Toasted Coconut and Parrot Bay

Today I helped my mother and father in law at a bridal show here in Stillwater.  I took the opportunity to expand my horizons a bit and brought along truffles and business cards with the hopes that the masses will recruit me for their dessert needs for their events and showers.  I made some of the truffles I always bring to these sorts of things, but I also wanted to make something new.

I called these Honeymoon Truffles... toasted coconut, tropical rum, dark chocolate... if these don't remind you of the flavors of an oceanic chocolate paradise, I don't know what will.

Honeymoon Truffles

4 Tbsp Parrot Bay or other coconut rum, 42 proof
16 oz 60% cacao dark chocolate, divided and chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
12 oz coconut flakes

Preheat oven to 350.  Spread coconut out on a baking sheet in a thin layer.  Bake 3 minutes in oven.  Turn off heat and crack the oven door.  Leave the coconut in for another 8 minutes, until browned and toasty, stirring once halfway through.

Remove to a glass bowl and set aside.

Put 8 oz chopped chocolate in a glass bowl.  Heat the cream in a small saucepan, whisking occasionally, until lightly simmering.  Pour over the chopped chocolate and stir until smooth and creamy. Stir in the rum one tablespoon at a time until smooth. Reserving 1/8 cup of the toasted coconut for later, crush the rest of the coconut into the ganache mixture and stir until well combined.  Refrigerate at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

Melt the remaining chocolate over a double boiler until smooth.  Using a cookie scoop, scoop 1/2 inch balls of the set ganache and roll with your hands to make perfect balls.  Dip in the melted chocolate and remove to a parchment lined baking sheet.  Sprinkle a small amount of the leftover toasted coconut onto each truffle while the chocolate is still wet.  Let sit in the freezer for fifteen minutes to ensure a strong set. 

These are so delicious and perfect for a special occasion.  Hopefully I made enough friends today at the bridal show to ensure plenty of Honeymoon Truffles in my future.

Rosemary Bread

I love bread.  I love anything full of carbs. Pasta, bread, cake, bread, anything with white flour, bread... you get the idea.  One of the judgements I make about whether or not I like a particular restaurant is typically in what kind of bread they serve.  For instance, Olive Garden may not have the most flavorful sauces or the best chicken cutlet but you'd be hard pressed to find a more garlicky or delicious breadstick.  Texas Roadhouse has the most amazingly soft yeast rolls with honey butter I've tasted to date, and always fresh.  Primo's and Macaroni Grill have rosemary bread.  I live in Stillwater.  We don't have a Primo's.  Or a Macaroni Grill, for that matter.  This means in order for me to partake in rosemary bread, I either have to drive 80 miles or make it myself. The latter is cheaper, so that's where I am today.

Rosemary Bread (adapted from here)

1 packet 1/4-ounce active dry yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing and serving
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 tablespoons dried rosemary
1 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked sea salt 
Freshly ground pepper

Mix yeast, sugar, and 1/4 cup 110-115 F water in a small bowl.  Set aside until yeast is active and froth forms, about 5 minutes.  In a mixing bowl, combine 1 tbsp olive oil, 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 1/2 tbsp dried rosemary, and 1 tsp fine salt with the yeast mixture.  Use either a wooden spoon, a stnad mixer fitted with a dough hook, or a hand mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Turn out onto a well floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 9-10 minutes.  Form a ball.  Coat a large bowl with olive oil and place the dough ball in the bowl.  Cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and let rise until more than doubled, about 2 hours.

Turn out and divide into four equal parts.  Working with one part at a time, fold the edges over to form a freeform square.  Turn the dough over and tuck the corners underneath, creating a smooth ball. Do this with each of the dough parts until you have 4 uniform balls. Transfer to a baking sheet coated with olive oil and let rise on sheet for another 2 hours, or until more than doubled in size. 
Preheat oven to 400.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Pull from oven, brush the loaves with olive oil, and crack fresh sea salt over the top of each one.  Sprinkle rosemary over the top of each one and return to oven for another 10 minutes.  Remove and serve warm with olive oil and an Italian spice blend, or olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

So amazingly delicious, especially fresh from the oven.  However, the loaves were not much more than a glorified dinner roll in size so I think next time I will only divide the dough into two parts rather than four for larger loaves.  Macaroni Grill, eat your heart out.

