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Category Archives: Dessert

The One And Only Commander’s Palace Bananas Foster Recipe | Food Republic

The One And Only Commander’s Palace Bananas Foster Recipe | Food Republic.

Bananas Foster is my absolute, all-time favorite dessert. I have tried a few different recipes over time, but Food Republic has this recipe from Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, the home of Bananas Foster. Give it a try and you will want to have it this way all the time!

 
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Posted by on February 15, 2013 in Cooking, Cooking Websites, Dessert

 

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Cooking a Valentine’s Day Meal at Home – NYTimes.com

Cooking a Valentine’s Day Meal at Home – NYTimes.com.

With Valentine’s Day coming next week, many people are looking to make a nice romantic meal at home. The New York Times put out this quick and easy menu as a suggestion of a nice steak, potatoes, salad and a one ingredient chocolate mousse. Check it out and see if it is something you might like to try!

 
 

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Girl Scout Cookie Recipes: Thin Mints, Samoas And More

Girl Scout Cookie Recipes: Thin Mints, Samoas And More.

Since it is the Girl Scout cookie time of year, why not take a shot at making some of your favorites on your own. The Huffington Post pulled together these cookie recipes from different sites that they say taste just like what you get from the scouts. Why not give them a try? I might try the Thin Mints myself!

 
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Posted by on January 29, 2013 in Cookies, Cooking Websites

 

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Classic Christmas Recipes from Bon Appetit Editors: BA Daily: bonappetit.com

Classic Christmas Recipes from Bon Appetit Editors: BA Daily: bonappetit.com.

It’s not too early to start planning your Christmas meal out. I like to have a good idea of what I am going to make well in advance when I am hosting Christmas. This blog post from Bon Appetit features 6 great recipes of some dishes you would love to have on your holiday table. Check it out and see if there is anything you like.

 

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Thanksgiving Dry Run

So I did a test dinner tonight that will be a lot like what I will make on Thanksgiving Day for dinner. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about how well this recipe would go. It is one I picked up from America’s Test Kitchen on a braised turkey with gravy. The trick in this one is that you butcher the chicken so you are cooking all the parts. They also recommend brining the turkey. Now I have heard both sides of the argument on this one and I am still not sure which would be best. I know that brining does help to keep things moist, but if you are like me, you may not have the room in your refrigerator for a tub to brine a whole turkey in, so I skipped the brining process. Everything turned out really well without it so I think you can get away with not doing it.

Braised Turkey with Gravy

Salt and Pepper

1 cup sugar

1 (5-7 pound) whole bone-in turkey breast, trimmed

4 pounds turkey drumsticks and thighs, trimmed

3 onions, chopped

3 celery ribs, chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

6 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

2 bay leaves

6 sprigs fresh thyme

6 sprigs fresh parsley

1/2 ounce dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed

4 tablespoons butter, melted

4 cups chicken broth

1 cup dry wine

Gravy

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Salt and pepper

For the Turkey: Dissolve 1 cup of salt and the sugar in 2 gallons of cold water in a large container. Submerge the turkey pieces in brine, cover, and refrigerate for 3 to 6 hours.

Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 500 degrees. Remove the turkey from the brine and pat it dry with paper towels. Toss the onions,celery, carrots, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, parsley, porcini mushrooms and 2 tablespoons of butter in a large roasting pan; arrange everything in an even layer. Brush the turkey pieces with the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and season with pepper. Place the turkey pieces, skin side up, over the vegetables, leaving at least 1/4 inch between the pieces. Roast until the skin is lightly browned, about 20 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and reduce the temperature to 325 degrees. Pour the broth and wine around the turkey pieces (it should come about three-quarters of the way up the legs and thighs). Place a sheet of parchment paper over the turkey pieces. Cover the roasting pan tightly with aluminum foil. Return the covered roasting pan to the oven and cook until the breasts register 160 degrees and thighs register 175 degrees, 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 hours. Transfer the turkey to a cutting board, tent loosely with foil, and let rest for 20 minutes.

