Category: Desserts

  • Smoked Salty Almond Chocolate Cookies

    Stack

    If you’ve read our About page, you would know that Leili and I met while working at a bakery in Boston. Allow me to garnish with extra information on our delicious friendship. Leili worked back of house as a baker while I worked front of house – we quickly became friends by talking about boys and her occasionally sneaking me sweets.

    Between the two of us, Leili is the sweets and I am the salty. I have always been intimidated by baking but slowly unlearning that fear. This all changed very recently when Leili got me the Not Without Salt Cookie Mix by the great Ashley Rodriguez for Christmas.

    Mis

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  • Sea Salt Caramel Hot Chocolate

    FinalGuys, it’s almost the end of the year and I’m sure resolutions are being drafted up. But before we commit to those good habits, let’s have one more splurge and indulge in something decadent. We deserve it, don’t we?

    Tcho

    Leili and I love the marriage of salty and sweet – Leili is kind of a mega-girl fan of that coupling and that’s an understatement. So naturally, this hot chocolate with salted caramel fits the bill. And since it’s so close to the New Year, why not add some Bailey’s to it and be merry?

    Ganache

    This recipe is very similar to the hot chocolate we used to make at the cafe we worked at. It is made with ganache and steamed milk – I won’t go too in depth with ganache since Leili already covered that in the chocolate truffles recipe. I use two different types of chocolate since it was all I had but it comes out to about 67% cocoa. Use the chocolate you like, but keep in mind that the caramel is rather sweet and if you’re adding Bailey’s, well, then good for you.

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  • Dark Chocolate Truffles

    pistachio truffles

    I’m a sucker for Christmas music. From Nat King Cole to Mariah Carey, Christmas music gives me the warm and fuzzies. It throws me back to blurry childhood memories of coming in from the cold after a vicious snowball fight and eagerly tumbling over my siblings to get to the first cup of hot cocoa. It reminds me of that fresh pine smell and the way beautifully thick snow crunches underfoot. This time of year is filled with nostalgia, and I’m a fan.

    So I don’t waste any time when it comes to getting pumped for the holidays. Although I usually wait for the Thanksgiving dishes to be cleared, this year I couldn’t resist from listening to some Christmas songs in early November. This was not too appreciated by the people on the bus listening to me hum a little too loudly, nor by my boyfriend, who is the Grinch reincarnate. But I don’t care. The past few days have had me in a cookie baking frenzy as I try to wrap up all my holiday gifts, and I couldn’t have done it without the help of Bing Crosby’s familiar soothing voice reminding me that I’ll be home for Christmas.

    mocha truffles

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  • Hazelnut Buttercrunch Toffee

    buttercunch stacked

    I may love chocolate, but I’m not a candy fan. Jelly beans, sour gummies, hard candies, lollipops, Swedish fish…they just don’t do it for me. Cookies, brownies, cakes, mousses, and flaky pastries are more my thing…can you tell I’m a baker? I do have a HUGE sweet tooth, but candy is usually way too sweet for me. Or, at least that’s what I thought until last weekend, when I tried English toffee for the first time.

    Two words: Butter. Crunch. Say it with me. Buttercrunch. Crunchy, buttery buttercrunch.

    hazelnuts

    I never thought I’d be one to like toffee; I always thought of it as old lady candy. Or maybe I’m thinking of taffy?

    But after trying one bite I was converted. I believe my first words after it graced my tongue were “MMM BUTTERY”. It was not a stick-to-your-teeth caramel nor a painful-to-chew candy. It had a light, pleasant crunch and melted in my mouth after one bite (yeah, there was also chocolate on there – so it was officially better than brittle). This, my friends, was a candy game changer.

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  • Pear Cake with Caramel Chocolate Drizzle

    slice

    Everyone thinks I’ve ruined Thanksgiving.

    This year, I thought it would be fun to try a new dessert. I just decided that if Thanksgiving comes every single year, then there’s no harm in playing around with new food. If it doesn’t work out or if my family hates me for taking away their pie, then I can do better next year.

