What is 4 dessert?

For the wedding, I have contracted a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sundae bar. This was one wedding expense I was not willing to budge on.  I was prepared to go to the mattresses for this one! Luckily for all, no one fought me on it.

For the sundae bar we get to pick 4 ice cream flavors and 4 toppings, Ben & Jerry’s will supply them plus the whipped cream, caramel, and fudge. They also supply a server who will dish out as many sundaes as our guests can eat for 2 hours!

Friday, G. and I are on our way to the Ben & Jerry’s in Harold Square to sample ALL their available flavors. The menu that we were sent from the Kansas City location has 25 ice cream flavors and 3 sorbet flavors! How are we to only select 4? It almost seems criminal to have to discriminate against the other 24 flavors that we can’t pick!

— an hour later—

We made it to the Ben & Jerry’s! This location has a total of 30 flavors and we tried them ALL. I have the spoons to prove it.

There was a mix between ice creams, sorbets, and their new frozen Greek yogurt. The guy behind the counter, Cabeanie, was a dream! He was so nice and really knew his product. With each tasting spoon he handed us he told us a little something about each flavor and what made it unique.

For instance, did you know that AmeriCone Dream was just a test batch that wasn’t expected to succeed. It became such a success that it is now a staple provided in each B&Js. 

All the flavors were amazing! Seriously, no joke, awesome! Milk & Cookies tasted just like cookie soup. Chocolate Therapy, which is made with chocolate pudding, had the consistency of cold pudding that had been mixed with a scope of chocolate ice cream and had chunks of brownie tossed in - which is pretty much exactly what it is.

The big surprises for me were Chunkie Monkey, Pina Colada, and Vanilla Chocolate chip. I have to admit I’ve never tried Chunky Monkey because I’m not a fan of fake banana flavor, but this was made with real bananas!  The Pina Colada flavor reminded me of sitting by the pool in Puerto Rico. It was so refreshing and not too sweet with coconut shavings in it.  The Vanilla Chocolate Chip was actually made with Splenda and was surprisingly very tasty.

The sorbets were all pretty good. The most note worthy was the Lemonade, which reminded me of my childhood when we’d suck a lemon that had sugar on it.  Unfortunately you can’t really make an ice cream sundae out of sorbet so these were all ruled out. We also ruled out all of the Greek yogurts.

But alas, in the end we could only choose 4. So we had to consider what would make the very best ice cream sundaes. Our final picks were (insert drum roll):

1) Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream: Vanilla ice cream with fudge covered waffle cone pieces and a caramel swirl.

2) Chocolate Fudge Brownie: Chocolate ice cream with fudge brownies.

3) Mint Chocolate Chunk: Mint ice cream and fudge chunks.

4) Chunky Monkey: Banana ice cream with fudge chunks and walnuts.

After all the samples we were all hopped up on sugar and ready to take on the mad house of Macy’s. But it is all worth it, since I’m sure that this is going to be my favorite part of the wedding celebrations.

buen provecho!

Saturday G. and I were running errands on the Upper West Side. We had a sweet tooth and looked to Yelp for help. Levain Bakery came up with 1,525 reviews and 4.5 stars so naturally we had to try it. When we got to the location we recognized it from an old episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay. They had won the Chocolate Chip Cookie Throwdown episode. Needless to say we were very excited!

The shop is small. You walk down a set of very steep stairs to a shop with 1 small glass display and a few seats along the window all with an active bakery in the background. At first impression the cookies look amazing. They are huge! And there were only 4 to choose from, so I knew that they were going to be great.

The Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip cookie was most definately chocolately. The outside of the cookie had a great texture, as you bite in you pull away with strings of melted chocolate oozing out just like it should from a fresh cookie. However, after eating the outside crust of the cookie we were left with raw cookie dough. It had the consistency of half cooked brownie mix. All the fun of eating a fresh cookie was gone when we realized that we were really just eating half cooked cookie dough.

We had also gotten a slice of the Banana Chocolate Chip bread to get a full sense of the bakery. It had great flavor, the banana was fresh and not overpowering. But while the middle of the bread was perfectly cooked, the edges were dry and tasted a bit burnt.

