Desserts
{Tazo Cookoff} Vanilla Rooibos Quinoa Pudding with Cherry & Pistachio
Fate smiled down on me last week when I opened the box containing the mystery ingredient for week two of the Tazo Cookoff. I had been dreaming of a tea enriched breakfast appropriate rice pudding for months. When I was first asked to participate in this challenge I knew I finally had an excuse to actually make it. But I wanted to step things up for this challenge so I decided that instead of using rice I would use quinoa. I crossed my fingers and hoped that one of the mystery ingredients would work in this dish.
Imagine my delight when I opened he week two box only to find a jar of organic red quinoa waiting to take pat in some culinary magic. My quinoa pudding was meant to be.
I used boxed vanilla rooibos latte concentrate for this recipe because cooking with a product clearly meant for drinking (even more than tea in general) seemed fun. Plus it meant that I didn’t need to add any additional sugar or spices (the concentrate is slightly sweetened and contains vanilla and cinnamon). Complete with toppings, this recipe contains a grand total of six ingredients. You can’t get much simpler than that!
The quinoa gives this pudding a nutty flavor and a coarse texture — it lacks the creamy starchiness or rice pudding and reminds me more of steel cut oats. The flavor of the tea is very prominent and combined with the sweetness of the cherries and the crunch of the pistachios, it makes a great breakfast or a filling snack.
Also, vanilla rooibos lattes? Totally my new favorite drink. Warm and creamy, with a slightly floral this drink reminds me of the perfect rainy day. The kind where you have nothing better to do than sit in your yoga pants, drink tea, and curl up with a book while the rain softly pitter patters outside the window.
A few tips for making this pudding:
- Make sure to rinse the quinoa well. Until the water runs clear. This will prevent it from being bitter.
- Ignore the directions on the back of the box of concentrate. If you look at the box, you’ll be tempted to use more concentrate than this recipe calls for. That would be a huge mistake. Even though you start with a cup and a half of milk, it reduces down to form the pudding and you’ll only end up with about a quarter cup of milk in the final dish. If you use too much concentrate the ratios will be way off and your pudding will be far too sweet.
Click to continue reading Vanilla Rooibos Quinoa Pudding with Cherry & Pistachio and for a change to win a great Tazo gift pack –>
Frozen Hazelnut Hot Chocolate
Have you ever had a frozen hot chocolate? It’s one of my favorite summer treats. They’re icy and cold – like a cross between a milk shake and a slushy. Frozen hot chocolate might seem like an oxymoron, but these really do taste like hot chocolate and not at all like a regular chocolate shake.
You can make them with your favorite hot chocolate mix, but I like to make mine with milk and cocoa powder. If you decide to use a mix instead, keep in mind that it will get diluted by the ice. Adding in some melted chocolate chips helps it retain an intense chocolatey taste.
I love chocolate and hazelnut together and I decided that frozen hazelnut hot chocolate sounded great. Instead of adding in melted chocolate, I added Nocciolata organic hazelnut spread. Nocciolata is one of the products presented at the recent Fancy Foods Show, and they sent me a jar to review/play around with. The spread is very similar to Nutella, but it’s organic. It’s also thinner. At first I didn’t know how I felt about that – I like the thick, frosting-like consistency of Nutella. But then I realized it means that the Nocciolata is really easy to spread….meaning you can cover more surface area with less spread and save yourself some calories. It also meant that it blended very easily into this frozen hot chocolate and didn’t all end up in one blob.
I like that the ingredients are simple: sugar, hazelnut paste, sunflower oil, skim milk powder, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, and vanilla flavoring. That’s all. I think that the hazelnut flavor is also more pronounced in the Nocciolata than it is in Nutella, and the spread isn’t quite as sweet. It’s definitely not something you want to be eating every day, but it does make a very nice treat.
Click to get the recipe for Frozen Hazlenut Hot Chocolate –>
Chewy Brown Butter-Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies
Psst! Hey… you! Over here. I have cookies.
Not just any cookies: soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies. With brown butter. Because what isn’t better with the addition of brown butter?
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a dessert. I’ve been trying to stick to the whole healthy thing. But these last few weeks? They’ve been very healthy; some might even say too healthy. And life is all about balance. No matter how delicious my healthy recipes are, if I don’t get a sweet treat every now and then I get very cranky.
And these cookies are just what the doctor ordered if you’re in need of a treat! Their delicate crumb and deep, nutty, toffee-like flavor has driven me to distraction. I had originally planned to use them for ice cream sandwiches, but they were so good on their own that before I knew it, there were only two left! (There also may have been a very pathetic instance of me standing in front of the open freezer, eating dough that I had put in there to bake another day. Who had time for baking?) I decided I had better seize the opportunity while I still could, and sandwiched some vanilla bean ice cream between my last two cookies. I immediately set aside any doubt that I had harbored about the potential for the ice cream to ruin a thing that was already too good to be true. It was easily one of the best ice cream sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.
