After I baked these brownies, I went to my recipe files to make a comparison of this recipe (from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody blog) to my old standby, Heavenly Cream Cheese Brownies, a recipe that dates back to the 1960’s. Sure enough, they’re really similar except for the Baileys. Peabody’s recipe has more bar chocolate and chocolate chips, the Bailey’s, of course, and she added a Bailey’s glaze on top too.

We had invited friends over for dinner because Bob is renovating their kitchen, and Peggy just struggles to create things to cook when the kitchen is in such a mess. They were SO happy to go out. So, even though we had a 5-hour power outage at our house yesterday (some kind of maintenance thing), as soon as the power was turned back on I quick-like-a-bunny started dinner. Made a slow-cooker tamale pie, which had just enough time to do its thing. I had some leftover veggies from the other night which were sufficient for nibbling before dinner, made a big green salad with everything but the kitchen sink in it, and I had just read Peabody’s post about these brownies. I had the cream cheese, had the Bailey’s, so quick-like I made them too.

The swirled brownie batter in the pan

You make two batters – the vanilla and Bailey’s one, and a larger amount of chocolate/brownie one. They’re layered in a pan, then lightly swirled with a knife to mix them up a little. Oh-so very pretty, I think. Then once they’re baked and cooled a little, you add a Bailey’s glaze on top, cool completely, cut and serve!

These are RICH. And SWEET. As I said, they have more chocolate than in the older recipe, so I’ve reduced the amount of sugar in both batters below. But overall they’re delicious. If you’re a Bailey’s fan, you’ll adore them. I served them with just a little slurp of Bailey’s on the side. Yum. If I’d had vanilla ice cream I’d have served that with it too.
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A year ago: Potato & Onion Cakes (a side dish)

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This is not a new recipe to this blog. But I finally got around to taking a photo of it. I’d posted this back in 2007 when I had a fractured foot and was posting recipes, with internet photos or no photos at all.

So, my hubby and I are out at our house in the California desert (it was about 65 yesterday, gorgeous sunshine), and last night after a very light dinner of leftovers, I was craving something sweet. Since we’ve been renting our house here some this season, I knew there wasn’t much in the cupboards, but aha, there WAS a German chocolate cake mix. Sure enough, a few chocolate chips, and pecans in the freezer (the recipe calls for walnuts, but pecans work too). And yes, I had cinnamon, eggs, oil. Took all of about 10 minutes to mix it up (well, maybe 15 since I spilled nearly the whole bag of pecans all over the kitchen floor) and I popped it in the oven.

You can go to the post I did back in ’07 for the full recipe. This is EASY! REALLY EASY! Cake mix, oil, eggs, chocolate chips, nuts, cinnamon and sugar. Done. Makes a 9×13 pan full, great for taking to a potluck. Or camping. Or a picnic. A family favorite I’ve been making since the 1960’s. Nothing like the typical German Chocolate Cake with coconut, etc.

Here are some photos of our desert yesterday when my DH and I toodled around in our golf cart within our complex (1 mile square, 2 18-hole golf courses).

A view toward the west, of snow-covered San Gorgonio peeking through the clouds.

Another view – lantana in the foreground, an ocotillo just beginning to bloom on the right edge, ponds in the background just begging to swallow your golf balls

Would you believe petunias are in full bloom here? The risk of frost is past, so they’re safe.

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Another Carolyn favorite coming your way. This cake. Oh yum. That’s all there is to say about it. For me there’s nothing much better than chocolate and whipped cream, and this is a really lovely presentation – and taste – of those two things.

I began making this cake in the 1960’s. It came from one of my military wives’ cookbooks (From Mrs. Louis P. Hodge, “Recipes on Parade Desserts,” 1965) I bought at the time, and the page in the cookbook is smudged and spattered from frequent use. This used to be one of my top desserts of choice when I entertained back then, and as my daughter Dana grew up, this was one of her most favorite requests on her birthday as well.

