The Last Dessert Night (at least for a while)

Dessert Night is officially over. Well, at least for the next 2 years while I'm in school. I decided to celebrate the end of an era with one of my favorite desserts, Carrot Cake. I think I really just eat Carrot Cake because I LOVE cream cheese frosting, but nevertheless it was tasty.

I turned again to one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen, for the recipe for this week's dessert. However, I opted for a traditional cream cheese frosting instead of the maple cream cheese frosting that SK used because I had leftover cream cheese frosting from the red velvet cupcakes that we had earlier this month.

The cake was super easy to make. I opted to use currants instead of raisins because I happened to have those on hand and substituted allspice for the nutmeg. I didn't include nuts because I'm always conscious of possible nut allergies. Another great idea for this carrot cake would be substituting crushed pineapple for the raisins. My mom used to do this when I was younger and it makes the cake a little sweeter and adds a bit of a tangy flavor to it. I highly recommend it. If you'd like to make your own Carrot Cake, check out the cake recipe here and the frosting recipe here.

Sadly, this will be the end of recipes that I share regularly on this blog. I will still be cooking and hopefully baking as I have time, but you cannot count on a weekly recipe. While I'm sad to end this fun Tuesday tradition, I know that Dessert Night will be resurrected at some point in the future when I'm no longer a student. From now on, you'll be hearing all about my life as a first year at Haas.

Apple Cake

The count down to the end of dessert night has begun, sadly. This week was our 3rd to last dessert night ever. As such, I'm trying to pull out some of the most unique and more challenging recipes to go out with a bang. Over the past year and a half, we've had several varieties of apple pie, apple crumble bars, and German Apple Cake, but this recipe was more of the traditional East Coast Apple Cakes.

The recipe was super easy to make. Don't be concerned if your cake doesn't start puffing up until an hour into your baking. Mine didn't and still puffed up nicely in the end. Also, the recipe says that the cake bakes for 1.5 hours. Mine took closer to 2 hours. It is a dense and filling cake that really brings out the flavors of the apples. Definitely make sure to use good apples for this recipe because they make the flavor of the cake. If you'd like to make your own Apple Cake, check out the recipe here.

Stay tuned for a variety of cookies and ice creams next week!

4th of July Celebration: Red Velvet Cupcakes

Everyone has been all gaga over red velvet cupcakes ever since Sprinkles came out with red velvet as their signature cupcake. I had my first Sprinkles red velvet cupcake about a month ago and it was good, but not necessarily $4 a cupcake good. Since I didn't even know what made up a red velvet cupcake, I decided that I'd make some for 4th of July.

I have to say that the ingredients of a red velvet cake are rather disgusting: 2 huge bottles of red food coloring, chocolate, flour, sugar, and some buttermilk. The red food coloring is particularly gross to me, so I'm considering making them again without the red food coloring and seeing what happens. All in all, this recipe turned out a very moist red velvet cupcake.

The frosting recipe that is also on Pinch My Salt's website was very flavorful, but turned out a bit softer than I would have preferred. Next time, I will add more powdered sugar to stiffen it up.

If you'd like to make your own red velvet cupcakes, check out the recipe here. These cupcakes also work great for a Valentine's Day surprise, but with the blue sprinkles, they were great for 4th of July.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th!!

Blueberry Crumb Cake

Blueberries are my all time favorite fruit. I can eat them by the handfulls and not get bored of them. They are very good for you since they're full of antioxidants. The only downside is that this blueberry consumption rate can be rather expensive.

I decided that since I love blueberries so much, what better way to eat them is in a tasty dessert. I came across a recipe for Blueberry Upside Down Cakes which got me thinking about blueberries in cake. I eventually came across this recipe from Fresh From the Oven that is a take on a Barefoot Contessa recipe. I've been hearing about Barefoot Contessa and her wonderful recipes for years from various foodie friends but I hadn't tried one yet. This was a great and very easy recipe and yielded a very tasty result. Given that I love blueberries so much, I added almost 2 cups of blueberries to this recipe instead of just the 1.5 cups required. It was very tasty. The sour cream made the cake so moist that it was a nice contrast to the crunchy crumbles of the crumble topping.

If you'd like to make your own Blueberry Crumb Cake, check out the recipe here.

Stay tuned next week for Red Velvet Cupcakes in celebration of the 4th of July!!!

