If there is anything I can drink by the gallon, it’s got to be Strawberry Lassi. Lassi is a perfectly smooth yoghurt-based creamy drink that is really popular in India (Of course, blending it with strawberries isn’t traditional.) This is a season favourite that has become a breakfast staple for me (along with being a lunch substitute and a snack to satiate a midnight hunger pang!). The strawberry lassi is so gorgeous to look at, baby pink speckled with vanilla crystals, that I find myself playing with the bottle of strawberry lassi as if it were a kaleidoscope.
All you need is 4 ingredients and an immersion blender (or a fork to mash and a whisk to mix) and you will have a luscious and utterly creamy strawberry lassi ready in just a few minutes. Don’t fret if you don’t have vanilla beans at hand, you can skip it entirely and still enjoy a yummy strawberry lassi.
Strawberry Lassi
Serves: 2
Note: You may need to vary the sugar based on how sweet your strawberries are and personal preference.
400g / 14 oz. plain yoghurt (or you can use vanilla yoghurt too, I like Dannon)
150g / 5 oz. strawberries, washed and hulled
60g / 2oz sugar
½ a vanilla bean, split and scraped
In a medium sized bowl, place the strawberries and sugar together and blend together with the immersion blender. Add in the yoghurt and vanilla bean innards and blend until it all comes together. If you’re impatient, just drink it up. If you’re Zen-like, let the vanilla bean sit in the strawberry lassi for 30 minutes (refrigerated). Serve cold over ice cubes.
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The best things to come out of my kitchen from last year’s strawberry madness were without a doubt the strawberry pop tarts and the supremely creamy frozen strawberry yoghurt that I made over and over again (and I don’t think I can ever get enough of. Ever.)
Just when I thought nothing could possibly outdo these favourites of mine, I was in for a pleasant surprise in the form of strawberry butter. Strawberry Butter! How could I not have thought of this sooner? My favourite fruit + butter, lots and lots of butter, come together to give me straaaaawberry buttttaaah! Okay, enough of the dramatisation, but I cannot tell you how this ridiculously simple butter will change the way you have your ho-hum butter on toast. Heck, I’m not even a butter on toast kind of person, but with this strawberry butter, I’m a convert.
I made bite-sized buttery (more butter!), flaky biscuits from Dorie Greenspan and dolloped a generous amount of the butter on top . Warm biscuits, crisp on the outside, and melt-in-the-mouth soft inside, heavily scented with the strawberry butter. Betty couldn’t make a better butter breakfast.
While I’m off to pull out the butter from the refrigerator to spread on some toast (you don’t need to wait for it to soften! It’s soft and spreadable!) , I’ll leave you with the recipe.
Strawberry Butter
Note: It is important to have all the ingredients at room temperature, otherwise you might end up with a strawberry butter that looks like ricotta cheese, which I actually prefer over the uniform texture, but it won’t have the smooth buttery texture you set out to achieve. If you do end up with the ricotta-like butter and want to smoothen it out, place the bowl with the butter over a water bath on a low heat and keep stirring it so that the heat is evenly distributed at all times. Soon you will see that the butter and strawberry puree come together to give you a homogeneous mixture.
100g butter
30g Philadelphia cream cheese (optional, use butter if you don’t have it)
30g icing sugar
60g strawberries, washed, hulled and pureed
- In a bowl, whip the butter and cream cheese until it looks light and fluffy. Add the icing sugar and mix until evenly incorporated.
- With the mixer still on, pour in the strawberry puree and mix together. You can either go for the marbled look and not mix it up entirely, or go the whole hog.
Buttery Biscuits
Adapted from: Baking From My Home To Yours, Dorie Greenspan
Yield: 12 biscuits
Note: Super easy to make and comes together so quickly. Just make sure to sift the flour with baking powder; nothing can be more nasty than getting a piece of biscuit concentrated with the flavour of baking powder. I wish I weren’t talking from experience.
2 cups / 250g all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
3/4th stick / 80g butter
3/4th cup / 175ml light cream (25% fat)
- Line a baking sheet with parchment or Silpat and preheat the oven to 425F/220C.
- Sift the flour and baking powder together. Whisk in the sugar and salt.
- Working quickly (don’t want the butter to melt), with a pastry blender, cut the butter into the dry ingredients. You will have irregular shaped chunks, flakes, pebbles and whatnot. This is how it should be.
- Pour the cream over the mixture and lightly knead together, until everything has come together. Dust extra flour if required.
- Dust a work surface and roll out the dough to a ½ inch thickness.
- Using a 2 inch cutter (in my case, I used a 1 inch cutter for bite-sized biscuits) cut out as many biscuits as you can. Use the scraps to roll out the dough for the second time.
- Transfer the cut out biscuits to the baking sheet and bake for 14-18 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown. Serve warm with the strawberry butter!
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Of late, I’ve been eating fruit yoghurt every morning. This is one breakfast item I haven’t gotten bored of ever since I discovered the goodness that a
berry + yoghurt mixture can yield. Fast forward to January ‘10, I still eat berries and yoghurt with the same gusto. Of course, sometimes I use regular yoghurt instead of making my own vanilla yoghurt. But hey, such shortcuts are allowed in the mornings where all you want to do it satiate that grumbling tummy.
I like my fruit yoghurt to be really fruity – definitely not the kind that just leaves you with a hint of the flavour and you’re forever guessing what that fruit might be. Today I made myself mulberry yoghurt for the first time. And you know what made me so happy about it? It turned a much deeper shade of purple after sitting in the refrigerator for a few hours!
I loved how thick and creamy the yoghurt was – sweet and slightly tart from the berries. I can eat a huge bowlful of it and be a happy, happy woman for the rest of the day. You know the best way to maintain the thickness of the yoghurt? Blend the fruits and stir the yoghurt separately. You might feel lazy to use up more dishes – but this is absolutely critical to achieve that unctuous texture. Once that’s done, just stir in the fruit puree into the yoghurt and that’s it! Deliciousness awaits you!
Mulberry Yoghurt
150g mulberries
400g plain yoghurt
4 tbsp sugar or honey (if you’d like it healthier)
4 tbsp caster sugar (more or less, depending on how sweet your berries are)
- You can either blend the mulberries with an immersion blender or roughly squish them up with a fork for some added texture. Add the sugar as well.
- Stir the yoghurt in a bowl until it loosens up to yield a uniform consistency.
- Now pour the fruit pulp/puree into the yoghurt and stir together until evenly blended.
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