Posts Tagged With: vanilla

Swedish Spelt Pancakes (plattar)

Posted on June 28, 2014 by pauldelancey

Swedish Breakfast

SPELT PANCAKES
(plättar)

INGREDIENTS

2 ½ tablespoons butter
2 cups spelt flour or all-purpose flour
½teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
3 eggs
3 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter
no-stick spray

Makes 60 pancakes

SPECIAL UTENSIL

plett pan or electric skillet (I’ve never seen a plett pan in the wild.)

PREPARATION

Melt butter or at least let it soften. Add flour, salt, and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Put eggs in second bowl. Beat with whisk. Add butter, milk, vanilla extract, and eggs to flour/salt/sugar mix. Mix ingredients with whisk until you get a smooth batter.

Set electric skillet to 350 degrees. Skillet will be hot enough when a drop of water on skillet starts to break up and dance. Spray skillet before each batch of pancakes. Add 1 ½ tablespoons at a time to skillet. (Do not let batter run together. Swedish pancakes should be the size of silver dollar pancakes.) Cook pancakes for about 1 ½ minutes or until golden brown on bottom on bottom then flip. Cook for another 1 ½ or until golden brown again. Goes well with lingonberry preserves, whipped cream, or confectionery sugar.

TIDBITS

1) March 19 is World Spelt Day. On this day, at eight in the morning, a lone runner sets out from Uppsala, Sweden, carrying the ingredients listed in this recipe. At dusk, he stops at the nearest house. The dwellers are bound by tradition and hospitality to let the runner in. Once inside the runner makes everyone spelt pancakes. The hosts adopt the runner into their family.

2) Next morning, a family member takes off with spelt-pancakes ingredients in her backpack, running until nightfall when she too makes pancakes for a lucky family. The spelt-pancake-baking relay continues until a spelt-pancakes runner returns to the original home in Uppsala, Sweden. Thousands of families around the world are made happy. This is Sweden’s contribution to world peace.

– 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: Uncategorized | Tags: breakfast, cookbook, fun, pancakes, Paul R. De La, peace, plattar, plett, recipes, spelt, Sweden, Swedish, Uppsala, vanilla, World Spelt Day | Leave a comment

Chocolate Fondue

Posted on June 21, 2014 by pauldelancey

Swiss Dessert

CHOCOLATE FONDUE

INGREDIENTS

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

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: balls, Calvinist, chocolate, chocolate chips, cook, cookbook, culinary, De Lancey, dessert, Eat Me, fondue, fun, marshmallows, Monet, musket, Paul R. De Lancey, recipes, strawberries, Swiss, vanilla | Leave a comment

Pralines

Posted on May 9, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

PRALINES

INGREDIENTS

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

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: American, candy thermometer, cookbook, dessert, pecan, pecans, pralines, recipe, romantic, sex, sex life, state tree, testosterone, Texans, Texas, vanilla, whoopie, zinc | Leave a comment

Mexican Tres Leches Cake

Posted on April 20, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mexican Dessert

TRES LECHES

INGREDIENTS

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

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: butter, cake, cookbook, cream, De Lancey, dessert, dictator, evaporated milk, French Revolution, grandma, Marie Antoinette, Mexican, milk, Ming Dynasty, Nobel Peace Prize, North Korean, Paul R. De Lancey, queen, sledgehammer, Stalinist, tres leches, vanilla | Leave a comment

Chocolate and Vanilla Sundae

Posted on January 31, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

CHOCOLATE AND VANILLA SUNDAE

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup whipping cream
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup unsalted peanuts (or already ground)
2 pints chocolate ice cream
2 pints vanilla ice cream
nonpareils (optional)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

spice grinder or other grinder or quick hands with a knife

PREPARATION

Make chocolate sauce by adding whipping cream, chocolate chips, and vanilla extract to pot. Cook on low heat for about 5 minutes or until chocolate is completely melted or liquid becomes uniformly dark. Stir constantly.

Grind peanuts. Add large scoop (is there any other kind?) of chocolate ice cream and a large scoop of vanilla ice cream for each bowl you make. Drizzle chocolate sauce over each bowl, top with ground peanuts and nonpareils, if desired.

TIDBITS

1) Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) enjoyed snow flavored with nectar and honey. He was just a few steps away from inventing ice cream. But no, Alexander invaded the Persian Empire instead. His armies conquered land after land. However, these conquests never brought him the satisfaction that only a scope of ice cream could have given. Alexander came to realize how he had wasted his life by not coming up with ice cream and he drank himself to death.

2) The Roman Emperor Nero (54-68 A.D.) enjoyed ice and snow topped with fruit. He committed suicide rather than share this dessert with a jealous Roman mob

3) Marco Polo (1254-1324) is most famous for bringing the idea of ice cream from China to Italy. The Renaissance followed shortly.

