Ginger Lime Sorbet

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If you are looking for a refreshing kick in the mouth this is the sorbet for you ha.  It really is quite delicious and perfect for a hot summer day.  Don't let the ginger part scare you.  You can leave it out if you really want and you'll still be left with a yummy lime sorbet, but I think the ginger is a nice little flavor to have and isn't overwhelming at all.  It's a really simple recipe and not that difficult to make at all - the hardest part is juicing the limes.  The only downside is that if you don't have an ice cream maker, you'll have to be home the majority of the day so you can scrape the pan (more on that later).

Recipe
2 Cups Sugar
2 Cups Water
1 Tbs. Lime zest
1/2 - 1 tsp. Freshly grated ginger
1 Cup Fresh lime juice

Put the sugar, water, lime zest and freshly grated ginger into a saucepan (use a microplane for your zest and grated ginger so the pieces are nice and fine).

Boil until the sugar is completely dissolved.

It will look like this when the sugar is dissolved - nice and clear.

Pour the simple syrup into a glass cake pan.  Now for the hardest part of the whole recipe - juice limes until you get 1 cup of fresh lime juice.  A trick with limes is pop them in the microwave for 10-15 seconds before you juice them, it will help you get a lot more juice from each lime.  Once you get 1 cup of lime juice, straight out the pulp and pour that into the cake pan, stir until everything is combined.  Place the dish in your refrigerator for 1 hour so it will get a little chilled.

 If you have an ice cream maker, after the hour of chilling in the fridge, you'd put the mixture in your maker and in no time you'd have a lovely sorbet.  If you don't have an ice cream maker, place the pan in your freezer.  Come back every hour or so and scrape/stir with a fork.

 Continue to do this for several hours, until your sorbet is nice and frozen and the consistency you're wanting.  If you have some big chunks, you can always pop in in the blender to get it smooth again.

 Make sure to serve it right out of the freezer.  It tends to melt quickly.  And honestly, since it's so flavorful, you really only need one big scoop.

If you want to store it for a few days, I'd store it in a container with an airtight lid.  It won't store for more than a week or so because it will get really hard and frostbitten.

Brownie Fruit Pizza

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For Mother's Day I wanted to make my mom a special dessert.  I thought a fruit pizza would be delicious, and then I was told that they had fruit pizza two weeks ago.  So it was back to the drawing board.  I wanted to do something with fresh fruit and possibly chocolate.  I considered doing molten chocolate cakes, but changed my mind because we wouldn't really want a warm dessert on a warm day.  Then it came to me.....fruit pizza with a brownie crust rather than the cookie dough crust.  Let's just say it was deliciously decedent yet refreshing.  Here's what I did.

I baked 2 packages of Ghiradelli chocolate chunk brownies on a well greased cookie sheet.  You can use any type of brownie mix you want.  You may or may not need to use two packages depending on the amount of brownie mix comes in your box.  You want your cookie sheet filled about 1/2 way or higher, I wouldn't really go thinner than that.  It took 1 hour at 325 for my brownies to bake.

I then spread my cream cheese frosting layer on the cooled brownies.  And layered it with strawberries, raspberries and black berries.

 I warmed up some seedless raspberry jam and drizzled it over the fruit pizza (I put it in a zip lock bag and cut the corner a tad in order to drizzle it because it wasn't thin enough to just use a spoon.

 I then drizzled semi-sweet and white chocolate over the top.  I then put it in the refrigerator until we were ready to serve the dessert.

Here's the recipe - Enjoy!

Brownie Crust

- 2 packages ghirdelli brownie mix (from the Costco box) - You can use whichever type of brownie mix you want.

- Eggs, oil and water that your brownie mix calls for

Cream Cheese Layer

- 2, 8 ounce packages reduced fat cream cheese, softened

- 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

- 1 tsp. Vanilla

Toppings

- Strawberries

- Raspberries

- Blackberries

- Seedless Raspberry Jam

- Semi-sweet chocolate

- White chocolate

Baby Food Jar Spice Jars

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How many of your spice drawers look like the one below?  I hope I'm not the only one ha.

Well I was sick and tired of digging through my spices every time I needed one.  I would spend forever trying to find the right container in the pile.  I decided it was time to do something about it.  I've actually  been planning on doing this for a while, but finally got around to doing it and I'm so glad I did it!

I simply took old baby food jars and washed them.  Then I spray painted the lids black.

After the lids were dry, I wrote the different spices on top using Elmer's Painters Pen.  I will warn you to test your pen somewhere before writing on your lids.  At first my pen oozed out a TON of paint.

 Then I put the spices in the jars and put them in my drawer.  I love it!!!