Strawberry Yogurt Bundt Cake

Easter is in 2 days.  The last 2 years I've been out to Walmart or Target on Saturday night at around 10:00 trying to find some stuff to stuff into my kid's Easter baskets.  Not very fun.  Needless to say, there is slim pickins for procrastinators like me.  So this year, I had such good intentions of having everything all ready the week before Easter, but guess what?  Yep...nothing...nada!

But the good news is that my husband and I are planning our Friday date night as a "go to the store and find Easter basket stuff for the kids."  What romance fills our lives.:)  But at least it's not Saturday night & at least I'll have Tony with me to make it bearable!  

We're going to try something a little different this year though.  Instead of just stuffing baskets full of mostly junk food, we're going to try a theme basket instead.  I found this awesome list of ideas and also this list of boys baskets ideas over on Pinterest.  I'm so thankful for creative people that share!! (Check out our Easter board for more great ideas!)

If you need something fun to take to friends/family/neighbors...these Chocolate dipped Peeps are a lot of fun to make (and eat).  Just attach a tag that says "to one of my/our favorite peeps" and you're good to go.  And last year we had the kids "plant" jelly beans outside on Saturday night (they just scattered them...I would only do like 10 each kid or so) and in the morning they grew into suckers!  (Just poke the sucker stick into the ground...it looks really cute!)  Last year it was still pretty cold and the group was pretty hard when I went to do it so there were quite a few bent sucker sticks!:)  But the kids loved it!

And, last but not least, if you're looking for a great dessert for Easter Sunday...I've got you covered there!  This dessert is perfect for these beautiful spring days, and is so delicious!!

Strawberry Yogurt Bundt Cake

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1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

zest of 1 lemon

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup vanilla yogurt (you can use greek yogurt if desired)

2 cups fresh strawberries, diced

For glaze:

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  

Grease and flour a 10 inch bundt pan.

Mix together 2 1/4 cups of the flour with baking soda, salt and lemon zest.  Set aside.

In your mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Beat in the eggs one at a time until incorporated.  Stir in the lemon juice.  Alternate beating in the flour mixture and the yogurt into butter mixture.  Beat just until combined.

Toss the strawberries with the remaining 1/4 cup of flour.  This helps prevent the strawberries from all sinking to the bottom of the pan while baking! 

Gently fold the strawberries into the batter. 

Pour batter into your greased bundt pan.

Place the bundt pan into the preheated oven.  As soon as it's in the oven, turn the temperature of the oven down to 325 degrees.  Bake for 60-70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and let sit in pan for 25 minutes to cool.  Turn cake out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cake is completely cooled, transfer to your serving plate.  Make your glaze by mixing the lemon juice and powdered sugar until smooth.  Use your spoon to drizzle the glaze over the cake.

Just keep on drizzling & drizzling until all your glaze is used up.  You may feel like your using too much, but trust me...you're not!  Isn't she perfect?!  Delicious!

Hope everyone enjoys a beautiful Easter Sunday!  And have some cake!!:)

Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Trifle

Strawberries...mmmmmm!!

It's getting to be strawberry season soon.  So along with strawberry freezer jam, fresh strawberry sorbet and strawberry peach jam, you've got to make this as well!  

I love trifles.  This one is fabulous with the fresh strawberries, cream cheese whipped cream, chocolate shavings and pound cake...wow...amazingly delicious!

And I love how cute they look.  I also love to make individual trifles.  You could use mini trifle bowls (you can find them at walmart for a couple bucks) or plastic cups, glass canning jars, etc. and they turn out so cute.

So, when you grab a bunch of strawberries this season to stock up on your jam, make sure you make this at least once...your family will thank you!

Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Trifle

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2 pints fresh strawberries, sliced

1 cup sugar, divided

2 packages (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened

3 tablespoons orange juice

3 cups heavy whipping cream, whipped

1 loaf (about 12-14 oz.) pound cake, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

2 ounces semisweet chocolate, grated

extra strawberries & chocolate for garnish

In a large bowl toss the strawberries with 1/2 cup of sugar, set aside.

In a bowl, beat the cream cheese, orange juice and remaining sugar until smooth.  Fold in the whipped cream; set aside.

Drain the strawberries, reserving juice, set the berries aside.  Gently toss cake cubes with reserved juice.

Place half of the cake cubes into the bottom of your trifle bowl.  Top with 1/3 of the cream cheese mixture, half of the strawberries and half of the grated chocolate.  Repeat layers.  Top with reamining cream cheese mixture.  Garnish with strawberries and grated chocolate.  Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours.  (I think it's even better the next day!)

Yield: 14-16 servings

Strawberry Peach Jam

We've got a couple of delicious fresh peach recipes for you this week.  They will tickle your taste buds for sure!:)

It's peach season here & we are so lucky to live in a peach valley!  We can get some of the best peaches around, I dare say.  I love canning them & making jams & pies, etc.  But I really just love a nice big juicy fresh peach.  The kind where the juices run down your face.  YUM!

This jam is delicious.  The strawberry & peach go together so perfectly.

Try it on some toast, PB&J, or it is fabulous on pancakes!

