Elements » blueberry

Kiwi Cabbage with Blueberry Salad Dressing

Sheila — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:46:52 +0000

I love cabbage salads in pretty much any way, shape, or form. I can eat them every day and not get tired of them. But I don’t care much for traditional coleslaw. I don’t like much vinegar in my cabbage salads, and whenever we go out to eat, I never order coleslaw because I just never like the strong, heavy dressings that the cabbage is usually drowned in.

Here’s a fruity cabbage salad I made last night.

It’s got diced kiwi and tangerines in it, with a blueberry dressing mixed in. I would have liked to have added some fresh blueberries but I didn’t have any. Maybe next time.

The blueberry dressing is very light and is made with a juice that contains 100% fruit…nothing else. I mixed the juice with a little olive oil, and that’s it. I didn’t measure anything. There’s really no need to. How much fruit and dressing you use will be based on your own preferences.

Just cut, dice, and slice. Then toss everything together. Easy!

It’s a wonderful salad that makes a great accompaniment to most any meal. We had ours with some blackened turbot fish. It also makes a great meal all by itself, but if you eat it as a meal, you may need to toss in some nuts so you can get some protein.

Kiwi Cabbage with Blueberry Salad Dressing

Ingredients for the Salad:

green cabbage, finely cut
purple cabbage, finely cut
kiwi, diced and sliced
tangerine, diced
cherry tomatoes, cut in half
poppy seeds
black pepper to taste

Ingredients for the Blueberry Salad Dressing:

blueberry juice (I used Naked Juice’s Blue Machine juice, but you could just mash some fresh blueberries if you prefer.)
olive oil

Instructions:

Wash and finely cut the green and purple cabbage.
Peel and dice the tangerine(s) and kiwi(s), saving some kiwi to slice so you can use it to decorate the top of the salad.
Wash the cherry tomatoes, and then cut them in half.
Make the dressing by mixing some blueberry juice and olive oil together.
Toss the shredded cabbages, cherry tomatoes, diced kiwi, and diced tangerines together.
Sprinkle with poppy seeds and black pepper.
Add the dressing, and then toss the salad again.
Place the cabbage salad on a serving dish and decorate the top with kiwi slices.

Note: An alternative to tossing the salad with dressing is to leave the dressing on the side and let everyone add their own dressing.

Vegan Whole Wheat Bran Pancakes with Jam and Applesauce

Sheila — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:23:04 +0000

I’m not a big pancake eater. Generally I find them to be way too sweet for breakfast. Pancakes also seem to never stick to my ribs. I eat them and get hungry an hour later. Not good. And pancakes have been known to make me sick.

I remember once when me and Kemal had a late night breakfast at a 24-hour restaurant with friends, I ordered pancakes and got miserably sick afterward. That was about 13 years or so ago, and I don’t think I’ve eaten a pancake since then…except for the German pancakes I made last week that is.

Anyway, yesterday I saw Joy the Baker’s “Vegan Jam Swirled Pancakes” and it occurred to me that those pancakes were exactly what I needed for my stomach which has been giving me fits the past couple of days.

There’s no dairy or eggs in them. Perfect. I’m allergic to casein, the protein found in cow milk. I’m also allergic to eggs, rice, and shellfish…among other things.

Now the thing is…I eat eggs. I also eat/drink dairy products make from cow milk. Why? Well, I like all that stuff. Does it bother me? Sometimes. I get tummy aches, gas, and headaches sometimes. Other times, it seems it doesn’t bother me at all.

But whenever my stomach is giving me fits, I know I need to listen to my body. So no eggs or dairy products made with cow milk.

Anyway, back to pancakes. Those pancakes I had at the 24-hour diner probably was made with milk and eggs. For sure, it’s the reason I got sick.

So I decided pancakes could be good for my stomach. Hey…they could be best friends…if I made them the right way.

I chose Joy’s vegan pancake recipe, and it was perfect. I’ve made it three times in the past two days. I totally love them!

And Kemal, who’s also not a pancake eater, requested them for breakfast!! Amazing! He said they smelled so good he wanted some. And guess what, he loved them!

I totally recommend her recipe just the way it. They’re fantastic!

But I did change her recipe just a bit so it’ll give me a bit more fiber and whole grains which is something I need. I also used applesauce instead of oil, and I didn’t add any sugar to mine…just used the applesauce and jam as sweeteners.

Here’s some pictures of the vegan whole wheat bran pancakes I made with applesauce and blueberry jam:

And below are some pancakes made Joy’s way…with all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour. There’s strawberry jam and applesauce inside the batter, and then I topped the pancakes with warm applesauce and cinnamon.

And here they are plain. Same pancake as above…just without the applesauce on top.

These pancakes are incredibly delicious. I hope you’ll try sometime and see for yourself just how tasty they are. And if you need a bit more fiber and whole grain in your diet like I do, try the recipe below which I adapted from Joy’s recipe. Use whatever kind of jam you like. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you enjoy every yummy bite!

