Coconut & Maple Macaroons

Macaroons are the hottest thing in high-end pastry and chocolate shops right now … but when you think “macaroon,” you’re probably thinking of something different. Although classic French macaroons consist of chocolate cream sandwiched between two disks of almond meringue, when the concept was translated to the American dessert lexicon, the recipe changed. Drastically.

Each kind of macaroon has its own charm, and both are irrefutably delightful. The French ganache-and-meringue version is crunchy and creamy at the same time; the American version is based on coconut and is charmingly chewy. Odds are that each will strike your fancy at a different time. When you want to make a quick and easy dessert, for example, you’ll probably have a hankering for the American macaroon. It requires zero heating of any kind and can be made in about two minutes. The French version is considerably more involved. While “project”-style desserts are ideal if you have some time on your hands and curiosity in your nature, sometimes a make-it-in-fewer-than-five-minutes dessert is exactly what you’re looking for.

Coconut & Maple Macaroons
Makes 12 macaroons. Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

1/2 cup + 1 T. unsweetened coconut flakes
3 T. unsweetened cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
2 T. maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Sprinkle some cocoa powder on a large plate and have another empty clean plate nearby. Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, mixing well. Use your fingertips to roughly pinch the mixture into 12 equal balls, then roll each ball into a smooth ball on the dry, clean palms of your hands. (Your fingertips will be sticky from having mixed everything together.) Place the macaroons on the clean plate as you go. Wash and dry your hands thoroughly — the idea is to ensure that the macaroons stick to themselves rather than your hands — and then roll each macaroon in the cocoa powder to finish. Alternatively, roll in almond flour or finely ground pistachios or any other finely ground nut.

Macaroons can be refrigerated for up to a week. They’ll dry out slightly and actually improve in texture upon standing. (Although I like them freshly made, too.)

Enjoy!

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

It’s true: oatmeal makes a great breakfast. But not the flavored, sugared, powdery instant oats that are more chemicals and sweeteners than they are oats. Plain, old-fashioned rolled oats are a much better choice…and you can flavor them any way you want! You could even cook a giant batch once or twice a week and then enjoy “instant” oatmeal whenever the mood strikes you. (Or cook a big batch of steel-cut oats or even oat groats, which is the whole un-steel-cut grain.)

For my breakfast earlier in the week, I had some strawberries that needed to be eaten and a handy bag of rolled oats. I could have opted for sliced berries stirred into cooked oats, of course, but I thought it would be interesting to see what a shake made with oats would be like. The answer? With their thickening power, oats make the ideal shake. And it’s easy enough to make the shake dairy-free if you’d like: just simmer the oats in water rather than milk. So simple! This is a surprisingly hearty and satisfying smoothie to enjoy first thing in the morning or even on the way to work.

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

Blend cooked plain rolled oats with a handful of organic strawberries* in a blender. (To make a single serving, I cooked 1/4 cup raw oats and tossed in about 9 strawberries.) Add 1 T. maple syrup and a dash of vanilla extract and blend again. If the smoothie is too thick and is refusing to blend to a smooth consistency, trickle in cold water and keep blending until you have a milkshake-like smoothie. Note that this idea of cooked oats + fruit would work with any fruit that’s soft enough to blend. Banana-oat, blueberry-oat, peach-oat…the possibilities are endless!

* Seeing as strawberries are one of the most-sprayed crops on the U.S. market and we eat the whole fruit, they’re worth buying organic.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cooca Nibs

Plenty of “convenience” foods are far more convenient to make yourself — while the commercial versions tend to have unpronounceable ingredient lists and a mind-boggling amount of sugars/sweeteners, you can whip up a homemade version with a few simple healthy ingredients…and in less than a minute. Sixty seconds spent preparing AND at least 30 minutes saved by not going to the store? Now, that’s convenience! And using ingredients you already have vs. spending more money on an inferior product = thrifty (and smart) convenience.

Flavored yogurts fall into the “Prime Candidates for DIY Convenient Foods” category. If you keep a container of full-fat plain Greek yogurt in your fridge, you can enjoy the same yogurt innumerable ways by simply stirring in a few extra ingredients. Plus, when you have plain yogurt, you can even go sweet or savory without having to spend extra money. Use it as a basis for creamy salad dressings (use the yogurt in place of oil), as a way to enrich curries and soups (remove the pan or pot from the heat and stir in the yogurt at the last minute to keep it from curdling), or as a substitute for sour cream (to me, full-fat plain Greek yogurt tastes richer and fresher than sour cream does). And remember that fresh herbs make a wonderful companion to yogurt.

