Strawberries!

mani

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Where I come from used to be full of strawberry farms before it turned into houses!  But there are still plenty around and we have a strawberry festival each year.

So some strawberry ideas from down under:

strawberry muffins:
  • 2 cups of self-raising flour
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 1 egg lightly beaten
  • 1 cup milk
  • 4 tablespoons melted butter
  • 1 punnet strawberries, chopped
Preheat oven to 200º C. Lightly grease a 24 capacity mini muffin tin, or a 12 capacity large muffin tin. Mix all dry ingredients, add milk, egg and melted butter, mix lightly. Stir in the chopped strawberries, do not over mix as mixture is meant to be lumpy. Spoon Into the muffin tins until ¼ full and bake for 20 to 25 mins. Test by inserting a skewer until it comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 mins before tuming onto a wire rack to cool.

And my personal favourite because it's so easy for a special occaision:

strawberry tiramisu:
  • 2 - 3 tablespoons strawberry schnapps or liqueur (or orange liqueur)
  • ¾ cup milk
  • 150g Savoiardi biscuits (sponge fingers)
  • 1 punnet strawberries
  • 1½ cups thickened cream
  • 2 - 3 tablespoons icing sugar
  • 150g mascarpone or bakers cheese
  • White chocolate and extra strawberries to garnish
Mix ½ the schnapps or liqueur with the milk in a bowl. Using half the biscuits, dip them one by one into the milk and arrange in a square dish. Rinse and drain strawberries, remove green tops. Place ¼ of strawberries in a food processor and chop coarsely. Add ¾ cup of cream, 2 tablespoons icing sugar and the mascarpone or bakers cheese and process smooth. Add more cream If needed, to make a smooth thick cream. Spread over the soaked biscuits. Slice remaining strawberries and arrange over the cream. Whip remaining cream and icing sugar with remaining schnapps or liqueur. Spread a thin layer over strawberries. Dip remaining biscuits in flavoured milk, arrange over the strawberry layer. Cover with remaining whipped cream and decorate with the extra strawberries and shaved or grated white chocolate to garnish.
 
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Winchester

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Mani, thank you! Those muffins look good. But ohhhh, that tiramisu! Rick just loves tiramisu and that would be right up his alley. I have some Grand Marnier, that would work for the liqueur. Those sponge fingers....they're lady fingers, right? And a punnet is a basket or container, right?

Thickened cream? Help me, please? Is that clotted cream? Or just heavy cream, like for whipping?
 

mani

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Mani, thank you! Those muffins look good. But ohhhh, that tiramisu! Rick just loves tiramisu and that would be right up his alley. I have some Grand Marnier, that would work for the liqueur. Those sponge fingers....they're lady fingers, right? And a punnet is a basket or container, right?

Thickened cream? Help me, please? Is that clotted cream? Or just heavy cream, like for whipping?
  I forgot I was talking Australian....
  • Thickened cream is cream that has had additives like gelatin added.  I just gave you the actual recipe, but I actually don't use thickened cream.. it works just as well with whatever.. my personal favourite is what I think you would call clotted cream, or use double cream which is just really rich cream... no additives.
  • Yes, sponge fingers are lady fingers, but in Australia lady fingers are a kind of stubby banana.
  • A punnet of strawberries is about 250 grams, which, according to the calculator I just used, is 8.81849 ounces
I adore Tiramisu too... and Grand Marnier is perfect for this.
 
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Winchester

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Our yield tonight, probably about 1-1/2 quarts. Some of them have white at the stems, but we figured best pick them now anyway. We'll probably have to pick again tomorrow, too. At the latest Sunday.

I'm going to bake a white cake and we'll have the strawberries as a topper. The rest are going into the freezer. 

(Oh, and we found two banana peppers, too.) The zucchini have flowers. And.....the cucumbers are flowering, too! 
 
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MoochNNoodles

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Oooooo!!!  (Would you believe I bought strawberries last Sunday and completely forgot till last night!? Most were still OK.)

I've got lots of flowers on things; but nothing to harvest yet.  Can't wait!!
 

pat

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Lucky you..we have a few large but green berries I am watching with great care..can't wait until they are ripe!
 
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Yepper! We were really surprised when we saw them growing as we weren't expecting them. I picked them off the other night as I needed some chopped pepper. Nothing else is even flowering on the pepper plants.
 
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Last night, we were up in the garden picking strawberries and suddenly Rick said, "There you are! So you're the one eating our berries!" And there was a baby bunny hopping along the inside edge of the strawberry patch!

Rick ran down to the house to get a bucket to try to catch the bunny, but it made it out of the garden and ran up into the trees at the end of the lot. We were trying to figure out how in the world he got in and then out again because the low part of the fence at the ground has the smallest holes. Evidently that bunny is really small. I watched where he got out and we put landscaping ties around the fence right there. I don't know if that will stop him from getting back in. He was a fat little bunny......from feasting on strawberries!!
 (And now I'm afraid that since he's out of the garden, a cat or an owl will get him. I don't want him eating our berries, but I don't want anything to happen to him either.)

We picked a nice bowl of berries again. There are a few plants blooming yet, but the berries are getting smaller. I think when they get smaller, it means that the plants are almost done producing. I hate to say this, but I hope so! I'm about berried-out!
 

MoochNNoodles

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  That's how I felt with the summer squash and zucchini a couple years ago.  I had it coming out my ears!!  

I hope the bunny finds somewhere else to do his nibbling! 
 

callista

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Well... you know, if you have enough berries, you might as well let the bunny have the last of them. :lol3:
 
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