dessert – Page 2

Lemon Cheesecake

April 1, 2016

Lemon-Cheesecake-12b

This cheesecake, along with all that Easter candy, is the reason I am back to dieting this week. I know a lot of times I try to make my favorite treats a little healthier but cutting out the fat, sugar, and guilt. But this lemon cheesecake is not one of those times. This is full fat, full sugar, and oh so worth it! Sometimes you have to treat yourself with a decadent dessert, like on holidays… when calories don’t count. What? You haven’t heard that? 😉

I guess I should have anticipated this when I combined two of my favorite desserts in the world: my mom’s classic cheesecake and lemon meringue pie. My self control never stood a chance.

The foundation of my mom’s cheesecake is the sugar cookie crust. Many people have been skeptical of the sugar cookie crust, but once they try it they are converted. Not only is the sugar cookie so much better suited for all the lemon flavor going on in in this cheesecake, it is SO much easier than a graham cracker crust. We (my mom and I) just use the slice and bake sugar cookie dough you can find in your grocery store’s refrigerated section. To make the crust, I sliced the log of dough into discs then pressed them around the bottom and sides of a spring form pan.

After the crust was ready, I put it aside and got started on the cheesecake. It’s actually pretty simple and comes together very quickly. I creamed together the cream cheese and sugar, then I added in the eggs, Greek yogurt (my mom uses sour cream), and vanilla. Since I was making this a lemon cheesecake, I added the zest of of one lemon. When the batter was well mixed and smooth, I poured it into the crust.

Now my trick for baking the cheesecake is something I learned from Martha Stewart. She bakes her cheesecakes in a shallow pan of water so that the steam helps prevent the cheesecake from cracking. To keep the water from seeping into the cheesecake, I wrapped the pan in tin foil. I baked the cheesecake for 10 minutes at 450 degrees, then lowered the temperature to 325 and cooked for another 60 minutes, or until the cheesecake no longer jiggled in the center. It’s okay if it has a little wobble, but you don’t want it to look liquidy in the center.

While the cheesecake was baking, I went about making the lemon curd. I followed the same technique I used to make these lemon bars. While I find making lemon curd pretty easy, when I was telling my mom about this recipe she scoffed at the idea of making homemade lemon curd. She didn’t like the idea of separating the eggs. A woman who was a home economics major and working mother thinks separating eggs is too much trouble. Where did I go wrong with her? Anyways, if making your own lemon curd isn’t up your alley either (I actually do get it, I just like to give my mom a hard time), you can certainly buy a jar of it at the store. I would just recommend that you warm it up first to make it a little more spreadable.

So at this point I have made my lemon curd and let it cool just a bit. My cheesecake is fully cooked and also slightly cooled. I poured the warm curd over the cheesecake and used an offset spatula to evenly cover the cheesecake. I then let everything cool to room temperature, then put it in the fridge overnight to really set up.

Lemon Cheesecake-8

When I was ready to serve, I removed the outer ring of the spring form pan and dressed it up with some slices of meyer lemons since I used some meyer lemon juice in my lemon curd (not necessary, but it’s meyer lemon season).

This was the perfect dessert for Easter brunch. Rich and decadent, but still fresh and crisp! And it was a total hit with the group. I sent slices home and whatever was left over was quickly demolished at work the next day. This would be perfect to make for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or any Spring or Summer outing.

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Paleo Lemon Bars

March 9, 2016

Paleo Lemon Bars with Chia Seeds

Friends, let me tell you, whether you are on a Paleo diet or not, you must make these lemon bars! They are so freaking good. They were a pain in my butt to get right. But once I figured out the magic recipe, they turned perfectly!

Also, on a quick side note – while I was spending my afternoon baking these bad boys, I binged watch Fuller House. It is so bad it is good. It is just like the Full House of old, but even cheesier! Maybe it’s because I am older so it seems cheesier, but that is what makes it so great. So you need to go out and watch this immediately! Also, Jodie Sweetin needs her own show. The end.

Okay, back to the lemon bars.

I did a lot of research for this recipe; looking up other Paleo lemon bar recipes, as well as your typical (sugar-, gluten-, dairy-filled) lemon bar recipe to find the perfect combination of lemon topping to crispy crust.