Chocolate Whoopie Pies

This week I had a bit more time for dessert making because I took Monday off to recuperate from my Alaskan adventure. While I was catching up on my food blogs in the hotel, I spotted this recipe for Chocolate Whoopie Pies.

The fact that this recipe included Crisco did turn me off from eating the finished product. I will admit that dessert night is not usually about making nutritious desserts that aren't high in fat as most of my recipes do use real butter and whipping cream, but I have thus far never used Crisco. Other than that, this recipe was very tasty. The marshmallow fluff in the middle added a very light and sweet frosting flavor similar to that of the inside of an oreo. The cookies were a bit more dense than I was anticipating and didn't spread out very much as they baked. They had the consistency of the chocolate cookies that make an ice cream sandwich.

Whoopie pies come in all different flavors and fillings. I would definitely make these again, but I'd work on a different filling so I didn't have to use Crisco. If you'd like to make your own Chocolate Whoopie Pies, go here.

Chocolate Chip Angel Food Cupcakes

As you noticed in last week's post, this week's dessert was a runner up for last week's. Everyone strongly voted the Chocolate Chip Angel Food Cupcakes as their second favorite dessert.

The recipe for these was very easy to follow and the use of a muffin pan means that no special equipment is required since I'm assuming that most of you have made cupcakes before. I must say that even though I wasn't entirely paying attention when I made these so there was an additional egg white in the recipe and I forgot to add the vanilla. This is just one of the hazards of baking while on conference calls and doing 5 other things. Despite these errors, these cupcakes still tasted great. I used dark chocolate chunks for the chocolate chips and they added a great flavor to the light angel food cake. I am a huge fan of angel food cake so I really liked these cupcakes a lot. If you'd like to make your own, go here for the recipe.

Apologies for the very terrible picture of this week's dessert. At least there is a picture, but I'll try to make sure that it's actually decipherable next week.

Crumb Cake

Thanks to all of you who voted for this week's dessert! I really appreciated your input and it was great to start to learn more about your likes and dislikes. Chocolate souffle was the unanimous winner, but it is a picky dish that requires special dishes, total silence, and an accurate oven. None of which I seem to have at the moment, so that will have to be a future dessert.

Crumb cake was the second most popular first choice dessert so I went ahead with that. Luckily, I didn't vacuum prior to dessert night because this dessert is really every bit as messy as you think it's going to be. The recipe was very easy. One thing of note was that the cake batter is much thinner than usual. Don't worry, it's supposed to be that way. While the cake is baking, you will be making the crumbly topping. This topping can be made and stuck on top of a variety of other pastries like muffins and scones and adds a nice crunchy crumbliness to them. If you'd like to make your own crumb cake, please check out the recipe here.

Stay tuned for the second favorite dessert, Chocolate Angel Food Cupcakes, next week!

Ghiradelli Brownies and a Low Fat Vanilla Ice Cream Incident

Ghiradelli has been my favorite chocolate company pretty much since I realized that you can get as many of their free samples as you want by going back in again and again. They just keep giving you those delicious caramel squares. They also used to have a soda fountain attached to their store on Cannery Row in Monterey that had the best mint chip ice cream. I recently discovered that they are venturing into other chocolate based mixes like brownie mix. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the traditional Betty Crocker or Pillsbury mixes because they have this bit of artificial sweetness that allows me to instantly tell that they're not a true homemade brownie. Given that Ghiradelli makes superior chocolate, I had to give their brownie mix a shot. This was a perfect week for a quick and easy dessert too with my Haas interview before dessert night.

I must say that the brownies were intense and delightfully moist. I made them in an 8x8 pan, per the directions, but I think next time I might make them in a 9x13 pan to spread out the chocolatey goodness. As Amy astutely commented though, the low fat vanilla ice cream was a good pairing with the intensity of the brownie because it sufficiently diluted it.

Let's talk about this ice cream for a second. I attempted to make ice cream with 2% milk instead of cream and whole milk. For all of you out there who are thinking right now that this is a good idea, let me asure you that it is NOT a good idea. The resulting ice cream had a great flavor, but was very very icey. I even added a teaspoon of rum in an attempt to make it less icy. I'm sure it helped but not nearly enough. If you're trying to enjoy ice cream, but also trying to keep with your diet, I highly recommend just having a little bit of the homemade full fat stuff or buying some of the lowfat ice creams from Safeway.

