Sweets

I’m not much of a coffee drinker (strange for a Seattleite), but I do enjoy a good cup of tea.  Actually, I enjoy a frozen bowl of tea even more – get it, iced tea!  I’ve recently discovered the Portsmouth Tea Company, an excellent supplier of high-end tea blends.  Their "Mmmmango” tea is perfectly sweet and just slightly herbal – a great fit for tea-based sorbet. 

Makes: 2 quarts
Total kitchen time: 30 minutes, plus churning time

Shopping list:

• 1.5 quarts purified water
• 4 tbsp. Mmmmango tea
• 3 tbsp. honey

1. In a medium saucepan, bring the water to a boil.  Remove from heat.
2. Distribute the loose tea among 4 tea bags or 2 tea infusers and place in the pot of water.  Let the tea steep for 25-30 minutes for maximum flavor.
3. Once the tea has steeped, remove the tea bags and stir in the honey.  Adjust to taste with more honey, if needed, until the mixture is just slightly sweet.
4. Refrigerate the tea mixture until cold, then churn using your ice cream maker’s instructions.
5. Top with a drizzle of honey before serving.

I’m a big fan of sneaking loose tea into recipes, especially deserts.  Do you have any favorite tea recipes?  Are there any tea creations you’d like to see?  If so, leave a comment below!

 
My sister just passed a landmark birthday and her gift request from me was a hand-made peanut-butter-cup cake.  She is crazy for peanut butter, but scaling up a Reese’s to feed 20 people was a bit of a challenge.  I’m not much of a baker (and my penmanship sucks) so Rachel helped me out a lot with this cake.  Mad props to her, yo.  By the time we were done, it looked like a buttercream grenade had gone off in the kitchen and my hand mixer smelled like burning.  But, everyone loved this cake, so something must have gone right.

Recipe continued after the jump >>

 
When flu season comes around, it’s important to soothe your aching throat with something healthy and delicious.  Yes, of course you’ll have plenty of tea and honey, but why not try a cold treat to numb away your woes? 

Makes: 1 prescription quart
Total kitchen time: 20 minutes plus freezing time

Shopping List:

• 6 blood oranges (you can cheat and buy blood orange juice – about 1.5 cups)
• 1 cup Muscat (dessert wine; you can drink the rest)
• 1/2 cup blue agave nectar
• 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated
• 1 tbsp. vanilla almond tea (loose tea in an infuser, or about 4 tea bags)
• 1 tsp. lavender (in an infuser, or find lavender tea, about 2 bags)
• 2 cups water

1. Juice the blood oranges through a fine mesh screen to remove any pulp or seeds.  I used my potato ricer to get the oranges squozen.  
2. Combine the blood orange juice, Muscat, agave nectar, vanilla bean (including the pod) and ginger in a medium pot.  Bring the liquid just to a boil, then remove from heat.
3. Add the tea and lavender in an infuser or in loose tea bags.  Let the mixture steep for 10 minutes.  Remove and discard the tea.
4. Add the water and refrigerate the mixture overnight or until cold.  Then, freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can still-freeze this recipe in a large, shallow baking dish.  Pour in the mixture and put it in the coldest part of your freezer.  Every 20 minutes or so, scrape the sorbet with the tines of a fork to break up the ice crystals.  You’ll end up with more of a granita than a sorbet, but it will still be delicious.

This dessert is so good that you’ll make an “ooo” face when you eat it.  The silkiness of this gelato comes not from some mysterious culinary secret, but from the inclusion of lots and lots of fat.  There’s no two ways around it, folks: great ice cream is heavy (iced) cream.  I’m confident that your guests can look past your nutritional indiscretions for a rare treat like this.

Makes: 8 bowls of hazelnut heaven
Total kitchen time: 20 minutes plus freezing

Shopping list:

• 2 cups heavy whipping cream (get the best stuff you can find)
• 1 cup half and half
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 13 Oz. nutella hazelnut spread
• 1 personal trainer

1. In a large saucepan, combine the cream, half and half, and sugar.  Over medium heat, bring the mixture to 170°F.
2. Remove the mixture from the heat and add the nutella – yes, all of it.  Wisk together until well combined.
3. Refrigerate the mixture until it has chilled thoroughly, at least 6 hours.  Then, freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

That’s it.  No special magic, just a lot of tasty ingredients and a carefree attitude towards gravity.  Garnish with a dessert wafer, or serve with fresh raspberries.

These treats are great for holiday gift bags.  Arrange a handful of bonbons with cookies and peppermint bark in a a bag for thoughtful, handcrafted gifts. 

The picture to the right shows apricot and spice bonbons rolled in crystal sugar (recipe from epicurious.com).

Check out photos of my gingerbread house this year.  Mad props to my girlfriend Rachel for her enormous effort on this project.

