Sweet Treats

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Sherbet

08/12/2012

It’s hot. And I’m cranky. And you know what solves all of the world’s ills? Peanut butter & chocolate sherbet.

This is a recipe evolved from one by David Liebovitz. And yes, I did look up whether or not it’s “sherbet” versus “sherbert.” I pronounce it sherbert, because I’m uncultured, apparently. Whatever.

So, how do you make this classy-ass dessert?

BOOM!

2 cups milk (any fat level, I used 1%), divided
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
pinch of salt
4 ounces peanut butter chips
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons creme de cacao (optional)

Over low or medium heat, mix together 1 cup milk, sugar, a pinch of salt. Boil while whisking, and once it hits a boil, kick down the heat and then simmer for 30 seconds.
Remove heat, and stir in the chips, vanilla and liqueur. Whisk until everything is incorporated. (If you’re wondering why liqueur, it helps keep everything soft for scooping!)
Chill thoroughly, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to directions. I used my KitchenAid stand mixer’s ice cream attachment.
Serve, once frozen solid.

This is SO good. And SO peanut buttery. And SO chocolately. And highly adaptable! I want to try doing half white chocolate chips and half peanut butter, so it might taste a bit like tiger butter.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what sherbet vs. sorbet is? Sherbet has milk or eggs in it for creaminess. Sorbet is just water, more like ice.

What did you whip up this weekend?

diy showoff • sumo’s sweet stuff • mrs. happy homemaker • 30 handmade days • back for seconds • mommy’s sweet confessions • alli n’ sons •

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The Best Oatmeal Cookies

08/08/2012

Who decided that oatmeal and raisin was the thing?

I mean, really. Raisins? I like them and all, but who the hell wants fruit of any kind in their dessert?

LIES, vintage Molly Ringwald. LIES.

We all know nature’s candy is the cocoa bean that naturally becomes chocolate with the addition of hours of tedious labor and various chemicals.

Duh.

So, I wanted to give a big Screw You To Fake-Healthy Cookies and throw the raisins out the window.

I went on allrecipes.com and found a well-rated, basic cookie recipe. But I made a few (relatively minor) changes.

3/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups rolled oats
1 cup white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
In large bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until fluffy. Stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Gradually beat into butter mixture. Stir in oats and raisins. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown. Cool slightly, remove from sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

If you’re a fan of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies, you must make these cookies. David used to eat the Little Debbie cakes as a kid– his Grandma would give them to him, and to watch him eat one is to watch a kid on Christmas morning. These cookies taste exactly like the Little Debbie cakes, but without the preservatives and scary, unpronounceable chemicals. To be honest, I might make some home made whipped cream, and make some oatmeal pies tomorrow!

If they last that long.

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Plenty of Enjoy-Mint Cookies

07/31/2012

If you’re an avid reader of the ~~blargh~~ blog, then you know that David and I haven’t made sweets in a really, really long time. I sort of lost my sweet tooth for a while, but it came back with a vengeance this past week.

Enter: my annual Celebration of Mint and Chocolate Desserts!

I’ve done a grasshopper pie, mint and chocolate cupcakes, grasshopper cocktails.

And now— mint cookies.

After not baking for months and months, I whipped up something using three sticks of butter. Oh, well. So much for healthy eating, inspired by watching the Olympics.

I came home from work super grouchy and head-achey and stressed on Monday. I had already tweeted that the only solace I was going to find was going to be in cake. (Hi, my name is Emily and I eat my feelings.)

David had made a delightfully healthy riff on our rustic zucchini casserole, but I still needed something chocolate after dinner. It was that bad of a day.

So, I went to a go-to sugar cookie recipe, and kicked it up with my favorite flavor combination. It made me so happy to be back in the kitchen again, hovering over my KitchenAid mixer and filling the house with the scent of baking cookies. Back in the groove!

Plenty of Enjoy-Mint Cookies

Sugar Cookie Base- taken directly from MyRecipes.com

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 1/4 cups AP flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt

Mint Icing

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp mint flavoring
milk, as needed

Preheat your oven to 350*. Lightly grease a cookie sheet and set aside.
In your stand mixer, whip 1 cup butter and 1 cup granulated sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the egg and beat until combined.
Slowly add the flour and then the cocoa powder and salt. Mix until combined.
Take about 1 tablespoon of dough and roll in your palms till you get a sphere. Space on your cookie sheet and squish them down slightly into disks. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until edges are set.
To make the frosting, beat together butter and powdered sugar until consistency is thick. Add vanilla extract. Then, add at least 1 1/2 teaspoons of mint flavoring; add more if you need a more minty flavor!
If icing is still too thick, add milk gradually to thin.
Refrigerate icing for at least 20 minutes prior to assembling cookies.

To assemble the cookies… well, I think you can figure that out. I put my mint icing in a ziploc bag, cut off a corner, and smooshed the icing on top of one cookie and sandwiched another one on top. You’ll have more than enough icing to make about a dozen or so sandwich cookies.

This project comes together really quickly– I think it took me about an hour with the help of my stand mixer.

