Easter Dessert

I made Tangerine Semifreddo with Salted Almond Brittle for dessert. Recipe from Epicurious. It was a process!

The first part was to make an almond brittle which was a literal hot mess - but not that complicated. 

Clockwise from top: Yolk custard, Egg Whites, Almond Brittle, Cream

For the filling  I had a number of different bowls set out on the counter at once. First I had to cook the egg yolk/tangerine mixture in a bowl over simmering water and then cool it really fast by beating it while the bowl was set over ice water. It was my first time making any type of custard so the process was new to me. 

Next up was whipping the cream. I chilled a bowl first and then poured the cream in and whipped away. Pretty simple. 

Then it was egg whites time. Whipping egg whites scares me - what with the possibility of both under whipping and over whipping and a fine line in between. Turned out beautifully though! 

After that I folded together the yolks, whites, and cream and layered the fluffy mixture into plastic-wrap lined loaf pans sprinkling some chopped almond brittle in between layers. I wrapped it up tightly and then stuck it in the freezer to set overnight. It looked yummy!

And then about midnight I suddenly realized that while the recipe called for the yolks to be cooked the whites never were. So I started worrying about giving people salmonella and did some googling on freezing raw meringues and decided it would just be better if I re-did the dessert in a safer way. So I drove to Wal-Mart in the middle of the night to  get more eggs and such and then followed instructions I found online to cook/cool the egg whites similar to the process for the yolks. (And, yes, I do embrace my insanity. Feel free to laugh at me. :) ) The egg whites did not get anywhere near as fluffy - but at least there was no raw egg?  The result was a MUCH shorter loaf of tangerine yummyness - but it was still yummy.

The day of I made the tangerine sauce. I think the sauce turned out a little bitter/salty and I'm wondering if it's because I used a juicer to get the tangerine juice rather than hand squeezing. Perhaps some of the rind or something got into the juice.  So, I'd suggest hand juicing.

In the end it had a creamy ice cream texture with a nice tangerine flavor and the crunchy brittle throughout gave it a nice texture variety.

Carrot (Juice) Cake

The other week I was participating in one of my favorite summer activities - yard-saling - and I found a great find! Brand new, in the box, Hamilton Beach Juicer for $10. The manual had a 1999 date on it - but it works great and had never been used. So, I can juice like it's 1999.

So, of course I came home and washed it up and no fruit or veggie in my kitchen was safe from being grated to a pulp.



Thing I discovered by accident: juicing frozen fruit gives you a really nice frozen drink like concoction on the "pulp" side of the juicer - but makes the engine make unpleasant sounds.

I also thought I'd try out one of the recipes included the juicer manual: Carrot Cake

You juice about 6 carrots. Enough to give you 1/2 cup of juice and 1 1/2 cups of "pulp". I just love watching the juice come out - such fun! (ok, I'm odd)



And the pulp side. . .

Now, set that off to the side and heat your oven to 350. Grease a 9 inch baking dish.

In a small bowl mix: 1 cup flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon salt.

In a medium bowl mix: 2 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 3/4 cup veg oil

Add flour mixture, carrot juice, and carrot pulp alternately to the egg mixture.

Stir in 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Pour in prepared baking dish. Bake 35-40 minutes.

I whipped up some cream cheese frosting to top it all off - very yum! (and totally healthy - it's made out of carrots!)

Anybody have a favorite juicer recipe?

Strawberry Shortcake Trifle

This is the dessert I made for Easter - and I was finally able to use the mini trifle dishes I received as a Christmas present.

Ingredients:

Strawberries (I kept some quartered and then mashed some)
Some kind of cake (I used pound cake)
Whip Cream

And then all you do is layer them in the Trifle dishes.



I put the quartered strawberries around the outside and filled the center with a bit of whip cream and the mashed strawberries.

Then cake, then cream, then more berries!

Robert Redford

When my grandmother made this dessert we called it "Chocolate Delight" - but when my sister-in-law arrived in the family she had a different name for it: Robert Redford. I'm not really sure WHY it's called that - but it stuck in our family. I made this dessert for a party the other night. (And we played Scattergories during the party and on the list that had "dessert" as a category our letter was "R" and I scored two points!)

So here is the very simple recipe for Robert Redford.

Crust:

One stick butter, melted

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup chopped pecans.

Mix these ingredients together and spread in the bottom of a baking dish (9x13). Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Allow to cool completely.

Mix 1 small tub of cool whip and 8 oz of cream cheese together until smooth. Spread on top of cooled crust.

Mix together one box of instant vanilla pudding and one box of instant chocolate pudding prepared according to the "pie filling' directions on the box. Spread on top of the cool whip mixture.

Spread one small tub of Cool Whip on top of that.

Top with a grated Hershey Bar or chopped pecans (or both!)

Chill overnight before serving. It will set and you can cut it like a sheet cake to serve.