    And honestly? I’m tired of pie. I like it just fine, but I’m bored with always eating the same ones. In the past I’ve been known to make chocolate cake in addition to pies for Thanksgiving, just so I would have something a little different on the table.

    drizzle

    That’s the other problem I wanted to fix: lack of chocolate. As I’ve mentioned before, I need it to survive. It baffles me that there is not a single ounce of chocolate in a traditional Thanksgiving. So I took it upon myself to finally put an end to this madness.

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  • Flourless Bittersweet Brownies

    stack

    Sometimes, I just need to shove some chocolate into my face.

    It feels like more than just a craving. It’s a necessity. Without it I go through withdrawals, getting easily disoriented and inexplicably anxious. It’s gotten so bad that after tearing apart my kitchen without finding so much as a single chocolate chip, I’ve sprinted out into the rain at one in the morning to the 24-hour store just to pick up a couple chocolate bars. (My roommate at the time hesitantly joined me, more out of fear of my chocolate mania than out of solidarity.)

    brownie mise melted chocolate

    Chocolate isn’t just delicious, people. It runs through my veins.

    So if you’re like me, then you know most brownies just don’t make the cut. They’re more sweet than chocolatey; or more cake than brownie. And I’m officially done with those. Because when you can have these rich, chewy, decadently dark chocolate brownies, there’s no point wasting your taste buds on anything less.

    eggs and sugar ribbons

    Did I mention these are flourless? There’s no flour in this recipe – of any kind. So they’re gluten-free, but without any weird gums or sneaky vegetables keeping things together (here’s looking at you, black bean brownies). To make these, I just created a hybrid recipe of my two favorites and replaced the flour with cocoa powder. The result is a super-rich and extra chocolatey brownie that isn’t the least bit cakey. Yet it isn’t overly sweet like fudge, either. It’s just right.

    batter spread

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  • White and Dark Chocolate Pistachio Cookies

    Final

    Since I started cooking and baking, I’ve been all about the marriage of sweet and salty in a single, perfect bite. And there’s a reason sweet and salty go so well together: science. It’s just how our taste buds were built.

    Butter Egg

    I know I’m late to the whole sweet and savory game with these cookies, but that actually makes me really happy. It means that now I can look for any recipe for salted cookies and get pages of results to choose from. I’m not alone in the corner putting salt in my sweets anymore (or sweets in my salties), and that’s pretty damn cool.

    Mix 2 Pistachio

    These cookies are big, so they’re soft in the middle and slightly chewy around the edges. In addition to the salted pistachios, white chocolate chunks and dark chocolate discs, we’re also throwing in a hint of orange zest. You can barely taste it and it really rounds out the flavors, but you can also easily leave it out. (more…)

  • Blueberry Ice Cream

    FInal

    When I was younger, my family and I would stay with my great-grandmother in Vermont nearly every summer. The small house was situated on the corner of two intersecting dirt roads, with an ancient wood-burning oven to keep warm in the winters and an apple tree out back that was perfect for my small hands to climb.

    Nearby there was a hill where you could pick your own blueberries, so every summer we’d craft make-shift buckets out of empty water gallons by cutting the tops off, and pick as many berries as we could fit in our buckets while still snagging a few handfuls to snack on.

    Back at the house I would help my mother wash the giant batch of berries, pick out all the leaves and stems, and then watch as my mother would make jars of fresh jam and blueberry pie. So much pie! To this day the smell of freshly baked blueberry pie throws me back to those sweltering summers spent in that rustic Vermont kitchen watching my mom bake, while I stole bites of raw pie dough when I thought she wasn’t looking.

    Jam

    Blueberry season is now almost over, so get the fresh ones while you can! Then make this ice cream to cool off. Although I didn’t pick these blueberries myself, I did get them from a local farm. Still good vibes.

    Pour
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