4) Ice cream became readily available in seventeenth-century France. French literature flourished.

5) Ice cream came to America in the 1700s. and caused the birth of the American Republic in 1776.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history | Tags: Alexander the Great, America, American, chocolate, chocolate chips, emperor, France, French, ice cream, literature, Marco Polo, Nero, nonpareils, Persian Empire, Renaissance, Republic, Roman, sundae, vanilla, vanilla extract, whipping cream | Leave a comment

Peanut-Butter Milkshake

Posted on October 24, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

PEANUT-BUTTER MILKSHAKE

INGREDIENTS

3 cups milk
1 cup smooth peanut butter
2 1/2 cups vanilla ice cream

PREPARATION

Put milk in blender. Add 1 cup of peanut butter. Put the peanut butter directly into the blender until the level of the milk reaches 4 cups. (Measuring sticky peanut butter exactly by the measuring cup is a colossal pain.) Make sure, though, that the peanut butter is completely submerged in milk. Similarly, add the ice cream until the milk’s level reads 6 1/2 cups.

Blend the mix at the “milkshake” or “blend” speed until you get your desired level of smoothness. You smooth operator, you.

TIDBITS

1) This has a lot of calories in it. So beware.

2) It sure is tasty, though.

3) I had a peanut-butter milkshake in Plains, Georgia, the hometown of President Jimmy Carter.

4) Everyone told me how I had just missed seeing him by a half hour and how he liked to talk to people.

5) I waited a bit hoping he would come back soon, but he didn’t.

6) I never saw him, ever.

7) Culinary life isn’t always fair.

8) But I’ve gotten over it, mostly.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor | Tags: American, calories, dessert, Georgia, ice cream, Jimmy Carter, milk, milkshake, peanut butter, Plains, President, vanilla | 1 Comment

Arrowroot Custard

Posted on September 2, 2013 by pauldelancey

St. Vincentian Dessert

ARROWROOT CUSTARD

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons arrowroot
1 tablespoon milk (3 1/2 cups more later)
3 1/2 cups milk
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks

PREPARATION

Add arrowroot and 1 tablespoon milk to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until paste forms. Add 3 1/2 cups milk to pot. Cook milk on high heat until milk just starts bubbling. Stir CONSTANTLY. Add arrowroot paste from mixing bowl to pot and stir. Remove pot from burner. Turn heat down to low.

(Milk burns quickly. Anybody who comes by and sees you intent on boiling milk will say, “Careful, milk burns in a hurry! They cannot help it. It’s inevitable as falling asleep in the back row at a lecture for theoretical economics.)

Add sugar to pot. Mix with spoon until sugar dissolves. Return pot to burner. Simmer on low heat for 3 minutes. Remove pot from burner. Add in vanilla extract and egg yolks. Mix with whisk or fork until egg yolk blend in completely. Allow to cool. (The heat in the mix will cook the yolks enough during this time.)

Drink as much as you dare before sharing with guests. It’s really tasty.

TIDBITS

1) An anagram for “arrowroot custard” is “Coward roars, ‘Trout!’”

2) Arrowroot is a starch-rich underground creeping rhizome.

3) There was a 1964 movie called The Creeping Terror. Leonard Maltin, the film critic, gave it a “bomb” rating. His Classic Movie Guide said, “Awful horror movie, poor on every conceivable (and inconceivable) level.” I saw it. The monster looks a lot like a giant Denver omelette.

4) If that sort of horror movie can get made, why not The Creeping Rhizome? Just saying. You could have The Underground Creeping Rhizome but that would be way too scary.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, food, humor, international, recipes | Tags: anagram, arrowroot, arrowroot custard, Classic Movie Guide, cookbook, Creeping Terror, custard, De Lancey, Denver, dessert, Leonard Maltin, milk, omelette, rhizome, St. Vincent, sugar, vanilla, vanilla extract | 2 Comments

Sunshine Milkshake

Posted on July 8, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

SUNSHINE MILKSHAKE

INGREDIENTS

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 bananas

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

PREPARATION

Peel the bananas. Put bananas, milk, orange juice, sugar, and vanilla extract. Use “milkshake” setting. Blend until shake is sufficiently smooth for your taste.

With the time you saved making this simple recipe over a more complicated one, you can read War and Peace.

TIDBITS

1) Seasoned fishermen put vanilla extract on their hands so fish can’t smell them. How fish hundreds of feet deep in the ocean can smell human way up there in a boat is beyond me.

2) If fish have such a good sense of smell, maybe the TSA should hire them to sniff for drugs and explosives at airports.

3) Of course, the TSA would have to provide fish bowls for their aquatic brethren or the fish would die. And stink. And then no one would want to fly, except the bad guys who would be easy to arrest as they were the only ones flying.

