Desserts: Flourless Chocolate Cake

Well the last of the Candy Holidays is behind us until the fall. Just as people think of Thanksgiving as the start to the winter holiday season, so I consider Halloween as the start of the Candy Holiday season. And the Candy Holiday season is a lot longer than the winter holiday season.

I’m as big a fan of chocolate as the next person, but I also have four small children (and an almost non-existent personal will power). Starting with Trick or Treating, there seems to be some event for which the stores are stocking their “seasonal” shelves with various-shaped Peeps for between six and seven months (depending on the timing of Easter). Candy corn of various shades—yellow/orange,red/green or pastel colors (really?)—calls to me with its corn syrupy siren song. And don’t even get me started on Cadbury Crème Eggs.

The Candy Holidays kick off with Halloween. Once they’ve cleared out the last of the orange-wrapped miniature candy bars, they truck in Hershey’s kisses in silver, red, and green foil. From there it’s but a moment before the heart shaped Whitman’s samplers are displayed. On February 15th, it’s Reese’s Eggs (another notable weakness of mine) and chocolate bunnies. When I bought a package of Cadbury Mini Eggs in February, and confessed to the checker that I just couldn’t resist them, even though Easter was weeks away, she told me that, in fact, they’d received all the Cadbury stuff in DECEMBER, I suppose in the hopes that they’d dedicate some floor space to it during the Christmas holidays.

I’m just grateful it hasn’t occurred to Brach’s to make patriotic candy corn yet.

So this year, Easter brunch was at my house. After a morning of eating pastel M&Ms and Kit Kats wrapped in cheery pink and blue, I wanted something more sophisticated for the grownups. I teetered between a pound cake served with…something (I never actually got very far down the pound cake path), or a chocolate cake of some description. I decided on a flourless chocolate cake because I’d been working on this recipe and it seemed like a good time to break it out. This cake is not a little bit of work, but it’s a departure from the usual traits you find in a flourless chocolate cake, which to me makes the work it requires worthwhile. At least it’s effort expended for something a bit different.

This is not a flourless chocolate cake for people who like the thick, dense, fudgy product that normally represents the genre. This is a flourless chocolate cake for people who want something a little more cake-like (although, let’s face it, it’s still exceptionally rich from the chocolate). This also has a lovely crusty top provided courtesy of the brown sugar.

It’s also a flourless chocolate cake for people who can’t eat almonds. Often flourless chocolate cake recipes substitute almond meal to provide some of the structure that would normally come from the flour. While my family has no food allergies, plenty do, and nuts are one of the usual suspects.

In fact, it’s rather like a cross between “true” flourless chocolate cake (by which I mean the kind with almond meal), and a brownie. Whatever you call it, the recipe calls for a fair bit of whipping. In fact, you may think I’m exaggerating when you read how much whipping there is. Or that I’m kidding.

You start by beating a lot of air into the eggs, and then folding in whipped cream. The eggs will expand hugely in volume. They’ll then deflate somewhat when you add the chocolate, and you’ll reintroduce some volume in the form of the whipped cream. All of this sort of evens out, and you wind up with a cake that bakes down but doesn’t slump as much as the almond flour variety. As a matter of fact, my husband said he didn’t care for it precisely because it isn’t the usual fudgy, squidgy product that we usually think of when we think of a flourless chocolate cake. So you might want to prepare your audience before you serve it to them.

I presented it with vanilla ice cream and homemade caramel sauce. You could also serve it with whipped cream or crème fraiche, if that’s more your speed. If you like fruit and chocolate (I don’t) you could serve it with strawberries or with a strawberry sauce. However you serve it, it’s a fitting end to the Candy Holiday season.

A note about the picture: the ice cream may make it appear that the cake is quite thick—possibly as much as 2 inches. However, the scoop I used for the ice cream was one of those smaller ones that holds about a rounded tablespoon. So the ice cream scoops themselves are only about 2” high. The cake is probably just over an inch thick. I don’t want anyone to look at the picture and think that the ice cream scoops are “normal” ones, because perspective would then dictate that the cake was quite a bit thicker than it really is.



Flourless Chocolate Cake
Makes 8 – 10 servings

1 cup light brown sugar
6 eggs
14 oz chocolate, melted (I use a mix of bittersweet and semi-sweet—about 9 oz of bittersweet, the rest semi)
½ cup cocoa powder
4 tablespoons Frangelico, divided
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ¼ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9” or 10” round springform pan with nonstick spray.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine eggs and brown sugar. Add salt, vanilla, and Frangelico. Beat 10 minutes or until eggs are 4-5x greater in volume than they were. They’ll deflate a bit later on—that’s OK.

Place all chocolate in a bowl and microwave until melted. Best to melt it in 1 minute increments, checking between each. Once it softens, reduce to 30 second increments. In my microwave this takes 2 ½ minutes total, but power varies by microwave. Stir in the cocoa. Allow to cool slightly. You want it to still be pourable, but not so hot it will cook the eggs when you add it to the egg mixture.

In a separate bowl, whip the cream (if you have a second work bowl for your stand mixer, lucky you. Otherwise I recommend using a hand mixer in another bowl). Once the cream thickens slightly, add the powdered sugar a tablespoon at a time, beating it in to avoid lumps. Once the powdered sugar is all added, beat in the Frangelico. Continue beating until the cream is thick. As the beaters go around, they will leave a path through the cream, and you’ll be able to see the bottom of the bowl. This will take probably 5 minutes.

Remove the mixer bowl from the stand mixer, and scrape the melted chocolate into the egg mixture. This is where the egg mixture will deflate by about half. This is expected. Also, because the egg mixture is cooler than the chocolate will probably be, the chocolate will solidify a bit. Turn the mixer back on and let it run while you’re whipping the cream (if you’re using a hand mixer and separate bowl for the cream. Otherwise, turn the mixer on and let it run for a minute before swapping out the work bowls and cleaning the whip attachment so you can beat the cream). Use a spatula to scrape the bottom of the egg mixture bowl to get any chocolate that may be lurking there. Don’t worry if there seem to be some lumps of chocolate. Even if they don’t get incorporated during the folding that comes next, they’ll melt when it cooks.

