Memorial Day Tarts!

So as Dana said I am typically not the one to make the sweets but for Memorial Day dinner we had nothing for dessert, so I went to my favorite cooking blog Picky Palate and found something that looked good and then experimented. I made 2 tarts and the pictures show the process of both. First I used her recipe to make a peanut butter chocolate chip. And then since my dad is not too fond of chocolate I decided to improvise a fruit tart using that recipe as a guide.

So here are the ingredients

Butter, cream cheese, graham crackers, sugar, brown sugar, heavy cream, peanut butter and semi sweet chocolate chips.

First I made a crust using 9 graham crackers(one sleeve) by mashing up the crackers very fine and then mixing it with 4 tbsp of butter and 3 tbsp of sugar. Then coat the bottom of your pan (I used a pie pan since we didnt have a tart pan) with this mixture. Then bake this at 350 for about 10 minutes. Put it on a cooling rack and let it sit while you do the next part.

 Then you mix the peanut butter, cream cheese, heavy cream, brown sugar together adding half of the chocolate chips.

At this point it tastes delicious already ahaha.

Then while waiting for the other crust to chill, I started the second. This one I used the exact recipe, removing the peanut butter and chocolate chips and replacing them with the same amount of vanilla yogurt and a fruit puree(Exactly I used 4 strawberries the whole thing of red raspberries and 2 handfuls of blueberries). I also used nilla waffers for the crust because I felt graham crackers might be odd.

 Nilla waffers, yogurt, sugar, brown sugar, cream cheese, strawberries, raspberries, heavy whipping cream, blueberries(not pictured), (and I did not use the preserves pictured)

Mix the crust the same with the nilla waffers and sugar and butter and bake it. Then mix the cream cheese yogurt, brown sugar heavy cream together. Then I made the puree using 4 strawberries the whole thing of red raspberries and 2 handfuls of blueberries. Mixing it with a blender until liquid. I then used a mixer to mix about half of what I created into the liquid mixture(To taste but be careful adding too much might make it not get too solid).

(My mother helping out)

By then the crust for the first tart had chilled and we added the mixture, the other half of the chocolate chips and put it into the freezer.

Then mixing the puree into the liquids for the fruit we have we poured it into the nilla waffer crust and put it in the freezer.

The peanut butter chocolate one set up really quickly, but the fruit one had to sit much longer (about an hour) then you can either top the fruit with fresh fruit (like I did ) or use the leftover puree. But the final product turned out to be this

 

Everyone agreed either peanutbutter chocolate or fruit, they loved it!

First Guest Post

It's been one of those super busy weeks, for better of for worse. Which unfortunately translated to way less cooking then we had intended. However, our buddy Devin was still on top of his game this week. I was around for the first half of this process, but then had to run pick up my friend downtown, so I left my camera with him and he continued documenting his efforts for the blog.

Presenting AnythingButRanch's 1st Guest Recipe Post: Tamarind Ice Cream

Last week, while we were in the strip district, Devin picked up a box a tamarinds from Lotus, our favorite Asian grocery store! 

 

I had personally never heard of them before. We had far too much fun cracking jokes about their appearance. But all kidding aside though, they're pretty tasty...the flavor's something's between a raisin and something citrus...though with the pit they kind of reminded me of a date. 

I'm not sure where the recipe came from, but the best part about it (and I'm sure all my college friends will agree with me), is that it didn't require an ice cream maker.

The first step was to shell them. Which is where the jokes got worse (I'll spare you the specifics).

Shelling them was actually a pretty easy, and kinda fun. We made a mess, but that's one of the best parts of cooking, right? Then Devin put them in a pot with some water and boiled them into tamarind goo (the jokes continued). Then the pits were strained. Then the ice cream making could really begin!

 

At this point I had to leave. But, like I said, Devin, continued documenting.

Ingredient Lineup! 

The Process! My mixer was happy to get some more use.

After some time hanging out in the freezer, tamarind ice cream was born! And served in the same fancy glasses as out tofu moose from last week.I totally thought there were sprinkles on top..but its actually a cayenne/salt/sugar combination that "made it perfect," according to Alyssa.

