Recently in Desserts/Sweets Category

Happy Valentine's Day!

I know, I know- you've worked all day, then came home and cooked a good dinner, when all you really felt like doing was opening a greasy sack of anything. Kudos for making the effort, but I beg you to try not to just plop it on a plate and ring the dinner bell. Putting a little bit of thought into plating a dish properly, even if you're just cooking for yourself, not only makes a dish look better, it will actually make it taste better.

Why? By incrementally increasing saliva in your mouth and on your tongue, which helps to distribute seasoning and flavors all over your taste buds, including those the food isn't actually in physical contact with, which increases the perception of flavor in your brain.

In these days of tight food budgets, a little bit of thought into plating can help you to get a "WOW!" out of simple ingredients, such as what I did with a simple pork chop and applesauce dinner, and after a while you get in the habit of considering how you're going to present a dish as you're doing your prep, which will help you to be more imaginative with your meals.

It's fun, rewarding, and it will make you a better cook.

We've had my Mom and stepdad in town for the last few weeks, and as a belated birthday gift I made my Mom some chocolate chip cookies to take back to the Midwest with them.

Didja have to take all of them, Mom?

And yes, they were good, especially right out of the oven with a glass of milk.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Gail!

Basically, you can tweak the recipe on a chocolate chip package, and add a little extra baking soda. Take the time to mix these by hand- first cream the butter and sugars together, then add the eggs and vanilla. Stir in the salt and baking soda, then add the rest of the ingredients. Taste the batter before you portion them, there should be just enough salt to increase the succulence of the batter without it actually tasting salty.

Use parchment paper!

(This is actually 100% edible, and probably very tasty.)

Happy Friday, everyone! The voting for the Spam® cookoff continues in the thread below, so cast your vote if you haven't done so yet. Also, our "Two for the Troops" promotion for Operation Gratitude is still going on, so please click here to donate two tins of Survival Spice™ for only $7.99!

I've gotten this email from a few people, most recently Dennis and Kathleen (thanks!), so I guess it's time to post it. I mean, after posting Spam® recipes for the better part of two weeks, I've pretty much hit "bottom" anyway...

Have a great weekend. Cook something good, willya?

I guess it's really a form of dulce de leche with chocolate, but somehow 'chocolate crack' seems to describe my addiction to it. I learned to make it from a Brazilian friend, so whenever I come across a can of sweetened condensed milk, I find myself making this without being aware of it. It's so decadent, it makes an easy sort of fondue for dipping fruit, crackers or whatever you come up with!

Real dulce de leche is made from milk and sugar and takes hours. This technique is far faster, and is way easier.

(In progress, bubbling away nicely)

I threw this together to serve with the Dutch Baby I made Saturday morning. You might want to double it if you're feeding more than 2 people. So easy, and fruit compotes are a really great addition to syrup on pancakes and waffles.

I made this while the Dutch baby was cooking, which is why I sliced the apples thinly. Fujis are a good choice for this compote, they have a little more complexity than Delicious or Jonathan apples, and they retain their shape better, too. There are a bazillion variations, but the trick is to get the liquid to reduce to the proper consistency at the same time the fruit has softened, but still retains its shape. Always match the size of your cuts to the cooking time you're going to give it to cook!

Have you ever had a beer flavored ice cream? I saw a recipe for Guinness Ice Cream I thought I'd pass along.

It looks like a pretty good recipe, though I'd add a good pinch of salt and use a real vanilla bean if I had one handy. I've also never added molasses, but it might be a nice touch. And I have to say, as much as I like the flavor that Guinness imparts to this, I've had even better luck using Samuel Smith's Oatmeal stout.

While I love Guinness, and I've tried hard to drink the Guinness brewery in Dublin dry a few times, the Oatmeal stout gives just a little more depth of flavor, and doesn't have the bitterness that the American version of Guinness has. The Oatmeal Stout has more of a sweetness, too, which I feel makes it pair a little better with ice cream. For those of you who aren't beer drinkers, while I won't say that it has no beer affectations at all, it does a surprisingly good job of adding a richness and complexity that makes vanilla ice cream seem, well, vanilla by comparison.

Try it, or tell me what an idiot I am for suggesting it in the comments!

As a kid I hated bananas, so my Mom got me to eat her banana bread by calling it 'grape' bread. Okay, it was really deceptive, but that's what love is all about, I guess...

Sorry, got caught up in a bit of a daydream, where were we? Ah, yes, banana bread. I continue to love it in adulthood, though a banana fan I'm not, still. Fried plantains? Dig 'em, but a banana in the morning doesn't cut it for me.

Here's my version of banana bread. It's moist, thanks to a stick of butter and two eggs in each loaf. With 3 bananas, it has lots of banana flavor. I use a combination of brown and regular sugar, which gives it a bit more depth that you find in a lot of recipes. To top it off I use a butter/honey glaze to give it a beautiful shine and richness.

It's easy to make, too, no mixer required really, just make sure your butter is soft when you start. I recommend taking the time to cream the sugars well, to give that great texture a good start. Don't overmix once the flour's in, you don't need to develop gluten here.

So, without further reverie, here's my Banana Pecan Nut Bread:

(Photo: John, in Chicago. TPC logo is only to thwart dastardly image robbers...)

Gawd, the stuff I find in my inbox at 5:00 in the morning! Today's "drool til you're satisfied" moment is brought to once again by John, in Chicago. John's offering/torture is a flourless chocolate cake, with butter toasted walnuts and a kona bittersweet chocolate sauce. It was a sin to crop this picture, just seeing the full shot of this chunk o' heaven brought chocolatey tears to my eyes.

BTW, John has a really cool photography website called Open Tune.org. I'm begging him- post some of your food pictures, too!

Email me your food pics and recipes, I'm going to arbitrarily start awarding an occasional tin of Scovie Award winning Survival Spice™, especially to those submitting for the first time. Remember, simple or elaborate, I don't care, the only criteria I ever use revolves around "Does it taste good?"

Wow, Food Fight Four is complete, and Shauna has submitted a beauty to close it up! I've excerpted most of her post at Gluten Free Girl, but go to her place for the whole thing, along with lots of other great stuff.

Shauna drew MC's Northwest Salmon with a Twist"" as her dish to interpret, and she definitely took the ball and ran with it. Apricot sausage? Watermelon sorbet? Right on.

She also said some nice things about yours truly that I'm not sure I deserve, but I really appreciate it. When I formulated Survival Spice™ for production, I was a maniac about sourcing premium ingredients. I wanted to produce an all natural product because it tasted better than anything else I tried, not because I was aware of Celiac Disease at that point. Happily, when I checked with my suppliers, they each said their ingredients were gluten free, so I felt comfortable spending the money to have it verified by an independent lab. There are lots of good resources on Shauna's blog for those with Celiac disease, if you know someone please pass her site on to them.