Once you have the chocolate well incorporated into the egg mixture, fold in the whipped cream carefully, trying to lose as little volume as possible. You won’t be able to get the two mixtures completely combined—just try to fold until there are no obvious white streaks. The mixture may appear somewhat mottled—lighter and darker chocolate streaks. This is fine. Scrape the mixture into the prepared springform pan.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour and ten minutes, checking at 50 minutes. The cake will appear craggy and cracked. You want it quite well set.

Allow the cake to cool completely. After about 15 minutes, you can run a knife around the edge and release the springform pan. The cake will sink in the middle during cooling. This is normal. Serve with the accompaniment(s) of your choice.

Dessert: Cinnamon Roll Cookies

This is a meandering musing about Christmas cookies. It’s kind of two unrelated stories that I’ve joined together, but it’s what popped into my head when I started thinking about what to say about the cookies I made.

I was having a conversation with a friend about Christmas cookies a week or so before Christmas, and we got to talking about the deterioration of quality of baked goods as people age. I won’t lie—it was a pretty mean conversation, in some ways. She was complaining about her mother’s poor execution of the sausage balls over Thanksgiving (Bisquick, bulk sausage, and cheddar cheese, the recipe is here, if you want it; in the manner of so many things that are made with what I call “low rent” ingredients, they are embarrassingly tasty), and I was telling her about Alex’s grandmother’s Christmas cookies.

I was assured that at one time, Grammy’s cookies were second to none. I’m not sure if that was an opinion clouded by the passage of time, or biased by affection, or possibly both, or if Grammy’s cookies had really once been great and had just gotten awful. But trust me, they were horrible. The only ones I can actually remember her making are Mexican wedding cakes. I think the truth was that she made several things—chocolate chip, fruitcake cookies and some fudge as well as other things, but they all seemed to be little stones covered with powdered sugar (they were all little stones, but I think the fact that they were all covered in powdered sugar had to do with them all being in the tin together and the sugar sifting off of the wedding cakes and on to every other thing around them). We always thanked her profusely and assured her we’d eat them on the way home.

Of course we never told her how they really were, nor what we really did with them (I can be mean, but I’m not that mean), which was to sow them along the roadside between Adams, MA and Falls Church, VA at regular intervals. Every so often we’d declare it to be time for a cookie, choose one, and announce the type. Only what we’d say was something like, “Mexican wedding anvil!” or “Chocolate chip brick!” or similar, and hurl it out the window. Then we’d say something witty like, “Oops! Sorry about that, Mr. Squirrel! I’m sure the swelling will go down in a couple of days!” or “Uh oh—that Jersey wall will never be the same again!” And you’re wondering why CBS still has Letterman in its late night line up instead of us.

And then when I started making my own Christmas cookies this year, I realized I’m bored with the same old Christmas cookies we’ve made every year. Chocolate chip. Oatmeal raisin. Peanut butter. “Magic” cookies (which aren’t “magic” cookies in the Eagle Sweetened Condensed Milk recipe definition, and in fact are actually a recipe called Favorite Chocolate Caramel Nut Bars and came out of a package of Kraft Caramels in the 1980s, but for some reason my grandmother always called them magic cookies, so that’s what I call them, but it always confuses people, who think they’re the kind made with a can of sweetened condensed milk, shredded coconut, and chocolate chips, and my high school English teacher just had an aneurism because this whole parenthetical aside is textbook case of comma abuse). Toffee Nut Bars. Brownies. I guess I’m just jaded, but all of those things just sound boring, boring, boring.

So I decided to come up with something a little different, and all my own. I got to thinking about things I’d like to translate into cookie form, and for some reason I thought of cinnamon rolls. At first I thought about doing them as an actual roll, but that experiment wasn’t much of a success. The dough I chose is pretty easy to work with, but doesn’t lend itself to being rolled out, filled, and rolled back up. It would make an admirable refrigerator log cookie (in fact, that’s its true application), but as a rolled up filled deal, not so much. So I decided to make them a thumbprint cookie, something I’ve had trouble with in the past, but figured I’d give another try.

I won’t keep you in suspense--they did work. My husband even liked them (he’s my harshest critic when I’m developing my own recipes, and he usually curls his lip at about 1/3 of everything and sends me back to the drawing board. With, I should hasten to add, constructive feedback for improvement). I got feedback from some other tasters, primarily about the distribution of filling within the cookie, which I’ve included within the recipe instructions.

The cookie part of these isn’t particularly sweet, which is good because the filling would make your teeth ache if you ate it on its own, and they both have a sort of crumbly tenderness to them. So they balance and complement each other pretty nicely. The topping could be piped on or spread on with a spoon, or if you prefer to drizzle for aesthetic purposes, you could—just add a bit more heavy cream until the icing is thin enough.

It’s possible that in another 40 years, my children or grandchildren will toss these out a car window yelling, “Cinnamon Roll rock!” but as long as they thank me profusely when I give them the cookies, I’ll be none the wiser.

Cinnamon Roll Cookies

makes 24-30 cookies

Ingredients

Cookie dough
2 sticks butter, softened
½ cup + 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
2 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon kosher salt

Pecan Sugar Filling
½ cup pecans
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup light or dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon water

