Tag: <span>strawberries</span>

Fresh Strawberry Tart

Fresh Strawberry Tart

Our Fresh Strawberry Tart recipe is here just in time for strawberry season! This beautiful tart makes the perfect ending to any meal. A mouth watering dessert layered with chocolate, filled with a rich and decadent cream cheese filling, and topped with jam glazed strawberries. […]

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Valentine’s Day is coming up and I know what I want……anything chocolate!!! Chocolate covered strawberries are one of my favorite V-day treats, but the price tag in stores is highly overrated. No thanks! Lucky for you (and me!) they are SO easy to make. Like […]

Summer Fun at Becker Farms

Summer Fun at Becker Farms

A couple weeks ago we took a charming little daycation to Becker Farms! Does it count as a vacation if it’s just one day of fun? I think so! I’m counting it!! Becker Farms is a quick 45 minute car ride from our home in Buffalo (it’s also a 45 minute ride from Niagara Falls if you’re playing tourist). In grade school growing up, we went on field trips to the farm to pick apples. As we got older, we would visit every Halloween for their haunted hayrides. And now as adults, let’s be honest, we came for the booze! Becker Farms is home to Becker Brewing Company which offers 8 different locally produced aritsan hand crafted micro brews and ciders, as well as Vizcarra Vineyards, one of the 21 stops on the Niagara Wine Trail. We couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Monday afternoon! Maybe Mondays aren’t so bad after all.

Our first stop was of course, the Brewery! Might as well just dive right in with a tasting flight! My hubby rose to the occasion. This is where he truly shines!


The winery was closed since it was a Monday, but luckily you can still sample their wines at the brewery. My favorite was the Niagara. I love sweet wines! The sweeter, the better!! And I even took a bottle home with me. They have a slew of  unique flavors of fruit wines, including Spiced Apple, which tastes like apple pie and Rhuberry, a blend of rhubarb and strawberry.


Once we got a little liquid courage, we decided to head out to the cherry grove. I sent this guy up a ladder to reach the best cherries at the tippy top of the tree. He was like a seasoned pro!

Picture perfect cherries still on the branch! The farm provides plenty of ladders for everyone and there are also scales out in the grove so you can pick by the pound. You can bring your own containers or purchase them at the General Store on site.


Check out some of our haul! They were so good that a couple of them didn’t seem to make it to the bucket! The following week we made an amazing, homemade, from scratch (even the pie crust) sweet cherry pie!! You can find the recipe for our homemade pie crust here! And check out those glowing white legs!! Tanning is just something I’ve never been able to do. I have two color choices, white as a ghost, or as red as those cherries!!


After we filled our cherry bucket, we headed over to the strawberry patch to catch the tail end of strawberry season. You had to look a little bit harder, but we managed to find some good ones!


After we left the farm, we headed to Lake Effect Ice Cream in Lockport, NY. I had been dying to try this place for like……FOREVER!! Lake Effect is a small batch artisan ice cream company and a local favorite. Seriously, ask anyone in Western NY where to get the best ice cream and they will surely namedrop this place!


The flavor combinations are so diverse and unique! Too many killer choices to pick just one, so we opted for a flight of five. We chose Big Wayne’s Cake Batter (top left), Whiskey Brown Sugar (middle), Peanut Butter Epiphany (top right), Loganberry (bottom left), and Strawberries and Cream (bottom right). Loganberry was our favorite, by far!!! It’s such a traditionally unique Buffalonian flavor and these guys sure nailed it! We loved it so much that we had to get a Loganberry milkshake to split on the ride home. OMG. PERFECTION!! So good!!

From there, we headed to New York Beer Project for dinner. The building is HUGE and holds a gastropub, a tap room, 3 private banquet rooms, alongside an outdoor beer garden, tiki bar, and fire pit.


Here’s my guy enjoying a well deserved beer after all of that hard work at the farm! Isn’t he cute? I think so!


Sticking with our flight theme for the day, we chose to go with a flight of burgers. I mean really, who would say no to a flight of burgers??? No one! The Destination Flight includes 3 slider size burgers, the Upper East Side (cheddar, avocado, applewood smoked bacon, arugula, tomato, and ranch), the Times Square (swiss cheese, carmelized onions, sauteed mushrooms, pub sauce, lettuce, and tomato), and the Central Park (cheddar, pulled pork, applewood smoked bacon, onion strings, and slaw). I would absolutely order a full size version of any one of these babies next time!


We also couldn’t resist a flight of mac and cheese!! Not one, but three kinds of oozy, gooey, cheesy, deliciousness! Send it right over here!! The Mac N Cheese flight is a smaller version of the Manhattan (beer cheese sauce with a buttery crumb topping), Hell’s Kitchen (cherry bbq sauce, pulled pork, and signature slaw), and the Buffalo style (blue cheese crumbles, hand-dipped buffalo chicken tenders) mac and cheeses. Not gonna lie! The Buffalo style was my fave! It even came with a Buffalo chicken strip on top.

I absolutely love this gorgeous summer weather but I’m also secretly dying for it to be Fall so we can do this all over again with apple picking and hard apple cider flights!! Who’s with me???

Red, White, and Berry Fruit Pizza

Red, White, and Berry Fruit Pizza

We make my famous Red, White, and Berry Fruit Pizza every Fourth of July. And sometimes on Memorial Day. And Labor Day. And whenever berries go on sale. And even on just because days. It’s so good that I promise you will never get sick of […]

Berry Delicious Belgian Waffles 

Berry Delicious Belgian Waffles 

Have you ever gone to the grocery store and just couldn’t avoid buying something that wasn’t on your list??? Raise your hand! We’ve all been there! That’s what happened with these strawberries. I just couldn’t pass them up! So then I started to brainstorm what to make with […]