As a food blogger I often find myself with assorted dribs and drabs of leftover frostings, fillings or other ingredients in my refrigerator just waiting to be turned into something new. When making desserts to post on the blog I will often make partial recipes so that we don’t end up with quite so much food to give away, but there are some things that are hard to make in small quantities. If they are things that keep well or freeze (like lemon curd) I am happy to make the full recipe because having extra on hand makes it easy to throw a quick dessert together on short notice. That is how these truffles came about.

I had some leftover lemon curd (from this trifle) and was playing around in the kitchen experimenting with various ideas. I love the combination of lemon and white chocolate so a creamy truffle seemed like the way to go. I wanted to incorporate more lemon curd than would be possible in a standard ganache so decided to make cream cheese truffles. I have to say I am very pleased with the result. The tanginess of the lemon offsets the sweetness of the white chocolate perfectly. Parve white chocolate is not as delicious to eat out of hand as good quality dairy white chocolate but for this recipe there are enough other flavors to more than make up for it. The white chocolate gives the truffles a sweet creaminess and the crunch of a chocolate shell while the lemon curd really is the star.

The only problem with these truffles (besides the fact that they are alarmingly easy to pop in your mouth one after the other) is that the filling needs to be dipped cold which means the outer chocolate coating sets very quickly. This makes it difficult to get an elegant perfectly smooth exterior shell. I kind of like the way that the swirls look so I decided not to let that bother me and just went with it, but be forewarned that if you make these they will not look like they came from a fancy chocolate shop. (If you want them to look more perfect you could try them as molded chocolates. If you do please share a picture and let us know how it goes.) Sometimes the flavor is more important than the finished look and in my opinion this is one of those cases. I am sure I will be making these again next time I find myself with extra lemon curd on hand.

Trifle is one of those desserts that isn’t one of the first things that comes to mind when I am planning dessert, but every time I do make it I wonder why I don’t make it more often. Layers of cake, fruit, and custard blend seamlessly into a delicious and beautiful dessert that is better than the sum of its parts. Even better it can be made ahead and serves a large crowd which makes it perfect for entertaining.  Infinitely adaptable, trifle is a dessert that can be made year round (this roasted pear amaretto trifle is a fall favorite in my house), but this time of year I love to feature the amazingly delicious fresh strawberries in everything I can so this trifle contains a healthy amount of strawberries among the other creamy goodness. Traditionally trifle contains whipped cream. I am not a huge fan of the options for non-dairy whipped cream (as much as I want to I can’t seem to love whipped coconut cream) so I substitute pastry cream for the whipped cream and the results are fantastic.

In this trifle I layered lemon pound cake, meyer lemon curd, strawberries and coconut pastry cream and it was delicious. I have a lot of desserts around from all my recipe testing and usually I pretty much ignore them, but this kept calling me back to the fridge for one more bite of the leftovers. The coconut flavor of the pastry cream is pretty subtle and was barely noticeable in the dessert as a whole (which was what I wanted for this particular trifle). That being said, the flavors coconut, lemon and strawberries go well together so if you want the coconut to be more prominent you can use a coconut pound cake instead of the lemon one. The coconut in the cake will bring out the coconut undertones in the pastry cream.

When I was in college there was a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream store not far from campus. We didn’t go all that often but I have to admit that every time I was in there I was puzzled by one of the items on the menu, the Sorbet Splash. As a fervent ice cream lover I could not imagine why on earth someone would order sorbet mixed with seltzer water when there were so many rich and delicious ice creams to choose from. (If you wanted to order a frozen drink at least make it respectable like a milkshake!) Well it seems that my tastes have grownup quite a bit because now I understand exactly why someone woud order a sorbet splash. I might even order one myself, if the opportunity presented itself. I now appreciate how a cool and refreshing treat that isn’t heavy like ice cream or a milkshake might just be the perfect indulgence. Especially if it is a good balance of sweet and tart. That’s not to say that I don’t still have a healthy appreciation for ice cream and the like, but there is a time and place for everything. On a hot summer’s day I can’t think of a better way to cool off than with a cold frosty drink. Even a sorbet splash.

