I’m all about quick and easy here on Flurries of Flour, and this recipe for homemade ice cream sandwiches is a quick and easy recipe that gives you a fun, sweet and delightful dessert that belies its simplicity. It makes a perfect special treat for special occasions or holidays like Valentine’s Day, and you the best part is that you can make them any way you want! Just start with the basic recipe and go from there! Plus, you can make these gluten-free, dairy-free, paleo—it’s up to you!…
Gluten-Free Italian Chicken Fingers
If you’re looking for something fun and delicious for dinner, this recipe is it! Done in under an hour, full of flavor, and gluten-free, it’s as easy as it is healthy and delicious! You can even make this dairy-free if you use dairy-free cheese or even nutritional yeast in place of the Parmesan. These gluten-free Italian chicken fingers are cooked in the oven, so there’s minimal fuss (although if you want to pan-fry them first, it works just as well!). It’s a fuss-free, healthy, delicious and quick weeknight meal!
…
Simple Weeknight Pasta
Sometimes you just need a big bowl of pasta, am I right? I know I do. Whether it’s regular pasta, whole wheat pasta, gluten-free pasta, Paleo pasta—there’s something about a big bowl of noodles in front of you that makes the evening more comforting (and more delicious). This simple weeknight pasta is full of layers of flavor from fresh and dry herbs, really good Parmesan cheese, garlic, good olive oil, and salt and pepper—that’s it! It’s done in under 20 minutes, and you can use it as a base for any type of protein (or not) and even additional vegetables. It’s also perfect with a simple side salad, like the winter citrus salad from a few posts back, and maybe some wine and either a good movie or TV show while you cuddle under a blanket or maybe put some candles on the table. Warm, comforting and delicious—this recipe for simple weeknight pasta is perfect for unwinding from a busy day!…
Tuna and Sweet Apple Salad
Everyone has their favorite recipe for tuna salad, I know. But sometimes regular old tuna salad can get a bit boring. But tuna in a can, the kind without olive oil or salt added, is so good for you with all of its omega fatty acids! It’s full of protein, not full of calories, and the perfect healthy lunch when you’re trying to lighten things up for January. And with this quick, easy and healthy tuna and sweet apple salad, you get all the benefits of tuna in a creamy, crunchy, sweet and salty combination that will make your taste buds dance! You won’t have to worry about any boring lunches here, that’s for sure!…
Apple Cider Jelly and Panna Cotta
I had no idea what to call this except for what it is—sweet, effervescent sparkling apple cider gelatin mixed with mellow, creamy panna cotta. It’s what holiday dessert dreams are made of. It’s light, sweet, and perfect for any holiday party from Christmas to Hanukkah to New Years. Plus, it’s so pretty! It’s also very easy to make, which makes it a perfect holiday dessert when you’re crunched for time, and you can make it dairy-free, and it’s naturally gluten-free, too!…
Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Tarts
Here is a new series just for December: party appetizers! No matter which holiday party you’re celebrating (Hanukkah party, Christmas party, New Year’s party, etc.…), these appetizers are perfect small bites to delight your guests! And I’m starting off with one of my all-time favorite appetizers, caramelized onion and goat cheese tarts! They only require a handful of ingredients, aren’t very labor intensive, and the sweet-savory flavors meld perfectly in the flaky pastry crust! These holiday appetizers will fly off the plate!…
Breakfast Baked Apples with Granola Crumble
Almost nothing says fall and fall produce more than baked apples and apple cider, and this recipe combines both baked apples and apple cider with a crumble topping made with granola!
I am really excited about this recipe for breakfast baked apples with granola crumble. I was excited when I came up with it, I was super excited to test it out (and eat it, of course), and now I’m excited to tell you about it. This is a recipe for breakfast that has everything—a little bit of sweet, a little bit of crunch, a little bit of spice, and a creamy element. Put it all together and you have something that is warm, comforting and completely satisfying for those chilly early fall breakfasts or brunches: breakfast baked apples with granola crumble!
Think about it like this—mix apple pie filling with an apple crumble topping and then mix in cool, creamy ice cream. Then make it a little healthier with granola for the crumble and yogurt instead of ice cream, take out some of the sugar, and serve it for breakfast—that what you’re getting! It’s not exactly a quick breakfast, but it is simple and most of the time is spent cooking in the oven, so it doesn’t require much work on your part, especially if you use store-bought granola. Plus, it makes your kitchen smell like apple cider, which is always a plus.
This also makes a perfect brunch recipe for a crowd—you can make the apples the night before and then just heat them up in the morning with the yogurt and granola. There you have a fall brunch for a crowd and you can spend more time drinking mimosas and talking with guests than you can when you make pancakes.