Unfortunately, I did not get to try any of it. But I heard it came out wonderfully. It was certainly a neat way to use a strange and tasty fruit. Homemade ice-maker-less ice cream is going to go on the summer cooking project list I think

Happy Memorial Day!

Strip Saturdays

Saturday was probably the nicest day Pittsburgh has had this year, which made it the perfect opportunity for our first summer trip to Pittsburgh's strip district. We browsed cooking supplies, Asian grocery stores, Greek grocery stores, and ate our weight in samples. Pretty much the best everything Pittsburgh has related to food and cooking can be found in the strip. Feeling inspired, we decided to make an international dinner.

Devin whipped up guac. and plantain chips, and bruschetta on fresh Italian bread. With some assistance from Alyssa, of course:

Beyond delicious. I was so excited about the bruschetta Devin had to remind me to take a picture. And I promise, it was even better then it looks.

While we were munching on our appetizers, Don had been working on his soup.

Chopping away with Devin's slice-printer-paper-in-half knife:

Making the broth:

Finished product!

Lastly for desert, I made a batch of my chocolate tofu moose. Yes, you read that right. And if you didn't know it had tofu in it, you would have know idea. Though I'll admit, initially it looks kind of gross:

I would include the recipe, but since I was making it at Devin's place, it turned into a mismatch of every version I'd ever tried (albeit still delicious).

The moose post-blender. My favorite thing about making the moose that I have an excuse to use the magic :bullet.

I had bought strawberries at the strip and figure they'd be the perfect topping. Alyssa came up with the brilliant idea to cut them all fancy:

She's such a good helper.

 And then our final product! (served in fancy glasses courtesy of Devin)

We spend the rest of the night nursing our food babies but it was well worth it. I couldn't have asked for a better Saturday. 

Hope you enjoyed! I'm sure there are typo's but I really wanted to get this up. We're totally open to suggestions so feel free to leave them! (Just be nice ;)  )

corona and fudge

I spend my first week of my co-op browsing the internet for recipes. I promise, I really didn't have anything else to be accomplishing. And I haven't baked in my own apartment in over month, which really needed to change. So after filling Nick' inbox with recipes, we settled on two to end our week with. 

Our first project was Corona blondies, which I found on foodgawker (prob. my favorite website next to google reader). The recipe we used can be found here.

Our ingredients:

My lovely, of age roommate assisted with measuring the Corona:

Then Nick mixed up all the wet ingredients (Since my mixer was at my neighbor's 'til after these were in the oven)

Alyssa's boyfriend / my adopted roommate shredded some lemon zest via knife (since we don't have a zester..)

We were are so anxious for them to come out of the over I served them before I took a picture. But I remembered before we devoured the whole thing:

Enjoying the conncotion:

They turned out more cake like than I expected. However, after chilling in the fridge for two days they got way better. (seriously though, perfect 11 pm/ its still eighty degrees outside snack). 

Anyway, back to Friday. Devin left, Alyssa and Don went to sleep...and Nick and I kept baking. Our next endeavor was Nutella Brownies. With icing of course. We used this recipe- because I'm an avid reader of Averie's (Her blog's pretty sweet) .

Ingredients:

Melted chocolate and butter, plus sugar, eggs and vanilla:

 

I ran downstairs between batches of baked goods to get my mixer back. I didn't realize how much I had missed it until now.. We added the dry ingredients and popped the pan in the oven. While it the brownies were baking we set to work on the icing. Definitely forgot to picture the ingredients (the recipe documentation process is a work in progress to say the least). Mixing the icing:

By and far one of the best icing/frosting/delicious sugar-y toppings I've ever had. It probably had something tow do with the mass amount of butter and two cups of sugar...

The brownies looked delicious when we pulled them out!

And even better when we added the icing! 

And every single  taste testers so far has agreed- they are just as good (or better) then they look.

We definitely had a successful baking night.... made a whole heck of a lot of dishes for me to do in the morning. But honestly these things were so good it was completely worth it. And there are a lot of delicious snacks in my fridge.

And thanks Nick for putting up with my urge to open this blog by baking up a storm. We'll be posting savory dishes asap, promise!