I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.
Since I made the decision to avoid using gelatin, I had wanted to make homemade marshmallows with a vegetarian alternative. Then, I received a kitchen torch, and the desire to toast homemade marshmallows catapulted this project to the top of the list. I knew there was a vegetarian version of marshmallows made with xanthan gum in Demolition Desserts, but I had read that they don’t set up as firm as marshmallows made with gelatin. I decided to try them anyway. Once I had gelatin-free marshmallows and the ability to toast them, it seemed natural to then float them on top of some rich and delicious hot chocolate. I took a few cues from Ina for the technique and whipped up a white hot chocolate with a little espresso to balance the sweetness and some Kahlua to reinforce the coffee flavor with an alcoholic edge. A sprinkle of cocoa powder before floating the marshmallow added a bit of dark chocolate flavor too.
So, to make vegetarian marshmallows, the process is the same as for making ones with gelatin only instead of dissolving gelatin in a hot sugar syrup, xanthan gum is added after the hot syrup is incorporated into the egg whites. Water, cream of tartar, sugar, corn syrup, and half a vanilla bean were placed in saucepan over high heat and brought to a boil. The heat was reduced to medium, and a candy thermometer was attached to the pan. The syrup was cooked until it reached 248 degrees F, and meanwhile, three egg whites were being mixed in a stand mixer with the whip attachment. The hot syrup was added to the egg whites while mixing, and as soon as all the syrup was added, one and a half teaspoons of xanthan gum was added. You get the same, glossy, sticky meringue. That is then transferred to a cornstarch-sprinkled pan and left to set. I cut some marshmallows into heart shapes, and they did seem softer and a little gooey-er than marshmallows I had made with gelatin in the past. They held their shape well enough for floating on hot chocolate though. For the hot chocolate, I chopped four ounces of white chocolate and heated two cups of milk to a simmer. I poured the hot milk over the white chocolate and whisked until it melted. I poured that mixture through a sieve, just like Ina, into a small, heat-proof pitcher. Then, I added one tablespoon instant espresso, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a splash of Kahlua. After pouring into two mugs, I topped each with a sprinkle of cocoa powder and a toasted marshmallow.
I have to say I was very pleased with the slightly bitter edges of the toasted marshmallow in combination with the sweet, white chocolate. The resulting color of the hot chocolate itself with the added espresso and Kahlua isn’t exactly a beautiful shade of off-white, but the flavor made up for the unremarkable looks.
I think I’ve started a tradition, and I think it’s a good one. You see, every year my spinning instructor starts dropping hints about his birthday a couple of weeks before it arrives. Last year, I took the hints and decided to bring some cupcakes to class on his big day. Having cupcakes in the spinning room was so wrong, so antithetical, so naughty, and so great. One year later, I had to do it again, and this time, I looked to Demolition Desserts for a completely decadent cupcake. The candy bar cupcake is intended to taste like a Snickers bar. It’s a brown sugar cake with caramel filling, a rich chocolate and peanut butter frosting with roasted peanuts on top, and a sprinkling of sea salt. A woman at the front of the room, near the tray of cupcakes, said: I love smelling chocolate while on a spinning bike. It is very good motivation.
The cakes themselves are made with dark brown sugar and were tender and nicely flavored by themselves. As they baked and cooled, the caramel sauce was made from water, cream of tartar, sugar, and light corn syrup. After that mixture came up to temperature, butter and cream were added, and then it was simmered briefly. I chilled the caramel in the refrigerator before piping it into the cupcakes. The technique is a simple one. You push a one-quarter inch tip on a bag filled with the sauce into the top of a cupcake and squeeze in the caramel until the top of the cake just begins to rise a bit. A little caramel dribbles out on top, and that’s fine. The frosting was next, and that was made with milk chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, peanut butter, and buttercream frosting. I thought it was a little strange that one of the ingredients in the frosting was a half cup of buttercream frosting from another page in the book. Instead, this recipe could have just called for enough butter, confectioners’ sugar, milk, and vanilla to make up one half cup. At any rate, I mixed a little buttercream separately and added it to the chocolate peanut butter frosting, and the finished product was delicious. That was swirled onto the cupcakes and topped with roasted peanuts and sea salt.
These were definitely adequately decadent. Using a natural peanut butter with no added sugar, the bittersweet chocolate, and a touch of sea salt kept them from being too sweet. And, the chocolate, peanut, and caramel mix was reminiscent of a Snickers bar in the best way. Now, I just need to find a way to propel a tray of cupcakes in front of me when I’m out running.
