Rhubarb Crisp

Goes well with vanilla bean gelato.

Ahh, rhubarb. What a funny little vegetable? Fruit? According to wikipedia, rhubarb is usually considered a vegetable, but a New York court decided in 1947 that rhubarb would be considered a fruit for the purpose of regulations and taxes. Who knew that a court could decide how to classify a plant?

The trouble I have with rhubarb is trying to describe its flavor. It is tart and, when cooked, sweet. But that really does not explain what it tastes like. Lemons can be tart and sweet, yet taste nothing like rhubarb. Maybe it tastes pink? Keep in mind that I think bleu cheese tastes like a musty cellar in an old French maison...

Beautiful and red!

Anyway, this weekend I had my sister and her husband, and my brother, his wife, and their son over for dinner. I knew I was going to make quinoa burgers for the main course, but was not sure about dessert until I went to the farmer's market on Saturday morning. When I saw some beautiful rhubarb, I knew I had to make something with it. Then, when I came home from the market, I rummaged through my cookbooks looking for rhubarb recipes. The winner was a rhubarb crisp in my Grand Central Baking book.

This recipe was incredibly easy to pull off. You just chop up the rhubarb, throw it into the bottom of the pie dish, then top it with a simple streusel. Et, voila! Dessert! I paired it with a vanilla gelato that I found on sale at the store. The crisp was a hit, even with my non-rhubarb eating siblings. I must say, the warm crisp with vanilla gelato was simply delicious!


Enjoy!

Rhubarb Crisp from The Grand Central Baking Book

7 oz light brown sugar
5.25 oz granulated sugar
2.75 oz rolled oats
2.5 oz all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter
2 lbs rhubarb stalks

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch deep dish pie pan.

Measure the brown sugar, granulated sugar, oats, flour, and salt into a bowl with high sides and stir to combine. Cut the butter into small cubes (1/4 to 1/2 inch) and toss with the cry ingredients. Rub the butter between your thumbs and fingertips, blending everything together until the mixture is mealy, with some big chunks of butter remaining. Chill the streusel in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes before using.

Cut the rhubarb diagonally into 1-inch pieces. Arrange the pieces in an even layer on the bottom of the pan.

Spread the streusel evenly over the top of the rhubarb. Bake for about 1 hour, until the top is dark brown and crispy and the rhubarb is soft and bubbly. Serve warm from the oven.

Irish Coffee Trifle, Dessert of the Gods

Ooh, pretty, wow...

A trifle is a wonderful thing. What's funny is if you look up the definition for trifle, you will find that it means "an article or thing of very little value." This definition could not be further from what I believe a trifle to be. Either the name of the dessert needs to change, or the definition of the word trifle does. To me, a trifle is a dessert of the utmost value. A trifle is what you serve when you have a fancy party. Or a family get-together, in this case.

I sneak a bite and nephew eyes his next spoonful.

Sunday evening brought yet another family dinner for my crazy clan. Mom had us make our own pizzas, and I brought this Irish Coffee Trifle for dessert. I had the idea because I still had all of the ingredients for the Irish Coffee Cupcakes, I had all the ingredients for some chocolate pudding (not to mention whole milk that needed to be used up), Irish Cream liqueur, and some whipping cream that needed to be used. All of this sounded to me like the makings of a trifle.

Served up nice and pretty.

What I love about trifle is that it is pretty difficult to mess up. As long as you have some good cake, a good pudding, and some whipping cream, you can pull together a trifle. I also love how it allows me to be creative. I can use any cake, any custard, any liqueur- heck, I could even add fruit or candy if I wanted! The possibilities are endless!

I will eat the whole thing if nobody stops me.

To make my trifle, I used my Irish Coffee Cupcake recipe (just the cupcakes), my chocolate pudding recipe (the good one), some leftover ganache from the Irish Coffee Cupcakes (melted), and some whipping cream. To make the whipping cream, I beat about 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream with 3 or 4 teaspoons of white sugar on high speed with a hand mixer until stiff peaks formed.

The lineup.

To assemble the trifle, I started with 6 of the cupcakes, quartered, and broke them up and laid them in the bottom of my trifle dish. Next, I sprinkled 4 teaspoons of Irish Cream liqueur over the cake, and dropped some globs of melted ganache on top of that. Next, I spread half of my pudding over top of the cake layer. Then, I spread half of the whipped cream on top of the pudding. I then repeated the whole process with the cake, liqueur, ganache, pudding, and whipped cream. Finally, I used a vegetable peeler to shave some semi-sweet chocolate on top of the trifle to make it look fancy. I think I succeeded.

You know you want some...

Brewer's Blondies and Sister Time

Mmm, tasty...

The sucky part about being in school is finals. I hate the pressure of knowing that I will be tested on what I've learned. I also hate the period of time between the last lecture and the final, because it means that any minute not spent working or sleeping should be spent studying. But why study when you can bake something totally awesome?

