Tag Archives: dessert

Can You Really Make These From Scratch? Honey-Cinnamon Graham Crackers

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I’ll bet even your grandmother didn’t bake like this…

I found a cheesecake recipe I wanted to experiment with, and, off course, I needed a graham cracker crust. Since we hadn’t sent up any graham crackers, my choices were to buy some at our local store, order them through Amazon.com, or forget the whole idea. Prices at the Native Store are too high, so I ruled that out, and with only five weeks remaining till we head south, it seemed late to be ordering food. The next obvious step was to give up. Ha! That’s not me! I searched around and found a couple of recipes for graham crackers from scratch. Fantastic! My crackers came out looking a little rough around the edges, but they tasted perfect. Actually, in our opinion, they taste better than store-bought. These homemade beauties have a crisp cracker crunch and a sweet honey-cinnamon taste. Now, I’ll tackle the cheesecake recipe.

Honey Graham Crackers

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/4 cup softened unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 tbsp and 2 tsp honey
  • 2 tbsp corn syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • Optional cinnamon sugar topping – 3 tsp granulated sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

  1. Mix together whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
  2. Blend butter, sugar, honey and corn syrup until well mixed and fluffy. Add vanilla and mix.
  3. Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Stir in milk. You should have a nice ball of dough at the end of this step.
  4. Cover dough and refrigerate overnight.
  5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  6. Roll the dough out on a well-floured surface. It is easiest to do this working with only a quarter section of the dough at a time. Roll until the dough is about 1/8″ thick. Cut the dough into rectangles using a knife. Place rectangles on ungreased cookie sheets. Prick decorative holes with toothpick. If desired, sprinkle cinnamon and sugar topping on crackers.
  7. Bake for 13 minutes. Finished crackers will be browned and will become more crisp as they cool. Cool on wire racks.

Marvelous Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

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Fudge-like brownie batter swirled with chocolate chip cheesecake make this decadent dessert irresistible. 
As we go through our annual shopping list, I have to wonder why I thought I needed twenty pounds of chocolate chips! It is a challenge to shop for a whole year in one fell swoop. In most regards, we were really accurate, but I must have been suffering from a chocolate craving while we were in Costco! I did make it through about five pounds so far. With 15 pounds remaining and big chocolate lovers around, I am inspired to keep baking wickedly chocolate confections.
Marvelous Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies
Ingredients
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 3/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips, separated
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter
  • 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 8-inch square baking pan or baking dish.
  2. Combine cream cheese with 1/4 cup sugar, 1 egg, and vanilla in a mixing bowl; beat until smooth. Stir 1 cup chocolate chips into the cream cheese mixture. Set aside.
  3. Fill a saucepan with water and bring to a simmer. Set a heatproof mixing bowl over the water. In the mixing bowl, combine butter with the remaining 1 cup of chocolate chips; stir until just melted and blended together.
  4. Mix in the remaining 1/2 cup sugar and 2 eggs in a bowl. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir flour mixture into sugar and egg mixture. Mix in chocolate-butter mixture into flour mixture so that it is evenly blended.
  5. Pour half of the batter into the prepared baking pan. Spread the cream cheese mixture over the chocolate layer. Top with remaining chocolate mixture (this doesn’t need to completely cover the cream cheese layer). Using a knife, swirl the top chocolate layer into the cream cheese to make a marble pattern by cutting the blade through the mixtures in a swirling pattern.
  6. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 25 to 30 minutes, or until top is cracked and edges pull away from sides of the pan. Cool thoroughly. Cut into 12 to 16 squares. Store in refrigerator or freeze.
We tried the brownies cooled on the counter and chilled in the refrigerator. We preferred them chilled in the refrigerator.

Recipe adapted from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chunky-cheesecake-brownies/Detail.aspx.

Butter Toffee Almonds

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Plain, cayenne pepper, or rock salt. We liked all three. Which will you make?

We don’t like to visit friends empty-handed, especially when we invite ourselves over to watch a sporting event on TV. In bush Alaska, there aren’t six-packs of beer or bottles of wine to grab at the store. Our ready gift is usually something we’ve created in the kitchen. Recently we were running late for one of the March Madness basketball games and had nothing already prepared, so a few whirls in the kitchen and we had buttered toffee almonds – three ways. The original plain version is quite tasty. Two other versions were made by sprinkling cayenne pepper on some for that back-of-your-throat-bite and by sprinkling large grains of sea salt for another pleasant surprise. All three versions were tied for first place. This recipe was finished in 15 minutes. Lucky for us, the walk over in sub-freezing temperatures cooled the almonds enough to eat as soon as we entered our friends’ home.

Butter Toffee Nuts Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 3 cups whole almonds (or use 3 cups peanuts)
Directions
  1. Use a deep, heavy-bottomed saucepan to heat all of the ingredients, except the nuts. Stir the mixture constantly to prevent scorching. Using a candy thermometer and medium heat, bring the mixture to 300 degrees. The temperature will rise as the water is boiled off, and this can happen quickly, so be prepared to lower the heat or remove the candy from the heat as needed.
  2. As soon as the mixture reaches the desired temperature, remove it from the stove and add the nuts. Mix until all nuts are coated. Pour the nut mixture onto a greased cookie sheet spread into an even layer. Let fully cool. This step works well on parchment paper.