Monkey Bread!!

After all the overwhelming festivity of the holiday season, it's nice to kick back and make a few simple recipes.  I love cheats in January, like cooking with Bisquick or using cake mix instead of doing everything from scratch.  Sometimes a dressed up mix is almost as good as a from scratch recipe, and doesn't always require the planning ahead that most decadent treats do.
That's what I love about this monkey bread... it tastes like the most delicious, oo-ey, goo-ey, sweet treat on the planet but it really takes absolutely nothing and is always sure to impress.  In order for it to really satisfy that decadent sweet tooth craving, the key is the level of gooiness, the amount of finger licking required afterwards, and the necessity of cold milk alongside.  This recipe gets a 10 in all three categories.  I attribute that to the syrup, which is the perfect amount of sugary, syrupy awesomeness.

Easy Monkey Bread

3 cans refrigerated biscuit dough (anything will work but steer clear of anything that says "flaky")
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
2 Tbsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350.  In a bowl, whisk together white sugar and cinnamon.  Using a sharp knife, cut the biscuits into thirds or quarters, or some of each.  Coat each piece of biscuit in the cinnamon sugar mixture and layer them into a well greased tube pan or bundt pan. After they've all been coated and layered, set aside.  In a small saucepan, melt the butter.  Add in the brown sugar and mix well.  Boil for one full minute.  Remove from heat and pour evenly over biscuit layers.  Bake 35 minutes.  Wait ten minutes and then turn out onto a serving plate.  Serve fresh and warm.

What a treat this is for breakfast on a weekend, when you want it to feel sort of special and don't want to go to all the effort.  This is also the perfect recipe for kids.  It's almost impossible to mess up and they love rolling the dough in the sugar.

Just a few random memories...

I was browsing my cell phone gallery and I came upon a few gems that made me smile and I thought I'd share...

 

I love this one of Brooklyn.  She sleeps like me... haphazardly.

This one is Christian and I in 2010 playing outside during a snowstorm.  That was one of the best days of my life. Still not sure why... we didn't do anything exceptional.  I guess everything was just right that day.

This one is so sweet... Christian has such a beautiful face, and when he's sleeping he's still enough for me to appreciate it.

Anyway, thanks for letting me share.  I'm ready to move on to new memories now :)

Salted Caramel Cheesecake

I made a salted caramel cheesecake with a chocolate crust for Christmas this year.  I made it because I was scrolling through Pinterest, and kept seeing salted caramel everything and a recurring cheesecake that looked amazing.  Something in me snapped and I knew that if I didn't have a salted caramel cheesecake I might not make it to the new year.  It's a good thing I did, because here it is 2012 and I don't know how my family would survive without me to do things like complain that they're too loud all the time or get onto Chad for playing crude video games during waking hours.  It's a conundrum... one we thankfully avoided this time.

Salted Caramel Cheesecake with Chocolate Crust

Crust
2 cups chocolate animal crackers, finely ground.  You can use any kind of plain chocolate cookie here, but the animal crackers worked out really well
1/4 cup melted butter

Cheesecake (adapted from this cheesecake)
1 pound (2 blocks) cream cheese, softened
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400. In a food processor, pulse cookie crumbs with melted butter until sticky.  Press into the bottom of a springform pan or bottom and sides of a glass pie plate. Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Let rest in the fridge until ready to bake cheesecake.

