TALYA BOERNER: GRILLED POUNDCAKE WITH FRESH STRAWBERRIES AND BASIL
Grilled poundcake with strawberries and basil is that special sweet something you need for your 4th of July celebration. This dessert is super simple to make, especially since you’re already planning to fire up your grill for the holiday. Right? READ MORE
JULIE KOHL: STRAWBERRY SKILLET CRISP
Yet there are few dishes that can satisfy the senses quite like my Strawberry Skillet Crisp. The berries are cooked to a warm, gooey perfection and the topping is sweet, crunchy and buttery. It’s like being wrapped in a hug by your grandmother with a single mouthful.
Best of all, this dessert cooks up great in a cast iron skillet and nothing says home cooking quite like a cast iron skillet. READ MORE
ANITA STAFFORD: STRAWBERRY MUFFINS
Fresh strawberries are an appealing fruit with numerous health benefits. Strawberries are in season and abundant right now, so they are a great choice for eating fresh or for using in recipes. This muffin recipe is rich with buttermilk, but not too sweet, allowing the strawberries to take center stage. I baked these for breakfast, but I predict I will be having another one for a snack later today. READ MORE
DEBBIE ARNOLD: BLUEBERRY, STRAWBERRY AND CHICKEN SALAD WITH BLUEBERRY VINAIGRETTE
Spring has finally arrived (I hope!) in Arkansas. Our strawberries are just finding their way into the local markets, and they’ll be finding their way into lots of dishes at our house. This Blueberry, Strawberry and Chicken Salad uses my Blueberry-Basil Vinegar that I love, love. (The blueberry pickles it makes are super added to your salad.) READ MORE
A tasty snack is all my kids need to turn a bad attitude around. I’ve learned that the twobest tools to deter any kind of bad attitude are humor and delicious snacks.
When things get a little tense around the house because someone is having a bad day or bad attitude it’s time for some laughs and snacks. Bad attitudesnever happens at your house, because your house is perfect right??? Just kidding, I know we are all normal and have our days when we are just a little grouchy.
One morning recently, there were sibling squabbles and bad attitudes hanging around our house for no real reason. I decided to somehow get our day turned in a better direction. So, I turned on some fun music, did a few crazy dances, whipped up some quick bread, and got my kids to laughing and having fun.
After our bread was ready, I whisked everyone outside on the back porch to have a snack with some fancy teacups and I read our overdue library books to them.
Voila. Attitudes changed. The blueberry bread was magic.
I know it’s not the actual bread that changed their attitudes, but it’s the love, laughter, and conversations shared around a snack that tied heart strings together.
Who can be upset when eating fresh blueberry bread, sitting on the back porch on a sunny day, drinking lemonade out of tea party cups, and reading funny picture books?
Quick breads are a go-to hosting treat for us because they are so quick and simple. The ingredients are things that you always have around.
Whenever you make one, always make two and freeze one! You can give it to a friend or pull it out for breakfast on a busy morning.
When we make a quick bread, we always pour a mini loaf to take to a neighbor or friend. I try to keep the disposable mini loaf pans on hand so we can always do that. This time, I was out. But, I did have mini pie tins and they worked just as well.
After all attitudes were adjusted I gave my kids the gift of giving hospitality and they delivered a mini pie/loaf quick bread to some neighbors. Being generous always brings a cheerful heart.
Amanda Farris is a former teacher/coach who hung up the whistle when she got promoted to mom. She still keeps those competitive juices by running in local races and playing competitive board games with her kids. She is the reigning Jenga champion in her home.
I am a southern girl, through and through I tell ya, born and raised here in Arkansas. But one thing I don’t always find joy in here in the south is the summer heat. Well, more specifically the humidity and sticky feeling that comes with it. Yuck, I mean can’t a girl get a couple months of nice dry heat without all the sweating? It’s not like I can live in the pool all summer, although that does sound amazing!
Here I am confessing that I am not a fan of the sweltering heat, but there are a many things that I do love about spring and summer time. One of those things being all the local berries I have access to. I am super lucky when it comes to living just over a mile from a local blueberry farmer. How awesome is that?
