Desserts – Page 3 – Rosemary and the Goat

Grilled Pineapple Dessert

A great little summer dessert.

Looks like summer is here; can you believe that? Do you have your summer all planned out yet? We don’t. We are in the process of having an outdoor kitchen built and not sure how long that is going to take. We will be doing some babysitting for the grandsons this summer which should be a lot of fun and hoping to squeeze a trip or two sometime before the Fall.

This dessert is so easy to make for any of your outdoor parties where you already have your grill heated. In fact, you could cook the pineapple in advance and just serve it room temperature, then you don’t have your ice cream melting which is one of my complaints about warm desserts that are served with ice cream.

Remember when there were regular pineapples and then there were the new ones coming to the markets called “gold” pineapples. Now, that is all you see in the market. There are all sorts of test for checking the ripeness of fruits (scent, sight and feel). Pulling the center leaves from a pineapple does not tell you whether it is ripe or not. I just found this out and I have been using that technique for years. Probably a lot of my other methods of picking the most perfect piece of fruit or produce isn’t accurate either.

May 27, 2015 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Peach and Raspberry Enchiladas with Creme Fraiche

Cobbler like with some crunch.

A while back, with nothing to do, I was looking around on Pinterest. I know there are probably a million things I could be doing but not many I want to be doing. An Apple Enchilada recipe just jumped off the page at me and I was held hostage long enough to find the site it came from and “Pinned” this into my “try” list.

I’m not a huge apple fan and it’s probably last on my list of fruit favorites. So when I saw that Cornfed Momma‘s recipe suggested substituting peaches or cherries, I knew where I was going with the recipe — peaches and raspberries since I probably still have about 25 packages of frozen raspberries I bought back in the fall.

I love making creme fraiche and always wonder why anyone would pay $5 for it from the grocery when with a cup of cream and a little buttermilk and 24 hours you can have a cup of the delicious topping that can be used for anything; and instead of serving with ice cream like CM did, I’m using a cinnamon cream fraiche.

March 22, 2015 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Frozen Fruit with Hot White Chocolate

What’s not to like about Hot White Chocolate!

I’m sure most of you (wherever you live) are absolutely, unequivocally sick of all this snow, ice, rain, dampness, cloudy and gloomy days we are all experiencing this winter.

Well, I have a recipe for you. The frozen fruit will remind you of what you want to leave behind and that you are ready to move on to Spring. And the warm white chocolate smoothly flowing over and coating the frozen fruit, thawing it has it runs down the dish, should bring promise of all that melting snow you may be experiencing now. So, a little bit of winter, hopefully in our rear view mirrors, and Spring ahead of us.

What would I do without Ina Garten. I love watching her show and watching her gather her ingredients at her local markets. I had this dessert at my friend, Peggy’s, and knew I would be making it again; and I did, again, and again, and again. You can change up your fruits. My favorites are raspberries, blueberries, cherries, and blackberries. Any fruits can be used, just make sure you freeze them. (Strawberries freeze a little too hard for me, almost like ice cubes.)

The day I served this to my craft circle group (only seven of us in my section) I used frozen cherries, peaches, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. Anyone that can’t eat the seeds simply use fruits without seeds like the cherries and peaches.

March 7, 2015 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Chocolate Grand Marnier Pots dè Creme

Not like any Jello pudding you grew up eating!

Christmas is over and now you are thinking of starting some kind of diet BUT we still have the New Years parties to get through so why not try this quick delicious little dessert to bring in the New Year. You could change it up and put peppermint extract instead of the Grand Marnier and top with crushed peppermint if you wanted to make it a little more festive looking.

Pots de Creme is so similar to a homemade chocolate pudding you’ll wonder why you never made this dessert. Just the name itself always makes me want to order it when I see it on a menu. For years I called this “pots” de cream not knowing it is really pronounced “po” de creme. Whatever you choose to call it, it’s easy and delicious.

Don’t you love the taste of coffee and chocolate together; and the taste of chocolate with orange is even better. So, I decided to turn just a run of the mill pots de creme into a chocolate, orange, espresso pots de creme and I baked them in these cute little espresso cups.

I served this one night for my Girls Night Out group along with my Pumpkin Tomato Salad and my Wedge Salad (on a different angle) and also tried the Brazilian Cheese Puffs for the first time. The small espresso cups were the perfect size for just a few bites of dessert to finish off the evening.

December 31, 2014 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts/ Fruit Dishes

Wine Poached Pears with Almond Cream

And it has wine jelly leaves.

I had to give you this recipe in time for Christmas. Maybe you want to do a light dessert during the holidays. Wouldn’t this be a beautiful Christmas dessert; I’d cut the wine jelly into little stars instead of leaves.

