Lemon Ricotta Strawberry Pie with Poppy Seed Shortbread Crust

Although it is still cold here, Spring has officially arrived and what better way to celebrate than with strawberries! California strawberries are available year round but during Spring they are at their peak season and I thought that I would welcome in Spring with a fresh strawberry pie!

I started the pie off with a simple shortbread crust filled with lemon zest and poppy seeds and I filled it with a quick and easy lemon ricotta no-bake cheesecake sweetened with honey. The pie is finished off with a floral like arrangement of fresh sliced strawberries along with a garnish of mint and lemon zest.

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Thanksgiving Dessert Recipes

Although the turkey is the star of the show, it is definitely the dessert that gets all the attention. I often like to go all out with the dessert and with falls harvest around there are plenty of options. My biggest problem is trying to decide which dessert to make as there are just too many amazing options. Despite the fact that I want to go all out on dessert I recognize the fact that the Thanksgiving meal is already a huge production and so I appreciate a dessert that can be made a day or two ahead of time.

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Kanafeh/Künefe (Sweet Cheese Pastry)

A few months ago I got an email inviting me to explore Israel, it's people and it's cuisine on a project called Taste of Israel put on by a group called Stand With Us. At first I was a little leery about the offer but after a bit of research it seemed legit and it was an opportunity that I simply could not pass up and so I went! It turned out to be an absolutely amazing experience filled with lots of great people and of course plenty of amazing food! I enjoyed a lot of dishes in Israel and I just had to try making a few of them at home and sharing them with you!

The adventure started as soon as we got off the plane, after almost 20 hours travel time from Toronto, as we were whisked away to the beautiful Dan Hotel Tev Aviv where after checking in we headed out for dinner at Yaffo Tel Aviv restaurant by Haim Cohen. The meal that we had there was filled with plenty of tasty dishes including a flat bread that was covered in melted garlicky butter and roasted cherry tomatoes but the one dish that really stood out for me was a dessert, the kanafeh.

I had never heard of kanafeh before but as soon as I heard that it was warm cheese in between two layers of light flaky pastry, I was sold! I mean you really cannot go wrong with cheese and I loved the idea of using it in a dessert! This particular künefe was made with goat cheese and it was topped with a sweet apple sauce and the combination of sweet and savoury was phenomenal; I knew immediately that I would have to make kanafeh when I got home!

Kanafeh (aka Kunafeh, aka Künefe, aka...) is a pastry that is common to countries in the Levant region including Turkey, Israel, Greece, etc. and and there are as many different ways of spelling it as there are of making it. It's commonly made with the shredded phyllo like pastry, with the same name as the final dish, and it is usually filled with a neutral, non-salty, stringy cheese and it is baked until the pastry gets nice and golden brown and crispy and it is then smothered in a simple syrup. (Imagine something like a single layered baklava with a cheese filling instead of nuts.)

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Apple, Cheddar and Bacon Fritters in Caramel Sauce

I always enjoy making fritters out of different fruits and vegetables and I recently realized that I had not shared my recipe for the classic fritters, apple fritters! I have really been into apples lately so as soon as I had the idea of apple fritters they quickly made it to my meal plan! Although basic apple fritters are amazing all by themselves I like to kick them up a bit by adding cheddar cheese and since bacon also goes so well with this combo I like to throw some in as well. These apple fritters are super easy to make, you pretty much just need to shred the apples and cheese, squeeze and drain the shredded apple, mix everything up and then fry them in a pan. The apples, bacon and cheddar combo makes for an amazing blend of sweet and savoury in these fritters that are nice and crispy on the outside and soft and warm on the inside! I like to snack on these apple and cheddar fritters just as they are but they are also absolutely divine when topped with caramel sauce.

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SweeTango Apple, Bacon and Cheddar Pecan Sticky Buns

One of the best things about fall is that it is apple season and this year I discovered a tasty new apple, the SweeTango apple! The SweeTango apple is a cross between the Honeycrisp and the Zestar and they have the best qualities of both of them! SweeTango apples are grown in a few states in the US and a few provinces in Canada and they are only available for a few short months in the fall. After enjoying snacking on some SweeTango apples it was time to put them to the test and use them in a recipe and the first recipe on my list to try was some SweeTango apple pecan sticky buns!

Apple pie has to be one of my all time favourite things and I was a kid when I first came across the idea of serving apple pie covered in cheddar cheese. It wasn't until a few years later until I finally embraced the idea of combining sweet and savoury by adding cheddar cheese to apple pie and to my surprise I found that the combination was amazingly good. When I first got my hands on some of the SweeTango apples I could not resist using them to make some apple pie inspired pecan sticky buns and I just had to try throwing some cheddar cheese into the sticky buns! As you know, I am a complete bacon addict and I just had to try adding some bacon to the apple pecan sticky buns since bacon goes so well in sweet dishes and when combined with both apples and cheddar cheese.

Since you need to let the dough rise two times, these sticky buns require a bit of time to make but they are actually pretty easy requiring very little actual work. One of the great things about making these sticky buns is the amazing aroma that fills the house while they are baking and it only heightens the anticipation! These SweeTango apple, bacon and cheddar pecan sticky buns turned out amazingly well! The sweet and savoury combo of the SweeTango apples and caramel when fantastically well with the melted cheddar and bacon! The SweeTango apples themselves worked really well in this baked dish and I can see myself using them in many more!

