You Won’t Get Raspberries from These Recipes – March 16, 2014

I hear Spring is coming although you’d never know it from watching the ice bits fall from the sky outside.  I guess it’s a good time to stay inside and cook.  I also am trying to do a bit of Spring cleaning by using up things we put away for the Winter and still haven’t used.  One of these was a bag of frozen raspberries from our backyard and community garden.  I took them out and let them defrost and drain over a wire strainer.  I thought I had about 1 ½ cups of berries, but it was probably twice that.  Unfortunately, I found that the white raspberries which I much prefer due to their mild taste do not freeze well as all.  They were totally mushy and some so icky, I just picked out and tossed.  I guess that will give me the encouragement to just eat them off the vine this year which is how they taste best!  But for now, I picked out 1 ½ cups of the best preserved berries, saved the rest of the strained berries for a smoothie and poured the strained liquid (about a cup) in a small pot with a half cup of sugar on medium-low.

Raspberry Muffins

2 ½ c. all purpose flour

1 T. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. cinnamon

2 large eggs

1 c. sour cream

1 tsp. milk

1 c. sugar

8 T. melted butter

1 tsp. vanilla

1 ½ c. berries

Heat oven to 400 degrees with rack in center.  Prepare muffin pans by oiling or inserting cups in about 18 sections.  Whisk first five dry ingredients.  Mix remaining ingredients except butter and berries.  Add butter once it is cooled enough to insure you don’t cook your eggs and mix just until all ingredients are incorporated (lumps are fine).  Then carefully fold in berries.  Drop muffin mix in cups and sprinkle additional sugar on top of each muffin.  Cook 17-20 minutes.

The raspberry muffins are fabulous warm with butter or with lemon curd.

To go with them, I made a raspberry smoothie from the remaining berries. 

Raspberry Smoothie

I c. berries

1 c. milk

½ c. Greek yogurt

4 packs Splenda

Place everything in blender and blend.  Mine was a bit thick but you could add more milk if you prefer or add a half banana if you felt it was too thin or you prefer a thinner yogurt.  The thicker version can just be eaten with a spoon and would be great with toasted sweetened nuts or granola.

Also, about the time everything else had finished, I had a small amount of raspberry sauce that had been thickening on the stove from the raspberry liquid.  You could eat it on yogurt or ice cream or I mixed it with a bit of vodka and lime juice and simple syrup for a yummy purple afternoon treat.

One Year Ago - Egg White Omelet
Two Years Ago - Lemon Curd and Angel Food Cake