Isn’t it amazing how many food blogs are out there and I’m amazed at how many I follow. Recently I was looking for a dessert recipe for our Fall dinner and came across this poached pear recipe at allthatcooking.com. It had such a beautiful presentation that I knew I had to look no further. All That Cooking is a co-authored blog and this recipe belongs to Óli who is from Iceland but lives in Sweden and has been a professional chef for the last 30 years.

I never liked can pears as a kid and when my mother, for some reason, would use a can of fruit cocktail as a starter for her homemade fruit salad, I always picked out the pears and left them behind on the plate. Over the years, I learned to appreciate the juiciness of a fresh pear and started trying all the different varieties. I love the Asian pear but for this dish it doesn’t have the shape I wanted.

This recipe was followed as written except for the cutting of the jelly cubes. I have some tiny aspic cutters and a few fall leaf cutters we are trying. and the way his dessert is described –Firm pears, poached to a jewel toned crimson, surrounded by a just rich enough almond cream with flecks of butter toasted almonds is a dessert to please anyone’s palate — now doesn’t that make you want to try it.

December 6, 2014 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Raspberry Ciabatta Bread Pudding

Any bread pudding lovers out there?

What better way to start Fall than with something to warm your tummy while you are sitting and watching what’s going on outside? Are you still having warm days as we are here in Texas or are you having some chill in the air and wanting a comforting dessert for the weekend. If you are having one of those days that you can’t get out of the house and you just happen to have some raspberries in the freezer (I have a freezer full) and some bread you threw in there for a rainy day, then you can whip up this dessert for supper.

Do you say supper? or dinner?. This dessert screams supper because I picture a dinner being something I have slaved over all day and supper is something I just throw together for the two of us. Unless of course it is our Sunday Night Suppers we do occasionally then I do like to go out of my comfort zone sometimes doing the menu of a couple of new things. This recipes falls into the supper (easy) category.

I have to honestly say I have never been a bread pudding lover until I made my Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce a few years ago and when I did it for a party, everyone loved it. So I’m venturing out again to try this Ciabatta Bread Pudding that I have added raspberries to; I think the raspberries will add some tartness to the dessert to balance the sweetness.

November 6, 2014 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts/ Pastries/ Pies/Tarts

Peach Tart with Raspberry Sauce

So what are you doing with those fresh peaches from the farmer’s market this summer?

(I’m off in Seattle/Vancouver/Victoria right now and hope to have lots of new ideas to cook up when I get back.)

I missed getting my Fredricksburg peaches last year and this year so I was in search for the best peach I could find. On my way back from Austin one weekend I stopped at Buckee’s Truck Stop (or gas station, or mega everything store). At the checkout, there was a bushel of home grown peaches and they were the most beautiful peaches I have seen in years. The touch was great, the smell was like just picked freshness off some farmer’s tree so I bought a few for this recipe.

You never know what you are going to get in a peach. I have picked up beautiful peaches at the grocery, liked the feel of it in my hand when I gently pressed on it, loved the smell of the peach when I took a big sniff but then when I got home with it, chilled it, got out a big bowl to cut my peach in, only to find when I cut it open it is a mealy, tastless peach. Short of asking for a sample before buying a peach, and I’m likely to do that at a farm stand, I know no other way of finding a perfect peach.

So the sad end to those fresh Buckee’s Truck stop peaches is that I kept putting off making this dessert because I did need someone to eat it. I looked at the peaches each day and the first few days they were smiling back and me saying “we’re ready”. Then I waited, and waited, and waited and when I decided it was time to make it the peaches were in no mood to be made into this nice dessert. They had puckered skin and way beyond looking pretty in their pink skins. So I ate them.

July 29, 2014 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Nutella Strawberry Banana Crepe with Chocolate Cream Sauce

Chocolicious!

Two days ago I became a Gran again to my fifth grandson, Thomas Huntington Russell. That’s five little fellows under 5 1/2. I’m so proud of my daughter and her husband; they did such a great job bringing the little guy into this world.

A few years ago my daughter took me to my first food trailer. A silver stream trailer which sold nothing but crepes and that was my first Nutella and banana crepe.

What is a crepe but a pancake on a diet. I’ve been making crepes for years and still know that I’m going to have to offer up the first few as a sacrifice to the crepe pan. That’s just the way it goes.

I went years, maybe decades after beeing married before attempting to make crepes. I don’t know what I was afraid of. Over the years I have had about 4 different types of crepe pans. My favorite now is a blue steel pan. One of my least favorites was a pan that you dipped the bottom into the crepe mixture and then turned the pan upside down over a ring that is set over the burner. Never quite got the hang of that one.

