It’s college graduation season! I remember the day I graduated I was equal parts exhausted and so excited to celebrate with friends and family. That morning we all got together and came back to my extremely small 500 square foot college apartment (what was I thinking?!) for a champagne toast!

I put out a few bottles of Korbel and different juices for people to mix and match. You name the occasion and I was down for a little party (still am!).

If you’re showering a new graduate or throwing a party to commence the occasion, bubbly is mandatory! It’s a right of passage to toast a new graduate into adulthood and the world.

People always ask me the best kind of drinks to serve at parties and while beer and wine are always good choices, I love a few cases of champagne if you’re celebrating!

Champagne instantly makes people feel a bit more festive and excited to be at your party.

How to Make a Bellini Bar:

Grab a surface to set everything up on. You can use a table, buffet or a countertop. I love using my Design Ideas console table for this because it’s sleek and takes up hardly any room. Plus, it looks gorgeous just the way it is without a lot of added décor or linens.

Mix up 2-3 fresh fruit purees and get them chilling before people arrive. I love doing a mixture of stone fruit and berries. Simply blend them up in a food processor, strain and add in simple ingredients like lemon juice, sweetener (if desired) and herbs for freshness.

Chill the champagne bottles and your glasses so they are perfectly cold once everyone arrives. I love using a mixture of champagne flutes and coupe glasses for height on my bar setup.

Fill a few small bowls up with different berries and fruit slices for a festive garnish on each drink. If you’re feeling really festive you could also add herbs, stir sticks or little tinsel drink stirrers.

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Herbal Spring Bellini Bar

This Bellini Bar is the perfect thing to add to your next party. Champagne instantly makes people feel a bit more festive and excited. Amp up the traditional bellini bar with plenty of cold champagne and a few easy fresh fruit purees made from scratch.

Keyword Cocktails and spirits, Drinks, Entertaining

Skill beginner

Servings 1

The post Amp Up Your Bellini Bar with These Herbal Fresh Fruit Purees appeared first on The Inspired Home.

The meringue base should be crisp with a slight chew, while the whipped cream on top is fluffy and silky. Berries are the ‘solid’ constant, sprinkled on top of everything to provide moisture and bright flavor contrast.

While my family jokes this is “mostly air”, it does make a great dessert for a crowd since it’s gluten-free.

It’s also incredibly easy to adjust the toppings based on what you have and especially what’s in season. This pavlova is topped with three kinds of berries, but if your blackberry bushes are overloaded, use that with a little lemon zest instead. No basil? Switch it out for mint!

One essential for this recipe is a good stand mixer. My grandma has had her KitchenAid for decades. It’s a piece of equipment that lasts a long time and is always reliable. Trust me…one time I made 125 mini pavlovas for a wedding. It survived.

I also consider a KitchenAid stand mixer an ‘anti-unitasker’. It doesn’t just ‘stir things’. My most frequent uses are for whisking egg whites or making bread or cookies…but you can also purchase a ton of attachments.

From a juicer, to veggie noodle maker, sausage production and even ice cream making, you can keep your kitchen free of unnecessary additional equipment by using the same base mixer.

Maybe the most exciting recent KitchenAid update is the new line of bowls. The line of mixer colors is always evolving (matte black!!!), but we’ve never seen something like this.

While I certainly don’t have a problem with the standard stainless steel bowls you’ll flip when you see the ceramic bowls. You can buy a floral bowl, a tropical bowl, or something more understated like my textured white version.

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Summer Berry Pavlova

Course Desserts

Keyword Desserts, Summer

Skill intermediate

Servings 1

The post Fresh Berry Pavlova Is the Light Summer Dessert You’ve Been Missing appeared first on The Inspired Home.

My grandma passed away several years ago, but my family enthusiastically carries on her tradition of homemade pasta. Every summer for 23 years running, we’ve gathered for a massive family reunion where we roll and stuff more than 5,000 ravioli.

Lots of people assume making pasta from scratch is hard. I beg to differ. What other dish can you make from three ingredients? Ingredients so simple and affordable they can be tossed out and replenished in the event of a misfire. I like to roll pasta by hand, (it’s a form of therapy for me), but pasta-making appliances can be a great “safety net” for beginners. Pasta machines and drying racks boost confidence by guaranteeing consistent shape and size.

Pro Tip: Whether you’re rolling out your pasta by hand or using a machine, rolled pasta must be thin. Overly thick pasta takes forever to dry and gets clumpy when cooked. A rolled, pre-cut sheet of pasta dough should be thin enough to see through it when held up in a well-lit room. Marcato’s pasta making machine has an adjustable thickness setting – I’ve found settings six and seven to be just right. Check out the sidebar for all of the tools and appliances I reach for first.

Here, I share a handful of my favorite summer pasta dishes. Pick one and give it a try. I suspect you’ll be saying “That wasn’t so hard after all” after you take your first bite.

Egg Noodle Pasta with Roasted Vine Tomatoes, Burrata, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Fresh Oregano

Recipe here.

Squid Ink Pasta with Salmon, Fresh Dill and Cherry Tomatoes

Recipe here.

Red Beet Ravioli Stuffed with Goat Cheese, Shallot Reduction and Brown Butter

Recipe here.

Spinach Noodle Pasta with Fresh Asparagus, Peas, Pesto and Parmesan Cheese

Recipe here.

Tomato Noodle Pasta with Fresh Arugula, Ricotta Cheese, Lemon and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Recipe here.

The post How to Master Making Homemade Pasta appeared first on The Inspired Home.

