Flourless Chocolate Cake

As you may know we are adding new areas to our website.  Besides expanding our Vegan category we have added a Gluten Free category.  It seems everywhere I go someone says they are gluten intolerant.  Being the huge “bread” person I am that really bothers me.  Along with registered Dietitian Lisa M. Ronco, MS RD CDN, we will endeavor to develop recipes and meal plans for our readers and members of our website: emealsforyou.com, who have problems planning meals around their eating preferences.

Most of us consider gluten free foods to be bland and tasteless; not so around here.  This cake is wonderful, smooth and chocolaty without a speck of flour.  As with all of our recipes in the Gluten Free category this is a keeper that you will find the whole family will enjoy, even without flour.

Grapefruit Sorbet

I’m big on “pantry cooking.”  I believe you should be able to make wonderful meals from what you have around the kitchen, whether in the pantry, frig or freezer.  With just a little imagination you should be able to cobble together an  easy appetizer, meal or dessert from items you have on hand.  At emealsforyou.com we give you a list of what we consider essentials for stocking away.

This weekend we were running a little short on appetizers so I went to the pantry and started looking for a quick, easy appetizer to make.  A can of black beans from the shelf, some fresh cherry tomatoes from the garden, some pickled pepper rings from the frig and some frozen pita bread all went together to make a very good relish and chips.  Add a few spices and herbs to your taste and you will wish you had written the recipe down for future use.

Along these lines I give you the easiest recipe I can think of.  Serve this grapefruit sorbet between courses at a formal dinner or have it following a salad for lunch to make it special.  So the next time you are in the store pick up a can of frozen grapefruit juice to save for a “rainy” day.

We are having a going away party for a couple in our neighborhood group this weekend and I am responsible for the desserts.  I have over 100 dessert recipes on my website (emealsforyou.com) so finding something to make wasn’t the problem, deciding what to make was.  After kicking around several ideas we hit on having an old-fashioned Ice Cream Social.  We will set up a dessert station with ice cream, hot fudge sauce, caramel sauce, whipped cream and of course cherries to top it all off.  The perfect finish for the neighborhood party.

This hot fudge sauce is extremely easy it make and has always elicited rave reviews.  Make a double batch, it lasts forever in the frig, well almost forever depending on your families addiction to chocolate.

Hot Fudge Sauce

Heat sugar, syrup, vanilla, cream and butter in a heavy sauce pan until blended. Mix in cocoa and stir.

Hint: may be kept in the refrigerator for weeks. Re-heat in microwave.

Lemon Italian Ice

It has been a couple of crazy dessert weekends around here lately.  Last weekend I made dessert for the local Memorial Day picnic; Croissant Bread Pudding and Hazelnut Cheesecake.  This weekend the friend, who had the Memorial Day party, called and asked if I could help out with some desserts for her mom’s Red Hat Ladies meeting; dessert for 20 or so.  No problem; I made a huge Mary’s Special Birthday Cake and a Brenda’s Favorite Lemon Tart, both travel well and both feed an army.

The thing I had forgotten was the dinner party we were having on Saturday night for our new neighbors to meet our old neighbors and our “before the old neighbors”  neighbors.  What to make for dessert.  The new neighbor stopped by as I was icing the Red Hat Ladies chocolate cake and it became immediately obvious he was a big fan of chocolate icing.  That solved part of the equation, make a Flourless Chocolate Cake, but what to make that was lighter and easier on the waistline.  I baked some pears to serve with honey and blue cheese but the winner was the Lemon Italian Ice.

As I was a little busy in the kitchen I welcomed a dessert that basically requires mixing frozen lemonade with water and placing it in an ice cream freezer.  This is the perfect dessert when you are looking for something different, not expensive, easy to make and always a crowd pleaser.

Give this a try on a hot summer’s night.

As frequent readers will know we moved just before the New Year.  Setting up the new kitchen, getting things where I want them, getting a “good flow” of movement has been a building process.  Sometimes it’s the little things we miss.

This weekend I was responsible for the desserts at a neighborhood picnic.  I settled on Croissant Bread Pudding and Hazelnut Toffee Cheesecake, as both are great and serve a ton of people.  Baking the desserts seemed to take longer than it should have.  I should have looked into the reason why but rushed through and they came out great, although taking longer and requiring me to constantly check on them.

I should have remembered installing a new oven for my mother-in-law a few years ago.  Visiting months after the install she said her recipes were taking a longer time to bake.  I cooked some David Lee Shrimp ((From the Appetizer Collection at emealsforyou.com)  and they seemed to take forever to bake.  Pulling an oven temperature gauge from her closet I found her oven to be off by about 25 degrees.  The fix was an easy one, the manual instructed me to push these buttons in sequence then that button to raise the temp and it is fixed.