So while the ice cream was a bust, I can officially highly recommend the Ghiradelli brownie mix. It's really worth the extra dollar over the Betty Crocker mixes.

Vote for Next Week's Dessert!!

I'm stuck in that weekly dilemma again of which of the hundreds of tasty recipes that I have on file I should make for dessert night next week. So, this week, I'm asking for your help! Please check out my survey and rank the things that I'm considering for next week. Check out the survey here: http://bit.ly/i6wqG

I will be making the winning dessert for dessert night next week!

Blackberry Clafoutis

I have been wanting to make more desserts with fruit lately since we're getting to summer when all of my favorite fruits are available. I really enjoyed the last clafoutis that I had made because it smelled so good and was so fluffy. I decided that I would add blackberries this time instead of cherries because they are relatively tough fruits. I also saw recipes for apricot and peach clafoutis, but decided that a thicker fruit would be better. Also, blackberries are in season.

I used the same recipe that I used for the cherry clafoutis, just substituting blackberries for the cherries. This time though I used my mixer instead of doing it by hand. While this made my arm much less tired, I don't think that it mixed the batter quite as well as I did by hand. Next time, I think I'll try the handmixer, either that or do it by hand again. Last time's clafoutis was a lot better because it was better mixed. However, it was just as tasty with blackberries as it did with cherries. I'd like to try it again with a handmixer and perhaps some apricots.

If you'd like to make your own clafoutis, go here. Feel free to substitute two cups of any fruit for the cherries.

Cinco de Mayo Celebration: Margarita Cookies

Margaritas are pretty much my favorite way to drink tequila. These are an essential part of any Cinco de Mayo celebration along with Coronas and lime. Why not have margarita cookies instead of the liquid version?

Smitten Kitchen had a recipe posted on her blog and so I decided to give it a shot because she always has such great, tasty things. The recipe had lime and orange flavorings to create the taste of a margarita, with some tequila in the batter, and a sugar/salt rim on the outside. You definitely have to make the added effort to get the crystal clear granulated sugar to roll the cookies in. The crunchiness that it adds to the outsides is not like any other and, if you use Sugar in the Raw or a brown sugar, it will change the color of the cookie.

Because these cookies are rolled and then sliced, you save a lot of time and energy trying to use two spoons to make nice dollops of cookie dough if you don't own a cookie scoop.

All in all, these cookies were a very tasty bite-sized margarita. Eat them quickly after you make them because they taste the most like margaritas just after you make them and the flavor separates more over time. If you'd like your own margarita cookies, check out the recipe here.



I decided to get a bit artsy this week since I remembered to take pictures before everyone came over.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream & Strawberry Sherbert

Thank you to all of you who participated in my ice cream survey. The results were not what I was expecting. Most people wanted ice cream with fruit in the first question, followed by something with nuts. The second question though showed that Ben & Jerry's is the preferred ice cream brand by far. This question had the most responses for an ice cream with stuff in it, like Phish food, cookie dough, or cookies and cream. The other most mentioned desired flavor was vanilla with some kind of fruit in it.

Knowing that, I set out to pick one fruit flavored ice cream and one intensely flavored chocolate based ice cream. The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz is definitely my go to book for all ice creams. That's where I found the most amazing Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream recipe with peanut butter patties mixed in. It had the qualities of cookie dough with the peanut butter chunks, but also the intensity of the chocolate that you'd find in a Phish food. As with all ice creams, the recipe is exceedingly easy. Just throw everything in a pot, boil for a bit, chill, and throw in the ice cream maker. If you want to make your own chocolate peanut butter ice cream, check out this link for the online recipe or pick up your own copy of The Perfect Scoop.

For my fruity ice cream, Candace had been flipping through my latest Eating Well magazine and come across a great recipe for Strawberry Sherbert. What I liked about this recipe was that it used buttermilk instead of half and half so added a bit of a sour flavor to the sweetness of the strawberries. Honestly, I would have probably added more strawberries in comparison to the volume of buttermilk because I wanted a bit more of a strawberry flavor, but it was still great as is. The recipe is below for those of you who'd like to make your own.