If you don’t like to make a sponge cake (in a jelly roll pan) with the work accompanying it, you might want to pass on this. But if you pass, you’ll be missing out. The cake isn’t an overwhelming dark chocolate taste – it’s on the mild side, actually, and the cake itself is almost milk chocolate colored. I used bittersweet chocolate shavings in the filling and sprinkled on top. And I used Penzey’s 24% Fat Dark cocoa for added flavor.

The only tough part about this dessert is rolling, unrolling and filling, then rolling up the cake. I’ve rarely made it when it didn’t crack somewhere. I never seem to know the exact time to unroll and fill this. But, even with the cracks, you just do the best you can, and trust me, nobody will care once they taste it. When you roll it up, put the break on the underside, if possible. You can actually see a break in mine (in the photo at the top) – along the front right. Did it affect anything? Not at all.

When dessert time came the other night, I brought the platter to the table and cut and sliced each piece and put them on a pretty heart-shaped red plate.
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A year ago: Almond Bar Cookies

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We’re having a dinner for nine at our house on Valentine’s evening. All friends and the sister of one of our guests who is visiting from the Midwest. Couples who probably will be very happy not to have to vie for a waiter’s attention on a very busy holiday evening. It’s been some years since we have gone out for Valentine’s Day. It’s just not worth it. Too busy. Hectic. Competitive. Not always good service. Food sometimes compromised because of the crush of people all wanting to eat at about the same time. So it was my idea to hostess a Valentine’s Dinner at our home.

But I got to thinking that if any of YOU are planning to cook at home, maybe you need a few ideas for the menu. I certainly have ample recipes to choose from. And especially some chocolate desserts, since chocolate is one of my favorite things. So, here’s a short list of appropriate items for the 14th. When I think of Valentine’s Day, I think beef, because that’s probably my hubby’s favorite, and I think of salads with a bit of fruit in it, and I think CHOCOLATE. Here you go:

Filet Mignon on a Portabello Mushroom with Blue Cheese
Herb-Crusted Beef Tenderloin
Steak Diane Flambe
Tenderloin in Puff Pastry
Ribeye Steaks with Amazing Glaze (can’t get enough of these guys)
Cajun Steak with Creamy Creole Sauce
French Hamburgers (if you’d like a lower-cost, but elegant dish)

Other entrees:
Chicken Breasts with Spinach and Gorgonzola
Dijon Chicken, Panko Crust
Chicken Breasts with Bacon and Mushrooms
Pork Roast with Spicy Apricot Glaze
Shrimp and Pasta a la Pizziaola 
– – – – – – –
Spinach & Berries Salad
Spinach Salad with Fresh Mango
Apple, Cherry & Walnut Green Salad
Raddicchio, Belgian Endive Salad (no fruit in this one)
– – – – – – –
Bittersweet Mocha Roll
Chocolate Citrus Almond Torte
Chocolate Grand Marnier Decadence Cake
Flourless Chocolate Cake with Caramel Sauce
French (Chocolate) Silk Pie
Pear & Chocolate Tart
Raspberry-Almond Truffle Tart
Triple Chocolate Torte with Raspberry Sauce

– – – – – – – – – – – –

In case you’re interested, here’s the menu I’ll be serving for our dinner:
Gorgonzola, Grape & Nut Crostini (a new recipe)
Ginger Picks (a Ham, Pear & Ginger Tower on a toothpick)
Filet Mignon on a Portabello Mushroom with Blue Cheese (in list above)
Mushroom Bread Pudding (a new recipe)
Spinach & Berries Salad (brought by one of the guests)
Chocolate Sponge Roll (an old favorite of mine)

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Oh, was this ever wonderful! It was just a few days ago that I was reading Elise’s blog, Simply Recipes, and this dessert was front and center. With a similar picture to the one above. Doesn’t it look good enough that you’d like to reach right into your screen and cut yourself a slice? We haven’t had any desserts around here for a month, so it was fun to make something. And this was special.