Perhaps it is because I am in my third trimester of pregnancy, but now that the weather has warmed up I find myself constantly dreaming up  frozen drinks of all kinds. This rhubarb sorbet spritzer is my newest iteration of the frozen drink theme that I’m sure will show up frequently on this blog throughout the summer. It is the perfect way to cool off whether you are at a Memorial Day picnic  with friends or just sitting in the backyard after school trying to keep the kids from trampling the blueberry bushes as they play soccer (is that just me?). This drink is more of a suggestion than a recipe because it can be customized based on individual tastes. I don’t like things too sweet so I preferred my spritzer made with half lemonade and half seltzer to keep the sweetness down. It I had been more ambitious I would have made my own lightly sweetened lemonade instead of using store-bought  and that would have helped with the sweetness, but this is supposed to be a quick refreshing treat not a whole big process so the store-bought lemonade mixed with seltzer is the perfect compromise. If you don’t happen to have rhubarb sorbet on hand strawberry sorbet would be lovely too, it just might be a bit sweeter. No matter how you make this drink, the lovely pink color and refreshing crisp cool taste will make you feel like you are on a mini vacation, even if it is just for long enough to finish sipping.

When I was a child I went to summer camp on a working farm. I have lots of fond memories of the camp, but one of my favorite times at camp was when they would take us around the garden cutting pieces off of the different vegetables and herbs for the kids to sample. My favorite was the fresh rhubarb. It is quite sour to eat plain, and most of the kids didn’t like it,  but since I love sour things that just meant more for me! (I also peel and eat meyer lemons like you would an orange. Sprinkled with a bit of salt they are a fantastic snack). For some reason all my attempts to grow rhubarb in my own garden have failed so I eagerly look forward to rhubarb showing up in the stores an markets each spring. Store bought rhubarb tends to be more sour than the freshly cut rhubarb I remember so even I need to cook it with some sugar before I eat it but that doesn’t stop me from buying it in huge quantities. I usually just make a simple sauce that I use atop yogurt but we had some friends coming over for dinner so I decided to turn the rhubarb into a light refreshing dessert instead. Rhubarb pie is one of my favorite things but we were having such a heavy meal (my friend’s grandmother cooked a whole Persian feast for us!) that I thought even pie would be too much for dessert. So I made a rhubarb sorbet and some lemon cornmeal cookies and it was just about perfect.

Rhubarb naturally has a lot of pectin, which is why it is great for pie and jam. It also makes for an amazingly silky creamy sorbet that keeps well in the freezer without getting icy. I have been eating the leftovers a spoonful at a time and it has stayed much softer and creamier than most sorbets. The rhubarb flavor shines through beautifully, unadulterated by the usual addition of strawberries, so it is perfect for a rhubarb lover like me. Paired with some crisp sugar cookies it is the perfect light dessert. It also makes a fantastic rhubarb spritzer (recipe coming soon)!

It sometimes surprises me how many strawberries we go through in my house durring the summer months. Most of them get eaten straight out of the baskets or pureed into smoothies and popsicles but I also love to play around with strawberries in all kinds of recipes from salads to jams to cakes. One of my most requested recipes is a strawberry soup with basil cream. The fusion of strawberries and basil is one of my favorite flavor combinations. This soup is deliciously unique. People are always surprised when I serve this refreshing strawberry soup as a first course and then go back for seconds, asking for the recipe.

I usually make the recipe dairy (I served more than six quarts of this soup over Shavout), but when I saw that the theme of this month’s Kosher Connection recipe challenge was croutons I immediately knew that I wanted to make a sweeter parve version of my strawberry soup to serve with pound cake croutons as a dessert. It is nice, light, refreshing dessert, perfect for a summer lunch. All the components can be made ahead and just assembled when ready to serve. The parve version of this soup has a hint of coconut flavor from the coconut greek yogurt but it pairs nicely with the flavors of strawberry and lemon present in the soup. If you are a bit hesitant about the combination of basil and strawberries I recommend you try it, but if it isn’t for you the soup is great without the cream as well.