Strawberry Sherbert (from Eating Well):
2 cups chopped fresh or frozen (not thawed) strawberries, divided
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups nonfat or low-fat buttermilk
1/2 cup half and half
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

1. Combine 1 cup of berries and sugar in a small bowl and let sit, stirring occaisonally until the sugar has begun to dissolve, about 10 minutes. Transfer the berry mixture to a food processor or blender and process until smooth.
2. Meanwhile, combine buttermilk, half and half, lemon juice, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl. Press the strawberry mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into the bowl. Stir, cover and chill for at least 2 hours or up to 1 day.
3. Whisk the sherbert mixture and pour into the canister of an ice cream maker. Freeze according to the manufacturer's directions. During the last 5 minutes of freezing, add the remaining 1 cup chopped berries. If necessary, place the sherbert in the freezer to firm up before serving. (If the sherbert becomes very hard in the freezer, soften it in the refridgerator for about 30 mins before scooping.) Makes 8 servings.

Salted Caramel and Pecan Cheesecake

Recently, it seems like I've been making a ton of cupcakes for Dessert Nights. I'm not sure if it was just a coincidence or if I was inspired by how tasty the Irish Carbomb Cupcakes were for St Patrick's Day. I've consciously tried to deviate from cupcakes in the last couple of weeks. I realized that it has been over a year since my first ever cheesecake attempt and decided to try another one.

Salted Caramel has been all of the rage lately. It's in everything from ice cream flavors to Starbucks drinks. It's also a great topping for cheesecake since that's usually rich and the sweetness of the caramel would be a nice complement. I happened upon this great recipe from Bake or Break. The recipe is super easy. For those of you who want a great easy dessert, this is it. Honestly, the toughest thing was the caramel and that's the easiest thing to cheat on by just using a jar. If you don't have a mixer, it will take more elbow grease to make sure that the cream cheese is light enough, but nothing that you can't handle. You will definitely be rewarded with a tasty cheesecake that's sure to excite your taste buds.

I did learn that nuts are more popular with the dessert night crew than I previously thought. I only put the pecans on half of the cheesecake to cater to those who don't like nuts, and that side was gone before anyone had barely gotten into the nut-free side.

Stay tuned to hear about next week's ice cream experiment and survey results.

Vote for Your Favorite Ice Cream Flavor!!

I decided to make Dessert Night a bit more interactive this week and am looking for your input into which ice cream flavor (or flavors if there is enough time) for me to have for dessert next week. Given that it's been 90+ degrees for a couple of days now, I'm feeling in the mood for ice cream and have decided that's what we're having next week. I'm looking for everyone and anyone's input even if you are unable to attend dessert night next week.

Please check out the survey here: http://tinyurl.com/d5j8h5

Girl Scout Cookies!

As you've read about in my other posts by now, it has been a very busy last few weeks for me. I decided that I'd take it easy this week and serve Girl Scout cookies for Dessert Night. I placed my original order for cookies from J's little cousin, but then needed more to make this enough for a Dessert Night. I found some Girl Scouts on Chestnut in SF a couple of months ago so I picked up some additional boxes.

It was a fun night. People made ice cream sandwiches with the Thin Mints. J tried a Thin Mint sandwich with peanut butter in the middle which he claimed to be good but not as good as Tagalongs. I even removed the lemon frosting from the middle of one of the Lemon Chalets and put ice cream in the middle. That was very tasty as it had some of the lemony flavor of the frosting still on the cookies.

All in all, it was a great and tasty evening. Next week, we'll be back to the usual tasty desserts. I will be making Salted Caramel Pecan Cheesecake. Stay tuned.

Charoset and the Next Web 2.0 Cake

This week, Tara helped us celebrate the upcoming Passover holiday by bringing in some homemade Charoset and Matzah for us to share. The Charoset is a nice apple dish that you spread on the matzah and sometimes even enjoy with horseradish. It was a nice light change compared to our other dessert for the evening.

Rick brought the third cake in his Web 2.0 cake series. This cake was sporting the Digg logo and was a fabulous counter part to the Flickr and Blogger cakes that we've previously enjoyed. It was a very light and tasty cake. Unfortunately, Rick had some difficulty keeping the cake together as it was very light and moist. Luckily, it tasted fabulous!

Thank you again to both Rick and Tara for providing Dessert Night with tasty treats!!

Hamburgers for Dessert!

Unlike last year, Dessert Night wasn't precisely on April Fool's day. I decided that we should have a joke dessert anyway. Last year, I served a nice big flour pot of dirt! It was both really tasty and hilarious because people walked into the room and were confused by the flower pot on the table.

