Adventures in Mika's Kitchen
With the upcoming holidays, I’ve been looking for some simple, but flavorful, dessert recipes to try out for Christmas. I like to stick with ingredients that are in-season if possible – so for winter in Southern California… that means citrus! I love the bright & tart flavors that citrus fruits impart to cakes… the inclusion [...]
There’s a restaurant nearby that we go to sometimes that has a wonderful margarita called the “spicy tangerine”. It has a lovely sweetness, with a mild kick of spice and heat. This is my homemade version of that drink – use fresh limes & tangerines to make the juice for the best flavor! Enjoy! [...]
So I guess it’s now autumn and we have to say goodbye to summer (although you wouldn’t know it from today’s 91 degree weather)! With autumn comes some really great things… Pumpkin spice lattes, warm apple pies, spiced cider, Halloween candy… but I would say the fall flavors that I most look forward to are [...]
What is “La Paloma“? This is a Mexican cocktail – commonly prepared by mixing tequila with grapefruit flavored soda. In other versions, the grapefruit soda can be replaced with fresh grapefruit juice, fresh lime juice, and topped with sparkling soda water. According to many sources, the first published recipe for La Paloma was in a [...]
Now that it’s winter time, Japanese Fuyu Persimmons (a.k.a. “Fuyu Kaki“) are in season! (Fuyu persimmons are the non-astringent [sweet] short/flattened ones that you eat when semi-firm… not the astringent acorn/sphere shaped ones that can only be eaten when soft and squishy.) I found three of the largest Fuyu kaki that I’ve ever seen… put [...]
Last week, some friends gave us a bag of guavas from their backyard tree. The guavas were perfectly ripe, and very fragrant… Great timing, as I was planning to make some fall jams and jellies to give away during the holidays! While some guava jam recipes don’t call for added pectin… I think it’s a [...]
Over the weekend, we visited the Carlsbad Strawberry Company‘s “U-Pick” strawberry fields. For $20, they give you a large KFC sized paper bucket (and two adult admission tickets), and you can go down the rows of strawberries to pick and fill up your bucket. This was a really fun experience – our little nephew had [...]
There’s something about cherry pie made with fresh cherries… sweet and slightly tart, juicy and bright! Cherries are in season right now… the perfect time for fresh Cherry Pie!!! My only problem with making cherry pie at home from scratch – is the time it takes to pit the cherries. What a chore (and a [...]
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