Vegan Whole Wheat Bran Pancakes with Jam and Applesauce

Yield: 10-12 very small pancakes

Recipe Adapted from: Joy the Baker

Pomegranate Cream Wafer Cake

Sheila — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:20:50 +0000

Pomegranate cream is scrumptious!!! Yeah…it’s filled with tons of butter, cream cheese, and sugar, but what can I say…it’s worth every bite!! And surprisingly, it’s really not all that sweet. You would think it would be with 2 1/2 cups of sugar in it, but it’s not. The cake tastes heavenly!! I only had a small piece, but I have to tell you I was tempted to eat more!!

We kept half of the cake for ourselves, and we gave the rest to the wonderful team of guys and gals at our apartment complex. They went above and beyond the call of duty last night to help us out. We walked into the office 10 minutes before closing time to tell them our air conditioning was blowing out hot air, and the very nice lady in the office called a technician immediately. Within 10 minutes they were at our apartment to fix it. We felt bad that Jimmy, the maintenance guy, was there until almost 7 p.m. replacing parts, but we were very grateful to him because our apartment was 85 degrees.

We had tons of cooking and laundry to do, and our apartment would have just gotten even hotter. We were already miserably hot and it would have been horrible to have to cook and clean for hours in that kind of heat. Anyway, we wanted to express our thanks and gratitude to them, so we brought them a thank-you note and some cake.

Anyway, the pomegranate cream is very easy to make, and if you’ve never tried these wafer tortes before, they taste just like the wafer cookies with cream filling that you buy in the store.

If you can’t find the Vika wafers wafle tortowe where you live, you can order them.

Pomegranate Cream Wafer Cake

Adapted from: Recipe Goldmine

Here’s a couple of pictures so you can see the how thick I made my pomegranate cream.

After I made this first picture, I realized that while it does show the consistency of the cream, it’s not a very pretty picture. Here’s one that looks prettier.

Here’s a couple of pictures that Kemal took for me so you can see how the cake looks after you’ve finished spreading cream on the wafers.

Now you need to cover the cake with some plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator.
Place something heavy on top of the covered cake so the cream can better soak into the wafers. You can use a heavy cutting board or a heavy pan…something like that…just so long as it’s not so heavy that it’ll crush the wafers.
Leave the cake in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours.
Then transfer the cake to a large cutting board.
Use a very sharp knife to cut the cake into whatever shape/size pieces you want. I asked Kemal to cut our cake, and here’s some pictures I took of him doing so.

In the photo below, the little pieces on the plate are for our immediate eating consumption. And oh how we enjoyed consuming them!!!

After you cut the cake, place the pieces on a serving dish and eat ’till your heart’s content!

Make sure you cover and refrigerate whatever you don’t eat.

Blueberry Ice Cream Made Without an Ice Cream Maker

Sheila — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:16:18 +0000

Yesterday when I made a blueberry coconut bundt bread with blueberry cream, I ended up with too much cream. I wasn’t worried though because I knew that all I had to do was freeze it and I’d end up with blueberry ice cream to enjoy later.

To make the ice cream have an even richer blueberry flavor, I just added more berries to the mixture. Easy as pie. Less hassle than pie. And more refreshing than pie on a hot day like this!

Enjoy your ice cream! I know I am!!!

Blueberry Ice Cream Made Without an Ice Cream Maker

Adapted from: Joy the Baker

Ingredients:

1 pint fresh blueberries
40 additional fresh blueberries
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 pint whipping cream
juice from half a lemon
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 tbsp. light corn syrup
2 tsp. water
2 tbsp. dry vanilla pudding powder (not instant)

Instructions:

In a small bowl, mash the blueberries with a fork.
Take half a lemon and squeeze the juice out of it. Remove any seeds.
Add the lemon juice, corn syrup, and vanilla extract to the blueberries.
Now add the powdered sugar and water and whisk until all the ingredients are combined.
Then add the whipping cream and dry vanilla pudding powder to the blueberry/sugar mixture.
Beat the mixture with an electric mixer until it has the consistency of a thick whipped cream.
Pour the mixture into a plastic freezer container and place in your freezer for several hours so it can harden.
Enjoy every creamy bite!!!

Blueberry Coconut Bundt Bread with Blueberry Cream

Sheila — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:26:32 +0000

Do you ever have one of those mornings where you want something sweet for breakfast and instead of choosing something healthy (like fresh fruit) you choose something like a donut, a pastry, a piece of coffee cake, or perhaps crepes?

Well, I had a morning like that. All I could think about was eating something sweet. I looked in my fridge and saw fresh cantaloupe and passed on that. I had eaten cantaloupe for two mornings in a row for breakfast and wanted something different.

Then I saw all the blueberries in my refrigerator. I thought about having some with my cereal but that’s what I had for breakfast three days last week.

