Lisa made these delicious treats from a recipe in the Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites cookbook. It made for a nice dessert following the swordfish.

Chris says:

What smells like pancakes in here?

Carrie says:

Yum! Were these really hard to make?

Lisa says:

No, they were easy… I just didn’t know how to cut them right.

Chris says:

I don’t care how they’re cut, they’re awesome. I’ll be taking these with me tomorrow…

Maple Walnut Biscotti
———————
1 3/4 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet with cooking spray or a very light coating of oil.

In a large mixing bow, sift together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt.

Lightly beat the eggs and add them to the flour mixture. Stir in the maple syrup, vanilla, and walnuts, mixing just until the dough is smooth.

Using a rubber spatula and floured hands, scoop half of the dough out of the bowl and onto one side of the baking sheet. Shape the dough into a 15-inch long log. Make a second log on the other side of the baking tray with the remaining dough. Space the logs at least 6-inches apart.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the top of each biscotti log is firm. Remove them with a long spatula to a wire rack and cool for 10-15 minutes. Cut each log on a severe diagonal into about 20 1/2-inch thick slices and place them, cut side down, on the baking sheet.

Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake for 15 minutes. Hot from the oven, the biscotti might be slightly soft in the center, but they will harden as they cool. Allow them to cool completely.

Tonight Lisa made another successful dessert from a recipe she spotted in Cooking Light. Individual lemony bread puddings, with blueberries and a sweet-tart lemon curd.

Lisa says:

So lemony! That lemon curd totally puckers me up.

Megan says:

This is really good, where’d you find fresh blueberries?

Lisa says:

The frozen aisle…

Megan says:

Really? They taste totally awesome in this.

Chris says:

I swear I could eat this for dessert every night.

Lisa says:

You hated bread pudding like two years ago!

Chris says:

Mostly because I didn’t know what it was. I just imagined banana pudding with hunks of bread in it or something. This rules.

Blueberry Bread Puddings with Lemon Curd
—————————————–
Puddings:
1 1/4 cups 2% reduced-fat milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
4 1/2 cups (1/2-inch) cubed French bread (about 8 ounces)
Cooking spray
1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries, divided

Lemon curd:
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons butter

Combine milk, sugar, lemon rind, and egg in a bowl and stir well with a whisk. Add the cubed French bread and toss to coat. Cover the bowl, place in the refrigerator and chill at least 30 minutes, preferably longer.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Spray 8 6-ounce ramekins with cooking spray and fill the cups using half of the bread mixture, then half of the berries. Layer the remaining bread and remaining berries on top, and cover each with foil. Place in a deep baking pan filled with hot water to a depth of 1 inch. Bake, covered for 15 minutes, then remove foil and bake an additional 15 minutes or until set.

To prepare lemon curd, combine the sugar and egg in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring with a whisk. Cook 2 minutes or until sugar dissolves, while continuing to stir. Add in the lemon juice and butter; cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly with the whisk.

Place saucepan in a large ice-filled bowl for 5 minutes or until lemon curd cools to room temperature. Serve lemon curd over warm bread puddings.

8 Servings

Taste & Create is a food blogging event in which you are randomly paired up with another particpant, and each of you try a recipe from the other’s food blog. For Taste & Create V, We [Heart] Food was paired up with Stephanie from a whisk and a spoon. As soon as the partner list was posted, I rushed to check out what delicious dinner item or side dish I would be preparing for the event. Oops! Turns out Stephanie is big-time into posting delicious looking cakes and sweets, items I’ve never tried making! (I don’t bake.) After perusing the site a bit more, and checking out recipes for both sweet and savory items, I decided to go for broke and chose what I thought was the most delicious-sounding recipe on the site: Cranberry Bliss Cupcakes. The cupcakes are Burnt Butter Brown Sugar, filled with cranberry sauce, and frosted with a white chocolate ganache with dried cranberries and toasted pecans. Sounds delicious, right? With the exception of my overbaking the cupcakes (dry! thank goodness they were filled…) they were very tasty — the frosting was a *big* hit.

I must say that I have a new-found respect for bakers… putting together these cupcakes was a comedy of errors. Here are some things I learned:

Lesson 1: Ingredients really matter in baking! Usually substitute margarine or some other spread for butter? Guess what? “Burnt Butter” needs … butter. Not some oil-based spread. First off, it won’t brown, and secondly, once it melts, it ain’t coming back to a solid any time soon.

Lesson 2: Don’t rush it! I figured I could whip these up before dinner, take the pics, and be done with it. Bzzzzt, wrong. Not only did I have to throw in an extra trip to the store mid-recipe to buy butter (see Lesson 1), my cranberry sauce filling never gelled — why? Instead of letting it cool to room temperature first, I just stuck it right into the fridge after removing it from the pan. Now, this ended up being a happy accident; we just filled the cupcakes with whole cranberries that were soaking in the simple syrup: they made a satisfying liquid explosion when you bit through the cake. Lisa and I both loved that.

Lesson 3: Watch the clock! The yang to the yin of Lesson 2… I left the cupcakes in the oven just a few minutes too long and they ended up pretty dry. I’m used to just being able to eyeball something to check for doneness — in this case I should have just used a timer.

