Desserts

Dessert Recipes

Buttermilk Butternut Squash Spice Cake

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Vegetables are so versatile.  They can be enjoyed raw, roasted, steamed, fried, sautéed, boiled, and surely a few ways I’ve neglected to mention.  One of my favorite things about vegetables is that they can be enjoyed as a savory side dish, an entrée or in a sweet baked good.  The butternut squash in this cake adds moisture and texture, and a very subtle flavor of squash that is a nice complement to the tart buttermilk and sweet vanilla and spices.

I used a traditional bundt pan, which I greased and sugared.  This is my new favorite way to prep a pan for baked goods.  I used this method on a pan of blondies yesterday that came out beautifully.  The two batches I tried before stuck like crazy, but this sugaring thing seems to be pretty foolproof.

The batter was smooth and smelled wonderful even before it was baked.  I used 3/4 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice in the batter because I was out of ginger.  I think it worked well and still provided the fall spice flavor.

This is an easy recipe that can be prepared ahead of time since it needs to cool before applying the glaze.

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Sweet Saturday: White and Dark Chocolate Coffee Brownies

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It was 70° two days ago.  Right now it is 39°, cloudy and misty.  I’m wearing long pants, a sweatshirt and my fake fur lined boots…and I like it.

I am starting to truly like cool weather and I’ve always loved the things associated with this time of year.  Changing leaves, pumpkins, sweaters, warm socks, soup, and before you know it, it’s Christmas!  Anyway…

The cooler weather inspired me to bake something warm, rich and chocolate-y yesterday, so I found a basic and easy brownie recipe, halved it to better serve 2 people, and made use of what I had in my pantry.

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Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

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The success of the peanut butter M&M cookie last week inspired me to try the cookie again, but this time with chocolate chips.  I changed the amount of sugars in this cookie.  I wish I could claim that I was being purposefully experimental and had some great reason for changing the ratio of white to brown sugar.  The truth is that I didn’t have enough brown sugar left.

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So I used 3/4 cup brown sugar and 3/4 cup white sugar.  All the rest of the ingredients remained the same.  I used 1 cup of milk chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped 60% cacao Callebaut from a block that I had left over from another recipe.

I think this cookie may be my new favorite.  I love the texture and flavor.  Even with the change in the sugar ratio they were delicious.  I did find them a bit less moist than the cookie with more brown sugar, but not enough to make them less tasty.

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Sweet Saturday: Peanut Butter M&M Cookies

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Crispy M&M’s are no longer being sold anywhere, and this is a bit heartbreaking for me.  I loved those little chocolaty, crispy bits.  My friend Kim and I used to share the big bags of them when we were roommates in college.  For a while after they stopped selling them at grocery stores I could find them at Target, but I haven’t seen them in over a year now.  My second favorite M&M is peanut butter.

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I was at the store picking up some laundry soap and toothpaste when I saw a big bag of the Peanut Butter M&M’s on special, so I decided to buy one and make some cookies!  I thought about doing an oatmeal cookie as the base, or maybe a peanut butter dough, but after much deliberation I settled on a chocolate chip cookie dough.  I used Alton Brown’s recipe for The Chewy for a few reasons.

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Mamma’s Rice Pudding

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Some foods will always remind me of my childhood and of family.  Among these are my Grandma June’s pecan pie, my mom’s chicken velvet soup, dutch babies, bar-b-cups, spritz cookies, Swedish rye bread at Sundbeck Christmas, Swedish pancakes, and the Rystrom family’s rice pudding.  Of course there are plenty more now that I begin brainstorming, but I’ll focus on this one today.

ricepudding7I asked my mom where this recipe originated but she doesn’t really know.  Her mom made it when she was young, and I plan to make it for my kids…whenever they choose arrive.

My mom grew up in Richvale, California.  Her dad, better known as Gramps, is a rice grower in Northern California, and so they ate a lot of rice growing up.  My mom met my dad in college and he brought her to the great state of Texas.  Thanks to my sweet Californian mother, I don’t have too much of a Texas accent, and I ate of lot of perfectly cooked rice as a kid.

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Daring Bakers: Dobos Torte

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The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

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This challenge really snuck up on me.  I guess I could blame it on the fact that last week was my first week of school, but really I am just a little forgetful sometimes and I have a bad habit of putting things off.  This week was really too busy to make this cake, so I had to wait until yesterday.  I have never baked and assembled a cake this involved so quickly!  It still took me a while, about 3 hours start to finish.  This is an accomplishment, in my opinion, especially when you consider the 6 sponge cake layers, chocolate buttercream, the caramel coated triangle cake pieces and assembly.

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Buttermilk Cakes

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I made SmittenKitchen’s raspberry buttermilk cake a few weeks ago.  The cake was so lovely that I decided to try it with some different additions.  Since I had blueberries, half a bag of raw blanched almonds and a tube of almond paste already on hand…that’s what I used.  The other ingredients in the cake are readily accessible in a bakers kitchen; 1 egg, 1/2 stick butter, sugar, flour, buttermilk (You can make your own!) baking soda, powder, salt and sugar.  Easy.

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The first cake I made was a blueberry almond cake and it was, in my opinion, incredibly delicious.  Tart and juicy blueberries in a sweet, tender and moist cake with crunchy almond paste crumbs on top.  The blueberries sank into the batter as it baked, but the almond paste stayed on top so it was able to get a little brown and crunchy.  I sprinkled regular granulated sugar on top as well.  I did not use lemon zest in the cake.  I thought it might not combine well with the almond, but it would probably be great.

