1-Minute Dessert: Sea Salt Chocolate Cherry Cake

Some days are chocolate cake days.
When you drop your stud earring on the floor, then step on it thumb tack style.  That’s a chocolate cake day.
When you leave your keys in your car and the engine running and it takes you like half-an-hour to realize it and run back outside in a panic.  Um, chocolate cake day.
When your boss is out of town and the phone rings about 20 times.  And every time it’s him.  Yeah, get you some chocolate cake for that day.
All of these are possible reasons why you need to shove this cake in your face.
But you don’t really need a reason.

1-Minute Sea Salt Chocolate Cherry Cake

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Endless Poptails: Grilled Mango Smash

 

I’m going to be upfront and set this post up properly: I’m a baker, not a griller. I’m not saying that because I rock heels over flip flops for weekend outings.  Grill’n is just not my thing. As a result I’m the worst kind of griller. I’m always lifting the hood a few too many times and turning the heat up and down too much—I grill with self-doubt.

So for this recipe it wasn’t bravery that stirred me to action. Nope. It wasn’t even the Esquire article about this new breed of female master grillers, that is, until I got to the grilled margarita recipe. Grilled drinks?

Yeah, go ahead, I’ll wait while you grab your tongs.

Here’s what I made after grabbing mine: Grilled Mango Smash.  Think sweet mango grilled to the point when the sugar is sweated to the surface for a dark smoky carmelized flavor. Lighting up that sweetness is the fire from the tomatillo and quietly but confidently nudging its way in is a slight peppery bite from the basil. And finally, lying beneath all that is a layer of that belly-grabbing barbeque flavor. It’s awesomeness on a stick.

Grilled Mango Smash

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Endless Ice Cream: Coconut Curry Chocolate Chip

If you’re thinking that this is an ugly ice cream, you are right. The picture doesn’t even begin to do justice to the weird, neon yellow color of this ice cream. But what it lacks in looks it makes up for in taste. The depth of toasty goodness will keep you spooning more and more into your face. The toasted coconut hits you first, followed by the mellow, smooth, warm curry. The chocolate chips add little bursts of sweetness to offset the spice of the curry. For all of you adventurous curry lovers out there—this one’s for you.

Coconut Curry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

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Peanut Butter Oreo Truffles

How do you eat your Oreos? Do you twist? Dunk? Twist, then stack, then dunk? How about crushed and pulverized into a small ball and then covered in chocolate? I never thought an Oreo could get much better until  I visited my girlfriend’s family for the holiday and discovered “Oreo Balls.”  These creamy spheres are made of Oreos crushed up and mixed with cream cheese, then covered in chocolate. They are so good, I’ve been conditioned to salivate just from talking about them.

Fast forward over a year and a half, and my sister’s graduation is upon us. In order to pitch in, I volunteered to make Oreo Balls with a twist—a peanut butter twist. Admit it:  you put some peanut butter on your Oreos occasionally. So I bring to you “stick to the roof of your mouth” Peanut Butter Oreo Truffles.

I figured that actual peanut butter Oreos would work in the recipe, but was prepared to throw in spoons of peanut butter just in case. And of course, since I’m a health nut, I used fat-free cream cheese. Turns out that the one package of peanut butter Oreos was enough to give a sufficient taste of peanut butter in the truffles. The end result is a sweet, creamy, peanut-buttery bite of deliciousness. Imagine the taste of dunking a peanut butter Oreo in milk. It’s better than that. I promise.

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Crispy French Toast Strawberry Shortcake

My car stereo has been on the fritz this week.  So, unless I listen to my iPod with one earphone in (for safety, people), I’m kind of forced to think on the way to and from work.  Let me just preface this by saying that I’m really weird.  But whatever.  I embrace it. Well, what I have been thinking about lately is tweeting.  More accurately, I have been thinking about tweets I would tweet if I tweeted.  I don’t have Twitter, nor do I have any desire to.  But, still, this is what is on my mind:

Does {the rapper} Pitbull have any actually albums of his own?  It seems like he is on everyone else’s songs.  Does he have time to do songs alone?  How does he sell records?

***

I raced home and put my swimsuit on the other day and I totally did not even get in the pool.  I felt really loser-y sitting around in a non-functional swimsuit.  It’s like putting on a prom dress and sitting on the couch.  What the heck?

***

What would happen if you combined cornflake encrusted angel food cake French toast with roasted strawberries and made a play on strawberry shortcake?  Um, my head might explode.

***

That last fake tweet was clearly onto something.

Crispy French Toast Strawberry Shortcake

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Endless Ice Cream: Peanut Butter Pretzel Ice Cream Truffles

At some point last year I came across a recipe for ice cream truffles. It seemed easy enough. You scoop the ice cream, flash freeze the scoops, coat them in melted chocolate, freeze a little while longer, then indulge. So I grabbed a pint of  Häagen-Dazs vanilla bean ice cream out of the freezer and happily started away.

Good lord, it was a holy disaster. I’m pretty sure it ended with everything thrown unceremoniously in the garbage, quickly followed by the crack of a beer. But since I started making my own ice cream, my mind has often wandered back to that terrible day, and made me wonder exactly what went wrong. I started researching and I determined it was three things:

1) When the ice cream scoops started to melt I kept going instead of popping them back into the freezer.

2) When the temperature of the chocolate dropped and quit adhering easily to the ice cream I did not heat it up again.

3) Dipping the ice cream with my hands was messy and slow, increasing the speed of melted ice cream and cooling chocolate.

So I decided to give it another whirl, and this time the results were pretty fantastic…

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Cherry-Whiskey Upside Down Cake

I’m going through such a maniac state right now. I think my overloaded schedule has me in some sort of fit of always doing. Not that “doing” is actually resulting into anything productive. For instance if you follow me on Pinterest or Instagram, you see quite a bit of time has been sucked away admiring and trying to acheive some level of aestheticness that I’ve yet to figure out. What I have figured out is how to make a killer whiskey-loaded cake to impress the hell out of the dads in your life this Father’s Day.

Go ahead and show them that whiskey ain’t just for sipping or for licking. You truly can bite your whiskey with this cake. Here’s the quick rundown: the cake portion is tender and springy, not all all mushy as the bottoms of upside cakes can be. The whiskey gives the ensemble an extra subtle dimension that quiets the caramel topping and brings it in balance with the cake and fruity sweetness of the cherry.

If you like to bake, make this. If you don’t – well, there aren’t many times in your life where you can drink on the job, but in this case you totally can. Get in the kitchen and bake this for the dad(s) in your life, already.

Cherry  & Whiskey Upside Down Cake

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