In mine there is a mixture of apples and pears (the pears are the lighter colored pieces, and in between you can vaguely see apples – they absorbed more of the caramel, I guess). Elise made hers with only apples. I didn’t have but one apple, but I did have pears, so I made mine with a mixture. My one apple was a Granny Smith (not what Elise recommended), and the pears gave off a LOT of fluid, so my cake may be more juicy than hers. But it was delicious nevertheless. And cooked through, which was a concern Elise had with her dad’s previous versions of this cake made with Granny Smiths alone.

The recipe is just a tad different than some – the fruit is mixed with a caramel you make right in a skillet and you cook the fruit until it’s nearly done. Then you pour that into a high-sided cake pan that’s been lined with parchment paper and buttered. Then you make the cake batter which contains just a bit of cornmeal. I didn’t have ordinary cornmeal, but did have fine-ground polenta, so used that. There isn’t a lot of sugar in this entire cake (3/4 cup for everything). And there is just one cube of butter. It’s not difficult, either.

In reading some notes over at Elise’s blog about this recipe, some people had difficulty with the caramel – once they added the fruit it seized up, but after cooking longer, it released and all was well. I had no difficulty – I thought the pears had given off too much fluid, actually. And I didn’t cook the fruit as long as Elise indicated in her recipe. I also cut the fruit into 3 wedges for each quarter also (Elise did 2). Just notes to you if you try it too. One reader made hers in an iron skillet, so she saved dirtying up another pan to cook the fruit.

The verdicts: beautiful looking, and delicious tasting. The fine polenta cornmeal in the cake adds just a tiny bit of crunchy – it was wonderful. The cake is light. The fruit is not overly sweet, which I liked. My DH was in heaven both times he’s eaten it – and tells me it’s one of the best desserts I’ve made in a long time. Elise suggested serving this with vanilla ice cream. I didn’t have any, but had heavy cream so ours was served with whipped cream, an able substitute, I believe. I’ll be making this again. Yesiree. Thanks, Elise, for sharing this recipe.
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A year ago: Scott’s Broccoli Salad

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Why don’t I make crème brûlée more often? It’s not hard. Doesn’t take all that much time, either. Maybe it’s because it requires a water bath – that’s a bit of a nuisance – and when you broil them to caramelize the sugar-dusted tops, you need to pack the ramekins in an ice-crowded pan. But other than that, they’re a very simple dessert. And much beloved by most people.

My former business partner, Audré, found this recipe and raved about it. She was in a ginger stage, if there is such a thing, back in the early 80’s. At the time, she liked and wanted ginger in all different kinds of foods, and she told me I just had to make this. I did. Oh my yes. Wonderful.

Some years later I attended a cooking class taught by Hugh Carpenter, and he prepared a type of crème brûlée in which he dotted the bottom of each ramekin with a small glob of raspberry jam. I was enamored with the taste contrast of the raspberry and the crystallized ginger, so have made it that way ever since. But I didn’t have any raspberry jam in the pantry, so I opted to use some ginger jam, spiced ginger jam, to be exact. The tiny pieces of crystallized ginger and the jam stay on the bottom of each ramekin, so you get a nice little surprise when you finally get to the nether reaches of the ramekin.

The ginger lightly perfumes the crème brûlée , but it isn’t until you get into it that you realize the ginger is even there. Be sure to make this in time to chill the finished ramekins so the custard sets up to its smooth goodness.
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Oooh, were these ever tasty. It’s been some months ago that I made these for a dinner party. In reading through the “recipes to try” in my copious stack, I found this. I’d read about it over at Serious Eats. It’s actually a Daniel Boulud recipe, from one of his cookbooks, was written up by Dorie Greenspan on her own site, but the recipe is over at Serious Eats, a food blog in which she participates.