If there is such thing as a sweet tooth, I would like to suggest that there may also be such thing as a coffee tooth. Going with that assumption, my coffee tooth has been acting up lately, and that led me to this recipe for double chocolate espresso cookies from Demolition Desserts. The cookie dough was made with cocoa powder and finely ground espresso, and dark chocolate and white chocolate chips were added. You might think a dark, chocolaty, coffee-flavored cookie like that would be slightly bitter, but this one wasn’t. I suspect it’s the brown sugar that smoothes out the flavors in the dough. The tender, almost-cakey texture is a nice surprise about them too. You can use any ratio you wish of white to dark chocolate chips, and I went with a whole cup of white to one-third cup of dark chocolate.
In the recipe, the suggested method for preparing the dough is to stir it by hand with a large wooden spoon. I prefer the hands-free method of tossing everything into a mixer, so I went that route. The flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and ground espresso were sifted while the butter and dark brown and granulated sugars were mixed. One egg, vanilla, and salt were added to the butter before the flour mixture was mixed in just until combined. I folded in the white and dark chocolate chips, and then the dough was refrigerated for 30 minutes. Small, one-inch balls of dough were formed and baked for about ten minutes.
These cookies are found at the beginning of the book with a few other versions of the chocolate chip variety like the chocolate chip cookies xs. This particular chocolate chip espresso cookie is also used in the chocolate chip mania dessert found on page 35 of the book. For that, the cookies are baked as minis and are stacked on top of a blondie with brown sugar-chocolate chunk ice cream and chipped cream with dark and white chocolate sauces. That sounds like a great way to satisfy a sweet tooth, a coffee tooth, and a chocolate tooth all at once, but for now, the cookies by themselves made me and my coffee tooth very happy.
When I started using my new ice cream maker, I pretty much wanted to make every frozen concoction I could imagine all at once. Plain ice cream was quickly followed by ice cream sandwiches with a chocolaty sundae coming right after that. As I read the Demolition Desserts' recipe for vanilla gelato which I used in those ice cream sandwiches, I saw the note at the side of the page: “make a tin roof sundae with dark chocolate sauce (page 207) and salted Spanish peanuts.” Thank you, yes, I believe I will was my response. Throughout this book, there are helpful tips, suggestions, and added information in the sidebars, and I appreciate that each topic is thoroughly covered. For instance, on page 207 with the dark chocolate sauce recipe, there are more notes about how this sauce could be used as a filling for cupcakes, or as a warm sauce served with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows, or as a drizzled sauce over cakes, ice cream sandwiches, or bare skin. I didn’t make that up; it’s part of the list. There’s also a note about making this as milk chocolate sauce rather than dark chocolate. Despite the book’s focus on somewhat complicated, plated desserts, there is a lot to gain from learning the techniques for each component of those desserts. And, rather than preparing the desserts exactly as presented, the components can be used in simpler ways just as this sauce is being used here for a sundae.
There are two types of chocolate flavor in this sauce. First, 70% cacao bittersweet chocolate was melted with a combination of heated cream and honey. Then, cocoa powder was heated with water and whisked until thick. The cocoa mixture was added to the chocolate-cream mixture and whisked to combine. Butter and salt were added to finish the sauce. The result was a thick, full-flavored chocolate sauce with a nice shine. It can be refrigerated for a week, but it does harden when chilled. There are instructions for re-heating by placing the bowl of sauce into a larger bowl of warm water, but I found that removing it from the refrigerator about 20 minutes before I plan to use it gave it enough time to soften to a spoonable state.
The luscious sauce poured over freshly made vanilla gelato and topped with salty peanuts was a very fine version of this classic sundae. All the contrasts, cold ice cream and warm sauce, oozy sauce and crunchy peanuts, sweet ice cream and salty nuts, make it what it is. One more classic ice cream treat has been re-created at home, and now there are only about a thousand others I’m looking forward to attempting next.
I am proud and excited to announce that I am now the owner of an ice cream maker. No longer do I have to look longingly at all the ice cream, sorbet, and frozen yogurt recipes I see. No more will I read about them and think, well, some day. Having an ice cream maker during the heat of the summer is turning out to be a terrific thing, but I suspect I’ll be using it regularly throughout the whole year. I chose the Cuisinart model, just like the one Ina uses, because it’s small enough that I should be able to find a place to store it in my tiny kitchen. I’ve been using it almost constantly since I got it, but if I ever need to store it, I’m sure I’ll find a place. For my first use of the new machine, I followed Michel Roux’s recipe which includes one batch of creme anglaise and then some added cream. Six egg yolks were involved, and at the end of the churning time, I added some fresh cherries. It was a rich, creamy, and decadent cherry-vanilla ice cream. That was a great test run, and next, I decided to try the vanilla gelato found in Demolition Desserts. In the book, Elizabeth Falkner explains that she prefers a pronounced salt flavor in her vanilla gelato. So after the custard base is chilled, salt is added until you can taste it.
