Dessert – Page 9 – Rosemary and the Goat

Brown Butter Pecan Bark

Can’t get much easier than this. Stack of sweetness

Who doesn’t love an easy recipe? If you are having a sweet craving or if you need something easy to take to a gathering considering making this. After making this you may want to keep some graham crackers on hand for that last minute dessert that literaterly takes minutes to make.

Graham crackers and chocolate always remind me of s’mores so when I found these two ingredients in my pantry and I needed something sweet for a group I started with “Google” (where else would we start). There are always pounds of pecans in my freezer so I knew I had the ingredients to make the recipe I found.

My results were not quite the same as the recipe I found online at the domestic rebel.com. Her recipe actually looked a little better than mine. She had a more caramel look to hers. I will try this again making sure my pecans are at room temperature and not still cold from the freezer. I feel like that might have lowered the temperature of the cooking sugar mixture and kept mine from getting brown like her recipe. Whatever the results, everyone loved these little pieces of crunch. (I couldn’t resist adding some mini chocolate chips to the top when it first came out of the oven.)

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Honey Pecan Stuffed Snow Peas never fail to delight those brave enough to pick one (or two) up and put them on their plates. The last time I looked at this recipe it had 2,180 views. Now it’s up to 4,656 — like I always say “someone out there is looking”.

April 5, 2014 By Sherry

Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Frosted Molasses Cookies

Nice and spicy and for my Christmas Baby who turns 40 on Christmas day.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you all are spending the holidays with family and friends and enjoying some of the recipes I have posted here. My son and his family in Chicago will be spending their Christmas in Minnesota this year and I sent a box of these cookies to the in-laws house for him to enjoy on his birthday — ohhh, my Christmas baby. Seems like just yesterday we were rushing to the hospital in Louisville to meet our first born. He was born 12:26 a.m. on 12-25-73 (I was one minute too late to match his birth date).

I have always loved baking, and making cookies has always been the top of my list of baked goods. My kids mostly grew up on homemade cookies because that’s what I did — baked. Occasionally I would slip and buy some Oreo’s or Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip but the chocolate chip of course never measured up to homemade.

Didn’t all kids have hot cookies and milk waiting for them when they came home from school. My daughter, Alexis was always our sugar cookie baker because I never had the patience to cut and decorate that type of cookie. I have my share of cookie cutters and probably have over 75 for sure but I’m usually looking for a quick way to decorate them.

December 24, 2013 By Sherry

Candy/ Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Pecan Divinity

Little clouds of sweetness.

(Happy last day shopping everyone. I’m checking my list and checking it twice. I did almost 100% of shopping online and now just waiting for things to start rolling in. I love ordering, it’s like Christmas everyday when packages start rolling in. I always wish I got an earlier start though because I start getting nervous if I know we are leaving and everything hasn’t made it to my door step.) MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I think anyone who has eaten my mother-in-law’s divinity would call these little pieces of candy “pillows from heaven”. I would wager to say she has been making divinity for at least 50 years probably longer and what amazes me is she makes the most wonderful divinity and never uses a candy thermometer.

On a recent trip back to Missouri I talked her into showing me how she does her divinity. I think just about everyone in our hometown probably has tried her divinity and hers is always the first one to sell out at any bake sale.

I remember a life time ago, making some divinity to send to my husband at college. You know how roommates and fraternity brothers can be, of course someone stole some of his divinity. To his misfortune he got a piece that had a pecan shell in it and he broke a tooth. Needless to say, he never took any of my husbands food again.

December 15, 2013 By Sherry

Cookies/ Dessert

Babe’s Pumpkin Cookies

Fantastic fall cookie.

Cats, ghost, witches, colored leaves, pumpkins, turkeys, falling leaves, the smell in the air are signs of fall and the holidays to come. I just love fall because I know those hot days of summer are behind us and we will start having a little chill in the air in the evenings. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays and I think that’s because it’s the easiest meal I ever put together.

Thanksgiving is all about pumpkins and I’m not even a pumpkin pie fan. Pumpkin bread, pumpkin bread pudding, pumpkin tomato soup and these pumpkin cookies should be on your list of things to try for the holidays. I even bought a pumpkin piñata which I’m filling with candy and toys for the four little grandsons to bang away at.