For the Gravy: Strain the vegetables and liquid from the roasting pan through a fine-mesh strainer set in a large bowl. Press the solids with the back of a spatula to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard the vegetables. Transfer the liquid to a fat separator; allow it to settle for 5 minutes. Reserve 3 tablespoons of fat and measure out 3 cups of braising liquid.

Heat the reserved fat in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the flour is a dark golden brown and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Whisk in 3 cups of braising liquid and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the gravy is thick and reduced to 2 cups, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the gravy from the heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.

I’ll be honest- butchering the turkey was no easy feat, even with poultry shears and a good sharp knife. If you could get it butchered before you even bring it home, that would be ideal. If not, it took me about 20 minutes to do it. I didn’t think that was too bad, considering I had never done that with a turkey before. I think the results are well worth the work that goes into it. The turkey came out done perfectly. It was very moist and the skin was nice and crispy. I took the foil off for the last 10 minutes or so to crisp up the skin and it was great. It also made carving easy since all the parts were removed already.

There’s a stuffing recipe that goes along with this recipe so you can make use of the turkey wings (thought I forgot about them, didn’t you?). This recipe is designed to make stuffing for 10-12 people, so if you have a smaller group coming, cut the recipe down appropriately. I cut in half for today since they were only 5 of us for dinner and it was the perfect amount with just a bit left over.

Bread Stuffing with Sausage, Dried Cherries and Pecans

2 pounds hearty white sandwich bread (20 to 22 slices) cut into 1/2-inch cubes (I actually used a large loaf of french bread instead, and it came out fine, so use whatever bread you like)

3 pounds turkey wings, divided at the joints

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1 pound pork sausage

4 tablespoons butter, plus extra for the baking dish

1 large onion, chopped fine

3 celery ribs, chopped fine

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons minced fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons minced fresh sage leaves

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 1/2 cups chicken broth

3 large eggs

1 cup dried cherries

1 cup pecan halves, toasted and chopped fine

Adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower middle positions and heat the oven to 250 degrees. Spread the bread cubes in an even layer on 2 rimmed baking sheets. Bake until the edges have dried but centers are slightly moist, 45 to 60 minutes, stirring several times during baking. (You can toast the bread up to 1 day in advance.) Transfer the cubes to a large bowl and increase the oven temperature to 375 degrees.

Use the tip of a paring knife to poke 10 to 15 holes in each wing segment. heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it begins to shimmer. Add the wings in a single layer and cook until golden brown, 4 to 6 minutes. Flip the wings and continue to cook until golden brown on the second side, 4 to 6 minutes longer. Transfer the wings to a medium bowl and set aside.

Return the skillet to medium-high heat and add the sausage; cook, breaking the sausage into 1/2-inch pieces with a wooden spoon, until browned, 5 to 7 minutes. Transfer the sausage to a paper towel-lined plate, leaving the rendered fat in the skillet.

Heat the butter with the rendered fat in the skillet over medium heat. When the foaming subsides, add the onion, celery, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened but not browned, 7 to 9 minutes. Add the thyme, sage, and pepper; cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add 1 cup of broth and bring to a simmer, using a wooden spoon to scrape browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the vegetable mixture to the bowl with the dried bread and toss to combine.

Grease a 13 by 9-inch baking dish with butter. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, remaining 1 1/2 cups of broth, the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and any accumulated juices from the wings until combined. Add the egg/broth mixture, cherries, pecans and sausage to the bread mixture and gently toss to combine; transfer to the greased baking dish. Arrange the wings on top of the stuffing, cover tightly with aluminum foil, and place the baking dish on a rimmed baking sheet.

Bake on the lower-middle rack until the thickest part of the wings registers 175 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, 60 to 75 minutes. Remove the foil and transfer the wings to a dinner plate to reserve for another use. Using a fork, gently fluff the stuffing. Let it rest 5 minutes before serving.

The stuffing was great! I think putting the wings on the top was a great idea and added some turkey flavor to the stuffing. The dried cherries add just the amount of tartness to the dish and they rehydrate a bit with the broth while cooking.

I served the meal with mashed turnips and boiled potatoes, but on Thanksgiving I will be making mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole and cranberry sauce. We’ll also be starting the meal off with a butternut squash soup. I’ll be posting the recipes for the butternut squash soup, sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole over the next few days if you want to check them out.