To go the sweet route, you can stir everything from spices to jam into your yogurt. For this batch, I opted to go with cinnamon, maple syrup, fresh blueberries, and a sprinkling of cocoa nibs. Any fruit would work, though, and you can use any sweetener you like, from honey to palm sugar to date sugar. Let your imagination run (conveniently) wild!

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cocoa Nibs

Plain full-fat Greek yogurt
Drizzle of maple syrup
Sprinkling of cinnamon
Fresh blueberries (or any other fruit)
Cocoa nibs (optional, but adds an appealing chocolate crunch)

Use a fork or a small whisk to stir the maple syrup and cinnamon into the yogurt. Gently stir in blueberries and top with nibs. Note that any fruit would be lovely — just be sure to cut the fruit into bite-sized pieces before stirring it in. Or you could dip larger-sized fruit slices into the yogurt.

Enjoy!

Crustless Pecan Pie

What do chestnuts, pecans, beech nuts, and hickory nuts all have in common? They’re all native to North America. While beech nuts and hickory nuts are hard to find since they’re usually foraged rather than farmed, chestnuts and pecans are relatively plentiful. Roasted chestnuts are especially findable around the holidays. (Although this Flourless Chocolate Chestnut Cake is delicious any time of the year.) Pecans, on the other hand, are findable year-round.

Where chestnuts are starchy and dry in nature — which makes them excellent in baked goods when dried and ground into flour — pecans are rich and buttery. That satisfying flavor and the high protein/fat content of pecans makes them an ideal ingredient for breakfasts that’ll stick with you all the way to lunch. (As opposed to sugary, refined cereals that will leave you feeling hungry and irritable by mid-morning and will have you reaching for more sugary junk to make it to lunch time. Break the cycle deliciously!)

Soaking the pecans, draining them, and then roasting them overnight will make them insanely buttery-tasting and isn’t very much work seeing as all of those steps are pretty passive: once you have the nuts situated, they can simply do their thing. But you can pan-toast the pecans at the last minute, too, if you want to skip the overnight soak. I think it’s much easier to do hands-off activities like soaking and roasting rather than pay-attention activities like toasting in a pan. (The more oily and buttery the nut, the more likely it is to over-toast and wind up burnt.) How you deal with your nuts is up to you.

Crustless Pecan Pie

8 oz. raw pecan halves (6 oz. or even 4 oz. would also work; I happen to be a nut about pecans and wanted to make a very pecan-y pecan pie)
1 T. sea salt (which sounds like a lot, but you’ll wind up rinsing most of it away)
6 dates, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup maple syrup
4 T. butter (half a stick), preferably from grass-fed cows
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
2 tsp. vanilla

The night before, place the pecans and salt in a small bowl and add enough cold water to cover the nuts. Leave them sit out on the counter overnight. The following day, rinse well and let drain for at least 5 minutes. Preheat oven to 200F. Spread the drained pecans out on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until the pecans are dry and brittle and break apart easily. (When they start to smell magnificently of roasting nuts, start checking them. This is the most enchanting scent ever — not even baking bread can beat it!) When the pecans are done, increase the heat to 350F.

Get out a 9″ glass pie pan. Place the dates, maple syrup, and butter in a small saucepan and heat over medium-low until the butter is melted. Raise the heat up a notch or two until the mixture is gently bubbling. Let simmer for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and whisk in eggs and vanilla. Whisk in the pecans. You can hand-break them into smaller bits or you can leave them as whole halves. I like the texture and look of the halves, so I do my best to keep them intact.

Pour the batter into the ungreased pie pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350F. Let baked pie cool at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Leftover pie can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Talk about the most lush breakfast imaginable! Especially when you consider that if you serve it in 4 generous portions (one-quarter of the pie makes a lasts-well-until-lunch breakfast), each portion only has 1 T. of maple syrup and 1 T. of butter. It doesn’t take much to play up pecans!

Enjoy!

Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt

One of the many beauties of crepes is that you can fill them with whatever you like, whether that’s sweet or savory or something in between. And by varying the kind of flour you use to make the crepes themselves, you can tweak their base flavor to suit your mood. Want a nutty, rich-tasting crepe? Use teff, buckwheat, or chestnut flour. How about a mild crepe that would work with any filling? Try brown rice, sorghum, millet, or corn flour. For a decidedly savory crepe, go with chickpea or potato flour. In a chocolate kind of mood? Use unsweetened cocoa powder as one of your flours…and maybe throw in some coconut, too. Mesquite flour lends crepes a caramel flair; plantain has a hint of the tropics. Your options are endless.

Although I often make savory crepes intended for lunch wraps and chutney roll-ups, I made these for breakfast and filled them with chocolate yogurt and some blackberry jam. The whole-grain-ness of the crepe + the protein-rich whole-milk yogurt makes for a deliciously satisfying breakfast…and you can make both elements ahead of time and simply roll them at the last minute. Quick breakfasts can be classy and easy!

Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt
This crepe recipe makes about 12 crepes; the yogurt is enough for 2 servings. Feel free to downsize the crepe portions or upsize the yogurt portions as desired. I like to make a full batch of the crepes so that I have some leftovers to enjoy however I like.

For the crepes:
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup buckwheat flour*
1 1/2 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Dash of sea salt
Butter or ghee for cooking the crepes, preferably from grass-fed cows

For the chocolate yogurt:
1/2 cup whole-milk plain Greek yogurt (Fage is my favorite)
2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 T. maple syrup

To make the crepes, whisk all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Get out a (or two or three) 7″ nonstick crepe pan and place a dab of butter in the pan. Heat over medium heat — I go with mark 4 out of 10 on my electric burners — until butter has melted and is sizzling. Pour in 1/4 cup of the crepe batter and cook for 2-3 minutes or until crepe is set on top and browned on the bottom. Use a heatproof spatula to flip over the crepe and cook the second side for another minute or two or until equally browned. If you’re adventurous, by all means go ahead and flip that sucker up into the air to turn it over. Just don’t do that directly over the burner! It’s much easier to rescue a misdirected crepe from a cool element than a hot burner.

Place the cooked crepe on a wire rack. (If you put it on a plate, it’ll collect condensation and get soggy.) Make a second crepe in the same pan using the same technique. I find that I have to put a fresh dab of butter into my crepe pan every other crepe to keep them from sticking. Leftover crepes can be stacked in a sealed container and refrigerated for a week.

To make the yogurt, use a fork to thoroughly mix the ingredients in a bowl. Leftover yogurt can be kept up until the “expires by” date on the original package.

When you’re ready to assemble your chocolate-filled crepe, just spoon some yogurt onto the center of the crepe, roll up, and enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make wheat-based crepes, substitute 1 total cup of spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flours for the brown rice and buckwheat.

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

February may have turned into April overnight (44F? Weather gods, what is going on??), but there’s still enough of a chill in the air to warrant baking muffins. Especially whole-grain muffins with a jammy surprise inside. I opted for locally made, naturally sweetened blackberry jam for this batch; next time I might go for raspberry or cherry. That’s the great thing about making “surprise” muffins: as long as you can come up with different treats to tuck inside the batter, you can keep reinventing your recipes! Other fun surprises include dollops of nut butter and chunks of dark chocolate.

If you are going for a jammy surprise, though, make sure to pick an all-fruit jam, not one that has a bunch of added sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup. Always, always read the ingredients label! You can save yourself a lot of headache and heartache by skipping all of the misleading claims and marketing flimflam on the front of any given package and going right to the ingredients label. If you don’t like what you see there, put it back and go on to the next brand…and possibly the next one…until you find an appealing list of ingredients.

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

3/4 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1/2 cup almond flour (I run sliced almonds through a coffee grinder until I have flour; this is a far more affordable — and tastier! — way to enjoy almond flour)
1 T. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows, OR coconut, grain, or nut milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. vanilla
Blackberry jam

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tin with paper cups. This recipe tends to make at least a baker’s dozen, so you may need to line a few openings in a second tin. Get out a small spoon to use for scooping the jam into the muffins right before you pop them into the oven.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, maple syrup, oil, and vanilla. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ones.