Note: If you’re looking for allergy- and sensitivity-friendly swaps for ingredients, you’ll find them after the recipe!
When you cook the apples the night before, make the granola crumble, add it and the yogurt to the apples and heat them for ten minuts! You’ll have a fun, decently healthy breakfast on the table in ten to fifteen minutes!
I am really excited about this recipe for breakfast baked apples with granola crumble. I was excited when I came up with it, I was super excited to test it out (and eat it, of course), and now I’m excited to tell you about it. This is a recipe for breakfast that has everything—a little bit of sweet, a little bit of crunch, a little bit of spice, and a creamy element. Put it all together and you have something that is warm, comforting and completely satisfying for those chilly early fall breakfasts or brunches: breakfast baked apples with granola crumble!
Think about it like this—mix apple pie filling with an apple crumble topping and then mix in cool, creamy ice cream. Then make it a little healthier with granola for the crumble and yogurt instead of ice cream, take out some of the sugar, and serve it for breakfast—that what you’re getting! It’s not exactly a quick breakfast, but it is simple and most of the time is spent cooking in the oven, so it doesn’t require much work on your part, especially if you use store-bought granola. Plus, it makes your kitchen smell like apple cider, which is always a plus.
This also makes a perfect brunch recipe for a crowd—you can make the apples the night before and then just heat them up in the morning with the yogurt and granola. There you have a fall brunch for a crowd and you can spend more time drinking mimosas and talking with guests than you can when you make pancakes.
Note: If you’re looking for allergy- and sensitivity-friendly swaps for ingredients, you’ll find them after the recipe!
Breakfast Baked Apples with Granola Crumble
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
This recipe for breakfast baked apple with granola crumble combines the best of fall in a warm, filling, and satisfying breakfast: baked apples, fall spice, yogurt, and a granola crisp! You can even bake the apples the night before for a quick, fuss-free brunch!
Author: Samantha Gallegos
Recipe type: Breakfast
Serves: 6
Ingredients
- 6 semi-sweet apples
- 1 cup of granola, either homemade or store-bought
- ½ cup of vanilla yogurt or Greek yogurt
- 1 cup of water
- 2 Tbsp. softened butter
- 1 Tbsp. flour
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- ½ tsp. nutmeg
- ¼ tsp. ginger
- ¼ tsp. nutmeg (You can also use 1 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice and 1 tsp. cinnamon)
- ¼ tsp. salt
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 375°.
- Combine the spices in a small bowl.
- Core the apples then set into a baking pan or casserole dish. Sprinkle the spice blend, salt, and vanilla on top of the apples, dot with small bits of butter, then pour the water into the bottom of the pan.
- Place the apples in the oven for half an hour to forty minutes, or until the apples are soft.
- While the apples are cooking, combine the granola with 1 tablespoon of butter and the tablespoon of flour with either a fork or your fingers.
- Take the pan out of the oven. The water will probably have evaporated, but if not, take the apples out and pour out the water. Put the apples back into the pan, fill with the yogurt, and top with the granola crumble mixture.
- Place the apples back into the oven for 10 more minutes, or until the granola crumbled mixture is cooked through (you’re cooking the flour and butter).
- If you’d rather not have the yogurt warmed, you can cook the apples and granola crumble mixture together, then pour the yogurt over top.
- Serve!
When you cook the apples the night before, make the granola crumble, add it and the yogurt to the apples and heat them for ten minuts! You’ll have a fun, decently healthy breakfast on the table in ten to fifteen minutes!
Swaps:
- Instead of apples, you can use pears
- To make this recipe gluten-free, you can use a gluten-free flour and a gluten-free granola.
- To make this recipe paleo-friendly, use a paleo granola and an alternative flour like coconut or cassava (almond flour probably would not work, however), and yogurt made with alternative milks.
- To make this recipe dairy-free, use yogurt made with alternative milks like coconut, almond, or cashew.
So, there you have a delicious fall breakfast or brunch, and the apples in the stores right now are so good and perfect for this recipe—nothing mushy or tasteless.
‘Till next time!
Honey and Stone Fruit Clafouti
Late summer is the season for stone fruit—peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, and cherries. (They’re called stone fruit because of the large, dense seed you find in the middle.) I’ve see baskets and baskets of peaches at the farmers market last weekend and this weekend and there are mountains tumbling off displays at the grocery store.
Late summer. Can you believe it?
