Posts Tagged With: dessert

Chocolate Fondue

Posted on June 21, 2014 by pauldelancey

Swiss Dessert

CHOCOLATE FONDUE

INGREDIENTSChocolateFondue-

3.5 ounces TobleroneTM Swiss milk chocolate
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 ounces pound cake (See above recipe.)
6 ounces strawberries
4 ounces marshmallows

SPECIAL UTENSIL

fondue pot
fondue forks

PREPARATION

Cut pound cake into 1″ cubes. Add Toblerone chocolate, semisweet chocolate chips, sugar, butter, and vanilla extract to large pan. Warm mixture using low-medium heat for 5 minutes or chocolate melts and everything blends together. Stir constantly.

Transfer melted chocolate in pan to fondue pot. Adjust flame under fondue pot so that the chocolate stays smooth, but barely bubbles. Use fondue forks to dip cake cubes, strawberries, and marshmallows in chocolate sauce.

TIDBITS

1) Chocolate fondue was invented on April 1, 1798, by the great Swiss ballet dancer and explorer, Fon d’Ue. Monsieur d’Ue and all his fellow ballet dancers were at that time in the 89th infantry.

2) One day, d’Ue held up a handful of brown musket balls. “Bah, we never kill any French with these things.” He flung the balls away. The musket balls bounced off the marbled statue of the beautiful ballerina, Madame Swiz Staek that lurked in the town square.

5) The musket balls landed in the regiment’s soup pot. “Want not, waste not,” was the philosophy of the regiment’s Calvinist cook, Claude Monet. Monet dipped his supply of pound-cake cubes, strawberries, and marshmallows into the soup pot. He fished out a coated marshmallow with a long thin fork. It tasted great! The regiment’s and indeed the whole army’s bullets were being made from discarded chocolate remnants from the frugal nation’s chocolate factories.

7) And so Switzerland had lost every battle. The French annexed the whole chocolate-eating country for nearly sixteen years. Bad for Switzerland, sure, but great for the culinary world. Yum.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Chocolate Egg Cream

Posted on May 13, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

CHOCOLATE EGG CREAM

INGREDIENTS??????????

1 1/3 tablespoons Fox’s u-bet® original chocolate flavor syrup
2 tablespoons whole milk
9 tablespoons seltzer water (needs to be cold, needs to have all its fizz, preferably from an unopened bottle.)

PREPARATION

Pour chocolate flavor syrup into tall glass. (Connoisseurs agree that Fox’s u-bet® is the best.) Add whole milk, then seltzer. This should all be done quickly to preserve the fizz. Stir briskly with fork. This is an excellent refreshing drink for those hot summer days.

TIDBITS

1) This tidbit is scrunched by the picture. A picture of a round dish would not have gone so far down the page. So I would have had more space to write longer and more numerous tidbits.

2) However, every silver cloud has a lining or something like that.

3)Hey, aren’t the bags in vacuum cleaners called linings? Are there such things are silver vacuum-cleaner bags? They’d be quite expensive. Only the super rich could afford them. Maybe bags like these would become status symbols. We might even have to worry about our landfills getting clogged with expensive non-biodegradable silver vacuum bags.

4) Oh wait. Silver is so expensive. People would scour the landscape for silver vacuum-cleaner bags, picking them off the sidewalks if need be. These precious-metal bags would probably never even make to the landfills. Our neighborhoods would become cleaner. Our landfills would have more space for millions and millions of HuggiesTM that we dispose of every day. Everyone wins.

5) Hey, why don’t we use cement and HuggiesTM to make storm walls for all those low-lying sea towns. These coastal dwellers would be safe from storm surges and rising sea levels. Best of all, the sea wall wouldn’t cost anything as the savings from not filling our landfills with HuggiesTM would pay for the sea wall. I have just saved Florida. Yay.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Pralines

Posted on May 9, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

PRALINES

INGREDIENTSPralines-

1 1/4 cups white sugar
1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup butter
2 cups pecan halves
2 tablespoons vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSILS

candy thermometer
cookie sheet
waxed paper

Makes 23 squares. It should make more but the family keeps nibbling before I can get them all wrapped in waxed-paper squares.  (The squares, not the family. Goodness sake, you didn’t think you were going to get an exciting admission, did you?)