Let me let you in on a little secret. Maybe it's not a secret. I love that I have some mad baking skills. If I were a man, I would marry me for my super-duper chocolate cookies alone. My Swedish friend once offered to marry me because she liked my pancakes, but we knew that that would just never work out. But at the end of the day, whatever kind of day it happens to be, I can make myself something pretty damn tasty. And it makes me smile, which is all that matters, right?

So anyway, today I should have studied for finals. I kind of did. Reading the take-home exam counts, right? Hey, I started brainstorming too, so I got that far at least. And I opened my textbook to look up sexual harassment (it's employment law, and it's kind of a big deal). So I did something. Unfortunately, I find it really hard to focus when I have absolutely no baked goods or sweets in my apartment. Solution: go to the store, buy things, and then come home and bake. But....I also wanted some sister time.

I never really say it, but I think my sister is pretty rad. Perhaps some of it is that we're a lot alike. Whenever someone who knows one of us meets the other of us, they remark on how alike we are. We're both goofy, opinionated, theatrical and we like to boogie. And we both bake. A badass duo, if you will.

So I had sister Frakah come over to bake blondies with me. We tried listening to Enrique (Iglesias, who we simply refer to as Enrique), but ended up with crappy Marc Anthony (thanks, Pandora). Then we tried for George Michael but wound up with a crappy song that had me imagining myself in a long flowy dress on a yacht at sunset in the 80s. Yech. So it was time for a movie.

Frakah and I have a few fallbacks that we tend to watch together, and today it was time to watch Practical Magic, a perfectly appropriate sister-time movie. About five minutes into the movie, I realized it would be a lot funnier with midnight margaritas (in the movie, they have midnight margaritas, but I think you should be able to have midnight margaritas whenever you like). Then, we realized there were many changes we would like to make to the movie- a midnight margaritas scene every five minutes, replace makeout scenes with someone ribbon-dancing in a meadow to sappy music, and add a psychedelic element to the big midnight margaritas scene. Our new dream is to create our own feature-length reenactment of this movie, with said changes.

What does this have to do with blondies? I don't know, just that we enjoyed the fresh, warm blondies as we watched the movie. The main reason I decided on baking these blondies today is that the recipe says you get to enjoy them warm- you only have to cool them for twenty minutes before cutting into them. I served these yummy guys with some milk chocolate ice cream, which was not a bad idea at all. Not a bad evening at all.



A thick, gooey mess

 Brewer's Blondies
adapted from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp malted milk powder (I used Ovaltine)
14 tbsp unsalted butter, softened and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 3/4 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 lrg eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup malted milk balls (Whoppers), coarsely broken by blunt force (see note)
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch baking pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and malted milk powder together.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and brown sugar with a hand mixer on medium speed until combined. Scrape down the bowl, add the eggs and vanilla, and beat until combined.

Spreading the love...

Add the flour mixture in two batches and beat until just combined. Add the malted milk balls and chocolate chips and stir with a spatula until just combined. The mixture will be thick. Turn the mixture out into the prepared pan and use an offset spatula to spread it evenly.

Bake in the center of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the blondie comes out clean.

Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes. These blondies taste pretty frickin' fantastic warm.

Note: The recipe tells you to chop the Whoppers in a food processor, but mine was dirty, so I improvised. I put the Whoppers in a freezer baggie, sealed the baggie, and beat the hell out of the Whoppers with a big silver spoon. It felt really good. :)

Enjoy!

Tiramisu!

Tiramisu!

Let me preface this post by saying I love tiramisu! Exclamation point! It is decidedly my favorite dessert of all time. I actually judge Italian restaurants by their tiramisu. If they can't make a good tiramisu, then what are they good for?

Tiramisu is actually a fairly easy dessert to make, if you ask me. A good tiramisu should be creamy and have a distinct coffee flavor. It's basically a fancy Italian trifle.



Yummmmm...

 I've made this particular recipe for tiramisu a few times before. It has always been quite a hit with everyone. This week I made it for family dinner. We were planning to have salad, lasagna and bread, so an Italian dessert was in order. Enter: tiramisu.

Classic Tiramisu
from allrecipes.com

6 egg yolks
1 1/4 cups white sugar
1 1/4 cups mascarpone cheese
1 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream
2 packages ladyfingers
1/3 cup coffee liqueur

1 tsp unsweetened coca powder, for dusting
1 square semisweet chocolate

1. Combine egg yolks and sugar in the top of a double boiler, over boiling water. Reduce heat to low and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and whip yolks until thick and lemon colored.

2. Add mascarpone to whipped yolks. Beat until combined. In a separate bowl, whip cream to stiff peaks. Gently fold into yolk mixture and set aside.

3. Split the lady fingers in half and line he bottom and sides of a large glass bowl. Brush with coffee liqueur. Spoon half of the cream filling over the ladyfingers. Repeat ladyfingers, coffee liqueur and filling layers. Garnish with cocoa and chocolate curls. Refrigerate several hours or over night.

Note: The longer this sits, the better it will taste. My ladyfingers were particularly crisp, so they were not softened enough after sitting in the fridge for six hours. I may recommend more liquid for crispy ladyfingers. I used Kahlua Especial.