- 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.
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Josh, Great Chefs
June 4, 2009Browned Butter Ice Cream? I’ll have to try that. Sounds quite tasty!
Howmyday
December 13, 2009yes… cognitively post