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Category Archives: Dessert
I had planned to make these for Valentines as Lenny loves them! In fact, whenever I ask about his favorite desserts this is the only one he mentions. Shari of Whisk: a food blog beat me to it as she picked this fablous recipe for our weekly Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) challenge.
The recipe starts with making a Creme Anglaise, which is a light pouring custard. It is made with milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla flavoring. I decided to skip the vanilla extract and add a split vanilla bean to the milk while it simmered. I love the dark speckles floating in the finished creme not to mention the very intense flavor of fresh vanilla.
While the custard was chilling I made the floating islands. Dorie’s recipe was basically egg whites with a little sugar. I normally add a bit of cream of tartar which helps them hold up a bit more. Since this recipe did not call for it, I did not add it. Instead I made my meringues extra big, which was a good idea, as when I removed them from the simmering milk they deflated quite a bit. Tip, save the slightly sweet milk and use in your coffee.
The recipe called for the option a drizzling of caramel, we went for it. I did decide to cook it a little longer then the recipe stated as we love burnt caramel. With the smell of vanilla, frothy milk and burnt sugar lingering in the house, we could not hold out and ate the dish slightly warm. Even though it is better when served a bit colder, we were not complaining as we licked the spoons and bowls clean. This is an easy recipe that tastes fantastic! Sultry creamy custard and comfortable caramel teasing your taste-buds. We may be eating this again on Valentines!
Be sure to check out all the other TWD Floating Islands as well!
For our first challenge Christy picked the Avocado. The avocado is also known as the butter pear and is native to Mexico, South America and Central America. It is also a fruit. Avocado is a “good” fat and has been known to lower cholesterol levels only after a 7 day diet rich in avocado intake. These subjects also showed a 22% decrease in both LDL (bad cholesterol) and triglyceride levels and 11% increase in HDL (good cholesterol) levels. Avocados are a great super-food to add to your daily diet to help aid in weight loss and maintenance.
For the RSBC challenge Christy asked to to make a dessert with this super-food. I have to say it took some time for me to figure out what I could possibly come up with using the avocado. We eat them very often but never as a dessert. I put a twitter out there asking my fellow foodies if they have any ideas – I got tons of them! As well this dessert was going to be for a dinner party so I wanted something that would look like dessert! Nicole from Pinch My Salt, sent over a recipe for an avocado pie, which looked fantastic. The recipe is so easy especially when you pick up a premade graham cracker crust. Basically you mix the avocado with condensed milk and lemon juice, I used fresh lime juice as I wanted to trick our diners into thinking it was key lime! Instead of using whip cream as a garnish I made a slightly sweet meringue for the topping. The result – it was fantastic! No would have guessed what it was, if Lenny did not keep grinning and asking, what do you think it is? Thanks Nicole!
With regards to rest of my challenge, I am sorry to say I was not that good. Completed: 3 miles of running and 1 culinary challenge. This week will be better. Don’t forget to check out Balance for to see how everyone did with this challenge.
The super-food this week with be the Kale and you need to use it as the main ingredient for dinner. Kale is considered to be a highly nutritious vegetable with powerful antioxidant properties and is anti-inflammatory. It is high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin and rich in calcium.
Rules for the challenge
Post your entries some time this week on your blog, and send me an email at denise@chezus.com with the link to your post and a picture. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. Entries are due Saturday evening before midnight. Have fun!
Heather of Sherry Trifle is the Tuesday with Dorie (TWD) host this week and she picked a very refreshing dessert, the Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread. I have always thought about making gingerbread or gingerbread cookies with fresh ginger but never have. I am so glad Dorie created this recipe, it is really lovely.
The recipe calls for fresh ginger, dried ginger and stem ginger (I could not find so I used candied baking ginger) as well as cloves and cinnamon, lucky for us, I still had some of that lovely cinnamon bark so I used that. In addition to molasses (which I forgot how much I liked until I licked the spoon) there is melted bittersweet chocolate and pieces of chocolate mixed into the batter. I was suppose to frost the finished gingerbread with more chocolate but opted to keep it simple and on the light side. Overall, we like it as it is moist, spicy, light and really refreshing. Perfect after a nice meal or as a simple afternoon snack with a nice cup of espresso.
Thank you Heather for hosting!
This gingerbread is also the dessert for our Recession/Depression dinner series.
Mary over at Meet Me in the Kitchen is the hostess for this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie challenge and she picked the Berry Surprise Cake. What a fantastic recipe!
Dorie was inspired to create this recipe from her childhood days of having a Charlotte Russe. Charlotte Russe is a combination of sponge cake, fruit or jam, lots of whipped cream, and topped with a cherry. I have never had a Charlotte Russe so I was very anxious to try this recipe out.
The base of this recipe is a genoise whole-egg sponge cake. I was concerned the height of my cake would not be perfect as Dorie suggests using a 3″ spring-form pan, which I do not have, so I doubled the recipe and made two 9″ cake-pan layers.
The filling is a layer of simple syrup, a cream cheese based mixture and fresh raspberries. The simple syrup we decided to flavor with orange liqueur and cardamon, it was the perfect combination of sweet and spice. The cream cheese layer was simply cream cheese, whipping cream and very little sugar, I used the sugar from our sugar bowl that is full of vanilla beans and unrefined sugar! Finally a layer of raspberries.
