Chewy Gooey Congo Bars (Blondies on Steroids)

Gingerbread White Chocolate Congo Bars

I was flipping through my well-worn copy of The Great Book of Chocolate by David Lebovitz, flagging the pages of interest, when I saw a recipe for something called a Congo Bar and realized that I didn’t know what a Congo Bar was.

Then, as I read through the recipe, it started to coalesce in my head as a Blondie loaded with chocolate chips and chopped nuts. And as good as I’m sure David’s recipe is (which came to him courtesy of the Goddess of Baked Goodness, Flo Braker), I couldn’t help remembering that I created the Best Blondie in the Universe last year around this time and even suggested loading it with chocolate chips, chopped nuts, coconut, chopped peanut butter cups and anything else you can think of. For the post, I made a Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce and dolloped that throughout the batter. So was that creation actually a Congo Bar?

Filed Under: All Season, Chocolate, Cookies, Desserts, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , ,
May 28, 2011 By 4 Comments

Rosalyn’s Toasted Coconut White Chocolate Dream Pie

Toasted Coconut White Chocolate Dream Pie

Over the past year, I sampled Coconut Cream Pies across the Northwest restaurant/bakery landscape and kicked around the tenants of the perfect custard cream pie with dear friend and culinary maven, Rosalyn Rourke. One thing led to another, as the saying goes, and the next thing I knew, on Roz’s insistence, I was hunting down a Lindt Excellence White Coconut Bar. After one taste, the Coconut Cream Pie turned into Rosalyn’s Coconut White Chocolate Dream Pie. After all, her appreciation for white chocolate and coconut was the inspiration.

Filed Under: All Season, Desserts, Let It Snow, Recipes Tagged With: , , ,
February 24, 2011 By 10 Comments

Spirited Mocha Crepes with Peanut Butter Caramel, Peanut-Cocoa Nib Brittle & White Chocolate Crema

Spirited Mocha Crepes with Peanut Butter Caramel & Roasted Peanut-Cocoa Nib Brittle

When I’m creating chocolate desserts, one of the first flavor pairings that pops into my mind is chocolate and peanut butter. I mean, does it get any better than that? And if I’m trying to please my man on Valentine’s Day, well chocolate and peanut butter are surely going to do the trick.

Filed Under: All Season, Chocolate, Desserts, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , ,
February 7, 2011 By 3 Comments

Heavenly Chocolate Crepes

Heavenly Chocolate Crepes

Recipes can be inspiring, but there is nothing as satisfying as truly understanding the underlying formula and technique of a particular dish. Once you’ve got those under your belt, you OWN that dish and can riff it successfully and endlessly. That’s when the real fun begins.

Take the concept of dessert crepes (pronounced kr?ps in French or kr?pes in English) for instance, which are a type of very thin pancake. You can go straight to a comprehensive French cookbook, grab the basic dessert crepe recipe and process, and rely on that forever. Or, if you are more curious, you can gather 10-20 solid resources, compare the formulas and processes, and then hit the kitchen and test your way through them. When you are done, the entire world of desert crepes will open up for you and reveal its secrets. You will become the Zen master of dessert crepes.

Filed Under: All Season, Basics, Chocolate, Desserts, Recipes Tagged With: , ,
February 3, 2011 By 8 Comments

Chocolate Shortcake with White Chocolate Crema, Strawberry Lime Sauce & Strawberry Lime Salsa

Mayan Chocolate Shortcake with White Chocolate Crema & Strawberry Lime Sauce

To set the record straight and to put my mind at rest, as near as I can determine after years of looking for the ultimate and absolute distinction between scones and shortcake, there is none.

Shortcake is a lightly sweetened cream biscuit–which is exactly what a scone is. So if you can make a perfect scone (and YOU CAN after reading The Best Scones in the Entire Universe), you can also make perfect shortcake.

Filed Under: All Season, Chocolate, Desserts, Quick Breads, Recipes, Sauces, Valentine's Day Tagged With: , , , , ,
January 29, 2011 By 14 Comments

Deep, Dark, Spicy Gingerbread with Coffee Glaze

Spicy Gingerbread Cake with Coffee Glaze

It never fails. When the temperature drops like a rock and snow is in the air, I start craving gingerbread cake. It’s one of those ultra-comforting sweets that has so sparked bakers’ creativity over the years that it now boasts hundreds of variations. Maybe thousands. Look at the lineup of gingerbread cakes on TasteSpotting.

However, for gingerbread inspiration this year, I had only to open the new Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Café cookbook by Harvard educated mathematician turned professional baker, Joanne Chang. I scored the cookbook earlier this fall while at the South End location of Joanne’s Flour Bakery in Boston.

Filed Under: Desserts, Holiday, Let It Snow, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
December 29, 2010 By 7 Comments

Dreamy Creamy Gingerbread Fudge: Two Ways

Dreamy Creamy Gingerbread Fudge

There are few things in the candy domain that cause more consternation or downright fear than FUDGE. Just utter the word in some circles and everyone starts reeling off their horror stories. “Oh I can’t make it. It never works for me.” “I tried it once and it was a big grainy mess.” “I had to dump the whole thing in the garbage.” “It never set up, no matter how many times I tried to make it.” “I followed the directions EXACTLY, and it just didn’t work.”

Well, if any of these remarks sound like something you might say, you have come to the right place. For I, dear reader, am determined not to let a gooey, sticky, hotter than Hades, mass of caramel, with or without chocolate, get the better of ME. No way, no how, ain’t happening.

Filed Under: Confections, Desserts, Holiday, Let It Snow, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
December 19, 2010 By 26 Comments

Pumpkin Spice & White Chocolate Cheesecake

Pumpkin Spice & White Chocolate Cheesecake

You’ve heard the saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Well, it was definitely the impetus for this Thanksgiving dessert, as I was torn between pleasing my stepdad, Mike, who loves White Chocolate Cheesecake and my daughter’s boyfriend, Chris, who expressed a desire for Peanut Butter Cheesecake (which I quickly swapped for pumpkin in honor of the holiday.)

The combination of the two flavors was even better than I expected, with the white chocolate lending the pumpkin a measure of sophistication.

Filed Under: Autumn Leaves, Desserts, Holiday, Let It Snow, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
November 27, 2010 By 29 Comments
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