One of the good things about these cookies is you can make these ahead and freeze them and bake them when you want a hot treat to go with your cup of tea (or coffee) in the morning or for an afternoon snack. They are fantastic and make my mouth water thinking about the ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon that spice up these little cookies and the dough has molasses in it which gives the cookies a deep brown color. I normally use a 3″ cookie cutter but the day I made these I knew I was going to be taking them to craft circle to share so I wanted to get as many out of a recipe as I could. I ended up tripling the recipe and each recipe makes about 24 cookies.

Babe was my sister’s mother-in-law and this wonderful recipe was one she use to make. I have several recipes of hers and her mother-in-law’s that I still go to like their banana nut bread and an asparagus casserole.

October 29, 2013 By Sherry

Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies

Cherries for the pickin and perfect for these cookies.

A few weeks ago while my husband was off fishing in Alaska, my sister and I decided to get away to beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. It was a wonderful week with temperatures in the low 70’s and we stayed in the little town of Fish Creek, which was one of our favorite harbor towns we visited.

Before I get to the cookies I have to give you a few details about the trip. I can’t say I was always the adventurous twin, that would for sure be Terry. So, we decided that we were going to try the segway tour. We didn’t want to do the orchard tour on the segways because we thought that might be a little boring just going up and down cherry orchard rows. In hindsight we should have rethought that decision. We chose the Peninsula State Park tour and were along for the ride with a family of five. The first hour we were really doing pretty goods. The state park has quite a few hills that bikers come roaring down at 40-50 mph. We got the hang of going down hill but going uphill was a whole another thing. If you don’t lean far enough to the front then you kind of just stop and at that point your thinking you are going to fall and when you step off, the thing starts spinning. Between the two of us we fell 5 times. Funny thing is we had identical cuts on our right calves in exactly the same location. Go figure. Don’t know if we would do this again or not (maybe on flat ground). I would have to have my mind examined first. I think my new knees survived but I still have a little bit of a sore shoulder.

We had some wonderful meals while there and one of our favorites was at Alexander’s on our last night. One night we went to a theatre out in the woods — Penisula Players and saw “George In The Park”. A beautiful setting where you can take your wine and dinner and eat out on tables overlooking the lake before the play starts in a 7 million dollar indoor facility.

We bought so many sourvenigns and could not come home without some dried cherries, chocolate covered dried cherries and some of their wine (not cherry). We also bought back about 4 kinds of cheeses and we have eaten most of what I brought back.

August 20, 2013 By Sherry

Cake/ Dessert

Very Berry Cake

This mixture of berries is wonderful.

It’s berry picking time again and what berries are you going to be picking and the BIG question is what are you going to make with them. Don’t you just love trying out new recipes on friends and family? I do and this one turned out great.

This recipe came to life when I saw Pioneer Woman make her Blackberry Cobbler. I needed a quick dessert for a meeting I was having at my house one night and with blackberries and blueberries in the freezer I had a head start on the grocery shopping. I knew I wanted to add strawberries to the mix and I think that was a good move. You can decide what fruits to use when you make it and if you do, please leave a comment below.

I made one other change which you may or may not want to try; I added some chopped crystallized ginger to the top of the cake. I love the peppery, sugary bite it added to the cobbler. This recipe is definitely more of a cake than a cobbler, I think, and a little vanilla whipped cream just takes it up a notch. I guess ice cream on the warm cobbler/cake right out of the oven would be wonderful but I’ve always gone more for whipped cream than ice cream on desserts.

I’m calling this a cake because to me a cobbler has lots of fruits, juice and pastry crust strips on the bottom and top of the dessert. That’s what I grew up with.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Need another use for those berries. Here’s a Blackberry and Raspberry Upside Down Cake that I posted back in 2009.

June 21, 2013 By Sherry

Dessert

Chocolate Banana Quesadillas

A quick and easy dessert.

I’m a couple of days late for a Cinco de Mayo dessert but what the heck, this will be good any time of the year.

Chocolate and bananas are made for each other, a match made in heaven; and chocolate, bananas, topped with cinnamon sugar tortillas, grilled and served with ice cream is a combination you do not want to miss.

Ya know, there is so much you can do with a flour tortilla; make chips is the first thing that comes to mind, roll up some fillings or lunch-meat for a quick sandwich; and have you ever tried cutting them up into strips and dropping them in a pot of boiling chicken broth to make chicken and dumplings. The dumplings are delicious by the way and you would never guess they were made from flour tortillas.