Promptly fill each cup in the full 12-cup tin halfway with batter. (If you are using aluminum-free baking powder — which I always do — time is of the essence since the powder will immediately start to react when mixed with liquid. Now is not the time to tarry!) Use your tiny spoon to scoop a dollop of jam into each muffin. Add a little more batter to each cup, enough to cover the jam and fill the cup 3/4 full. If you still have some batter, make another 3 or 4 muffins in the second tin.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the muffins are turning golden on top and a toothpick inserted along the side comes out clean. (If you poke the center of the muffin, you’ll hit the jam and the toothpick will come out sticky.) Let cool for at least 10 minutes before biting into your surprise.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make wheat-based muffins, use a total of 1 1/2 cups spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flours. You could replace the almond flour with wheat, too, but the nuttiness of the almonds is a nice compliment to the tart-sweetness of the blackberry jam.

Chocolate Macadamia Muffins

Peanuts make my favorite butter and almonds and chestnuts make my favorite flours, but macadamias make my favorite nuts + chocolate combination. In this case, the final result was muffins. (Or — if you frost the muffins with melted chocolate and butter and pop them into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to harden your two-ingredient frosting — cupcakes.)

Macadamias are also fabulous in trail mixes. Eat them with raisins, for example, and they’ll taste like a nut-and-fruit version of oatmeal cookies. And here’s a bit of trivia about macadamia nuts that you might not know: the #1 macadamia-growing region of the world isn’t Hawaii. It’s Australia, where the first commercial crop was planted in the late 1800s.

Chocolate-Macadamia Muffins/Cupcakes**

1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup teff OR sorghum flour*
1/2 cup chestnut OR almond flour*
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably non-Dutched
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (OR coconut milk)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375F. Line a muffin tray with 12 baking cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and nuts. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ones and immediately pour into the muffin cups. Note that aluminum-free baking powder (which is what I use exclusively) reacts very quickly, so speed is of the essence here — no dallying! Get those muffins into the oven lickety-split. That way, you’ll have nicely raised, rounded tops. (Or, in the case of wheat-based muffins, peaked tops.)

Bake for 20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let muffins cool for about 15 minutes in the tray, then remove from the tray and finish cooling to room temp. (If you leave them in the tray, accumulated condensation can make the bottoms soggy.) If you’re like me, you probably want to eat one of them fresh out of the oven and piping hot.

Let muffins cool completely before storing in an airtight container. Muffins can be refrigerated for a week (but will dry out slightly in the fridge) or left out for four days. Chances are your house is dry and rather chilly in January, so mold shouldn’t be a problem; if you make these or any other muffins during the summer, promptly store them in the fridge.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make a wheat-based version, use a total of 1 1/2 cups spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour instead.

** To make these muffins into cupcakes, make a simple frosting by melting dark chocolate (at least 75% dark) and unsalted butter (preferably from grass-fed cows) in a small saucepan over the lowest heat setting until chocolate is almost melted. The ratio should be about 2 chocolate squares to about 1 tablespoon of butter.

Remove from heat and stir to finish melting the chocolate — if you leave it on the heat until it’s completely melted, you risk burning the chocolate beyond repair — and get out a small spatula. Drip a dollop onto the center of each muffin top and use the spatula to spread the chocolate slightly out to the sides, giving the frosting a chance to run down slightly. Stash the muffins in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to harden the frosting. Chances are you’ll only need about 4 squares to do 12 muffins.

Whipped Pumpkin Cream

Nothing adds an easy touch of elegance to holiday desserts like freshly whipped cream. (Skip the aerosol can!) Be sure to chill your beaters and bowl before whipping away, either by putting them in the fridge for a good 30 minutes or by popping them into the freezer for a quick 10. I like to sweeten my cream by drizzling in a little bit of maple syrup before I begin to whip; sometimes I add a bit of vanilla or almond extract for flavor, too.

The key to lush whipped cream is choosing lush cream to begin with. Ideally, you want cream from grass-fed cows — it has a richer, fuller taste and a lighter, fluffier texture — and cream that has not been UHT pasteurized. UHT means “ultra-high temperature,” which in turn means that the cream will be difficult to whip since it’s been thoroughly cooked and in the process has lost a great deal of its natural thickness and ability to hold that thickness when whipped. (Whipping simply incorporates air into the cream. The fat in the cream stiffens around the air pockets and holds itself up to create the fluff effect. Cold fat is stiffer than room-temp fat, which is why using chilled equipment and chilled cream is so important.) Take a look at the ingredient list on UHT whipping cream — you’ll see that it’s been thickened with carrageenan, gums, and other stabilizers to recreate the thick texture the cream has lost through having been overheated. Not exactly an ideal scenario.