The crust was actually the easiest part for me to master. I knew I wanted it to be light and flaky, so I made something that was a mix between a shortbread and a pie crust. I mixed together almond and coconut flours with some coconut sugar, egg, and fat. The mixture of the two flours made a big difference. I tried it the second time with only almond flour and it turned out terribly.

The lemon topping is what gave me so much trouble. In your typical lemon bar recipe, the lemon topping is baked on the crust. I tried that method twice with very bad results (as you may or may not have seen on Snapchat). I finally found a recipe that used a different technique: making a lemon curd and pouring it on top. No baking needed! Which is exactly the solution I was looking for.

So I went about making a Paleo lemon curd, which was a lot easier than I anticipated. I replaced the sugar with honey and the butter with ghee/coconut oil. Literally a 1 to 1 substitution. Soooo easy. But I knew that the lemon curd wasn’t going to set up like I wanted since it would be a bit too runny. To solve that problem, I turned to my old friend the chia seeds!

Chia seeds to the rescue!

I only used a tablespoon of them, but it was just enough to soak up some of the moisture and help the lemon curd firm up a bit.

So I poured the crazy looking lemon curd over the baked crust and set it in the refrigerator to let the chia seeds work their magic.

Sugar-free and grain-free lemon bars

I found that the lemon topping was firm enough to cut through after about 2 hours, but I left it in a bit longer just to make sure. I actually didn’t take these out of the fridge until the next day.

Healthy, Paleo lemon bars

All I can tell you is that they were totally worth the wait. They were so good you would never know that they didn’t have any sugar, flour, or butter in them at all. I took them to my Small Group on Sunday night and all the girls asked for the recipe. None of them realized these were Paleo until I told them so.

If that isn’t the mark of a successful Paleo baked good, I don’t know what is!

Enjoy!

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Teddy Bear Cookies

September 9, 2015

I’m at that stage in life where it seems like all my friends, co-workers, and Facebook acquaintances are having babies. Which also means I am at that stage in life where those aforementioned people are asking ME when I plan on having one of my own. So to distract them from their question (hey, look over here!), I just make them really cute cookies for their baby shower.

These teddy bear cookies were made for the most friend to have a baby shower. My friend doesn’t know the gender of the baby and since she also went to Baylor, like me, I thought green and yellow cookies with teddy bears would be perfect! But I also through in some pink and blue cookies to break up the Baylor theme.

Before I get too much further, I want to apologize. I only filmed the bear portion of the cookie design, since it was the most complicated (and I didn’t think about filming until I had done the first layer of icing). But for all the cookies, either did stripes or dots, which are both really easy.

First I iced the whole cookie with flood/15 second consistency icing in a solid color, like white. Then while the cookie was still wet, I either piped little dots or stripes (see my post here for some tips on piping). I let them dry completely overnight before putting the bear on top.

For the bears, I actually found a picture of a teddy bear I liked on Google and traced it onto parchment paper (I had the picture pulled up on my clean iPad and placed the parchment on top of my iPad to trace). I cut out the design and then traced the template onto the cookie with a food coloring pen. I then filled in the different parts of the bear in brown flood consistency icing.

The other part of the bear design that I didn’t capture in the video was the “fur”. Once the bears were done, they just looked too flat to me. So I stippled thickened brown icing onto the bears with a little craft brush. Once it dried, it looked like the bear had a fuzzy layer of fur.

I finished the cookies by piping dots in stiff consistency icing around the outside to create a border and let them dry over night. You could definitely leave the borders off, but I find them helpful to hide my mistakes. The circular cookies are especially hard to form an even and perfect circle, so the dots help cover that up.

I used my Basic Sugar Cookie recipe with almond extract and this royal icing recipe.

I have a while until my next baby shower…so what cookies should I make next?

Worms and Dirt Brownie Cups

October 30, 2014

One of my favorite things to make for Halloween parties is worms and dirt. I have made it in various forms: as a cupcake, a pudding cup, a cake. And this time around, as a brownie. It’s just so easy and really gets me into the Halloween spirit!

I decided to make these for a bake sale we had a work this week (to support diabetes of all things!). I wanted it to be easy to eat and package, which is why I decided on a brownie in a cup. The cup helps hold in the “worms” and the “dirt”, which really are the key features of this dessert.

And just to be clear…these are SUPER easy. Sometimes I like to attempt complicated things, but these are not one of them. Literally they are a boxed brownie mix baked in a cupcake tin, topped with butter cream, cookie crumbs, and gummy worms. Boom. You’re done.

