Winstead Wandering

Prone to Wander

Southwestern Corn Cakes with Jalapeño Lime Cream

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Southwestern Corn Cakes with Jalapeño Lime Cream offer perfect lightly-fried bites of sweet corn, cheese, and peppers topped with a slightly-spicy citrus sour cream.

Southwestern Corn Cakes with Jalapeño Lime Cream offer perfect lightly-fried bites of sweet corn, cheese, and peppers topped with a slightly-spicy citrus sour cream.

My grandfather (Gramps) brought fresh corn to a family gathering last week. Like, picked-from-the-field-that-day fresh. He and my aunt tried cooking it using that cooler and boiling water hack. I’m not sure it worked, but seriously, it didn’t matter. The room temperature corn I devoured – sans butter, salt, or pepper – was divine. So divine, in fact, that I brought a bag of leftover ears home and immediately began dreaming of what I wanted to do with it.

I have several go-to corn recipes, but only one that I had all the ingredients for: Southwestern Corn Cakes with Jalapeño Lime Cream. Just like regular corn cakes, these guys are packed with juicy kernels and cheddar cheese. To add a Southwestern twist, I toss in sweet bell peppers and jalapeños. The resulting corn cakes are on the spicy side (I use a full tablespoon of diced jalapeño), so the jalapeño lime cream is the perfect cool relief.

Southwestern Corn Cakes with Jalapeño Lime Cream offer perfect lightly-fried bites of sweet corn, cheese, and peppers topped with a slightly-spicy citrus sour cream.

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Strawberry Limeade Cupcakes

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The perfect balance of tart and sweet, these strawberry limeade cupcakes are a refreshing treat for just about any occasion.

The perfect balance of tart and sweet, these strawberry limeade cupcakes are a refreshing treat for just about any occasion.

I made these cupcakes for a baby shower I attended recently. Actually, it was more like a baby sprinkle, and it was partly mine. We had a small faculty and staff gathering to celebrate the sweet baby girls another teacher and I will be welcoming soon. Because I never turn down an opportunity to bake, I volunteered to make cupcakes.

I knew right away I wanted to make a cupcake with strawberry frosting. I made some last year for B’s birthday and it was to die for. The recipe never made it to the blog, though, so I decided to recreate it. It wasn’t until the last minute I decided to step the whole thing up a level and make strawberry limeade cupcakes.

I did cheat and use a box mix. Sometimes I make cakes from scratch, but when I’m pressed for time, I’ll opt for homemade frosting over homemade cake every day of the week. To me, there’s just no comparison. I went with a regular yellow cake mix, because that’s what I had and because I’m really not a fan of the flavored cake mixes, like key lime or strawberry. I prefer to use a basic mix and add the flavors myself. It makes the final result taste much more fresh and homemade.

As it turns out, the shower wasn’t actually for four more days. So I just brought these beauties to school and left them in the office, where my coworkers were kind of enough to polish them off for me. Can you say pregnancy brain?

The perfect balance of tart and sweet, these strawberry limeade cupcakes are a refreshing treat for just about any occasion.

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glazed strawberry lime scones

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These glazed strawberry lime scones are so light and fluffy! The strawberries baked inside are sweet and juicy, and the lime glaze is the perfect balance of tart and sweet.

These glazed strawberry lime scones are so light and fluffy! The strawberries baked inside are sweet and juicy, and the lime glaze is the perfect balance of tart and sweet.

 

Some of my best recipes come to be through a desire to use up expiring ingredients. In this case, I bought a pound of strawberries and promptly forgot about them in the fridge. When I remembered them a few days later, they were just past the eat-them-raw stage. They hadn’t quite moved into completely inedible, though, so I knew I could bake them into something to avoid throwing them away.

I had pinned this scone recipe a few weeks earlier and knew it was just the vehicle for these almost-spoiled berries. Scones have a reputation for being the dry, unappealing cousin of biscuits or coffee cake, but I’m here to tell you that’s not true.

My only experience with scones has been the ones my mom makes, and those are moist, light, and full of flavor. The key to producing a fluffy scone- and not a triangle-shaped hockey puck- is to not over mix your dough. Once you add your wet ingredients to your dry, stir everything just until it’s combined.

These glazed strawberry lime scones are packed with pockets of fresh berries and swirled with lime juice. Before going in the oven, they’re sprinkled with coarse sugar for a sweet crunch. Next, they’re baked until golden and light and then drizzled with a tart sugar lime glaze.

These glazed strawberry lime scones are so light and fluffy! The strawberries baked inside are sweet and juicy, and the lime glaze is the perfect balance of tart and sweet.

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