When I came across this recipe for “Indian Spiced Peanut Brittle” on 28 Cooks, I knew it would be a fun treat to try making for our recent housewarming party. I’d never made peanut brittle before, and assumed that it would be a pretty time-consuming affair involving standing over a hot stove with a thermometer, waiting for the perfect time to pour, stir, etc. Well, with the exception of remembering to keep an eye on the bowl, it’s pretty much a no-brainer in the microwave — yes, the microwave! Not only that, it was a fantastic way to use up the light corn syrup and peanuts that we had in the pantry.

Once we saw how easy the first recipe was, we made a second batch using some leftover white chocolate. Both were delicious and a big hit at the party.

Chris says:

Oh my god, these spices in here rule. I love the savory along with the sweet.

Matt says:

Mmmmmm… I love the way those spices sneak up on you. Very good.

Lisa says:

Ooh, next time for the white chocolate I want to try lining the parchment with the chocolate and then then pouring the peanut mixture over the top instead of mixing it in.

Chris says:

That sounds cool, you’d have whole bits of chocolate in there.

Amy says:

I think you guys just figured out what to give people for Christmas presents next year!

Chris says:

Genius!

Peanut Brittle
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1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 c light corn syrup
1/8 tsp kosher salt
1 cup dry-roasted unsalted peanuts
1/2 tbsp butter
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the Sweet White Chocolate Peanut Brittle:
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1/2 White Chocolate candy bar, broken into pieces

For the Savory “Indian Spiced” Peanut Brittle:
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1/4 tsp coriander seeds
1/4 tsp fennel seeds
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp whole white peppercorns
1/8 tsp cumin seeds

Use a mortar and pestle to crush the spices together.

1. Combine the sugar, corn syrup, salt, and peanuts in a microwave-safe dish. Heat on high for four minutes, stir well, and return to the microwave for an additional 2-4 minutes until it just starts to slightly darken, making sure it doesn’t burn.
2. Remove from the microwave, add the butter and stir well. If making the sweet peanut brittle, add the chocolate and stir well.
3. Return to the microwave for an additional 1-2 minutes.
4. Remove from the microwave and add the baking soda and vanilla, stirring well. If making the savory peanut brittle, add the crushed spices and stir well.
5. Spread on the parchment-lined baking sheet and let cool. When set, break into pieces and store in an airtight container.

Notes:
On microwaving: Microwave times vary based on the power of your oven, so watch that bowl. If it starts to brown darkly and smoke, your brittle may be toast, and not the edible kind!
On washing the bowl: After you pour out the contents of the bowl on the parchment paper, whatever’s left will quickly harden, and you may think you have an evening of hard scrubbing ahead of you. No worries, though, remember it’s basically just hardened sugar in that bowl, so just fill it with water, let it sit for a while, and when you return you should find that it has all dissolved.

Lisa made this recipe from the book Fitness Food. We didn’t have a baking pan that was the size the recipe asks for, so she used an 8×8 pan and put the remaining mix in muffin pan lined with paper cups. The recipe yielded a full 8×8 pan plus 4 cupcakes.

Lisa says:

Yay for bonus cupcakes!

Chris says:

They’re so good with ice cream and that chocolate sauce. What’s with the walnut on that one brownie?

Lisa says:

There was a walnut laying around, so why not?

Chris says:

Good call.

Reduced Fat Fudge Brownie Cupcakes
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oil spray
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup self-rising flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup superfine sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp canola oil
7 oz low-fat vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup apple sauce
powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350. Spray an 12×8 baking dish with the oil and line the base and 2 long sides with baking paper. Sift the flours, baking soda, and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Combine the eggs, sugar, vanilla, oil, yogurt, and apple sauce. Add to the flour and mix well. Spread into baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
The brownie will sink slightly in the center as it cools. Leave in the pan for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool. Dust with powdered sugar, cut, and serve.

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
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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
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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…