These Rum Balls are adult-only treats. They are not intended for consumption by children. So, yay, the adults get to have their very own secret treats they don’t have to share with the kids! These rum-infused balls are a classic adult treat around the holidays. Continue reading Right Some Good Rum Balls
Mincemeat is a traditional Christmas food in many parts of the world, including mine. As mincemeat is a common staple ingredient in my pantry, I use mincemeat in a whole host of recipes including muffins, cookies, tarts, pies, squares, and quick breads. Today, however, I have used my own homemade Green Tomato Mincemeat to create a divine Steamed Mincemeat and Apple Pudding. Continue reading Steamed Mincemeat and Apple Pudding
These Christmas Fruitcake Drop Cookies are what I like to describe as a deconstructed light fruitcake turned into mighty tasty little cookies. The cookies, themselves, are not difficult or complicated to make though there are a couple of time delays required for them. One is the period required to soak the fruit in brandy and the second is the cookie dough resting period in the refrigerator. Continue reading Christmas Fruitcake Drop Cookies
A hearty Beef Stew is a soul-satisfying and tummy-filling meal. It’s pure stick-to-the-ribs comfort food, especially on cool autumn or cold winter days. Made with basic ingredients, what makes this hearty Rustic Homestyle Beef Stew so wonderfully tasty (in addition to the Beef Seasoning Mix) is the long, slow, moist heat method of cooking a tougher cut of meat in a small amount of flavorful liquid to tenderize the meat. I believe this is what makes the difference between a bland, lacklustre beef stew and a super flavorful one. Continue reading Rustic Homestyle Beef Stew
Pizza lovers will know that a pizza sauce can make or break a pizza. Some sauces don’t have enough flavor while others can be too spicy. Some are too watery while others are pasty thick. What I aimed for when I developed this Pizza Sauce recipe was to land somewhere in the middle! Continue reading Bistro Style Pizza Sauce Recipe
Green Tomato Quick Bread is a great bread to make when green tomatoes are plentiful. This bread is one I like to make in the autumn when my garden is overflowing with green tomatoes, more than what I can reasonably use either in their green or ripened form. Continue reading Green Tomato Quick Bread
If you are a salad lover like me, sometimes you just need to see a different salad on the table to the traditional green salad. Try this lovely Fresh Corn Salad when the local corn is in season. Continue reading Fresh Corn Salad Recipe
As the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to eat your vegetables and these cookies prove it! This cookie recipe combines ordinary zucchini with chocolate chips that results in yummy Zucchini Chocolate Chip Drop Cookies. Continue reading Zucchini Chocolate Chip Drop Cookies
One of the most versatile foods in the garden has to be tomatoes – enjoy the ripe ones fresh or make into into sauce. Use the green tomatoes to make Green Tomato Marmalade, chow, and the list of possibilities for their use is practically endless. Today, I am sharing my recipe for another use of green tomatoes – Green Tomato Mincemeat, the uses for which are extensive. Continue reading Green Tomato Mincemeat Recipe
I call this my “old faithful salad”. It’s so tasty, it’s almost addictive! This Rice and Spinach Salad is a hearty salad filled with cold cooked long grain rice, bright green healthy fresh spinach, veggies, dried fruits and nuts, and tangy crumbled Feta. A light vinaigrette dressing is all that is needed to complete this tasty salad. Continue reading Rice and Spinach Salad Recipe
We always grow lots of string beans in the garden. We always think we haven’t planted enough beans so you know the drill (pun intended) … we add “just a few more” to the drill for good measure. Well, those vines sure can produce!
