This recipe has been adapted from With Helen blog.
We are always on the look out for recipes that contain freeze dry products that are easy and delicious make – this recipe ticks every box!
Below is a photo off all the ingredients you will need plus some frozen strawberries, remember you’ll need our Luvaberry Strawberry Crunch
Ingredients
*incoming*
Method
*incoming*
Happy Easter!
Mandy and Maddy have been busy in the kitchen, rustling up some Easter treats using the LuvaBerry Freeze-dry Range.
These chocolate treats are easy to make and taste so good! You can and store in the fridge for nibbling over the long weekend.
You will neeed
200g packet of white marshmallows
1 tablespoon of water
50g unsalted butter
200g dark chocolate
1 cup of LuvaBerry whole Freeze-dry Strawberries
½ cup pistachios
½ cup cranberries
Steps
Put all dry ingredients into a bowl: pistachios, cranberries and whole pieces of LuvaBerry freeze-dry strawberries
Combine marshmallows and water in a saucepan over a low heat. Stir constantly until melted
Remove from heat
Add in chopped up dark chocolate and stir until melted
Use a silicone mould that is easy to pull off once set or line a slice tin or a muffin tin
Pour in melted chocolate mix thoroughly.
Either using the back of a spoon put into a slice tin ready for setting or as we did spoon into silicone muffin tins.
Allow to set for a min 2 hours, overnight is ideal.
When finished dust with Luvaberry Strawberry dust
Slice in half or into pieces as a nice accompaniment to a cheese platter or serve with coffee
Let us know how you go by posting videos and and photos of your creations.
Today we’re celebrating International Women’s Day and at LuvaBerry we’re all about female empowerment. We feel that there’s nothing stronger than women supporting women. So, we’re using this day to give a huge shout out to some of our favourite local female owned businesses. Thank you for inspiring us every day.
Kokopod
Back in the early days of LuvaBerry freeze-dry, Mandy was part of the 2018 Food Grow Coastal Accelerator Programme. This is where she met the driven brains behind Kokopod – Brigid. Inspired by a trip to Europe when she was younger, Brigid’s passion for Australian made artisan chocolate has only grown stronger. A 2019 Food & Agribusiness winner at the scbusinessawards, Brigid & her team are constantly working to develop & perfect new & innovative ideas with a focus on quality & attention to detail.
Collaboration is at the heart of what LuvaBerry does, and working with Brigid from packaging to product development is always exciting. You can purchase Kokopod’s gorgeous chocolates from their website, our favourite is the Strawberry Milkshake. Or, if you’re in the area and want to pop in to say hi to the wonderful team, Kokopod are based at the Ginger Factory.
Little White Goat Cheese
When Mandy and Adrian began their journey to become strawberry farmers, they had no idea of the amazing and supportive people they would meet. From one of the first markets selling fresh fruit, to where we are today the lovely Karen has been there every step of the way. When she’s not running around creating the most amazing goat’s cheese through her company Little White Goat Cheese, you’ll find Karen tirelessly working hard on innovative products such as Luv Handles.
We believe that behind every successful woman is a tribe of women who have her back and Karen is part of our tribe. A huge success at our Farmgate stall, Karen’s goat’s cheese is now available in a delicious freeze-dry feta option.
Thank you to all the fearless women in our lives that continue to inspire us.
International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide, as groups come together to celebrate women’s achievements or rally for women’s equality. You can read more about it here.
The amazing Lucy made these tasty treats and shared them with us on Instagram. Check out her Instagram feed for a sneak peak into her life as a mum with twins.
Strawberry macaron shell
140g almond meal
150g pure icing sugar
10g strawberry dust
55g egg whites
150g caster sugar
37ml water
Pink gel food colouring
55g egg whites
Strawberry cheesecake filling
60g unsalted butter, room temperature
80g icing sugar mixture
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
100g cream cheese, softened
To make the shells: Put the almond meal and icing sugar into a food processor and process for about 30 seconds, just to make it extra fine. Pour them into a large bowl with the strawberry dust. Add the first lot of egg whites and a few drops of food colouring. Mix it all together and if you like, add more food colouring until desired colour is reached. Cover until needed.
Put the second lot of egg whites into the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment (or hand mixer). Prepare a piping bag and 2 cookie sheets with baking paper, or use silicone macaron mats.