Icing
2 ½ ounces cream cheese at room temperature
3 Tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2-3 teaspoons heavy cream (enough to make a
spreadable or pipable paste)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar.
3. When butter is light and fluffy, and sugar is fully incorporated, add the vanilla, salt, and cinnamon. Beat to combine.
4. Add flour slowly, mixing until just combined.
5. Form dough into 1” balls and place on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.
6. In a food processor, combine pecans, sugar and cinnamon, and process until pecans are finely ground. With the motor running, add the teaspoon of water and pulse 8-10 more times until the mixture forms a thick paste.
7. Using your thumb, make a depression in each cookie. You can spread them out a bit
and make a fairly wide, shallow indentation, or make a deeper, more narrow indentation (the feedback I got was that the taster would have preferred the wide shallow configuration, because then they would have gotten a bit of filling in each bite; it’s a personal preference). These cookies don’t spread much as they cook.
8. Using a spoon or your fingers, fill each indentation with about a teaspoon of the pecan/sugar paste.
9. Bake 17-22 minutes, or until cookies are light golden and filling is set. Allow to set up for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to racks to cool completely.
10. While the cookies bake and cool, make the frosting. Combine cream cheese, lemon juice and sugar in a small bowl and mix to combine. Pour cream in ½ to 1 teaspoon at a time, beating after each addition, until the mixture reaches a consistency you can either pipe or spread on the cookies (it should be a bit thinner than toothpaste).
11. Once the cookies have cooled completely, top each cookie with a dollop of icing (the icing can be piped using a pastry bag, a plastic bag with the corner snipped off, or you can just use a spoon to spread it gently over the filling).

Desserts: Butterscotch Sauce

The Salted Caramel Cheesecake I posted here back in September has taken on a life of its own. This is entirely thanks to Pinterest. It got pinned once or twice, and has been repinned and repinned. I'm delighted that so many people are interested in it, but I have to tell you, it's somewhat harrowing as well.

This particular recipe is my own creation, not something I "adapted" from another source. It's rather like looking at your child and hoping that people find him or her as appealing as you do.

At the same time, "salt" is a very personal taste. What you find salty, I may find bland. What I find unpalatably saline, you may taste as perfection. Also, I am very sensitive to both the disappointment that comes from making something for a special occasion that turns out to be less than expected, and additionally to the wastefulness that comes from having to toss 3/4 of a finished dish. So when a few people said it was just too salty for them, I felt personally responsible.

And so I am back today with another dessert concoction, but not a "salted" one. This time I am resurrecting my love affair with butterscotch. From a child I have felt that a butterscotch sundae beat the pants off of hot fudge. True butterscotch (as opposed to caramel sauce, which is what many sundaes are made with) has the same warm, sugary notes that caramel has, but with an added complexity from the molasses in the brown sugar that generally goes in butterscotch. Also, caramel is such a small amount of butter in a greater amount of cream and sugar syrup. My butterscotch is almost as much butter as sugar and cream.

I read dozens of butterscotch and sticky toffee recipes before making this. I thought about including some kind of liquor--rum or similar--but decided to keep it pure. But I did want to emphasize the molasses, so I added just a smidge. I have Lyle's Golden Syrup in my pantry, but I realize not everyone has access to this, so I used dark Karo syrup instead. The difference in flavor is minimal in the finished product.

It took a lot of self control not to eat the whole recipe with a spoon right out of the container. I'm planning on serving this on Christmas Day for dessert with a Brown Sugar and Brandy Pear Turnover served with homemade vanilla ice cream. This isn't the best picture of it--I just shot it with my phone because I was worried that if I didn't, I'd eat it all and then I wouldn't have anything to show you.

Butterscotch Sauce

Makes a little more than 1 cup of sauce

Ingredients

2T butter

1/4 cup + 1T dark brown sugar (you can probably use light, but I had dark on hand)

1/2 teaspoon molasses

1T dark Karo syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch of salt

1/2 cup heavy cream

Detailed Instructions

1. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter with brown sugar, molasses and Karo syrup. When butter has completely melted, add vanilla and salt and stir to combine.

2. Increase heat to medium, and add heavy cream. Over medium heat, cook stirring frequently until mixture has the consistetency of cream of tomato soup, about 5-7 minutes. It's fine if it's at a strong simmer (lots of medium sized bubbles around the edges) but you don't want the whole thing to boil or you'll end up with pralines.

3. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Resist the urge to eat it all as though it were soup. Transfer to a container and refrigerate. The sauce will thicken up as it cools.

Desserts: Salted Caramel Cheesecake (Updated with A Note on Salt)

This post has gotten so much traffic via Pinerest that I have to comment further on those who say, "It's too salty." The idea is that it's a salty caramel dessert. But, everyone has a different level of salt tolerance. So, here's my suggestion--make the crust with just a little salt--a teaspoon or two. Then make the filling with just a teaspoon or two of salt. Then TASTE IT. People watch Food Network and see those people just scatter in some salt, take a small taste, and go, "Mmmm GOOD!" But that's just TV--they're supposed to say that so they don't spend precious air time adjusting the seasoning. You MUST TASTE as you go. Make the filling with everything but the eggs (raw eggs can be dangerous--I can't recommend eating anything with raw eggs in it) then TASTE it. The idea is that you taste some salt, but not that you go, "Ugh, salty." You're supposed to taste the contrast between sweet and salty. If you don't like things pretty salty, just leave the majority of the salt out and make a caramel cheesecake--caramel cheesecake is delicious too! If you taste it and it's not salty, and you want it salty, add a 1/2 teaspoon salt at a time until you get it to where you think it tastes OK. But I strongly recommend you taste as you go.

N.B. It was brought to my attention that if this recipe is made with regular salt, it is WAY too salty. I always use kosher salt. Don't use table salt or this will be truly inedible. My apologies to anyone who may have tried it already without that caveat!

Here it is at last. I’ve been trying to get a picture of a single slice of this for months. And you know what happens? That’s right—every time I’m ready to photograph it, I look for the slice I saved as my “model” and it’s gone. Someone has eaten my model. So you’re just going to have to content yourself with the picture of the whole cheesecake that I happen to have snapped once with my camera phone. It doesn’t really do it justice, but you get the idea (and yes, it’s also my profile picture).

I made this for Thanksgiving in 2010. It was proclaimed, “The best dessert you’ve ever made.” Praise, indeed. Well, actually, considering all the desserts I’ve made in 15 years of marriage, plus probably 3 years of dating, that could be saying quite a bit. In the event, I was asked to make it again for Christmas. And again for Alex’s birthday. And again for our anniversary. And every time I made it, I would post about it on Facebook, and my friends would say how much they wanted a piece. Finally, in August of this year, I made a cheesecake, and invited all my friends over for a Friday night Happy Hour and Cheesecake Devouring Event.

