meat showed up at your door, just chilling over some dry ice and waiting for you to defrost as you please and get creative in the kitchen? I think any paleo or real-food cook would love it, and that’s why I’m so excited about ButcherBox.

ButcherBox is a grass-fed meat subscription service that carefully curates a unique selection of cuts each month and sends them straight to your door, complete with informative cards showing where each cut comes from, explaining how to best prepare it, and detailing a delicious recipe to try with each one. I shared about my first box and what I did with it in this slow-cooker Cuban short ribs post, and now I’m sharing a delicious hanger steak recipe along with some info on my second box. All the meat I’ve eaten from ButcherBox has been exceptional, with such good taste and texture that it’s hard to believe it was ever frozen.

This month’s box contained hanger steak, four ribeye steaks, two pounds of ground beef, thinly sliced beef (perfect for stir-frying or pho), and a Scotch roast, and paleo bacon (if you’re interested in paleo bacon, too, you can get a package of it for free when you buy your first ButcherBox right here!). I was especially excited about the hanger steak because it’s so flavorful and so hard to find–it’s also known as butcher’s steak because butchers often keep it for themselves instead of selling it.

When I started thinking about how to season the steak, mole came to mind. Mole is an amazing and complicated Mexican sauce that’s usually served with chicken, and I’ve loved it ever since one of my students’ mothers first brought me a plate of it when I was teaching in Houston. I have a great recipe for chicken drumsticks with mole poblano in Paleo Planet, but I usually save it for special occasions because there are so many ingredients and it takes a while to make. I’ve really been craving the taste of mole lately, though, so I decided to use some of its main ingredients in a simple and easy-to-make dry rub.

Spring Green Soup with Sugar Snap Peas

April 11, 2016 By Becky 8 Comments

This spring green soup with sugar snap peas is an easy, tasty way to use up greens. With paleo, vegan, and Whole30 versions, everyone can enjoy this soup!

I’m pretty much the worst when it comes to using up salad greens. I’m not a salad person but I’m trying to become one, so I optimistically buy heads of lettuce and spring mixes with big plans to make showstopper salads like this one, simple side salads to add green to meals that otherwise lack verdant hues, and everything in between. As you may have guessed, it doesn’t always happen in time.

That’s where this spring green soup with sugar snap peas comes in. As I read through the April issue of Bon Appetit, I was excited to find a recipe in which salad greens that are a bit past their prime are blended into a fresh soup with peas and a little potato and topped with a dollop of creme fraiche. It sounded delicious, and like the perfect way to redeem myself by using up lots of healthy greens without having to eat a sad salad.

I decided to add a bit of an Asian twist to my soup, throwing some ginger and garlic into the base and deepening the flavors with a splash of fish sauce for umami and a squeeze of lime for acidity. The result is a soup that’s surprisingly light and refreshing, but with an intriguing taste that keeps you coming back for spoonful after spoonful.

Since this soup is all about not wasting food (and I also wanted to make it easy to create a Whole30-compliant version), I used whole sugar snap peas. Those pods are good for you, and including them means there’s no shelling required. If all you have is frozen peas, though, you can use those instead–that’s actually what’s called for in Bon Appetit’s recipe.

Strawberry Orange Ginger Fizz

March 28, 2016 By Becky 10 Comments

This strawberry orange ginger fizz is the perfect spring mocktail or cocktail. It’s sweetened with honey, so it’s paleo friendly and free of refined sugar.

I love a good pink drink, and this strawberry orange ginger fizz is the one I can’t stop sipping on at the moment. It’s a mix of wintry citrus and springy strawberries, so it’s the perfect way to toast the bridge between the seasons, and the ginger gives the drink just the right amount of bite. I’ve gotten to the point where I find a cocktail boring if just tastes sweet and has no other flavors. The ginger cuts through the fruit and honey here to create a taste that’s not only sweet and delicious, but also intriguing. And of course, the bubbles help with that, too.

The syrup for this drink takes less than 15 minutes to make and keeps for a week or so in the fridge. So if you make the syrup ahead of time, all you need to do when you’re ready to serve is spend two minutes chopping an orange and some strawberries and one minute mixing the ginger fizz itself. It’s so easy, and so good! Why not invite a few friends over for an impromptu drink to celebrate spring?

Grain-free Carrot Cake

March 21, 2016 By Becky 19 Comments

This grain-free carrot cake gets wonderful flavor from hazelnut flour, lemon zest, and just the right balance of spices. It’s perfect for Easter, birthdays, or an impromptu spring celebration.

Carrot cake–how do you feel about it? I’ve changed my tune over the past few years. As a kid, I thought carrot cake was a huge disappointment. I’d take a few bites if it was the only cake available, but just because even carrot cake was better than no cake whatsoever. As I grew older, I came to appreciate carrot cake as a vehicle for cream cheese frosting, which I do like, despite finding most store-bought versions way too sweet.

When Ben and I first started dating, I was flabbergasted to hear that carrot cake was his FAVORITE kind of cake. Because I love him so much, I started experimenting with homemade carrot cake and was gradually won over. This grain-free carrot cake is good enough to often get stuck in my head like a song, with the memory of its flavor playing over and over until I give in and bake it again. I won’t say carrot cake is now my number one cake, but it might actually be one of my top three. I like how the carrots keep the cake from drying out, and how the subtly spiced cake contrasts with the subtly tangy frosting.