This year, I was determined to preserve those plants and all my hard work, but didn’t have the patience for drying them. But turns out, just like frozen summer berries, fresh herbs preserve well in the freezer too.

The first step is to store herbs the right way when you bring them in from the garden (or home from the grocery store!). Herbs such as basil, parsley, and cilantro should be set upright in water like you would with a bouquet of flowers and covered loosely with a plastic produce bag. You can use a simple jar for the job or a tool like the Hutzler Herb Saver, which keeps herbs at the right level of humidity. You’ll want to keep basil on the counter (or it will turn black) but put the others in the fridge. Herbs with woody stems like rosemary, thyme, and oregano can be wrapped loosely in a paper towel and kept in a plastic bag in the crisper drawer.

When you’re ready to freeze them, here are three options:

Freeze herbs whole.

Herbs like thyme, rosemary, and even parsley can be frozen right on their stems. Rinse and dry them well, then place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze for about an hour. Then put the frozen stems in a zip-top freezer bag and take them out as needed.

Freeze herbs in cubes.

Herb cubes make the perfect portion, and you can pop them right into your recipes. Rinse and dry the herbs then chop (an herb stripper makes quick work out of this sometimes-tedious job!). Put about a tablespoon of chopped herbs in each compartment of an ice cube tray. Cover with either water or olive oil and freeze until firm, then remove cubes and place in a plastic freezer bag until you need them.

Another option is to freeze the herbs in cubes without any liquid at all. Fill the compartments of the Chef’n Spice Cube Herb Freezer Tray with fresh herbs and push the lid down to seal out air. Once they’re frozen, you can pop them out and add to soups and sauces.

Freeze herbs in compound butter.

Compound butter is a fun upgrade for a baguette, but it can also serve as a quick sauce and flavoring for meats, pasta, and fish. It also makes a pretty gift. And you can stash it in your freezer until you need it. To make compound butter, you simply blend softened butter with fresh herbs and seasonings, shape it, and freeze it. My recipe for garlic butter is below, but for even more flavor, try this recipe for Sage Roasted Garlic Compound Butter!

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Garlic Compound Butter Recipe

Skill intermediate

Servings 1

The post 3 Ways to Freeze Fresh Herbs appeared first on The Inspired Home.

Everyone can enjoy these creative concoctions! All you do is dream up a few flavor combinations based on classic cocktails. Then, you decide on a creative way to present them to your guests using fancy glasses, traditional garnishes, and whimsical ice cube shapes.

You’ll need a juicer if you don’t have one already. My Kuvings Slow Juicer has become my new favorite kitchen appliance. It’s not the first juicer I’ve ever owned, but it is the most efficient. Even though it’s called a slow juicer it processes fruits and vegetables just as quickly as my last juicer. Rather than shredding the vegetables and fruits, it pulls them in and crushes them using a giant corkscrew and a very powerful motor. You don’t even really ever need to use the plunger. This crushing action renders more juice, which is evidenced by the small amount of dry pulp the juicer produces. In addition, it’s been the easiest to operate and isn’t too time consuming to clean.

Once you decide on a flavor combination, traditional glassware completes the illusion and makes each drink feel very special. Luminarc glasses have the clean, modern style I favor. I was able to find just about any style you can imagine. It’s good to have a few different types on hand. It’s always great to have a good wine glass, and I love the delicate curves of these margarita glass and sturdiness of the rocks glasses.

Whimsical ice trays offer a fun way to make your juicer drinks even more creative. We froze juice from satsuma oranges in the Fred & Friends Cool Jewels Diamond Ice Tray and floated the blinged-out shapes in my Honeydew, Apple, and Lime Margarita. The usual room-temperature juices become more appealing and refreshing when they’re ice-cold, and a Trudeau Cocktail Shaker with Measuring Cap is helpful to have on hand if you want chilled but not watered-down martini-style juice…shaken, not stirred.

Get the party started with a shot of spicy ginger and turmeric served in a glass made of ice. That’s right! This bracing drink is full of antioxidants and is a sure bet to fight inflammation. So if you have a headache or an injury, this is the drink for you. The vessel is made by freezing water in a food-grade silicone mold by Fred and Friends.

Try one of our mocktail recipes or make up your own the next time you’re in the mood for fresh juice at home or when you host your next evening get-together this fall. You might be surprised by the positive reaction from some friends and family members–you know, the ones who sometimes roll their eyes about your healthy habits.

There’s really no reason for fresh juices to be relegated to a sad plastic cup with a straw. Join in our mission to make juicing super cute so we can all raise a glass and drink to our health.

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Green Grape Spritzer with Lemon

Keyword Appliances, Fruit, Healthy, Juices, Superfoods, Vegetables

Skill intermediate

Servings 1

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Spicy Beet Root Bloody Mary

Keyword Appliances, Fruit, Healthy, Juices, Superfoods, Vegetables

Skill intermediate

Servings 1

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Honeydew, Apple, and Lime "Margarita"

Keyword Appliances, Fruit, Healthy, Juices, Superfoods, Vegetables

Skill intermediate

Servings 1

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Ginger Shot with Lemon and Turmeric: A Powerful Shot of Anti-Inflammatories

Keyword Appliances, Fruit, Healthy, Juices, Superfoods, Vegetables

Skill intermediate

Servings 1

Equipment

• 4 frozen shot glasses

The post ​Drink to Your Health: Creating Fruit and Vegetable Mocktails appeared first on The Inspired Home.