Renee’s Berry Farm has the most amazing blueberries and each year I find myself anticipating their opening. They are a small and charming farm and everyone around here loves to go reap the benefits of the owner’s hard work. So the short window of their blueberry season is usually a very busy one. If you drive by on those mornings, the popularity of their farm can be measured by all the cars parked in their lot. If you don’t keep an eye on the opening dates and get there early each morning, you may sadly miss out. Oh, what a sad day that would be!
My family loves berries and we use them in many ways throughout the year so it is important to me that I always stock up on these wonderful blueberries and freeze some for the colder months. There are so many ways to enjoy them like smoothies, cobblers or crumbles, muffins, and of course coffee cake.
Ah, coffee cake, such a wonderful invention in my opinion. Considering I live off coffee most days it is only natural that I would love a cake that pairs so well with my steamy cup of “liquid mom power”. This Blueberry Coffee Cake is such a treat, and it is always good with my dear coffee! It is moist with a buttery crumble on top, bursting with that blueberry flavor! Along with the amazing flavor, it is also easy to make. The recipe comes together pretty quickly, making it a great weekend breakfast, a nice surprise for your company after dinner, or any spacial occasion when you want a tasty snack.
Oh, who am I kidding, who needs a special occasion for cake? Not me, that’s for sure. After all, it is sugar and gluten free so no worries about guilt when you have a slice, or two! I hope you enjoy this coffee cake around your table as much I do around mine. It really is part of the magic that gets this girl through hot southern days! Okay, okay, I might be complaining a little about hot sweaty summer temps or all the trips to the storm shelter during spring, but I wouldn’t change one thing about living in Arkansas. Well, maybe the tornado thing, but even still, I love my hot mess of a life here! But, the blueberries, this coffee cake, and my air conditioning sure make it a lot more enjoyable, just saying!
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 9x5 loaf pan or 8x8 square pan really well.
For the Streusel: Add the sugar, oat flour, almonds, cinnamon, and salt to a bowl.
Use a fork or clean fingers to work in the softened butter into the flour mixture until it becomes crumbly. Set aside.
To make the cake start by blending the oat flour, baking powder, and salt together in a mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, cream together sugar, butter, vanilla, and the egg.
While mixing on low speed add the milk and the flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating each until they are all incorporated.
Once your cake batter is combined well slowly fold in the blueberries by hand.
Add the batter into your prepared pan. Sprinkle the streusel topping evenly over the top of the cake batter.
Place the cake in your preheated oven and bake the for 45 to 50 minutes. A toothpick or knife should come out clean when fully baked.
Remove the cake from the oven, and set it on a rack to cool for 20 minutes at least before removing from the pan or slicing the cake.
Notes
To bake with real sugar use 1/3 cup of sugar in the topping and 3/4 cup of sugar in the cake itself. All purpose flour can also be exchanged for the oat flour cup for cup.
Keri is a sassy southern girl who loves cooking, reading and spending time with her family. She is a former corporate minded gal turned homeschool mom and baker. When she’s not covered in some flour you can find her blogging about recipes and getting healthy over at My Table for Three. Keri loves to share and interact on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
Everyone loves hamburgers. They are easy to fix, tasty, kids love them, and they remind me of summer.
On the other hand, a good hamburger is usually high in fat. Everyone knows the best burgers are made from the fattest beef. They’re juicier, more tender, tastier… just better. So, if you are watching your weight, you indulge on fewer burgers.
We all know that we can buy very lean ground beef. Ground sirloin is 90% lean and some stores offer ground beef as lean as 96%. If you buy that lean of beef for burgers, they turn out dry and tough.
When I was working on my graduate degree, I found some really interesting articles where berries were mixed with lean ground beef to improve the flavor, juiciness, and texture of the burgers. It worked so well that one state was mixing berries in the lean ground beef used for school lunches.
Now that I’m a mom of an almost-6-year-old, I am trying to figure out new ways to make healthy foods that a picky little girl will actually eat.So, I decided to give the blueberry burgers a try.
Cooking with me is always a little bit of an experiment. My husband and I both have PhD’s in Meat Science, so we are always thinking of ways to try something new or use an ingredient in a novel way.
You can google ‘blueberry burgers’ and several recipes and articles come up. Basically, I just winged it based on my research in graduate school.
I decided to try my experimental cooking at work where I wouldn’t be interrupted by little helpers.
