Strawberry Greek Yogurt Pancakes

These were super yummy. I love all things breakfast and I love fruit! Pancakes soo yum ahh. I don't have a waffle maker (SAD) but pancakes are super easy. I wanted to make a pancake that was relatively healthy (aka had more protein) so I tried out this recipe and it was pretty good!

Strawberry Greek Yogurt Pancakes
Recipe by Amy Zhang

1/2 cup plain non-fat Greek yogurt
1 large egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp honey
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 to 1 cup fresh strawberries
1 tsp sugar (optional)
Butter, for pan

Chop strawberries into small pieces. *Optional: In a small bowl, combine about 1/2 cup of the strawberries with 1 tsp sugar and set aside to macerate.*

In a medium bowl, mix together yogurt, egg, vanilla, and honey. Add in salt, flour, and baking powder, then stir until wet and dry ingredients are mixed. Fold in 1/2 cup of strawberries. In a pan over medium heat, melt a small amount of butter, then add in about 1/4 cup of the batter (it's thick, so you might need to spread it out a little with a spoon). Repeat if you're pan is big enough. When you see bubbles starting to form on the top (after about 3 minutes), flip the pancake(s) and cook another 2-3 minutes.


If you macerated strawberries, use as a delicious, naturally sweet topping!

Tilapia with Strawberry Salsa

Week 2 of Happy and I cooking together (this time girls only!), we decided to make tilapia. WOW. SO EASY. WOW. SO GOOD. I will be making this again asap because it was soooo yummy. I love fish, and I love fruit, so fish + fruit = omnomnom. And it looked beautiful to boot! While I whipped up the fish and salsa, Happy handled the rice and salad--the rice was soo good, she stuck in a whole 2 cups of fresh mushrooms to make it magical.

The recipe calls for grilling the fish and the original calls for baking--I pan fried mine easily.

Tilapia with Strawberry Salsa

Recipe from Pasta Princess and More

2 tilapia fillets

1 tbsp butter

1 tsps lemon juice

5 large strawberries, de-topped and finely chopped

1 tbsp finely chopped white onion

2 tsps lime juice

1 tsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp grated ginger

1 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped or 1 tablespoon Thai Red Chili Sauce

Mix the strawberries, onion, jalapeno, ginger, lime juice and red wine vinegar together. Stir well and let sit in the fridge for at least 15 mins so the flavors can mingle.

Generously season each fillet, pour lemon juice over both and place 1/2 tbsp of butter on each. Grill until fish turns opaque and flakes easily.

Serve with a spoonful of salsa.

Dorie Greenspan's Fresh Fruit Tart

I think I made this in September.  It turned out pretty good--my mom went out and got the fruit for me and the fruit was absolutely gorgeouss. A very easy, delicious recipe! The recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours, which of course is my go-to recipe book for impressive desserts! Her recipes are always beautiful and delicious and easy to follow, although sometimes time-consuming (and definitely not low-cal...but this one wasn't so bad, I mean, the majority of the sugar was natural fruit-sugar!).

Asian Fruit Cake 2

Remember THIS? Yeah, well, I did it again. And this time it didn't turn out half as well. Yes, I made the cake 2 days before graduation. Yes, I assembled the cake the day before graduation. But still, I could have done better. I forgot the vinegar, and I'm blaming that for why the cake didn't rise, though I didn't buy new baking powder and used the one that I got in August, so that could have been a problem too. Then I didn't have the appropriate storage stuff to keep the cake from drying out overnight before I frosted it, so the plastic wrap didn't really work and the cake got a little hard on the bottoms of each layer. Kind of annoying. But apparently my grandma kept on thinking about this cake after she ate it, and it was really alright, though not light (the day I baked it it was light, because I ate a little piece that fell off, but the next day it was a little more dense).

That being said, still try this recipe! It's beautiful! But eat it the day of, and make sure if you're storing it, you store it properly!

Almond Milk Pancakes

I don't remember when I made these, but I was feeling like pancakes, and I made them, and they were delicious, and easy, and worth it, so worth it. Plus relatively healthy for pancakes because seriously there's like 40 calories in a cup of almond milk and I definitely didn't eat all of them. Soo good. I just had the plain pancakes with unfrozen strawberries on top, but fresh fruit would have been deliciousss or really anything. I don't eat maple syrup...is that weird? I can't stand it. Like juice. Too sweet. And yet I have a crazy sweet tooth and love to bake and would totally eat an entire cake if I could without getting fat or getting diabetes or feeling sick to my stomach afterwards haha.

Almond Milk Pancakes
Recipe from About.com

1 cup all-purpose flour
3 T. sugar
2 t. baking powder
½ t. salt
1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk or other non-dairy milk
1 large whole egg, lightly beaten
1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten
1 ½ t. canola oil

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, making a well in the center.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the almond milk, whole egg, egg yolk and canola oil until well combined. Add to the well in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. (Batter should still have some lumps.)

Lightly oil a heavy-bottomed skillet or griddle and heat over medium heat. Once hot, add the batter to the pan, about ¼ cup at a time, flipping when bubbles begin to form on the surface of the pancakes and the edges begin to rise. Cook the other side of the pancakes for about 1-2 minutes more, or until golden brown. Repeat until all of the batter is used, keeping the pancakes warm either on a plate beneath a towel or in a 200 F. oven. Serve with toppings of choice.