I feel like we’re rushing to get as much out of summer as possible because it’s barely before it’s begun. So, to squeeze in as much summer as possible, we’ve been taking weekly trips to the farmers markets and eating up every last ounce of the tastes of summer, and this honey and stone fruit clafouti fits the bill perfectly!
You do have to turn on the oven, but the result is full of flavor and completely worth it: sweet plums and cherries, tart apricots, mellowly sweet peaches together with honey in a slightly cakey, slightly custardy clafouti.
A clafouti (or as my husband calls is a “kerfuffle”, not to be confused with a “kerfluffle”, which is what we call a group of huskies…) is a beautifully simple French dessert—it takes minutes to put together and has a minimal number of ingredients.
Besides the fact that it’s delicious and simple, why did I choose it for this particular blog post? Because the simplicity of the ingredients allows the fruit—whatever fruit you’re using—to shine. It’s the perfect way to savor the summer.
A few notes: the recipe usually calls for a ceramic dish, but I don’t have one as of yet, so I used a nine-inch cake pan with low sides.
You also need to make sure you really beat the eggs until they’re foaming—it will help whip air into the mixture and ensure the custard inflates.
Allergy-Friendly Options: this recipe is perfectly good with gluten-free flour! In fact, the cake I used for these photos was made with gluten-free flour. I used the Trader Joe’s brand, which is pretty good and cheaper than most, but you can use your favorite brand of gluten-free flour.
You can also make this dairy free by using almond milk, or another type of non-dairy milk. While I haven’t tested this recipe with all non-dairy milks, it certainly works just as well with almond milk as with dairy milk (husband tested, husband approved. And he’s not a fan of almond milk. “You can’t milk an almond,” as he says).
Honey and Stone Fruit Clafouti
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
The best of summer's stone fruit is the star in this simple, delicious, custardy honey and stone fruit clafouti!
Author: Samantha Gallegos
Recipe type: Adapted from Julia Child's Pear Clafouti Recipe
Serves: 8
Ingredients
- 2 to 3 pieces of stone fruit cut into ⅛ inch slices and/or a handful of pitted cherries cut in half
- 1 C. whole milk or almond milk
- ½ C. all-purpose flour or gluten free flour
- ¼ to ½ C. honey, plus more for drizzling
- 3 eggs
- 2 Tbsp. butter
- 1 Tbs. vanilla extract
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp. salt
Instructions
- Butter a nine-inch cake pan or ceramic dish and preheat the oven to 350°.
- Slice all the stone fruit into ⅛ inch slices, or, if using cherries, in half.
- Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk until light in color and frothy. Stir in the vanilla, milk, salt, and cinnamon and whisk until combined.
- Melt the butter and pour it into the pan, then drizzle honey over the butter.
- Arrange the stone fruit pieces in the bottom of the pan in a single layer, then pour the batter over the stone fruit.
- Place the clafouti into the oven for 50 to 60 minutes until set, puffed, and browned.
- Allow to cool for a few minutes and enjoy!
This dessert pairs beautifully right out of the oven with vanilla ice cream or even a crème anglaise, but it’s also perfectly good just the way it is.
‘Till next time!
Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Warm Berry Compote
As I promised in last week’s warm summer berry compote blog, I’m posting a recipe for a dessert over which the compote goes absolutely perfectly: buttermilk panna cotta.
In Italian, panna cotta means “cooked cream”, and that’s really what this recipe is. I believe I extolled upon the virtues of, and my love for, panna cotta in the pumpkin spice panna cotta recipe I posted last fall. It’s one of my favorite desserts to make and to eat: soft, creamy, cool, sweet but not too sweet, and with a little tang and fresh tartness from the buttermilk and lemon zest. It’s also a perfect low-heat dessert for these, the hottest days of summer (and wow has this summer been hot…). You don’t need an oven, there’s not a lot of work, you barely need to turn the stove on, and it comes out of the fridge nice and cold. There are also very few ingredients. 
So let’s say you’re having friends over for a summer dinner on the patio. Spend twenty minutes that morning (at the most) in the kitchen, put the panna cotta in the fridge, and it will be ready to pull out and serve whenever you and your guests are ready. Just spoon the berry compote (warm or not) on top and you have a delicious and very pretty dessert!
A quick note: The recipe states that the gelatin needs to “bloom”. It will look a little odd and look like it’s already hardened, but no need to worry. It will melt when combined with the warmed milk and set beautifully. Blooming gelatin looks a little bit like this:
Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Warm Berry Compote
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
This is one of my favorite desserts to make and to eat: soft, creamy, cool, sweet but not too sweet, and with a little tang and fresh tartness from the buttermilk and lemon zest. It’s also a perfect low-heat dessert for these, the hottest days of summer!
