With the end of Dessert Nights getting closer and closer, I keep trying to out do myself with each new dessert. This week I went a bit overboard, but July is National Ice Cream Month so we had to have ice cream. And what goes better with ice cream than cookies! On a different note, I accidentally selected 3 of the 4 recipes for the week from either David Lebowitz's blog or his ice cream cookbook, The Perfect Scoop, but since they are so delectable it didn't matter.
Peanut butter and chocolate has long been a favorite flavor combination of dessert night goers, so it was only fitting to make sure that at least one of this week's cookies had this flavor combo. Baking Bites just happened to suggest a recipe that combines everyone's favorite, the brownie, with a peanut butter cookie. This recipe calls for chopped brownies in the batter. Instead of making my own brownies, I went to Whole Foods and picked up some of their brownies in their bakery. Very tasty! This recipe is super easy and requires no special mixers or anything to make and was delicious. If you'd like to make your own Peanut Butter Brownie cookies, check out the recipe here.
Madelines quickly became the other cookie of choice because my cousin just bought me a madeline pan. Unfortunately, you do have to have a madeline pan for these tasty cakey cookies. They are generally rather inexpensive for a decent one, but this may be a barrier for some of you out there. Contrary to popular thought, these cookies are super easy to make, but I will warn you that they take forever! Each step is rather time consuming particularly if you're modifying your kitchen gadgets to act as other things like a strainer as a sifter and such. Definitely liberally butter and flour the madeline pan otherwise you're going to have a tough time getting these little guys out of the pan. I opted to use the baking powder to make sure my cookies were a bit fluffy, but honestly they ended up not flattening out well so were a bit rounded. I'd probably try without the baking powder next to see what happens. All in all, they were super tasty. If you'd like to make your own Madelines, check out the recipe here. (Note: the recipe calls for a lemon glaze which sounded super tasty, but I opted to leave that out.)
Finally for the ice creams, I opted for a simple Chocolate Raspberry Ice Cream because it was very easy to make and I love the flavor of all summer berries. Unfortunately, I can't share the recipe for this with you at this time because I've already packed my copy of The Perfect Scoop. The recipe is in there and I highly recommend that cookbook if you like ice creams or even if you have an ice cream maker and don't know what to do with it. When I finish moving, I'll try to remember to post the recipe.
The Absinthe Ice Cream was the most anticipated ice cream of the evening. Absinthe has such a unique flavor that I imagined it would make a very delicious ice cream after seeing David Lebowitz's blog about it. I also happened to have a small bottle of Absinthe lying around which was perfect for this recipe. As far as ice cream recipes go, the ones that are more involved are the custard based ice creams, like this one. Those aren't that bad either, but between the Madelines and the Absinthe Ice Cream, I think I used about 70% of my kitchen utensels. For the chocolate chips in this recipe, I finally found that you can buy dark chocolate chunks (like you see in professional ice creams) at Whole Foods! It was a great discovery and these added a great counter-flavor to the licorice in the absinthe. This was definitely my favorite ice cream of the evening. To make your own Absinthe Ice Cream, check out the recipe here.
Sadly, next Tuesday marks the end of an era with the last Dessert Night. I still don't know what I'm going to be making yet, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to send them my way.
Showing posts with label peanut butter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peanut butter. Show all posts
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Happy Birthday J!!!!!
Happy 26th Birthday J!!!! You can officially round up to 30 now. Ok, enough giving him a bad time for being old and on to describing his very tasty cake.
A month or so ago when I asked him if he wanted to keep Dessert Night on his birthday, he decided that he did and that he either wanted Chocolate Zucchini Cake, which is mom always makes for him, or something chocolatey and peanut buttery. I decided it was best to leave the Chocolate Zucchini cakes to his mom and instead find a tasty chocolate peanut butter dessert. After much searching for possible tasty recipes, I settled on this Chocolate Peanut Butter cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
The recipe posed several challenges for me as this is probably the nicest cake I've attempted to make in a long time. First of all, it's always challenging to bake a 3 layer cake in only 2 cake pans, but I managed to quickly swap one of them out in time to bake the other one before anything bad happened to the remaining dough. The cake part turned out really tasty and fluffy. I will definitely be making it again. Second, the recipe was rather long as there were 3 pieces to it and somehow I managed to not read the entire recipe the first, second or even third time around which resulted in 4 trips to the grocery store to acquire all of the ingredients for this recipe.
All in all, it turned out really well and was surprisingly not too sweet after all of the sugar that went into it. I highly recommend that you follow Deb's notes with the recipe about chilling the cake at certain points in the assembly process as they really make it much easier to put together. The only thing I'd add in addition to her notes is that the recipe for the glaze seems to make a lot more than you actually need for this cake so you might try putting only about 2/3 of the glaze on the cake at first and then adding more later if you need it.
A month or so ago when I asked him if he wanted to keep Dessert Night on his birthday, he decided that he did and that he either wanted Chocolate Zucchini Cake, which is mom always makes for him, or something chocolatey and peanut buttery. I decided it was best to leave the Chocolate Zucchini cakes to his mom and instead find a tasty chocolate peanut butter dessert. After much searching for possible tasty recipes, I settled on this Chocolate Peanut Butter cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
The recipe posed several challenges for me as this is probably the nicest cake I've attempted to make in a long time. First of all, it's always challenging to bake a 3 layer cake in only 2 cake pans, but I managed to quickly swap one of them out in time to bake the other one before anything bad happened to the remaining dough. The cake part turned out really tasty and fluffy. I will definitely be making it again. Second, the recipe was rather long as there were 3 pieces to it and somehow I managed to not read the entire recipe the first, second or even third time around which resulted in 4 trips to the grocery store to acquire all of the ingredients for this recipe.