Of course you can make all of the elements from scratch, but I don’t really feel the need. I don’t think people are going to notice if you made the brownie from scratch when they are digging in to their little worms and dirt cups.

And it doesn’t have to be just worms. You could use gummy spiders or other insect or reptile shaped candy. Even little tombstones made from cookies or white chocolate would be a great touch. And if you don’t want to make these in cups, you can certainly make a pan of brownies and top with the frosting and cookies. There are no limits!

Hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween!!

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Cookie Dough Cake

September 12, 2014

My husband turned the big 3-0 this past week. And we couldn’t let the occasion pass without a little celebration and a cake! Since my husband isn’t a huge fan of cake, but does love a good bowl of ice cream, I decided to merge once of his favorite ice cream flavors with a cake, resulting in cookie dough cake!

Now, I do not make cake often, so I relied heavily on some experts for the cake and icing recipe. The cake is a vanilla pound cake, a recipe that I got when I took a cake decorating class last year at Johnson Wales. The icing recipe was adapted from a Martha Stewart butter cream recipe. I pared down the recipe by about a third, then replaced some of the granulated sugar with brown sugar so that it had more of a cookie dough flavor.

But the real icing on the cake, so to speak was the bits of cookie dough. I took my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, left out the egg, and added a touch of milk instead. I then piped little dollops of cookie dough between each layer, pressing down the top layer to flatten them out a bit.

Once all the layers were stacked, I lightly frosted the top and sides of the cake to make a crumb coat, sealing in all the crumbs.

Clearly my frosting skills need some work. Fortunately, there was an easy solution to the problem: covering the cake in chocolate chips! I started by sprinkling them on the top then pressed them into the sides.

Because I had some of that cookie dough left over, I just pipped a bit more dots of dough around the edge. I might have also just eaten it straight from the bowl.

My husband and I both shared a slice right away, eager to dig in. While definitely on the super sweet side, the little bites of cookie dough were a delightful surprise!

It was a great way to usher my husband into the next generation. Unfortunately for him, he will be there alone. What he doesn’t quite understand is that once I turned 29, I just stopped aging. Sure, I may celebrate the anniversary of my birthday, but I will be 29 at least until I have a child that turns 29. I’m pretty sure that’s a law of physics…or something….

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S’mores Ice Cream

June 4, 2014

It seems a bit odd to put something that is naturally warm, gooey, and melty into ice cream, but it worked out splendidly. Possibly because there are few things more quintessential to American summers than ice cream and s’mores. There is nothing like a cold ice cream cone on a hot day or the perfectly camp-fire-roasted s’more on a summer’s night.

Fortunately, chocolate and marshmallows are made for ice cream (see Rocky Road). The wonderful thing about marshmallows is that they stay fairly gooey even when frozen. The graham crackers were the only thing that provided a bit of a challenge. They would get a bit soggy if left alone, but that is easily taken care of when covered in chocolate.

I broke up about 4 crackers into bite size pieces, poured a melted bar of dark chocolate over top, and tossed them until all the pieces were coated in chocolate. I laid them out on a baking sheet and popped them in the freezer to harden. I wanted the marshmallows to be a bit chared like a true s’more, so I broke out my trusty cream brule torch. You could also put them under a broiler for a few minutes to get the same effect.

Once everything was nice and cool, I mixed everything into some homemade vanilla ice cream. If you don’t have an ice cream maker or don’t feel like making ice cream, you could just add these pieces to softened store-bought vanilla ice cream.

I scooped my mixed ice cream into a loaf tin, covered it with plastic wrap, and put it back in the freeze to harden a bit more. This takes at least 2 hours, if not over night. After that its ready to serve! My husband suggested that some crushed graham crackers sprinkled on top would be an excellent addition. Some melted chocolate would also be nice, especially to add that melty element.

What are some other of your favorite ice cream flavors and combinations?

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Margarita Tart

April 28, 2014

I don’t know what it says about me to turn a drink into a dessert….or make my dessert alcoholic, so let’s not read too much into it, okay?

This tart is essentially just like any other lime tart with a few extra ingredients. How do you turn lime juice into a margarita? Tequila, triple sec, and salt.

To get that hint of salt, I added pretzels to the crust by processing both graham crackers and pretzels, then adding in melted butter. If that sounds delicious on its own, let me tell you, it is. I may or may not have eaten the leftover crust out of the bowl with a spoon. By itself.

