strawberry 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.

Gluten-Free Strawberry Buckle

April 12, 2017 By Becky 46 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.

Strawberry Panna Cotta with Balsamic Vinegar

February 28, 2017 By Becky 8 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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.

Cherry Berry Ice Cream Loaf

July 3, 2016 By Becky 4 Comments

This show-stopping ice cream loaf is easy to put together with fresh strawberries, blueberries, and cherries and store-bought ice cream.

Happy Fourth of July! I realize I’m getting this dessert idea out to you at the very last possible minute, but this is so easy and elegant that I just had to share. Plus, it doesn’t have to be patriotic. You can swap in whatever fruits and whatever flavors your prefer and enjoy this ice cream loaf technique all summer long.

Here I used vanilla bean and lemon ice creams. The lemon ice cream is super refreshing, and plays really well with the fresh summer fruit. The blueberries, strawberries, and cherries were so beautiful that I couldn’t bring myself to cook them as I had originally planned, but using raw fruit makes this ice cream cake taste fresh and almost light, plus it cuts down on the prep time.

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

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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.

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?

Strawberry-Peach Crisp with Hazelnut-Pepita Crumble

August 27, 2015 By Becky 12 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Strawberry-Peach Crisp with Hazelnut-Pepita Crumble | acalculatedwhisk.com

This gluten-free strawberry-peach crisp is lightly sweetened with maple syrup

and topped with a rich crumble made with hazelnut flour and pumpkin seeds.

Hello from Chattanooga, our new home! Ben and I packed everything up and drove from Boston to Tennessee across two days, arriving last night a little after midnight. I’m in love with my new city, which is Ben’s hometown, already. So far we’ve driven around a bit looking at houses, and had amazing burgers at Main Street Meats (see my bunless burger on Insta!). We’re also dogsitting for Ben’s sister, so I get to spend time with this guy.

I spent a while editing the photos of this fabulous strawberry-peach crisp with hazelnut-pepita crumble today. The photographs make me a little sad, because this was the last photo shoot I did in our apartment in Boston, where I’ve taken all the photos for the blog so far and all the photos for my cookbook, Paleo Planet. I hope our next apartment has light that I like just as much!

Anyway, enough wistful reminiscing about the natural light at my old apartment. We’re talking crisp today! I had some good-looking strawberries and peaches, but wanted to do more than just eat them. In part because I was trying to avoid packing, I decided to bake. (Yes, when I’m feeling stressed, I avoid whatever I’m worried about and bake instead. No, my fiancé has never complained!)

I put the freshly cut fruit right into the greased baking dish and added a little maple syrup, a tiny bit of tapioca flour to keep the juices under control, and a pinch of salt and the seeds of half a vanilla bean to bring out the natural sweetness of the fruit. I mixed it all together right in the dish to avoid having to wash an extra bowl. (I did have to wash the bowl I made the crumble in, but that’s it for this recipe: one bowl + the baking dish).

Rainbow Salad with Grilled Chicken and Raspberry Walnut Dressing

July 6, 2015 By Becky 16 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Rainbow Salad with Grilled Chicken and Raspberry Walnut Dressing #30MinuteMondays | acalculatedwhisk.com

All the colors of the rainbow are represented in this quick paleo salad with a creamy, dairy-free raspberry walnut dressing.

I’ve been wanting to make a rainbow salad for a while now, but this seemed like an especially opportune moment. Summer produce is everywhere in all its resplendent hues, and more Americans are able to get married than ever before. Let’s celebrate with this salad!

This healthy salad has pretty much all the colors of the rainbow (if you kind of merge indigo and violet together) plus pink. Pink is my favorite color and it’s not really fair that it’s not a part of the official rainbow, so I made sure it was included by making a nice pink dressing. Despite how creamy it looks, the dressing is dairy-free–the creaminess comes from the walnuts and shallots, and the color is thanks to the raspberries. It’s inspired by the creamy shallot dressing from my pan-seared chicken, orange, and walnut salad, but this one’s even better because it’s pink.

Mocha Ricotta Pie with Strawberries

May 1, 2015 By Becky 14 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Mocha Ricotta Pie with Strawberries (Gluten free, Grain free) | acalculatedwhisk.com

This mocha ricotta pie is one of my absolute favorite desserts. It’s in my top three of all time, right up there with almond butter thumbprints and salted caramel brownies.

What makes it so fabulous is the trifecta of a lightly sweetened, crunchy shortbread crust, a rich and creamy ricotta filling with chocolate, coffee, and a hint of lemon (yes, lemon!), and a topping of juicy strawberries. It reminds me of the amazing Southern-style chocolate pie I always used to eat at the now-defunct Marimont Cafeteria in Austin, Texas, but with a mature Italian twist and bright berries to lighten things up.

Really good dark chocolate and high quality, full-fat ricotta are important for this pie. (Good coffee won’t hurt either, but I love my Café Bustelo.) I was so excited about having a tub of Narragansett Creamery ricotta in my fridge that I proceeded to completely forget I’d bought it to make zucchini lasagna, and dumped all of it into the filling for this pie.

Golden Cake with Strawberries and Whipped Cream

April 11, 2015 By Becky 6 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Golden Cake with Strawberries & Whipped Cream (Gluten free, Grain free) | acalculatedwhisk.com

How were your Easter and/or Passover celebrations? Ben and I had a few people over on Saturday and then went to another Easter dinner on Sunday. I won a pork crown roast from Snake River Farms over at Rhubarbarians, and it was pretty great. I also made this cake–we enjoyed one of the layers on Saturday, and brought the other one, pictured here, to the party on Sunday.

So, yes, I’ve been sitting on this cake recipe for an entire week. I apologize! I had one of those very busy weeks that I should have seen coming, but instead somehow managed to take me completely by surprise. Am I the only one that happens to? Between papers and evaluation reports and trying to get at least a little shuteye, it took me all week just to edit these photos.