After 2 disappointing treats, G. suggested that I try an Oatmeal Raisin cookie. He said I had to see how my little cookies stacked up to all the hype of these gargantuans. Their cookie was, again, raw in the middle; it had the consistency and flavor of cold porridge. The cookie itself was overly sweet and the sugar was competing with the sweetness of the raisins. I was left wanting something that would break up the flavor. A little spice perhaps, maybe some cinnamon?

In the end, we went in expecting to try the best cookies that New York has to offer. I mean, that’s why Bobby Flay challenged them, right? But all we found was cookie dough…

This week I got to spend my Sunday at The Institute for Culinary Education (ICE) perfecting my cookie skills. This is my second class at ICE and I already feel comfortable walking around the Flat Iron District “campus”.

Today’s class is all about cookies so you can imagine how excited I am! I know my treats have gotten better over the years but my goal is to pick up on a trick or 2 to make my goods even better!

On the agenda today is an eclectic mix of both sweet and savory drop cookies, ice box cookies, cut out cookies and brownies. The class is slit up into groups in order to produce over a dozen recipes.

My partner Alex (an home cake baker) and I were a great team. It was like we had baked together before. We mad Sicilian Fig Pinwheels, All-American Coconut Macaroons, and Peppery Cheddar Coins.

Pinwheels

The pinwheels were the most complicated recipe we tried and it was definitely a team recipe. The cookies came out great. The dough has a crispy texture that is not too sweet. It pairs well with the sweet fig mixture that it is rolled with.

Pinwheel Learned Techniques:

- make sure that after you’ve made your wheel that you chill the dough completely. The dough should be pretty hard to the touch.

- when cutting your wheel, roll the wheel 45 degrees so that you keep the wheel shape.

Coconut Macaroons

These macaroons are meringue based and I wanted to try my hand at the meringue again. I swear, meringue will be the absolute death of me! I’ve been trying to make it for over 2 years and, even with an instructor, I managed to fudge them up, AGAIN!

One of these days I WILL master how to make these! It’s all about timing with these guys and apparently my timing is all wrong. While the macaroons came out of the oven beautifully, our meringue was not stiff enough so they deflated once they cooled. But they looked really nice for my picture. :)

Meringue Learned Technique:

- if you think your done whisking, you’re not. Keep going!

Peppery Cheddar Coins
These are like savory butter crackers. This recipe was so easy to make and these cheesy little guys are amazing! They would pair really well with a spicy jelly or a spicy curred meat like a sopressata.

Learned Technique:

- we used a food processor rather than a mixer to make these. Who knew?

All in all, this was a very productive Sunday afternoon and I can’t wait to try to make some of the other recipes that were provided to the class on my own. Below is a snap shot of the fruits of our collective labors. So much sugary goodness!

Buen Provecho!

G. and I went down to Miami to get away from the cold for a few days. While we were there, all we did was eat and sit by the pool.

But the important parts of the trip were all the desserts that hit up. Between flan, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Thai donuts and pasteles, the most note worthy were the 2 treats that we tried at PATAGONIA on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables.

The inviting lights around a beautiful case full of chocolate and delicate looking desserts drew us in. I asked the girl behind the counter what was in each of pastries as there weren’t any labels. The first one I pointed to she said “that one has dulce de leche”. I pointed to another and she replied “that one has dulce de leche”. I pointed to a third and she responded, “that one also has dulce de leche. actually most of all of them have dulce de leche”.

All the treats looked very different but they all had the same filling!?! So rather than going down the line I asked her instead to tell us which ones did NOT have dulce de leche. She took a step back. looked at the back of the display case and what felt like a full minute later she pointed at 2 bite size fruit tarts.

I looked at G. and said “Well, I guess they specialize in dulce de leche here. Take your pick.” We each choose 1, and they were very different both in taste and texture. 

1. A chocolate covered dulce de leche tart

The dulce de leche in is tart was hard and the chocolate was a bit waxy. The flavors didn’t marry well together and neither did the textures. Perhaps if they had used a different chocolate (maybe a stronger dark chocolate) and not had cooked the dulce de leche so much it would have worked better. Definitely not my favorite.

2. A bite sized pancake folded and filled with dulce de leche

This smaller dessert had a much more pleasant texture. The pancake-like outside had been soaked in anisette syrup like a Cuban Cappuccino Cake (one of my absolute favorites). The dulce de leche in here was much softer and gooey-er. This bite size treat was surprisingly not overpoweringly sweet and I wish I had gotten 2 so that I didn’t have to share. :)

Buen provecho!

L.