PIE!

My grandfather came for lunch, so I had to have an enticing dessert. Coconut cream pie anyone? yes, I think I will.

I made the pastry - yes folks, I made it. But only because I forgot to buy one and couldn't face loading the kid up in his car seat and schlepping back out...here it is prebaked...rustic looking? I use the Barefoot Contessa pastry recipe, with a LOT more water than she uses

Toasted up the coconut while the pie shell baked...


Made the custard filling...1/2 c sugar and 1/4 c cornstarch mixed with 4 egg yolks, 2 c half and half, and vanilla....

Here is the filling in the crust....

Top with whipped cream and voila - coconut cream pie!

R's mushroom birthday cake

Mr. R decided to try a different cake for his birthday this year ( the standby being German Chocolate from a box). We went for the Chocolate/Peanut Butter creation that I found on Smitten Kitchen a while back.

For whatever reason, I didn't think to take pictures until well into the cake creation process. So for example, here's the basic iced cake - a really moist and delicious chocolate cake with a peanut butter frosting. The recipe calls for 3 layers, but I opted for 2 mainly because I didn't have 3 8 inch pans and didn't want to bake in batches. So I made 2 9 inch layers and let them bake slightly longer. The dog really enjoyed licking the frosting bowl. Pay no attention to the cake's precarious position on the counter.


Once chilled, it was ganache time. Peanut butter, chocolate chips, corn syrup...with some 1/2 and 1/2 mixed in at the end.


Problem was, I didn't add enough cream/corn syrup. So 1) it wasn't shiny and 2) it was too thick. Hence, we have a giant chocolate/peanut butter mushroom cake. I should have captured a more aerial shot to show off its mushroominess.


Regardless of how it looked and the strange texture of the ganache, it was a really good cake. The frosting had really good peanut butter flavor without having a gross overly-buttery taste that happens sometimes with frosting. The cake was VERY moist and delicious. I may or may not have eaten two pieces on the birthday night. Next time I make this, I will definitely take more care with the ganache so it behaves as it is supposed to!

14 layer bars! Ridiculous!

I was out of work a day last week because I felt quite yucky, but by afternoon, I felt a baking urge coming on. I had little in the house to work with - some oatmeal, some chocolate, some nuts, some butter. I went to the Food Network site and started browsing around...and found a recipe for 14 layer bars - much more grand than the standard 7 layer bar. I was intrigued as to whether it would be good or not, so I plowed ahead and made them.

I split these between two 8-inch baking dishes - one would stay behind with Mr. R and one would go with me to B-lo.

At its base - butter, graham cracker crumbs, vanilla wafer crumbs, chocolate graham cracker crumbs:


Then coconut and oats:

Then the chips - butterscotch, peanut butter, and chocolate:

Nuts! In my case, pecans, walnuts, and sliced almonds:

And finally, blobs of cream cheese and a light coating of sweetened condensed milk:

Bake in the oven until golden and voila - 14 layer bars.


I have to admit, I did not actually try them. I was too full to try them in B-lo, and by the time I got back to Cbus, Mr. R had eaten them all. They were VERY easy to make and may make a reappearance at a football party in the future - throw together baking is the way to go, I think.

No Bakes

So, for some reason, no bake cookies popped into my head this week and I knew I wouldn't last more than a few days if I didn't make them. The first time I ever made these cookies was during home ec class in middle school. Way back in the day.

So, for starters, i mixed about 3 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder, 1 stick of butter, 1/2 skim milk, and 1 1/2 c sugar in a sauce pan.


Bring slowly to a boil and let boil for 2 minutes


Mmm. Crunchy peanut butter. I added a heaping half cup to the cocoa mix off the burner, along with 1 tsp vanilla and a tiny pinch of salt.


Then the oats! I ended up using about 3 1/2 c of quick oats.


I dropped them by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a foil lined pan (no parchment in the house for some reason).


They were ready to eat after about a half hour...and eat them I did. My mom asked why I didn't bring them into work, I just looked at her.

"Light" tiramisu

So, I love tiramisu. My first experience with tiramisu was my sophomore year of college - a friend had gotten a selection of pastries from Mike's Pastry in Boston's North End. My eyes were opened to the glory that was coffee-soaked ladyfingers and mascarpone cheese.

Since that time, I've made the lovely dessert many times. Regular, chocolate - I like it almost anyway. THE PROBLEM, however, is that no matter how you cut it, (well, unless you cut it v. v. small, and that's no fun), it isn't a low calorie food. And I'm tryyyying to keep a bit of a lid on the calorie intake - I am not opposed to having some fun, just not having so much of it that I have to walk the poor dog for hours or ride to nowhere on our elliptical for days.

So, bearing this in mind, I set about making a lightened version of the tiramisu - the core flavors of mascarpone and coffee still had to be there, but I tinkered with some of the elements.