4) Unless, of course, the TSA people eat the fish when they die. Maybe use some lemon juice.

5) It’s an interesting legal question. May a fish working for the federal government be eaten?

6) In 1519, Montezuma invited Cortez to share a chocolate drink (Xocolatl) with him. Cortez accepted the invitation. Cortez soon afterward seized Montezuma and executed him. This is more than bad manners on the part of a guest. If Cortez had not gotten into see Montezuma, he couldn’t have decapitated the leadership of the great Aztec nation. The resulting disarray in the Aztec command gave Cortez enough of an advantage to conquer Mexico.

7) The Spanish went on to conquer Central America, much of South America, and what became the southwestern part of the United States. One can only imagine how culinary history would have been changed in the Americas if this had not have happened.

8) So think about that when you invite someone over for hot chocolate.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, food, history, humor, recipes | Tags: airports, America, American, Americas, Aztec, bananas, chocolate, cookbook, Cortez, De Lancey, dessert, Mexico, milkshake, Montezuma, orange juice, recipes, Spanish, sugar, sunshine, TSA, United States, vanilla, War and Peace, xocolatl | Leave a comment

Horchata From Mexico

Posted on June 27, 2013 by pauldelancey

Mexican Dessert

HORCHATA

INGREDIENTS

2 cups uncooked long-grain rice (white is best)
2 cups water
3 1/2 cups milk
1 tablespoon cinnamon (freshly ground is best)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

PREPARATION

Put rice and water in blender. Blend using highest setting for 2 minutes. Put blender container in refrigerator overnight.

Add cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla extract to rice/water in blender. Blend at highest setting for 5 minutes. Pour mixture into large pitcher. Add milk. Stir with long wooden spoon. This goes well served over ice. Olé

TIDBITS

1) The director for the middle school near my home loves the song, “Tequila.” However, he and the school disapprove of alcohol, so the band changed the word in the song to “horchata.”

2) “Horchata” is an anagram for “CAA, Thor.” The initials for the Canadian Automobile Association is CAA. Thor was a powerful Norse god. I think this means Thor drives a car and is a naturalized Canadian.

3) What types of car would Thor drive? A Thunderbird.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, food, humor, international, recipes | Tags: Canadian, Canadian Automobile Association, cookbook, De Lancey, dessert, Eat Me, God, horchata, Mexican, Norse, recipes, Thor, vanilla | Leave a comment

Baked Maple-Covered Doughnuts Recipe

Posted on February 4, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

BAKED MAPLE-COVERED DOUGHNUTS

INGREDIENTS

DOUGHNUT

1 cup pastry flour or regular flour if not available
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons milk
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons vegetable oil

MAPLE GLAZE

1 cup confectionary sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons maple syrup

SPECIAL UTENSILS

doughnut mold, or tray, for 6 doughnuts
no-stick spray.

PREPARATION – DOUGHNUT

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in medium mixing bowl until all ingredients appear to be well mixed. Add milk, eggs, and vegetable oil to another medium bowl. Blend with whisk until mixture starts to get foamy. Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and blend with whisk until all is combined.

Spray doughnut mold with no-stick spray. Scoop combined mixture into each dough form until half full. Put in oven and bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Doughnuts should be done when they spring back when gently poked.

Remove doughnut mold from oven. Let sit for about 3 to 4 minutes. Gently pry doughnuts from mold with knife or small wooden spatula and put on plate.

PREPARATION – MAPLE GLAZE

Combine confectionary sugar, milk, vanilla extract, and maple syrup.. Use blend setting on electric beater to mix these ingredients. Use ladle or large spoon to pour glaze over the doughnuts. Use spoon to smooth the glaze on the doughnuts. Cool doughnuts in refrigerator until glaze sets.

Eat your share before your family or friends do.

TIDBITS

1) Canada’s new $50 and $100 bills smell like maple syrup. Way cool.

2) It’s part of the bills’ anti-counterfeiting measures.

3) The maple leaf symbolizes Canada and appears on the Canadian flag.

4) Swedish meatballs smell great and symbolize that nordic nation.

5) It would be great if Swedish currency smelled like that.

6) I like the idea of baking money.

7) “Patty cake, patty cake, baker man, bake me a bill as soon as you can.”

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international, recipes | Tags: America, American, baker, cake, Canada, Canadian, confectionary, cookbook, currency, De Lancey, dessert, doughnuts, Eat Me, extract, flag, kinde, maple, maple leaf, meatballs, money, nordic, recipe, recipes, Sweden, Swedish, syrup, vanilla | Leave a comment

Posts Tagged With: vanilla

Swedish Spelt Pancakes (plattar)

Chocolate Fondue

Pralines

Mexican Tres Leches Cake

Chocolate and Vanilla Sundae

Peanut-Butter Milkshake

Arrowroot Custard