Meringues with a kick

The pasilla chile softening on the comal is a traditional start to a Mexican meal. And next the next step, perhaps, would be grilling tomatoes, onions, and garlic to make the perfect base for a savoury sauce. Well not in this case. This was the start of dessert for last night's dinner. Part 1 of the pudding was to be chocolate-chile ice cream.

Next step is creating a chile and cream infusion as the base to the ice cream. Just steep the softened chile in the cream.  Then you waz it up in a blender, then strain out the bits of chile (which if  you've blended it well, there shouldn't be much of).

While that's all going on, there was chocolate being chopped. Using the good stuff makes a big difference. Then the chile infusion gets mixed together with this lovely chocolate and is well on its way to becoming the custard base for the ice cream.

Add the chile-chocolate-cream mixture to a bowl full of egg yolks and sugar. Now you're ready for cooking the custard.

The custard has to thicken over a double boiler so there's a bit of arm-building whisking action involved. Although it's a lot less arduous than say, making mayonnaise.  And because there's no shortage of steps in this ice cream making process, once it's all up to the right temperature and thickened up, then the custard has to be cooled. So stick it in an ice bath and whisk some more.

At this point, I was wondering if this whole process was ever going to end, but having an array of delicious ingredients, I cracked on with it. A little vanilla, some heavy cream, and a bit of chocolate liquer. Then into the ice cream maker it all goes.

Once this final step is complete, it can go into the freezer for a few hours or overnight to harden up and for the flavours to really marry together.

And since the ice cream only used the egg yolks, and I don't like to waste, I thought I'd try my hand at making some meringues. Last weekend I made a pavlova, which was very delicious but the meringue base was not quite right. So this time, I used the basic recipe for the Joy of Cooking. The trick to the nice stiff peaks: cream of tartar. Conveniently I had some in the pantry, so stiff ones all around.

My initial dessert plan had been to have the chocolate-chile ice cream with grilled pineapple, which I still made, but with the meringues (which I have to say came out pretty freaking perfectly), it was perhaps one of the best desserts I've ever put together. I gave myself quite a few pats on the back.

And, I'm also happy to report, J and our dinner guests enjoyed it. And that's reallly what all the time and effort is about, seeing the clean plates in front of everyone.

Cheesy cakes

It was my brother's birthday recently and his wife threw a party for him tonight and asked my mom to make the birthday cake. Well with 18 people on the guest list, my mother felt one cake wasn't going to be enough so called and asked if I'd make a second one. Sure, I said.

But cakes are not my forte. Not to mention, we don't really have a decent cake tin in the house to bake one in. But I do have a springform pan, that I essentially bought to make one of my favourites:  chipotle chocolate chili cake. But apparently said pans are also good for cheesecake. I've never made one but thought now might be the time.

Luckily our cat Bean was diligent in waking us up this morning because for reasons unknown, there was actually sleeping in (a change from the usual wake-up-at-dawn-whether-you-want-to-or-not situation that generally occurs on the weekends.). As this whole proceeding would take a bit of time, Bean's insistence on our waking up was actually quite helpful as I had a noon curling game.

I used the classic cheesecake recipe from Canadian Living. Not too many complicated ingredients but really, no shortage of dairy items. So I put it all together, nestled it in its bain marie to cook and shuffled off to curling. J was good enough to finish watching it and take it out the oven. And when I returned, I chopped up some strawberries and mixed in a little sugar and white balsamic vinegar for some maceration action and headed out to the birthday party.

My niece Nikki says it's the best cheesecake she'd ever had in her life. 'Nuff said. A good day!

Sweet treat with a zing

I bought some new popsicle molds recently and was excited to put them to use. J is not a big fan of the popsicle-type dessert and it's not like there's lots of traffic through the old homestead just hankering for a cool snack, so it took me a while to try something out. But I'd had a hankering to put together some mango-chile paletas (Mexican popsicles) and I happened upon a tin of mango puree on sale so thought, now's the time.

They are quite easy to do because the mango was ready to rock, no peeling or monkey around with hard-to-handle bits of fruit. So all I did was take the mango puree, add juice of 1 lime, and sugar to taste - if your puree is really sweet, you likely don't need much - and mixed them up. If it's a bit too thick add a bit of water to make it a little runnier. In terms of chile, I used a combo of regular chile powder and ground ancho chiles, which give the little flecks of colour and a bit of texture to it all. Obviously if you want to feel the afterburn put lots of chile but if you just want a little zing of heat, use less. It's hard to say how much because every chile powder packs a different punch and you need to know what you're using.