I get so worried about overcomplicating a dish that I tend toward simple flavors and fairly normal ingredients.  If you want something crazy, make this.  It grosses me out a bit, but my 7th grade Texas History teacher, Mr. Dennis, made this for us as a Christmas treat when I was in his class, and it was good…so maybe Velveeta cheese is better for more than Cheater Queso?  If you’d like to make a bit more work of your queso…try this. After reading this post and drooling on my keyboard, I might have to try it as well.

Back to buttermilk…the possibilities are endless with this cake.  This recipe is definitely one I will be experimenting with.  It lends itself to fruit additions perfectly, but I would be willing to try chocolate pieces and various nuts as well.  Pecans and walnuts would be tasty.

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I absolutely love almond, so next I tried a cake with chopped almonds in the batter and a sprinkle of the almond paste on top as I did this last time.  I used 1/3 white and 1/3 brown sugar in this cake, 2 ounces of chopped toasted almonds in the batter and about 2 ounces of crumbled almond paste on top.

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Colorado Oatmeal, Coconut, Chocolate Chip Bars

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I am part of a family who thoroughly enjoys snacking.  That is why we needed some cookie bars up here in Durango for after finishing off all the cookies we had from Bread Bakery in Durango.  They have some incredible cookies, a delicious ham and brie sandwich and an incredible goat cheese and thyme scone that I plan to try to duplicate at some point.  So, after all the crazy delicious goodies were gone I made these cookie bars.  I found a recipe for oatmeal, coconut cookies from Allrecipes.com, and changed a few things in the dough and also made bars instead of cookies.  I was reminded by my sister after I had pressed the dough into the pan that I should have done something to compensate for the high altitude, but it was a little late for that.  So, I took my chances.  It turned out not to be an issue.  The bars did take a bit longer to bake than I would have thought.  Other than that, the flavor and texture were good.

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Raspberry Buttermilk Cake, My Cute Nephew and My Crazy Husband

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The flavor of this cake was absolutely delicious, and slightly sweet.  The tartness of the raspberries is lovely.  The texture was wonderfully moist with a nice tender crumb.  I got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  I was disappointed that mine did not end up looking as beautiful as hers, but I am sure I will make this cake again, so we’ll see if I can improve on the appearance.  I followed her recipe and instructions completely except that I added a cap-full, about 1/4 teaspoon, of almond extract just because I love the flavor of almond.  I served this cake when my parents came through Amarillo after dinner.

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It was a light cake, perfect all by itself, no whipped cream needed.  I used turbinado sugar instead of white granulated sugar and loved the crunch it provided.  This cake is so easy to prepare and has simple ingredients most people have on hand.  The buttermilk is also non-essential since you can make your own buttermilk in 10 minutes with regular milk and some lemon juice or vinegar.

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Galaktoboureko: Greek Phyllo Custard Pie

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Sweet, creamy, rich and wonderful.  I made Greek food for dinner on Friday night, and I wanted to make a Greek dessert that wasn’t baklava.  I love baklava and have a good recipe for it that hasn’t failed me yet, but I wanted to try something new.

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There were so many different recipes and methods for this dessert.  Some were made in a 9×13 pan.  Others were made into individual little pies.  I baked mine in a 9 inch pie plate, and it turned out well.  There is something appealing to me about doing this dessert in little individual packages so that more of the phyllo stays nice and crisp.  However, the pie plate was nice and self contained with no serious risk of leaking.

This dessert is made of a custard of milk, eggs, semolina flour, sugar and butter wrapped in phyllo and soaked in some type of syrup after baking.  The kind of milk, number of eggs, and flavor of syrup varied quite a bit in the recipes I browsed, but the methods were all similar.  I chose this recipe from Epicurious .

Phyllo-Custard Pie

Ingredients

  • 1 3/4 cups sugar
  • 2/3 cups water
  • 2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
  • 1 teaspoon grated orange peel
  • 1/2 cup semolina flour*
  • 3 cups whole milk
  • 11 tablespoons (about) unsalted butter, melted
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 10 fresh phyllo pastry sheets or frozen, thawed

Directions

Stir 1 1/4 cups sugar and 2/3 cup water in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Add cinnamon sticks and 1/2 teaspoon orange peel and simmer 2 minutes. Set syrup aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix semolina and 1/2 cup sugar in heavy medium saucepan. Whisk in milk and 4 tablespoons melted butter; bring to boil, whisking occasionally. Boil until mixture is thick and creamy, whisking constantly, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat. Whisk eggs and 1/2 teaspoon orange peel in medium bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in semolina mixture. Mix in vanilla. Cool filling completely.

Lightly butter 10-inch glass pie dish. Place 1 phyllo sheet in bottom of dish. Brush with melted butter. Top with second sheet. Continue layering with 3 more sheets, brushing each with butter. Spoon filling into dish. Top with 5 more phyllo sheets, brushing each with butter. Using scissors, trim excess phyllo from sides of dish. With very sharp knife, score tip of phyllo sheets, forming diamond pattern.

Bake pie until phyllo is golden brown and filling is set, about 45 minutes. Transfer pie to rack. Immediately strain 1 cup cooled syrup over pastry. Cool completely. Cut into wedges and serve.

I LOVED this pie.  Crisp phyllo encasing a creamy custard.  Just delightful.  It was too rich for Ben, but most desserts are.  It was good at room temperature, but so lovely after it had chilled in the fridge for a few hours…and delicious the next day as well!  The cinnamon syrup is essential and gives the pie a nice flavor.  Try this next time you want a fairly easy and very  impressive dessert.

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