The Good Plate

Archive for the ‘Fruit’ Category

Kiwi Lime Cupcakes

Recipes in this Post

• Kiwi Lime Mini Cupcakes
• Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

On one of my recent sojourns to the local grocery store, I found dried kiwi fruit. I immediately thought they would make a great decoration for St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes. When I brought Cheesecake Stuffed Chocolate Dipped Strawberries for my son’s third grade class field trip, one of the girls requested I make cupcakes the next time I brought a treat for the class. So, I’m making mini lime cupcakes with kiwi for Friday since St. Patrick’s day is on Saturday.

I had planned on making these Thursday evening, but decided to do them this morning. Why? Well, let me first say that I love my son’s curiosity and inventiveness. Yesterday, he was tinkering with the alarm clock and mistakenly set the clock ahead four hours. When I got up at what I thought was seven o’clock and drank coffee, it was not until I looked at the cable box that I realized it was only three o’clock. Since I had already had a half a cup of coffee, it was too late to try to go back to sleep, so I’m making cupcakes.

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At my son’s school they have something called “Second Chance Breakfast” for those students who either didn’t have time for breakfast at home, or who are hungry at the midmorning break. Spane has coined a lot of second chance items in our house, dry food for Rolo is “Second Chance Cat Food”, etc.

Spane and I like bananas, and we especially like them when they are just ripe, are firm and might have a little green still on them. I even have a banana slicing tool from Chef’n which makes slicing them a snap. Still, it’s hard for us to get through a small bunch of bananas without one or two going brown. Sure enough, one had gone brown, and knew that it was destined for banana bread.

Why do I call it Second Chance Banana Bread? Well, because it’s a second chance for the banana itself, and because the night Spane and I made it, I was very tired and fell asleep waiting for it to finish baking. When I woke up the house smelled of burnt sugar. The whole loaf was black on top. A little bit in the center had not burned, and we ate that. It was so good, Maria gave me three bananas she had that had also gone brown, so I could make a second loaf – and not burn it.

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Cream Cheese Stuffed Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Recipes in This Post

• How to Temper Chocolate
• Cheesecake Stuffed Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

The other day, when I was perusing Pinterest, I came across something that looked fabulous. It was strawberries stuffed with cream cheese, and it was called Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries. I pinned it, and decided it would make a nice treat for the kids in Spane’s class going to the Planetarium field trip. Last year, I made White Chocolate Rum Raisin Cookies for Mrs. Mary’s class when we went to The Natural Science Museum.

I lucked out, and strawberries were Buy One box, Get One Free. There are 24 kids in Spane’s class, plus the teacher, and possibly one or two more parents who, like me, volunteered to go on the trip to help with the children. There were enough strawberries, with a few extra for the house.

I decided to change the original recipe a little and dip the strawberries in chocolate. All the recipes on the Internet tell you to add shortening to the chocolate to temper it. I don’t like shortening, and I knew that I had dipped strawberries before without it. Of course, looking in The Joy of Cooking, I found that I didn’t need shortening at all, just a candy thermometer, that I have a nice glass one with a clip. There are instructions later in this post about how to do this.

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Recipes in This Post

Fruit Boats

• Skull Cheese Ball
• Fruit Boats
• Cucumber Boats

Here, for your pleasure and review are pictures of some of the food served at Spane’s eighth birthday party. There will be pictures of the actual Birthday Boy soon.

These Caribbean meatballs were quite the hit. Spane asked me to make them again. Recipe for Caribbean Pirate Meat Balls

These just looked so lovely. My original intent was just to have the banana slice and orange quarter, and Douglas came back from the store with these lovely red grapes. They made the dish!

This cheese ball was very simple to make. It’s a good way to get rid of little bits of cheese, nuts and dried fruit you might have laying about.

These were a take off on the Oreo Rum Balls I made, only these used white creme cookies, and had spice flavorings. Here is the recipe.

This is probably my favorite. In all the time I was thinking to myself, what could I stuff those cucumbers with, and then I thought egg salad would be good. As I removed the egg yolks from the whites, I realized that the whites would make proper sails, and the black olives were the Jolly Rogers.

I have a whole post about making this cake. It was really fun and everyone loved it!