Filed under Foodies and Chefs, Baking by Nicole | 1 comment
- Today is Canada Day, and in tribute, Dinner with Julie baked some Maple Cupcakes. Maple cupcakes are a fitting treat for the holiday because maple syrup is so closely associated with Canada and Canadian foods. The cupcakes have quite a bit of maple syrup in the cake itself, and are topped off with a decadent maple syrup frosting. If you want to take the maple flavor even further, try to track down some maple sugar to replace the regular sugar called for in the recipe.
- Both cheesecakes and apple pie are staples of American dessert menus, but there is absolutely no reason that the two couldn’t be combined into one rich, creamy, fruit-filled dessert, like the Brown Sugar Apple Cheesecake at Eat Me Delicious. This cheesecake has a gingersnap crust, made with all the usual apple pie spices, and is filled with a layer of light-sauteed apples. Although cream cheese isn’t typically found in apple pies, all the flavors of regular apple pie can be found in this cheesecake, making it novel and familiar at the same time.
- Tomatoes are in season and very plentiful. When you have good, fresh tomatoes, you probably want to enjoy them as close to their natural state as possible. Ezra Pound Cake’s Fresh Tomato Tart with a Basil-Garlic Crust is a good way to do that, and a nice change from making just another salad. The tart is filled with a simple mixture of mozzarella, tomatoes and olive oil. The filling sits in a savory crust flavored with fresh basil and garlic.
- The Apple Popovers from The Way It Crumbles are a twist on apple pie that I haven’t seen before! For this recipe, apples are diced up and caramelized on the stovetop with sugar and butter. The apple mixture is then ladled into the center muffin cups already filled with popover batter. When the popovers bake, they form a light “crust” around the apple mixture and leave you with a treat that could be served for dessert, breakfast or just eaten as a snack. Don’t forget the ice cream if you’re looking to make them a little more like regular apple pie!
- When I think of whoopie pies, I tend to think of chocolate cookies with a cream filling. Sweet Charity Pie’s Lemon Whoopie Pies may not be perfectly traditional in that respect, but they certainly sound like a refreshing change of pace. The cookies are soft, almost cake-like, and are packed with lemon zest. The cream cheese filling also has more lemon juice and zest in it to give the cookies a bright flavor. These keep well and travel easily, so they’re a great choice for summer barbecues and parties.
Filed under Foodies and Chefs, Baking by Nicole | 7 comments
- Lemonade and limeade are refreshing drinks, not just because they’re served cold, but because of the zestiness of the citrus fruits. This zestiness carries over into other dishes, so it’s no surprise that Culinary in the Country dubbed these Coconut-Lime Bars with Hazelnut Shortbread Crust as being refreshing. The bright lime flavor really stands out against the sweet coconut and nutty crunch of a shortbread crust packed with toasted hazelnuts.
- Hazelnuts also popped up in Visions of Sugar Plum’s Cinnamon Hazelnut Brownies. These rich brownies have Nutella - that delicious chocolate hazelnut spread - mixed into the batter to infuse it with hazelnut flavor (as well as enhancing the chocolate of the brownies). They are also topped off with chocolate chips and hazelnut pieces. The hazelnuts toast up nicely in the oven and add some great texture to these bars, as well as bringing even more attention to the Nutella in the batter.
- I’ve always liked jelly roll-type cakes because they aren’t fussy and have a fun look to them - not to mention that they taste delicious and are very versatile. The Rolled Nut Cake with Raspberries from Anne’s Food is a perfect example. The cake base is a simple sponge cake that includes ground hazelnuts and it is filled with fresh whipped cream and raspberries. The whole thing takes very little time to put together and it has a light flavor and texture that is perfect for summer, especially if you get some top notch berries in there.
- Cogito Ergo Creo made a delicious looking Vanilla Cream Pie with Gingersnap Crust that doesn’t use any cream. The recipe is based on a Chocolate Moo-less Pie recipe that uses tofu as the base and gets its flavor and richness from melted chocolate chips. The vanilla pie calls for melted white chocolate chips, so unlike the chocolate version, it’s not vegan, but it is creamy, decadent and very easy to put together. It’s also a little bit sturdier than your typical vanilla cream pie, so you shouldn’t have any problems serving it on a hot summer night, either.
- When you have a lot of fresh, ripe strawberries, you don’t need to do too much with them to really show them off. Closet Cooking’s Strawberry Tart is made with puff pastry and plenty of berries. It’s simple, and really puts the jewel-like berries into the spotlight. The tart is garnished with a generous sprinkle of chopped pistachios, which add crunch and a nice splash of green to the ruby red base beneath them. This tart is probably best the day it is made, but if you like strawberries, I suspect that getting through the whole thing won’t be much of a problem!