Put the caster sugar and water into a small saucepan. Bring to a slow boil over low/medium heat. Once it reaches around 90०c, start whisking the egg whites (on their own in the separate bowl) until thicker and a bit foamy, about a minute. Remove sugar syrup from stove once the temperature is over 100०c. Put beaters on medium speed and slowly pour syrup into the foamy egg whites to make the meringue. Once all added, turn the speed to high for about 2 minutes. Check the consistency and scrape down any syrup from the sides or bottom. Put it back on medium for about a minute. Check the consistency again. It should be less stiff than a regular meringue mixture, but still hold peaks, and it should have cooled down to about 40-50०c. Pour 1/3 of the meringue into the pink almond meal/icing sugar mixture. Mix it all together until colour and texture is even, you can be a bit rough with it at this stage. Add the rest of the meringue mixture and fold it in more gently. Once all mixed together push the mixture up against the sides of the bowl and fold back into the centre. Do that for roughly a minute, until the texture resembles lava. Just tip the bowl from side to side to see how it moves.
Put the mixture into a piping bag and pipe onto your cookie sheets. If you’re not using a template count to the same number each time you pipe a shell, so they end up roughly the same size. Once you’ve piped out all of the mixture, tap each tray on the bench about 10 times; this releases any air bubbles that will cause your shells to be hollow in the middle. Turn on your oven to 150०c (fan-forced). Leave your shells on the bench to dry for about 15-30 minutes. After 15 minutes touch the surface of a few macarons to check if they stick to your finger, if they do, leave them 10 more minutes. They need to form a skin and so your finger should only leave a small imprint in your shell, not remove any mixture with it.
While they are drying out, make your strawberry cheesecake filling: In the bowl of your electric stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter until smooth. Add the icing sugar, strawberry dust and vanilla extract. Beat until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Add the cream cheese in two parts, scraping down the bowl in between. Beat until the mixture is smooth. Place in the fridge until needed.
When the shells are dry, put them in the oven for 15 minutes, swapping the trays over halfway through so they are evenly cooked. Before removing from the oven ensure they’re no longer soft by trying to lift one off the tray, if it comes freely then they are ready, if it won’t budge, leave another 2 minutes. Keep doing this until ready. They should take anywhere between 15-25 minutes. The cooking process is tricky, so don’t leave them alone for very long! Check on them every few minutes if needed.
Remove to a cooling rack. Take your cheesecake filling out of the fridge and check the consistency. You want your filling to be quite stiff, but soft enough to pipe. A filling that is too soft won’t hold up when you push the shells together. Match up shells to similar sizes and lay out on the bench. Pipe your filling onto one shell, leaving about 5mm around the edge, then gently push and twist the other shell onto it. Put into a container and wrap the container tightly and securely in cling wrap or similar – moisture is not their friend!
These taste best a day or 2 after you’ve made them, and will keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks if wrapped securely. Enjoy!
We’ve been playing around with our wonderful freeze-dry dusts (3 for $55 and free Aus shipping) and love how easy but creative moulds are!
Our freeze-dry dust can be added to your smoothie, cereal or yogurt or sprinkle over ice cream. They’re pure fruit so have all the benefits of fruit with no added preservatives, sugars or colours.
We’ve been seeing moulds popping up in Coles and Woolworths, but eBay/Amazon has a great selection too.
Everything from seasonal Santas to unicorns and pineapples. These hearts are a favourite of ours.
We take our favourite yogurt and add a teaspoon of dust, you can add more for a deeper colour.
Once it’s mixed in and you’re happy with the colour, the next step is to add to your mould.
It’s important to make sure there’s no air bubbles and if you have an intricate shape; that you get into all the corners. We often use a fork/knife or a kebab stick to poke into the corners to make sure there’s no air trapped there.
Once you’re happy you’ve filled the moulds correctly (sometimes this is trial and error), you pop it in the freezer to set!
We’ve even tried experimenting with half strawberry dust (pink) and half blueberry dust (purple) – check out the pineapple image below.
Here’s some examples of the final product:
We’d love to see what you create, remember to tag us on Instagram and share on our Facebook pages.
Another amazing recipe from Zoe on Instagram, she’s always creating beautiful things so check out her page!