These quesadillas are getting spread with Nutella first, then a bananas sliced thinly over the chocolate, and then the tortillas are brushed with butter, grilled and at the end they are sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. You can top these with whipped cream, or ice cream and drizzle a little melted Nutella over and a sprinkle of nuts if you desire a crunch to your quesadilla dessert.

Hope you like these. Please leave a comment below in the comment section if you do; would love to hear from you.

May 7, 2013 By Sherry

Dessert/ Ice Cream

Coconut Almond Ice Cream

Sometimes you feel like a nut! Sometimes you don’t!

That’s one candy bar commercial that always rang true with me. Sometimes I did feel like a nut (literally) and other times I just wanted the creamy coconuty piece of candy without the almonds.

Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars are sister bars but with a few differences; the mounds is covered in dark chocolate and the almond joy has milk chocolate with two almonds on each piece. (“Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t / Almond Joy’s got nuts ‘ Mounds don’t”. I’m merging the two candy bars into a delicious cool treat for the summer months that are ahead. I don’t think they even have commercials for candy bars any more do they? I just love being able to have a quick and easy ice cream to throw together at the last minute.

I always loved both candy bars when I was younger. My only problem with the Almond Joy was there were only two almonds per piece and I would carefully eat around each almond saving the almonds for the last bite. Now with this recipe I can have the best of both. I can all add all the toasted almonds I want and I can have a dark chocolate shell instead of milk chocolate.

May 2, 2013 By Sherry

Cake/ Dessert

Lemon Pudding Cake with Preserves

Lemon dessert perfect for Easter dinner. Lemonlious!

Why is it when Spring and Summer starts to show it’s pretty flowers, newly leafed trees, singing birds and light rains we think of things like lemon, asparagus, and beautiful green lettuces. Maybe it’s to purge our bodies of all those foods we consumed during the cold winter months. Then comes summer and we have a lot of hot dry days (especially here in Texas) and I’m still thinking of some kind of fresh tasting dessert.

Easter I think is the beginning of spring with all those little rabbits and chicks popping up all over the place. You may still be having a chill in the air or even a little snow but this dessert just couldn’t wait to make an appearance.

I actually had this made last fall and intended on posting it if I ran out of things to cook while doing all that rehab on the knees; but then I kept thinking to myself that the recipe needs to wait until spring. I did make it a couple of times in the winter months though and loved it every time.

I love anything lemony. Remember the ;Lemon Citrus Flower I made, or the Lemon Meringue Pie (my husband’s favorite) or this Lemon-scented Pull-apart Bread. There’s just something about that little yellow citrus fruit that makes you pucker just thinking about it. And it is used in sauces, to flavor water and even dipped in salt it will clean your copper bowls beautifully. And, if you want a neat trick to show the kids, squeeze the peel at the same time you light a match and see what happens. (Keep away from kiddos though) If you have a use for lemons that you would like to share, please leave a comment.

I’m never going to give up desserts because I think any dinner party needs a fantastic ending. I think this little lemon pudding cake fills that need. It’s light, lemony and you can control the portion size so no need to worry about all those calories.

Back last summer when I went to pick berries there was a lady selling her raspberry preserves. I bought some thinking I would use it with this recipe but it was not a very pretty color. It was delicious but I wanted a bright red raspberry preserve to put on top of this Lemon Chiffon Pudding Cake. I decided to make my own preserves and found this recipe at The Girls Guide to Guns and Butter. So you can either make your own or simply buy the reddest one you can find.

March 24, 2013 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Bananas Foster Napoleon

Can a classic be improved upon? I’m monkeying around with the bananas.

Can a classic be improved upon? It certainly can. There’s really not a change here; it’s just in the plateing of the dessert. Very seldom do I find a recipe that I don’t end up tweaking to suit our taste. How easy does puffed pastry, bananas, ice cream sound. Throw in some sugar, rum and banana liqueur and you have a new improved version of Bananas Foster. Just adding the puffed pastry to this dessert changes everything. It’s not just a bowl of ice cream with hot bananas poured over it, it becomes a Napoleon. Now doesn’t the word Napoleon sound delicious.