Filed under Foodies and Chefs, Baking by Nicole | 3 comments
- Chiffon cakes are light and fluffy, a great dessert to have around in the summertime when you don’t feel like munching oni a heavy or overly-rich dessert. Like angel food cakes, many are only lightly flavored. Unlike angel food cakes, chiffon cakes can actually pack in a lot of flavor. Pureed fruit makes a great addition to chiffon cakes. Fuzzy Bakes used fresh, ripe mango to make a Mango Chiffon Cake. Be sure to taste-test your mangoes before you start baking, as some can be a little fiberous and you want to have the silkiest, sweetest mango you can get to achieve the best results on this cake.
- I love empanadas, the little pocket-sized South and Central American stuffed pastries, and have had them with all kinds of meat and vegetarian fillings. They’re quite easy to make and are a great lighter meal (unless you want to eat a whole bunch and make it a big meal), or hors d’oeuvre to serve to party guests. 5 second rule’s Spinach, Brie, and Apple Empanadas have an unusual, but delicious-sounding filling that I haven’t encountered before. These vegetarian empanadas are sweet and savory, thanks to apples and golden raisins mixed in with spinach, garlic and brie.
- The Coconut Peanut Squares recipe at Angie’s Recipes features a combination of ingredients I haven’t seen put together in a while. The bars start with a shortbread-type cookie dough that is full of hazelnuts and shredded coconut. That bottom layer is finished off with a creamy layer of peanut butter topping. The flavors all manage to come together in the end, and you’ll have something that’s a little more like a candy bar (without chocolate, however) than your average shortbread cookie. The recipe calls for German #405 flour, this is similar to cake or pastry flour in the US.
- Without making them yourself, it can be hard to tell one batch of brownies from another. Rich, chocolaty and moist, many brownies look similar from photograph to photograph, blog post to blog post. If names are anything to go by, however, I would have to give an edge to the Seduction Brownies recently baked by Cookie Baker Lynn. The brownies, which are from a David Lebovitz recipe, are moist and dense, so they taste very rich. They are also topped with a layer of indulgent ganache that is, for a chocolate fan, very seductive.
- The thing that caught my eye about Good Life Eats‘ post on Creamy Vanilla Apricot Sorbet was not the delightful-sounding sorbet, which is made with lots of fresh apricots and is lighter than regular ice cream. It was the White Chocolate Almond Bark that accompanied it. The bark is easy to make, just a thin layer of white chocolate topped off with crunchy nuts, but the flavor works well with the ice cream and it is something you could easily whip up on a few moments notice to accompany other dishes.
Filed under Foodies and Chefs, Baking by Nicole | 2 comments
- As much as I love egg dishes for breakfast, the morning meal can get a little bit boring without mixing things up from omelets and scrambles once in a while. Not Quite Nigella’s Bacon, Egg and Cheese Breakfast Strudel is a great change of pace that incorporates several breakfast staples. The strudel is a bit like a quiche, in that it has a crust and an eggy filling, but a strudel dough is lighter and flakier than most pie crusts. The dish looks complicated, but is easy once you have the dough mixed up, and it is great one-dish meal for serving a crowd.
- One of the great things about food blogging is that we get to see food from all over the world without leaving our own homes. Not that it’s not good to get out once in a while, just that it’s nice not to have to. A good example are the Indian Cardamom Mava Cakes on Tartelette. These cakes, an Indian specialty, aren’t something you’ll find in your all -purpose cookbook. The plain-looking cakes are made with a mixture of cream and evaporated milk that is something like a pudding and adds a ton of moisture to the cakes and a great milky flavor.
- I love the bright flavor combination of raspberry and lime, as well as the color contrast between the two fruits in general. So, Bittersweet’s Raspberry Lime Sheet Cake immediately caught my eye. The cake is a little bit more like a coffee cake than a regular sheet cake, since it is packed with berries and topped with just a drizzle of icing and you could easily get away with serving it for brunch - always a nice feature in a cake.
- A great use for fresh fruit is to make a fresh fruit sorbet. It’s refreshing, light and a great treat for the summertime. Kiss My Spatula recently made a Fresh Pineapple Sorbet, inspired by some Italian ices from childhood. The sorbet is simple, with just three ingredients: pineapple, sugar and water. Be sure to choose the ripest pineapple you can find to get the best flavor into the sorbet. This is great served on its own, complemented with fresh fruit or even topped with a shot of run or vodka for a fun, grownup cocktail.
- Chick-O-Sticks are semi-retro candies (they’ve been around for a long time) that are kind of like the center of a Butterfinger bar. They’re crunchy, bright orange, round candies that taste like peanut butter and toasted coconut. As Mac & Cheese found out, they also make a great addition to ice cream. Chick-O-Stick ice cream is made with peanut butter and coconut milk, highlighting the two flavors in the candy bars. The candy is crushed up and mixed in, adding a nice crunch to contrast with the creaminess of the ice cream.