I’m in a cowshare program*, which means that I can order fresh raw cream directly from my farmer. It’s a lovely pale yellow color (the cows eat grass and the orange-hued beta carotene in the grass shows through in the milk) and whips to fluffy peaks in less than a minute. If you live in a state like California that allows retail sale of raw dairy products, by all means go for the raw cream. If you live in a state like Michigan that allows cowshare programs, join one! If you simply can’t find raw cream, try to find whipping cream that isn’t UHT.

Note: if you want to whip cream, you need whipping cream! The other types — coffee cream, light cream, even light whipping cream — don’t have enough fat in them to whip, particularly not when they’ve lost so much of their natural texture through pasteurization.

Pumpkin Whipped Cream
This amount is enough to serve 2 people; double, triple, or quadruple as necessary to suit the number of guests.

1/4 cup whipping cream
1 T. maple syrup
1/2 tsp. vanilla OR almond OR hazelnut extract (optional, but adds a nice flavor dimension)
1/4 cup puréed pumpkin (canned is fine, or you can roast your own and then put the cooked flesh through a food processor with a splash or two of water to make your own fresh purée)

Chill your beaters and bowl for at least 30 minutes in the fridge or 10 in the freezer. Pour the cream, syrup, and extract into the chilled bowl and whip at the highest speed until the cream has gone from liquid to a fluffy consistency. If you’re lucky enough to be using raw cream, you’ll be done in less than a minute. If you’re stuck on the opposite end of the spectrum and are using UHT cream, this could take three or four minutes. Either way, if the cream starts to take on a grainy look, STOP! You’re about to make butter.

Fold in the pumpkin with a spatula, occasionally turning the bowl and scraping the sides as you carefully lift and tuck the pumpkin into the cream. Raw whipped cream is very stable and can handle a fair amount of pumpkin; UHT cream collapses quite easily.

Serve the cream atop cake (here I spooned it onto pumpkin bread and had it for breakfast), as a dip for fresh fruit (apples and pears are especially nice), or as a treat all by itself. Feel free to sprinkle on some spices for additional flavor and as a garnish.

Enjoy!

* To find cowshare programs in Metro Detroit, check out my Local Farms & Markets list; to find them across the nation, check out sites like www.eatwild.com and www.localharvest.org.

Cranberry Ice Cream with Cranberry, Apple & Orange Chutney

I don’t have many fancy gadgets in the kitchen — sous-vide cooking and flavored foams just seem like too much work to me — but I consider my ice cream maker to be an indispensable culinary aid. Ditto for my blender. If you have those two kitchen helpers, making ice cream becomes ridiculously easy. Not only can you upgrade your ice cream by using high-quality ingredients (dairy from grass-fed cows, natural sweeteners, etc.), you can let your imagination run wild and you can make whatever flavor you want. Avocado and coconut? Done. Creamed corn with cinnamon? Sure. The scoop is yours.

Seeing as Thanksgiving is just around the corner and ’tis the season for every market to showcase cranberries in all their crimson glory, I thought I’d give cranberry ice cream a shot. And because I had the delicious joy of sampling ice cream made with blackberries and buttermilk when I was in Germany earlier this year, I decided that I’d use a similar approach for this batch. (Tip for travelers: if you are in Konstanz, visit the Aran coffeehouse + ice cream shop!! The Touch of Singapore restaurant is another must-taste destination in Konstanz.)

You can serve the ice cream all on its own or you can serve it with the chutney as I’ve done here. Or serve the chutney all on its own — I originally came up with the chutney because I wanted to serve a tastier and healthier version of the time-honored but sugar-drenched cranberry & orange dish that’s typically offered at the Thanksgiving table. Rather than white sugar, this chutney features apples, ginger, and a touch of honey.

Cranberry Ice Cream with Cranberry, Apple & Orange Chutney

For the ice cream:
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, preferably from grass-fed cows
4 egg yolks that you don’t mind eating raw (I always stick with eggs from pastured hens)
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. almond OR vanilla extract

For the chutney:
12 oz. fresh or frozen cranberries
1 large apple, chopped
1 seedless orange, peeled and split into segments
1 tsp. ginger
1 to 2 T. honey or to taste
Apple cider (optional)

To make the ice cream, place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into an ice cream maker and follow manufacturer instructions.

