desserts

Nothing Says I Love You Like…

Nibbles

They say (whoever they are) that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Despite the anatomical argument against it, it very well could be true. Cupid knows the first, second and future dates I’ve procured due to the promise of my culinary skills.

With today being Valentine’s Day, the most loving of holidays (at least according to Hallmark), what foods of love are you serving up to your nearest and dearest?

Will it be the tried and true(?) aphrodisiacs of oysters and chocolates?

Dinner out, brought in!

Dinner out, brought in!

Will you be dining out? (If so, I hope you have a reservation someplace or are willing to wait a good, long while.)

Or will you skip dinner and go straight to dessert?

The other day we’d decided to seek dinner out a little too late on a Friday night to find any place without at least an hour’s wait and a line out the door. Rather than give in and pick up fast food, we got the idea to pop into Fresh Market and check out their ready-to-eat deli selections. We made a fabulous meal with a couple of pop-in-the-oven items, fresh fruit and cheese. Add in a bottle of wine from the fridge and a fire in the fireplace and it was a wonderful dinner out, brought in!

It’s Todd’s turn to cook this week so he’ll be cooking dinner but I’ve got dessert all ready to go: a lemon-blueberry cheesecake. Want to make your own? Check out my basic cheesecake recipe and not-so-secret secrets to getting the best results possible. This one features Lemon Snaps as the crust as edging, the cheesecake batter is flavored with a bit of Limoncello and then has lemon curd swirled-in along with fresh blueberries.

Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake

Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake

So, what’s the way to your heart?

A Tasty Experiment of Strawberry Proportions

Nibbles

I don’t usually post recipes, here, but today I’m making an exception. Strawberries have started to appear in stores and, while it’s still early in the season, the temptation is there to make something of them. This recipe would be a nice in-between step between now and when spring and summer shortcakes come around.

~~~oOo~~~

Hidden Strawberry Cake

Hidden Strawberry Cake

Company was coming for dinner and we’d picked up some early-season (but so fresh you could smell their sweetness as you walked past the flats) strawberries with a vague plan that they would comprise dessert.

But a vague plan only gets you to a few hours before dinner. What to do with them?

Sure, there’s the usual pie, shortcake or cobbler but I wanted something more cake-like.

For Christmas Eve I’d made the Caramel Apple Cake from Food Network Magazine, which was similar in concept to a pineapple upside-down cake and we really enjoyed the combo of dense cake and moist fruit. To make a strawberry-friendly version, I headed to Joy of Cooking for a basic Sour Cream Coffee Cake recipe (skipping the streusel) and added in a layer of strawberries between each half of the dough.

The addition of the strawberries and the change in baking pan from the original recipe meant it took twice as long for the cake to bake. And I worried that skipping the streusel topping would result in a blah cake.

Thankfully, our guest proclaimed it a very successful experiment.

~~~oOo~~~

Hidden Strawberry Cake

Cake
(adapted from Joy of Cooking)

4 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup plain Greek-style yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs, beaten

 Strawberry Filling

1 pint fresh strawberries
1-2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar

Strawberry Topping

1 pint fresh strawberries
2 Tbsp demerara sugar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and prepare an 8-inch square pan.

In a stand mixer, beat together butter and sugar until light-colored and fluffy.

Meanwhile, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a medium-sized bowl and stir until combined.

In a small bowl combine the Greek-style yogurt and vanilla.

Scrape down the mixing bowl and then, on low, add the dry and wet ingredients in batches to the creamed butter and sugar: 1/3 dry, 1/2 wet, 1/3 dry, last of the wet, last of the dry. Scrape down the bowl and mix in the beaten eggs.

Stem, hull and slice 1 pint of the strawberries for the filling.

Spread half the batter into the bottom of the prepared pan. Scatter the sliced strawberries in an even layer over the batter, sprinkling with cinnamon and brown sugar. Carefully spread the remaining batter over the top of the strawberry layer.

Bake for 45-55 minutes, until the cake is golden brown, the edges pull away from the sides of the pan and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

While the cake bakes, take the remaining pint of strawberries and stem, hull and slice them. Place them in a bowl with the demerara sugar (or other raw sugar), cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until you’re ready to serve the cake.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then unmold to a serving plate to cool completely.

