Category: dessert

TWD: Tibute-to-Katherine-Hepburn Brownies

Dorie says, “…these are thin, soft, very chocolaty brownies made without much flour…” and truer words have never been spoken. Except for maybe my friend Karen who tasted them at dinner Sunday night (actually, I think she ate them as an appetizer) and said, “those are more like fudge than brownie.”

KAtherine Hepburn brownies

These brownies may be my favorite yet! They are dense and soft and not at all cake-y, which is the prime reason why I don’t like brownies from a mix. These are MY perfect brownies. I think there might still be one in the cake dome, but probably not for long.

Dorie makes the bold move of adding instant coffee and cinnamon to the batter, which I know isn’t for everyone, but I love it.  It’s just a hint of something classy at the end of a pig-out session, and it’s probably not for kids, but I thought it made the whole thing a step above licking brownie batter from the spoon.

You can find the whole recipe here, at Surviving Oz. This non-baker designed the new Tuesdays with Dorie logo and agreed to bake with us as part of her “prize.” Though she was recognized for her design work, she is also a pretty exceptional writer and photographer, and not a bad baker (is there such a thing when you work from scratch?).

TWD: Honey-Peach Ice Cream

oh, honey-peach ice cream, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…This was seriously the best weekend treat I could have asked for.  I fire up the ice cream maker a lot during the summer, and previously my favorite was Nutella ice cream.  But now that Dorie has given me this, I’m not so sure.

honey peach ice cream

Even though I used frozen peaches (it’s too easly for fresh peaches in this part of the country, and frozen peaches come already skinned. SCORE!) for this treat, I found it wonderful.  I like to think it’s the locally produced farmers market honey I used,  rather than that flavorless glop that comes in the plastic bear.  The ice cream was rich and fresh and summer-tasting.  I can’t wait to make it again!

So, to justify my passion, I found several health benefits to my indulgence (via DinineCaroline and Health24):

  • Peaches are low in calories and one 100 g peach provides almost three quarters of the daily vitamin C requirement.
  • The fruit has a gentle laxative effect.
  • Peaches are also rich in iron and potassium.
  • When allergy season hits, locally-produced raw honey may be an effective treatment. Local honey works best, according to some, because it contains pollen from the same local grass and trees that are making you sneeze. However, few controlled studies support the efficacy of honey as an allergy treatment beyond those showing that it works as well as a placebo. If you have severe seasonal allergies, consult an allergist before self-medicating with honey.
  • Honey might improve your oral health. Studies have shown that the anti-microbial properties of manuka honey, thanks to enzymes, can help clear bacteria from infected wounds and can be used to treat gum disease and gingivitis.
  • Honey contains the same level of antioxidants as spinach and strawberries, according to some research.  The antioxidants in a gram of honey equal the antioxidants in a gram of fruit.

So, eat up, readers! Visit Brown Interior for the recipe – she added amaretto to her ice cream! Might this be another place for my beloved bourbon?

TWD: Cinnamon Squares

Oh, baking friends, where do the weeks go? I SWEAR there was no Tuesday this week – nope…skipped right from Monday to Wednesday.  That’s GOT to be the reason I am so far behind in these lovely desserts.

I’ve got a few to catch up on, so here goes.

Cinnamon Squares

The cinnamon squares were a hit, especially because they fill only a 9″ pan. Any more I think would be overload, but the cake is not dry, the chocolate is not too bitter, and the cinnamon is it spectacular self! It is my favorite flavor in the whole world. Thanks to Tracey for selecting it and posting the recipe on her Web site.

I once heard that a fraternity hazed freshman by making them swallow a whole tablespoon of cinnamon, and it didn’t sound too bad to me – that’s how much I love the flavor. I buy good cinnamon, too, from the Spice House.  It’s so much more flavorful than the stale stuff in the grocery store.  One whiff inside the store and you understand why it’s worth the trip (or the shipping charge if you buy online).

But I think the cake is perfect not just because of the featured ingredient but because of the combination of cinnamon and chocolate in such perfect proportions (even though I clearly need to practice scooping half of the batter into the pan before I sprinkle in the cinnamon/coffee/sugar/chocolate layer, as you can see that mine is a little too close to the bottom of the pan. Oops).  The chocolate frosting is this hardened combination of chocolate and butter that I hope to replicate on many dessert. I can see it on cupcakes, banana bread, peanut butter cookies…

TWD: Chipster-Topped Brownies

The theme at my house this weekend seemed to be “little pieces of heaven.” Between the smell of freshly baked-from-scratch brownies and the fluffy/fudgy texture of the dessert, it was wonderful dessert heaven, which has now turned into breakfast heaven, appetizer-while-I’m-making-dinner heaven…..