Strawberry Peach Jam

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1 1/4 cup mashed strawberries

2 cups finely chopped peaches

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 (1.75 oz) box Pectin

4 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

Wash strawberries, remove, stem and mash them with a potato masher until coarse.  You still want a few chunks in there.  Wash and peel peaches.  Chop with a knife into small chunks.  Add the peaches to the strawberries and stir to combine.

Add the lemon juice and stir.  Sprinkle box of pectin over fruit and then stir really well.  Let fruit mixture sit for 30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so. 

Pour in the corn syrup and mix well.  Gradually pour in the sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved and it is no longer grainy.  You may want a second set of hand to help you with this part.  It takes a little bit of time & my arm felt like it was about to fall off by the time it was ready!  Just a heads up...but it's worth it!

Pour jam into freezable containers, 1-2 cups size, leaving about 1/2 inch room at top to allow for expansion while in the freezer.

Let sit on the counter for 24 hours and then either refrigerate & use within 3 weeks or freeze for us to 1 year.  Makes about 7 cups.



Fresh Strawberry Sorbet

We had a fun day shopping the other day.  The boys were busy playing at a friends house, so Tony and I took Kyla shopping.  Ok, actually, I took Kyla shopping & we dropped Tony off at Sport's Authority & Office Max while we were doing our business!:)

I was exhausted when we got home & decided to lay down on the couch.  My wonderful hubby went to the store to get ingredients so Kyla could make Pesto Chicken for dinner.  Kyla started the chicken & Tony started the rice.  It was so nice to not have to worry about it...I got spoiled!

But here's the kicker...when the rice was supposed to be ready, it wasn't.  It was still soupy & chewy.  The chicken was covered in tin-foil to help keep it warm while we were waiting on the rice.  I turned the rice cooker back on & kept checking it.  About 40 minutes later....it was still the same, so I started it over. 

20 minutes later it was ready & perfect.  (Have no clue what happened to the first batch!)  So we sat down to eat, it was about 8:30 by that time.  When I took the tin-foil off the chicken I noticed that they were still full chicken breasts.  Kyla had "skipped" the part in the recipe that says to cut chicken breasts into 2 or 3 pieces.  I was worried that the chicken wasn't fully cooked and so cut into the biggest one...and I was right.  So....back in the oven the chicken went.

We ended up having a very wonderful dinner at 9:30 that night!

I was going to make this wonderful sorbet to go with the dinner, but that just didn't happen, so we ended up making it the next day instead.  IT WAS PERFECT for the hot day that we had, so everything turned out great!

Fresh Strawberry Sorbet

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2 cups sugar

2 cups water

1/2 cup light corn syrup

2 quarts (8 cups) fresh strawberries

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup lime juice

Combine the water and sugar and heat until boiling over medium heat, stirring frequently.  Let simmer for 5 minutes, do not stir.  Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl & place in the fridge to chill.

Place strawberries and citrus into a blender & blend until smooth.  Pour into a large bowl & add the corn syrup & sugar water syrup.  Mix until combined and then place in the fridge for about an hour to chill.

Place in ice cream maker and follow your directions for freezing.  I think they're all about the same.  For mine we just needed to place the strawberry sorbet into the canister.  Place ice and rock salt around the sides and turn on.  Ours took about 1 1/2 hours to soft serve (which is about as good as you're going to get it in the ice cream freezer).  If you like it set up a little more place in the freezer for a couple of hours to harder more.

We served it soft serve and then placed the leftovers in the freezer for later.  We liked it both ways!

Strawberry Freezer Jam (the kiddo's all-time favorite jam!)

We ran out of this jam back in January & my kiddo's have not been happy!!  We'd been waiting to find a good sale on strawberries so I could make another stock pile until next year.  This time I'm making more than I think we'll need so as not to run out and have the wrath of my kiddo's every time they want a PB&J!!

We also love this jam on pancakes & waffles as well as toast and PB&J's, but my all-time favorite is on a piece of warm homemade white bread!!

Strawberry Freezer Jam

recipe from any box of pectin!!:)

PRINT RECIPE

4 cups mashed strawberries (about 2 1/2 pounds whole strawberries)

8 cups sugar

2 boxes of pectin

1 1/2 cups water

Wash & remove stems from strawberries and mash them.  You can mash them with a potato masher or I just like to blend them in my blender, but if you do that just don't blend them to death!  In a large bowl measure the EXACT amount of sugar...I know that's a lot of sugar, but it needs to be that much or else the jam will not set.  You can try the recipes on the less-sugar pectin boxes if that much sugar scares you to death!:)  Pour the strawberries over the sugar and stir until mixture is combined really well.  Let sit for 10 minutes.

When there is about 3-4 minutes left of the strawberry/sugar mixture start making the pectin.  Measure water into a medium sized sauce pan (you don't want it too small because when it starts to boil it boils up...I've had many a spill overs over the years!) and add the pectin.  It may be a little lumpy but will dissolve during this process so don't worry.  Bring the water/pectin to a boil stirring constantly.  When it reaches a boil, stir & boil for 1 minute.  Pour over the strawberries and mix for 3 minutes to ensure it's incorporated throughout.  Pour into freezer safe jars.  Let sit at room temperature for 24 hours and then put in the freezer for up to a year (we've used some past the year mark and it was still good) or store in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.

Makes about 5 pint size jars.

Hope you enjoy as much as we do!!