To make the chutney, place all ingredients in a medium pot and simmer over medium-low heat for 20 minutes or until thickened, stirring and smashing the chutney occasionally to help the orange segments release their juice and the apples and cranberries release their pectin. (Pectin thickens as it cooks.) Add another drizzle of honey or a splash of cider if you’d like your chutney to be sweeter. Serve with the ice cream, on its own, or even on a cheese plate or with a helping of turkey or chicken.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream

I was lucky — as a kid, I had the pleasure of visiting a local ice cream shop that made (and still makes, as far as I know) its own ice cream.  It was creamier and tastier than anything you could buy in a store.  Although all of their flavors were fantastic, my far-and-away favorite was the pumpkin ice cream they only made between Halloween and Christmas.  Ice cream in the summer was grand, but Ray’s Pumpkin Ice Cream in the winter was even better.

Since I had a half-can of organic pumpkin left over from making pumpkin bread yesterday, I decided to give my own pumpkin ice cream a shot.  (Literally … I included a shot of rum.)  In lieu of heavy cream — I only had whole milk on hand — I added a few extra egg yolks, then threw in a few of my favorite spices.  The result was a not-too-rich, very pumpkin-y ice cream that tasted a lot like the inside of a pumpkin pie.  In short, I’d say that making your own pumpkin ice cream is so easy that you can enjoy a bowl of pumpkin ice cream even in the sweltering depths of July.  (If you’re a big pumpkin fan, you might want to stock up on canned pumpkin while it’s plentiful in stores — the organic pumpkin at Trader Joe’s is particularly nice, but they only stock it seasonally.  Whole Foods does stock organic pumpkin year-round, though.)

Note on making ice cream: the more fat you include (in the form of heavy cream, coconut cream, or egg yolks) and the more liquor you include (plain vodka and rum work best), the less frozen the ice cream will get.  If you like your ice cream soft, use more yolks; if you like it to freeze harder, use fewer yolks or skip the booze.  Don’t use more than one shot of booze per batch, because 1. odds are the rum/vodka flavor will be too pronounced and 2. the ice cream probably won’t freeze well.

Sugar also helps modulate the freezing consistency, but I prefer less-sugary ice cream, so I use natural sweeteners that don’t have much effect on the how hard the ice cream gets, both because there’s simply less sweetener in my ice cream vs. a commercial brand and because I use sweeteners like maple syrup and molasses rather than refined white sugar.  I’d rather control the consistency by upping or decreasing the fat content.  Note that you are consuming uncooked yolks, so be sure to at least get organic eggs; if you have access to local eggs from a local farmer, so much the better.  I wouldn’t recommend using 99-cents-a-dozen eggs in a raw situation.

Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream

1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (Calder’s and Organic Valley are good choices)
1 cup canned pumpkin, preferably organic (it really does taste better!)
3-4 egg yolks (3 if you like harder ice cream, 4 if you like softer ice cream), preferably from pastured hens
2/3 cup maple syrup
1 shot of unflavored rum
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. (Mine takes about 20 minutes to churn the blended mixture into a frozen cream.)

Enjoy!

Flourless Chestnut Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Jam

Two observations that would seem to be quite unrelated: chestnuts are in season again (!), and wow, food processors sure are handy!

One dish that makes the two connect: flourless chestnut chocolate cake made in a food processor.  Ridiculously easy, ridiculously tasty — using steamed chestnuts instead of flour gives the cake a dense, fudgy texture — and a great way to highlight a unique seasonal treat.  (Chestnuts are the starchiest nuts of all, so puréed chestnuts can easily stand in for flour.)  Also, using steamed chestnuts instead of chestnut flour is a much, much more economical way to incorporate that chestnut flavor into a cake: eight ounces of steamed chestnuts cost $3-$4, while a small bag of chestnut flour is usually $10+.

For the topping, I used naturally sweetened organic raspberry jam, but any dark berry jam would be fantastic, from strawberry to blackberry to cranberry.  A dollop of full-fat Greek yogurt or freshly whipped organic cream would also be great toppers.

Flourless Chestnut Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Jam

60 grams (about 2 ounces) dark chocolate, preferably 85% dark, broken into chunks
8 oz. steamed chestnuts (I buy mine at Trader Joe’s)
1 egg
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup buttermilk OR whole milk OR coconut milk
Pinch of sea salt
1 T. baking powder

Naturally sweetened raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Grease a 9″ glass pie pan and set aside.