The comments during the baking process didn’t conjure the same cherubic bliss.  We started with nearly a pound of butter, a half dozen eggs and the double-dessert task of making brownie batter, washing to dishes, and then making cookie dough.  But you still only get one dessert out of the deal!  After I created the batters – which were each wonderful to lick off the spoon- Mom went to work on the pan, placing tiny drop of cookie batter on a smooshy base of brownie batter.  “Tedious” was I believe the word she used (right before she reminded me that she was, in fact, doing a “superb” job).  But her face said far more.  I don’t think her Dorie experience on this vacation did much sell her one of Dorie’s books.

Chocolate Chipster BRownies

But, an hour later when we were smelling the brownies and lifting them from the pan, all was forgiven.  They are spectacular! The brownie part is heavy on the chocolate, but also moist and dense and delicious. The cookie top provides a non-chocolate crunchiness to soften the blow of the brownies – it’s not far from the Toll House cookie recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag, but the not-for-a-box brownies make it taste like so much more.

I recommend that if you have a whole afternoon to kill making one dessert that you will eat for every meal all week long, you visit  Supplicious, where Beth has posted the recipe. (BTW, Mom recommends using many small drops to get the cookie dough onto the brownie batter, rather than large clumps of dough.)

Food Find: SugarBliss Cake Boutique

I had one Wednesday not long ago that was just one of those days.  It started with a very frustrating call from my realtor (nine days before closing!), followed by a  frustrating conference call, a do-it-yourself plant arrangement (how many Senior Staff Writers can say they’ve arranged Birds of Paradise and orchids with their executive directors?)  and finally a Norwegian man who walked into my office seeking asylum from a private company (we’re a professional society, not a church).  I needed something sweet.

So when I happened upon SugarBliss on my way to the train station, I found a $10 bill in the bottom of my wallet and picked two: lemon drop and Texas red velvet.  They are both fabulous: dense and light at the same time, sugary sweet, made with real ingredients, and TONS of frosting.  Perfect!

LemonDrop

(The menu also lists frosting shots for $1, which I feel might be in my future, as well as breakfast cupcakes.  I’ll have to investigate that further.)

Yet another day called for more of the same, but with limited cash on me I popped for just one cupcake to eat on the train going home:  orange creamsicle.  It made me a bit nervous, but it was the best available option.  It did not disappoint. The frosting alone was a bit cloying, but eaten with the delicate vanilla cake it was delightful – the cake totally mellowed out the frosting and I was one happy commuter.  I just wish they had better packaging for a single cupcake fix so that I wasn’t forced to lick frosting off the bag on the train.

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TWD: Fresh Mango Bread

I baked this two weeks early and STILL didn’t get it posted on time…AARGH!!

Regardless, I really enjoyed this selection by Kelly, of Baking with the Boys. Thanks for picking the recipe and posting it on your blog.  I don’t think I would have tried this on my own, but I’m glad we all did it together!

Mango Bread

I trusted the title of this recipe and served this “bread” alongside a Caribbean chicken (cooked in orange and lime juices in the crock pot for several hours) and some carrot pudding.  HA!  While we all certainly enjoyed the sweet bread at the main meal, it was far more breakfast cake then bread.  I’ve been eating it every time I walk through the kitchen (before work in the morning, after I get in from the train in the evening, on my way to bed….).

I should have known when I pulled the ingredients for this cake that I was too sweet for a main course Sunday Supper, but by then I was too close to dinner time to scrap it and shop for some other starch – and I made so many substitutions I thought maybe it would be more savory that Dorie had intended. So I continued on: white sugar, brown sugar, golden raisins, frozen mangos, lime zest, ginger and cinnamon.  YUM to all of it, and especially when it’s baked with oil and butter.

Keep in mind, though, that I was short on vegetable oil so I used some olive oil.  I diluted the white flour with whole wheat flour. I used frozen fruit rather than fresh.  AND, mangoes are a good source on antioxidants A, C and E, and potassium – so there are health benefits to this sweet treat.

The bread browned quickly on top, so I wrestled with the aluminum foil as I tried to tent it while wearing oven mitts. It stayed in the oven longer than the  90 minutes the book recommended, too, and each time I took it out of the oven to test it with a knife I had to readjust with the foil tent WITH THE OVEN MITTS.  I must have been quite the sight, but I soldiered on and it was worth it.

The browned crusty top was wonderfully crunchy in contrast to the moist cake and sweet fruit. The Other Eater and I gobbled it donw for breakfast every day that week.

Next week: chipster-topped brownies.  I am SOOO looking forward to these!

TWD: Tiramisu cake parfaits

Like many of my TWD colleagues, the idea of having a whole cake in my house is not appealing. I’m not really the kind of person who makes a whole cake just for fun, and so rather than gobble the whole thing down it tends to dry out and tie up valuable real estate in my refrigerator. This is especially gross when the cake has a lot of dairy it in that gets crusty and makes the whole fridge smell.