The recipe calls for you to hollow out the middle of your cake, brush the center with the simple syrup, fill with a small layer of cream cheese and top with the berries, as I had two layers I did this with each layer. Then I topped them upon each other.
The outer frosting was pure whipping cream with a bit of sugar and vanilla. I had some extra cream cheese filling left over and since I did not want to waste it nor did I want it sitting on my waistline, so I added it to the frosting. It definitely gave it a bit more structure and made it easier to frost. After chilling for a couple hours it was ready to serve!
This dessert was soft and slightly sweet, just like a new summer day. A few of my fellow TWD bakers said that they did not think it was sweet enough and I was concerned when serving it, but we all liked that the flavors of the eggy genoise cake came through as well as the jammy flavors of the berries which was only enhanced by the traces of sugar and vanilla. This would be a delightful substitution to your typical strawberry shortcake.
Be sure to check out all of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers.
I was pretty excited, as I am sure rest of the Tuesday with Dorie bakers where as well, when I found out that Dorie would be our lovely hostess for this weeks challenge. I was equally as excited when I found out that Dorie picked the French Pear Tart. I have been dying to make a Pear Tart all winter and have not had a chance to do so. We had a dinner party to go on Sunday and I knew this would be the perfect opportunity.
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Most people either love or hate New Years. I always feel that it is one of those “over-rated” holidays with too many expectations and the end result is never what your fantasize it will be. Lenny still has hope, even though he can not remember one standing out over the others. This would be the first New Years Eve we have spent at our home as we are usually on the E. Coast. Therefore, we wanted to make it extra special with the hopes of it being one that stands out. In the early planning phase we talked to our friends Jeff and Andy to see what they were up too and before we knew it we were planning a sit down dinner for 12, one that would be similar to our ever so popular French Bistro dinner. But where would we go?
This time we would be going to Argentina! We started researching the food of Argentina almost immediately and the task at hand was looking for cookbooks, this proved to be very difficult. We finally decided on one to use, Argentina Cooks! As well, we were really surprised by the heavy influence of Europe, particularly Spanish and Italian in the cuisine. At one point I felt I was planning a meal in Italy. So we put out our feelers and contacted a few people, to get their advise on menu planning. Sylvia of La Vida en Buenos Aires was a huge help in giving us some direction with the menu planning.
Since our 20 sq. ft. kitchen would not handle a dinner for 12, Jeff and Andy were more than accommodating to host the evening at their home. As well Jeff would be my cooking companion as when we did the French dinner. Jeff’s brother John took charge of decorating for the evening and Andy set up the very adult bar. The table was decorated in shades of white and silver with lots of white light and candles. Each place setting had a coordinating menu printed out in hues of pale blue. We wanted the dinner to be cozy so he moved the living room furniture into the dining area and created a nice little lounge area which had views of the kitchen, and then he moved the table into the living room by the fireplace. The room was magical and intimate, exactly what we had in-visioned for New Years!
 
Unfortunately the guest list was the hardest part of the evening as we wanted to be with everyone but due to space and budget we had to have limit the guest list to 12. To be able to share our evening with everyone we love we did a live web cast – which was very fun as we had family and friends from far sign in. Sort of your virtual dinner party!
Now to the food! We decided to add our own style into the menu planning and to take the hearty country food of Argentina and add a California twist to it, as well we wanted to make it a bit more formal. It was very important that the food we used be organic, seasonal and as local as possible as we wanted to utilize the farmer’s market as much as possible. The menu we planned would be 7 courses and would be paired with wines to compliment.
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This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.
What is a French Yule Log you say and how is it different from the Buches de Noel that the Daring Bakers made last December? In France you can buy two kinds of Yule log, either the Genoise and Buttercream type such as the Buches de Noel or what is more common which is a frozen Yule Log, which is very reminiscent of an ice cream cake, only it is not made of ice cream but rather chocolate mousse. In French this is called an entremets, which is sometimes translated in English as simply a cream dessert. When I first read the recipe I was definitely intimidated by the 18 pages of instruction, in fact, I seriously reconsidered making it on and off for a couple weeks. Then as with all challenges, I just decided to do it, I knew I could this! So, I came up with a plan and decided to prepare this special dessert for our annual crab fest with our good friends, Evelyn, Will and MEM. WAIT! There’s more »
Vibi from La Casserole Carrée is the hostess for this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie challenge. Even though Vibi is not American nor will she be celebrating Thanksgiving this week, she picked Dorie’s Twofer Thanksgiving Pie. Thank you!
We are in Montana celebrating with family this week and lucky for you all, the family loves to eat, so we (or I) decided to make the Twofer Pie for a little pre-Thanksgiving indulging.
The pie is two pies rolled into one: pumpkin and pecan. The recipe is pretty straightforward, make Dorie’s wonderful crust recipe, add a basic pumpkin pie filling and top it with a pecan filling. The pie smells wonderful cooking with the two different flavors blending. I did have to cook it more than the recipe called for, probably due to altitude and it did come out rather soft still; but, the flavors and texture were really nice. The end verdict – it was not my favorite Dorie recipe. I would probably make two separate pies, but it was fun to try.
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