Strawberry and Cream Dessert

With the development of storage system, nowadays we get all the seasonal fruits round the year. Strawberry is no different. However, the store bought preserved strawberries can hardly match the juiciness and freshness of fresh strawberries plucked from the trees. Since the harvesting season of strawberries is going on now, we took the opportunity to visit a local farm last week and bought a few pounds of fresh strawberries that we plucked all by ourselves from the fields. It was my first time experience to visit a strawberry field. Strawberry picking is no easy task as it requires sitting carefully between the rows of strawberry shrubs and yanking the red and ripe juicy fruits from the stems. Since the local farm we visited cultivated the strawberries organically without adding any pesticide or herbicide, we could direct eat the strawberries right after we plucked them from the trees. The strawberries in all their freshness were much juicier and sweeter than the ones available in stores throughout the year. 





While picking strawberries, I was simultaneously thinking of the delicacies I am going to prepare with them. A few recipes were in my mind, and one such recipe is of strawberry dessert prepared with heavy whipping cream. Since I prepare Strawberry Cheesecake, Strawberry Sponge Cake and Strawberry Cake whenever I bring home strawberries, this time I wanted to try something new that I did not try before. Hope you will enjoy the recipe of Strawberry and Cream Dessert. Please don't forget to leave a comment. 

Apple Kheer or Apple Pudding

My son has just turned two a month back. He is getting super choosy about food as days go by. He refuses to eat foods that even 6 months back he used to relish. He grew very fond of egg yolks after we introduced egg to him at his first year, but now he does not like eating egg that much. As soon as he smells egg in any dish, he turns his face away. May be in our excitement of seeing our child growing up, we fed him too much eggs in his first year that hew grew bored of eating it. These days my son has developed a liking for rice pudding, but lest he grows bored of eating it too, I try to maintain variety in pudding preparation so that his interest in pudding remains intact. So instead of cooking rice pudding every time, I try adding different flavors into the pudding. For example, recently I prepared Mango pudding that my son liked so much that the otherwise fussy eater polished it off without complaint. 

When the first time I cooked Apple Pudding, I only grated the apples and mixed it into the boiling milk, but the acid in apple curdled the milk and turned it into chana. However, even though the whey water separated from the milk, the taste of the pudding was delicious and my son relished that with pleasure. Since chana is good for children, it was a nutritious pudding. However, grown ups may not like the taste of that pudding since many people do not like the taste of chana. So while cooking apple pudding for grown up people, I boil apples so that the acid becomes neutralized and it does not curdle the milk. The rich creamy taste of this pudding will not only savor the taste bud of grown ups, but will also please the taste buds of fussy little ones. 

Aam Kheer - Kheer Mango

Just as I began to feel sad for missing yet another season of mangoes of Bengal cribbing about how the taste of mangoes available in Wal-Mart and Meyer were bland in taste, my husband brought home few Mexican mangoes one day. Now, I really didn't have any idea that Mexican breed of mangoes could be as sweet and ripe as those of Bengal. It was seriously a revelation. Sitting here in USA, if you could lay your tongue on some luscious super juicy mangoes, you would feel yourself to be in seventh heaven and that's exactly how was I like. I ate few of them raw and left the remaining ones to prepare my favorite mango dessert - Aam Kheer.

In the months of summer when the scorching weather outside leaves the mouth dry, one glass full of this kheer with lots of ripe mangoes in would take away every bit of parchedness the tortuous heat has caused.