TWD: Floating Islands

I know exactly what you are thinking right now:

What the hell is a floating island?

Well, I thought the same thing, too... when I saw that Shari of Whisk: a food blog had picked this recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie. And then I noticed it was in the "Spoon Desserts" section of the cookbook and I grumbled under my breath... and then I saw the picture and I thought... YUCK! That thing looks disgusting. I immediately planned skipping out on the recipe... and then I remembered that the whole point of this baking group is to expand my horizons. Shari is merely trying to culture me in the world of desserts... so, here I am... making floating islands.

I've been trying to stay ahead of the curve so that I can set my TWD's up for automatic posting on Tuesday mornings, but this recipe, I ended up having to wait till last night to complete.

So, let's discuss the Floating Island , shall we? I'm going to break it down into basics for you. You've basically got a pool of melted ice cream... a cold soup, if you will. And floating around in this melted ice cream pool is a meringue puff/boat/island/blob.

The thing is... you have to actually make this melted pool of ice cream... (don't think I wasn't tempted by the half a carton of ice cream that is still in my freezer, left over from my birthday). But, I stayed honest and made the pool, which is technically called a Creme Anglaise. And I threw in some Bailey's Irish Cream to liven the pool up a bit. All pool parties are more fun with booze.


Apparently, this is what little french children think is a "fun dessert." Someone please introduce them to a Reese Peanut Butter Cup. These poor, poor children. I mean, granted, I think mine turned out wrong... I have a feeling that they weren't supposed to taste like an egg white omelette swimming in a pool of melted ice cream. Mine SUCKED. Even with the Baileys. Baileys alone cannot a party make.


I imagine that this was supposed to turn out more like meringue cookie texture, instead of a soggy, eggy mess. (Yes, I had good intentions and even used red food coloring for mine!) But, it's cool and now I've learned something... I've learned to stick with pastries and chocolate when I go to france.



So, since I'm embarrassed with just how shitty mine floating islands turned out... instead of posting the pic at the top... I'm posting it down here at the bottom. Something went terribly, terribly wrong...





Next week teaser: CHOCOLATE CAKE. Oh YES.

TWD: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

Being born and raised in Nashville I get the best of all worlds... It makes me a southern girl... but I also feel like I can shun the stigma some people place on the South because...
1. TN was the last state to secede from the Union in the Civil War
2. My ancestors are all from East TN, and during the civil war they were like... "what??? you say there's some sort of war going on??? hmph. we don't know nothing about no war."
3. (My most favorite!) Nashville was dubbed the "Athens of the South" forever ago, because we have so many higher institutions of education (and we were the first Southern City to institute public schools) as well as having lots of arts and culture.

Boo-ya! Look at us Nashvillians, all refined and stuff.

Anyway... being a southern girl means I was raised knowing 3 things:
1. Dinner is the mid-day meal and supper is the evening meal.
2. Everything's better with a little pork fat thrown in.
3. Cornbread is always, always, always devoid of sugar. ALWAYS. You hear me, Dorie... ALWAYS.

I've talked on this blog before about how my mom makes the best cornbread. Bar none, hands down the BEST cornbread. Like biscuits, there are a million different ways to make cornbread and while my mom's recipe might not be your favorite... there is room in the culinary spectrum for all different types. Yes, including what my family calls "yankee cornbread..." aka... cornbread with sugar in it. Instead of raging against the sugar in cornbread, I've decided to be okay with it and just never let sugar touch any cornbread of mine. This, is what I call personal progress, folks.

My mom's cornbread recipe is made with white cornmeal and has nothing fancy in it. No corn, peppers, chili powder... nothing like that. So, when Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake (check out her blog, it's excellent) chose Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins for this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. I was excited to step outside the "comfort box" for cornbread and whip these up.

I invited my family over for dinner this weekend to celebrate my parents 41st wedding anniversary and made these. I'm sad to say... that these were not the hit of the dinner. In fact, I didn't really like them at all. I omitted the sugar and the corn kernels from the recipe, but aside from that... made as instructed. Mine came out dry and pretty flavorless... even with the jalapenos and chili powder. Go figure.

Better luck next time... different strokes for different folks, as they say.

If you like fancy cornbread with bits in it and sugar, check out Rebecca's blog for the recipe.

TWD: Snickery Squares

The Snickers Bar is my all-time favorite candy bar. I often flirt with other candy bars… Reese Peanut Butter Cups, M&Ms, etc… but I always go back to the Snickers. It’s just the perfect mix of chocolatey, crunchy, gooey, chewy, sweet and salty all in one bite.

So, initially I was excited about the Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for this week, picked by Erin of Dinner & Dessert. She choose Snickery Squares.

Yay! Snickers!

Then, I read through the recipe and looked at the picture. Hmph. These sure don’t look like Snickers bars, I decided. I love shortbread, but shortbread in my snickers??? I don’t know about all that business.

Upon reading the recipe I realized that I didn’t have 3 things mentioned in this recipe.