Lesson 4: Essential Baker’s Equipment: A blow-dryer. You read that right! The ganache was nice and fluffy when it only had the cream and white chocolate, but as we added in the soft butter… it broke. In a big way. It turned into what looked like a bowl of cottage cheese — disaster! We tried everything… whipping it more, adding more butter… oy. Nothing worked. We stuck it in the fridge hoping that might firm it up a bit, but when we tried whipping it then, the entire blob ended up stuck INSIDE the whisk, and looked like a frozen block of cottage cheese that was weeping milk. Sad, sad, sad, and ruined… or so I thought. I did some web searches and found others who had the same situation, and someone presented what sounded like a strange fix: Use a blow-dryer to heat both the bowl and the frosting sludge for just a few seconds in each spot while you continue to whisk. Sounded crazy, but we were desperate. I was on whisk duty while Lisa manned the dryer. At first it just seemed to cause the huge glob to separate even more, but after a minute or two… whoa! It’s coming together! And of course, once it reached the right consistency, it stayed that way.

So — in spite of all the “issues” I ran into, I was pretty satisfied with the results, especially with that delicious frosting. The recipe can be found here, for those of you with better baking skills than yours truly.

Lisa says:

Did you tell them you brought these cupcakes to a professional baker?

Chris says:

You just *had* to bring that up… anyway, she was impressed with the frosting, and said that baking is way harder than cooking. Even if it was a lie, it made me feel a little better.

Lisa says:

You’re too hard on yourself. I loved the filling, and she wasn’t lying about the frosting… it ruled! I think if you would have pulled the cupcakes out about 5 minutes sooner they would have been totally fine.

Chris says:

I was wondering what that timer in the kitchen was for…

Another catch-up post; Lisa made this as an alternative addition to the usual pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. This recipe comes from Cooking Light; the crust was somewhat of a disappointment, but we loved, loved, loved the filling.

Lisa says:

What’s this “we”? Not all of us loved the filling.

Chris says:

What? You’re nuts — I was stealing leftovers every time I walked by the fridge. How can you not like it? It has *bourbon* in it!

Lisa says:

I didn’t like the consistency; I think I should have blended it a bit more. I wanted it smoother. And I hated the crust. Stupid Cooking Light.

Chris says:

I think if you made it the exact same way but just used a ready-made pie crust it would be perfect.

Lisa says:

*Maybe*. I just wish we had more of those brussels sprouts.

Chris says:

…or you could make it the same way except leave everything out but the bourbon, and instead of slicing it you could just pour it in a glass.

Sweet Potato-Bourbon Pie
—————-
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons stick margarine
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 ounce block-style fat-free cream cheese (about 4 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 medium sweet potatoes (about 2 1/4 pounds)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons bourbon or 1/4 teaspoon rum extract and 3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons stick margarine
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
2 large eggs
Cooking spray
2 teaspoons water
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
1/4 cup chopped pecans
Preparation
Preheat oven to 400°.

Combine first 4 ingredients in a medium bowl; beat at medium speed of a mixer until light and creamy. Add vanilla and 1 egg; beat well. Gradually add flour, beating at low speed until moist. Press mixture gently into a 5-inch circle on heavy-duty plastic wrap; cover with additional plastic wrap. Chill 1 hour.

While dough chills, bake sweet potatoes. Bake at 400° for 55 minutes or until very tender. Cool. Reduce oven temperature to 350°. Peel potatoes; place potato pulp, brown sugar, and next 8 ingredients (brown sugar through eggs) in a large bowl. Beat at medium speed of a mixer until smooth; set aside.

Roll dough, still covered, into an 11-inch circle. Remove 1 sheet of plastic wrap, and fit dough into a 9-inch tart pan coated with cooking spray. Remove top sheet of plastic wrap. Spoon potato mixture into prepared crust. Combine 2 teaspoons water and egg white, and brush edges of dough with egg white mixture. Sprinkle potato mixture with chopped pecans. Bake tart at 350° for 1 hour or until puffy and set. Cool on a wire rack.

10 servings

Lisa’s been hankerin’ for this boozy treat for a while now, and she finally found the time to whip it up tonight.

Lisa says:

Wow, this is super sweet. My favorite is the whipped cream and the rims.

Chris says:

Gulp… gulp… gulp… Aaaahhhhh….!!! Delicious!

Kahlua Hot Chocolate
——————–
5 ounces dark chocolate, cut into small pieces, plus extra for mug rims
chopped mixed nuts (peanuts and hazelnuts)
3 cups 1% milk
1 cups fat-free half-and-half cream
sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup Kahlua
1 cup whipping cream, whipped
grated chocolate

To prepare the mugs, heat extra chocolate in a double-boiler until melted and smooth. Dip the rims of each mug into the chocolate, and then roll in chopped nuts. Refrigerate until ready to fill with the hot chocolate.

Heat the chocolate, milk and half and half cream over medium heat in a heavy saucepan, stirring until the chocolate has melted.
Whisk until the mixture is hot and frothy. Add in sugar if desired. Add in the Kahlua and vanilla; contine to whisk until the mixture is hot. Remove from heat.
Pour into prepared mugs and top with whipped cream. Garnish with shaved chocolate.