For a savory crepe you could simply fill a crepe with…..say… spinach, bacon and mushrooms, or a SW take of sausage, onion, peppers, mushrooms, cilantro with some salsa, or a crab mornay. Or how about a proscuitto and fontino with a béchamel sauce. You get the idea… a crepe is the wrapping to hold all your ingredients. If you look on Pinterest alone you will see a gazillion crepe recipes.

For dessert crepes the possibilities are endless. I’ve done a simple one filled with apricot or peach preserves folded twice into a wedge and dusted with powdered sugar and I’ve even seen a cake made with about 50 crepes stacked on on top of the other.

May 5, 2014 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

Dessert/ Desserts

Almond Cherry Clafoutis

What’s a clafoutis anyway?

Do you love cherries as much as I do? If so, you will love this clafoutis.

So today when I did a routine clean-out of my refrigerator, and there is nothing routine about cleaning my refrigerator, I happened to notice two partial bags of cherries so I was motivated to find something to do with them. We can get fresh cherries year round here in Texas, just not at the summer prices.

Pronounced, kla-foo-TEE, a Cherry Clafoutis or Clafouti is a rustic French dessert made with cherries arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a flan-like batter then baked and dusted with powdered sugar and served warm. We had many rustic French desserts and pastries while in France this year but I never saw this one on a menu.

I’m serving my clafoutis with whipped cream flavored with almond extract. Some recipes call for not taking out the pits because they are suppose to release a wonderful almond flavor when the dessert is baked. The other member of my household does not like anything with a pit, so unless I want to sit and use a cherry pitter (I love my pitter) and pit him a bowlful, I’m the only one eating those cherries. After what he has done for me during both knee recoveries, I should be cutting his meat and spoon feeding him.

There are so many versions of this online, some are almost bread pudding like and some flan like. I think this is somewhere in between.

October 27, 2012 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts/ Pies/Tarts

Strawberry Shortcakes

You’re going to say “do what with the egg yolks”.

Summer is slipping away and you will want to try this dessert before those just picked strawberries are no longer available.

My daughter first tried this recipe after seeing it on a blog and I remember her telling me the shortcakes had BOILED EGG YOLKS in them. When I was in culinary school I NEVER heard of using boiled egg yolks in a pastry. According to a La Times article, a trick from chef Larry Forgione is to add a couple of hard boiled egg yolks to his shortcake because the yolks are high in fat and low in moisture and they add richness without toughening the dough. Go figure. Well, I guess he knows what he’s talking about because these are delicious.

I’m sure I have said before that my mother use to make strawberry shortcake by first making homemade pie crust (she always made homemade). She then cut it into strips and baked it until lightly brown and crunchy and then we would crumble it up in our bowls, top with sweetened strawberries and whipped cream. I know, I know, sounds like a lot of trouble but well worth the effort.

Others, I’m sure still buy those little round shortbread cakes that get soggy after you put on your strawberries and get that first bite into your mouth. That’s ok too. But this little shortbread cake seems to be the perfect platform for those strawberries or any other sweetened fruit you may want to try.

August 15, 2012 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Floating Island (Eggs in Snow)

Something I definitely wanted to try in France.

So, before heading off for France I found a “must try” food list while in France. Below was my list I was working from and if I managed to try them.

Baguettes (tried many times), croissants (almost daily), cheeses (many different kinds were eaten), charcuterie (had it), foie gras (yes), steak frites (yes), croque monsieur (twice), crepes (suzette of course), fleur de del caramels (yes), and quiche lorraine (twice) were a few of the “must try” things and we made it through the list. We can’t forget macarons (made them twice, had them from Laudree), pates (definitely), rilletes (didn’t, but have made one), duck confit (yes, twice).

Ok, so I have either made a lot of these things or have had them before, but it was so much more fun sitting in some little French bistro or brasierres, trying to translate a menu, watching the people go by and toasting our time in France.

The desserts were beautiful (see some of the window shots I got of bakeries). I knew I wanted to try Floating Island and sure enough it showed up on a menu our second night in Paris. A guy next to me ordered it and I looked at it and said “floating island”??? and he said yes. I knew I had to order it. Their meringue was done differently and was baked and then cut into large wedges.

Floating island is a French dessert (they call it Eggs in Snow) consisting of meringue puffs floating on a pool of crème anglaise. The meringues are made of whipped egg whites, sugar and vanilla extract that are quickly poached in water or milk. (I did these in water, but will use milk the next time.)

I don’t know about you but I never like my refrigerators (I have three) to be without milk, cream, butter or my pantry to be without flour, yeast, sugar or vanilla. You can make almost any dessert or breads from those ingredients; so I don’t think we will ever starve in this house.

This dessert is such a recipe. A little egg, cream, sugar and you have a wonderful little dessert which looks so elegant served in a martini glass.

May 14, 2012 By Sherry