This gingerbread house is a replica (with artistic license) of the Queen Anne High School building in Seattle.  The original building has 86 windows on the front side alone – the gingerbread version only has 18.  This probably disqualifies us from entering the National Historic Register’s Gingerbread House/Gumdrop Nativity Competition.  Next year, perhaps we’ll try for a more accurate model.  We doubled the gingerbread and icing recipes found here to accommodate the size of the building (5 feet 17″ wide by 2 feet 10″ tall).

November is a time of giving thanks, which, for some reason, translates to eating like the apocalypse is approaching.  In keeping with that theme, I had a few close friends over to celebrate the season.  Try out this menu on your freeloaders guests and let the spirit of giving loosen their belt buckles.
 
Menu:

• Assorted Cheeses, Olives and Salumi
• Baked Brie in Phyllo Dough with Shitake Mushrooms
  
• Hickory-Bacon and Roasted-Corn Gougeres (epicurious.com)
  
• Carmelized Onions and Blue Cheese Puff Pastry Squares
• Andouille and Mussel Cajun Gumbo
• Sage and Honey Skillet Cornbread (epicurious.com)
• Apple Tart Tatin
• Pumpkin Mascarpone Bites with Marshmallow Meringues
  
  (Cooking credit: Rachel.  For these treats, she used the filling from the pumpkin pie recipe with the crust from the marshmallow meringue recipe.  Rachel baked the pumpkin pie in a 1″ thick layer in a rectangular cake pan.  After it cooled, she used a 1.5″ biscuit cutter to form the “bites”.  She baked the meringues separately at 350 for 15 minutes, and placed the cool meringues on top of the pumpkin rounds.)
   

Dear Adoring Fans,

Thanks to the magic of selective publishing, you, the reader, are shielded from the occasional culinary misstep here at Scot’s test kitchen. However, I decided that in the name of honesty (and learning from mistakes) I would share this story with you.

This tale begins, as do most good stories, at Whole Foods. I was shopping for a dinner party that night and planning an elaborate menu. For dessert, I wanted to make guava-filled puff pastry pillows. Unfortunately, the grocery store had no guava in any form. So, I decided to make a pear tart instead. Now, I’m not much of a baker (this will become obvious soon). In an attempt to reduce the already day-long prep time for the meal, I chose to buy a pre-made, frozen pie crust for my tart. I grabbed a few pears along with the rest of my groceries and headed home.

I poached the pears in a delicious orange soda, brandy and vanilla bean broth. I pureed some almonds, butter and sugar and spread a creamy layer of the nutt-butter over the crust. I topped the whole thing with the pear slices, meticulously arranged in a sunburst pattern. I par-baked the tart for 15 minutes and let it sit in the oven until we had finished dinner. Then, I turned the heat up to 400 and gave it another 5 minutes to rewarm. It sure looked good, and cooked too!

I presented the tart to my guests with pride, proclaiming in a usually ironic way “You know, I don’t bake much so we’ll see how this turns out,” thinking confidently that it would be a masterpiece. One cut into the tart and I knew something was wrong. The bottom of the crust was wet and doughy! The entire dessert was totally undercooked – a lot. Luckily, my guests were very polite and ate their puddle of tart with a smile on their faces. Meanwhile, I wanted to crawl into the oven and finish my baking.

I learned a few lessons from this evening. First, it never hurts to practice a dish before serving it to guests. Second, if you are going to wing it for company, make sure they’re really good company. And finally, always make sure your tart is baked before serving!

Sincerely,
Scott

Black cherry ice cream was my favorite flavor as a kid. Plus, it’s a great way to sneak fruit into your diet. Mmmmm…. that’s the sweet taste of deception.

Total kitchen time: 40 minutes, plus freezing time
Makes: 1 healthy, fruit-filled quart

Shopping list:

• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp dark brown sugar
• 2 tbsp peach preserves
• 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
• 1 dz ripe cherries, stemmed, pitted and halved
• 1/2 cup brandy

1. Place the cherry halves in a large shallow bowl. Sprinkle on the brown sugar and stir to coat. Add the brandy, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. By getting the cherries as drunk as a freshman, they’ll stay soft when we freeze them into the ice cream.
2. Combine the remaining ingredients in a large saucepan and stir to combine. Over medium heat, raise the temperature to 160 F. Once it hits 160, remove the pan from the heat and put it directly into the fridge. Chill the mixture until cold, probably 8 hours.
3. Freeze the cream mixture following the instructions on your ice cream maker. Just at the end of the churning, add the cherries, discarding the remaining brandy. Freeze the ice cream overnight to let it set up.

If you are feeling adventurous, this is exactly the type of dessert for which waffle cones were invented.

This recipe is embarrassingly easy, but nobody needs to know that. This sorbet makes an excellent summer dessert and can be served with fresh tropical fruit. I like to serve sorbets in martini glasses with a small, colorful garnish. If you want to be less subtle, a coconut shell works, too.