I could have taken numerous pictures of my friends eating it, but when the dust settled, once again, I was left with no model. In fact, I didn’t even get a piece. So the next day, I made another Salted Caramel Cheesecake. I took it to a birthday party for a friend, where once again it was completely consumed, and while I didn’t have anything left to take a picture of, at least I got a slice of it this time.

So, rather than make you wait until November for this recipe, when I might actually be able to get a decent picture of it, I’m giving it to you now and you can make it for Thanksgiving and Christmas and your husband’s birthday and your anniversary. I hope it’s the best dessert you’ll ever make.

Salted Caramel Cheesecake

Serves 2

Ha ha! Just kidding—I’ve served up to 20 people with one cheesecake. Ideally it probably serves about 10-12 people.

For the crust

About 15 graham crackers

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt (note: I reduced this from 2 teaspoons. A number of folks in the comments said they found it was too salty. I made this recipe 4 times before posting this, and checked the measurements pretty carefully, I thought. However, I made it for Thanksgiving 2011 and realized that they WAY the crust is distributed in the pan can make it seem quite salty--if there's a significant slope between the bottom and the sides, that fairly dense piece of crust can be overpowering to the rest of the recipe. So I'm recommending the reduction to the salt to account for the possible variations in the way people make the crust.)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a food processor, grind graham crackers to crumbs. (If you’re using premade crumbs, you want about 8 oz or 2 cups, and you’ll want to do all these steps in a bowl.) Add sugar and salt and pulse to combine. With motor running, add butter through feed tube. Process for another few seconds until combined.

2. Transfer the mixture to a 9” or 10” (I have a 10” myself) springform pan sprayed with cooking spray. Pat crumb mixture into the bottom of the pan, and up the sides about 2”. Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly even around the top; you just want to be sure it’s deep enough to hold all the cheesecake mixture.

3. Bake crust until slightly brown. You’ll just be able to smell it. This will take anywhere from 10-12 minutes. Remove crust from the oven and allow to cool on a rack. Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees F.

For the cheesecake

3 8oz packages cream cheese, at room temperature

1 13-14 oz. can dulce de leche

2 tablespoons all purpose flour

3 teaspoons kosher salt

1 ¼ cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1. In a stand mixture fitted with the paddle attachment beat cream cheese until smooth, add dulce de leche and beat to combine.

2. Add flour and salt, beat to combine, stopping to scrape down the sides as necessary. Beat until smooth and fluffy, about 5 minutes. There should be no lumps.

3. Add the sugar and beat to combine.

4. Add the vanilla, and then beat in the eggs one at a time until just combined, about 30 seconds each. Don’t overbeat once the eggs are added; the cheesecake will puff up too much while baking, and the top will crack.

5. Pour the cream cheese mixture into the cooled crust and smooth the top.

6. Bake at 300 degrees F for 55 – 65 minutes. The center will seem to be only slightly set, and will be wobbly if you nudge it. The sides will puff slightly.

7. Cool completely on a rack, then cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight (I have gotten away with a 5 hour cooling, but I was on edge that it wouldn’t turn out; overnight is really best). When I put it in the refrigerator to set up, I remove the ring from my springform, and put the cheesecake on a cake stand. You can leave it in the springform if you don't have a cake stand.

For the caramel

½ cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons water

½ cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar and water. Swirl to combine. All those warnings about stirring caramel and brushing down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush to avoid crystal formation? I avoid all that by just never stirring it at all. If I need to move it around the pan, I just swirl it.

2. Continue cooking until the sugar turns golden brown, swirling occasionally. You’re looking for something that’s about the color of dark honey. The problem with caramel is that it goes from perfect to burnt in the blink of an eye, so just when you find yourself thinking, “Any second now…” pull it off the heat. It should take 3-5 minutes.

3. Off the heat, carefully add the butter, then the cream. Don’t wait until the butter is melted; toss in the butter, give it a whisk, then pour in the cream. It will foam up, seize, and otherwise look like a total failure. Persevere! Add the vanilla extract and salt and continue whisking.

4. Return to medium low heat and whisk until smooth. (Added note: if your caramel is too thin, let it cook for awhile over a low heat. I've actually let it boil a bit--unintentionally--and just when I thought I'd ruined it, it turned out to be perfect.) Allow to cool slightly, about 15 minutes.

5. Remove cheesecake from the refrigerator and pour caramel over the top. I try to encourage mine to pool in the middle, but if you’re more of a drip-down-the-sides type, you can go with that. I just think the drippy makes sort of a mess on my cake stand, but maybe that doesn’t bother you.

6. Return the cheesecake to the refrigerator to let the caramel set, about 30 minutes. To serve, cut in slices (it’s pretty rich) with a sharp knife, wiping the blade clean after every slice.



Desserts: Chocolate Caramel Tart

Caramel Chocolate Tart
Ingredients

For the crust:

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened

½ cup + 1 tablespoon powdered sugar

¼ cup cocoa powder (I use Hershey’s Special Dark)

1 egg yolk

¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ¼ cups flour

For the caramel:

2 cups granulated sugar

¼ cup corn syrup

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter

½ cup cream

2 tablespoons crème fraiche

For the Chocolate Glaze:

3 ½ ounces bittersweet chocolate

½ cup cream

Summary 
Crust
· Cream together butter, sugar, and cocoa in a bowl
· Mix in egg yolk and vanilla
· Sift over flour and mix in
· Wrap dough in plastic and chill 30 minutes to an hour
· Preheat oven to 350 degrees
· Roll out dough and transfer to tart pan
· Blind bake crust for 15 minutes, remove weights and liner and continue cooking for 10-15 minutes
· Remove crust from oven and allow to cool

Filling
· Combine sugar and corn syrup in a large saucepan
· Cook over medium heat until golden brown
· Off the heat, add in butter, cream, and crème fraiche
· Once butter is melted, pour into cooled crust
· Allow to set up for 30 minutes (refrigerate if possible)