Tiramisu cake

A parfait, on the other hand, lasts mere hours before my will power caves in an I am licking the glass clean (no wonder the dessert’s name translates to “perfect”). Many thanks to Megan of My Baking Adventures for picking this week’s Tiramisu Cake recipe recipe, and posting it on her blog. Tiramisu literally means “pick-me-up” and even though I left out all of the espresso powder the pure pleasure of indulging in this treat on a sunny Sunday evening lifted my spirits.

I spread Dorie’s fabulous vanilla cake batter into a 13×9 baking pan and made a really shallow sheet cake that I cubed and tossed into parfait glasses (which I had previously purchased at the local church-run consignment store for 25 cents each). I scrapped the espresso syrup and extract in favor of Starbucks liqueur I had in the house, and layered the cake with the filling and the mini chocolate chips, as Dorie recommended.  It was a hit at Sunday dinner with The Other Eater in my household and his mom! Light and fluffy, just the right portions and not too rich to stomach after a nice dinner and a walk through the neighborhood on one of the first really great spring days of the year.

(Earlier in the meal we tore into the [frozen] fresh mango bread that my TWD colleagues will be making later this month – what a treat! More about that later….)

TWD: Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding

The weather here has been hit and miss lately: we’ll have one beautiful day of strong, warm sunshine and then five days of persistent light rain and general dumpiness.  “Good days for chicken Parm(esan)” one friend remarked the other day, and it seemed to sum it up just perfectly.

But Lauren of the Upper East Side Chronicle left me with chocolate bread pudding instead of chicken parm, and as long as I remember to microwave the dessert before applying whipped cream, I’m quite happy with her decision.  She’s posted the recipe for you, too, here.

Chocolate Bread Pudding

I love bread pudding, but it’s usually filled with vanilla and maybe bourbon or bourbon cream, so I was a little freaked out by the idea of bittersweet chocolate.  I decided I’d think about that at the grocery store – one of many things to think about, it turned out.

Sadly, the dairy producers do not consult with cookbook writers when they size their products (sort of like Steve Martin’s Father of the Bride rant about hot dogs vs. hot dog buns), so I did some creative recipe re-jiggering to make it all work without a plethora of dairy products in my refrigerator.

*three cups of whole milk and one cup of cream became two cups of each

*three eggs became the rest of the egg beaters I had leftover from something else

*6 oz. bittersweet chocolate became lots of bittersweet chocolate with a handfull of leftover milk chocolate and a few peanut butter chips sprinkled on top.

The end result was a delight! Dense, not too chocolate-y or overly sweet, and even kinda pretty to look at with those browned peanut butter chips on top. Whipped cream – even the fake kind from the can – makes everything better.  I’m a fan and I’ll be making it again next winter, I’m sure.  I just don’t see it as part of this weekend’s BBQ.

Easter Pie: Mom’s Way

In my refrigerator each Easter you will find two Easter Pies: Barb’s Easter Pie and Fran’s Easter Pie.  Barb’s is a sweet dessert filled with ricotta cheese, eggs, rice and pine nuts.  Fran’s Easter Pie is a tempting appetizer, a pizza rustica filled with sausage, pepperoni, a few herbs and whatever else I have in the refrigerator (this year it’s sun dried tomatoes and parsley.  More on that soon).

Barb’s Easter Pie

Easter morning after church my husband and I broke into Barb’s Easter Pie. It’s sweet but not overly rich, the perfect spring dessert. The eggs fluffen up and lighten the cheese (this is not nearly as dense as a New York style cheesecake) and orange zest makes it all taste a little brighter – a true signal of longer days and warmer mornings in the Midwest.

My recipe is the same as Giada’s, but I use refrigerated pie crusts instead of pastry. My crust doesn’t brown, either, so watch the oven.  I bet this would be really nice with a glass of Prosecco….

TWD: Banana Cream Pie (the lazy way)

Oh, Dorie, how I’ve missed you!   Moving went as well as can be expected, but the few weeks I spent eating down the pantry (canned soup, jarred sauce, and frozen meals that I didn’t want to pack and move) were hard on me. I’m so glad to be in the new house, largely unpacked and back to cooking.  Sing for your Supper’s choice of Banana Cream Pie – even though I kinda screwed it up – was a great way to start back in!

Banana Cream Pie

 Check out that stove!

I made a half-batch of the cream and filled tiny graham cracker crusts with banana slices, the cream and Cool Whip from a can.   But I did make a special trip to the store for vitamin D milk!  My custard didn’t turn out quite as creamy as many of the photos appear, which I’m chalking up to the learning curve of the electric stove I inherited.  And when I started to bake I had only unpacked half the spice rack so I used pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon and nutmeg, but the flavor was fantastic!  So much better than my go-to sugar free instant pudding with vanilla wafers and cool whip.

AND I got to try out the “new” stove.  There is definitely a difference between gas and electric, but I think I will learn to love this machine as long as it’s still working – the odd shape and size combined with the lack of gas line in the kitchen island make me think I’ll have it fora L-O-N-G time….