I thought about blueberry muffins and while this bread is similar to a muffin in taste it looks more like a cake because I baked it in a bundt cake pan to make it look more festive and also because I just want my bread to look different. Sometimes I get tired of my breakfast breads being in the same bread-shaped loaf or made into muffins. Besides, who says we can’t make bread in a cake pan? If there is such a rule then I’m all for breaking it.

Anyway, I decided a blueberry glaze might be nice on my bread, but after I made it, I realized the glaze was WAY too sweet. I wanted sweet but not like that. I saw I had plenty of whipping cream in the fridge so I decided that my blueberry coconut bread would be awesome topped with blueberry cream. So I added the cream to the glaze I made and realized that was exactly what I wanted!

The cream is sweet but not overpowering. The bread itself isn’t too sweet at all, and the coconut flavor is subtle and doesn’t overpower the blueberries flavor.

If you wanted to cut back on the sugar, you could use a lot less powdered sugar…maybe only 1/2 cup. But when I make this again I’ll probably make it the same way because Kemal thought the bread and the cream was perfect just the way it was.

Anyway, I was rather pleased with my breakfast, but I ended up with way too much cream. No worries though. I’ll tell you what I did with the rest of the cream in the next post.

Blueberry Coconut Bundt Bread with Blueberry Cream

(Blueberry Bread Recipe Adapted from: Jen at How to: Simplify)

(Blueberry Cream Recipe Adapted from: Joy the Baker)

Here’s a picture of the blueberry bread after it cooled and I inverted it.

And after it cooled some more, I cut it, topped it with blueberry cream I made, and sprinkled it with coconut flakes, and then placed a few fresh blueberries around the plate as a garnish.

Doesn’t it look scrumptious!!

Blueberry Vanilla Fluff

Sheila — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:57:12 +0000

We had some blueberries and whipping cream in the fridge that needed to be used up, so Kemal and I threw this together last night after we made veggie pizza. It’s a quick and easy dessert because you can just purchase the pastry sheets and pudding to have on-hand in your kitchen and use them when you don’t have time to make a cake from scratch. I love making cakes from scratch, but sometimes when we’re feeling rushed or if we’re really tired, it’s nice to be able to make a cake quickly, on short notice, and without a lot of effort.

The cake is only mildly sweet which is the way we like our cakes to be, and every bite is pure joy!

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Blueberry Vanilla Fluff

Ingredients:

2 pkgs. Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets (Each package contains 2 sheets. I used 3 sheets for this dessert)
2 pkgs. vanilla pudding (not instant)
2 lemons
4 cups milk
16 tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 pints fresh blueberries
1/2 pint heavy whipping cream
2 tbsp. vanilla

Instructions:

Take the pastry sheets out of the freezer a couple of hours before making this dessert.
Butter two large jelly roll pans.
After the pastry sheets have thawed out, remove them from the package and cut them into squares, placing them on the greased pans, side-by-side.
Cut the lemons and then squeeze lemon juice over the pastry squares.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
When the oven has warmed up, bake the cut pastry sheets uncovered until they’re golden brown.
Remove them from the oven to cool.
In the meantime, make the pudding according to the package instructions. (I made mine by whisking together the 2 pudding mixes, 12 tbsp. sugar, and 4 cups cold milk. Then I heated the mixture on medium heat until it thickened up.)
When the pudding has thickened, put it in the refrigerator to thicken up a little more and to cool down.
Next, make whipped cream by mixing the whipping cream, 4 tbsp. sugar, and vanilla, beating it with an electric mixer until it gets thick and creamy.
Chill the whipped cream when it’s done.
Wash the blueberries.
After everything has cooled down some, take the baked pastry squares and arrange them in the bottom of a square pan. I used a 10-inch Springform pan.
Spread vanilla pudding over the pastry squares.
Then sprinkle blueberries over the pudding.
Place pastry squares and place them on top of the blueberries.
Spread more vanilla pudding on top of the pastry squares.
Sprinkle more blueberries.
Add another layer of pastry shells on top of the blueberries.
Decorate the top with whipped cream.
Refrigerate for for several hours so it can harden and set.
Cut and serve.

Note: You don’t have to assemble the cut pastry squares to make a whole cake the way I did. If you prefer, you can make individual cakes not putting the cut pastry squares side-by-side. If you have a large serving dish, you can place the squares on the dish, leaving room in between each square. Then just spread pudding, sprinkle berries, add another pastry, spread more pudding, sprinkle more berries, add the top pastry square, and then decorate each individual piece with whipped topping and/or berries. Or you can assemble the cake on a plate or parfait dish.

However you decide to assemble it and serve it, you and your guests are gonna love it!

Oatmeal Blueberry Applesauce Bread

Sheila — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:38:21 +0000

If you like oats with a little fruit for breakfast, you’re gonna love this bread! The combination of whole grains and fruit makes for a healthy way to start your day, and what I really like about it is that it’s not too sweet but still packed with flavor.

This bread is one of Joy the Baker’s recipe’s that I tried and adapted. It’s definitely a bread I’ll make again.