Glaze
· Heat cream over medium heat
· Pour over chocolate and whisk until smooth
· Pour over tart and tilt pan to distribute evenly over caramel
· Let set 1 hour (refrigerate if possible)

Detailed Instructions

Crust
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or on a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream together butter, sugar, and cocoa powder. Add the egg yolk and vanilla, and beat in. Sift in flour and mix to combine. Turn dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, pat into a circle, and wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9” or 10” tart pan with a removable bottom. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to a 10-11” circle (depending on the size of your pan). Transfer the dough to the tart pan (the easiest way to do this is to set your rolling pin at one end of your dough, then roll the dough up on the pin, just as though you were rerolling an unrolled length of paper towel. Position the “loaded” rolling pin over the tart pan at the edge, then unroll the dough and drape it over the pan. Press the dough gently into the pan, letting the excess hang over the side. When the dough is fitted in, roll the pin over the top of the pan and let the edge of the pan “cut” the dough. If there are places that are in any way uneven—the dough tears before you can pat it into the pan, etc—just use some of the scraps to “patch” those places). Gently line the dough with parchment paper or aluminum foil, and fill with either ceramic pie weights or dried rice or beans, and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the filling, return to the oven, and bake for 10-15 minutes more. It’s hard to tell with a chocolate crust when it’s truly brown, but when you start to smell that chocolaty smell, it’s time to take it out.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool, about 20-30 minutes. This is about how long it will take to make the filling.

Filling
In a large saucepan, combine the sugar and corn syrup. Bring sugar mixture to a boil over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally. This will look strange at first, until the sugar starts to melt, but it will eventually all be liquid. Keep cooking until the sugar mixture is the color of dark honey. Watch it carefully—sugar goes from perfect to burnt in a twinkling. Just when you think, “Maybe ten more seconds…” pull it off. Off the heat, carefully add the butter and cream (mixture will foam up), then the crème fraiche (don’t wait for the butter to melt, just add it and stir to combine and melt the butter). Once the butter is melted, pour into the tart shell and let set, at least 30 minutes. If you can refrigerate it, this will help.

Glaze
Place the chocolate in a medium bowl. In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring the cream to a boil. Pour the cream over the chocolate and whisk until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Pour glaze over set caramel, tip pan to distribute chocolate evenly, and let glaze set, 1 hour. Again, refrigeration is helpful here.

Serve in slivers, each scattered with a few grains of fleur de sel. Makes 10-12 servings.

Thoughts

Have you ever had the feeling that certain aspects of your life were jinxed? I've often heard people say they have "bad luck" with this or that. They go through three DVD players in two years, or they keep buying travel mugs that keep breaking, or every time they have the battery changed in a watch, it dies within two months. You know what I mean.

When I decided to make this tart, I had one of those moments when I was convinced I was just cursed. Rather than use my stand mixer to make this, I decided to use a hand mixer. I was feeling lazy, and the clean up would be easier, I reasoned. Years ago we bought (or were given, I sort of forget now) a hand mixer. It was just your basic hand mixer, nothing remarkable. Then one day, about three years ago, the beaters vanished. I mean they disappeared into thin air. One day I used them for something, and ran them through the dishwasher, and the next time I went to look for them, they were gone. My kids were too little to have put them in a weird place, we hadn't had any houseguests (often after we have guests, I discover things in odd places--well, odd to us, obviously not odd to them), and my husband didn't know where they were either.

We looked everywhere those things could be, and in three years they have yet to materialize. Every so often (usually when I had the bright idea to use the hand mixer) we'd say, "Really, we should just buy a replacement set--this is silly!" but it was never a priority except in the 10 or so minutes around the time during which I wanted to use the mixer. Then it was gone from my mind until the next time I wanted to use it.

Flash forward to maybe a month ago, when my grandmother was moving out of her condo and getting rid of things she no longer used on a regular basis. I asked if I could have her hand mixer, and she gave it to me. I wanted it for two reasons: first, it was a 1950-something Westinghouse (my grandparents always bought either Westinghouse or GE appliances--my grandfather worked on the Westinghouse and GE accounts when he was in advertising in the 1950s and 60s, and he was a firm believer that if you were going to tell other people to buy the products, you should use them yourself) and after 50+ years it was still going strong, and second, it had beaters.

So, to make a long story short (too late), I now have a mixer with two beaters, and this great tart recipe to make. I get out the ingredients. I get out a bowl. I get out the mixer. I get out the...wait, where are the beaters? Where are the beaters? You're never going to believe this. I couldn't believe this. I could not find those beaters for love or money. I looked everywhere. I could only stand there in bewilderment, and assume that when it came to mixers (or, more accurately, beaters for mixers), I was simply doomed. Going forward I would be one of those people who says, "I have terrible luck with..." and would finish that sentence with, "hand mixer attachments." I was completely floored. I checked every drawer, every cabinet. Could. Not. Find. Argh!

Finally, after doing what anyone in this day and age does when something utterly maddening happens (which is to say, I posted about it on Facebook), I looked one more time. And I did find them. Not in any bizarre or unreasonable place. Just toward the back of a drawer. Now I've put them in the drawer with the whisks (which I think makes sense, since that's essentially their function). We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, this tart is amazing. I've made it twice now, and the first time it was a bit overly gooey (but really, overly gooey caramel--so what?) and the second time the consistency was perfect, but I decided that the chocolate glaze constitutes lily gilding, and I'd skip it next time. In fact, I think it would be better without the glaze, but with some chocolate whipped cream (cream with a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder and some powdered sugar beaten into it, then whipped).

Lately my recipes have been my own. I shamelessly admit that I got this directly out of Amanda Hesser's new New York Times Cookbook (and she got it from the pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern who developed it in the first place). I wrote up the detailed instructions from my own execution. It's very rich, so a little goes a long way, but this is truly an amazing dessert. Assuming you can find the attachments to your mixer.

