During a heat wave, most of us aren’t thinking about turning on our ovens and baking up a couple of batches of cookies. That prospect is not nearly as appealing as it is during the winter, when the idea of working in front of a warm oven sounds very appealing. In the summer, we want air conditioning, refreshment and, most importantly, nothing that will make us hotter than we already are – even if a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie still sounds tempting. Here are a couple of recipes, sweet and savory, to help beat the heat during a heatwave:
Put that ambient heat to good use and turn your oven into a car with a batch of Car Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies. When it is over 100F outside, the interior of a car can reach up to 180F when left in the sun – hot enough to do some long, slow baking. The cookies turn out just like they would from the oven! You won’t need to turn on your oven and you’re car will smell like freshly baked cookies when you’re done, too. Oatmeal cookie fans can try Car Baked Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies instead of the original.
Classic s’mores are a great summer treat if you’re camping, but if you don’t already have a roaring fire going, try a S’mores Ice Cream Terrine instead. This layered dessert has all the elements of a s’more in a much more refreshing format. The terrine is made with ice cream, fudge sauce, marshmallows and graham crackers and it really does capture that s’more flavor! It can be made well in advance and served to a crowd for dessert or simply saved for treating yourself on a warm afternooon.
Homemade Ice Cream Drumsticks are another great frozen treat for summertime. Starting with store bought sugar cones, you can easily customize this ice cream truck favorite with any kind of ice cream you like. Simply press the ice cream into the cone and shape it into a neat scoop. Chill, then dip into chocolate to coat. You can even dip the unset chocolate into chopped nuts, shredded coconut or sprinkles to give it a sundae-like look! These are another treat that keep very well in the freezer if you take the time to make a good sized batch of them.
Outdoor cooking is a lot more appealing than indoor cooking when it is hot. You don’t need to heat up your oven, and standing in front of a 500F grill actually makes you feel cooler! Grilled Pizza is a great summertime option and alternative to burgers and sausages. The dough can be made in advance and it only takes a couple of minutes of cooking on each side to finish the pizza. Keep the toppings light, because they won’t have as long to cook as they will in the oven.
Finally, one last summertime favorite is gazpacho. This chilled tomato soup is not only refreshing, but uses up lots of fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes when they are at their best. Salmorejo is a type of Spanish gazpacho that uses a lot of olive oil and has bread incorporated into the soup mix. These two ingredients make the gazpacho exceptionally creamy, while keeping the great tomato flavor and losing none of the refreshment of the dish. You can also make a watermelon gazpacho for something with a sweet and spicy finish to it!
A banana split is the quintessential soda fountain sundae and probably the best thing that you can do with ice cream. They were first introduced in the early 1900s, when bananas were still a relatively new and exotic fruit for Americans. The original recipe calls for a split banana (hence the name) to be topped with three scoops of ice cream, topped with chocolate syrup, marshmallow, nuts, whipped cream, and a cherry. You don’t find them at ice cream parlors anywhere near often enough anymore, but they’re easy to make at home to cool down on a hot day and enjoy a thoroughly retro dessert.
A banana split starts with a perfectly ripe banana that is peeled and split lengthwise. The banana should be laid in a long, shallow dish or bowl and can then be topped with three scoops of ice cream. The most basic combination is a Neapolitan one – one scoop each of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry – and each of the flavors is doused with a single type of sundae topping, such as hot fudge, strawberry sauce, pineapple sauce or caramel sauce. The whole thing is covered with whipped cream, chopped nuts and a maraschino cherry.
Like any kind of ice cream sundae, you can easily customize a banana split with any ice cream or topping flavors you like. As long as you start with a split banana, you can still call the sunday a split no matter what you top it with! The sundae pictured above uses coffee, chocolate and dulce de leche ice creams. It is topped with hot fudge, caramel sauce, marshmallow sauce, chopped peanuts, whipped cream and a few maraschino cherries.
When faced with a freshly baked batch of brownies, which piece do you reach for first: the fudgy center or a chewy corner piece? If you are in the corner camp of brownie lovers – as several members of my family are – there is a new pan out that is designed to give you twice as many corners as a regular square brownie pan can. The Corners Brownie Pan is made with an unusual zig zag design, so where the batter in a regular brownie pan will touch straight edges, here it will spill right into corners. Edges are chewier than the center pieces of brownies and corners are always even chewier. It’s not everyone’s favorite piece of brownie, but most corner piece fans have a strong preference for them over center-cut pieces. The pan is nonstick and measures about 15” X 16” X 2”, making it large enough to hold the batter for a brownie recipe – or a brownie mix – designed for a 9×13 pan. The pan can be used with cake batters and cake mixes, as well, so you’re not limited to baking brownies with it, though you won’t get the chewy edges that brownies do when baking other goodies.
The main competition for a pan like this one would be the Baker’s Edge pan, another nonstick pan with an unusual design that delivers brownies (and other baked goods) with far more edges than your standard bakeware. While that pan delivers more edges, this one gives you corners and fudgier centerpieces with no edges at all, so there is more variety as well as more corners to enjoy!
Rocky Road ice cream is a flavor with a great story behind it. It was created in March of 1929 by ice cream makers Joseph Edy and William Dreyer, who put marshmallows and walnuts into chocolate ice cream. After the big Stock Market Crash in December of 1929 (which started the Great Depression), the partners gave the flavor it’s current name – Rocky Road – “to give folks something to smile about in the midst of the Great Depression.” Even the story puts a smile on my face, and the ice cream itself is one of the most popular flavors out there almost a century later.
Rich chocolate ice cream, crunchy walnuts and sweet, fluffy marshmallows are a fantastic combination for an ice cream flavor. I start my Homemade Rocky Road Ice Cream with a classic chocolate ice cream base. The basic custard is made with milk and cream, and thickened with egg yolks. The chocolate flavor comes both from semisweet chocolate and cocoa powder, so it has a really balanced chocolate flavor that is neither too dark nor too sweet, but just right for a batch of rocky road. You’ll need an ice cream maker to get the best, creamiest results with this recipe – and with most homemade ice cream recipes, so it is worth investing in one if you’re an ice cream lover planning to make it yourself on a regular basis.
My biggest complaint with rocky road ice creams that you can buy at ice cream shops or at grocery stores is that they don’t have enough stuff in them. Not that there is anything wrong with chocolate ice cream on its own, but if I wanted plain chocolate I would buy that! Fortunately, when you’re making your own ice cream you have a lot of control over how many add-ins you can add. I like to put in a lot of miniature marshmallows (homemade will work, but I tend to prefer the lighter store-bought minis for ice cream) and plenty of nuts. Walnuts are classic for rocky road, though I will often use a combination of toasted walnuts and pecans when I’m making it at home.
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