After a few “feeds” of boiled green beans served as a side veggie topped with butter and a sprinkle of salt and pepper, I find it’s time to do something else with them. A great way to serve the green beans is in a Green Bean Casserole which is my featured recipe today. Continue reading Green Bean Casserole Recipe
Victoria Sponge Cake – sometimes called Victoria Sandwich – is one of the most basic, simple cake recipes. Essentially, it is made with basic pantry ingredients, filled with a favorite jam and whipped cream, and is unfrosted. Continue reading Classic Victoria Sponge Cake Recipe
Today, I am making Peach Crumble for dessert. Mid-summer always brings an abundance of lovely seasonal fruits and I adore peaches so it is never a problem coming up with wonderful ways to use them. Continue reading Perfect Peach Crumble Recipe
One of my favorite meals to prepare (and enjoy) is afternoon tea. There are so many options for the menu and tea table setting.
Today, I am sharing photos from an early summer afternoon tea where I featured Aynsley’s Garden Gate teaware on my tea table.
My sweet little Lily of the Valley made an appearance as the main bouquet on the tea table as well as miniature versions in tiny vases at each place setting.
I don’t have recipes published for all of the foods presented on this tea table but, for those that are published, I will provide hotlinks to the recipes.
But, first, I am introducing a vintage tea set (circa 1930s) – the Garden Gate pattern from Aynsley. There weren’t many pieces available at time of purchase but, as soon as I saw my beloved lupins on the teaset, I knew I had to have whatever pieces were available! Lupins grow wild in various colors along Prince Edward Island roadsides in June and their colorful presence is highly anticipated each year.
The blue and gold-edged tea plates feature a border of sprays of colorful flowers (including purple and pink lupins) and garden gates.
The matching cream and sugar are quite large but display the pattern very well.
There were no cups and saucers available with these pieces though I know they do exist. I’ll keep an eye out for them in my travels so they can be added to my teaset. Part of the charm of being a teacup and teaware collector is the thrill of a find where and when you least expect it and that will complete a cherished set.
When I am setting a tea table, I don’t worry about having all the teaware match unless it is for a formal event. I find mixed pieces, so long as they somewhat match, lend a more curated and interesting look to the table. So, in this tea setting, I mixed and matched some suitable teacups in with the plates.
Most of my teacup collection is floral in some way. I am not particularly drawn to teacups with scenes on them; however, I came across a pair of these Royal Vale cups and saucers (pattern no. 7382) that feature a thatched English cottage set amidst a garden. Apart from the lovely reminder they gave me of past visits to the Cotswolds, I immediately knew they would complement the Garden Gate tea set and I believe they do.
For the teapot to hold our King Cole Orange Pekoe tea we enjoyed with the afternoon tea, I chose the Royal Denby (pattern no. 301202) teapot with a larkspur spray. The floral motif, along with the pastel colored teapot with an ivory background and yellow and green trim, blended in well with the floral theme of the tea.
I used a three-tier server for the food but it is not a traditional three-tier server of plates. Rather, it is fold-up server which makes it compact for storage when not in use. This stand is lower in height than a traditional three-plate stand so makes it easy for teatime companions to see each other across the table. I think it presents the three courses of tea fare quite attractively.
So, now the menu for our three-course traditional afternoon tea. A traditional afternoon tea will have three courses – a sandwich (or savory) course, scones course, and a sweets course and the items are eaten in that order. Starting, of course, with the sandwich course, I chose two kinds of sandwiches – cucumber with an avocado spread and alfalfa sprouts presented on both white and whole wheat breads and dainty pinwheel sandwiches filled with my ham salad filling (recipe here).
Teatime sandwiches, of course, are always crustless and of a two-to-three bite size.
Two kinds of scones – plain and currant and orange (recipe here) – were served for the scones course.
The scones were served with rhubarb curd (recipe here), strawberry jam, and naturally, clotted cream.
The sweets course included parfaits made with coconut Greek yogurt and rhubarb curd, Custard Sandwich Cookies (recipe here) sandwiched together with buttercream icing, and sweet little madeleines that are a traditional teatime cake.
Colorful artisan chocolates from Jane & Sue Chocolate in Stanley Bridge, PEI, were a tasty finale to our afternoon tea.