Desserts: Strawberry Cream Cheese-Sour Cream Ice Cream

Strawberry Cream Cheese-Sour Cream Ice Cream

1 pound strawberries, hulled and sliced
1 cup granulated sugar
1- 8 ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup half and half
½ cup sour cream
½ cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla
½ teaspoon salt
1 ounce plain vodka

Summary
• Cook strawberries down with sugar until syrupy and soft, and cool
• Combine cream cheese, ½ & ½, sour cream, heavy cream, vanilla & salt in food processor until smooth
• Combine cream cheese mixture with strawberry mixture in a bowl
• Chill in an ice cream maker, adding vodka at the very end
• Spoon into containers and freeze until firm

Detailed Instructions
Combine strawberries and sugar in a small saucepan (I used a 2qt). Cook over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved. This will take about 5 minutes. The strawberries will end up swimming in a light syrup. At no point do you want the syrup to boil (you could end up with strawberries in caramel if you do, which probably wouldn’t be horrible, but I haven’t tested that); if you start to see lots of bubbles, turn the heat down slightly. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the strawberries are soft, but not falling apart, another 3-5 minutes. Set aside and let cool until almost room temperature, about 10-25 minutes, while you make the cream cheese mixture. You don’t want it to be too warm when you add it to the ice cream maker, or it won’t set up properly.

In a food processor, combine the cream cheese and ½ & ½ and pulse until smooth, scraping down the bowl as necessary. With the motor on, add the heavy cream, sour cream, vanilla, and salt and process until well combined and smooth. You’ll have a very thick liquid, kind of like melted ice cream.

In a large bowl, combine the cream cheese mixture and the strawberry mixture. Stir well to combine. In an ice cream maker (I have the kind with a cylinder and a motor base) add the ice cream mixture to the cylinder and chill according to manufacturer’s instructions (mine calls for letting it run for about 15 minutes). Don’t worry if it’s not really ice creamy—it will firm up nicely in the freezer. In the last minute before you turn off the ice cream maker, add the vodka and let it blend through the ice cream.

Spoon the chilled ice cream into containers (I just use disposable plastic ones) and chill in the freezer for 4-6 hours or until set to desired consistency. You can take it out and stir it from time to time (you have the opportunity to lick the spoon you use for this when you do it), and once it reaches the consistency that you like, you can serve it. Because of the vodka it won’t freeze solidly. The ice cream will keep for about two weeks in the refrigerator. Eventually it will start to form ice crystals and ice chunks. Eat it before that happens. I’m not worried about that, to be honest.

Thoughts
This is not an ice cream in the classic sense. That is, it doesn’t start with a cooked custard base. That’s a plus for me—I don’t have the patience to wait for a custard to cool overnight in the refrigerator, which is why I seldom make ice cream. This recipe is largely attributable to my friend Julie Tiramisu (as I think of her—she has a real last name, but she also has a degree in Pastry, so I think of her as Julie Tiramisu).
 
I first made this for Mother’s Day as a cream cheese-ice cream mixture. When I described it to Julie, she said, “I’d put some sour cream in it, but that’s what I do—I tweak recipes.” I said, “Me too,” and made a mental note. I jotted down some changes in my recipe book along the lines of switching out some of the ½ & ½ in the original recipe for sour cream and moved on.

Then my neighbor gave me some strawberries from her patch, because they were just rotting on the vine, she said. While the first use for them that came to mind was strawberry daiquiris, the strawberry ice cream recipe seemed more family friendly, so I went with that. The berries weren’t terribly big, but they had big flavor, so I used them, making the changes I’d noted to the recipe when Julie T and I had talked.

There are only a few words appropriate to describe the result, and all of them should be followed with exclamation points. Wow! Incredible! Amazing! You get the idea. The sour cream makes the ice cream silky, while the cream cheese adds that lovely tang. You’d think that was the sour cream that added the flavor twist, but having had it made with and without, I can assure you it’s not the sour cream that adds the zing—that’s the cream cheese—while the sour cream changes the consistency. The sour cream makes it taste like liquid pink silk. If it were possible I’d have a dress made out of this stuff, it’s so beautiful.

It’s nice to have it in the freezer for any time, but I did serve it as dessert on Mother’s Day with great success. Because homemade ice cream is somewhat out of the ordinary, it makes a nice “special occasion” dessert. When I took some over to the woman who gave me the strawberries in the first place, her whole family said, “You made it? You made ice cream?” People just don’t expect it, but it’s easy with an ice cream maker, and with a base like this, that doesn’t require overnight chilling, it’s right up my (impatient) alley.

He Liked It!

This weekend I bought a pumpkin, which inspired my son to beg for pumpkin pie. The kid has an insatiable sweet tooth (he’d eat sugar straight, if I’d let him), but since pumpkin pie is one of the healthier desserts he could ask for, I agreed that we could make it on Sunday.

In fact, I’ve decided to take a slightly different tack on trying to curb his sweet tooth. My plan is that on Sunday he will be allowed to choose a recipe, and make the sweet thing of his choice with Mom or Dad. He can indulge all he wants in the finished product on Sunday. After that, whatever it is gets put up out of sight, and will be distributed on a very limited basis. We were getting a little out of hand with dessert every night—gummy worms, Rice Krispy treats, cookies, candy corn, marshmallows. Not all of that in one sitting, of course, but that was perhaps the catalog of a weeks’ worth of desserts. Too much crap, too often. I’d far rather have him satisfy his sweet tooth with something homemade, and I’d like to encourage him to make it himself (with our help) so he gets a feel for cooking. And we’re not talking about cake from box mixes here—if we’re making cake or cupcakes, we’re starting with flour, sugar, eggs, etc.

I did not, however, force him to make the crust for the pumpkin pie. I think that would be a little cruel, especially since the recipe I originally chose (from the Bon Appetit cookbook) included the instruction “refrigerate dough for 30 minutes” at least twice, and involved the cutting out and scoring of pie crust leaves, then scattering them across the surface of the baked pie. That’s hard on a little kid who just wants some pie. It was hard enough getting him to wait until the one we made cooled down. But we did find a good recipe for pumpkin pie that involves few ingredients, and little measuring, and so is ideal for small children to help with. The recipe comes from the back of the little container of McCormick’s Pumpkin Pie Spice that I bought at the grocery store on Friday. It goes like this:

1 15oz can pumpkin puree
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 frozen pie crust

Combine pumpkin, milk, eggs and pumpkin pie spice in a bowl. Pour filling into pie crust. Bake for 15 minutes at 425. Reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 40 minutes. Cool. Eat.