All in all, it turned out really well and was surprisingly not too sweet after all of the sugar that went into it. I highly recommend that you follow Deb's notes with the recipe about chilling the cake at certain points in the assembly process as they really make it much easier to put together. The only thing I'd add in addition to her notes is that the recipe for the glaze seems to make a lot more than you actually need for this cake so you might try putting only about 2/3 of the glaze on the cake at first and then adding more later if you need it.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Lots of Cookies
This week, I decided that we should try some of the cookie recipes that I've been saving from all of the dessert blogs that I read. I wanted to finish using the buttermilk that I bought for last week's cobbler, so I had to try the Buttermilk Cookies. Also, I love how easy and yummy bar cookies are so I decided to try the Raspberry Hazelnut Crumble Bars. Finally, everyone loves a little chocolate and peanut butter so I thought I'd try the Chunky Peanut, Chocolate, and Cinnamon Cookies.
I didn't have enough semi sweet chocolate chips for the peanut/chocolate cookies so I threw in some darker chocolate chips. As I dark chocolate lover, I think it adds a really unique flavor to the peanut butter. They were really easy to make and made closer to 4 dozen cookies instead of the daunting 5 dozen forecasted by the recipe.
The Raspberry Hazelnut Bars called for an 8 x 8 pan for the bar cookies. I followed those directions and this resulted in a 2 inch deep cookie. I think next time I will spread out these cookies farther so they are a bit thinner and more the shape of a traditional bar cookie.
The buttermilk cookies were AMAZING. From the moment that the oven started to smell like sweet well made pancakes, I knew I was going to love them. But add a little glaze and I'm head over heals for these little guys. They were so light and cakey and the little bit of glaze on top added just a tad of sweetness that really rounded out the flavor of these cookies. I didn't put the lemon zest in the cookies that the recipe requires but I have a feeling that if you do it will add a whole new dimension to these cookies. It's a really good thing that I put these in the freezer after dessert night otherwise I might have eaten all 3 dozen myself!
The best thing about all of these recipes was that they could all be made either in the Cuisinart or with the hand mixer. It was a quick and dirty baking night. I really appreciate all of Tara's help. This week's dessert night would not have been possible without her. Feel free to check out the links above to make these cookies for yourself.
Here are the boys watching numerous YouTube videos. Notice how the girls have all found something better to do...
I didn't have enough semi sweet chocolate chips for the peanut/chocolate cookies so I threw in some darker chocolate chips. As I dark chocolate lover, I think it adds a really unique flavor to the peanut butter. They were really easy to make and made closer to 4 dozen cookies instead of the daunting 5 dozen forecasted by the recipe.
The Raspberry Hazelnut Bars called for an 8 x 8 pan for the bar cookies. I followed those directions and this resulted in a 2 inch deep cookie. I think next time I will spread out these cookies farther so they are a bit thinner and more the shape of a traditional bar cookie.
The buttermilk cookies were AMAZING. From the moment that the oven started to smell like sweet well made pancakes, I knew I was going to love them. But add a little glaze and I'm head over heals for these little guys. They were so light and cakey and the little bit of glaze on top added just a tad of sweetness that really rounded out the flavor of these cookies. I didn't put the lemon zest in the cookies that the recipe requires but I have a feeling that if you do it will add a whole new dimension to these cookies. It's a really good thing that I put these in the freezer after dessert night otherwise I might have eaten all 3 dozen myself!
The best thing about all of these recipes was that they could all be made either in the Cuisinart or with the hand mixer. It was a quick and dirty baking night. I really appreciate all of Tara's help. This week's dessert night would not have been possible without her. Feel free to check out the links above to make these cookies for yourself.
Here are the boys watching numerous YouTube videos. Notice how the girls have all found something better to do...
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Brownie Peanut Butter Cups
This week's dessert night was a rather last minute endeavor as our plane landed from our weekend in Colorado (the subject of a later blog) 5.5 hours prior to dessert night. I had not previously selected what I was going to make nor had I made sure to have the ingredients on hand before we left for Colorado. So I was looking for something quick and tasty at the same time.
I happened upon this recipe for Brownie Peanut Butter Cups in my Google Reader because I had no doubt starred it a long time ago thinking that I should save it because J loves peanut butter so. It turned out that I had all of the ingredients except chocolate chips and peanut butter chips already on hand. I ended up getting Reese's Pieces (small peanut butter M&Ms) instead of the peanut butter chips because I couldn't find any quickly at Safeway.
They came out great...just like they were supposed to. My only complaint is that they were MUCH too sweet. The brownie mixture was almost mixed with an equal quantity of candy which was just a little intense, but they do look pretty.
If you'd like to make your own, go here.
I happened upon this recipe for Brownie Peanut Butter Cups in my Google Reader because I had no doubt starred it a long time ago thinking that I should save it because J loves peanut butter so. It turned out that I had all of the ingredients except chocolate chips and peanut butter chips already on hand. I ended up getting Reese's Pieces (small peanut butter M&Ms) instead of the peanut butter chips because I couldn't find any quickly at Safeway.
They came out great...just like they were supposed to. My only complaint is that they were MUCH too sweet. The brownie mixture was almost mixed with an equal quantity of candy which was just a little intense, but they do look pretty.
If you'd like to make your own, go here.
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