Chocolate Pudding with Espresso Whipped Cream

I have a thing for pudding. I don't necessarily have a thing for dark rainy nights, but I have a solution for them.  All winter long I have been craving the comfort of puddings, just like a warm sweater you slip into, pudding caresses my belly into childlike happiness.  I spent many evenings at the supper table, with a cool bowl of pudding in my paws, a reward for eating my vegetables.  It's one of my fondest dessert memories, and the one that calls the loudest when I think of my very youngest years. Recently we've been in need for some real comfort.  Shane has been studying hard for exams, and dealing with having shingles, while I've just started a full-time night line.  These things are hard, and demand real heart helping nourishment.  Unlike this one, my childhood pudding came straight from a 5x4 inch box, the directions were straight forward: add milk.  While there are a few more steps involved with this recipe, the effort is hardly significant.  After the fourth time I found my head in the fridge and a spoonful of pudding in my hand I realized this treat is the ideal grownup version of my favourite dessert memory.

Baking notes:
-I made this dessert exactly as indicated and it was spot on.  Nothing curdled, ideally flavoured. Basically perfect.

The recipe for Chocolate Pudding with Espresso Whipped Cream can be found on the epicurious website.

70/569

Parsnip Spice Cake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

So a few days ago a good friend of ours stopped by with her arms full of stuff.  She has a hobby farm where she raises chickens and tonnes of vegetables.  There were about 8 frozen chickens, one and a half dozen eggs and a pail full of dirty brown veggies she had just pulled from the garden before she drove over.  We are so blessed to have the friends we do.  In the pail were many things, but among them about 10 parsnips of varying size.  We ate a few roasted but with the surplus I decided to make a parsnip cake, which although it sounds weird, is only as strange as carrot cake!  The cake is an excellent snacking cake, it's warm with spice, fresh with ginger and toasty with walnuts.  It's not too sweet, and has a lovely light texture. I've been loving every slice. (Though I still prefer carrot cake).

Baking notes:
-I used only 10-11oz of powdered sugar in the icing and found it perfect.
-Watch the baking times very closely.  I took the cake out at only 18 minutes.

The recipe for Parsnip Spice Cake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting can be found on the epicurious website.

69/569

Chocolate Brownies with Peanut Butter Frosting

Yesterday was Valentine's day and while I don't wholeheartedly support such a consumeristic holiday (but aren't they all?) I do love an opportunity to remind my husband how much I love him.  February is a love month for us though, because his birthday is on the last day of the month, which is a whole other lovefest!  I wrote sweet notes and left little chocolates around the house for him in the two week leading up to V-day, so on the 14th I had to pull out a few extra stops, namely the book he'd be eyeing up recently and his favourite, fudgy brownies and peanut butter.  Together!  This recipe was absolutely perfect since it was a marriage of the two, a classic brownie with a peanut butter frosting.  He loved them, and so did everyone at my work who got half a pan of leftovers.  I thought these were especially good straight out of the fridge. Do what you like!

Baking notes:
-I thought the brownies were a tad dry even though I took them out at 18 minutes, rather than 20.  Next time I'd check them at 16.5 or 17 minutes.
-The peanut butter frosting was good, but a little boring.  Next time I would incorporate cream cheese into the frosting for a little extra interest.

The recipe for Chocolate Brownies with Peanut Butter Frosting can be found on the epicurious website.

68/569

Classic Tiramisu

There are plenty of reasons not to make tiramisu; where to find those damn ladyfingers, the fact that mascarpone costs an arm and a leg, and really, a $20 bottle of wine, that you mix with coffee?!  But there is one really great reason, it tastes amazing.  Luckily for us, this was the best tiramisu I've ever had.  It was worth every bit of work and worry, because when you eat a bite of tiramisu that tastes better than the stuff you had in Italy, you know it's over.  Shane picked out this dessert to finish off a dinner of pasta and wine, and even knowing how cost prohibitive it was, agreed to make it happen.  The ladyfingers, as it happens, were on my shelf, a box that I bought over a year ago (when I saw them in an Italian store in Vancouver and scooped them up).  Check one.  I went to the store aiming to buy mascarpone, money be damned.  But when I saw the $12 price tag my resolve fell away, I bought two cups of cream instead and went home to make my own. Check two.  Finally, I decided not to buy the Marsala wine, Shane and I don't like very sweet wines, and anyways, I knew we loved coffee liqueur with ours.  In the end I'd argue to anyone, this is the best tiramisu money can buy.

Baking notes:

-I used kahlua instead of marsala wine in the espresso mixture and frangelico in the egg yolk mixture.

-It took at least 15 minutes for the egg-frangelico mixture to reach 160 F, not 3 minutes as it states.

-I made my own mascarpone cheese, which worked wonderfully.

-The egg whites made the tiramisu so light and fluffy, I would not skip these!

The recipe for Classic Tiramisu can not be found online.

67/569

Ice Maple Cream with Berries

Being the good Canadian I am, I have a great fondness for maple syrup.  I would put it only one notch below honey on my sugar love scale (you're probably wondering how crazy I am). Yes, sugar love scale.  It's a thing, though I may have just made it up.  Maple syrup is incredibly expensive, I use it very sparingly, always with my oatmeal in the mornings and sometimes in the lattes I make, but I never skimp and buy the cheap stuff, it's just not worth it. This is how I feel about honey too, I buy local when it's available, the taste is always worth the extra dollars.  My sugar love scale looks something like this: honey, maple syrup, molasses, agave syrup and then the sugars.  (You'll never find me with things like aspartame, truvia or stevia in my cupboards!)

It is with great, indulgent pleasure that I bring you this dessert.  Now, I never thought about pairing maple syrup and summer berries, it didn't seem like the best idea.  But somehow it was! and the dessert works heavenly.  The maple cream was simple to put together and thankfully there was no ice cream maker required.  The downside to this of course, is that the cream only lasts around 24 hours before the quality starts to noticeably deteriorate, getting overly ice-y and hard.  Our batch was gone within 24 hours without any trouble!

Baking notes:
-I was short half an egg yolk, but it didn't seems to make too much of a difference.
-The recipe states that the yolk-maple syrup mixture will come to 175 F within 3 minutes or so of cooking over the double broiler, but after 20 minutes my mixture had only hit 165 F.  Finally I took it off, scraped it into a cold bowl and beat the mixture to cool down (it took about 5 minutes).  The ice cream turned out wonderfully.
-I used raspberries and strawberries that I froze from last summer, so they had broken down and were sweet and soft.

The recipe for Ice Maple Cream with Berries can be found on the epicurious website.

66/569