Dessert « Eat Love Cook

Posts filed under ‘Dessert’

As the temperature is firmly in the 80s around here, comes the realization the summer is well and truly upon us. And what better way to celebrate summer sunday’s that with those old-fashioned childhood treats of icecream sundae’s (get it?). While ice cream tastes great during any season, sundaes work best during summer, when the ice cream melts quickly but the addition of a few other select accouterments go a long way towards dragging out the dessert into a delicious meal-ender.

For my first sundae of the season, I chose to keep it simple – because, like with most things in life, sundaes are best when kept simple. Throw on too many ingredients and you lose the essence of this wonderful melding of flavors. So start with your favorite ice cream flavor (or 3, if you really must), add some textured toppings, and a sauce of some sort to bring it all in together – and voila, a perfect sundae. Here, I used vanilla icecream which really is the best base for all kinds of sundae toppings – and complemented it with some of my homemade ganache and some toasted walnuts. Done.

♥ Continue reading Sunday Sundae: Simple Ice Cream Sundae

Filed under American, Dessert, Quick and Easy

Posted on June 6th, 2010 |

No Comments

Watermelon with Ginger and Lemon

Watermelon is a terrific fruit to keep in the fridge as we head in to the warmer months. The fruit is loaded with enough water (duh!) to act as a wonderful hydrant, while providing you with enough fiber and other fruity goodness. The fruit is pretty sweet all through the year – you just have to pick a dark red fruit which feels heavy for its size.

Watermelon is also wonderful as a stand-alone dessert, since its subtle sweetness stands up well to a variety of add-ins and seasonings. The wifey loves her watermelons sprinkled with some salt and pepper; if the fruit is not as sweet as you like, you can always add in some sugar. My favorite add-ins are some freshly grated ginger and some lemon juice. The watermelon cubes can be stored in the fridge for up to a week this way, and are delicious eaten straight out as a cold treat.

♥ Continue reading Watermelon with Ginger and Lemon

Filed under Dessert, Quick and Easy

Posted on April 14th, 2010 |

No Comments

I’m a Complan (cookie) boy!

Anyone who grew up in India knows that the phrase ‘I am a Complan boy’ relates to the nutritional drink mix popularized in the last few decades back home; we spent a large part of our childhoods drinking steaming hot mugs of Complan as part of our breakfasts before we headed to school in the morning. The highly successful ad, featuring a growing boy helping his mom by reaching up for some hard-to-get-to kitchen shelves, with the proud mom admiring the height of the boy, had a whole generation of India kids wanting to be Complan boys and Complan girls. (I’m 6 feet tall, considered tall for a regular Indian, so i’m probably one of the few that Complan did work on :p).

I always loved the taste of Complan even when eaten just as a powder; the original flavor, slightly malty and with with a subtle vanilla flavor. It was even chalky at times, dissolving into a sweet paste that coated the arch of the mouth. They introduced new flavors like Chocolate and Mango, but the original was always the best. Ofcourse, my mom would always chide me for just eating the powder, insisting that I drink it with milk.

I forgot about Complan for a while till I stumbled upon Complan cookies in our local Indian grocery store a few weeks ago. Could it be? The sweet taste of Complan sandwiched between a biscuit (the Indian kind, not the Paula Deen southern kind)? It seemed too good to be true, especially when I spied not just the natural Complan flavor but an orange flavor too. I just had to give them a try!

How did they taste? Meh. Like any other cream-filled biscuit, with the iconic Complan taste barely coming through at all. This seemed like one of those attempts at cross-marketing by the conglomerate that owned the Complan brand- “Hmm, we have a popular beverage mix, and we also make cream cookies – why not just slap the Complan name on the cream cookies and call them a healthy snack?”! Don’t get me wrong – cream cookies by themselves are fine. Just not Complan worthy, I thought. But now I was left with a couple of packets to get rid of – so I got creative and decided to dip them in Chocolate Sauce and freeze them. Yummy! The cold, half-chocolate-dipped frozen cookies were a delicious mid-afternoon weekend dessert, with the Vanilla and Orange flavors complementing the chocolate. I even convinced myself that maybe I’ll get a nice energy boost from the Complan in the cookies You can try this with any cream cookie ofcourse; bonus points if you pick up the Indian variety at your local ethnic grocer.

