Strawberry Cream Cheese Pop Tarts

Over the years, I've become a connoisseur of tinfoil wrapped pastries. I use the term pastries lightly; anything that comes packaged to last through Armageddon doesn't quite pass my personal criteria as a true pastry. However, as any red blooded American child could tell you, despite the fact that pop tarts have an expiration date that lasts into the next year, they are delicious. Sinfully.

Pop tarts, if you haven't had the privilege of enjoying one for yourself, are filled pastries drizzled with frosting and sprinkles that are served for breakfast.

Yes, breakfast. They have seven essential vitamins and minerals, after all.

As a child, I was torn between the chocolate fudge and s'mores flavors, constantly changing my opinion over which reigned supreme. Pop tarts were a rarity in my house, considered a "special treat" instead of standard fare. My mother would buy pop tarts for afternoon snacks (never breakfast) and we were allowed only one in each sitting. Since pop tarts come packaged in twos, this became a big deal.

Would the remaining pop tart be eaten before it went stale?

(If anyone can identify with the fear of ending up with a stale pop tart, it's Paula Poundstone).

When I stumbled across the Michael Pollan quote above, I've truly tried to take it to heart. While I don't always eat "healthy," I try to eat real. Real foods in real cooking and real baking, with no ingredients floating around that I can't pronounce. Though this Strawberry Cream Cheese Pop Tart wouldn't fall under the definition of healthy, it's made with sound ingredients and fresh fruit which places it above tinfoil wrapped pastries in my book.

They are a treat my great-grandmother would have made and (if the genes she's passed down to me are any indication) enjoyed them immensely.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Pop Tarts are flaky, fruity hand pies. Two layers of pie crust (with a hint of oatmeal for a rustic touch) sandwich a thick spread of cream cheese and sweet, fresh strawberries. These little pies are relatively simple to make, but assembling them does take some time. These make for a lovely addition to special breakfasts or summer picnics when you'd like a less messy pie.

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No-Churn Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

In high school, I was smitten over the boy who sat in front of me in Latin class. It was a quiet crush; I was a shy and modest girl, only becoming more introverted when faced with the back of my crush's head. In the four years we shared the same small Latin class, I never worked up the courage to talk to him. We had quite a bit in common, both in and out of school, but when we'd find ourselves alone in the classroom, I'd bury my face in my notes instead of facing him. When I did open my mouth to speak, the words would stop before leaving my mouth, leaving me looking like a fish out of water.

I can only imagine what he thought about me, if he thought anything at all.

This particular boy I admired also wrote for the school paper. Each month I made it a point to page through it, as girls with high school crushes will do. One particular month, however, I came across an article that made me stop. It was written by a girl proclaiming her crush on a boy for all the school to read. The article would not have been nearly as interesting, except for one detail: part of the article had been lifted from a creative writing assignment I had written for English class the year prior. Confused by the plagarism, I scanned the article and gasped. This proclamation of "like" wasn't written about just any boy. It was for my crush and this girl was using my words to profess it!

It was a moment straight out of a sitcom.

I immediately folded up the paper and looked around for my best friend. As the girl who had heard me gush about this boy for the better part of two years, she was the only one who could understand and share in the sheer irony of the situation. As I showed her the paper and told her the story, we laughed until I cried. It was comedic and devastating, all at once. Looking back, it was, in essence, one of those quintessential high school experience.

Though I chose to ignore the plagiarism, I eventually learned my crush had turned the other girl down. As happy as I was about this turn of events, it still left me with one unanswered question: did he turn her down because he didn't return her feelings or did he turn her down because of the words she used to profess it? Would he have turned me down if he had known where those words originally came?

I may never know.

No-Churn Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream is creamy, dreamy, and you don't need an ice cream maker to create it! Blueberries are swirled into a cream cheese base, creating a colorful dessert that tastes remarkably like blueberry cheesecake. It is very rich, so a little does go a long way. One scoop will make for a refreshing dessert after an evening meal.

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Honey Wheat Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

It's a common practice, when one is feeling under the weather, to partake in retail therapy. Buying expensive shoes or a new shirt, in those moody moments, makes the weight of the world seem a little lighter. It's hard to say exactly why spending loose change can turn a mood from blue to bright. For some reason, it's easier to face the world with a cheery face when you're working a new pair of blue jeans. Whenever my mood is headed toward melancholy, I like to go food prop shopping.

I doubt you will find anyone get more excited about dirty, thrift store silverware than me.

Thrift stores and yard sales are the holy grail of food prop shopping. Not only is everything exceptionally inexpensive (as a young woman, extra cash is something I do not have), but the kitchen tools and dinnerware are each a unique find. Certainly this type of shopping can be the definition of hit-or-miss, but when you stumble across something you didn't know you'd been searching for, the union feels fated.

I've recently been caught up in old bakeware. Scratched and blackened, only years of dedicated cookie making could have turned these baking sheets into the perfect state of used. Old jam jars become glasses for milk and vases for stray wildflowers. Glass candle holders become cups for serving puddings or containers for jam.

Though I have an entire closet filled with baking gear and food props, I find myself using the same things over and over again. The old cotton sugar sack in the photos above is used so often, you could easily spot it in every other post (go play a game of I Spy—I wish I was joking). The white rimmed plate holding the honey cake is another find that frequents the pages of this blog whenever a slice of cake or a stack of cookies need to be held. Lately I've been wondering why all my photographs seem to look the same. I think I have my answer.

Last weekend I found myself on a food prop shopping spree. I came home with so many bags of old dishware, I began to wonder if I'd need another closet to hold it all. Plates so old they have the appearance of broken egg shells and colorful silverware now fill the shelves of my closet. Now to wait for inspiration to strike...

This Honey Wheat Pound Cake with Cream Cheese Icing is a real treat. The cake is a simple one, made with part whole wheat flour, buttermilk, and honey. The honey, however, turns this cake into magic when it hits the oven, caramelizing on the bottom and sides of the pan. Topped with a honey sweetened cream cheese icing, I found myself eating this cake for breakfast and lunch. I used a dark honey for this cake and I suggest you do the same to get a deep caramelized flavor. However, if dark honey isn't available, regular honey will work just fine.

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