strawberry dessert pizza

this is a really easy dessert recipe that I found on recipezaar.com. It's easy to make and tastes wonderful. The first time I made it, I used a pie plate because I didn't have any pizza pans, but since then I've made it in a pizza pan and it turned out even better. And I used about 1/4 c. of sugar with unsweetened frozen strawberries instead of the spenda.

By: CoolMonday
May 13, 2005

A delightful addition to that Friday night family pizza. Found this at Guide to Southern Food. If using fresh strawberries, mash, sprinkle with sugar, cover, refrigerate for 2 hours, and add 1/4 cup water when cooking. I had unsweetened frozen strawberries and added 3 packets of splenda while cooking.

SERVES 8
Ingredients

*

CRUST

* 4 ounces butter (1 stick)
* 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
* 1 cup self-rising flour

FILLING

* 8 ounces cream cheese
* 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
* 1/3 cup lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

TOPPING

* 2 pints frozen strawberries, in juice
* 4 tablespoons cornstarch

Directions

CRUST
Melt butter, mix with confectioners sugar.
Add flour, mix well.

Pat out in pizza pan.

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

FILLING.

Beat cream cheese and condensed milk together.

Add lemon juice and vanilla.

Pour over cooked crust.

TOPPING.

Combine frozen strawberries and cornstarch in medium saucepan (or fresh, mashed, sugared strawberries, 2 tablespoons water and cornstarch).

Cook over medium heat, stirring, until thickened (about 5 minutes).

Cool and spread over cream cheese filling.

Refrigerate at least 4 hours.

still growing

Whew...this time of year always gets busy. The saying "hurry up and wait" comes to mind. We only have two more rows to plant in the garden, but we're still thinking about what we want to plant.
I'm not sure yet how many pepper plants will survive, but it's looking like we should have at least 30 - we hope to have "ancho", "green and yellow bell" peppers. I'm also not sure how many of the tomato plants will survive, but we should have over 30 plants and there are at least 5 varieties which I'll have to list another time because it's raining right now and I'm not going to waltz out and check the name tags. We planted three different varieties of corn - "early choice", "silver princess" and "honey select". Hopefully this year we'll have a good crop of beans, we planted "Jade green bush" beans and we're trying black beans for the first time this year - the variety name is "black turtle" shelling beans. The swiss chard, spinach and potatoes are all growing well. The peas that were planted didn't grow very well and the blank spots were filled in about a week ago and the new planting has started. The cucumbers that we planted this week are: "moringa pickling" cucumbers and "sweet slice" cukes. We also put in a few "spooktacular" pie pumpkins and some butternut squash. Hopefully all 177 of the glad bulbs that I planted will grow (they are starting), and I have three hills of dahlias too. We have 6 hills of celery growing too. I wanted some fresh herbs, so we planted a packet each of dill, sweet basil and rosemary. Hopefully I'll get some sage too - nothing is better than fresh sage!
Finally got around to mulching the flower beds in the front of the property, and while we were at it decided to transplant some Hosta's and Columbine to fill in where plants died out over the winter.
Today while we were waiting for it to start raining, we decided to tear out the old shrubbery that was planted beside the house. Luckily we did get the old shrubs out, but the rain started before we had the opportunity to replant with Hostas. On the bright side...with the rain...I won't have to water the plants in the garden for at least a few days!
We survived the cold temperatures this week - one night the temperature fell to 28 degrees. Fortunately we had the strawberry plants and potatoes covered. Some of the strawberries were lost, and a few potato leaves got burned with frost, but unless we have a really late season frost things are looking pretty good.
Oh...and the asparagus tally for the year is up to 54 lb. 3 oz.!
I'll try to post some current photos soon.

slow wet spring

This has been a difficult spring to work the garden. It seems to rain all the time (we just had 10 straight days of rain), and it's been pretty cool. Tonight the weatherman is calling for frost and freeze warnings. Our potatoes are about 6" tall, the peas have been slow at starting and Zip replanted 1/2 of one of the rows yesterday. I planted three hills of dahlias, and 177 gladiolus bulbs. I still have a few hundred baby glad bulbs that I'll tinker with this year so that MAYBE next year they'll be big enough to flower.
So far we've cut 36 lbs. 4 oz. of asparagus this year. I finally started freezing some and have put about 12 lbs. of it in the freezer.
The strawberries are looking wonderful, hopefully we'll be able to protect them from any potential frost damage tonight.
Our lilacs are in bloom right now and their fragrance is wonderful - hopefully the rain will stop for a few days so that I can enjoy them!

May 2, 2009

Thought that you might like to see a picture of my dog Loki smelling the flowers - and a close up of him with his mud colored face!

Our asparagus is yielding well enough this year that we're eating it daily, soon I'll have to start thinking about freezing some. It's SO much better fresh though! And the garlic is growing like crazy too. I don't know what I'll do with it all if it yields as well as last year. Last years crop kept during the winter quite well, and we're still eating it.

I cut my first batch of rhubarb last week and made a pretty good coffee cake. Hopefully I'll have enough time to day to cut some more and make a couple of pies.



We've had some wild changes in temperatures in the past week. On Monday and Tuesday the temperatures were in the 90's, but today the temperature is only supposed to reach a high of about 60 degrees. The warm temps. really encouraged the blossoms to appear on the fruit trees. Our plum and cherry trees are now in full bloom.