MARSHMALLOWS... YOU KNOW YOU LOVE 'EM!

November 20, 2018 by Joanna Winn-Buono in Baking Dessert, dessert

I know it’s Thanksgiving week, and I do love Thanksgiving but I’ve been listening to Christmas music for the past week… ok maybe off and on it’s more like two weeks. Needless to say, I’m feeling rather Christmasy. So, peppermint marshmallows instead of turkey, after all, come Friday, Christmas will be in full swing.

Peppermint Vanilla Marshmallows

3 packets of gelatin, unflavored plus ½ cup of water

1 cup light corn syrup

1 ½ cups sugar

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup water (this goes with the corn syrup, sugar and salt)

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Lots of confectioners sugar for dusting, this is sticky stuff!

Mix the gelatin and water together in the bowl of a stand mixer. You’ll need the whisk attachment later, so go ahead and pop that on there.

Combine the corn syrup, sugar, salt and water in a small but deep sauce pan over medium heat. Don’t stir, just keep an eye on it until the temperature reaches 240 degrees on a candy thermometer. As soon as it does, take it off the heat.

With the whisk attachment in place, and the mixer on a medium-low speed, slowly pour the hot sugar syrup into the bowl with the gelatin. Once all the syrup in, turn the speed to high and let it go until the mixture is really thick. Takes about 12 minutes or so. During the last 2 minutes, add the vanilla and peppermint extracts, letting them mix in, then add a little red food coloring. Just eyeball it until it’s the color you like. I went for pale pink.

Using a sifter, dust an 8 x 12 inch pan with confectioners sugar… lots of sugar, make it snow! Then carefully pour the marshmallow into the pan and, just as generously, dust the top with more confectioners sugar. Leave it to sit, uncovered, on the counter to dry out for 7 or 8 hours… basically all day or over night depending on when you make them.

Using a spatula to loosen the sides, carefully transfer the now set marshmallow block onto a cutting board. Keep dusting your knife with confectioners sugar as you cut the marshmallows into cubes or blocks. Toss all the marshmallows with more powdered sugar to keep them from sticking to everything and each other.

You’ll have a lot of marshmallows, of course the exact number will depend on the size you cut them, but never fear, they freeze really well in a zip lock freezer bag. You’ll have peppermint marshmallows on hand for hot chocolate all throughout the holiday season. What are you waiting for? Go make marshmallows, it’s fun, I promise.

NOT A SUCCESS... NOT QUITE AN EPIC FAILURE. ADVENTURES IN RECIPE DEVELOPMENT

June 08, 2018 by Joanna Winn-Buono in dessert, Baking Dessert, baking

All ideas aren't necessarily good ones. Well, in this case that's not entirely true. I do think a rich, chocolatey brownie spiked with some chili heat is a good idea, just not this rendition. Alas, it was my bright idea when I came across the Guajillo Chili chocolate you see here (love the packaging, cute!). I had used the plain version of this brand and type of chocolate once before in class on a day that we made a particularly terrible mole. True story, it was not good, and no amount of tweaking we did improved it. There was a flaw in the recipe somewhere. That's the point of testing in recipe development. Very rarely are you going to knock it out of the park on the first version. So it went with this Guajillo Chili chocolate brownie fail.

Let's start with the chocolate tasting. This is some seriously sugar-grainy chocolate that reminded me of Freddo Frog chocolate my sister brought back from Australia. We'll just say that was a long time ago, and perhaps Freddo has changed. I do remember Freddo, in all his cute molded chocolate frogginess, being both sweeter and grainier in texture than say, a Hershey bar. The heat in the Chocolate Mexicano Guajillo Chili is decent if you eat a piece of it, it just didn't seem to survive once it was melted along with unsalted butter. I tasted the batter and noticed the lack of heat, and added some cayenne pepper, but not enough I would later discover.

Decreasing the amount of sugar in my "regular" brownie recipe was a must to account for the additional sugar in the chocolate. I should have also ditched one of the 3 eggs I normally use because the texture was just odd—not moist and chewy, but rather dense though not heavy. I know, how contradictory does that sound?! It was kind of like a souffle-meets-molten chocolate cake if both are slightly over-baked, you follow me? Just trust me, it was not the texture anyone is looking for in a brownie, except maybe someone who likes a cakeier brownie... you know, crazy people.