Couldn’t be simpler. The next time I would blind bake the crust, at least half way. It was a tad underdone for my taste, but the recipe did clearly call for a frozen pie crust. Otherwise it was perfectly fine, and even the twins at age two could help. Matthew cracked one egg, Chris cracked the other, and Chris, Patrick and I each lent a hand (or a finger) to getting the mixer turned off and in an upright position. This actually does require some tricky manipulation because of my lame duck mixer.

Everyone had a slice with whipped cream (made by all interested parties with the help of Dad) for dessert. Chris loved it, Matthew liked it, and Patrick was a little unsure. He’s the pickier of the twins anyway. Matthew pretty much shovels it all in and looks around for more.

The other great food event from this weekend was that I actually made something from scratch (well, OK, mostly from scratch) that my kids would eat. You simply cannot imagine my delight. Granted, what I made was bean and cheese “burritos” made with canned refried beans, but hey, it’s a start! It didn’t start life as a brick of ice that spent two and a half minutes in the microwave before hitting my dining room table. I actually assembled and baked them in the oven, and my kids ate them. In fact, when I coaxed Chris into trying a bite, the first words out of his mouth were:

“It’s yummy! Can I have some more?”

It brought tears to my eyes.

I put burrito in quotes here, because I didn’t have burrito sized tortillas, so they were kind of funny looking. Also, because the tortillas I started with were cold, they broke when I tried to fold them around the filling. But since they get cut up into little squares anyway, appearance isn’t that important to my kids. And I didn’t hear, “It doesn’t taste like at school.” This is the sentence I so dread, because I know what I’m competing with is processed, over-sugared, over-salted, lacking-in-nutrient crap. Of course it doesn’t taste like at school—it has actual food in it, instead of a laundry list of chemicals!

So between the semi-healthy pie (healthy, that is, as compared to something like gummy worms), and the warmly accepted bean and cheese burritos, it was a good food weekend. For someone as food-obsessed as I am, my children’s acceptance of my food is one of the keys to my happiness. I know I need to work on this—I can’t dissolve in tears or become angry when they reject something I’ve made. Food shouldn’t be the only way I have of showing them that I care about them. And I do try. I do my best to shrug and think, “In a few years—they’re just little kids.” I also remind myself how downright finicky I was as a child. I must have driven my mother completely around the bend. I guess this is what they mean when they talk about karma. I’m getting as good as I gave.

Let Us Eat Cake...and Cobbler...and Muffins

We had a dessert-heavy weekend. Alex made an apple cobbler, and a chocolate zucchini cake. I made pear and granola muffins. Actually the muffins aren’t so much a dessert, as a mid-morning snack item, but I’m grouping them with dessert (hey, the twins called them “cake”; work with me on this one).

The apples and the zucchini both came from our new house. Until about two weeks ago, my cousin lived in a rental house near where we’re building our new house, and they planted a garden in the spring. Now they’ve moved into the house they built for themselves, and the garden of the rental house has been left untended. My cousin told my husband he was welcome to whatever he could find in it (which to date is a really big zucchini, and a lot of tomatoes that need to have something done with them fast).

The whole island we live on was once strawberry fields and apple orchards. There are still a few apple trees (OK, more than few—a lot of apple trees) scattered around on various properties, including ours, so he picked a few and brought them home. I have no idea what kind of apples they are. Red ones. Ones that made a really good cobbler.

The cobbler was Saturday night’s dessert. He had asked me to find him a recipe, so I pulled out The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipes from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home by Brooke Dojny, on the grounds that a cookbook that focuses on the food of New England should have an outstanding apple cobbler recipe. Brooke didn’t let me down, but somehow things didn’t work out as planned. Not realizing what I was marking, he looked at the page, saw a recipe title, assumed that was it and dismissed it because it called for whole apples (it was Maple Baked Apples or something; he’d already started cutting them into cubes).

I suppose this proves the rule that the human eye falls to the right. The recipe I was marking was on the left facing page, although admittedly the title was not. The title appeared at the bottom of the previous page, just under the headnotes. I think this is a layout problem with that book as a whole—it’s the case in more than one instance—but I’m willing to overlook it because the recipes in general are pretty good. Not that the recipe he ended up making wasn’t good—it was, very—but it wasn’t the one I picked out for him to make.

So Alex pulled a recipe from the Bon Appetit Cookbook, which was supposed to be a pear cobbler, but for which he substituted apples. I would like to take a moment here to encourage everyone who has their complete cookbook collection unboxed and under one roof to pause and give thanks for this. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have had to cull down my collection to almost nil because we’re in a teeny little rental house. The only cookbooks I really have accessible are the twenty or so I deemed critical to my survival, and the ones I’ve collected since we moved (a frighteningly high number, actually—let's just move on).

Anyway, the cobbler, served with vanilla ice cream, was an excellent dessert after baked pork chops, Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic Glazed Red Onions, and oven roasted Yellow Finn potatoes. Very autumnal and perfect for a rainy night in late September.

The chocolate cake was also a Bon Appetit Cookbook recipe, and used two cups of grated zucchini (sadly, our monster zucchini made about four cups shredded; we may be having some kind of fried zucchini cake for dinner one night this week). This my older son adored, because it was chocolate cake. Of course, he did ask what the green thing in the cake was. In typical dad style, my husband stumbled and stuttered, not wanting to tell him it was a vegetable, but not sure how else to get out of it. Mom, of course, always knows what to say.

“It’s part of the flour. Flour sometimes does that.”

Say anything in an authoritative tone, and people will believe you, even skeptical four-year-olds.

