Truffle Mutt

Prune Plums

For as far back as I can remember I've been excited by food.  I have vivid memories of the coffee ice cream on summer vacations, the escargot and onion soup when we eat on our Easter break fishing trips, the rouladen, sauerkraut and smoked pork hocks from family dinners and the endless links of pork on sausage making day.

And it was one such memory that inspired me to bring home a bounty of prune plums from the market.  My Grandma used to make a dense, lightly sweet cake that was layered with juicy plums and sprinkled with sugar.  I haven't had her cake for years, but my taste buds, which can't tell time, remember it like it was yesterday.

This version was closer to a pastry than cake, but after one bite the juicy slightly sour plums and carmalized sugar took me right back.  

Nigella Does Dessert

What a cake!  It's just like Nigella says, "Cake Nirvana".  A simple yet sublime combination of flavors that are strong but clean.  It's a perfect cake for serving with fresh berries and vanilla ice cream.

This weekend I got to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  When the weather took a turn for the worse on Friday I decided to relax and stay around the house. I still made my trip to the Market (I wouldn't miss that) but as luck would have it the rain started pouring down just as I was about to leave.  I tried to wait it out, but after 20 minutes I made a run for the car (I knew wearing sandals was a bad idea!).  I put my head down and headed towards where I thought my car was and of course I couldn't find it.  Then when I did it was in the middle of an enormous puddle.  Needless to say, I was soggy!  When I got back to the house, shivering and wet, I was more than happy to sock myself away in the kitchen for the rest of the day.  I made a stir-fry and a big pot of Jambalaya to freeze and for dinner I made barbecue ribs with this cake for dessert. 

A Word to the Wise

Have a good look... Because this is what happens when a chocoholic takes the lava cakes out of the oven too soon in order to hurry up and eat them.  Proving that although practice might make perfect it is still no match for simple impatience. 

Most of the time chocolate lava cakes are super easy and can be whipped up in a few minutes.  This time however they were slightly less attractive than normal and crazy hot, but they were still easy and they still tasted good.

I used Nigella Lawson's recipe for Molten Chocolate Babycakes.  I didn't line the cups and the cakes slid out just fine, so I wouldn't bother with that step, unless you're serving them for the Queen or something and need them to be absolutely perfect. 

Cloud 9

What could be better than a cool and creamy slice of chocolate cream pie? 

Well, certainly winning a $1,000,000 or coming home to find this gas range in your kitchen would be better, but the other night there was nothing close to that on the horizon, so this was pretty good.

The recipe I used for this chocolate cream pie came out of Diner Desserts by Tish Boyle.  It's a fantastic little book hosting a wide range of diner faves like coconut cream pie and classic cheesecake all the way to root beer floats. 

After I first read the book everything sounded so good I couldn't help wanting to try it all, but time, space and groceries not permitting, I chose the German Chocolate Cake.  The batter is made using both butter and coconut milks, so I thought it would be something a bit different.  What it turned out to be though was rather boring.  The cake, although very light and moist, was unexpectedly slim on taste.  At least the icing came through with a perfect score, it was brilliant.

After that my excitement for the book faded.  It was shelved and has been doing a fine job of collecting dust ever since, but the story doesn't end there.  This one has a happier ending.

The other day I was bumming around the kitchen thinking I needed to make something - mostly out of boredom - and I took the book out of hiding.  I didn't have a lot of ingredients in the house so I had to stick to the real basics. 

Chocolate - check
Cream - check
Chocolate wafers - no check (frig!) oh no wait I have graham crumbs - check (woohoo!)   

I can make chocolate cream pie! 

The recipe was easy to follow and it took no time to put together.  Once the pudding was done and in the shell I put it outside in the BBQ to chill overnight, because it was -5 or so outside and the fridge was full.  It was a great idea that went way wrong when Jason decided to use the BBQ the next morning.  And since I'm not all that quick in the mornings, it was a few minutes before I clued in and ran out to make the heroic rescue.  Luckily (especially for Jason), it was just a bit hot on the bottom. 

I guess it was a Southern Barbecued Chocolate Cream Pie!  The end result was totally yum, but unless you're a real BBQ die hard, it's probably safe to hold off on the last step. :o)

Hip Hip Brûlée

The sesame crème brûlée was a bit exciting.  It tasted awesome, but I I had to make the stupid thing three times before it would set properly - which was more a function of my temperamental oven than anything else.  I'm thinking maybe it's menopausal because it seems to be experiencing frequent hot flashes. 

Making the brûlée was easy-as-pie and the change would likely work with any recipe out there.  I added 1/4 tsp of tahini paste for each egg, blending it with the egg and sugar before adding the cream and baking as per the recipe.  But be careful and do not over bake!  Because before you know it creamy and smooth becomes curdled and seriously egg-y.  Yuck. 

The sesame flavor from the tahini was distinctive but subtle, so while I made the sesame Florentines to go with the brûlée, I ended up not serving them together because the strong toasted sesame in the candy over-powered the subtle undertones in the crème brûlée.   

Star Strawberries

Another night and here we are back to the party story. 

