Friday Night Challenge 9: Dessert Night

Last Friday night I was given a challenge that turned from the initial idea of a dessert of simplicity to one of decadence. Without further ado, here's a quick yet elegant dessert for you to try sometime.


Ingredients: an angel food cake, strawberries, whipped cream, dark chocolate chips, and light rum.


Split the angel food cake horizontally and allow it to soak in light rum for a number of hours. Melt the chocolate chips in order to drizzle over the dessert. Slice a strawberry into thin pieces.


Assembly: one layer of angel food cake, a bit of whipped cream, a layer of strawberries, the top layer of of angel food cake, more whipped cream, a drizzle of chocolate and a strawberry on top. Drizzle a bit more chocolate on the plate and around the piece of cake. Drop a few chocolate chips around with a couple more slices of strawberry. Extremely easy and quick.

Friday Night Challenge 4: Bourbon-Infused Walnut Chocolate w/ Whipped Cream

Tonight in honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day, I decided we needed a good dessert challenge. So...out went the call. The ingredients suggested were:
                   chocolate, cool whip, pecans, bourbon, and brown sugar.
I had to make two substitutions: no cool whip, so I used whipped cream; no pecans, so I used walnuts.


I warmed the walnuts tossed in with brown sugar in a 375 oven. While these were heating, I shaved a piece of 70% dark chocolate into crumbs and set aside. I then melted some white chocolate and additional dark chocolate in the oven that was now cooling from the walnuts' previous visit there.


Once everything was melted, I did the following:
--mix the walnuts with the melted white chocolate; infuse with some good bourbon (I used Evan Williams). Put this into the freezer just long enough to set up
--pull from the freezer, form the whipped cream into a heart shape on top of the walnut/chocolate/bourbon layer
--sprinkle the chocolate crumbs to accentuate the heart shape
--take a fork and "sling" some of the melted chocolate around the walnut mixture


                                        Happy Valentine's Day dessert!

Orange Zest Dessert

Looking for a fairly easy yet pretty dessert that uses just three ingredients (including water)? Try orange zest dessert.
First zest an orange into strips (use a vegetable peeler to make this easier). Then, taking a pair of kitchen shears, cut the zest into narrow strips. Put a pan of water onto boil with the strips added in and then turn the heat down and cook until they're pretty tender (around 10 minutes). While this is happening, you can section the orange (use one orange per serving--navel oranges are best--no seeds!) Once you take the peels off the burner, pour them into a bowl and then, using the same pan, mix 1/3 c. sugar and 2 or 3 T. water and put onto boil, stirring occasionally until this turns to syrup. Once it is "syrupy", add the peels in, turn down to medium, and let them cook for at least 10 minutes. They'll reach a shiny and chewy stage; remove them from the syrup and add the orange sections to coat and cook about 5 minutes. It might take two rounds to get all the slices done. Put the slices into a pretty bowl, add the candied peels on top, and put into the fridge to cool. Enjoy!

Insanely Simple and Good Oatmeal Cookies

I have found a recipe with which I will never part. I was looking for something kind of light dish for tonight's dessert and decided upon cookies. We're fans of oatmeal cookies around here, so I started looking for a recipe. I found one and then, after reviewing it in this blog, found that I barely followed it...oh well, here's what I came up with:
Cream together 2 sticks of butter (I really like KerryGold Irish butter--my guess is if I can find it, you can) and 1 1/2 c. sugar (the more fine the better). Once this is done, you can drop in one egg and 1 t. of vanilla. Then start adding in 1 3/4 c. flour, 1 t. baking soda, and 1 t. baking powder. Once this is done, then mix in 1 1/2 c. instant cooking oatmeal. Spoon these out and and bake for about 13 minutes at 350 degrees. This makes around 3 dozen cookies. They bake down very thinly and brown nicely and lightly around the edges.

Enjoy!