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When you live on an Island where fishing is one of the main industries, it means you have access to wonderful fresh seafood. Yes, we are spoiled! Here in Prince Edward Island, where I reside, I make good use of seafood in my diet and in my recipe creations as I have done here with my Seafood Bubbly Bake. Continue reading My Island Bistro Kitchen’s Seafood Bubbly Bake
When you need a bright, colorful, tasty, and refreshing summertime salad, this Watermelon, Cucumber, and Red Onion Salad with Feta, dressed with a light vinaigrette, checks all the boxes. Continue reading Watermelon, Cucumber, and Red Onion Salad with Feta
Two of summer’s best flavors marry to create a wonderful summertime drink. This Rhubarb and Strawberry Cordial checks off all of the boxes one would expect to find in a non-alcoholic summertime drink. It’s super tasty, has fabulous color, is refreshing and thirst-quenching, and can be made ahead and frozen. Continue reading Rhubarb and Strawberry Cordial
Achieving a recipe for gluten-free muffins that closely replicates wheat-based muffins can be a challenge. The good news is, however, that it is indeed possible as demonstrated by these tasty deli-style gluten-free strawberry muffins.
A large part of the challenge surrounds the right blend of gluten-free flours and starches and then finding the right combination and amount of wet ingredients since, as you probably know if you bake gluten-free, each gluten-free flour reacts differently to liquid ingredients. So, while the list of ingredients in my gluten-free muffin recipes may appear long, each ingredient is necessary when a tasty muffin is desired. Of course, I am always aiming to achieve a nicely dome-shaped muffin and one that has a lovely muffin-like texture, much the same as you would expect a muffin to be like when made with wheat flour.
Today, fresh locally grown strawberries are my featured ingredients in muffins. The berries provide a lovely little burst of wonderful flavor in the muffins. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
At the bottom of this posting, you will also find links to several other gluten-free muffin recipes I have developed.
[Printable recipe follows at end of post]
Ingredients:
¾ cup sorghum flour
1/3 cup gluten-free quick cooking rolled oats
¼ cup brown rice flour
¼ cup almond flour
¼ cup gluten-free oat flour
2½ tbsp potato starch
2 tbsp ground chia seeds
1 tbsp + ¾ tsp tapioca starch
1¾ tsp xanthan gum
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp cardamom
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
½ cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
2 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
¼ cup coconut oil
2 tbsp pure maple syrup (no artificial substitutions)
1½ tsp pure vanilla
½ cup Greek-style vanilla yogurt (or ¼ cup plain vanilla yogurt + ¼ cup sour cream)
2 tbsp whole milk mixed with ¼ tsp lemon juice (let sit 5 minutes before using)
1½ cups fresh strawberries, diced (apx. 8 oz)
3 – 4 tsp turbinado sugar (optional)
Method:
Set out the eggs, yogurt, and whole milk to bring them to room temperature. If using solid coconut oil, melt and cool it completely before proceeding with recipe.
Preheat oven to 475°F.
Prepare 12 muffin cups (each at least ½-cup capacity) by spraying each muffin cup with cooking spray or greasing individually.
Whisk the flours, rolled oats, starches, ground chia seeds, xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices together in a large bowl. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Set aside.
In separate medium-sized bowl, or large measuring cup, whisk together the brown sugar, eggs, coconut oil, maple syrup, and vanilla. Stir in the yogurt and milk.
Pour wet ingredients into well in dry ingredients. With large spoon, mix ingredients together just until dry ingredients are fully incorporated. Do not overmix. Gently fold in 1 cup of the diced strawberries. Batter will appear very thick, stiff, and somewhat dry at this point. This is normal for this recipe.
Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each cup to the rim. Sprinkle remaining ½ cup of diced strawberries over the muffins and sprinkle each muffin with a few grains of turbinado sugar, if desired. Transfer muffins to pre-heated oven and immediately reduce oven temperature to 400°F. Bake for apx. 20 minutes, or until muffins are just firm to the touch and a cake tester inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean. Do not overbake or muffins will be dry. Remove from oven and let muffins rest in pan for 5 minutes then gently remove from pan and transfer to wire rack to cool completely.