When ready to serve, top each slice with some of the sugared strawberries.

~~~oOo~~~

The strawberry layer does sink a bit, instead of staying firmly in the center but the flavor is just fine regardless of the shift. The hint of cinnamon is just enough to spice the whole cake and the extra strawberries on top (along with the juices the sugar helps draw out) add a touch of moisture to the top of the cake. If anything, a little freshly whipped cream might also be added, but it’s certainly not necessary to enjoy the cake as-is.

Jell-O-bsessed

Nibbles

They are a hallmark of bygone days, incredibly retro and subject to some of the most odd flavor combinations and texture experiments ever born. Most consider them a novelty, at best, and something to be avoided at the family reunion at the very least.

I’m talking about the humble molded salad. Mixtures of reconstituted powder, canned fruit, whipped cream substitutes and who knows what else.

And I’m on a mission to find the good ones.

I’ve never been a huge fan of gelatin desserts but there was just something about the ones I had last month that really appealed to my taste buds.

  • They were sweet without being heavy.
  • The basic ingredients–gelatin, fruit, cream–aren’t inherently bad for you.
  • They are cold, perfect for the summer heat.

Oh, sure, there are some scary specimens out there. We’ve all seen them. Maybe even made some.

I tried to be inventive and use some of the things we had in our pantry to make my own version. We had cherry jell-o, canned fruit cocktail and a jar of marshmallow fluff (the latter leftover from a holiday project–honestly, I don’t usually keep these sorts of things around). I thought that the fluff would stand-in okay for the Cool Whip that seems to be a standard.

I thought wrong.

The fluff did not… mesh well with the gelatin. Oh, it tasted fine, but the texture was a bit off and the portion of the gelatin that I mixed with the fluff didn’t fully gel again, there was a bit of wateriness going on that made serving it with a slotted spoon a necessity.

There’s tons of these recipes on the ‘net–far too many for me to test and weed out the diamonds among the roughage–so I’d really love it if you’d point me in the direction of your favorites, the ones you’ve tried, your tricks with them. I’ll test the ones that seem the most promising and share my findings. This goes for the next month and a half–til the end of summer–but don’t wait. Even *I*, with my voracious sweet tooth, can only test so many options in the next 6 weeks!

Apple Dumplings

Nibbles

I’ve been thinking a lot about apples, lately, and with the weather cooling off, the cinnamon brooms showing up in the supermarkets and the idea that the holidays are right around the corner, I think of Mom making Apple Dumplings. This is her recipe, updated a little by me. They are especially good on cool Fall and Winter nights and actually travel fairly well for pot-lucks.

Apple Dumplings
serves 4*

1 sheet Puff Pastry Dough, thawed
4 medium apples, peeled and cored*
Cinnamon
Brown Sugar
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
Dried fruit (raisins, cherries, cranberries or blueberries all would go well)
1 beaten egg
White sugar

Roll out the puff pastry dough just a little bit to curb some of it’s puff tendencies (we want the flaky flavor, not necessarily the poofiness) and cut into quarters. [* If you are using very small apples you can actually get 6 dumplings out of one sheet.] Place an apple in the center of each sheet and sprinkle with cinnamon. Spoon some of the brown sugar (how much you use it up to you) into the hollows of the apples, top with a piece of butter and then the dried fruit.

Bring the corners of the puff pastry square up and around the top of the apple, pinching the corners together. Don’t worry too much about sealing up all the edges, it’s actually quite pretty to leave the little openings that the folded sides create. Place in a buttered baking dish and brush with the beaten egg mixed with a little water. Sprinkle with the white sugar and bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit or until the apples are tender, covering with foil if the pastry begins to brown too fast.

Serve warm with ice cream, freshly whipped cream or just plain heavy cream drizzled over them.

Blueberry Dumplings

Nibbles

It’s (technically) Fall now, and that means various group pot-lucks or company get-togethers will be starting, soon. Maybe it’s school fundraisers or church socials, but at some point you’re going to be asked or expected to bring something yummy to share somewhere. Even if it’s not expected, this is a quickly put-together dish that will delight your office, your civic group or just your family one nip-in-the-air morning.

Blueberry Dumplings
serves 16 (or less–depends on how hungry they are!)

1 c boiling water
1 c brown sugar
2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter, divided
2 cans crescent roll dough (the uncut sheets)
1/2 c granulated sugar
nutmeg
1 can blueberry pie filling
1 pint fresh blueberries (or 1 pkg frozen if not in season)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Melt one of the sticks of butter and then combine it with the boiling water and brown sugar in the bottom of a 9×13-inch baking dish.

Carefully spread out the crescent roll dough on a baking mat or lightly floured surface and sprinkle with the sugar and nutmeg. Spread half a can of pie filling and half the fresh or frozen blueberries onto each can of crescent dough, leaving about an inch clear on both of the long sides. Dot the top of the filling with bits of butter and then roll up the dough, jellyroll-style, sealing the roll with the inch of filling-free dough.

Slice the rolls into 1-inch sections and place each slice, cut side up, in the pan with the water-butter-sugar mixture.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the tops of the dumplings are golden brown.

The sugar mixture in the bottom of the pan makes a delicious sauce for the rolled dumplings. While these are perfectly fine served at room temperature or even cold, they are best when piping hot, served with hot coffee or ice-cold milk.

I made these for a friend’s party, recently (it was a morning get-together) and they were a big hit with everyone who tried them.