The beauty of springtime blooms with each new crisp morning. The vibrant greens of new growth give us a lift, and a feeling of hope and joy takes shape. In that spirit, we invite you to linger for a moment, or a quality family time afternoon, on a few bright, spring-inspired recipes we’ve put together. From berries and lemons to basil and pistachios, we’ve got your crunchy, zesty, sweet and fruity.    

With gratitude on our mind, we thought it’d be a perfect opportunity to pull these easy, kid-friendly recipes together into a lovely care package to gift and honor the healers and helpers that have led the way through the past year. We are looking ahead, in particular, to Nurses Week and National Teachers Day coming up in May. These essential workers have kept us and our kids safe and have continued to endure because that’s what they do — as they say, not all heroes wear capes. 

Watch those kids' faces light up when that care package lands in the hands of one of their heroes. A big circle of gratitude and happiness awaits.

Enjoy the baking, the tasting and the gifting 😊.

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Nothing says warmer days and lighter tomorrows like the light, fluffy, crunchy zest of one of these lemon basil shortbread cookies*. Topped with pistachios, these non-traditional cookies might just be another unexpected bright spot of your spring. Because we love them, we recommend adding a handful of chopped up pistachios to the dough in addition to the crunched up (but not pulverized to powder) nuts that will give the satisfying crunch to the topping. The finished cookies will keep for five days or so, but if a triple batch of these find themselves in the break room next to the nurses station, the keep time is closer to 12 hours.

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Real strawberries. Real bananas. Real yum. These MINI strawberry banana cupcakes are just the cutest and will give you all the feels before you even take a bite. If you haven’t experienced the joy and satisfaction of mixing soft bananas until they’re mashed and creamy in a stand mixer, do yourselves a favor, grab the kids, and make it happen. It’s oddly therapeutic and the secret to the fluffy, sweet cupcake-y portion of this recipe. The frosting is made with real strawberries pureed until there’s no trace of chunkiness or lumps. Once all the buttercream ingredients are combined, be prepared to fend off hungry spoon lickers that are willing to go to unbelievably creative lengths for a swipe of the fluffy strawberry-infused goodness. Don’t forget to let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting! 

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These baked raspberry yogurt bars topped with powdered sugar deliver top marks on richness grounded with the subtle sweetness of fresh raspberries. Prep for these bars is about as straightforward as it gets with a quick mix, blend and a bake of all the ingredients, making this a great starter recipe for letting a budding baker take the lead on kitchen prep! We recommend a 9” x 9” pan for these, or if you are going for thinner bars you can bump up to an 11” x 7” pan. Dust these yogurt bars with a deluge of powdered sugar and only cut them up once they’ve completely cooled. We checked with the teachers and all said yes, they’d love a delivery of these beauties, especially if they came with the sweet faces of one of their students.

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To kick these recipes up into care package quality, wrap up your delivery package with a washable, reusable, and compostable alternative to plastic wrap from our friends at Bee’s Wrap, tie with twine, and drop in a kraft paper box - tasty joy delivered.

From all of us at Flourish, THANK YOU to all essential workers and frontline heroes for everything you’ve done in the past year. We are grateful for you. There will be better days because of you. 

With gratitude,

Flourish Flour

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*Recipe adapted from Blue Bowl Recipes