PREPARATION

Add all ingredients to large pot. Cook on medium heat until temperature of syrup reaches 234-to-240 degrees or until a drop of syrup forms a soft ball that can be flattened when dropped in cold water. Watch carefully and stir constantly.

As soon as syrup is ready, use large spoon to quickly and carefully drop syrup onto cookie sheet. Try to make praline patties about 2″ across and ½” high. (Be careful, hot praline syrup will burn like molten lava if it gets on you.) Let syrup cool. While dessert cools, cut waxed paper into 6″ squares. Wrap each praline patty in waxed-paper squares. Tie at top with rubber band.

Makes a great gift. Great for yourself as well.

TIDBITS

1) Pecans help a man’s sex life. Pecans have a lot of zinc. Zinc helps men produce more testostone.

2) Chocolates make women feel slightly more romantic.

3) Chocolate-covered pecans make for a night of whoopie.

4) The pecan tree is the state tree of Texas. There are a lot of Texans. Need I say more?

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Sesame and Honey Sticks and a Crossword Puzzle

Posted on May 7, 2014 by pauldelancey

Malian Dessert

MENI MENIYONG
(sesame and honey sticks)

INGREDIENTSMeniMeniyong-

1 3/4 cups sesame seeds
1 1/4 cups honey
4 tablespoons butter, unsalted
no-stick spray

makes about 40 sticks

SPECIAL UTENSIL

cookie sheet

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Evenly spread sesame seeds on cookie sheet. Toast seeds in oven at 450 degrees for about 10 minutes or until they turn golden brown. Remove seeds and let cool.

Add honey and butter to pan. Simmer on low-medium heat for 5 minutes or until mixture bubbles all over, darkens, and thickens slightly. Stir constantly. Add the toasted sesame seeds to the honey/butter mixture. Stir with spoon until sesame seeds are evenly distributed.

Pour honey/butter/sesame mixture into bowl. Stir again with spoon. Put this bowl in sink filled with enough water to reach half-way up bowl. Let cool until mixture has mostly hardened. Scoop the gooey mass onto the cookie sheet. Spread it out until it is uniformly 1/4″ thick.. Cut mixture into finger-sized sticks. Let cool completely and give finger to everyone. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

TIDBITS

1) Toasting sesame seeds is much easier on a cookie sheet than on a grill.

2) Toasting sesame seeds is quite difficult in outer space where they are weightless.

3) Toasting an elephant in outer space is as difficult as toasting sesame seeds, if not more so.

4) You’d have to find an oven big enough to hold an elephant. Then you’d have to find a cookie sheet large enough for your hapless pachyderm.

5) As of now, NASA has no such ovens and cookie sheets

6) It’s doubtful they’ll be getting them soon. They’re not even in their current budget.

7) MENI MENIYONG CROSSWORD PUZZLE

(Nearly all answers are found in this recipe)

CrosswordPuzzle

ACROSS
2) An anagram for votes
7) Use this contact the Great Beyond
10) Always use the freshest…
11) Open …
13) Give speech while raising glass
14) “… down”
15) Not a dog, but a …”

DOWN
1) A pet name for your sweetheart
3) Healthier than margarine
4) Belongs to the great cook, Julia
5) Always cook until food is… (2 words)
6) The … Monster
8) This cuisine
9) Stressed spelled backwards
12) White as a …

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Mexican Tres Leches Cake

Posted on April 20, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mexican Dessert

TRES LECHES

INGREDIENTSTresLeches-

1 tablespoon cake flour (1 ½ cups more later)
1 tablespoon softened unsalted butter (½ cup more later)
½ cup softened unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar (½ cup more later)
5 eggs
1 ½ cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (1 teaspoon more later)
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
1 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 13″ baking pan
electric beater

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon cake flour to grease and dust baking pan. Add butter and 3/4 cup sugar to first large mixing bowl. Mix butter and sugar together, using cake or medium setting on electric beater, until butter and sugar become fluffy. Add eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Blend again. Add 1/3 of the baking powder and the 1 ½ cups flour at a time to batter. Use blender set on cake after each addition.

Pour batter into baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Let cake cool for 30 minutes. Poke cake several times with fork, skewer, or ninja knife. While cake cools, add whole milk, condensed milk, and evaporated milk to second large mixing bowl. (Also clean mixing bowls. As my Grandma Anna use to say, “The outstanding chef’s kitchen is perfectly clean when the dish is served.”) Mix the three milks together with whisk or with electric beater set on fold or low. Pour combined milks evenly on top of cake. Refrigerate cake for 1 hour.

