desserts

desserts — 1 Comment
21
Oct 09

Flourless Chocolate Cake on Steroids

All cakes should be homemade. If the frosting is messy (or there’s no frosting at all), I don’t care. If a big chunk falls off when you’re plating it, oops! But cakes are special. They mark important events, and when I get a homemade cake, in all its non-professional, crumb-riddled glory, I know that someone cares. Apparently, I’m in good company.


So when I heard that a friend and coworker was leaving my office to go back to school, I had to send her off with a homemade cake. I started with a flourless chocolate cake from the Gourmet Cookbook that’s incredibly easy to throw together. Then I spread on a layer of peanut butter frosting, and topped it all with a coat of dark chocolate ganache and some almond bark.


I’m not a cake decorator. Hell, I don’t even have a cake platter. But despite many superficial flaws, this cake is the most decadent, luscious chocolate cake I’ve ever eaten. It put a smile on everyone’s face. And nobody cared that it looked funny. Because I’m not a professional baker, and this cake was homemade.


Recipe after the jump…

desserts — 3 Comments
13
Oct 09

Almond Bark

Almond bark is an ideal snack. It’s not exactly healthy, but it beats out a bag of chips, and just a few bites goes a very long way towards satisfying a chocolate craving. I like it straight from the refrigerator because it’s brittle at first bite, and then melts into a rich, chocolaty mouthful spiked with crunchy almonds. It’s also so simple to make that it barely requires a recipe, but here goes:


Recipe after the break…

breakfast / desserts — 10 Comments
2
Sep 09

Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

People say that money can’t buy love, but nobody ever says that cinnamon rolls can’t. And I think you might agree with me that bartering these cinnamon rolls in exchange for love might in fact be a pretty even trade. See, cinnamon rolls are happiness in food form. Most people have fond childhood memories involving the wafting smell of sweet cinnamon waking them up in the morning, whether it was a surprise snow day, a random weekend, or Christmas morning. So eating a cinnamon roll is not just about enjoying the big, delicious, warm, rich, soft, buttery, oozy, sweet, cinnamon-filled treat that practically melts away in your mouth, it’s about reliving the best parts of childhood for a moment or two.

A while back, I found this recipe from the Pioneer Woman (one of my many food blog addictions). The amount of butter in the recipe soared past sinful without so much as a passing glance, galloped easily past gluttonous, and went straight to Oh-Dear-God-In-Heaven-This-Must-Be-A-Mistake. We’re talking 8 sticks of butter just for the filling.

But they looked so incredibly delicious that I just had to make them. As it turns out, I ended up cutting the butter in half, but it wasn’t for health reasons (would anyone ever consider cinnamon buns to be healthy?), it was just because after a certain amount, the butter started to pour off the sides of the dough, all over the counter, and threatened to overflow onto the floor, so I decided to stop. The only other major change comes from the fact that I am a firm believer that cinnamon rolls are best when topped with warm cream cheese icing, so I substituted it for the PW’s coffee-maple icing.



I admit, the recipe is long, rather time consuming, and a bit messy. But the outcome of all the work? In a word: happiness. What starts off as luscious ecstasy in the first bite slowly transforms into pure giddy joy as you remember how perfect it was being a little kid. You eat the rest and let the sugar high take hold. It’s odd, but you can’t resist smiling. And that’s when you know it was absolutely, 100% worth the effort.


Recipe after the jump…

desserts — 3 Comments
3
Aug 09

Watermelon Nectarine Granita

Making a granita is a legitimate excuse to stick your head in the freezer for a few seconds in the summertime. It’s also a chance to relive your childhood snow cone days while pretending to be classy and sophisticated. This was the first granita I’d ever made, and it was so simple and refreshing that there will definitely be more to come. All there is to do is blend some fruit together, pour it into a pan and freeze it. No special equipment or skills necessary.


Most recipes call for adding sugar to the blended fruit juice for added sweetness. Instead, I opted to add a couple nectarines to the watermelon, which really brightened the flavor and amped up the fruity, summery feeling of the dish.

Recipe after the jump…

desserts — No Comments
31
Jul 09

Almond Biscotti

Biscotti are the ideal dessert because they’re incredibly simple to make, but they seem complicated and fancy. You may have always been content to buy them at the grocery store, but once you make them, you’ll wonder exactly why you were paying over $6 a bag for something that costs well under $3 and takes less than 10 minutes of active time to make.


Biscotti means “twice baked,” and thats what these cookies are. First, a whole blob of dough is baked. Then, it’s sliced and baked again in its typical stick shape. Another advantage of making biscotti yourself is that you can choose how crunchy you want to make them, from moist and crumbly to break-your-teeth hard. I’d recommend against the second extreme.

Here, I use sliced almonds, but there are thousands of variations on biscotti. Perhaps some of them are slightly more difficult than others, but this one is dead simple.


Recipe after the jump…

desserts — 2 Comments
23
Jul 09

Lemon Squares

Every recipe has a story, and the important one here is not how it came to my family (a tale that involves a bassoon and m&ms among other characters), but how it changed me.

This was the first recipe I ever made, and it has all of the elements that conspire to get a little kid excited about cooking and baking. First, it’s sweet but lemony, so you know it’s going to be tasty. Second, it involves getting your hands dirty (which may not be fun for the adult who has to clean up after a messy child has left greasy fingerprints all over the kitchen, but is certainly fun for the kid). Third, it’s easy. Lastly, it’s a crowd pleaser, so you get that kind of “ooh, ahh, yum” feedback that makes you want to go back into the kitchen to make it again.

Oh, and they freeze beautifully, and are best eaten straight out of the freezer, so they’re a great thing to make on a rainy day and keep on hand in case of company (or, more likely, in case of sudden lemon square cravings).

Clearly, my mom knew what she was doing on that fateful day when she said to me “Josh, honey, if you want lemon squares, I need you to help me make the crust.”

Recipe after the jump…