I bought some 93% lean ground beef and blueberries.
I bought exactly one pound of ground beef and the blueberries came in a 6 oz. package. I wanted to use about a 4:1 beef to berry ratio, so I very scientifically removed about 2/3 of the blueberries from the package to use. Then, I picked the stems off the berries and chopped them up until I was bored with chopping.
I added a little salt and pepper (not enough, I was later informed) and made 5 patties. The extra weight of the fruit extended my ground beef, so I could make an extra patty. They did look a little odd…
I cooked the patties on a little electric griddle set to 400° F. I turned the patties every two minutes and used a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature. I made sure the patties reached 165° F, and removed them from the griddle. It only took about 8 minutes for them to cook.
When checking the temperature, you want to make sure you get to the center of the burger. I like to insert the thermometer from the side and check it twice. Ground beef needs to reach at least 160° F in the center to make sure it’s safe to eat. Checking the burger’s temperature also keeps you from overcooking your burgers and letting them dry out. You have to be careful with these lean patties, because the thermometer may cause them to crumble apart. It’s nothing a good piece of cheese can’t fix, though.
When I chopped the blueberries by hand, you could still see the pieces of blueberry in the cooked patty.
My finished product was tasty, tender, and juicy. I took a plate of hamburgers around my office and let people try them. Only one person said he didn’t like them, and he just doesn’t like blueberries. When I told them that my burgers were made with 93% lean beef, they were very surprised that they tasted so good.
I was pretty pleased with my little experiment, but I wasn’t sure that kids would eat them if they could still see the berry pieces, so I decided to try a follow-up experiment. I used the food processor to puree my blueberries before I added them to the ground beef.
This time the raw burgers turned out a little purple. The pureed berries also made the patties feel wetter when I was making them, but they cooked up about the same as the chopped version.
Even cooked, the berries made the beef just a little bit purple, especially on the inside, and some people said that they could taste the blueberry flavor, but they still liked them.
I made these on a Friday at my office, so we added cheese, cooked up some fries and had a little lunch. Everyone loved the blueberry burgers and were amazed at how good they tasted in spite of being so lean.
Using 93% lean ground beef rather than 80% lean reduces the calories in one cooked patty from 210 to 154. The blueberries also add fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants to the burger. So they are healthier!
The antioxidants in the blueberries should also help make the burger taste better if you keep them as leftovers. The offensive flavor that develops in leftover ground beef is caused by oxidation, and the blueberries prevent it from happening. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any leftover blueberry burgers to sample.
Blueberries aren’t the only fruit that would work in burgers. I’ve seen examples of people using cherries, raspberries, elderberries, and dried plums (also known as prunes). Just mix them in at about 20 to 25% of the ground beef. With drier fruits, like prunes, you may need to use less. Fruits in meat should work in other dishes, too, like meat loaf, sausage, even chili. Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Janeal Yancey
grew up in the small town of Cross Plains, Texas and attended Texas Tech University. She became interested in meat science through FFA and collegiate meat judging teams and decided to go to graduate school in meat science at Kansas State University. At Kansas State, she received both her Masters and PhD in meat science. She is currently at the University of Arkansas where she conducts research on many aspects of meat quality, from beef tenderness and ground beef color to the textural properties of bacon.
In 2011, Janeal entered the world of blogging with her Mom at the Meat Counter Blog. From this platform, she writes about meat and the meat industry from her point of view. As a mom, she knows that all moms have lots of questions about what they feed their families and as a meat scientist; she can answer a lot of their questions. Her posts range from topics about food safety and meat handling to the beef product known in the media as ‘pink slime’ and antibiotics in the meat supply.
Janeal and her husband, Ed, also a meat scientist, live in Huntsville, AR where they raise two wild daughters, Vallie and Wyn, and gentle Simmental cattle.
s a former teacher/coach who hung up the whistle when she got promoted to mom. She still keeps those competitive juices by running in local races and playing competitive board games with her kids. She is the reigning Jenga champion in her home. 
Keri is a sassy southern girl who loves cooking, reading and spending time with her family. She is a former corporate minded gal turned homeschool mom and baker. When she’s not covered in some flour you can find her blogging about recipes and getting healthy over at 
