I made yogurt using cardboard boxes, newspapers and hot water. Just cook the milk a bit, add starter yogurt and incubate overnight. Check out my Thrifty Cook tutorial over at The Phoenix New Times Chow Bella site:Â Homemade Yogurt in a Box
I will be writing a weekly piece at the Phoenix New Times Chow Bella here is the tag line:Â Every week, artist, writer and cook Cyndi Coon will bring you an idea for making the most of what you’ve already got in the pantry or the fridge. Ladies and gentlemen, we introduce the Thrifty Cook.
This week the Thrifty Cook (that’s me) offers a blueberry crisp recipe to use up the five pound box of blueberries I bought on a whim at Costco. Head over to the Phoenix New Times Chow Bella Site to read all about it: click here. Â
This Strawberry Coconut Cake made many people happy, including the one year old tasting cake for the first time in her life. Since the birthday girl can not yet talk, her older sister made the decision that the cake be strawberry. I got the cake recipe over at the Southern Plate. The frosting was my butter cream with coconut pressed into it. I tinted the coconut a hot pink for a fun effect. The red and white mushrooms were created out of fondant with my Cricut Cake using the Freshly Picked cartridge. The little white bunny was made by hand out of white fondant. I made the bunting out of vintage pillow case fabric and backed each one with felt triangles. I sewed it onto pink and white twist Bakers Twine and then tied the bunting onto wooden skewers. Not only was it super cute – it tasted yummy too!
Since I had some left over mascarpone in the fridge from another recipe so I thought I should use it up. I made some delicious lemon cupcakes and frosted them with the mascarpone and topped with slivered almonds and drizzled with honey. Yum! My baking studio is getting a lot of use these days. I am sweating anyway so I might as well bake! Click here for the Lemon Cupcake Recipe
After receiving nearly 10 lbs of figs from a friend I had to begin the hunt for recipes. I love recipe hunting using a key ingredient in the search. The fig search turned up mostly desert and pork recipes which I will gladly participate in but I also found some great other items that I will try out too. Of coarse the first thing out of the tall one’s mouth was could you make a fig pie? I wasn’t really feeling up to rolling dough but I did agree to a cake. So my first fig recipe installment is a delicious fresh fig coffee cake. It is excellent the next day after hanging out in the fridge overnight and served as cold breakfast coffee cake.
Here is the Recipe thanks to Karin Christian found on allrecipes.com. I altered a bit to serve my needs.
Fresh Fig Cake
Directions