Fluffy Lemon Ricotta Waffles

Yields: 10 small waffles

Ingredients:

1½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
3 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp fresh lemon zest
⅓ cup unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
½ cup ricotta cheese
¾ cup milk

Directions:

• Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.
• In a bowl whisk together butter, lemon, sugar, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice, ricotta, and milk. 
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Do not over mix the batter.  A few lumps remaining is fine.
• Heat you waffle iron according to the manufacturer’s instructions spraying with cooking spray if needed.
• Dollop ¼ cup of batter into the waffle iron and cook until golden brown.  
• Serve immediately with what whatever topping you would like. I served mine with a dollop of whipped cream, maple syrup, almond slivers for some crunch and topped it  off with blueberry preserve.
• These waffles can also be individually wrapped and frozen. They are great heated up in the toaster or in the oven

Recipe from oliveandmango.com

Wild Honey Lemonade

Finally back to blogging! My apologies, for being away for almost two months! That is because we moved to our new place a couple of months back, and it has been hectic with packing and unpacking. Seriously, if I ever have to unpack one more box gain, I am going to flip out!

I love my new house and my new kitchen has so much spaceJ. But I do miss my old house. Speaking of the old house, Mr.David, who was our next door neighbour, lived there with his two adorable dogs – Ginger and Hutch. He was always so nice to us. A few months before we moved out, he gave us this huge pack of wild honey from China, given to him by one of his friends.

He sounded so excited about the wild honey, which was in small cubes. I had no clue what to do with it. I was also doubtful about the taste. My hubby suggested we try it with lemonade first. We both love lemoades, and it turned out great, sweet and refreshing. It tasted more like sugar, not as thick as the normal honey that we are used too. Now we use it with milk and tea too.

Later when I researched online, I found that wild honey has seven times the benefit over the usual honey. It is not as sweet as the usual honey, and when mixed with water, wild honey appeared clear and transparent.

So next time when you come across small cubes of wild honey, do give it a try and enjoy the health benefits!

Fluffy Blueberry Lemon Cookies

Sorry I have been away for so long. Went to India a while back, and I still haven’t gotten back to blogging. Last week, I picked out these lovely blueberries at the supermarket. Since they were in a really good condition, I wanted to try freezing them, for future.

I know all of us are new to SOFT cookies. I was a bit worried as to the texture of the cookies. When I baked them, it was a bit crisp, but after a few hours it became so soft, almost like cupcake tops! This is a new texture of cookies, I enjoyed the fluffiness and the zingy taste from the lemons. I love blueberries, so this was a win win recipe for me!

Cookie dough ready to be refrigerated.
The green specs seen are the lemon zest.

I had saved this recipe for Blueberry lemon fluffy cookies a month back from http://bakerbettie.com/. And thought I would give it a try. I got a new zester from India during my recent trip. So this would be a perfect recipe to give my new zester a go, along with the frozen blueberries!

Spooned and flattened cookie dough.

You don’t have to have blueberries and lemons to make these, you can use the base recipe and make your own flavours, like chocolate chips, or even just plain vanilla. The cake flour mentioned in this recipe gives these cookies their fluffy texture. Cake flour has a low gluten content with allows the cookies to rise while baking.  

Frozen Blueberries

Thawed Blueberries

Blueberry and Lemon Cookies

Makes – 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 cup - unsalted butter, softened

1 cup - sugar

2 - eggs, room temperature

2 tsp-  vanilla extract

Zest of one lemon

Juice of one lemon

1/2 tsp - salt

1/2 tsp - baking powder

1/2 tsp - baking soda

1/2 tsp - cinnamon

3 1/4 cups - cake flour*

1 1/2 cups – blueberries (frozen or fresh)

*NOTE: Cake flour has a lower gluten content than all-purpose flour and therefore creates a lighter and fluffier cookie. However, you can sub all-purpose flour.  Decrease the amount of flour to 3 cups minus 2 tbsp.  The cookie will still be tasty, but the texture will be slightly different.

Instructions

• In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  
• Add the eggs one at a time, and beat after each addition.  
• Add the vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice and beat to incorporate.  
• In another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.  
• Slowly add the dry ingredients into the batter.  
• Scrape down the bowl as needed and mix until incorporated.  
• Fold in the blueberries gently as to now break them.  
• Allow the dough to cool in the refrigerator for at least an hour or up to overnight.  
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  
• Use a small scoop (about 1 tbsp size) and place rounded mounds of dough on a cookie sheet lined with Butter paper, And flatten the round mounds slightly.  
• Bake for 14-16 minutes until the bottoms look slightly browned (the edges should not brown).

Enjoy this pillowy soft and fluffy blueberry and lemon cookies. So unique and delicious! Perfect with your morning cup of coffee.  

Lemon Cupcakes

I was meeting a long-time friend for dinner at Canelé Pâtisserie Chocolaterie @ Raffles City. We were both dessert lovers, so it seemed like an ideal choice. But unfortunately the main courses were very limited, and the taste was too bland. It just not acceptable for the prices they charge. But the desserts were good, and we enjoyed their macaroons.

Another friend of mine who is a Vanilla lover, requested me to try out some vanilla cupcakes. For me personally vanilla is just too plain. I couldn’t bring myself to just make plain old vanilla cupcakes; it seemed too much of an effort. 

I have been wanting to try out some lemon/carrot cupcakes for a while now. And this dinner seemed like a perfect opportunity for some lemon cupcakes. I also had some cream cheese and lemon in hand, so I decided to add some cream cheese frosting. These cupcakes are not too sweet, so they need a sweet frosting to balance it out.

The recipe was super simple, and the added lemon zest was so refreshing a taste! This was my first successful attempt at “piping” frosting, and I am so glad that it turned out well. I stored the frosted cupcakes in the refrigerator until I left for dinner. And they were out of the fridge for 5 long hours, before my friend could take them home and put them in back in her fridge. And I was surprised to see that the frosting was still in shape, and not melted like I thought they would.

So now I have a perfect cream cheese frosting recipe which I can use for my future cupcakes!!

Lemon Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 tablespoons grated lemon zest (plus more if it’s not lemony enough for you!)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg

Directions:

• Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Line muffin tin with baking cups.
• In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, lemon zest and salt; mix well.
• Add wet ingredients and mix well.
• Pour batter into the lined muffin tin. Bake for about 16 minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry.                          
• Let them cool.
• Pipe Cream Cheese frosting on top. And refrigerate. 

The added lemon zest on top was a very, very wise decision. With each bite, you get moist lemony cake goodness, sweet cream cheese frosting and an added zest from the additional lemon! It’s like a summer party in your mouth.