Turn oven down to 325. Fill a kettle or saucepan with water and bring to a boil on stovetop. Beat cream cheese and sugar on high about 5 minutes. Beat in salt and vanilla.  Mix in eggs one at a time.Slowly beat in cream, adding gradually, until very creamy. Pour batter over crust.  Fill a 9x13 pan with the boiling water and place on bottom oven rack.  Place cheesecake on upper rack.Bake 50-60 minutes, until middle isn't liquid jiggly and the edges and top are golden. Turn off oven, prop the door open slightly, and let the cheesecake rest for another 45 minutes.  Remove and set on baking dish in freezer.  For the caramel, you can either use the prepackaged caramels, make your own caramel, or use the caramel from  this recipe, which is what I did.  The only difference... at the end, add in 1 tsp coarse sea salt.  Pour about 3/4 cup of the slightly cooled caramel over the top of the cheesecake and return to freezer for 45 minutes.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  When serving, sprinkle about 1/2 tsp coarse sea salt over the slice of cheesecake.  So delicious!

Crockpot BBQ Beef

My dad gave us a crockpot recipe book for Christmas (thanks, Dad) and I spent a couple hours browsing through it the other night while Chad played ping pong on the Move... as if that wasn't entertaining enough. I found several good recipes, but one in particular caught my eye.  Not because if looked amazing but because it was a good idea.  Crockpot pulled beef... their recipe didn't look awesome, I have a feeling it would have been more sour than sweet, and watery.  Nothing grosses me out more than watery beef.  However, the title challenged me to come up with my own crockpot BBQ beef, and try I did.  I think it was a raving success and for once, every member of my household readily agreed without complaint.  That says something...

1 2-3 lb chuck roast, thawed
1 tsp Liquid Smoke
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce (we only use Head Country in this house)

In a cast iron skillet, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil on high almost until smoking.  Season the roast generously on both sides with salt and pepper.  Sear in the skillet about 2 minutes per side, until a good crust is formed.  In a small bowl, mix 1 cup of BBQ sauce with the liquid smoke.  Put half into the bottom of the crockpot.  Lay the roast on top, and pour the remaining 1/2 cup of smoke/bbq sauce mixture on top.  Cover and cook on high 4-5 hours.  Remove roast to glass bowl and dump all remaining liquid out of the crockpot.  Using two forks, pull beef to shred, discarding any fatty pieces.  Return to crockpot, mix in all remaining BBQ sauce (about 2-3 cups, depending on bottle size) and mix well. Turn crockpot on low and cover for thirty minutes.  Mix before serving.

I like this recipe because it means we can have BBQ in the dead of winter, when it's too cold outside to use the grill.  It also means I have a go-to recipe for the summer when we have barbecue parties and guests come over that won't use up the stove space or grill space and I can be free to cook other things that are more time consuming.  This pulled beef tastes like it came from the grill to the bowl to your bun.  Perfect!

Cranberry Orange Loaf

Happy New Year, everyone! I know that the holidays have wrapped up and we are heading into a bland, cold, desolate month and a half until the next spot of brightness, Valentine's Day. That in mind, I needed something warm and sweet to keep me feeling festive for just one more day while I kissed the holiday season goodbye.  Then came this cranberry orange bread and I felt better.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
zest from one orange
1 cup sweetened dried cranberries
1 cup slivered almonds or chopped walnuts, or 1/2 cup of each
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup orange juice

Preheat oven to 325.  In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Fold in cranberries, orange zest, and nuts and set aside.  Beat butter and sugar 3-5 minutes, then mix in egg.  Stir in orange juice and then fold in flour mixture just until incorporated.  Prepare a loaf pan by greasing it with butter then dusting it with flour. Spread batter in pan and bake at 325 for one hour. Cool for ten minutes before turning out, then cool for another thirty minutes before glazing.  For glaze, mix 3 Tbsp powdered sugar with one teaspoon vanilla extract.  Slowly mix in a little bit of water until it reaches desired consistency.  I think I used 1 Tbsp water then ended up adding in a few pinches of powdered sugar.  Drizzle over the top of the loaf.

All in all, this bread was really a tasty treat and would make a great breakfast with some hot tea and honey.  I do think that next time I'll add 1/2 a cup of sour cream into the wet batter for a little more moistness, but it was delicious just as it is.

And Brooklyn loved it. Always a win in my book.