In a small pot, melt chocolate over LOWEST heat setting, whisking often to help the chocolate melt. Remove from heat and finish whisking out the last lumps — don’t leave it sitting there until it’s completely melted, because odds are the chocolate will become scorched. Unlike chocolate that seizes during melting, scorched chocolate can’t be saved. (Seized chocolate can be rescued by whisking in enough cream or butter to make the mixture smooth again.)

Pour melted chocolate into a food processor. Add remaining ingredients EXCEPT for the jam and process until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 28 to 30 minutes or until center is firm and set.

Serve each slice topped with a small spoonful of jam.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream

Even with plug-in ice cream makers that churn the mix all on their own — as opposed to the old-fashioned, human-powered crank models — making ice cream can still be a challenge, especially if you’re not adding heaps of sugar and fillers.  (Both of which lower the freezing point and keep the ice cream scoopable and smooth…and both of which you’ll find in spades in commercial ice cream.)  But once you’ve tinkered with a few different ingredients and proportions, you start to get the hang of it.

The trick to good ice cream is creating a blend that has great flavor and that doesn’t mutate into chunky, rock-hard ice crystals after it’s been in the freezer overnight.  While that variety still tastes good and is scoopable once it’s sat out on the counter and thawed for about 30 minutes, having to attack your next-day ice cream with an ice pick to get a bowlful isn’t fun.  Instead, you’re better off using ingredients and proportions that will lower the freezing point of the ice cream, thus making those pesky crystals less likely to form and grow.  Still, homemade ice cream is best when eaten within a week or less of making it.  Ah…what a sacrifice!

Some tips for making great ice cream:

- For maximum flavor, nutrition, and texture, use either whole coconut milk or heavy cream from grass-fed cows.  (You need a good helping of high-quality fats in your ice cream to make it smoothly freeze.)

- Have about 25% of your overall ingredient amount be maple syrup or honey; it’ll be plenty sweet enough and that proportion will make for good freeze-ability.  Naturally sweetened jams and jellies are other good options.  The pectin they contain also helps maintain ice cream smoothness.

- Include a dry powder to suck up excess moisture as the mixture freezes.  Cocoa powder works great, and who doesn’t like chocolate ice cream?  Coconut flour works, too.  You won’t always want these specific flavors, but ice cream tends to turn out better if you include one or the other.

- Include about 1 tablespoon of vodka or rum for every 2 cups of milk or cream.  Alcohol lowers the freezing point, and you won’t taste that small amount.

- If you have a good source for high-quality eggs that you don’t mind eating raw, include a yolk or two for every 2 cups of milk or cream.  Also a good way to stump those ice crystals!

- A pinch of sea salt will bring out the flavor of the ice cream, no matter what flavor you choose.

With all that in mind, here’s a recipe to try:

Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream (naturally dairy-free)

2 cups whole coconut milk (or 1 15-oz. can)
1/2 cup maple syrup (always check the ingredient label to make sure it really is maple syrup and not dyed corn syrup!)
1 tablespoon vodka or rum
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 egg yolk (from an actual farmer — I wouldn’t eat a raw commercial egg)
Pinch of sea salt

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until frothy. Pour mixture into an ice-cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer instructions. (Mine takes 20 minutes to churn.) Either serve promptly as a soft-serve dessert or freeze to harden. I like mine a bit soupy, so I’m a huge fan of just-made homemade ice cream. Garnish with unsweetened coconut flakes if you like.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Yogurt with Blueberries & Cashews

First it was omega-3s, then it was antioxidants; now, the food rage is probiotics.  (Mind you, these have all been mainstay elements of whole, unprocessed foods for millennia, long before food scientists and genetic engineers and corporate interests got involved in our food chain.  Thankfully, we’re now “discovering” that traditional cuisines contain plenty of foods that keep us hale and hearty.)  Probiotics — literally, “pro-life” in a nutritional/biological sense — are beneficial bacteria that do things like help our digestive systems establish and maintain healthy intestinal flora.  These flora then facilitate our metabolism and enhance everything from our immune system to our neurological functions.  In short, probiotics aren’t just “pro-life,” they’re “necessary-for-life.”