I also made a triple berry pie for dessert, which I have posted on here before. This time I used only frozen berries, but it turned out just as well if you want to try it that way.

I hope everyone has great plans for their Thanksgiving. I’ll be posting more recipes and I promise to take pictures of everything on Thursday while I am cooking (I am very bad about remembering to do that, I apologize). Until next time, enjoy your evening and enjoy your meal.

 
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Posted by on November 18, 2012 in Cooking, Dessert, Dinner, Gravy, Holidays, Pie, Side Dishes, Turkey

 

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A Taste of Dublin, Part 5

So this is all I have left from our trip to Dublin as far as the food goes. We ate a small breakfast on our last down, took one last walk around the city and we actually had hamburgers for lunch at the Jasmine Bar at the hotel before we headed for Dublin airport to come home. I did get some recipes from Guinness while we were there at the Storehouse. They do have a whole display of how Guinness has been incorporated into many food dishes in Ireland and the world. I picked up three separate recipes while we were there that all looked good. The first one is Irish mussels in a Guinness cream sauce. Keep in mind that all these recipe measurements are in metric so you may have to convert them when you give them a try.

Irish Mussels in Guinness Cream Sauce

1 kg fresh Irish Mussels

300 ml cream

200 ml fish stock

330 ml Guinness extra stout

1 bay leaf

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped

1 onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

1 stalk celery, diced

Juice of half a lemon

In a saucepan over medium heat, place the butter, onion, carrot and celery and fry for 2-3 minutes until tender but not browned. Add the Guinness, fish stock and bay leaf and simmer until reduced by half. Add the cream and reduce by half again. Add the mussels and cook for 2-3 minutes until all the shells of the mussels have opened. Add the dill and sprinkle with lemon juice.

I think this one will make a great appetizer for a group of 4 or 6 people. I’m not sure you can find Irish mussels easily, but I would try substituting mussels you can get at your local fish market and see how it goes.

For an entrée, I picked this recipe, one we actually saw on a number of menus in places we were at in Dublin. Beef & Guinness stew seems to be a favorite, and it just plain looks like it would taste awesome.

Beef & Guinness Stew

200 ml of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout

400 g stew beef, diced

1 medium onion, diced

1 large carrot, diced

1 large stalk of celery, diced

1 large parsnip, diced

1 liter beef stock

Sprigs of fresh thyme & rosemary

In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil until shimmering. Add the stew beef and brown on all sides, 4-5 minutes. Add the vegetables and cook until tender then pour the Guinness and reduce by half. Add the beef stock and the herbs and simmer very slowly for between an hours and an hour and a half.

They serve the stew with mashed potatoes served on the side of the bowl of the stew. It looks like it has a great dark color to it. It sounds very simple to make and does not have a lot of ingredients, so you can easily make it on a weeknight.

Of course, there needs to be a dessert using Guinness as well. They had a few different ones to choose from, including some cakes, but I chose this recipe for Guinness chocolate truffles instead. It looks simple and should taste great.

Guinness Chocolate Truffles

1 kg dark chocolate, cut into small chunks

400 ml cream

100 ml Guinness

Zest of 1 orange

Cocoa powder

Add the cream and Guinness to a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the chocolate and grated orange zest. Mix together until the chocolate is fully melted. Leave the chocolate mix until it is cool to the touch, but not set. Take a generous teaspoon of the mixture and roll it in your hands to form small round truffles. Dust each with the cocoa powder. Set in refrigerator for 2-3 hours.

A simple fast, chocolatey dessert to finish off a Guinness meal.

So that covers all of the Dublin meals. It was a wonderful trip and we hope to get back to Ireland again and see more of the country than just Dublin. it was a great experience and I would recommend to anyone that they go and enjoy it.

Back to real world cooking for me now though. I do have a backlog of some recipes we have tried recently that I plan to post, including one I just tried from Cook’s Illustrated the other night. Check back and see which one I display first. Until then, enjoy your evening and enjoy your meal!