I liked it. Lipsmacking.

Oh what a beautiful cupcake

J really wanted red velvet cupcakes for her birthday, so who am I to say no even if it's way out of my comfort zone to make 'em.

I used the recipe from the Hummingbird Cafe cookbook, which was a present from a friend for my birthday. I followed the instructions religiously but was worried the batter was too dense. Same deal with the cream cheese frosting, which didn't look like it was coming together. But it all worked out well and the cupcakes were delicious. My frosting job wasn't too professional but as they say, it's what's inside that counts.

A touch of the south

It is Thanksgiving here this weekend and this house was full of sweet potatoes, so what to do but make something that I've not done before. Sweet potato pie rang my bell as it has that bit of the south that I find attractive!!

Once again I lazed out by using pre-made pie crust but that is life, man! The filling was actually really easy to make though. Boil up some sweet potatoes then mash them up with butter, loads of sugar, some evaporated milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, and eggs. Pour the filling in the shell and pop it ij the oven for an hour or so. It made the apartment smell like heaven. Haven't eaten it yet though so let's hope it's taste and wonderful as it smells.

This is what a popsicle is all about

Recently we went up to Muskoka for the weekend and had a very relaxing getaway which involved lots of sitting by the lake relaxing and reading magzines. One such magazine was the latest issue of Saveur, The Greece Issue. So of course, I instantly ended up at the one thing Mexican in the issue. It is my destiny! So what was this fascinating article about . . . well popsicles of course!

According the article, paletas, or Mexican popsicles, are a speciality of the town of Tocumbo in the southwestern state of Mochoacan. They fresh-fruit dense and come in an array of fantastic flavours, including chile-flecked ones, which always excites me. My interest was piqued and I decided I had to try to make some.

Anywho, got a whack of strawberries in our food box this week so decided to try my hand at making a paleta of my own. The family coming over for dinner was a good excuse to make a bunch of popsicles! I did not use the Saveur recipe, which has cream in it but a straightforward strawberries, sugar, and lime juice combo. I will definitely be making the mango-chile ones in the future but for now . . .



The strawberry ones were fantastic. Best pospsicle. EVER!!

Strawberry paletas

• 3.5 cups of chopped up strawberries
• 1/3 cup of sugar (I put too much by mistake and they were fine but a little less sweet would be OK so I'd use this amount)
• 2 tablespoons lime juice

Waz up the strawberries in a blender. Then pour it into a fine strainer over a bowl and press through all the good stuff while leaving the little seeds etc behind. Add the sugar and lime juice to the strawberry juice, stir until the sugar is all dissolved. Pour into popsicle holders and freeze for at least three hours.

No kidding on the sweet tooth

So tonight I went to see a Chinese medicine man who conducted tremendous amounts of acupunture on my belly, so of course it was too late to come home and cook dinner so we had to fend for ourselves among the many restaurants on the streets of Toronto. We voted for the beloved gyros sandwiches at Messini on the Danforth. Although there was slight disappointment that they were out of lamb, the chicken hit the spot.

I do think the increase of energy flow through my belly due to the dozen or so needles from Mr. Acupuncture made me hungrier! So we set off to get a coffee and a baklava but instead hit upon this little joint on the other side of the Danforth called Sweet Tooth. It was not the traditional Greek pastry spot we were aiming for but it hit the spot fer sure. There was a wonderful selection of cakes, pies, etc. I picked out a beautiful piece of key lime pie - which had a chocolate crust, which a lot of key lime pies seem to have these days. I prefer not a chocolate crust but in this case I was not complaining because it wasn't overly choclate-y, if you know what I'm saying!?
J had a vanilla cupcake with strawberry frosting. Tasty and pretty!!

Cake!

Of course, you try to stop eating wheat and move on to gluten-free pasta and bread, make the necessary switches to make it easier, and then what comes along but a fierce craving for pineapple upside down cake.


I have really disliked pineapple for my entire life. It's really only about in the last year that I have started liking pineapple. Imagine my shock at being in throes of a full pineapple upside down cake craving!

After a perusal of Bob's Red Mill's website and many blogs, I found a terrific use for the baking mix I bought...


Really good! I cannot for the life of me remember how I made it. I just remember that there was a considerable amount of butter and sugar used. It had that smell that gluten-free flour has. It's a sort of beany almost soury smell. I don't love the smell, but the taste doesn't seem to carry the smell over. The cake was delicious. I need to figure out how to make even smaller versions of the baked goods. I don't need tons of it, but it's nice to have a sweet treat ever so often...