I started off making a zabaglione - in this case, 4 egg yolks, a few tablespoons of sugar, and some Amaretto. Whisk over a pan of simmering water until the mixture becomes pale and frothy.



Like this - then chill.


Meanwhile, I brewed some very strong dark coffee and mixed that with some sweetener and Amaretto:


I took 8 oz of mascarpone and about 2 oz of cream cheese and blended those together (I was NOT giving up my mascarpone)


To that, I added the chilled zabaglione:


And separately beat up some whipping cream with sweetener:


Then folded the cream/mascarpone cheese/zabalione mixture gently into the whipped cream:


Then, I took hunks of sugar free angel food cake, and started dunking them in coffee and layering them in a trifle dish


And added layers of the cheese filling - then topped the mess with shavings of bittersweet chocolate.


Not the world's prettiest dessert, but I managed to shave around 150 calories off per large serving by cutting some corners - and it tasted good! Next time, I'll take the coffee dunking more seriously - the angel food can take it!

Fatty McFatterton cookies

We're having a bake sale at work today and feeling rather uninspired, opted to make the Barefoot Contessa pecan shortbread cookies. They are easy - a fairly traditional shortbread dough - flour, sugar, butter - with flavoring and a bit of salt.

I failed to take pics as I went along - I wasn't in that mode - but I remembered towards the end.

Here's the dough being rolled out and cut - I've no idea why it looks like strawberry ice cream, it was decided NOT pink.

And into the oven with the lovely cookies:

And finally, the platter ready for presentation to the bake sale poobas.

Hopefully they sell - I don't need them at home tempting me!

Chocolate chip cookie experiments continue...

I'm still on a quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Everyone has their opinions, but what I want is a soft, but not too soft, cakey, but not too cakey, crisply-edge cookie with a not-too-sweet chocolate chip inside. I also personally want nuts, but I know a lot of people are anti-nut. So, I am still experimenting. This recipe was pretty good, especially the chocolate, but it still isn't quite what I'm looking for. The hunt continues. In the meantime...

I creamed 2 sticks of butter with a 3/4 c each of brown and white sugar. And some vanilla. Here it is at first:


Then a few minutes later - see the color change:


Now, all the dry ingredients and the lovely chocolate chips and nuts were added:

I used a mini ice cream scooper and baked about half the batch - these took a little less than 9 minutes per batch in my oven:


Now, you may notice, some of the cookies look different. I made about 2/3 of them on insulated baking sheets. Those spread out and became flat and normal looking. However, 1/3 were baked on a regular aluminum non-fancy sheets - and those did not spread and puffed up instead. V. interesting. Here they are in profile - on the left, insulated sheet, on the right, non-insulated sheet:


Even from above, they look different. The non-insulated sheet cookie looks normal, and its brother looks, well, just poofy and weird.

They still tasted good - but I did like the insulated sheet results better. Very interesting.

Hummingbird Cake

I've had many a Hummingbird Cake in my life, but hadn't thought about them in forever until this post on Cookie Madness. I had an itching to bake something, so I stopped at the store for relevant ingredients and threw it together at home. Although, I forgot one of the most relevant of relevant ingredients, eggs, so I had to make do with a two-layer cake instead of a three-layer monster cake. Sigh. Silver lining - more frosting for the remaining layers.

Here are the cake ingredients taking a spin - flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, oil, eggs, banana, pineapple, cinnamon...


Into the greased pans and the oven with the batter for 28 minutes:

While they cool, onto the icing! Mmm. Cream cheese and butter.

Frosting time - early stages:


And then heap all the rest of the frosting on top - yes, Virginia, that is an obscene amount of cream cheese frosting:

Tada! Oh wait, it's missing something...it's very rustic looking, no?

There we go....

Mmm...creamy fruity deliciousness....

Summery dessert?

Well, I don't know if these are ENTIRELY summery, but they will be delicious, oh yes, I know they will. Nothing makes me happier than cake with ice cream. I just love it. And I love ice cream cakes. But only the ones that actually have CAKE in them. Rolling some ice cream in cookie crumbs and forming into a cake-like patty is NOT an ice cream cake in my book. No way.

I'm relying on a method I picked up from Baking Bites. But unlike our friend at BB, I'm not making the cake from scratch nor the frosting. Am just too lazy. So, box cake mix and canned frosting, here I come.

First, I had to make the ice cream layers. I made two cakes - one will be chocolate cake/chocolate frosting/vanilla ice cream. The other will be white cake (well, Funfetti) with white frosting and strawberry ice cream. Thus, the molds:
Then, I baked the cakes.
And then I assembled and took a stab at icing them after everything was cool. Here we have our strawberry/funfetti concoction:
And the very ugly, but fairly tasty chocolate version:

Lessons learned - frosting does not want to stick to ice cream. Use a flat plate or a rotating stand. Frost cake better.