 
 

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A Taste of Dublin, Part 2

To pick up where I left off yesterday, we did not really have a dinner that first night in Dublin. We were so tired we had slept right through dinner and just went downstairs to the bar in the hotel to see if we could just get a drink and relax. When we arrived there, we found out that we could still order things off the var menu. Neither of us was tremendously hungry, but we did want to have a little something. We each decided to order the lemon tart with raspberry sorbet and an Irish coffee. I can tell you, all three things tasted fantastic. While I did not get the exact recipes for the lemon tart and the raspberry sorbet, I did find some recipes that I think will bring you the same tastes that we had that night.

Lemon Tart

1 fully baked warm tart shell, 9- to 9 1/2-inch (you can buy a store-bought shell if you want, or I will post  the recipe for the pastry shell following)

7 large egg yolks

2 large eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

2/3 cup lemon juice from 4 to 5 medium lemons

1/4 cup grated lemon zest

Pinch table salt

4 tablespoons butter, cut into 4 pieces

3 tablespoons heavy cream

Adjust an oven rack to the upper-middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the tart pan with the shell on a cookie sheet.

In a medium non-reactive bowl, whisk together yolks and whole eggs until combined, about 5 seconds. Add the sugar and whisk until just combined, about 5 seconds. Add lemon juice, zest, and salt; whisk until combined, about 5 seconds. Transfer the mixture to a medium non-reactive saucepan and add the butter pieces, and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until curd thickens to a thin sauce-like consistency and registers 170 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, about 5 minutes. Immediately pour the curd through a single-mesh stainless steel strainer set over clean non-reactive bowl. Stir in the heavy cream; pour the curd into the warm tart shell immediately.

Bake until the filling is shiny and opaque and until the center 3 inches jiggle slightly when shaken, 10 to 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack to room temperature, about 45 minutes. Remove the outer metal ring, slide a thin metal spatula between the bottom crust and the tart pan bottom to release, then slip the tart onto a cardboard round or serving plate. Cut into wedges and serve.

Tart Pastry

1 large egg yolk

1 tablespoon heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar

1/4 teaspoon table salt

8 tablespoons butter (1 stick, very cold), cut into twenty-four 3/4-inch cubes

1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour for dusting

Whisk together the yolk, cream, and vanilla in a small bowl; set aside. Pulse to combine 1 1/4 cups flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Scatter butter pieces over the flour mixture; pulse to cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal, about fifteen 1-second pulses. With the machine running, add the egg mixture and process until the dough just comes together, about 25 seconds. Turn the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and press into a 6-inch disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Unwrap the dough; lightly flour a large sheet of parchment paper or plastic wrap and place the dough in the center. Roll out  the dough and line the tart pan. Freeze the dough 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, adjust one oven rack to the upper-middle position and the other rack to the lower-middle position; heat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the chilled tart shell on a cookie sheet; press a 12-inch square of foil inside the tart shell and fill with metal or ceramic pie weights. Bake on the lower rack for 30 minutes, rotating halfway through the baking time. Carefully remove the foil and weights by gathering edges of foil and pulling up and out. Transfer the cookie sheet with the tart shell to the upper rack and continue to bake until the shell is golden brown, about 5 minutes longer.

Both of these recipes come from America’s Test Kitchen, but of the ones I looked at, these seemed to be the ones that would produce the results closest to what we had. For the raspberry sorbet, I looked around all over the place to try to find one that I thought would be close to what we had when I came across this one.

Raspberry Sorbet

1 pint fresh raspberries

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

Wash the raspberries well. Dissolve the 1/2 cup of sugar into the 1/2 cup of water. Combine the sugar-water mix and the raspberries in a blender (optional you could strain out the raspberry seeds at this point if they bother you. A lot of people don’t like them). Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker. Freeze as for making ice cream. It takes about 30 minutes in a 1 quart gel canister ice cream maker. Let the sorbet harden for an additional 30 minutes in the freezer. (Don’t leave the sorbet in the freezer too long, or it will be hard to scoop and have the texture of a popsicle.)

That’s all there is to it. It’s a pretty simple recipe that I think will produce results just like what we had. Here’s a picture of what we had at the Brooks Hotel;

The Irish coffee we had I thought would be similar to what I make but it did taste different. I have posted my recipe before if you want to see how I make it, but I watched the bartender make hers and she did it somewhat differently.