A food processor
A pastry brush
An 8x8 square pan

Jeez. So, I ended up making and baking the shortbread crust at my parent’s house on Saturday, using their food processor and also borrowing an 8x8 square pan. Then I left the shortbread hanging out in the fridge from Saturday till Monday, when I finally made the bars. I bought a fancy dancy pastry brush at Target. I really feel like 6.99 is too much to spend on such an item, but… I felt like the cheaper ones they had would just shed and I didn’t want to be gagging on bristles while I was enjoying my faux snickers

Fancy Dancy Pastry Brush. $6.99 Target.

The candying of the peanuts was interesting. At first, while I was letting the sugar “color” I was able to flit around the kitchen, making dinner, flipping through cookbooks, etc… occasionally brushing the sides of the pan with my fancy dancy pastry brush and saying to myself.. jeez. What’s the big deal about making candy??? This is a breeze.

And then as time went on, I started to wonder about the sugar. What does “just start to color” really mean? Color at all? Or color as in start to turn caramel colored? I let it color a little bit… meaning, I could tell that it was starting to color, but I let it color just a little bit more. Then I threw my peanuts in. And yes, they turned white just like Dorie mentioned. But, I wasn’t prepared for the constantly stirring for about 20 minutes that ensued. I totally thought I cooked the sugar too long, because for like 15 minutes the sugar was coloring, but it was all clumpy and not caramel-y with the peanuts. It was like forming its own little mini peanuts. I cranked the heat up and that seemed to help… eventually it all came together.

Here’s the thing though…. I thought that these peanuts were going to taste like the peanuts in snickers. But they don’t. They taste like the peanuts in cracker jack (which I really really dislike). So when I anxiously cut into it and tasted my first square. I took one bite and tossed the rest of the square in the trash. Yuck. The peanuts totally ruined it for me. I think I would have liked it better with just the peanuts layered in, instead of candied.

Oh well. Win some, lose some and at least I conquered the candy peanuts. Those rascally little attention-screaming bastards.

Soundtrack: John Legend's Get Lifted. I love to groove when I’m in the kitchen and this was the perfect accompaniment to standing over the stove stirring peanuts for so long.

Snickery Squares

For the Crust:
1 cup all-purpose flour¼ cup sugar2 TBSP powdered sugar¼ tsp salt1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten

For the Filling:
½ cup sugar3 TBSP water1 ½ cups salted peanutsAbout 1 ½ cups store-bought dulce de leche

For the Topping:
7 ounces bittersweet, coarsely chopped½ stick unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces, at room temperature

Getting Ready:
Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a 8 inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.

To Make the Crust:
Toss the flour, sugar, powdered sugar and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Toss in the pieces of cold butter and pulse about 12 times, until the mixture looks like coarse meal. Pour the yolk over the ingredients and pulse until the dough forms clumps and curds-stop before the dough comes together in a ball.Turn the dough into the buttered pan and gently press it evenly across the bottom of the pan. Prick the dough with a fork and slide the sheet into the oven.Bake the crust for 15-20 minutes, or until it takes on just a little color around the edges. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool to room temperature before filling.

To Make the Filling:
Have a parchment or silicone mat-lined baking sheet at the ready, as well as a long-handled wooden spoon and a medium heavy bottomed saucepan.Put the sugar and water in the saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Keeping the heat fairly high, continue to cook the sugar, without stirring, until it just starts to color. Toss the peanuts and immediately start stirring. Keep stirring, to coat the peanuts with sugar. Within a few minutes, they will be covered with sugar and turn white—keep stirring until the sugar turns back into caramel. When the peanuts are coated with a nice deep amber caramel, remove the pan from the heat and turn the nuts out onto the baking sheet., using the wooden spoon to spread them out as best you can. Cool the nuts to room temperature.When they are cool enough to handle, separate the nuts or break them into small pieces. Divide the nuts in half. Keep half of the nuts whole or in biggish pieces for the filling, and finely chop the other half for the topping.Spread the dulce de leche over the shortbread base and sprinkle over the whole candied nuts.

To Make the Topping:
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Remove chocolate from the heat and gently stir in the butter, stirring until it is fully blended into the chocolate.Pour the chocolate over the dulce de leche, smoothing it with a long metal icing spatula, then sprinkle over the rest of the peanuts. Slide the pan into the fridge to set the topping, about 20 minutes; if you’d like to serve the squares cold, keep them refrigerated for at least 3 hours before cutting.
Cut into 16 bars.

Low calorie=crap.

Well, that's probably a little too harsh of a title. But this didn't exactly turn out the way I had envisioned.

It was supposed to be a chocolate sponge cake that has like 50 calories per slice. I've never made a sponge cake, so maybe that's to blame... but it turned out to be more like a rubber pancake than a spongy cake.

It kinda looks pretty though doesn't it? The cool whip (I can't say whip without over pronouncing the "h" ever since I saw that episode of family guy) and strawberries tasted good! There's a low cal dessert recipe for ya!

Yeah, no more low cal sponge cakes for me...