I’ve already made a mental list of events that I can make these cookies for. Because I clearly can’t be trusted with them sitting unclaimed in my kitchen. If you have more restraint than I do — or are generous enough to share them with coworkers or neighbors who will suddenly be your best friends – I highly recommend making these. ASAP.
Chewy cookies not your cup of tea? Try my recipe for Crispy Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies!
Click to continue reading Chewy Brown Butter-Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies –>
Strawberry-Rhubarb Tart with Brown Sugar Shortcrust
The other day I mentioned on twitter that I have never had rhubarb. The responses were fast and plentiful, and most fell into a rage from disbelief to pity. I never realized it was so popular – I don’t even think I knew it existed until a few years ago! I decided that since everyone seemed to love it so much, I should take the plunge and give it a try. I went with the traditional combination of rhubarb with strawberries, but I didn’t want to commit to a whole pie. So I made a tart. A tart with a brown sugar shortbread crust.
Ok, fine. Maybe I just didn’t feel like dealing with pie crust. But the shortbread crust was perfect. Strawberries and shortbread. Strawberries and brown sugar. How could you go wrong? Especially when you start out with strawberries that look like these:
I mean, strawberries have been awesome this year as it is, but take a look at those beauties! They were every bit as juicy and sweet as they look. Which is good, since I paired them with rhubarb. Which, in case you’re like me and have never had it before, is extremely tart. Especially when it’s raw. I don’t recommend doing what I did and taking a nibble to test it out.
Despite the tartness of that nibble, I could tell that this was going to be a thing of beauty so I forged ahead. Let the berries and rhubarb macerate in sugar to release the juices. Scooped it into the partially bakes cookie crust. Baked it until the filling became luscious and jammy, almost like a grown up version of a linzer tarte. Where has this been all my life?
Click to continue reading Strawberry-Rhubarb Tart with Brown Sugar Shortcrust –>
Lavender and Vanilla Bean Macarons
Why what do we have here? Just my long promised second (and more successful!) post about making macarons! I know. I left you hanging for forever. A few of you even emailed me. But what can I say? I got distracted by other goodies like pineapple upside-down cake, cappuccino cheesecake, and a delicious orange pound cake that I still need to post.
I recently began seeing a group of people on twitter posting about a monthly #mactweets event. It took me a while to figure out what exactly was going on, but eventually I got it : a group of people looking to perfect macarons, and sharing laughs, encouragement, and cheers along the way. All with a monthly theme. I’ve been watching from the sidelines for a while, but decided that this would be the month that I would jump right in.
The theme for March is “Spring Fling: Baking Your Favorite Springtime Flowers.” I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy some of the beautiful dried flowers that they keep in the bulk bins at the co-op, so this was the perfect month for me to start! It took me a while to settle on a flavor, but I ended up choosing lavender and vanilla bean macarons with buttercream frosting.
I’m not going to lie. These are tricky little devils to make! It actually took me two tries to get them right – I over folded my first batch and ended up with flat, cracked cookies that stuck to the baking sheet and were a huge mess to clean up. But I didn’t give up. Instead, I did a little more reading and gave it another go. My results still weren’t perfect, but they were a lot closer! I mean, how cute are these?!
A few tips that I learned along the way:
- You need to mix the batter a lot more than you think you should. It’s ok! Start out quickly and the slow down — it should take around 50 strokes. When it’s folded enough, the batter will flow like magma, and a line drawn in it with a knife will disappear after about 10 seconds.
- Use a scale. It’s much more accurate than trying to measure your ingredients.
- Parchment paper works better than a silpat. I don’t know why, but it does.
- Don’t crowd your oven. Bake one tray at a time, turning it halfway through so they cook evenly.
- It’s much easier to put your “toppings” on before the macarons bake. I don’t now why I thought I would be able to get stuff to stick to them once they were baked last time!!
Also, one of the things that I didn’t like about the other recipe I had used was that it didn’t call for the piped macarons to rest before baking. Instead, you baked them for a few minutes at a high temperature, and then the rest of the way at a lower temperature. I much prefer the method of letting them rest, which helps the tops dry out. When they bake, the dried top will rise straight up, giving you nice, ruffly “feet.”
The tops on this batch isn’t as smooth as I would have liked — blame that on me being lazy and not sifting my sugar/almond mixture. Also, I didn’t let my egg white age (my aged white went into my failed batch). I’m not sure what aging does to them, but these seemed to come out ok. They were also a little more hollow than they should be. So I know what I have to work on for next month. But for now, not bad, if I do say so myself. {….]
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