Back to my problem.  When the light bulb in my brain went off I simply checked the real oven temp, hence the picture of the gauge above, and found my oven was off by 10 percent.  That means that my desserts, requiring 350 degrees, were baking away at only 315 degrees.  The bottom line is for a few bucks you can check your oven and perhaps save time when baking or at least have piece of mind that what you set your temp to is actually the temperature in the oven.

Here’s the Hazelnut Toffee Cheesecake  recipe.

Croissant Bread Pudding

One Christmas weekend down and one to go.  We celebrated with some of the family last weekend and will travel to New Jersey on the 24th for further celebration with more of the family.  I have almost 100 different dessert recipes on the website and so it makes sense that I make the dessert for the meals.  Last weekend we had a cheesecake with cherries and the cranberry cake shown on a recent blog.  For the Jersey trip I have solicited suggestions and requests from my brother-in-law.  His list includes: Ada’s Butterscotch Pie, Brenda’s Favorite Lemon Tart, the flourless chocolate cake, and a carrot cake.  My wife suggested Croissant Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce and I am leaning towards the Tiramisu.

Now that our blood sugar levels are up just from reading the list, it’s time to get serious and decide what I will take for the trip.  We will have four big meals during the visit.  I always like to have a couple desserts for people to have a choice so I think I will take about 4 desserts.  I have the lemon tart cooling its heels in the freezer so now my list is down to three more.  The bread pudding is easy and travels well so that will probably make the list.  I guess you will have to check back next week to see what the finalists are?

Cranberry Cake

We had our “early” Christmas on Saturday.  Some of us won’t be here for the real Christmas so we gathered together to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company.  As usual the food highlighted the weekend.  We had pan-roasted chicken, Caesar salads and pasta with four cheeses.  Our finale was Steak Diane, twice baked potatoes, French Vinaigrette salad and homemade artisan bread.

I made my usual Christmasy dessert of cheesecake, this time with cherries on the side for that festive look.  My wife made her always great Cranberry Cake. This buttery delight hits on all cylinders, sweet, tart, crunchy and moist.  It goes together in a flash and can’t be beat for a wonderful company dessert or even a mid-week surprise for your family.

My Mom's Sugar Cookies

It was about this time of the year, growing up in New Jersey, that my mother would make her buttery, sugar cookies.  She had a can in the basement that held about 3 gallons, don’t know how many dozens that translates into, of these freshly cooked, crisp cookies.  The patina on the can reflected all the years it was pushed into use to keep the cookies fresh throughout the Christmas season.

I found her recipe the other day and thought I would make some for the kids and the kids’ kids.  I cut the recipe in half and still found that I really don’t have the patience to mix, roll, cut and bake all the cookies the recipe made.  I don’t know how she stood there all day and rolled the cookies out and baked them.  She must have made about 4 recipes to fill that old can.

I am glad I made them.  For a short while my kitchen smelled just like hers a long, long time ago.

Find the recipe for these and many more at at emealsforyou.com.

Nut Roll

Preparing for our early Christmas I suddenly realized that “Mr. Sweetooth” is coming home and I really didn’t have much in the way of goodies for him to eat.  I remembered that my brother sent me his recipe, the old family recipe, for his nut roll.  He makes it every Christmas but I have never given it a try.  We had this at every house we visited during the holiday season growing up.  You couldn’t pass up the Slovak treat of nut roll, by the end of the day you were so full you didn’t think you could eat any more, but then you did.

This is a very easy recipe, great for snacks around the holidays and especially nice to give away as gifts to friends and family.  The nice thing is that it isn’t overly sweet, like the grocery store bakery makes.  Give it a try and it may become a family tradition just like at my brother’s house.

Cherries Jubilee

Mini Dessert Tray

My holiday desserts run the gambit from the very easy, Cherries Jubilee to the time intensive, but well worth it, Mini Dessert Tray.  Depending on your schedule pick a dessert that fits the meal you are serving.  Always consider desserts that may be made in advance, either something you make the day before or desserts that freeze nicely and can be made weeks in advance.

We will be celebrating Christmas in Ohio early to accomodate some of our family who will be traveling and then Christmas on Christmas Day in New Jersey with some more of the family.  This means many desserts.  The desserts for the early Christmas can be made a day or so in advance.  I am thinking I will forgo the Christmas Log and do a cheesecake, Laurie’s Cake (cornmeal cake) and some cannoli for the early one.  A Fig and Hazelnut Tart, Bourbon Gelato and the Cherries Jubilee will round out the Christmas on Christmas meal.  Maybe some Hazelnut Toffee for both, that’s because I am a nutcase about holiday desserts.