A couple of months ago, J had sent me a link to some very cute cupcakes that were decorated to look like a set of hamburgers. I decided that this would be the perfect desserts for April Fools Day as they look like little sliders.

To make these "hamburgers," you take a vanilla cupcake, cut it in half and then place half of a chocolate cupcake in the middle and cement it together with some red and yellow frosting to look like ketchup and mustard. I even happened to find some green sour airhead strips that looked like lettuce when you cut them into small pieces. The finishing touch on these master pieces is the sesame seeds on top. They really pull together the look and help these look like their real slider counterparts.

Not only were these a tasty treat, but they also were a great April Fools prank on your diners!!!

(P.S. Thanks for the comments about my terrible photography skills and often blurred photos. I'm working on improving this and possibly considering purchasing a better digital camera. In the meantime, my apologies.)

Cherry Cobbler

Wow, I just realized today exactly how behind on dessert night blog posts I am. My apologies to my readership! I have been all over the map literally and figuratively lately, but more on that in another post. Here we focus on desserts...

A couple of weeks ago now, I finally got around to trying a cobbler mix that my mom had given to me around the holidays. J loves cherries so my mom had found a cherry cobbler mix that she thought he might like. I liked that this mix was just the cobbler topping and used a can of cherry pie filling for the cherry part.

Unfortunately, something in the mix made it smell like it had coconut in it. It was the weirdest thing. My apartment started smelling like a coconut when the cobbler was baking and the smell stayed with it once it had cooled. It didn't have the flavor of coconut when you ate it, but it still smelled like it. I guess personally I prefer more crumbly toppings on my cobblers, so this didn't quite hit the spot for me. It did have a great cherry flavor though.

Thanks to my mom for sharing something tasty and I'm glad that J liked it!

St. Patrick's Day Celebration & Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Yup, you read that right. Irish Car Bomb CUPCAKES!! Irish car bombs are one way that we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but for dessert night of course I had to come up with an Irish related dessert. For weeks prior to St. Patrick's Day, I had been reading about chocolate Guinness cakes and other recipes that involved either Guinness or Irish or were somehow capable of being made green (that's the color, not environmentally friendly).

This recipe just sounded too totally awesome to pass up. As a lover of Baileys, the frosting sounded so amazing. It was a little sweet in the end, but given that the rest of the cupcake was so sweet it blended in nicely. The Irish ganache was so awesome! The flavor of the Irish really came through the chocolate well. Next time, I wouldn't have made such large holes in the cupcakes so there was a smaller amount of ganache in each cupcake.

All in all, it was a very tasty dessert night and a great way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day along with some real car bombs. After dessert, the crew wandered out to the Swinging Door for some great drinks. If you'd like to make your own car bombs, check out the tasty recipe from Smitten Kitchen here.

Cherry Ice Cream with White Chocolate and Dark Chocolate

I've been looking for slightly lighter desserts recently hence the recent panna cotta and this week's ice cream. I know recipes with cream aren't usually considered lighter, but at least both had a significant amount of fruit in them. Berries of all kinds are my favorite fruits and J loves cherries, so I usually look for recipes with any of those fruits. I happened to come across a tasty recipe for Cherry Ice Cream with White Chocolate Chunks care of Technicolor Kitchen. This brought on the great debate about whether to use white chocolate or dark chocolate in this recipe.

This seems to be a rather contentious food topic where people dig in their heals and remain entrenched in their opinions of which is better. Personally, I like both, but understand that people who don't like white chocolate often site the fact that it doesn't taste like real chocolate as their reasoning. Ideally, the food inventors probably should have named white chocolate something else and we would have avoided the majority of this argument today, but I digress. Back to which chocolate to use in this recipe. I decided that I would use a combination of white and dark chocolate because I really like the extreme sweetness of the white chocolate and the intense chocolate flavor of dark chocolate. In the end, I threw in a bit of milk chocolate as well because I had just less than 2oz of dark chocolate and no time for another trip to the grocery store.

I think it turned out really well! The flavors complemented each other nicely and the sweetness of the chocolate didn't overpower the cherry flavor in the ice cream. Stay tuned for Irish Carbomb Cupcakes and Dessert Night's celebration of St. Patrick's Day next week!!!