Yield: 12 standard-sized muffins
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Whisk the flours, rolled oats, starches, ground chia seeds, xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices together in a large bowl. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Set aside.
Yield: 12 standard-sized muffins
Gluten-free Carrot Zucchini Muffins
Gluten-free Banana Date Muffins
Gluten-free Rhubarb Granola Muffins
Ultimate Gluten-free Zucchini Date Muffins
Gluten-free Pumpkin Mincemeat Muffins
Deli-style Gluten-free Beet Muffins
Gluten-free Blueberry Muffins
Gluten-free Blueberry Zucchini Muffins
As regular followers of my food blog will know, I love china teacups and teapots! I use them regularly and, in fact, enjoy my daily afternoon tea break with tea in one of the teacups from my collection. Today, my afternoon tea is a little bit more formal than usual and it is centered around PEI’s official floral emblem – the Lady’s Slipper which blooms in June.
The Lady’s Slipper is not an altogether commonly found flower in PEI though it does indeed exist in both pink and white. I have long adored these beautiful orchids and have amassed a collection of Lady’s Slipper themed dishes and china so, today, I have selected a couple of my Lady’s Slipper teacups, cake plate, teapot, and creamer for teatime.
My latest (at time of writing) Lady’s Slipper teacup acquisition is the lovely Lady’s Slipper pattern from Elizabethan’s Canadian Provincial Flowers series.
The cup has a potbellied shape and sits upon a stylish little scalloped pedestal base. The cup features heavy embossing as well as gold trim on the rim, handle, and just above the pedestal base. The handle is a classic loop broken style.
A large pink and white Lady’s Slipper set amidst green leaves adorns the front of the cup. A tiny Lady’s Slipper appears on the inside rear of the cup and a slightly larger on the reverse exterior, both mirroring the large floral display on the front exterior of the cup.
The companion cup and saucer I have chosen for my tea table is also from Elizabethan Fine Bone China but is in a different shape with straighter sides. The floral motif on this cup is the same as the potbellied cup above.
So, it’s obvious that pink is going to factor significantly into my color scheme for today’s teatime. I have selected tea-sized napkins with a pink background and, not surprising, a teacup pattern! A basic flat fold is simplistic, especially on a small tea table.
As it is frowned upon to pick Lady’s Slippers because the orchids tend not to rejuvenate themselves if plucked from their natural habitat, I obviously do not have any of the lovely orchids on my table. Instead, I went to my backyard flower garden and picked a selection of pretty pink and white tulips.
My choice of teapot features, not only the Lady’s Slipper, but an iconic PEI lighthouse and a lobster fishing boat. There is no manufacturer’s mark on the teapot so I have no information on its origins.
I came across a small creamer that has a matching pattern to that of the teapot. The creamer was manufactured by Jubilee Fine Bone China (England).
I think the teapot and creamer make a lovely set. Today, for our teatime, the teapot is holding King Cole Orange Pekoe Tea.
Because we are making teatime a little special event today, we are starting off with Grapefruit Mimosas, a lovely cool and refreshing drink.
So, of course, we are going to begin with the savory course of afternoon tea and then work our way through the scones course, and then finish off with a selection of delectable small desserts. I don’t have recipes published for every food item in this posting but, for those that I do, I will put the hotlinks into the text for easy access.
Here’s what my tea table looked like with the savory and scones courses. While I will sometimes put all three courses on a three-tier server and serve it all at once to the table, today I opted to use a two-tier server for the first two courses and then cleared the table from courses one and two and brought out the sweets plate separately.
Typically, for the savory course, I will provide two to three different items. That, of course, is dependent upon what I am offering and how substantial the offerings are. On today’s tea table, I have two items, the quintessential Cucumber Sandwiches in open-face fashion and the more substantial Mini Lobster Croissants served on a bed of lettuce.