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Blueberry Almond and Amaretto Quinoa Crisp

I don't tend to make desserts all that often but in the summer it's hard to resist using some of all of the fresh fruits and berries in a few sweet treats! One of my favourite things to make has to be crisps or crumbles and they also happen to be one of the easiest things to make! A crisp is as easy to make as throwing some fruit or berries into a pan, topping them with a simple mixture of flour, butter and sugar and baking until bubbling and golden brown!

Not too long ago I discovered that if you bake cooked quinoa that it gets all nice and crispy and that led me to wonder how it would work as the topping in a crisp or crumble and I just had to try it out! Blueberries are everywhere these days and thus a blueberry crisp was just the thing to try out the quinoa topping on. As you can see the recipe is pretty much a basic crisp recipe with quinoa in the crust and an almond theme including almond slices in the topping and a splash of amaretto in the filling. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at just how well the quinoa topping worked in the crisp! The topping crisped up nicely and the quinoa added an amazing texture to the crisp! This is not your regular crisp or crumble topping but it is definitely fabulous in it's own way!

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Strawberries and Cream Coffee Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Glaze

With the local strawberries in season I have been getting a lot of them every week and it was about time that I used them in a recipe rather than just snacking on them. I have been thinking about a strawberry coffee cake ever since I saw one on Averie Cooks and it was about time that I made one! I went with a pretty basic coffeecake recipe that relies on butter, sour cream and buttermilk to ensure that it is nice and moist and tender both right out of the oven and that it remains that way for a few days. This strawberries and cream coffeecake recipe could not be easier to make; you really just need to mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, combine them, pour them into a baking pan and then bake. With less than 10 minutes of work you can have this coffeecake in the oven and be impatiently waiting for it to bake while your house fills up with the irresistible aromas of baking strawberries and vanilla! What a great way to enjoy fresh summer strawberries for breakfast!

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Apple Crisp Pizza with Caramel Sauce

I am a huge fan of apple desserts and I always enjoy fall and early winter with their huge selection of apples to use in them. Some of my favourite apple treats include apple crisps and apple pies so when I came across a recipe that combined the two an served them up in pizza form as an apple crisp pizza on The Girl Who Ate Everything I knew that I would have to try it! The basic idea is that a pie crust is rolled out like a pizza dough and topped with a layer apples coated in cinnamon and then topped in a layer of rolled oat crumble. Not only is this recipe amazing but it is dead simple to make once you have your pie crust! Really the hardest part is peeling and dicing the apples! If all of this was not enough, the finished product is smothered in caramel sauce and the apple and caramel flavour combination is simply divine! You will have to excuse me while I go and warm up a another slice!

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Rolo Cheesecake Bars

I have a friend that is completely addicted to everything Rolo and you really can't blame him with all of that chocolatly and caramelly goodness. One example on this addiction is the fact that if you were to look in his freezer at any given time you would find about a half a dozen containers of Rolo ice cream. When I came across these Rolo cheesecke bars on Bakers Royale a while ago I thought of my friend and pinned the recipe to make the next time we met up. I recently got the chance to make the Rolo cheesecake bars for my friend and they were a huge success with him and everyone else that tried them! These Rolo cheesecake bars are decadently good with a graham cracker crumb crust and a cheesecake layer sweetened in part with caramel sauce that is stuffed with mini Rolos and finally topped with a chocolate layer that has a caramel wave pattern. The only problem that I have now is that every time I meetup with my friend, he asks me where his Rolo cheesecake bars are.

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Triple Chocolate Pumpkin Pie

The final component of my Thanksgiving dinner was perhaps the most important part, the dessert, and this year I wanted to try something a little new, a chocolate pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is often the dessert of choice for Thanksgiving and since chocolate and pumpkin go so well together I was thinking that a chocolate pumpkin pie would be amazing! At first I was just planning on simply mixing chocolate into a regular pumpkin pie recipe but a quick search on the web led me to this triple chocolate pumpkin pie recipe and with three kinds of chocolate I was thinking that it would have to be at least three times as good!

This pumpkin pie uses a pretty basic graham cracker crumb crust with some pumpkin spices mixed in, though you could easily add some cocoa powder to the crust to get a fourth form of chocolate into the mix. The first chocolate comes in the form of a layer of bittersweet chocolate on the crust that is topped with the semisweet chocolate pumpkin pie and the final chocolate comes in the form of a milk chocolate drizzle that is added just before serving. This triple chocolate pumpkin pie is pure chocolaty decadence at its best!

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Roast Cherry Dark Chocolate Brownie Sundaes

The cherry season has been nice and long and they are still plentiful and cheap which is good because I recently came across the idea of using them to make roast cherry brownies on Foodie Bride which I just had to try! I always enjoy roasting things because it tends to concentrate and strengthen their flavour and I really liked the sound of hitting the little nuggets of concentrated cherry flavour deep under the surface of chocolate brownies!

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Strawberry Shortcake

The strawberries at the grocery stores are starting to dwindle and the farmers market is starting to fill up with other local, in season berries and fruits but I still want to get a few more strawberry recipes in. I really could not let strawberry season pass me by without making strawberry shortcake at least once, I mean it is pretty much the quintessential strawberry dish and it just just screams happy summer days! Luckily strawberry shortcake is super easy to make even if you are making the shortcake from scratch! It is just as easy as mixing the five ingredients in the shortcake dough, forming it into your favourite shapes, baking it for 15 minutes and topping it with whipped cream and sliced fresh, ripe strawberries. All said and done and you could be enjoying a strawberry induced bliss on pillowy clouds of light and fluffy shortcake in less than 30 minutes!

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