♥ Continue reading I’m a Complan (cookie) boy!

Filed under Dessert, Quick and Easy

Posted on January 6th, 2010 |

No Comments

Christmas cheater Pumpkin Pie

Christmas is the last true time in the year when we all get to cheat on our little personal food promises, before the week of the Resolutions is upon us. These can be little promises like “I will eat only one slice of pie for dessert”, or “I will not drink an alcoholic beverage before 5pm”, or “I will limit myself to just a little of that delicious, artery clogging stuffing that Aunt Edna prepared”. Or they can be bigger ones like “I will never use ready-made pie filling”.

Confession time – I broke that last one because I really wanted pumpkin pie for Christmas, and since we were only cooking for a small, intimate gathering of exactly 3 and already had 6 dishes lined up – I just didnt think whipping up a pie from scratch was worth it; and in the end, since I got an extra hour to join in a game of Monopoly with the wifey and the little brother (the other guests at this cozy little celebration) it definitely was the right decision I would say!

Since I had the oven cranked up to prepare some of the other items, it didn’t take much time to throw in this pie (actually got TWO pies from the one can) at the beginning of the evening – allowing for the couple of hours needed to fully cool ensure we had a perfectly set, delicious dessert at the end of gorging on the other items. A couple of homemade touches ensured the pie did not taste like it just came out of a can!

♥ Continue reading Christmas cheater Pumpkin Pie

Filed under American, Dessert, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 28th, 2009 |

No Comments

Evaporated Chocolate Ganache

As I wrote about a couple of posts back, the past month I discovered the joys of making chocolate ganache and using it top a toasted slice of bread ala La Maison Du Chocolat. While Ganache might seem like a scary French word, I write this to reassure all the young cooks out there that its just a fancy word for chocolate sauce – and is just as easy to make.

All you need to know about ganache, which is a little thicker than your generic Hershey’s syrup and has a lot more depth of flavor to it, is that it is a combination of chocolate and cream, and you can tinker around with the varieties of said ingredients to suit any occasions. By the same token, you can also be reassured that the recipe is fool-proof – if the sauce turns out thicker than you intended, it will harden into a nice, soft truffle. Much thinner than you wanted? Well, say hello to a nice chocolate glaze for a cake or muffin!

♥ Continue reading Evaporated Chocolate Ganache

Filed under Dessert, French, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 22nd, 2009 |

1 Comment

Toasted bread with Bitter-sweet Gananche

On days when you want a quick and easy dessert, but something a bit more sophisticated than just a scoop of the Haagen-Dazs from your freezer - well, nothing beats a hot toasted slice of crusty bread draped with warm chocolate ganache. It’s not a traditional combination, but one that really works because of the splendid contrast in textures and flavors of the bread and chocolate.

A few weeks ago, the La Maison Du Chocolat store near my workplace had a ganache tasting. The wife and I first fell in love with Maison chocolates during our trip to Paris last year, and I was elated when a branch opened up right on Wall Street soon after - I never miss any of their tasting events. At the ganache event, I was greeted with two chocolatiers (that word exists, right?) melting thick ganache in sparkling white ceramic bowl. The surprise was that instead of a plate of strawberries or marshmallows to dip in the ganache, they put out plates covered with small pieces of various bread – the regular savory breads, mind you, not any sweetened ones. The ganache was slowly drizzled over the piece of bread and handed over to the guests.

When I admitted that I’d never encountered this combination before, the lady reassured me that this was the best way to enjoy the flavors of the rich ganache. One bite and I understood exactly why – the hearty flavor of the bread stood up quite well to the richness of the chocolate, acting as the foundation for the deep flavor of the cocoa to shine through. The rough and crumbly texture of the toasted bread melded well with the velvety creaminess of the ganache, providing a little crunch at the end of the luscious chocolate. ♥ Continue reading Toasted bread with Bitter-sweet Gananche

Filed under American, Dessert, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 18th, 2009 |

1 Comment