Irish Coffee

1 teaspoon light brown sugar

1 1/2 ounces Irish Whiskey

6 ounces fresh brewed coffee

Clotted cream

Pour hot water into your coffee glass. Allow the glass to get warm and then dispose of the hot water. Add the sugar and whiskey to the glass. Pour the hot coffee over the whiskey and sugar. Top with clotted cream and serve.

Now I add extras to my Irish coffee, but I have to say it tasted great this way.You could get a good taste of the Irish whiskey and the clotted cream, which we don’t really do, tasted great. We each had Irish coffees on several nights and noticed that different bartenders make it different ways at the same bar. The first bartender we had mixed the whiskey and sugar before putting the coffee in. She also topped the cream with a single coffee bean, which I thought was a nice touch. The second bartender told us when he served it that he did not mix the sugar into the whiskey and gave us spoons to do it. He said some people don’t like the sugar mixed in, so he leaves it up to the customer. You could certainly taste the whiskey more in the second bartender’s version, but both were pretty good. Here is a picture of the one we had on the first night.

Michelle liked that served each one with a piece of Irish chocolate too :). They also left a piece of chocolate on our pillows every night.

I was going to include the Irish breakfast in tonight’s post, but this one is already running long so I think I will include it in tomorrow’s post instead. It was quite a full breakfast, and unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of that one, but it was good and I’ll fill you in on all the contents tomorrow. We’ll see how long tomorrow’s post goes and what I’ll include or maybe I’ll just wait until the next day. Keep checking back to see what shows up. until then, enjoy the rest of your evening and enjoy your meal!

 
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Posted by on October 8, 2012 in Beverages, Dessert, Eating Out

 

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Bananas Foster Milkshake Recipe | Food Republic

Bananas Foster Milkshake Recipe | Food Republic.

I am a big fan of bananas foster as a dessert. I don’t eat many desserts, but if bananas foster is on the menu or we are planning to make it at home, I am in. This milkshake recipe posted by Food Republic on their blog today definitely sounds like a must try for anyone who likes this. Check it out!

 
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Posted by on August 13, 2012 in Beverages, Dessert

 

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Chicken, Beets and Magic Ice Cream

We had family over for dinner yesterday so we did our typical Sunday dinner with way too much food. We started off with appetizers of buffalo chicken pizza and some homemade guacamole and tomato salsa with some chips. Then for dinner, I tried to do everything in one roasting pan to help cut down on the clean up. We made a couple of roast chickens with roasted root vegetables that we had picked up at the farmer’s market on Saturday. This also included some fresh beets that I roasted and they turned out wonderful. The whole dinner was very easy to prepare, although it took about 2 hours in total to cook. I used recipes from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” for the meal yesterday.

Roast Chicken with Root Vegetables

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 whole chickens, 3 to 4 pounds each, trimmed of excess fat

2-3 russet potatoes, scrubbed and chopped

1/2 pound parsnips, peeled and chopped

1/2 pound carrots, peeled and chopped

1 sweet potato, scrubbed and chopped

1 onion, peeled and quartered

6 whole cloves of garlic

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Mix together the olive oil and thyme and some salt and pepper. Put the chickens, breast side up, on a rack in a roasting pan. Toss all the vegetables together in a large bowl with 3/4 of the herb and oil mixture and scatter in the bottom of the roasting pan beneath the chickens. Roast the chickens in the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, spoon some of the herb mixture over the chicken and the vegetables. Shake the pan gently so the vegetables turn and cook evenly.

After roasting for another 10 minutes, the chicken breasts should begin to brown (if they don’t, wait a few more minutes until they are brown). Turn the heat in the oven down to 325 degrees, baste again with the remaining herb mixture, and roast until an instant read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 155-165 degrees.

Remove the chickens from the oven and raise the oven temperature to 425 degrees. Continue roasting the vegetables while the chickens rest before carving, about 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Serve the carved chickens with the vegetables scattered around them.

