In case we didn’t mention this earlier, we live in South Carolina. Hot, muggy, humidified, sticky South Carolina. The temp will not fall below 85 until sometime in September, so we have a lot of hotness to look forward to! Living here requires a bit of creativity regarding cold meals and desserts. Any oven-baked dish is just not as appealing when you are already drenched in sweat, but avoiding the oven entirely is pretty much impossible.
“Ice cream” were the first two words off the tip of my tongue when Mom asked if I had thought about this week’s dessert. It’s cold, it’s sweet, and it’s simple. Unfortunately, throwing ice cream in bowls does not make for an interesting recipe. So I dug around a little and found this fantastic idea.
Barbi CANNOT cook without Pandora.Jan started wondering about the lack of butter or oil.Warning: not for the weak-wristed!Make sure the cake is completely cool. We chilled it for 30 mins.
Rolling the cake with the ice cream inside was a fun challenge and the whole thing looked so artistic that I waited a full three seconds before digging in! The guys, of course, had no such inhibitions…
Squished out some at the overlap, but pretty sure no one noticed!
We’ve got a sweet Ice Cream Cake Roll in the oven right now! Also hunting for a good appetizer/snack idea for an event tomorrow, browsing paint colors for the kitchen remodeling project, and checking out lastest music on Pandora. Multitaskers extrordinaire! Full posts coming soon…
For this week’s dessert, Barbi suggested something NOT chocolate (shock of the century!!!). Searching through one of my many cookbooks, I came across this recipe for Strawberry-Lemon Cream Puffs. After reading through the recipe twice, I realized that it was definitely do-able, even though I didn’t have all the ingredients. That’s not always a problem since I almost never follow a recipe exactly anyway! Here is the original recipe, taken from “The Best of Country Cooking 2004”, with my changes at the end. Who knew fruit could go over so well with a chocoholic?
1 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 cup flour
FILLING:
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch
5 oz evaporated milk
8 oz vanilla yogurt
1 1/2 tsp. lemon extract
1/4 tsp. butter flavoring
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries
1/2 tsp. confectioners’ sugar
In a saucepan, bring water and butter to a boil. Add flour all at once, stirring until a smooth ball forms. Remove from the heat; let stand for 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Continue beating until mixture is smooth. Drop by 1/4 cupfuls 3 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire racks. Immediately split puffs open and remove tops; discard soft dough from inside. Set puffs and tops aside to cool.
For filling, combine sugar and cornstarch in a saucepan. Stir in evaporated milk and yogurt until smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat. Stir in lemon extract and butter flavoring. Cool. Fold in strawberries. Refrigerate until serving. Fill cream puffs; replace tops. Dust with powdered sugar.
Changes: Since I did not have vanilla yogurt, I used a 6-oz cup of blueberry yogurt and added 1/4 cup of light sour cream. I had no lemon flavoring either, which is really a good thing since the man of the house depsises any hint of lemon! I used vanilla flavoring instead and used almond flavoring for the butter flavoring. I also added a handful of frozen blueberries along with the strawberries.
I used a muffin pan instead of a baking sheet, so I ended up with 12 puffs instead of the called-for 10.
Many appologies for the lack of posts! Clearly we are off to a slow start with this project, thanks to exams and graduation for Barbi and a house full of company for Jan. Hopefully life will slow down in the next few weeks if we’re lucky.
In the midst of all the end-of-school-year craziness, Mother’s Day kinda snuck up on me (I know.. world’s worst daughter). I managed to grab a sweet gift (monogramed note cards from Minted.com), but the guys had a little trouble. Noticing the absense of gift-wrapping requests or flower advice, I sent out a text message enquiry around 10:30 Saturday night. Mass panic followed, as I suspected, but a midnight Walmart run successfully solved the near disaster and I earned a renewed big-sister respect. We’ll see how long THAT lasts..
Anyway, this cake was not originally intended to celebrate Mother’s Day, but I added the chocolate chips when she wasn’t looking. Sometimes a sneaky nature comes in handy. What are your Mother’s Day stories?
Coco-Pecan Cake
1 c. butter or margarine
1 c. water
1/4 c. baking cocoa
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. sour cream
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
In a saucepan, bring butter, water, and cocoa to a boil; whisk until smooth. Cool to room temperature. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt. Add cocoa mixture; beat on low speed just until combined. Add sour cream, eggs, and baking soda; blend until smooth. Pour into a greased 13×9 baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.
Frost with prepared coconut-pecan frosting (yes, we cheated).
Managed to snap one pic before the hordes descended
Sunday dinner at our house has been elevated to a ritualistically traditional status. The pot roast is placed in the crockpot at precisely 11pm Saturday night and covered with onion soup mix and (when available) half a can of coke. Said pot roast is not touched until after church Sunday morning when the whole fam troops into the kitchen to begin the rest of the ceremonial preparation. Rice, broccoli, carrots, mashed potatoes, and bread are added to the menu with no. deviations. whatsoever. If so much as one item is missing from (or added to) the Sunday dinner table, the security of the entire universe will be called into question. So when we told everyone not to move after dinner yesterday because we had dessert, the eyebrows went through the roof. Now we do have dessert every so often, but because of the harried nature of Sundays, dessert is NOT part of the traditional meal. Of course once this delicious recipe hit four male mouths, the universe-danger radars went down and (shockingly) the pie was gone in seconds.
The original recipe is from the Best of Country Cooking 2002, but we experimented with blueberries and strawberries instead of the recommended raspberries. Enjoy!
Strawberry-Blueberry Meringue Pie
1 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. cold butter or margarine
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp. milk
TOPPING:
2 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup strawberries, chopped
1 cup blueberries
In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt; cut in butter. Combine egg and milk; stir into flour mixture (dough will be sticky). Press into the bottom and up the sides of a lightly greased 9-inch pie plate; set aside.
In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites on medium speed for 5 hours until soft peaks form.
oh this shouldn't take long... 10 minutes later... Gradually beat in sugar, 1 tbsp. at a time until stiff peaks form.20 minutes...seriously?!? I HAVE CARPAL TUNNEL!!
Combine strawberries and blueberries. Fold into beaten egg whites.
Spoon over the crust. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until lightly browned.
Cool on a wire rack. Refrigerate. Yield: 6-8 servings.
Dad: hmm. Meringue? Just eat it Dad. There are no lemons, I promise.
Collective boys: no time to comment between bites. We take this to mean that dessert can safely be added to the Sunday dinner ceremony without harming the universe.
The Cookbook Experiment 