The muffins were from an old issue of Everyday Food. I noticed them a couple of weeks ago, and decided to make them to have as a morning snack. Every morning around 10 a.m. I feel the need for a snack. I often eat an apple, but I’m finding I’d like a little something more to carry me over to lunch (which keeps getting later and later as I get busier at work). So I made the muffins, using the last crumbs of a box of Kashi Go Lean Crunch cereal. I’ve found that once you get down to the small pieces of that cereal, it’s just not worth much on yogurt (which is how I usually eat it), and besides, it’s usually stale by that time. So making it a muffin ingredient worked out well.

I planned to make them while Alex took my older son to the (indoor) swimming pool, and the twins and the baby napped. What I didn’t bargain on was one twin taking a scant hour long nap. Thus, I measured, peeled, chopped and folded, all the while answering the same three questions over and over—What are these? (Muffin tin liners); Where is Matthew—is he in time out for throwing toys? (No, he’s napping); and We’re not supposed to throw toys, right? (Right).

In the end, they were a success (the twins ate one each, Chris said they weren’t as good as the chocolate cake, Alex wasn’t sure about the crisp topping, but said the flavor was good), and I’d make them again, but I think I might pulse the pears in the food processor. Even though I cut them into the ¼” chunks the recipe calls for, I still found the pieces to be a little big. Otherwise they were fine, except that the topping did burn a little bit. I’m not sure how to get around that. Using the topping the recipe called for, as opposed to the Kashi Go Lean Crunch, might help. I might try it the next time I make them.

So I have my to do list for this week: find something to do with remaining shredded zucchini, make notes on pear and granola muffin recipe to chop pears finer and figure out how to keep topping from burning, and make tomato sauce with the tomatoes before we become a headline in the local paper: Family of Six Consumed by Swarm of Fruit Flies.

Red Flag

The 4th of July is over, and I didn’t get anywhere near a sheet cake decorated with strawberries and blueberries. Not in real life, at least. I have, however, seen two emails, one magazine article, and countless magazine ads that feature the atrocious and much-despised “Flag Cake” that rears its ugly head this time each year. All of them, of course, present this idea as new and clever. Some of them have even taken the red, white, and blue dessert concept a step further. Hooray!

Why must we have a flag-shaped dessert at Fourth of July? I don’t see anyone making pilgrim- or turkey-shaped cakes at Thanksgiving. You get a basic, round pumpkin or pecan pie. Why can’t we just have a simple round pie or cake for Fourth of July, too? Why, for that matter, do we have to have a red, white and blue dessert to show our patriotism? Why does this cake now seem to embody everything that America stands for?

I’m sure the first time I saw this idea, maybe a hundred and ten years ago, it was cute. A sheet cake decorated with white frosting (or Cool Whip, which as a product is a total abomination and should be banned, but that’s another story), cut strawberries for stripes and a blueberry “star field.” My husband had some college friends who always threw a 4th of July cookout, and inevitably at least two of these little charmers would show up. This was at least 10 years ago.

I feel now that, as a nation, we should be “over” the flag cake, but every year someone at Jello or Kraft Foods or Better Homes & Gardens magazine trots out this stale idea and offers it up as an adorable and patriotic addition to your holiday meal (which, if they would have it, would be a cookout. NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!). Martha Stewart always feels the need to provide something red, white, and blue, but her folks have moved upscale to panna cotta and red currants. I even saw a recommendation from Ina Garten for a Memorial Day menu that included one of these cakes. Hers was a little more elaborate than Cool Whip smeared on a box yellow cake with cut strawberries and some blueberries decoratively arranged on top, but it was still a sheet cake decorated like a flag.

A friend sent me a link to a newspaper food section article in which the author confessed that those flag cakes always “tempted” her, but that she wasn’t “the decorating type.” I can’t say that I would really describe slathering a cake with frosting or whipped cream and pushing a few berries down into it in lines as “decorating” exactly. Even “garnishing” is a bit too elaborate a concept for that. This woman’s solution was to make a cake which, if the picture is any indication, looks not unlike a bundt cake covered with cream gravy. Now there’s a delightful change.

And now, as I mentioned, the various food manufacturers have made advances in the red, white, and blue dessert arena. Feeling that we might as an audience be tired of the flag cake after 15 years or so, they’ve added to their repertoire by creating other red, white, and blue desserts. Gee, thanks! The one I noticed involved blue Jello, blueberries, red Jello, and (no doubt) Cool Whip.

On the 4th of July (or really, on every holiday) I want something that reminds me of the Norman Rockwell world we don’t live in. Something that makes us think of the childhood we never had. Oh I know nostalgia for something that never existed is sappy and Hallmark, but really, don’t we all want to feel like we grew up in Mayberry with parents like Jane Wyatt and Robert Young? Well, OK, maybe everybody doesn’t, but I do. And I’d kind of like my kids to. I grew up in the city as an only child. I longed for the kind of life that the Brady Bunch had, or Beaver Cleaver. I admit I’m hopelessly sentimental and even goopy, and food contributes to that for me. I can’t think of anything more truly American than a good cherry pie with a scoop of ice cream on it. I know that even though I live in a surprisingly close community (for a place with 20,000 people, my town feels fairly small), my kids will never have the freedom of Mayfield. But I like the idea of giving my friends and family things to eat that make them say “You made it? I haven’t had that made from scratch since I was a kid!”

Maybe part of this comes from my own upbringing, in which nothing was ever made from scratch, including my birthday cakes. They always came from a bakery. A very nice bakery, to be sure, but a bakery. Dinners were packaged this or canned that. When Lipton first introduced Noodles & Sauce, my father went nuts; dinner every night for weeks was some flavor of Lipton Noodles & Sauce with some kind of “meat”—chicken, tuna, ground beef. I want my children to know what a homemade birthday cake tastes like. I want them to understand that “sauce” is not made from flavored powder with milk and butter added. I want them to think that dessert on the 4th of July means something made out of fruit that’s only available in the summertime, possibly with a scoop of cool ice cream on top of it. Most of all I want them never to know what a flag cake is.