Raspberry Dust Souffle Pancakes
4 Eggs Seperated
100g Caster Sugar
200g Milk of Choice (Dairy Free Alt or Cow will work)
240g Self Raising Flour (GF or Normal)
¼ tsp Salt
15g Raspberry Dust (Any dust would work here)
It’s heating up across Australia so we thought we’d share this great but simple recipe to cool down.
It’s made using yogurt so it’s not dairy free but we’re sure you can find alternatives out there.
We bought the mould from Kmart – they came in pink so we just couldn’t resist!
In two different bowls we separated the right amount of yogurt.
In one bowl we added blueberry powder for the purple layer. In the other bowl we added a spoonful of raspberry powder for the top and bottom layer.
We mixed the bowls and then carefully spooned into the mould layer by layer.
Earlier this year we spotted the wonderful Zoe on Instagram, she’s always creating beautiful things so check out her page!
We reached out to Zoe and asked if she’d kindly like to get creative with some freeze-dry products & the results were amazing. It’s taken us WAY too long to share these recipes but we promise the wait was worth it… first up, Strawberry Dust Sponge with Blueberry White Chocolate Chantilly.
Strawberry Dust Sponge w Blueberry White Chocolate Chantilly
Strawberry Sponge
100g Plain Flour (You can totally use GF flour here.)
15g Strawberry Dust (You could use any freeze dried dust)
½ tsp Baking Powder
4 Eggs
120 Caster Sugar
75 Melted Butter (that’s cooled slightly) (You can also use DF butter)
Blueberry White Chocolate Chantilly
500g Cream
150g White Chocolate
20g Blueberry Dust (You can use any free dried dust here too)
Assembly
100g Sugar Syrup
Extra Freeze Dried Fruit
Meet the Maker
We’ve pinched this little blurb about Zoe from this Facebook post from the Three Mills Bakery in Canberra.
From the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Zoe joined the Three Mills Bakery family this year as their in-house chef and gluten free expert. She has also been collaborating on the Beyond Bread & Butter cook book.
Zoe has worked in prominent restaurants and establishments such as 3 hatted Attica in Melbourne and 2 Michelin star ‘Core by Clare Smyth’ in London. We sat down for a chat about food and life.
Strawberry Dust Choc Bliss Balls
Today we have an amazing treat for you to try with your LuvaBerry dusts.
If you don’t follow @MelbMumFoodie on Instagram it’s time you did! She’s always getting creative in the kitchen and this time with our strawberry dust, making chocolate covered bliss balls! They look too good to resist.
Here’s the simple recipe for you to try at home!
Recipe:
1 cup dates (soaked in warm water)
1 cup almond meal
1/2 cup shredded coconut
2 tablespoons of strawberry dust
1 tablespoon chia seeds
1 tablespoon honey
Mix in processor
Roll into balls and refrigerate
1/2 Sugar free choc chips @noshufoods
1 tablespoon coconut oil
Melt these two ingredients
Dip the bliss balls into the chocolate and sprinkle with strawberry dust @luva_berry
Enjoy ?
Luvaberry has been awarded a Brisbane Snail of Approval. The Snail of Approval recognises producers, chefs, restaurant owners and food outlets to use and promote good, clean and fair ingredients from the local area.
In 2019 we welcomed the Brisbane Slow Food Group to the farm, we had a wonderful farm tour and talked about our War on Waste journey and freeze-dry range.
Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us. Since its beginnings, Slow Food has grown into a global movement involving millions of people in over 160 countries, working to ensure everyone has access to good, clean and fair food.
Slow Food believes food is tied to many other aspects of life, including culture, politics, agriculture and the environment. Through our food choices we can collectively influence how food is cultivated, produced and distributed, and change the world as a result.
Now, fast forward to 2020 and LuvaBerry has officially been awarded the Slow Foods Snail of Approval.
Businesses can be recognised if they are making efforts to produce food which is good, clean and fair.
The only strawberry farm in the area to receive the Snail of Approval, Mandy from LuvaBerry was emotional accepting the award, “It’s so humbling and rewarding to be recognised for our hard work. A few years ago we wanted to make a difference and challenge the way we think about waste on farms. It finally feels like your journey and effort is making a difference so thank you.”