Recipe adapted from http://www.life123.com/food/candies-fudge/toffee/making-butter-toffee-almonds.shtml.

Upside-Down Pecan Pumpkin Cake

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Moist, packed with flavor and topped with crunchy nutty deliciousness, this upside-down will have your guests glad they saved room for dessert. 

I baked this cake in a 9-inch springform pan because that was the best pan for the job in my cupboard. Set on a baking sheet it worked well, and unmolding the cake was a cinch.

Upside Down Pecan Pumpkin Cake

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, evenly divided and melted
  • 3/4 cup of brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup pecan halves
  • 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon mace
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 cup pumpkin puree, canned or fresh
  • 1/2 cup warm (110 degrees) milk

Directions

  1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread pecan halves on a baking sheet and toast for 5 minutes or until aromatic.  Remove from the oven and let cool. Coarsely chop the pecans and set aside. Leave the oven set to 350 degrees F.
  2. Melt one stick of butter in a small sauce pan. Add pecans and brown sugar, mix thoroughly. Spread this mixture evenly at the bottom of a 9 inch cake pan.
  3. In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, cinnamon, mace, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside.
  4. Melt second stick of butter.
  5. Add melted butter, eggs, milk, vanilla extract and pumpkin puree into a mixing bowl. Beat together with mixer until well combined, about 2 minutes.  Add flour mixture and stir with spoon until just combined.
  6. Pour batter on top of pecan mixture in the baking pan. Bake until a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Transfer the cake to a wire rack to cool, approximately 5 minutes.
  7. Place a plate over the cake and invert to unmold cake and let cool completely.

We served the cake with homemade vanilla bean ice cream and cups of freshly steeped almond roobios tea.

This recipe was adapted from http://thenoshery.com/2011/03/28/praline-upside-down-pumpkin-cake/.

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Molten Chocolate Lava Cake

Florentines – Chocolate or Plain?

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These crispy yet chewy cookies can be made as a sandwich with a layer of chocolate to hold them together, chocolate dipped, or with a drizzle of chocolate. And they are wonderful without any chocolate at all.

When I was young my family sometimes went to a deli in San Francisco where, out of an assortment of scrumptious confections, I was allowed to pick out a cookie after our meal. Often, I chose a chocolate dipped florentine, a delicious almond cookie flavored with the essence of orange zest, one of my favorite combinations.

We are trying to keep our kitchen as simple as possible in order to ready ourselves for life on a boat with only a relatively small galley kitchen. So it was only after serious contemplation that we recently added a new gadget to our galley – a Miallegro stick blender. Our manual nut chopper has worked well for most duties, but would have been tough to chop almonds fine and consistent enough to meet the needs of this recipe. The stick blender is much smaller than our counter top blender and much more versatile. With 550 watts of power and a dedicated nut chopper attachment, I had finely ground, perfectly uniform coarse almond flour in less than one minute!

Even with the help of the chopper, this recipe was time consuming, but our cookie taste testers all agreed: the result was fabulous. The first step was blanching and skinning the almonds. After some trial and error, I figured out that the easiest way to skin the almonds was to boil them for two minutes and then pinch them out of their skins while they were soaking in cold water. After this step, the almonds had to dry. I let them sit out on a cookie sheet overnight. After the dough is made, it needs to sit for about a half an hour in order to cool enough to handle. I could only bake six cookies at a time, which also added to the time. Lastly, if you dip the cookies or drizzle them in chocolate, this has to be done after the cookies have cooled. Wait! You still can’t serve them until the chocolate sets up. This investment in time results in cookies that end up disappearing quickly! I don’t know which I like better… the chewy yet crunchy texture, or the combination of the orange, almond, and chocolate flavors.

Florentine Cookies

Yields 24 six-inch cookies

  • 1 3/4 cups blanched almonds, sliced (about 5 ounces)
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • Finely grated zest of 1 orange (about 2 tablespoons)
  • 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
  • 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Chocolate topping (optional):
  • 2 to 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
Directions
  1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
  2. Pulse the almonds in a food processor until finely chopped, but not pasty. Stir together the nuts, flour, zest and salt in a large bowl.
  3. Put the sugar, cream, corn syrup and butter in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture comes to a rolling boil and sugar is completely dissolved. Continue to boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, then pour this mixture into almond mixture and stir just to combine. Set aside until cool enough to handle, about 30 minutes.
  4. Scoop rounded teaspoons (for 3-inch cookies) or rounded tablespoons (for 6-inch cookies) of batter and roll into balls. Place on prepared baking sheet, leaving about 3 to 4 inches between each cookie since they spread as they bake.
  5. Bake 1 pan at a time, until the cookies are thin and an evenly golden brown in color, rotating pans halfway through baking time, about 10 to 11 minutes. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks. Repeat with remaining batter.
Optional chocolate topping
  1. Put the chocolate in a medium sized, heatproof bowl. Bring a saucepan filled with 1 inch of water to a very low simmer; set the bowl over the water, but not touching the water. Stir the chocolate occasionally until melted and smooth.
  • For sandwiches, drop about 1/2 teaspoon chocolate onto the flat side of half of the cookies and press remaining halves onto the chocolate covered halves. Return to rack and let chocolate set.
  • For chocolate decor, drizzle melted chocolate over florentines as desired. Set aside at room temperature until chocolate has set.
Recipe courtesy of http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/florentines-italy-recipe/index.html