Here’s a photo of the coffee bean/cardamom/sugar mixture before it began to caramelize.

This dessert is a bit on the complicated side, I will admit. It’s not really difficult, but yes, a bit time consuming. Worth the time? Well, yes, for me it was. The result was a seductive custard, a pot de creme style with this elusive taste of cardamom and the delicious creamy coffee. But it was the cups that attracted me to the recipe at first – seeing the cute little espresso cups Dorie used. I mean, how many of us have espresso cups we rarely use? Eh? I certainly do.

Here are the details: you grind up cardamom pods (I had green ones) in the food processor, then chunk up coffee beans in there too. Not too finely. Then you add that to a heavy-duty saucepan with sugar and heat it, stirring constantly, until the sugar melts. My arm got a tad tired during the stirring process, but you don’t want to burn it, so you have to stir and stir. Finally it began to melt. You continue to stir until the sugar begins to darken, and caramelize. I had some difficulty seeing exactly when that was because I was using a dark colored, nonstick Calphalon pan. Eventually the coffee began smoking, so I figured it was caramelized enough. The stuff is a kind of glumpy dark mass at that point. Then you carefully pour in cream and milk (don’t burn yourself) and heat it until the glumpy mass breaks down and the sugar melts into the milk. You let this mixture steep for about 20 minutes, then strain out the solids (beans & pods). It was a glorious dark coffee latté color.

Meanwhile, you heat up the oven to 300°, and whisk together egg yolks and sugar until they’re pale and thickened. Then you slowly add the coffee mixture and stir until combined. It does make a bit of foam, which needs to be scooped off. I ate the foam right then and there, which was quite delicious.

The mixture is poured into espresso cups and you bake them in a water bath for about 40 minutes. These can be made ahead and refrigerated. I made them earlier in the day and left them out at room temp for about 3 hours. I served them with a small dollop of very lightly sweetened whipped cream on top.

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A day or two ago I mentioned I’d made a flourless chocolate cake for Christmas Day. It was really wonderful. I made it on the 25th, and it came out of the oven mere moments before we had to put it in the car to drive to a family get-together.

The recipe came from a Sunset Magazine article – a reader recipe. Trisha Kruse, from Eagle, Idaho, submitted the recipe and said “Guests always ask for the recipe and beg to bring home leftovers.” The cake is made with ground almonds (I used the almond meal from Trader Joe’s), chocolate of course, butter and eggs, which would be normal for a flourless chocolate cake. But what makes this one different is the orange and lemon flavors. The recipe called for orange juice (the juice from the fresh orange you use for the zest). And although I could have used the fresh juice, I made up a concoction of half orange juice concentrate and half water. Gave the cake a bit more zing, perhaps, than the developer planned. It also calls for some lemon zest also, so you get a double-whammy of citrus.

As I explained above, I made this just an hour or two before it was served. We did have leftovers, but I must admit, I think the cake tasted better the day it was made. It certainly wasn’t “bad” the next day, but there was something a bit more tender about it when it was freshly cooled, with a big, healthy dollop of whipped cream. The recipe calls for a dusting of cocoa, but knowing such a cake is rich, I decided to give it a little whipped cream side. Delish. Recommended.
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Does this look luscious, or what? It was. What you can’t see is the heap of Creme Anglaise on the top, and a full cloud of whipped cream. But I thought this shot of the trifle bowl was more interesting. What you see is nothing but bananas, cubes of pound cake, fruit cocktail pieces and the cranberry gelatin mixture.

Regularly I read the blog Al Dente. I’ve mentioned it before – it’s a compendium of individual recipes provided by well-known chefs who have cookbooks at Amazon. They spotlight one recipe at a time, offered up in a blog format, from the books of these authors. So you get a little glimmer of what the cookbook is all about.