The filling is essentially a margarita with condensed milk and egg yolks to make a curd. If you have the extra limes, you might as well use them to make yourself a real margarita.

If you are worried about serving this dessert to kids, the alcohol does cook out, however you could forgo the tequila completely and add in orange juice instead of triple sec to get the same effect.

I will definitely be making this again this summer. It’s tart with a hint of sweetness, plus you that little bite from the tequila followed by the saltiness from the crust. Just like your favorite margarita.

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Homemade Cookie Dough “Oreos”

March 31, 2014

There may never be two things on this earth quite so divine yet humble (especially to my sweet tooth) than cookie dough and Oreo cookies. If you find the previous sentence offensive or utterly ridiculous, then you are probably a better person than I, and we probably won’t ever be friends. I’m sorry….or, you’re welcome?

While I would love to take credit for such a glorious collision of childhood treats, I cannot. You should thank the good people in the Nabisco test kitchen for this flavor combination. I will, however, take credit for sharing with you how I recreated this treat so you can have yourself a homemade and all-natural(ish) take on a classic. I might even venture to say they are better than the original.

Like any ~~good~~ sandwich cookie, there are two key parts: the cookie and the filling. An Oreo cookie is light, crisp, and a bit crumbly so I knew I did not want to make a soft and chewy cookie. To get the cookie consistency I was looking for I employed the same technique you would to make a delicious, crumbly biscuit (full circle, people): cold butter. Before getting all my other ingredients together, I cubed up some butter and popped it in the freezer to get extra cold while I assembled everything else.

My other not so secret ingredient to make the cocoa flavor extra bold was espresso powder. You don’t taste the espresso flavor at all, but it adds depth and richness to the cocoa that will really make the flavor pop.The standard Oreo filling seems to be your basic buttercream, which is just butter and sugar…maybe some vanilla. To make the buttercream for these cookies a bit more cookie dough-like, I used both brown sugar and powdered sugar, a bit of salt, chocolate chips, and some flour to thicken it to be more “doughy”.

Assembling the cookies is the easiest part of the whole process, as you might imagine. But just be sure to let the cookies cool entirely or else you will have a melted puddle of butter and sugar (doesn’t sound so bad to me, actually). I scooped about 2 tsp to 1 tbsp of filling onto a cookie, then topped it with another. You may want to vary this depending on the size of your cookie.

Also, like normal cookie dough, this is also great to eat out of the bowl.

Or just lick straight off the cookie. No judgement here.

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Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

March 26, 2014

This is another old recipe, but it is one of my favorites. The cookies are so unexpected. Sweet yet spicy. Crispy and gooey. Rich, but not overpowering.

What kicks these cookies up a notch is the cayenne pepper and cinnamon. I used just a hint of both, and while they don’t take center stage, they add incredible depth of flavor. Upon your first bite, you may not know that these cookies have some extra spice, but you will know it’s no ordinary chocolate cookie.

And of course, what good cup of hot chocolate doesn’t have a few marshmallows. On my first attempt making these cookies, I baked the marshmallows IN the cookie. Big mistake. So on my next attempt I melted some marshmallows down (marshmallow fluff would also be acceptable), spread them on top and put the cookies under the broiler to get the marshmallow nice and brown.

Seriously, what’s not to like? Make these cookies.

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Spiced Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

December 11, 2013

My mom’s recipe for cheesecake has been widely request from friends and family over the years. It is her go-to dessert when she wants to impress. And it’s no surprise, because it is amazing!

This past weekend, when I volunteered to bring a dessert to our friends Christmas party, I knew this cheesecake would be perfect!

Instead of using sugar cookie dough, like my mom, I used gingersnap cookie crumbs for the crust to make it a little more “Christmas-y”. I also added some spices to the batter to compliment the crust.

One new thing I tried was baking the cheesecake in a shallow pan with a little water. This is a trick I learned from Martha Stewart to prevent the cake from cracking on the top, like it is prone to do.

The result is an extra creamy, and a tad bit spicy, cheesecake. And a little bit goes a long way! One small slice is perfectly decadent, so an 8 to 9 inch pan can serve well over 10 people.

Unless you are serving a large crowd of cheesecake lovers, in which case, you may want to make 2.

What is your go-to recipe for the holidays?