Posts Tagged ‘dessert’
Ritter’s Own Homemade Frangelico Hazelnut Ice Cream
My friends are food geniuses. Lucky for me, they love cooking and invite me over for dinner. Sarah and Mike recently bought a house in the flats, and are making it gorgeous/livable. The inaugural RitterBrown Town dinner last weekend had a delicious menu, ending with this knock your socks and shoes off home made ice cream. I asked Sarah to send me the recipe to share with all you folks that love to make your own home made ice cream. Thank you, Sarah!
If you don’t have an ice cream machine, worry not. Check out David Lebovitz’s machineless ice cream how-to. I’m sure you can adapt this delicious recipe for all kinds of ice cream making methods.
Ingredients:
– 2 cups heavy cream
– 1 cup whole milk
– 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, divided
– 2 large eggs
– 2/3 cup of Frangelico hazelnut liqueur
– liberal pinch of salt
– about 1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts, toasted
Equipment: an ice cream maker
Instructions:
Bring cream, milk, and 1/2 cup brown sugar to a simmer in a heavy medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring.
Meanwhile, whisk together eggs, remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Add cream mixture in a slow stream, whisking. Return to saucepan and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until mixture coats back of spoon and registers 175°F on an instant-read thermometer (do not boil).
Immediately strain custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a metal bowl. Stir in Frangelico and nuts and chill custard at least 6 hours.
Freeze in ice cream maker, then transfer to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden, about 2 hours.
•Custard can be chilled up to 24 hours.
•Ice cream keeps 1 week.
Mint Buttercream Frosted Chocolate Cupcakes
Even though I’m still off the hard stuff (gluten, sugar, most dairy). I still occasionally bust out some goodness for friends and co-workers. One of my co-workers told a story about being a little kid and asking for a lemon cake with mint frosting. Her parents tried to explain that it might not be the best tasting thing in the world and ended up making her two cakes for her birthday. One cake was lemon cake with a lemon buttercream frosting and the other was a chocolate cake with mint frosting. I made these mint frosted chocolate cupcakes for my friend’s baby shower last month.
A warning when using peppermint extract: the stuff is strong! Seriously a drop or maybe two will do – mix and taste the frosting to make sure it’s not too strong. I made the mistake of using a quarter teaspoon on this batch and the frosting tasted a little too toothpaste-like. Otherwise these cupcakes were full of awesome.
I have to give a shout-out to All Recipes for the simple chocolate cupcake recipe.
Ingredients:
– 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
– 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
– 2 teaspoons baking powder
– 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
– 1/8 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons butter, softened
– 1 1/2 cups white sugar
– 2 eggs
– 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
– 1 cup milk
Instructions:
– Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line a muffin pan with paper or foil liners.
– Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa and salt. Set aside.
– In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the vanilla.
– Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk; beat well.
– Fill the muffin cups 3/4 full.
– Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
– Frost when cool.
Mint Buttercream Frosting:
(Thanks to Big Oven!)
Ingredients:
– 1 cup unsalted butter, (2 sticks)
– 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
– 1/4 cup of buttermilk
– 1 or 2 little dashes of natural peppermint extract
– a couple of dashes of good old fashion green food coloring
Instructions:
– Beat butter until creamy, scrape bowl.
– Add 4 cups of sifted powdered sugar, milk, food coloring, and peppermint extract, beat until combined.
– Add more powdered sugar as needed to get piping consistency.
Polaroid Birthday Cake
Found this photograph while cruising Flickr for gold nuggets of photo goodness this afternoon. It’s amazing on so many different levels of amazing. It is a real polaroid photo of the cake! Peter, the photographer whose girlfriend made the cake for his birthday commented on this post! I still don’t really know Peter, but that’s kind of the cool thing about the Interweb. You can discover other photographers, artists, cooks, etc. Click on the photo if you want to hook into Peter’s flickr stream and check out his photography. Looks like dude rocks a Polaroid land camera too!
Dear Feedbag Reader, what’s your favorite kind of cake?
Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
I love carrot cake. I love cupcakes, they’re delicious. Do you love carrot cake and cupcakes? I hope so. Are you there Internet? It’s me, Patrice.
I searched for a recipe online for a straight up non-sugar, fruit or honey sweetened carrot cake recipe that didn’t sound like it would end up like a brick. There’s a lot of information out there in this world of Internet fancy food blogs and gourmet food sites. People are totally creative and pretty much awesome when it comes to alternative ingredients. Honestly, I think stevia takes gnarly and I’m not a big fan of soy flour: just throwing it out there, if you like those things by all means eat up!
I’ve discovered that using a sifter while working with whole wheat flour is of the utmost importance when making baked goods. This would seem like a pretty common sense, food not bombs kind of educated conclusion. Sifting helps break down whole wheat flour a bit so that your goodies come out less like weapons and more like delicious.
Ingredients:
1 cup of whole wheat flour, sifted
1 cup of wheat bran, sifted as much as you can
1/2 cup of ground almonds
1 1/2 cup of grated carrots
1/2 cup of raisins
1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup of low-fat yogurt
1/4 cup of canola, olive, or vegetable oil
1/4 cup of honey
1 juice of an orange, plus the zest of the orange divided into 2 parts (1/2 for frosting 1/2 for cakes)
1 1/2 tablespoons of molasses
Instructions:
– Preheat oven to 350 degrees
– Fill a 12 count muffin tray with liners, or grease
– use your food processor to finely grind some almonds or chop the heck out of ’em
– grate carrots or use a food processor for fast grated carrot fun
– sift whole wheat flour & bran into a large bowl with baking soda, salt, & spices
– Whisk 2 eggs together with molasses & honey, then add to flour mixture
– Wash and zest your orange before juicing it, reserve zest and juice
– Add orange juice and half of your orange zest to flour mixture
– Add carrots, raisins, oil and mix well
– Portion out carrot cake mixture into muffin tin using about a large spoonful for each
– Bake for 20 minutes
– Allow cupcakes to cool before frosting
Frosting Ingredients:
– A little over 1/2 a package, or 5 ounces of low-fat cream cheese at room temperature
– 1 Tbsp butter
– 1/3 cup of agave
– 1 tsp vanilla
– 1 tsp of orange juice
Instructions:
– Whip cream cheese, butter, agave, vanilla, and orange juice together with the whisk attachment of an upright mixer for 5 minutes
– Refrigerate frosting mixture for at least 20 minutes in a pastry bag , or a plastic bag to be converted into a pastry bag by cutting an edge off for frosting cupcakes.
Serving suggestion:
Delicious after dinner with a stovetop cup of espresso, even more delicious in the morning as a sweet treat breakfast.