Author: Samantha Gallegos
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Italian
Serves: 6
Ingredients
- 2 cups buttermilk
- 1 cup milk
- 1 packet of gelatin
- ¼ - ½ cup sugar or honey
- 2 Tbsp. water
- 1 vanilla bean and seeds or 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- ½ tsp. lemon zest
- 1 recipe of warm berry compote
Instructions
- Stir together the gelatin and 2 Tbsp. water until combined and set aside to let “bloom”.
- Heat the milk, sugar or honey, and vanilla bean and seeds (or the extract over medium-low heat). Stir until the sugar has fully dissolved and the milk is just barely simmering. There will be tiny bubbles around the sides and just a few bubbles under the surface.
- Take the milk off the heat (remove the vanilla bean, if using) and stir in the gelatin and lemon zest.
- Pour into dessert dishes, ramekins, or molds and place in the fridge. Allow to set for at least two hours or until the panna cotta is fully set.
- Serve topped with warm (or cooled) berry compote and enjoy!
Simple and so good! It even looks pretty in whatever you serve it, especially with the deep reds and purples of the berry compote.
‘Till next time! (There’s one more dessert coming in this summer’s dessert series!)
Compound Butter Two Ways
So, butter. I admit it, I love good butter. I love it on toast, I love it on buttered noodles, I love it in potatoes and sweet potatoes and over roasted veggies. I love a little bit in my oatmeal or my cream of wheat or on a piece of fresh-out-of-the-oven cornbread or melted over waffles and pancakes. It’s even great over a grilled steak. I also just adore European butter over a piece of really good crusty bread with a little bit of salt sprinkled on top—heaven!
What can make butter even better? If you add to it in the form of compound butter.
Compound butters are simple to make, but the results are so delicious! And you can make them either sweet or savory.
The two recipes I have today are for a berry-cinnamon-honey compound butter and a roasted garlic compound butter.
So what, you’re probably (not) asking, does this have to do with the summer ’16 dessert series? Imagine this: berry-cinnamon-honey butter melting into every little nook and cranny of a pound cake or angel food cake that’s been grilled (for more on grilling cake you can check out my recipe for grilled peaches and angel food cake). There may possibly be ice cream and berries involved. There you have a fusion of warm, cool, sweet, and tart with a touch of salt that is absolutely heavenly.
And because it’s summer, I’m including the roasted garlic compound butter recipe because it really is perfect over grilled meats, grilled veggies, and melted over rice.
Whether it’s dinner or dessert, these two recipes are the perfect addition to dining al fresco this summer!
Quick Note: I use salted butter for my compound butters, including the sweet butters, because I love the flavor dimensions a small bit of salt creates without overpowering any other flavor. Salt can really bring out the best in other ingredients. If you don’t want salt or can’t eat the salt, however, buy unsalted butter.
Compound Butter Two Ways
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
Sweet and savory, these homemade compound butters are simple to make and perfect for summer dishes, from roasted meats to grilled cake!
Author: Samantha Gallegos
Recipe type: Homemade
Serves: 8
Ingredients
- Berry, Honey, and Cinnamon Compound Butter Recipe:
- 8 Tbsp. butter, softened
- ¼ cup fresh or frozen berries (thawed, if frozen)
- 1 to 2 tsps. honey
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- ½ tsp. vanilla
- For the Roasted Garlic Compound Butter:
- 8 Tbsp. butter, softened
- 4 to 6 cloves of roasted garlic (to your taste preference), mashed
- 1/16 tsp. delicate finishing salt, like Himalayan pink salt, Maldon’s, or grey salt
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients for your particular butter in a bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer.
- If mixing by hand, use a spatula to stir and mix all ingredients together until thoroughly combined. If using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment at medium-high speed for a two until everything is well combined.
- At this point, you can taste the butter to see if it needs additional ingredients or seasoning.
- Scrape the butter onto the far end of a piece of wax paper and start rolling the wax paper tightly, shaping the butter into a roll as you go and pressing the ends in.
- Twist the ends of the wax paper tightly, giving the butter one last shaping, and place into the fridge for at least two hours.
- Slice into the butter and serve over whatever you wish!
Compound butters can be stored in the fridge for two weeks.
So there you have two recipes for compound butters, but you don’t have to stop here! There are so many different combinations you can try, such as dried or fresh herbs, roasted garlic with fresh or dried herbs, cinnamon and honey, maple butter, cilantro lime, pumpkin spice—it’s up to your imagination!
‘Till next time!