Strawberry Shortcake!!

Yesterday on a whim, I picked up a few pints of strawberries from a local farm stand. It was the perfect opportunity to make Strawberry Shortcakes!

For the shortcake I made All-American Baking Powder Biscuits (A King Arthur Flour recipe):

3 cups of flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tblsp baking powder

1-4 tblsp sugar

4-6 tblsp butter or shortening (I used Butter flavored Crisco)

1 cup milk or buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 F

Mix together the dry ingredients. Using a pastry blender cut the butter or shortening into the flour mixture.

Add the milk, all at once, mixing quickly and gently for about 20 seconds until you have a soft dough.

Drop the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead 8-10 times. Roll out or pat out the dough to about 3/4" thickness and cut the biscuits with a round cookie cutter.

Place on tray and bake for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Prep Work:

While the biscuits cooked I cut up the strawberries and mixed them in a bowl with a little sugar.

When the biscuits where done I let them cool a few minutes. Then cut them open and spread a little butter on them. I put two halves in each bowl, spread strawberries on top, and sprayed whipped cream over the entire top.

Let's just say that they were so good!! We all devoured our Strawberry Shortcakes in no time at all!

Raspberries!!

Aiden has really enjoyed picking raspberries in the play yard over the last few days. Daddy even setup a ladder for him to reach the high berries! Here he is picking, eating and delighting in his harvest!

Honey, Raspberries & Baby Birds

Hubby recently befriended a fellow beekeeper that lives up the road. All week they have been chasing swarms together, and as a thank you he gave us 5 jars of honey and 2 packages of honeycomb from his bees. We tried the honeycomb after lunch and had fun sucking the honey out. It was so floral tasting and sweet. Can't wait to try the honey out soon!

After lunch the boys went to play outside and discovered raspberries in their play yard. They were so excited and spent most of the afternoon picking berries. Hubby weeded out some butterfly bush from the raspberry patch and discovered a bird's nest that had two baby birds inside. He showed it to the boys. They were so excited to tell me about it, and Ehric said it had two little red colored birds in the nest. I will have to go inspect it tomorrow. Not a bad Thursday!

Homemade Goodness

Despite the humidity, I felt like baking tonight. I seem to have a knack for timing oven cooking (which throws extra heat into the house) for the very hot, humid days...wonder why that is? Anyways, I decided to make artisan bread and the chocolate chip muffins the boys have been asking me to make for the last week or so. In between recipes I decided to make some lemonade (you know to cool down from the heat!). The warmth in my kitchen was actually a good thing, both my bread and muffins rose a lot higher than normal. Also, the lemonade seemed to make my family much more appreciative than usual. I got lots of compliments, especially when everyone was stuffing their faces with the chocolate chip muffins!













I thought I would share my resources for the recipes:

Artisan Bread-I use the basic boule recipe that was in the Five-Minutes a Day for Fresh Baked Bread article that was in Mother Earth News last year or so. I just mix up my ingredients in a large bowl, lightly cover it and let it sit for about 2 hours. I flip out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, fold in my edges to the middle, pop the dough onto a pizza stone and let it rise for about 20-40 minutes (have the over preheating while it is rising). Then I cook it for about 30 minutes. You can tell if the bread is done when you flip it over and gently tap the bottom and it sounds hollow. You could also use only half the dough and refrigerate the rest for another day. We often use the dough for pizza...so good!

Chocolate Chip Muffins- Ehric discovered this amazing recipe and other really good muffin recipes while playing Holly Hobbie "Hey Girls" Muffin Maker game on NickJr.com. To get the recipe you need to complete the game. Have your kids play the game or try it out yourself!

Lemonade- I used Real Lemon's recipe from the bottle and it was really good!
for a 2 quart container: 6 1/2 cups of water, 1 cup Real Lemon (or other bottled lemon juice), and 1 cup sugar.

Enjoy!

A Walk In the Yard

Father's Day Memories