Filed under Vegan, Foodies and Chefs, Baking by Nicole | 1 comment
- Urth Cafe is a well-known Los Angeles cafe that is famous for organic coffee and its variety of healthy-conscious vegan and vegetarian foods and baked goods. Their baked goods can be surprisingly good, as Cookie Madness found out when she tried their “wheat free, dairy free, egg free, guilt free!” chocolate chip cookies. She was so inspired that she came up with a recipe for Giant Wheat Free, Vegan, Chocolate Chip Cookies (like Urth’s). The cookies use barley flour, egg replacer and vegan margarine. If you’re not vegan, you could probably get away with using regular margarine/butter and still get a great result.
- If you want to infuse a little bit of international flavor into your kitchen, think about giving the Skoleboller, or Norwegian Cardamom and Custard Buns, from Leftover Queen a try. The sweet buns start with a soft, cardamom-flavored dough and are filled with custard and topped with coconut. The custard goes on top of the dough, not as a filling inside, making these similar in appearance to Danishes and very portable, since the custard gets baked in the oven and firms up a little bit.
- Probably the polar opposite of the above vegan cookies is The Traveler’s Lunchbox’s Browned Butter Ice Cream. The ice cream is exactly what it sounds like: a rich ice cream that has loads of browned butter in it. It’s incredibly creamy and has that unique toasted flavor that makes browned butter so amazing on its own. The ice cream base must be made into an emulsion, much like making a mayonnaise, so that its elements don’t separate during freezing. If you’re not watching your diet (and probably even if you are) this is one to try for the summer.
- Rocky Road is a great combination of flavors and textures, with marshmallows, nuts (usually walnuts) and rich chocolate. But it never hurts to play with a classic, which is exactly what Taste and Tell’s Toffee-Coconut Rocky Road Bars do. These bars have a graham cracker crust that is filled with a brownie-like mixture that is stuffed with pecans, then topped with chunks of toffee, shreds of coconut and finished off with toasted mini marshmallows. These keep pretty well, making these bars excellent summertime treats to take to picnics and other excursions, like hikes, camping trips, etc.
- The Cooking Photographer’s Purple Pizza with Asparagus and Fontina is a very dramatic looking pie. I expected it to have purple asparagus on top, but what it actually has is a purple pizza crust. It is made by incorporating some pureed beets into the dough. They add some softness to the pizza dough and a lot of color. You could use any topping for this dough, too, and it will definitely be the centerpiece at any dinner in which you decide to serve it.
Filed under Foodies and Chefs, Baking by Nicole | 1 comment
- A dewberry looks like a blackberry, and, according to Homesick Texan, might actually be the same thing as a blackberry. Feel free to substitute one for the other in order to make this Dewberry Cobbler because whatever you call them, these dark purple berries are just coming into season and this easy to make cobbler is a great way to enjoy them. The dough comes together quickly and is made with melted buttet and buttermilk, and it is simply patted into place over the filling, made from fresh berries, a bit of sugar and a bit of cornstarch to help things thicken up. Don’t forget the ice cream when you go to serve it!
- You can’t go wrong with chocolate and coffee, and Culinary in the Country’s Chocolate and Espresso Cookies are chock full of both flavors. The cookies are dark and rich tasting, with lots of bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder. They get their coffee flavor from instant espresso powder, which does a nice job of infusing coffee flavor without the need to add additional liquids to the dough. If you want to get creative, these cookies are probably great for making ice cream sandwiches, with either vanilla or coffee ice cream inside.
- Sugar and Spice gave a Paula Deen recipe a try: Bobby’s Caramel Cake. This three-tiered cake has fluffy white cake layers that are topped with a rich caramel frosting and loads of pecans. The finished result is a cake that has a rich praline flavor to it. It’s sweet, but the frosting balances perfectly with the classic cake base. This is a great cake for a party when you’re looking to do something that isn’t chocolate.
- But speaking of chocolate, theChocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake that PigPig’s Corner recently made, looks delicious and sounds decadent. The cheesecake has a shortbread base made with ground hazelnuts and a cheesecake layer that has swirls of both vanilla and chocolate batter. The batter also has ground hazelnuts in it, adding a little more weight and texture than you might find in other types of cheesecake. It is finished off with a Nutella-spiked chocolate ganache.
- Homemade frozen yogurt is a delicious - and relatively healthy - frozen treat to enjoy during the summer. Sugar Law’s Mango Ginger Frozen Yogurt is definitely a step above the plain variety of fro-yo. The yogurt features fresh mango, pureed until smooth, and fresh ginger, and has a base of thick Greek-style yogurt. The trick to this particular yogurt is to add a little bit of vodka to the mixture before you freeze it to lower the freezing point slightly, helping to keep the yogurt softer in the freezer.