So anyway, I was looking at Robert Irvine’s recipe for a Raspberry Porter Trifle with Chocolate Ganache and Whipped Cream. His was designed to be layered in individual wine or parfait glasses, but since I was serving this at someone else’s home I didn’t want to transport them. So, I made it in my tall trifle bowl instead. I didn’t have raspberry gelatin on hand, but I did have cranberry, and since it ’tis the season, cranberry seemed more suitable anyway.

There are several things different about this trifle: (1) it’s softer than others I’ve made, i.e., more like a pudding consistency; (2) it doesn’t contain sherry, but does contain porter, a British ale; (3) the creme anglaise was more like a sauce and was poured on TOP of the trifle, not in the layers as is more traditional; and (4) the gelatin is in liquid form when it’s spooned into the bowl, to firm up somewhat in the refrigerator after it’s soaked into the cake.

We have a family member who is British (specifically, Julian is married to our daughter-in-law’s sister) and they invited us for Christmas Dinner at their home. A typical English Holiday dinner was planned, so would I make dessert? Actually I made two (because my cousin who is wheat-intolerant couldn’t eat the trifle –  the pound cake obviously has flour in it). So I also made a flourless chocolate cake which I’ll post very soon. Both desserts were sensational, so said Julian, the British host. The only comment he had was that in England bananas are hard to come by, so his family’s trifle would not have contained them.

This does need to be chilled for several hours before serving, but the bananas will begin to brown and turn to mush if you go past about 48 hours. I’m including the chocolate ganache in the recipe, but I didn’t serve it (I forgot, but also there wasn’t room in the trifle bowl for it anyway). Some folks at the dinner thought the chocolate would have made it too rich. I’d like to have tasted it just to see, but oh, well. Next time maybe. With the creme anglaise being such a soft type, as you angled the spoon down deep into the bowl, the sauce oozed down into the layers with no problem. The whipped cream did the same. Had the chocolate ganache been there, it too would have oozed everywhere.

I’ve altered the recipe to fit my trifle bowl (less pound cake only) and with notes on the couple other changes I made. If you’d like the original click on the link up above to Robert Irvine’s recipe. I doubled the recipe and had enough to serve at least 16 people. If you’d like the revised recipe to serve 8 (half of the below), email me at ctndt AT cox DOT net and I’ll email you the PDF recipe.
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Kugel. It’s a Yiddish word. But the food dish is German in origin, as I discovered when I was reading up on kugel at Wikipedia. However, Wiki’s site does say that there is very little documentation about kugel (and they invite people to contribute sources, if known, other than word of mouth). Kugels come both savory and sweet and are Jewish side dishes or desserts. Originally they were only savory, but over the centuries they’ve evolved to sweet-ish side dishes (mine) and much more sweet ones that incorporate fruit, raisins, etc. eggs, custard, etc. which are desserts.

The first time I was served this kugel was in the 1960’s. I used to be in a women’s gourmet group way back then (yes, they DID have such things back in the cave age of the 1960’s). The group met monthly for a weekday lunch at someone’s home. One of the ladies that I didn’t know very well, Alberta, brought this and it was served as part of the buffet lunch (we all brought something, hence it was a gourmet potluck). Having never had it before, I was enchanted. Certainly I noticed how sweet it was, and wondered why it was part of the lunch. But oh well, Alberta brought it, said it was part of her family heritage, and she put it out with lunch, not with the row of the desserts.

Now, though, I know from reading about kugels, this one is actually a dessert type. Why Alberta served it as part of lunch, I don’t know. Consequently, I have served it a few times as a side dish, but I make it less sweet. It’s great with ham, for instance, or a pork roast. Pork seems to lend itself well to sweeter sides. I make it less fat laden too. I was astounded the first time I made this to discover how much butter is in it. A lot. So I’ve cut it down some.

It’s a pineapple kugel – with cottage cheese and a crispy topping of cornflake crumbs and brown sugar. However you serve it, it’s delicious as long as you’re not planning to eat low carb or low calorie, because it certainly is NOT. So splurge and enjoy it.
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