To begin the custard, two egg yolks were whisked with cornstarch. In a saucepan, milk, sugar, corn syrup, and seeds from one half of a vanilla bean were heated just to a boil and then used to temper the eggs. The mixture was returned to the saucepan and heated for a few minutes. This custard base was then chilled in a measuring pitcher set in a bowl of ice water. Once cool, a cup of cream was added along with salt to taste. After the finished mixture was chilled in the refrigerator for an hour, it was churned into gelato.
As soon as I got the ice cream maker home, I started thinking about what kind of cookies to use for ice cream sandwiches. I considered going with a big, thin chocolate chip cookie or maybe a chewy molasses number. I’ll get to those options in time, but for my first ever homemade ice cream sandwiches, I finally decided on the chocolate malt cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookies. They are intended as a sandwich cookie in the book, I just replaced the chocolate malt filling with vanilla gelato. The cookies themselves are made with cocoa powder, malted milk powder, vanilla, and creme fraiche. They have a great texture which is a little crunchy on the edges and slightly chewy in the center, and they worked really well in ice cream sandwiches.
The interesting thing about assembling the sandwiches is that the ice cream needs to be soft enough to spread on the cookies, but you need to finish putting them together before the ice cream melts. This was tricky. I let the gelato soften in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes, and then, as I finished each sandwich, I popped it directly into the freezer. I felt a little bad that I wasn’t able to make the sandwiches more gorgeous given the speed required to finish them in my warmish kitchen. They may not have looked perfect, but they tasted incredible with the hint of salt flavor in the gelato and the rich chocolate maltedness of the cookies. Not too bad for a first try. Stay tuned for more ice cream treats to appear here in the coming days and weeks.
, but I had read that they don’t set up as firm as marshmallows made with gelatin. I decided to try them anyway. Once I had gelatin-free marshmallows and the ability to toast them, it seemed natural to then float them on top of some rich and delicious hot chocolate. I took a few cues from Ina for the technique and whipped up a white hot chocolate with a little espresso to balance the sweetness and some Kahlua to reinforce the coffee flavor with an alcoholic edge. A sprinkle of cocoa powder before floating the marshmallow added a bit of dark chocolate flavor too.
for a completely decadent cupcake. The candy bar cupcake is intended to taste like a Snickers bar. It’s a brown sugar cake with caramel filling, a rich chocolate and peanut butter frosting with roasted peanuts on top, and a sprinkling of sea salt. A woman at the front of the room, near the tray of cupcakes, said: I love smelling chocolate while on a spinning bike. It is very good motivation.
These cookies are found at the beginning of the book with a few other versions of the chocolate chip variety like the 
There are two types of chocolate flavor in this sauce. First, 70% cacao bittersweet chocolate was melted with a combination of heated cream and honey. Then, cocoa powder was heated with water and whisked until thick. The cocoa mixture was added to the chocolate-cream mixture and whisked to combine. Butter and salt were added to finish the sauce. The result was a thick, full-flavored chocolate sauce with a nice shine. It can be refrigerated for a week, but it does harden when chilled. There are instructions for re-heating by placing the bowl of sauce into a larger bowl of warm water, but I found that removing it from the refrigerator about 20 minutes before I plan to use it gave it enough time to soften to a spoonable state.
The luscious sauce poured over freshly made vanilla gelato and topped with salty peanuts was a very fine version of this classic sundae. All the contrasts, cold ice cream and warm sauce, oozy sauce and crunchy peanuts, sweet ice cream and salty nuts, make it what it is. One more classic ice cream treat has been re-created at home, and now there are only about a thousand others I’m looking forward to attempting next.
As soon as I got the ice cream maker home, I started thinking about what kind of cookies to use for ice cream sandwiches. I considered going with a big, thin chocolate chip cookie or maybe a chewy molasses number. I’ll get to those options in time, but for my first ever homemade ice cream sandwiches, I finally decided on the chocolate malt cookies from 
The interesting thing about assembling the sandwiches is that the ice cream needs to be soft enough to spread on the cookies, but you need to finish putting them together before the ice cream melts. This was tricky. I let the gelato soften in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes, and then, as I finished each sandwich, I popped it directly into the freezer. I felt a little bad that I wasn’t able to make the sandwiches more gorgeous given the speed required to finish them in my warmish kitchen. They may not have looked perfect, but they tasted incredible with the hint of salt flavor in the gelato and the rich chocolate maltedness of the cookies. Not too bad for a first try. Stay tuned for more ice cream treats to appear here in the coming days and weeks.