One of my favorite quick breads is the coconut bread from bills, a restaurant in Sydney Australia. The bread has a dense and tender crumb, is very moist and has a great coconut flavor. I also like to use it as a jumping off point for other coconut bread recipes because I am a big fan of coconut in general. That bread is served as breakfast, and comes out toasted and topped with butter. This variation on that basic coconut bread is more of a dessert quick bread – although you could still certainly serve it alongside coffee for breakfast or brunch – because it has a ribbon of chocolate running though it that makes it a little sweeter than the original.
The coconut bread uses a generous amount of shredded coconut, which gives it a texture that is almost half way between a coconut macaroon and a pound cake. You can use either unsweetened or sweetened coconut in this recipe, although I generally use sweetened for a little extra sweetness in the finished bread. To boost the coconut flavor even more you can use coconut milk rather than plain milk in the batter. The bread is sweet and tender, with a great blend of chocolate, vanilla and coconut flavors in it. Like the plain version, it can be toasted, but I think that this one is best when simply sliced and served as-is.
The chocolate ribbon is made by adding melted chocolate to a small portion of the batter. Semisweet or bittersweet chocolate is the best choice for the marble layer, because milk chocolate will be a little bit too sweet and a very dark chocolate will have a flavor that is too dominant over the light coconut flavor of the rest of the bread. If you want to increase the chocolate factor even more, you can stir in some chocolate chips to either or both parts of the batter.
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Vanilla is one of the most ubiquitous flavors in baking. Not only are there a wide variety of vanilla baked goods, but vanilla is in the vast majority of baking recipes regardless of the primary flavor in the cake/cookie/pastry in question. Vanilla beans are always an option when baking and cooking, but the beans can be quite expensive. Vanilla extract is the most common and most cost effective way of using vanilla in your home kitchen.
Vanilla extract is an alcohol solution containing vanillin, an organic compound that is responsible for the vanilla flavor of vanilla beans. It is made by macerating vanilla beans in the solution until the flavor has been well-infused. Pure vanilla extract is specifically defined by the FDA as a solution containing 13.35-oz of vanilla beans per gallon of solution and with at least 35% ethyl alcohol by volume. The rest of the volume of vanilla extract is typically made of water. Ethyl alcohol is used because it is flavor neutral, meaning that it does not impart a taste of its own, and alcohol in general is a good solvent, easily extracting the vanillin from the vanilla bean and infusing it into the rest of the solution. In short, vanilla extract is an alcohol-based solution that allows you to get a more flavor and more use out of a single vanilla bean.
There are many different types of vanilla beans – Madagascar vanilla, Tahitian vanilla – and they can all be used to make vanilla extract. Labels will often note the specific type of vanilla bean used, and different extracts will have slightly different flavor profiles depending on the variety of bean used. Some manufactures also make double or triple strength extract, using a higher ratio of vanilla beans to the alcohol solution during the manufacturing process. Homemade extracts can be made with other types of alcohol, such as vodka, by submerging split vanilla beans in the alcohol and allowing them to infuse for several months. Vanilla extract can be stored indefinitely if kept in a cool, dark environment or when stored in a bottle that does not allow much light through.
I typically use cake and cupcake carriers both for transporting and storing baked goods. I’ve gone through a variety of carriers over the years, and generally opt for lightweight, plastic containers that have an airtight seal because they are the most versatile and the most durable options for baked good storage. But even the well designed ones don’t qualify as cute (and some don’t even qualify as being particularly attractive), so I will often transfer baked goods to a bakery-style box when bringing them to serve to friends and family for a better presentation. I could just as easily transfer them to either a Glitterville Vintage Cake Carrier or Cupcake Carrier, both of which offer a lot more style than most other baked good transport options! Made of thin metal, these carriers have a very cute, retro look to them. The Cake Carrier measures 13 x 7-inches, which makes it large enough to handle most layer cakes, while the 14.5 x 10.5 x 4.5-inche Cupcake Carrier will hold a dozen cupcakes securely within a small rack inside of the carrier. The rack that holds the cupcakes in place is removable, and when taken out this carrier will also hold a sheet cake.
The containers are not airtight, so they’re not as good as most plastic cake carriers when it comes to storage and keeping baked goods fresh, but you can’t beat them on presentation when you arrive at a party or bbq with one of these carriers in hand. They also make a sweet birthday gift if you bring it filled with cake and leave the tin with the birthday girl to use for her own future baking endeavors!
Ice cream sandwiches are a fun summertime treat. They’re easy to make, because you can take just about any pair of cookies and stuff them full of whatever ice cream you have in the freezer for an instant ice cream sandwich. Now, some types of cookies work better as ice cream sandwiches than others. You want cookies that are tender, slightly soft and fairly thin. This results in ice cream sandwiches that you can fit in your mouth and won’t be hard as rocks when you make them in advance and store them in the freezer! But brownies often work better than cookies. Not only does chocolate go with just about every flavor of ice cream out there, but brownies are more tender than cookies and tend to make a softer, easier to eat ice cream sandwich that most cookies do.
These Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Ice Cream Sandwiches are definitely a great choice for ice cream sandwich lovers. The brownies are rich and chocolaty, with a hint of cakiness to them that helps keep them easy to bite into even after freezing (great when you don’t have a whole lot of patience for digging into that sandwich!). The brownies are baked in a 9×13 pan and, after cooling, the whole batch of brownies is cut in half. Softened ice cream is spread onto on half of the brownies and the second half is stacked on top. Chill the whole thing and then use a sharp knife to divide up the block into small ice cream sandwiches. The brownie layers are still relatively thick (especially compared to a store bought ice cream sandwich), but I definitely like to have a good brownie:ice cream ratio.
I used mint chocolate chip ice cream inside of these brownies and added a little peppermint extract to the brownie batter, as well. The mint chocolate brownies will still go nicely with chocolate or vanilla ice cream, but omit the mint extract if you prefer to use something like peach ice cream or rocky road as your filling. If you really want to make the brownie layer thinner, cut the sheet in half, chill the brownies slightly and use a large, serrated knife to cut them in half horizontally. You’ll get less brownie in each sandwich, but you’ll end up with twice as many sandwiches this way!
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