So it was 6:30 in the morning I was laying in bed after a good night’s sleep, which I had not had lately, thinking about what I wanted to do in the new year. (This was back in January — can you believe its March already.) Getting my knees in working condition should be top on my list since we are headed to the beach this summer and maybe, just maybe, checking into finishing what I started in culinary school 20+ years ago, and doing some yummy recipes for the blog.

Even though Valentine’s day is over, that’s no reason to not make this dessert for your special person. I am not going off the deep end with healthy, no carb, no sugar, no WHITE STUFF, recipes for the new year. I could make that promise to myself but it would be broken before the week ended. Everyone, if you are dieting or not, want recipes to serve friends and family for your special life events or just wanting something new to make for friends. Anybody can open a bag of veggies and rabbit out and you don’t need me to tell you how to open that bag.

February 27, 2013 By Sherry

Cake/ Dessert

Be My Valentine Pound Cake

KISS ME, SWEET TALK, BE MINE, HUG ME, TRUE LOVE, SOUL MATE

When you were a kid (unless you are my age maybe you didn’t do this) didn’t you just love Valentine’s Day. You got to make your special box to take to school so everyone could deposit a valentine card in it as you munched on treats during your Valentine party that your room moms tried to make so special. Not sure if they do parties these days. And I’m sure the kids would not be munching on cupcakes, candy, red punch etc. that we stuffed our cute little faces with; we’re still alive and it sure didn’t hurt us any.

I remember how special my valentine box was one year. My sister and I covered our boxes with crepe paper and then our mother would take strips of crepe paper and sew gathering stitches. We would then draw the long strips up into ruffles that we would glue around the boxes. How pretty they turned out and we were always so excited to go to school the next day to see what everyone else’s looked like. I wonder if kids these days still make valentine boxes.

All this Valentine talk got me to looking for something different to make for Valentine’s Day. I came across this idea at Very Culinary. I loved the idea of putting the hearts in the middle of the pound cake but I did not want to use a box pound cake. Why pay for a mix when you can make it twice as good (at least) from scratch. If you are in a pinch for time look at her recipe and go by her directions. She used two boxes of Betty Crocker pound cake. Take a look at Seeknows.com her recipe using pumpkin bread for the inside and pound cake on the outside. I listed her frosting at the bottom of the page which is the one I used except for browning the butter. It is a fluffyier looking frosting that the glaze from Very Culinary. I tinted mine pink for Valentine’s Day. I also did Very Culinary’s glaze on one of the cakes.

I decided to use my nephew’s wife’s (Julie) recipe for her delicious pound cake. I knew I wanted two cakes so I made one recipe, dyed it pink (should have dyed darker) and put that one recipe into two bread pans. Then I made another recipe and left it white and that was what encased the pink hearts into the center of the loaf. So, if you want easy, buy 2 boxes cake mix, make one pink and one white then follow directions at Very Culinary’s site.

Also, I have seen other sites where the person used a pumpkin for fall, clover leaf for st. pat’s and you could also just do a pretty flower cookie cutter for a flower center.

February 14, 2013 By Sherry

Cake/ Dessert

Chocolate Blackout Cake

Gale Gand’s Blackout Chocolate Cake just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Recently I was going through some old Food and Wine magazines. Anything chocolate always gets my attention; my page flicking came to a screeching halt. I came across this recipe by Gale Gand who was named Best New Chef back in 1994. She is now chef-in-residence at Elawa Farm in Lake Forest and part owner of Tru in Chicago. This recipe has been her most requested recipe and who doesn’t want a “most requested recipe”. (read article able recipe at above link.)

Is there is nothing better than the feeling of chocolate melting over your tongue as you eat a piece of anything chocolate? Whether it is a Hershey’s Kiss, a chocolate covered almond, even a Milk Dud, or the most delicious chocolate dessert you have ever put in your mouth, chocolate is something that creates a buzz, euphoric sensation even stronger than a kiss. (That was results from a study done by a neurophysiologist back in 2007.) Believe what you want.

I know there are people out there who do not love or even like chocolate, and that’s so hard to believe and can you imagine being friends with a person like that, just kidding.

Don’t use Dutch processed Cocoa powder (see note below), plain old Hershey’s works just find. There is a difference in the Dutch cocoa that does not work with the baking soda in this recipe.

January 29, 2013 By Sherry

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