Nope, no more ice cream side tracks for you!  I am going to skip ahead to the desserts now though, because I have no pictures of the baked brie with Asian pesto or the smoked salmon mousse.  I would however, like to make a special note of the deep fried capers, which are ever so cool and if you've never tried them you should make the effort.  Try them on salmon sandwiches, appetizers or in salads.  They get fabulously crispy providing a distinct burst of caper saltiness.   

But now to the promised dessert...

For the tarts shells I cheated to save on time and used frozen ones, but I did make the custard myself using a Jamie Oliver recipe on Food Network.  The custard turned out well, but to increase the smoothness I borrowed a technique from Pierre Herme's lemon curd recipe and added a few tablespoons of cold butter to the finished custard.  Splendid! 

The topping for the tarts was as easy as pie, a mixture of diced strawberries and anise infused syrup.  To make the syrup mix equal parts brown sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, add three star anise pods to the syrup and then reduce by half.  Discard the star anise and chill. Mix in the diced strawberries once chilled and marinate for at least 1/2 hour.   Before serving spoon on top of the custard tarts.

We All Scream For Ice Cream

Tonight I'm taking a break from the book club posts to talk about ice cream, and not just any ice cream, but my 'I Bought Way Too Many Oranges & I Don't Know What To Do With Them' ice cream.  Catchy huh?  Ben & Jerry's will be banging down my door in no time!

I've been planning for this first spoonful of frozen bliss since moment I unwrapped my ice cream maker two LONG weeks ago.  Not wanting to take this maiden ice cream voyage casually I spent hours searching through cookbooks, magazines and websites looking for a creation worthy of the event.  But in the end, with the heavy cream in the fridge and the bowl ready and waiting, I decided to forgo excitement and make plain-old strawberry ice cream.

I made it as far as rinsing the strawberries when I noticed that I had an enormous mound of oranges smothering the life out of a few defenseless bananas. 

"Look at all those oranges.  Why did I buy that many anyway?  I don't even like oranges that much.  Great, now I'll probably end up leaving them there until they go hard, and then what?  I'll have to throw them all out. Poor oranges.  Such a waste.  Check it out, I think they look a little sad".

And there you have it people.  The entire, astonishingly deep thought process behind orange ice cream.  Enjoy.

I've Forgotten Your Name

This is another recipe from the Sherry Yard cookbook "The Secrets of Baking", that I borrowed from the Library.  During its brief foray from the library, this book was able to teach me some handy tips and a couple of tasty desserts.  What I like the most about the book though was the attention to basics, like ganache and caramel.  The recipes are straight forward and the variations Sherry Yard suggests are a great inspiration.  So, I've added this book to my wish list in Amazon, along with the other 50 or so titles that reside there. 

This nifty looking cake is pictured in the book (sorry I don't remember what it's called) and when I saw it I had to try it.  The thin layers are achieved by repeatedly ladling the burnt butter batter into a baking pan and baking it 1 thin layer at a time.  It's a different approach to making a cake and it looks so cool!  The only problem, which is a foreseeable one, is that the cake turns out to be as dry as mouthful of sawdust.  If I tried it again I'd try brushing each layer with a simple syrup halfway through baking, which might also darken the layers and make them more dramatic in appearance.   

The flavor of the burnt butter was subtle, but exciting.  I imagine if you were to follow the recipe exactly the butter would be more intense tasting, but I added cinnamon, cloves and cardamom to the recipe, as well as the nutmeg that is called for. 

The taste was absolutely fabulous and the cake itself was certainly a dazzler, so I just need the solution for the sawdust problem and this cake will be a keeper. 

Baby Eclairs

I'm back!

Wow!  It feels like forever since I've typed on these pages.  Between TypePad's issues and my schedule it's been challenging finding the time to blog.  But, while I've been absent on the blogging scene I have at least kept busy in the kitchen.  Of course not all of my stories are worthy of sharing in detail, like the flour-less chocolate cake that fell apart when I didn't have enough time to chill it, or the chocolate pudding cake recipe that turned into a 90% chocolate pudding when I tried to half the recipe but accidentally used the full amount of eggs.  In the end both still tasted quite good, though they certainly lacked eye appeal.         

Luckily, with the bad also came some good. 

These eclairs that I made for a baby shower at work fall under 'the good' category.  They were light and airy with a pudding-like chocolate almond pastry cream filling.  The fact that they turned out to be baby eclairs was a complete accident however, I just thought they'd puff up a lot more in the oven than they did. 

The pate choix, ganache and pastry creams were easy to make and the whole effort proved to be more time consuming than difficult.  Once the pate choix is cooked it has to be piped into cigars (big ones btw), baked, chilled, and iced with ganache.  I held off filling them with pastry cream until the next morning to keep then from getting soggy and so I could have the left over chocolate pastry cream for breakfast.  Yum.

Chocolate Cookies

No bake chocolate cookies, oats stacks, haystacks, or whatever you call them I'm sure everyone has seen a variation of these cookies.  They have an uncanny way of turning up at every bake sale, potluck or kids birthday party.   Probably because they're super fast and require almost no skill to make.  Just melt everything together, mix in oats and coconut, drop and you're done.  You can get to the eating almost immediately.   

They're chewy, chocolaty and the only cookie that I was able make the other night when my fridge was bereft of eggs.  I threw them together and on top of a fresh batch of cookies I was left with a fantastically dirty pot to lick out.  Yum.