I have used mini croissants and stuffed them with the same filling as I use in my lobster rolls (recipe here). For teatime fare, I prefer to use the smaller canner lobsters as the pieces are much smaller and identifiable when used in smaller sandwiches or croissants. Using the larger market lobster means chopping the meat resulting in the shapes of the claws, etc., often being lost when used to fill small sandwiches. Everything for teatime should be proportionately small sized and dainty. The items are not meant to be full meal-sized portions.
How scrumptious does this look!
I have opted to use plain scones for today’s teatime. The recipe I have used is my Currant and Orange Scones (click here for recipe) but I have left the currants and orange zest out, resulting in melt-in-the-mouth plain scones. Can you see the layers of buttery good flakiness!
The toppings for today’s scones include the traditional strawberry jam along with rhubarb curd (recipe here) and clotted cream, of course.
I added a wee bit of pink gel food coloring to my Rhubarb Curd to achieve this pretty deep pink color. Left to its natural color, the curd is more of an orange shade.
I am not going to venture to weigh into whether the proper way to apply clotted cream is before or after the jam or curd is applied to the scone. I am going to take the diplomatic approach and say I like it both ways!
And, then of course, there is the pièce de résistance – the dessert or sweets course! Again, I typically provide a selection of 2-3 sweet treats for teatime, sometimes (but not always) featuring a signature dessert as I have done today.
Miniature Victoria Sponge Cakes filled with strawberry jam and whipped cream and topped with a fresh strawberry are the signature dessert for today’s teatime.
Pretty little pink French Macarons are often a teatime offering and they certainly fit into today’s color scheme! Vanilla flavored, the Macarons are filled with buttercream icing.
Melt-in-the-mouth Melting Moments Cookies covered in a delectable pink buttercream frosting are always a teatime favorite. The recipe for my Melting Moments can be found here.
As an added treat to the sweet plate, I have included some locally handmade artisan chocolates produced by Jane and Sue Chocolate of Stanley Bridge, PEI. How grandly did the color of these marbleized chocolates fit in with my tea table color scheme! I simply could not resist including them.
A sugar high for days!
I hope you have enjoyed a glimpse into our afternoon teatime! Have a lovely week, everyone!
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These Deli-style Strawberry Muffins are a must make when local strawberries are in season. Those lovely plump, juicy berries add wonderful flavor to a muffin batter that is lightly spiced with cardamom and nutmeg and has just a whisper of citrus notes.
The muffins are perfect for brunch, coffeebreak, or the lunch bag. Dress them up by sprinkling a few grains of turbinado sugar on each muffin just before they go in the oven. It will add a bit of crunch to the muffin top.
[printable recipe follows at end of post]
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ tsp cardamom
⅛ tsp nutmeg
2 tsp finely grated orange rind
2 large eggs, room temperature, slightly beaten
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup Greek-style vanilla yogurt (or ¼ cup plain vanilla yogurt + ¼ cup sour cream), room temperature
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1½ tbsp milk
1½ cups fresh strawberries, diced (apx. 8 oz)
3 – 4 tsp turbinado sugar (optional)
Method:
Preheat oven to 475°F. Prepare muffin tins by greasing or spraying with cooking oil, ensuring the top edges of each muffin cup are also well-greased/sprayed.
In large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cardamom, and nutmeg. Stir in grated orange rind. Set aside.
In medium-sized bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, yogurt, vegetable oil, vanilla, and milk.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir only until barely incorporated. Do not overmix. Gently fold in strawberries. Spoon batter into prepared muffin tins, filling each cup three-quarters full. Sprinkle a few grains of turbinado sugar on top of each muffin, if desired.
Transfer muffins to oven and immediately reduce the oven temperature to 375°F. Bake for 23-25 minutes or until muffins are just firm to the touch and a cake tester inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
Let muffins rest in muffin tins for about 5 minutes then transfer to wire rack to finish cooling.
Yield: 12 standard-sized muffins
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Yield: 12 standard-sized muffins
