To celebrate this year's Independence Day we have a special Vanilla Butter Cupcakes recipe that kids and grownups will love!  Serve this at your celebration!

Also try 7-Layer Taco Dip (photo above) and Grandma Mary's Cheesecake.

Cool Summer Favorites - by Mani Niall

This month I'll teach you how to make a cool summer sorbet cream; it has the icy cooling power of sorbet and the richness of ice cream all in one, without a fancy ice cream maker. Also, high protein quinoa is tastier than many whole grains, cooks fast and is my new replacement for pasta salads. read more . . .
Recipes: Strawberry Sorbet Cream
Be sure to use ripe, tasty and preferably organic berries grown as locally as possible. Feel free to adjust the amount of sugar to taste and adapt this recipe to berries that grow abundantly in your area. Best served the day it is made as the cream layer will crystallize after a few hours.
Apricot Cherry Buckle
Buckles are batters that cook up and buckle over the fruit on top. I first read about them in Lee Bailey's "Summer Desserts", a book made just before the advent of high-style food photography. The pies and cakes are seen cooling behind screen doors, served in shady backyards, blooming flowers overflowing on the vine, which is the relaxing summer mood this recipe brings to mind. Get your cooking done so you, too, can go relax in the yard with a fresh baked slice.

Summer Quinoa Salad
Pronounced keen-wa, this whole grain is extremely high in protein and cooks quickly. A great way to get summer's bounty in a simple side dish, great for BBQ's. Serve with salad for a cool summer meal or add in more of your favorites: chopped turkey, sliced salami or just more veggies.

Kosher Cuisine with Marcy Goldman Cool Summer Menu from the Kosher Kitchen

Who wants to cook in July? Either you are cooked out or BBQ fatigued or on vacation. You may be taking a vacation chez vous or renting a cabin somewhere but even so, we all can agree – easy (versus hot and complicated) does it. Not only easy does it but it's the time of year we prefer to enjoy recipes that are cucumber-cool - something to refresh those dog-days-of-summer palates.
Recipes:
Poached Salmon Steaks or Filets with Dill Sauce
I love this herb coating on fresh salmon steaks or filets. Make this in the oven or in papiotte, a parchment papger envelope to quickly cook this in the microwave.
Summer Beet Borscht
This appetizing, scarlet, chilled soup is the Jewish kitchen's answer to vichyssoise.
Almond Cottage Cheese Pie
Bake and chill and then luxuriate in this rich but not too rich, cottage cheese based sweet almond pie. Serve with sour cream or fruit or plain. This freezes well too. Dry cottage cheese is a kosher style cottage cheese also called hoop or baker's cheese. You can also use drained curd cottage cheese.
Buttery Poppy Seed Cookies
A bit of a switch in poppy seed cookies. A rich, crisp buttery dough, filled with requisite poppy seeds makes this homey but slightly upper crust, in 'mon' cookies. Make these tiny and thin, and serve with tea.

See you next time!