For more creative (and probably more savory) uses of croutons be sure to check out the rest of the Kosher Connection’s submissions to this month’s challenge.

Shavout, coming seven weeks after Passover, is the holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. It starts tonight and I have spent the last few days cooking up a storm. It is traditional to eat dairy meals on Shavout so it is nice to be making different things than I usually make for holidays when I generally serve meat.
If you mention Shavout to my five year old son the first thing he says (in a very excited voice, of course) is “blintzes!” These delicious sweet cheese filled crepes are a great treat. I make them only once a year, for Shavout, so he eagerly looks forward to them.

Now this being a parve (dairy-free) blog I am not going to post a recipe for dairy filled blintzes (although if you are looking for some truly decadent dairy-free alternatives to the traditional Shavout cheesecakes I highly recommend this cherry ginger or chocolate mint cheesecake). I mention blintzes here because too often I have been served potentially delicious blintzes that have been ruined by topping them with canned cherry pie filling. And that is something I want to try to fix. The artificial flavor, color and sticky sweetness of the pie filling is all that I can taste and that makes the blintzes significantly less delicious than they could be. But here is the thing. It takes just a minute or two to make a fresh sauce for blintzes that takes them from tasty to outstanding. I know that with all holiday prep time is at a premium, but trust me when I say that this is not the place to cut corners. Frozen blintzes will even do in a pinch, and the addition of a homemade sauce will make them taste homemade.

I pretty much like all fruit sauces as toppings for my blintzes, and I often make an assortment for people to choose from, but if I had to pick I would say my two favorite sauces are sour cherry and blueberry lemon. These sauces are fantastic on top of everything from ice cream to pound cake to pancakes to a simple bowl of yogurt so even if you are not making blintzes it is worth it to make the sauces to use on pretty much anything else.

Whenever I walk into a fancy candy shop I am drawn to the display of Pate de Fruit. These glistening fruit jellies look like shining jewels lined up in the display and I always want to buy some. While sometimes they can be disappointingly bland, a well made Pate de Fruit is intensely flavorful, capturing the essence of the fruit in a tiny bite sized square. They are softly chewy and I find them irresistible. Since I don’t frequent fancy candy shops all that much these days I haven’t had a great pate de fruit in quite a while. Which is why, of course, I decided to make my own.

Over the years I have tried to make several different kinds of Pate de Fruit but they have only turned out ok. Either the flavor is too muted or the texture has been too soft, yielding a weepy mess. They are really not that hard to make but they require a delicate balance of the amount of fruit puree, pectin, acid and sugar. Since I can’t help tinkering with recipes I keep having problems with the candy that I realize are entirely my own fault. This time, however, my tinkering with the recipe didn’t cause trouble and instead yielded perfectly delicious treats.

Ever since I realized that you can capture the essence of a kumquat by juicing it whole (like I did in these marshmallows) I have been playing around with places to use the fragrant kumquat juice. (If anyone is interested it makes an amazing kumquat sour with bourbon and the syrup from making candied kumquats. I will post that recipe when I can drink again so that I can test out the perfect proportions, the first time I made it I just eyeballed everything.) Pate de fruit seemed like a great (non-alcoholic) way to highlight the flavor of the kumquat, especially since it is an intense enough flavor I knew the finished candy wouldn’t come out bland.

I used Tish Boyle’s recipe for tangerine pate de fruit and it came out perfectly. Sweet yet tangy with just the right chewy texture. These are perfect to give out for gifts (this week is teacher’s appreciation week) or to serve as part of a dessert buffet on Mother’s day. If you can’t get a hold of fresh kumquats I imagine the original recipe that calls for tangerine juice would be just as tasty, so don’t let a lack of kumquats keep you from making these edible jems.