Probiotic foods include fermented specialties like yogurt, kefir, cultured buttermilk, cultured sour cream, coconut kefir (a non-dairy drink), lactic-fermented sauerkraut and kimchee (and/or any other vegetable), miso soup, fish sauce, traditionally-brewed soy sauce…there are plenty to choose from.  Yogurt, however, is probably the most common item on the American probiotic list.

Given yogurt’s popularity and  how much everybody loves chocolate, why not have a probiotic dessert?  Transforming plain Greek yogurt into chocolate yogurt takes less than a minute, and you’ll have a rich, creamy dessert that tastes like chocolate mousse.  Or stir naturally-sweetened jam (i.e., sweetened with grape juice rather than refined sugar or high-fructose corn syrup) for a fruity, ice-cream-like probiotic treat.

Chocolate Yogurt

To make chocolate yogurt, start with about 1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt (preferably whole-milk yogurt) in a small bowl.  Using a fork or whisk, stir in 1 T. maple syrup and 2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder until you have a smooth chocolate yogurt.  Taste it to check the sweetness level and add more syrup if desired.

Serve unadorned in a pretty glass or bowl or top with fruit and/or nuts.  (I topped mine with cashews and blueberries.)  If you like, garnish with a sprig of mint or a dollop of natural jam…or swirl in some jam to get a fruit-and-chocolate effect.

Enjoy!

PB&C (Peanut Butter & Cocoa)

Who doesn’t like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?  Peanut butter and chocolate just go together.  But I guarantee that once you make your own PB&C in solid form or smoothie/shake form, you won’t ever want to go back to the prepackaged kind.  The homemade variety tastes better, it’s a whole lot better for your health, AND you probably already have the ingredients for it on hand.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll just put it this way:

Milk Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Milk Non-Fat, Milk Fat, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, PGPR, Emulsifiers, Peanut(s), Dextrose, Salt, TBHQ (off the Reese’s label)

OR

Whole milk , 100% peanut butter, cocoa powder, maple syrup (out of your own blender).

Seriously, you gotta try making your own!  I swear you’ll never want a commercial PB&C again.

Liquid PB&C

Blend 1 cup whole milk (preferably from grass-fed cows, like Calder’s or Organic Valley), 1 T. 100% peanut butter, 1 T. cocoa powder, and 1 T. maple syrup (preferably Grade B) until smooth.  Enjoy!

Traditional PB&C

Dunk a square of dark chocolate (at least 70%; I go for 90%) in 100% peanut butter.  Enjoy!

Individual Crustless Pumpkin Pie

There’s a time for crusts and ends and corners, but that time isn’t all the time.  Sometimes you just want what’s in the middle without having to bother with anything else.  If you’re a big pumpkin fan like I am, you might prefer no-holds-barred, maximum pumpkin, especially at this time of the year when it’s okay to see how many ways you can serve it.  (Seeing as pumpkin pie doesn’t go over too well in the sweltering heat of August…) 

Enter, then, the crustless individual pumpkin pie, served in ramekins, crocks, or custard cups.  They’re practical and cute!

Crustless Maple Pumpkin Pies

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
3 eggs, divided into yolks and whites
1/2 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
1/2 cup whole milk, preferably organic/local (if you’d like to make this dairy-free, use whole coconut milk)
1/2 tsp. sea salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
15-oz. can of pumpkin, preferably organic
Chopped pecans for garnish

Dissolve the gelatin in the water in a small saucepan over low heat OR microwave water and gelatin in a small microwave-safe bowl for 30 seconds, then stir. Microwave for another 30 seconds and stir again, repeating once more if necessary. Set aside.

Separate yolks from whites, placing the yolks in a medium saucepan and the whites in a large mixing bowl. Set whites aside.

Stir the yolks with a whisk. Blend in maple syrup, milk, salt, cinnamon, and pumpkin. Heat mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until it’s thick and smooth. (This will take about 6 minutes.) Add the dissolved gelatin, stir thoroughly, and remove from heat. Let cool.

Beat the egg whites for about 3 minutes or until they’re tall and white and form stiff peaks. Using a spatula, carefully fold the whites into the pumpkin mixture, then carefully spoon pumpkin into individual ramekins, crocks, custard cups, or even small bowls. Garnish with pecans and a drizzling of maple syrup.

These pies can be served fresh or can be kept in the refrigerator for about 4 days. (They make good breakfasts, too!)

Enjoy!