Add whipping cream, ½ cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract to recently cleaned ☺ mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater set on whip or high until topping is thick. Pour topping over cake. Keep tres leches cake refrigerated until ready to serve.

TIDBITS

1) Doesn’t evaporated milk sound as if there should be no milk left? Well, because it’s all evaporated milk.

2) Condensed milk also seems like it should be hard to make. If you were to try condensing a cartoon of milk with, say, a sledgehammer, you’d most likely get milk flying all over the kitchen.

3) Then you’d have to clean up all that milk from the walls.

4) And goodness sakes, you’d be in big trouble if you shattered your sweetheart’s Ming Dynasty Vase on your back swing with that sledgehammer.

5) Best leave condensing milk to the condensed-milk manufacturers. Let them work their magic.

6) But you can safely smoosh a marshmallow bunny with your thumb and index finger.

7) Doing so will give a marshmallow figure that looks like that North Korean dictator, Kim Something.

8) The dour dictator doesn’t have a sense of humor. Maybe we can destabilize his regime by posting Kim marshmallow bunny pictures all over the internet. Maybe we can shake his authority to the point where he flees his country and a democracy takes his place.

10) We will all share in a Nobel Peace Prize.

11) Posting marshmallow bunny pictures can bring down Kim’s Stalinist regime. Remember the power of culinary politics. After all, it was Queen Marie Antoinette’s remark of, “Let them eat cake,” to the starving mobs of Paris that started the French Revolution.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Caramel Corn and Staying Alive at the Movies

Posted on April 15, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

CARAMEL CORN

INGREDIENTSCaramelCorn-

6 tablespoons popcorn kernels
1/2 cup butter
1cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup light-colored corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSIL

popcorn popper

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Pop popcorn according to instruction on bag or from popcorn popper. Remove all unpopped popcorn. (Peter Piper popped a peck of popcorn.) Put popcorn in large mixing bowl.

Add butter, sugar, corn syrup, and salt to skillet. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes or until mixture boils. Stir occasionally. Add baking soda and vanilla. Stir this syrup until well blended. Add popcorn evenly to baking pan. Pour syrup over popcorn. Bake in oven for 1 hour. Stir popcorn/syrup every 15 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) Everybody loves caramel corn, hard-working people and politicians too. However, not everyone likes to hear popcorn being eaten. In 2011, a Latvian movie goer was arrested for shooting another man dead for eating his popcorn too loudly during the film Black Swan. The dead man would have been safer eating caramel popcorn as it’s not nearly as crunchy as regular popcorn.

2) Or if you don’t wish to get shot during movies but still wish to munch on regular popcorn, may I suggest going to a comedy? The film goers’ laughter will mask the sound of your popcorn chomping.

3) As a public service to you popcorn lovers, here are my favorite all-time gun-shot-free-funny movies: Bananas, The Bank Dick, Bringing Up Baby, A Christmas Story, The Court Jester, Duck Soup, Father of the Bride, A Hard Day’s Night, It’s a Gift, Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, One, Two, Three, The President’s Analyst, She Done Him Wrong, A Shot in the Dark, Tight Little Island, Tootsie, and Unfaithfully Yours.

4) There, I am bringing peace to the world. I shall certainly be getting the Nobel Peace Prize soon. Taps foot.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Key-Lime Pie

Posted on December 25, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

KEY LIME PIE

INGREDIENTSKeyLimePie-

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup key lime juice
4 egg yolks
1 8″ graham-cracker crust.
1 can whipped cream

SPECIAL UTENSIL

electric blender

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Add condensed milk, key lime juice, and egg yolks to mixing bowl. Blend with electric blender set to “whip” or “cream” until well blended. Pour mixture into graham-cracker crust. Bake pie in oven at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the pie’s center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours.  Note, key lime pies made with real key lime juice are not green. Add whipped cream if desired. Or even lots and lots of whipped cream.

TIDBITS

1) Contrary to what I would have wished the Key Lime did not come from Key West nor even Key Largo. I researched this by going to Key West and by watching the 1948 movie, Key Largo. Key Largo starred Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Edward G. Robinson. None of these actors ate even a single Key Lime during the entire movie. After the movie? No one knows.