This past Sunday I took the kids to the farmers market for the first time in months. This being California the farmers markets are open year round, but the baby growing in my belly has left me exhausted. It takes quite a bit of energy  to navigate the farmers market with two small children, so it’s been a while. But now that spring is fully here I couldn’t resist going (I didn’t want to miss the oh so short and wonderful asparagus season) so I mustered all my energy, put the wagon in the car and off we went. The kids adore the farmers market as much as I do so it is always a treat to go. I love watching them sitting in their wagon munching on cucumbers and strawberries while I stock up on fruits and veggies for the week. The strawberries were so delicious that I bought a whole flat, I just couldn’t help myself. We shared some of the flat with my mom but that still left us with quite a lot of strawberries to eat and use. Which gave me the perfect excuse to get into the kitchen and start tinkering.

Strawberry and rhubarb are the natural spring paring. I absolutely adore rhubarb so I decided to make a strawberry rhubarb compote out of my bounty of strawberries. I love rhubarb sauce where the rhubarb is soft enough to fall apart but for this I wanted to match the rhubarb with the freshness of the berries. The rhubarb is cooked until just tender and then the fresh strawberries are mixed in. The end result yields a good balance of flavors but maintains the freshness of the strawberries because they are never cooked.

I needed something to serve the compote with and decided that a pound cake would be the perfect vehicle. I was planning on making a plain pound cake since the strawberry rhubarb compote had such great flavor but as I was making the cake my two year old (who was helping me bake) kept picking up a lemon from the fruit bowl and saying “we need dis, ema”. After putting him off a few times I decided to heed his advice and the pound cake became a lemon pound cake. It turns out he was right. The lemony pound cake deliciously compliments the strawberry rhubarb compote, making for the perfect spring dessert.

My husband is currently on a trip in Israel. Talking to him everyday about all the things he is seeing and experiencing has meant that Israel is very much on all of our minds (especially my older son who keeps reminding my husband that next time he wants to go too). With Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, coming up next week I wanted to make something to share at Shabbat dinner that captured the flavors of Israel. Since I am usually in charge of desserts when we are invited out I didn’t think people would appreciate it if I showed up with sharwma flavored cookies so I decided to capture a another quintessential Israeli flavor that was better suited for dessert.

Limonana (a combination of the Hebrew words for lemon and mint) is one of my favorite treats to enjoy when I am in Israel. The combination of lemon and spearamint is the perfect way to cool off from the hot Middle Eastern sun. My favorite form of limonana when I am in Israel is the slushy frozen mint lemonade that is ubiquitous in Israeli cafes but when I am home I like to play around with the flavor combination in fun and different ways. (For a recipe for frozen limonana check out my post on JoyofKosher).

Last summer when we came home from Israel I made limonana bars so this year I wanted to make something else using the same flavor combination. It should come as no surprise to those who know me that the first thing I think of when combining flavors in new ways is the blank canvas of homemade marshmallows. They are the perfect medium to experiment with flavor and I make marshmallows every chance I get. In the past I have made both lemon and mint marshmallows but the combination of the two is outstanding. Everyone who tried these agreed that these were one of the top flavors of marshmallows I have made. There is something about the tartness of the lemon with the refreshing minty undertones that just works perfectly. These will be entering my regular marshmallow rotation for sure.

When I saw that the recipe contest on Food52 this week was “Your Best Recipe with Cereal” I knew I wanted to submit my recipe for one of my favorite candies, Caramelized Rice Krispy Bark. When I went to get the recipe off my blog to submit it to Food52 I realized that I never shared it here. Which is a real shame, and something that needs to be corrected immediately. So here it is.

This is one of my favorite candies to make for presents. It is made with just a few ingredients but the finished product is so much more than the sum of its parts. Sweet caramel completely encases the rice krispies making them even more crispy. When combined with good quality dark chocolate the end result is like a grownup crunch bar. Crispy, crunchy and intensely chocolate-y with the additional depth of flavor from the sweet caramel. It is fairly easy to make but looks quite impressive which makes it great for gift giving. That is, if you are willing to share.