We served the chickens and vegetables with a fresh tomato and cucumber salad dressed with extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and a little diced shallot. You could just as easily only make one of the vegetables for this meal instead of the mix, but the mix turned out quite nice and gave us a good variety. I also made some fresh beets that I roasted with this meal. Now, not everyone is a fan of beets in general. I think some people were scarred in childhood by being forced into eating them, but fresh roasted beets taste unbelievably delicious. They have a very sweet flavor from their natural sugars, and once you have roasted them they are great hot or cold. Roasting them really is the best method for cooking them.

Roasted Beets

4 large beets, scrubbed, greens cut off (leave a bit of the greens on the end to help stop them from bleeding all over while they cook)

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Wash the beets well. Wrap them individually in foil and put them on a cookie sheet or in a roasting pan. Bake, undisturbed for 45 to 90 minutes, until the thin blade of knife pierces one with a little resistance. Remove the beets from the foil and carefully and gently rub the surface of the beet to remove the peel. Dress lightly with extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.

If you bake them in foil, you don’t really have to worry about them staining anything (unless of course you drop a piece on your shirt while you’re eating. Thankfully, none of us did). You could also take the roasted beets, cut them and saute them gently with some butter or olive oil after roasting for some added flavor, but I think they are great just this way. Everyone seemed to really enjoy them, and I had leftovers tonight with dinner.

I decided to try something completely different for dessert last night. I had seen a recipe from Cook’s Country for something called Magic Strawberry Ice Cream. The name intrigued me so I read up on it and it claimed to make ice cream with the need of an ice cream machine or maker. I figured why not, let’s give it a try.

Magic Strawberry Ice Cream

8 ounces strawberries, hulled

1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

1 ounce white chocolate chips

1 tablespoon vodka

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1 1/4 cups heavy creamed, chilled

Process the strawberries in a food processor until smooth, about 30 seconds (puree should measure about 3/4 cup). Microwave the sweetened condensed milk, white chocolate chips and vodka in a large bowl until the chocolate melts, about 1 minute, whisking halfway through cooking. Whisk in the strawberry puree, vanilla and salt.

Using a stand mixer fitted with a whisk, whip the heavy cream on medium-low speed until foamy, about 1 minute. Increase the speed to high and whip until soft peaks form, 1 to 3 minutes. Whisk one-third of the whipped cream into the strawberry mixture, then gently fold in the remaining whipped cream, 1 scoop at a time, until combined. Freeze in an airtight container until firm, 6 hours or up to 2 weeks. Serve.

I know you are probably asking, why is there vodka in this recipe? Well the berries have a lot of moisture all on their own and the ice cream would crystallize and ice over. The vodka prevents this from happening and lets the berries do their thing. I have to say, I was very skeptical this would work but I could tell before I even combined the puree with the whipped cream that this was going to taste good. The puree itself smelled exactly like a good strawberry ice cream. Once everything was combined and had set, it was perfect and tasted awesome. What made it even better for us was that Michelle’s grandmother had unknowingly made a strawberry shortcake to bring for dessert, so it was absolute perfect with a little ice cream on the side.

Of course, if I was smart I would have taken pictures of everything, but Sean reminded me about after most of the ice cream was gone, so I didn’t get a picture of it (he’s actually finishing the ice cream right now). Oh well, maybe next time. Now that we know how easy it is to make, I’ll certainly make it again.

That’s it for tonight. I have 2 chicken carcasses to make stock with tomorrow and I never did get to make chicken salad sandwiches the other night, but maybe I will do that tomorrow and post the recipe with some potato salad and cole slaw. We’ll have to see what else comes along this week. Work has kept me very busy lately, so I haven’t had time to blog, but I will try to fit some in this week. Until then, enjoy your evening and enjoy your meal!

 
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Posted by on August 6, 2012 in Cooking, Dessert, Poultry, Vegetables

 

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10 Refreshing Summer Desserts (That Just Happen to Be Low-Calorie): BA Daily: bonappetit.com

10 Refreshing Summer Desserts (That Just Happen to Be Low-Calorie): BA Daily: bonappetit.com.

With all this hot weather, here are a few cool summer treats that are also low calorie. There are several different ice pops and fruit desserts listed in this blog entry from Bon Appetit. I think I am going to give a couple of them a try. You should check it out and do the same!

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Cooking Websites, Dessert

 

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