creative anchorage

The continued adventure of melting popsicles!  This is a lazy picture of a melted and strained piña colada popsicle mixed with pineapple and orange juice.  And a tiny bit of lemon and juice from our strawberries.  The ice cream made it an interesting tropical float, but it probably would have been better without it. 
I could go for some more right now. 

Homemade sponge cake and homegrown strawberries make the ultimate strawberry shortcake!  It’s even better if I make my own whipped cream.

I was craving a graham cracker crust and decided to make experimental mini ice cream cakes.  I made three basic flavors, a vanilla, a chocolate, and two strawberries.  The other three were made my mixing other things into vanilla or chocolate ice cream.  From top left to right: cinnamon honey, banana topped with a layer of peanut butter (also mixed into vanilla ice cream), and peanut butter chocolate.
My favorites?  Probably the cinnamon honey and peanut butter chocolate! 

I’m calling these Stupid Cupcakes.
They were supposed to be chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream, but mine?  Not so much.  Several things kept them from being awesome.  Originally I was going to make all vanilla cupcakes, so I used a different recipe (but a 1/4 of it, since it was for a whole cake).  Later on I added cocoa powder to the remaining batter.  Both were very dense and throat-clogging, I assume because even though the recipe was accurately reduced, the act of doing so must have thrown the ratios off.  
I was making these with my sister, and when we started to run low on powdered sugar while making the frosting, she read the back of the bag.  Turns out, powdered sugar is only regular sugar and cornstarch.  The frosting was way too thin, so we dumped in some makeshift powdered sugar.  It definitely thickened it, but the sugar to cornstarch ratio obviously wasn’t correct because it tasted like a mouthful of chalk.  Which, by the way, my sister didn’t notice, but then again I seem to be sensitive to textures.  Chalky frosting is not smooth and fluffy and not very pleasing.  (Also, we used strawberries instead of raspberries.  Just because that’s what we had in the freezer).
I had a picture planned in my mind with piped frosting, something I never do, but the frosting was still too thin for that.  So, the final result?  Mini cupcakes almost too dense to swallow, topped with a layer of chalky strawberry frosting.
Mmm, appetizing!   

This is a case where, I hate to say it, I would have been better off using a yellow cake mix full of chemicals*.  Topped with homemade frosting :]

*Or, I could have made the actual recipe instead of messing with it.  Lesson learned?

I recently had family over and was presented with the task of baking a carrot cake and some triple chocolate brownie cookies for them to feast upon.  The carrot cake uses an 8 oz can of pineapple which must be drained.  Usually I mix all that juice with orange juice and drink it, but this time I thought to throw some strawberries in the food processor and combine all three.  The result was drool-worthy!

ex-libertine:

these are ‘pineberries’. allegedly they were sourced from an endangered strain in South Africa and have been cultivated for the past seven years, now available for limited commercial purchase in Europe. they have the same genetic makeup as a strawberry, but are white with red seeds and taste like pineapples!

I want to try one!  Strawberries and (fresh) pineapple are my favorite fruits.

I used the extra pie dough from the lemon curd blueberry tart to make these.  The first is strawberries with the orange-cream cheese left over from this.  And the second is chocolate pudding, but the strawberries tasted weird with it.  

My mom’s homemade strawberry ice cream.  So creamy.

Strawberry shortcake with homegrown strawberries!

tarastrawberry:

adorablelife:

nourz:

johnnychallenge: taujun: sytoh: picapixels: spx808: liefujishiro: 46252: nemoi: fillette4: kml: q-ga: ilthyfashionbeyotch: lenaasaurus: ohhtray:himtrina: THIS IS AMAZING (via lexraee)

UHhh.

Late-night snack, vanilla yogurt & strawberries :]

xaviaa:

(via femmecherie)

Oh goodness.  Want.