Sweets

Frozen Chocolate Pastry Cream Sandwiches

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Sometimes great concoctions come from extra ingredients.  I was making Napoleons for New Year’s Eve and had some extra filling.  I piped it onto a graham cracker and stuck it in the freezer.  New Year’s Day – best frozen dessert sandwich ever!  The graham cracker was soft and the rich chocolate filling was decadent.  It was like an ice cream sandwich with the most premium ice cream.  It was so good that it was requested as a birthday dessert in lieu of a birthday cake.

Napoleons may be a French pastry that have an origin in Italy, but this frozen dessert is all American.

Banana-Chip Oatmeal Cookies (gluten free)

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It’s been a while since I’ve done anything gluten-free and I was jonesing for dessert.  Once again, I bought too many bananas.  (Actually, I think I bought the same number of bananas that I normally do, but no one in the family ate them this week.  Maybe it is a conspiracy to encourage me to have to come up with banana dessert  recipes).  Well, I wasn’t in the mood to make banana muffins.  I really don’t like repeating recipes too many times.  I checked my pantry.  I found some milk-chocolate chips.  Score!  In the end, Banana-Chip Oatmeal Cookies.

Oreo in a Cupcake

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oreo cupcake

If you look, the Oreo is smiling at you.  After everyone ate these, they were smiling, too.  This is a really well-balanced cupcake – just enough vanilla and just enough chocolate.  The cookie becomes soft inside the vanilla cupcake.  To top it off, is a chocolate buttercream with crushed Oreos for decoration.

Thanks again to my daughter for photographing the cupcakes!

Irish Coffee Cupcakes

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photo taken by my daughter – Screen Shot 2014-10-22 at 8.55.28 AM

Bailey’s Irish Creme is a fantastic compliment to desserts.  This is a mocha flavored cupcake with a Bailey’s buttercream.  To get the perfect buttercream you need have the right balance of liquid to powdered sugar and must whip the buttercream for a sufficient period of time.  A good buttercream will be fluffy.  If you add too much liquid, the buttercream will not hold its shape.  If you do not add enough liquid, the buttercream will be stiff and difficult to pipe.  Do not stress – just keep taste testing your batch until it is perfect.  Taste testing – one of the perks of baking!

Blueberry Cake

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blueberry cake Blueberry cake eaten

Blueberry Cake and Blueberry Cake 10 minutes later.  My teenage son doesn’t even like blueberries and he ate three pieces of cake.

Here’s the back story on tonight’s cake.  It was snowing, I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store to get anything for dinner.  After looking in my refrigerator, I decided that I would make a breakfast dinner.  If you’re not familiar, that’s when you eat breakfast foods for dinner.  My kids are convinced that breakfast foods taste better at dinnertime.  I decided to make scrambled eggs and sausage.  I considered starch options: toast, bagels, or biscuits.  Then I thought to myself, if I make muffins or a coffee cake it’s like a combination of a breakfast starch and a dinner dessert.  Hence, I chose blueberry cake – it was like killing two birds with one stone.  Looking at the empty plate above, it’s more like my family killed-off the cake.

Macaroon (not French Macaroon)

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macaroon

I just baked macaroons.  No, they are not the French kind, which are a meringue-based cookie with almond flour (sometimes spelled Macaron).

The above is the typical kind of macaroon and is made of coconut, egg, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla.  I usually make them during Easter in multiple pastel colors.  For Passover, I will make both vanilla and chocolate.  (I believe in equal opportunity celebrating and eating)  These are a lot easier to make than French macaroons.

I don’t believe either Macaroons or French macaroons are a substitute for one another.  While the name might be confusing, the tastes are distinct.  Both are delicious!

Whoopie Pies Are For All Occasions

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red and green whoopie pies

It’s Christmas time – so here’s some red, green, and white whoopie pies (although the cookies would be good for Italian holidays as well :).  Even if you’re tired of the red and green theme of the holidays, these are still great little cookies.

Have you ever wondered what’s the difference between a whoopie pie, moon pie, and a macaroon?

A whoopie pie is a cake-like cookie sandwich filled with buttercream.

Whereas, a moon pie has a marshmallow filling between two circular chocolate-coated graham crackers.

A French macaroon is a sandwich style cookie made of light meringue-textured cookie (usually made with ground almonds) with a buttercream filling.