2) Key Limes were first grown in Southern Asia. Historians will tell you that Key Limes made their way to Spain, presumably by hitchhiking as these fruits don’t have legs. Actually, I doubt the whole hitchhiking theory as Key Limes do not have thumbs. You can tell they don’t just by looking at the tiny yellowish-green thingies.

3) Ship crews liked the take Key Limes as the fruit was high in vitamin C and prevented scurvy. Christopher Columbus took Key Limes on his voyages of discovery to the Americas. Indeed, culinary historians praise Spain for the bringing health-enhancing Key Lime to the New World.

4) Do other historians laud the European discoverers? Not so much, pointing to endless wars of conquest by the Spanish conquistadors, Old World diseases that decimated indigenous populations, and wholesale enslavement of the local tribes. Indeed, Europe didn’t balance things with the natives until they brought the hamburger to America in the 19th century. Kinda like a do-over.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Chocolate Cream Pie

Posted on December 11, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

CHOCOLATE CREAM PIE

INGREDIENTSChocolateCreamPie-

2/3 cup semisweet chocolate bits
8 ounces cream cheese
1/3 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 9″ graham-cracker pie crust

whipped cream

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

PREPARATION

Use medium heat to melt chocolate bits in pot. Stir constantly. Add chocolate, cream cheese, milk, and sugar to blender Using “mix” setting on blender until thoroughly blended. Pour mixture into pie crust. Add whipped cream as desired.

TIDBITS

1) “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” – Charles De Gaulle (French president) From the mid 1600s to the mid 1900s, France suffered from repeated uprisings, rebellions, and riots. The country also had a global empire for well over 200 years.

2) Ancient Romans so loved cheese that they had special kitchens, caerale, just for making cheese. Recurring civil wars convulsed the Empire for over 500 years. Rome also conquered all the lands around the Mediterranean and bit more.

3) The Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 under the crushing weight of one barbarian invasions, barbarians who wanted Rome’s cheese. The Eastern Roman Empire fell almost a millennium later in 1453. Barbarian cheese lovers just couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm for the Eastern Empire’s limited cheese selection to make a really dedicated invasion.

4) Remembering the unbridled horrors of World War One and World War Two, world leaders got together in Paris, France, June 15, 1947, to form the World Cheese Organization (WCO.) The WCO has worked tirelessly ever since to ensure adequate cheese production and selection in all the nations. They know a country with good and plentiful cheese has no reason to invade its neighbors.

5) Robert Louis Stevenson (crackerjack writer) sums up humanity’s love for cheese when he said,”Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted, mostly.” Note, just in case, the WCO is also distributing cheese toasters to the all the people of this globe.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Pumpkin Pie

Posted on November 28, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

PUMPKIN PIE

INGREDIENTSPumpkinPie-

2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon cardamom, ground
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves, ground
3/4 teaspoon ginger, ground
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 15 ounce can pumpkin mashed or puree
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
2 8″-to-9″graham-cracker pie shell or 1 9″ deep dish graham-cracker pie shell
whipped cream for topping

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Add eggs, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and sugar to large bowl. Beat eggs with whisk. Add pumpkin. Mix with whisk. Add evaporated milk. Mix again with whisk. Pour mixture into pie shell. Put filled pie shell in oven and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees. Bake an additional 40-to-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the pie’s center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours. Serve with whipped cream. Yum.

TIDBITS

1) Pumpkins are grown on every continent except Antarctica.

2) Morton, Illinois is the Pumpkin Capital. Go visit its Pumpkin Festival in mid September.

3) Pumpkin seeds have been used to remove freckles.

4) Linus from the comic strip Peanuts believed in the Great Pumpkin. See the lyrics for “I’m dreaming of the Great Pumpkin” and other pumpkin songs.

6) In 2009, motorcyclists in Nigeria wore dried pumpkin shells on their heads to circumvent laws making them wear helmets.

7) Irish lore says Stingy Jack was too miserly to get into Heaven. But Jack had tricked the devil so he wasn’t welcome there either. Jack roamed the darkness between Heaven and Hell with a lit, carved pumpkin. This is probably the basis for pumpkin carving on Halloween. That and freckle fear.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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