It’s strawberry season! And you know what that means! Yes, it means delectably juicy and flavorful strawberries… but it also inevitably means slightly-past-their prime berries that are going mushy, or never-quite-ripened berries that sneaked their way into your box. This recipe turns those berries into pure summer perfection. Plus, it has yogurt in it, so you can claim that it’s healthy…
I based these strawberry yogurt popsicles on a strawberry frozen yogurt recipe I fell in love with from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, which is full of fabulous recipes. It’s a fantastic fruity frozen yogurt– full of bright strawberry flavor with none of the heaviness of regular ice cream. There’s so much fruit in it, it’s practically a sorbet. But I really didn’t feel like waiting to freeze my ice cream maker insert for 24 hours before I could use my fast-ripening berries, so I decided to just make the mix and freeze it in popsicle molds instead.
It was perfect. Ordinarily the churning action lightens the yogurt and makes it soft and scoopable, but frozen in molds it turned out to make the perfect popsicle texture– icy and firm, but still bite-able. And of course, that summery strawberry flavor still comes through perfectly. I’m betting you could make these with frozen strawberries just as well, if you’re looking for a taste of summer when it’s not the height of strawberry season. Enjoy!
“More carrot cake jam?”– you may ask, wondering just how many more recipes for this delectable condiment I have planned. Well, this is my last variation, and it’s just as delicious as the previous ones. It’s simple, really– standard bite-sized cheesecakes with a swirl of jam baked into them– but irresistible once you’ve tried one. I like them best frozen, and really can’t decide whether I like these or the Carrot Cake Ice Cream better. Obviously, the recipe would work equally well with a jam or preserve of your choice– I’m thinking sour cherry next time?
I will note that this recipe makes 40 bite-sized cheesecakes in a mini muffin pan. I used a silicone pan, which made it a snap to remove the chilled cheesecakes– if you’re using metal, I recommend using paper liners. If you don’t have two mini muffin pans, the unbaked crumbs and filling will keep at room temperature while you bake and freeze your first batch– just don’t let it sit overnight or anything.
Oooh, this is good, you guys. Really good. I swear, I’ve been looking for a good carrot cake ice cream for ages, and I’ve tried it at a bunch of excellent ice cream parlors, but this is definitely the best one I have EVER had. It starts with my carrot cake jam (which I really can’t get enough of, in case you couldn’t tell), which gets swirled generously into a no-churn ice cream that tastes like frozen cream cheese frosting. Add in a generous handful of graham cracker crumbs (you could add nuts as well), and you have a sinfully delicious scoop of creamy, gooey-chewy (that’s a word, right?), carrot cake-y goodness.
Once you’ve made the jam, this recipe takes almost no time at all to come together, and I guarantee it’s worth the effort. I’m already plotting when I can make my next batch, because I’m already reaching the bottom of the container on this one and can’t stand the thought of running out!
So, having made (and loved) my carrot cake jam, it was time to make macarons! They turned out absolutely delicious– the macaron shell was just “cakey” enough to really evoke carrot cake, with the almonds lending a nutty background. The filling combination– carrot jam and cream cheese frosting– was perfectly sweet and tangy at the same time. I know I say this a lot, but these may be a new favorite macaron recipe!
I’ll start by noting that my decision to make this jam was mostly a happy accident– that being said, I’m so glad I did, because the results were *amazing*.
Anyway, I had some egg whites left over from my Dulce de Leche Flan, which made me start thinking about baking macarons to use them up (because why waste them on something easy?). And then I wondered what flavor of macaron I might want to make, and since Easter is coming up I thought about carrots, and carrot cake. But how to infuse carrot cake flavor into a macaron? Well, that’s where the carrot cake jam came in.
You’ll see the finished macarons later, but this jam is good for so many other things– it’s great with cream cheese on toast, delicious as a filling for cookies or tartlets, but my favorite use has to be for making the very best carrot cake ice cream *ever* (don’t worry, recipe to come).
The jam itself is sweet, spicy, and has a nice array of textures due to the variety of ingredients. I particularly like the pecans– without them the jam is awfully sweet, and they add a background savoriness that evokes the “cake” feeling of the original inspiration. You might also consider adding some shredded coconut, if you like it in your carrot cake generally. Either way, it’s sure to be sticky, gooey, and delicious!
The other day I was at the grocery store, minding my own business in the Latin-American food aisle, when I spied a can of pre-made dulce de leche! I was unreasonably excited about this, but you’ve got to understand that it was the first time I’d ever actually seen it in real life– I’d always been told it was available, but I’d never seen it for myself.
Rather, I’d been reduced to making it from sweetened condensed milk, either using the highly dangerous boiling-the-can method, or the slow oven method. In any event, I was thrilled to find it ready-made, and even more thrilled that I’d finally be able to make my very favorite dulce de leche flan, which I first made about fifteen years ago and have pined after ever since.
