Month: September 2009

Web find: guiltless orange dessert

Hungry Girl calls this dessert Scoopable Creamsicle Crush Pie, but since I turned it into parfaits, I’m not really sure that the name still applies. But it tastes darn good. You can find the recipe at her site in celebration of National Creamsicle Day (Aug. 14).

frozen orange

Two things appealed to me about this recipe: 1) it uses Nilla Wafers, which I love, and 2) it doesn’t mandate anything I din’t usually have in the house – most especially, no mass quantities of Splenda. I made the creamy filing with instant pudding mix, yogurt, Cool Whip and the juice from a can of mandarin oranges, and then layered it with whole orange slices and cookies that she recommended you break up.  I think my way was much better, if only because it dictated single servings in the cute parfait glasses I got at a second hand store for 25 cents a piece.

Plus, I could eat them with the excuse that Baby needed fruit and calcium and maintain some truth to my story – the ingredients are that real. Life is good.

(Alas, the dessert would be far cuter if I had a can of cool whip to spray on top, but that would have mandated another trip to the grocery store, most likely in my pajamas, and nobody wanted that.)

$250 burning a hole in my imagination

A blog I occasionally read asks today, “what would you do with a $250 grocery story gift card?”  I think that’s easy: stock the freezer. Ground meat, chicken breasts and thin cut pork chops. Heat and eat veggies. Lots of plastic tubs filled with my own spaghetti sauce and pesto sauce and casseroles. Bagels and waffles for my bleary-eyed husband to nosh before he dutifully marches off to work. And ice cream – ooooohhhhh the ice cream.

http://www.bwog.net/uploads/groceries.jpg

I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna need it all when this baby arrives in March and I’m too a) sleepy, b) disheveled, c) hypnotized-in-love with the baby, or d) cash-strapped to get to the grocery story and make us the dinner we both need. Or maybe there will be 6″ of snow falling in Chicago (since it’s not safe to put the snow shovels away until after Memorial Day).

What else should I stock up on for a March baby?

TWD: Cheesecake Brownies

I made the bold decision to leave the espreesso out of these brownies, and I feel like I stopped mid-step.  I should have left the sour cream topping off, as well.

cheesecake brownies

The brownies were really good – though my marbling left a lot to be desired. The brownie part was dense, the cheesecake part was creamy, and the combination was a delight! I really enjoy chocolate and cheese together in general (so much so that I once attended a chocolate and cheese pairing class at Vosges, where I made a mess of myself eating white chocolate panini, and I would do it again in a heartbeat), second only to chocolate and peanut butter, and this 9″ pan of goodness did not last long in my refrigerator.

However, the sweetened sour cream topping added nothing but a big mess.  The taste didn’t really enhance the brownies at all, and it made them difficult to eat in the car – one of my true tests for good feed: can I eat it in transit? Sour cream leaves too much evidence, and it smells if you forget to wipe it off your steering wheel before you leave your cap in a sunny parking lot and board the train in the mornin.

I’m just saying: leave the topping off, then love the brownies.