In the end, the chocolate taste was good, but the overall color was quite a bit lighter than my usual brownie. I'm still a little amazed that the chili, even the cayenne, didn't come through at all. By the way, that's a little Maldon Salt on top of the brownies, in case you were wondering. Back to (almost) square one I go. It's a challenge now to nail this chili-heat spiked brownie, but that's kind of the fun part, and I'll be approaching it from a bit of a different angle next time. Stay tuned.

DREAMY, DREAMY ICE CREAM. THANKS LEE BAILEY!

July 24, 2017 by Joanna Winn-Buono in dessert

Lee Bailey's Country Desserts is one of my very favorite dessert cookbooks of all time. It's not just that the recipes are great, which they are, it was the way he wrote, the stories and advice he shared in all his books. Friendly, approachable and real. So you're pie crust isn't picture perfect, eh, it happens, it's still going to be delicious. Besides, it seems to me that often times when something looks just so beautiful and perfect, the taste ends up being disappointing. Am I alone here? Maybe it's just me.

I've had this book for years and have looked repeatedly at the enticing photos of scoops of ice cream, ices and sherbets in pretty bowls and glasses but for some insane reason I had never made any of them. Now I've made two and I will continue making these two over and over again because they're THAT good and THAT easy. I have big plans to make some of the other ice cream recipes as well. I'm sharing these two because, well, it's nice to share and also because the book is, like all of Lee Bailey's cookbooks (I think, sadly), out of print. You can track them down used online, or if you're lucky, in a used bookstore. I found his Soup Meals cookbook by chance like that. Now, without further ramblings ...

Chocolate Nougat Ice Cream. If you love chocolate, make this now, if you don't love chocolate, make it anyway, might change your mind. The ice cream base smells and tastes so good I could actually eat it like soup. It's true, but it's even better as ice cream, so do that.

I used Valrhona Chocolate, 85% cacao, because I had the perfect amount on hand. I will be experimenting with other percentages of cacao because that's the perfect excuse to keep making this, research, all in the name of research. Little Tip: I chilled the base overnight in the fridge for both these ice cream recipes. It's so much easier than waiting, just go to bed, in the morning it'll be ready to churn.

Churned and ready for the freezer. Goes in light in color but darkens as it goes from a soft serve consistency to scoopable ice cream.

Espresso Ice Cream. This is so smooth and creamy, a real coffee lovers dream. Plus, the base is even faster to whip up than the chocolate.

There you have it. Two perfect, easy ice cream recipes to get you through the rest of summer and beyond ... because ice cream should be made and eaten often. Words to live by.

We all scream for strawberry basil ice cream

June 01, 2017 by Joanna Winn-Buono in dessert

I bought a lot of strawberries at the farmers market with no real plan in mind. Ate a bunch just by themselves, mixed some with basil then figured I'd use the rest for ice cream. Instead of regular old strawberry ice cream, not that there's anything at all wrong with that, why not strawberry basil ice cream? Exactly, why not! So I pulled out my copy of Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream and used that recipe for Strawberry Ice Cream with the addition of basil. Let me show you how I did it.

First off, I used a potato masher to crush the strawberries in a bowl, it just seems easier to me and I've done it before, works every time. I don't always have whole milk on hand so I used 1 cup 2% milk along with the 2 cups of heavy cream. I cooked the cream, milk, remaining tablespoon of sugar and pinch of kosher salt over medium heat as the recipe states, whisking and removing from the heat just before it comes to a boil. At this point I stirred in about a ¼ cup of sliced basil leaves and let the whole mixture just steep on the counter until it was cool enough to transfer to the refrigerator. I let the basil infuse over night and that gave the base a really nice subtle basil flavor.

The next day when I was ready to make the ice cream both the cream base and crushed strawberries were well chilled after a night in the fridge. Perfect conditions for making ice cream. Before adding the cream base to the strawberries you need to strain out the basil. Once the base is strained add it to the strawberries, stirring to combine and you're ready to get churning.

For churning, follow the directions for whatever ice cream maker you have. Don't be tempted to over churn, I've made butter ice cream a few times, not good. Transfer the ice cream to a freezer safe container and cover tightly. It'll take, like the recipe says, at least 4 hours to firm up. Maybe my freezer is set to arctic blast, I should probably check that, but the ice cream gets rock hard so you're going to want to set it out for a while and let it soften a bit before you try scooping it. So get out there, get some strawberries, some basil, make some ice cream. It's really easy and you won't be sorry when you're sitting there with a bowl of creamy, refreshing strawberry basil ice cream.