Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Unhealthy Chocolate Cake

OK, so in the spirit of wanting to be more like Drew I bought an iPhone (actually it's a birthday gift) and had my girlfriend (not fiance) bake for me. Unlike Nicki, Sarah is not a nutritionist, so she decided to make a chocolate cake and substitute unhealthy alternatives wherever possible.
I don't know exactly how she made it, because I was busy watching the Sox game and drinking beer. But I do know that it involves 4 eggs (extra cage & hormones for Dags), lots of chocolate chips, sour cream for some reason, and cake and pudding mix or something. Then it went into a funny shaped bowl (seen below), the oven for 1 hour, then my mouth (that's what she said).
After baking I sprinkled it with confectioner's sugar (my own touch) and that was that.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Pie

Let me officially welcome you to Dude’s Desert Day. Yeah, it’s spelled wrong. It’s still delicious! And in my case has poor grammar and spelling. Since no one actually bothered to explain what Dude’s Des(s)ert Day is, allow me. One fine day, our founding father (know simply as Dubs) took a break from his speed-walking and decided to grace us with both his presence and a home-made key lime pie. At the time some of us (well me specifically) had never had a key lime pie. Needless to say, it was delicious. Someone (me thinks it was S.Dot) said “We should do this every week!”, and thusly Dudes Dessert Day was born. Notice the correct spelling, since you can not spell something wrong when you say it. The origin of Desert Day was a simple combination of someone (else’s) poor spelling, and Microsoft’s inability to detect incorrect word usage. If someone knows of a good homonym (or is it homophone) detector, please let me know. Smell that? That’s irony.

Now, on to my dessert:

The recipe for this dessert was originally published in Family Fun magazine, or possibly Family Circle magazine, or possibly Family Circus, or possibly Circus Fun magazine (substitute elephant poop for the chocolate and it totally works!). If you are the copyright holder of this recipe, I apologize for the poor citation.

Despite Drew’s anticipation in the previous post, this dessert is neither vegan (as were my two previous desserts) nor overly sugary. Don’t get me wrong, it is very sweet, but blame that on the ingredients.

You start with 1/3 of a cup of peanut butter. It should be all natural peanut butter. The ingredients list on the peanut butter should go something like “Peanuts, salt”. If the list is longer than that, or contains anything you could not spell during a spelling bee, you bought the wrong kind. My favorites are Whole Food’s grind it yourself peanut butter or Teddie brand, but anything similar will work. Put the peanut butter in a mixing bowl and add 1/3 of a cup of refrigerated sweetened condensed milk. Stir until mixed. Then add 2/3 of a cup of heavy cream and beat with a mixer for a few minutes. The “stuff” should take on the consistency of mayonnaise or pudding.

Set this aside, and melt 2/3 of a cup of fair trade chocolate chips (should be about ½ a cup after melting/licking the spoon several times). Anything not fair trade will explode and possibly burn your house down. Pour the melted chocolate and 1/3 of a cup of refrigerated sweetened condensed milk into another mixing bowl. Stir until mixed. Then add 2/3 of a cup of heavy cream and beat with a mixer for a few minutes. This “other, darker stuff” will not achieve the same thickness as the PB mixture. It should be more like olive oil.

Take the PB mixture and drop dollops of it into a pie crust. Out of sheer laziness, I used a pre-made chocolate crumb crust. You can use anything, but I recommend a chocolaty crust. After you have dolloped about half of the PB mixture into the crust, pour the chocolate mix over it until it’s covered. Repeat the process until you have used up all of both mixtures or your spouse/significant other intervenes.

Top the pie with something fun like the remainder of the chocolate chips, crushed peanuts, or diced artichoke hearts. Put it in the fridge or freezer to set. It can be eaten frozen straight from the freezer, but I prefer to let it warm up to room temp, at which point it will regain it’s pudding like consistency. Top with your favorite non-gelatinous whipped cream (sorry “Cool-Whip”, you’ve got way too many ingredients for my diet).

For best results, freeze the pie overnight, then strap it to the tank of your motorcycle and bomb down the highway for 30-45 minutes. Nothin’ makes a pie taste better than a few bugs in your teeth.

Jon, you’re up next. Well rested after more than a week in Cali, you better bring it!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Raspberry Granola Bar Surprise + Blueberry Buckle!


Healthy Desserts?

I would like to preface this post with a few notes and excuses. I would like to apologize for the tardiness of this post. The excuses are as follows: this is my first blog (go easy on me), I couldn’t find the author invitation (Jon hid it in my gmail account), and apparently I am a procrastinator. Luckily for everyone’s taste buds, Nicki doesn’t procrastinate nor need any excuses. Additionally, this only my interpretation of Nicki’s dietary information.

This week Nicki and I chose to make a Raspberry Granola Bar Surprise and a Blueberry Buckle due to our love of desserts with fruit (similar to Dags’ love for sugar, Tristan’s love of vanilla, and Dubs’ love of estimating). I made two desserts because I am an overachiever (or because my fiancĂ© is a dietitian who likes to bake).

Since Nicki is a dietitian, our desserts usually contain things like whole wheat flour, yogurt instead of sour cream, and apple sauce or fruit preserves instead of oil. These substitutions come with many exceptions, and in these desserts, the exceptions are both butter and canola oil. Butter was needed in the Blueberry Buckle in order to get a proper mouth feel of the crumb topping and to keep the cake heavy. Canola oil was used in the Raspberry Granola Bars in order to make them crispy. Canola oil has a healthy fatty acid profile, has omega 3, and is mild tasting (props to Nicki).

The dessert pictured to the left is the Raspberry Granola Bar Surprise. This was created with whole wheat flour, canola oil, eggs (from Briggs Farm in PA), cinnamon, brown sugar, almond extract, raspberry preserves (also from Briggs Farm), and chocolate chips. The dessert pictured to the right is the Blueberry Buckle. This was created with white sugar (yeah Dags!), all purpose flour, butter, eggs, cinnamon, vanilla extract (yeah Tristan!), and about 1892 blueberries (is this close enough Dubs?). It also has a topping of brown sugar, whole wheat flour, and butter. This is called a buckle because there are so many blueberries and such a heavy crumb topping that the batter buckles in the oven while it bakes.

You’re up Dags. I look forward to some vegan sugary goodness.

-Drew

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Chocolate Biscuit Cake

Jon,

Thanks for getting this up on the site. So now that this is up there I will do my best to comment on the "desert". Drew asked me to make a last minute trade with him the day before I needed to get this thing created. I sat and asked myself what a good desert might be and was quickly reminded of a desert that I had not had since I was a child. You know, back in the days when eating an entire 5 pound bag of sugar was actually a good idea. For that matter the first ingredient is 1 entire box of confectionery sugar, 1 stick of butter, 3 heaping spoons of bitter sweat hershey's cocoa powder, a box of social tea biscuits and two eggs. The result is a fudge with biscuits interlaced that has the sugar content to makes your teeth hurt so much that you get a headache. What can I say, a 4 year old's dream. It is something that is great with a strong black coffee and was even sure enough to satisfy the sugar craving of Dag's. Can't wait for next desert day...Tristan