New York Style Cheesecake with Strawberry Sauce

Lastly for my mom's bookgroup retreat, I made a New York Style Cheesecake with a strawberry sauce. They were reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel, by Jonathan Safran Foer, and since that's based in New York it seemed appropriate. This cheesecake is based off a recipe my mom used to make, so I don't know where it's from originally, but she has adapted it over the years. The strawberry sauce is just made by letting strawberries sit (either defrosted strawberries or fresh strawberries) and cut them up together and then mixing them with sugar to taste. It turned out great!!

Because I'm no longer home, I don't know the recipe...so if you want it, I'll post it later, so comment if you want it & keep checking back!

Fresh Fruit Asian Sponge Cake

The week before spring break was one of my good friend's, Philip's, birthdays. He told me he liked ice cream cakes and I shot that idea down (because I couldn't make homemade ice cream so it wouldn't be challenging enough? I have noo idea why...) and then he said he also liked those Chinese Fruit Cakes that I also have experience with (I loved having them for my birthdays in high school). So I searched for a recipe. This recipe was reallllly good. I think I could have put more frosting in there because I was stingy but it made a LOT, and it would have been nicer if I could have gotten the layers a little thinner, but I didn't want to risk it. Also, if I could have gotten melon, it would have been better too. BUT it was really really delicious and turned out beautifully!





Fresh Fruit Cake
Recipe adapted from here

8 eggs
1 cup sugar, divided
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup flour + 1/8 cup cornstarch
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vinegar/lemon juice
1/2 cup milk
fresh fruits – strawberries, cantaloupe, kiwi fruit
1 cup whipping cream
3 tablespoons icing sugar

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift the cake flour together with the baking powder twice to airate the flour.

Separate the egg yolk from the white and put in two different bowls.

In the bowl with the egg white, add the cream of tartar and vinegar and beat until thicken. Add 1/4 cup of sugar and beat further until the mixture shines.

In another bowl, beat the egg yolk with the remainder 1/4 cup of sugar until the sugar dissolve.

Add milk and vegetable oil into the egg yolk mixture and stir to mix well.

Gently fold in the cake flour mixture into the egg yolk mixture.

Gently fold in 1/3 of the egg yolk flour mixture into the egg white until blend. Repeat with the remainder of the egg yolk in 1/3 portions.

Pour the mixture into two greased 8″ circular cake pans. Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes. Remove the oven and invert the cake to cool. It is very important to let the cake to cool completely before frosting.

Cut the kiwi into thin slices.
Cut the strawberries into thin slices, reserving a few whole strawberries to decorate the center part.

Beat the whipping cream and the icing sugar together until thicken.

Spread the whipping cream on the surface of the bottom layer and top with strawberries slices (or your desired fruit).

Spread whipping cream on a second layer and place it on top of the first layer.

Decorate the top of the cake with more nicely cut slices of fruit. Place the cake in the refrigerator for at least half an hour before serving.

Dorie Greenspan's Tender Shortcakes

After the first day of classes, I made this dessert for my roommate and some friends. It was good and very easy to make. I made homemade whipped cream, and used frozen strawberries, though you can use any kind of fruit (and I think Dorie said to use fresh fruit). To use frozen fruit, just let it defrost completely. The juices just make it better. Add a lot of sugar and mix it with a wooden spoon to get it all together. Start with 1/4 or 1/2 a cup and add more to taste. I ended up adding a lot of sugar, haha, and my berries were still a little frozen, but they were great.

You can find the recipe here, or just buy Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours, like I did. You can use any kind of berries, really, but I used strawberries because frozen strawberries were cheapest when I bought them. Mine made 12 biscuits, some bigger than others, and I probably could have made at least one more. I didn't use them all though so the rest are probably getting stale right now...I might have tried freezing them, but I guess I was too lazy.

Mine baked for much less than Dorie said: the first batch was done in about 7 or 10 minutes and they were perfect, and the second batch took about 12 minutes to be perfect (they were a little bigger than the first batch). Also, my oven was being mean and only heated up to 400 degrees when I made them, sometimes getting as low as 350, but they still turned out fine. This was an easy and delicious recipe!

Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Frosting

I was going to post a bit about where I baked these past two semesters, but I'll save that for a later day: I figure I should probably put some more recipes up first.

This one I baked in January. It's an easy, cake-mix-cake recipe with additions to make it more special...additions that ended up taking me longer than I expected, but that's okay. I made this for my best friend at college, Lucy: she's not a frosting lover so the frosting was a little too thick for her, but everyone else loved it.

I had to look everywhere to find frozen strawberries, and ended up buying fresh out-of-season strawberries instead because that's all I could find from the local supermarket. Luckily the cost of this cake still didn't amount to the $25 ice cream cake Lucy requested last year:

Just a heads up on the frosting, I had to make 1.5 batches of it to cover the whole cake, inside and out.

Strawberry Cake
Recipes from Niki

1 package white cake mix
1 package (3 ounces) strawberry-flavored gelatin powder
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup mashed strawberries or sweetened frozen strawberries

Combine cake mix and gelatin powder in a large bowl. Beat in oil, eggs, water, and strawberries. Pour into 2 9-inch round greased and floured cake pans. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool completely before icing.

Strawberry Frosting (I had to make 1.5 batches)

1/4 cup butter
dash of salt
1/4 cup shortening
1 pound confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup mashed strawberries or remaining sweetened frozen strawberries (drain juice)

Beat the butter/shortening and confectioners' sugar together until smooth and fluffy. Add strawberries. Spread between cake layers, then frost top and sides.

Top off with decorations!

This cake was kind of crumbly. I guess I'd recommend sticking it in the fridge for a bit before serving.