This flan is amazingly creamy and smooth, with a nice caramelly flavor from the dulce de leche. Don’t overcook or you’ll lose the texture– the center should be jiggly when you shake the pan in the oven, and it’ll cook the rest of the way after you take it out.
Going out for dim sum as a kid, we would always get egg tarts for dessert. They were my dad’s favorite, and since they came three to a plate I would sometimes split one just for the sake of having something sweet to finish off the meal. Back then I leaned more towards chocolate desserts, but as I’ve grown up my tastes have gotten more diverse, and I’ve learned to appreciate a flaky crust filled with smooth, silken custard– and I’m betting that if my dad ever gets to taste these, he’ll like them even better than the ones in the restaurant.
I admit that making a fully-laminated dough for the crust is a bit labor-intensive– certainly more so than simply making a flaky pie crust or a melted-butter tart crust– but the crust is one of the distinctive elements that makes these tarts a classic.
I actually made two different crust recipes, just to see which one I liked better, and while I’m only 95% sure that I noted the correct recipe to use here (oops!) they were both pretty tasty, so I’m comfortable giving you this one. It was a little tough to roll out but the flaky layers were perfectly crispy.
I used foil tart pans (these were perfectly sized), but you could probably use a regular muffin pan if you were so inclined. There’s enough butter in the dough that I wouldn’t worry too much about sticking.
For Lunar New Year this year, I decided to try my hand at making some childhood favorite recipes– in this case, almond cookies. Honestly, store-bought almond cookies were never my favorite– I remember them mostly being vaguely sandy and shortbread-y and only slightly almond flavored– but nostalgia compelled me to try making my own. And I’m so glad I did!
These almond cookies are crisp and buttery, melting away in your mouth and leaving behind a distinctive almond flavor (okay, that’s almond extract). I think I might try an egg-yolk-only wash on top next time for an extra-golden color, but aside from that they’re perfect. Also in their favor is the fact that you don’t need to soften your butter ahead of time, though chilling the dough is still necessary. And the shaping and decorating process is something the whole family can get involved in!
When my daughter decided that she wanted a Harry Potter-themed party, perhaps unwisely, I promised to make her whatever kind of cake she wanted… and she chose a three-tiered cake that looked like stacked spellbooks. Made of three different flavors of cake (lemon, chocolate, and marble). Iced in buttercream, not fondant. Oh, boy…
The toughest part was definitely going to be getting nice, smooth, flat book covers without using fondant. Not that I blame her– frosting is definitely tastier– but it was going to be difficult. I thought back to her Kitty House Cake, though, and decided that I would make the book covers out of graham crackers, which were naturally flat and smooth, and had some structure to them.
In order to keep the frosting as smooth and leather-like as possible, I decided to spread it onto a sheet of parchment paper– once spread, I pressed the graham crackers directly into it (for a 9×9″ square cake I ended up with eight crackers per side, plus two more for the spine), then pushed the frosting up over the edges so they would be colored on all visible sides.
Then I spread a bit more frosting on top to keep things sticky, placed my cake up against one edge of the “bottom” cover, and frosted it with white frosting to resemble pages.
Once that was smoothed out, I used the parchment to wrap the rest of the cover over and around it. Luckily for me, the width of the spine was just about the same as the height of the cake, so it worked out nicely. Since it was pretty chilly outside I then put the whole thing under a cover in my garage to chill down and firm up– necessary to be able to unwrap the parchment later without smearing. I will admit that the cakes, once frosted and crackered, ended up being a LOT larger and heavier than I’d anticipated…
I peeled off the parchment paper from each book and carefully transferred each cake to a sheet of cardboard– the bottom one was on a big cardboard presentation board, while the top two were on 8×8″ squares that wouldn’t show once stacked. I pushed drinking straws into the bottom two layers to support the weight of the cakes on top.
Then I stacked the cakes, slightly askew, on top of each other– and they held! They looked great! It was time to decorate. I used a grass tip to make brown fur on the Monster Book of Monsters, but the other two books were left smooth. To add some extra detail I made a batch of candy clay (more on that later) and rolled it out to make book spines, plus one frontispiece for the top book, which I painted with gold highlighter dust and vodka so the books would have legible titles.
And here’s the cake! I love it. Also, it was huge, so I was giving away cake left and right to the party guests, which I’m sure they didn’t mind one bit!
All in all, I think this experiment went well. True, I went through massive amounts of butter to make all the frosting (and the red was inedible due to the sheer amount of red food coloring I had to stir in to get it bright enough– note to self: use the “no taste” coloring next time), but the structure held, and the frosting-covered graham crackers were actually a nice extra treat to nibble on between bites of cake.
I’ll have to try this technique again, perhaps with a smaller cake next time!
Not too sweet, these two-bite desserts have a nicely spiced filling and sparkle with coarse sugar on top. I actually like them better cold than hot– the pumpkin flavor seems to come through better that way– but they’re tasty either way!
It's All Frosting... 