I recommend assembling these and leaving them in the fridge– the butter isn’t room-temperature stable, so in order to keep the icing solid, these should be kept cool!

Which won’t be hard, after all– it’s the chilly combination of mint and chocolate :-)

linked to: lady behind the curtain • the 36th avenue • something swanky • a little nosh • the mandatory mooch •

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Sparkling Sweet Tea

07/03/2012

National Iced Tea day was a few weeks ago, but it’s just starting to warm up here in LA. I know that everyone else in the country is being stifled under super-hot hot heat, so I wanted to re-post a recipe I did last summer, for a different kind of sweet tea.

Seeing as how I’m marrying a Texan, I’ve gotten a crash course in sweet tea in the past few years. I drink tea “like a Yankee,” David says. I like my tea bitter AND with lemon. He, on the other hand, makes some epic sweet tea. It’s a process. I process I still do not know.

But I do know how to make syrups. And so, I decided to make a tea-flavored syrup to be added to club soda for a sparkling riff on sweet tea!

2 cups strongly brewed Earl Grey Tea. I really like Twinings, as I find it to just have that authentic bergamot flavor.
1 cup sugar

Boil the tea and sugar until reduced by half
Cool completely
Store in an airtight container for a few days

And here’s what I did with it: Sparkling Sweet Tea: Add 1/4 cup Earl Grey Syrup to a tall glass…

Add some cubies… Top with club soda or seltzer… Stir and enjoy!

Now, this tea isn’t for the diabetic in your family– you’ll notice that it sunk to the bottom of the cocktail and didn’t blend with the club soda until I mixed it. This is straight-up syrup, that would probably also be very good on top of vanilla ice cream!

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Sparkling Raspberry Sorbet

06/24/2012

So, Friday celebrated a raspberry cocktail and continuing the theme (theme: Raspberries Are On Sale At The Grocery Store), I wanted to make another raspberry treat.

Riffing on a recipe from this book, I wanted to make something a wee bit different than my previous fruit sorbets, the Kiwi Sorbet and the Strawberry Sorbet.

The original recipe called for Champagne. And normally, I have a boatload (BOATLOAD) of inexpensive sparkling wines floating around the house. But, alas, I had already sipped them all, or given them away as gifts.

It turns out, I’ve had this bottle of sparkling apple cider in my fridge for about six months. My brother doesn’t drink, and I’d bought a few bottles to celebrate Christmas with the family. And this one just… sat. Until now.

Did you know that when you read the ingredients label on many products and it says “natural fruit juices,” it generally means “apple juice”? I don’t know why they don’t just say apple. But apple juice has a really great sweetness and acidity and is pretty much the ideal Champagne substitute for this recipe.

1 1/4 cup sparkling…something. Feel free to use Spanish Cava, Italian Prosecco, Champagne or Apple Juice
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar (I used raw sugar because that’s what I had)
2 pints raspberries, cleaned.

I *love* berries.

Now, this recipe really is involved. Are you ready?

Dump everything into a pot.
Bring everything to a boil. Like so:
Once at a boil and your sugar has fully dissolved, turn off the heat, cover the mixture, and let it stand for 10ish minutes.
Strain the mixture through a wire mesh strainer. Toss the seeds. Try not to wear light-colored clothing doing this, because you’ll inevitably end up with red on you.
Chill the mixture thoroughly, then pop it into your ice cream maker and follow directions until firm. Freeze until solid, then dish!

And if you like that silver-rimmed glass in the photo, I can tell you I have its highball cousin in my Etsy shop. (Cross promotion!) Click here to take a gander.

Did you make anything this weekend with seasonable fruits?

ETA: Now I have have “Rasbperry Beret” in my head, with new lyrics. “Raspberry sorbet… the kind you find in an ice cream store. Raspberry sorbet… and when it is warm, you don’t need much more.” #dork (And why don’t more videos nowadays feature choreographed dance?)

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LA Food Trucks & My New Food Obsession

05/31/2012

See that, up there? That’s my new food obsession. It looks like a take-out box filled with whipped cream and, well, that’s about 25% of it.

What it really is a take-out box filled with (wait for it…)

red velvet bread pudding.

Baked with love and awesome by the BSweet Mobile, who also offers things like “cookie dough you eat with a fork” and vegan cupcakes.

LA is pretty well known to be a food truck mecca. They’re upscale– no khlavkalash carts with just Mountain Dew and Crab juice here.

But here’s the thing– I’ve only been to one other food truck before! The Philly Cheesesteak Truck parks outside one of our favorite bars every week, and I got their grilled veggie sandwich a few times when we managed to cross paths.

SO… put that together:

Dessert-worshipping vegetarian who loves inexpensive food has only ever eat at the cheesesteak truck.

Woe was my foodie street cred.

But now! Now I see that the BSweet Mobile is at a pedestrian-friendly location near my house ever Friday night and with it, they carry red velvet bread pudding. And peanut butter cup bread pudding. And banana bread bread pudding. And cookies and cream bread pudding.

And can you tell where I”m going to be this weekend?

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