I think Peppermint-Stick might be my favorite flavor of ice cream. At least, it’s up there with Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and New York Super Fudge Chunk (and all the other Ben & Jerry’s flavors…). I think I partly like that it’s so girly and pink, and that it tastes like it looks – sort of simple and sweet and refreshing. This is certainly the time of year that peppermint is all the rage, but I love this ice cream regardless of the season – it actually brings up very vivid memories of standing on the lawn at the Bagaduce Lunch, eating a quickly melting waffle cone of the sweet, pink stuff and soaking up the sun. Mmm, ice cream in the summer. So good.

But ice cream in the winter is also good! Since I worked today and I’m working tomorrow, and since resolutions don’t need to start for almost another week, I thought I’d make a little treat to reward myself for working during the holidays. And since Starbucks has already proved to us that peppermint, chocolate, and coffee are an excellent combination, I decided to throw a few scoops of this on top of an espresso brownie, and then drizzle it with mocha sauce for good measure. Voila! A Peppermint-Mocha Ice Cream Sundae. Because that’s just what we all needed the day after Christmas. (Don’t worry, this year’s cleanse is coming up soon, and then this blog will be sorely lacking in sugar and heavy cream).

This sundae was pretty perfect, in my book. If you’re looking for something to do with extra candy canes and/or you’re not ready to give up all the sugary goodness of Christmastime, definitely give it a try!

P.S. It’s National Candy Cane Day! How timely!

Peppermint-Mocha Ice Cream Sundae

• 1 large scoop peppermint-stick ice cream (recipe below)
• 1 espresso brownie (recipe below)
• 1/4 c. mocha hot fudge sauce (recipe below)
• whipped cream
• crushed candy canes, for garnish

Assemble all ingredients and dig in!

Peppermint-Stick Ice Cream

Recipe from Dawn’s Recipes. Makes 1 quart.

• 1 c. whole milk
• 2 c. heavy cream
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 6 large egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp peppermint extract
• 3 drops red food coloring (optional)
• 10 candy canes (about 5 oz.), crushed into small pieces

1. Whisk together the milk, 1 c. of the heavy cream, the sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan. Place over medium-low heat and heat, whisking occasionally, just until milk begins to simmer.
2. While milk is heating, prepare three other bowls – in one bowl, whisk together the six egg yolks. In the second bowl, pour the remaining 1 c. of heavy cream, and set a fine mesh strainer over the top. Fill the third (largest) bowl halfway with ice water.
3. Pour the hot milk slowly over the egg yolks, whisking the egg yolks vigorously as you do so, to temper the eggs. Pour the custard mixture back into the pan and return to the heat, whisking the whole time. Cook over low heat, whisking constantly, just until the custard has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour the custard through the strainer into the bowl with the heavy cream, and stir to combine. Add the peppermint extract and food coloring, and place bowl into the ice bath. Stir until the custard has cooled.
4. Cover the custard and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Once thoroughly chilled, pour into prepared ice cream maker and process according to directions. Just before the ice cream has finished thickening, pour in the crushed candy canes and let churn for 1 minute more to incorporate. Freeze the ice cream until ready to serve.

Espresso Brownies

Recipe adapted slightly from Crustabakes. Makes 16 small brownies. 

• 5 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips
• 1 stick salted butter, cut into quarters
• 3 TBS cocoa powder
• 2 TBS instant espresso powder
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/4 c. sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 c. flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8×8-in baking pan with tin foil so that the foil hangs over the edges (for easy removal of the brownies).
2. Heat a large, half-full pot of water to a boil over medium-high heat. Place chocolate and butter in a smaller saucepan and place over the boiling water. Stir until chocolate and butter are melted. Remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder and espresso powder. Let cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Pour in the warm chocolate mixture and whisk to combine. Fold in the flour until just incorporated, then pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the top of the brownies are beginning to crack and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs attached to it. Allow the brownies to cool in the pan, then lift out using the foil.

Mocha Hot Fudge Sauce

Prepare this recipe, adding 2 TBS of espresso powder when you add the cocoa powder.

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Last week my little brother turned 21.  So obviously, I had to send him alcohol related things.  Because 21 is your last important birthday.  And by important, I think I probably mean fun, as I imagine your 50th birthday feels pretty important but not necessarily that fun.  Or maybe it’s actually a blast.  I wouldn’t know – I’m just gearing up for 23.  But the point is, 21 is a big one.  And it’s a big one because of the boozing.  Although I don’t think I personally know anyone who didn’t drink before turning 21, it doesn’t make it any less exciting when it becomes official.  You can walk into a bar and order a beer, or a kamikaze, or a shot of tequila, and no one can stop you.  It’s kinda cool.  At least, it’s really cool at first, and then it just becomes a sorta nice extra freedom – like, I can buy a bottle of wine whenever I want, or order a beer with a hamburger, and it’s no big deal.  Really, I don’t know why the drinking age is so high to begin with, but I think I’ll avoid getting into that just now…

Anyway.  Back to Ryan.  Ryan and I are only a year and a half apart, and we’re buds.  Our buddiness goes through phases – we were totally buds at ages 1 and 3, when I slapped my mother for making him cry while changing his diapers.  We were OK buds from ages 4-9, when we shared a room with pink, flowery wallpaper and I drew imaginary lines to demarcate whose side was whose – mine was the side with the door, obviously.  We were not such good buds when I was trying to be cool in middle school and he was just a 5th grade baby, although I secretly loved playing pokemon with him once I got home.  No shame.   And we became really good buds once I got my license and I drove us to school every day – 20 minutes of uninhibited, unchaperoned conversation every day for 2 and 1/2 years can make people pretty close.   Now it’s harder to stay tight – he’s at Cornell, and busy playing frisbee and programming computers and being a little bit fratty, and I’m here, busy working and blogging and trying to stay balanced.  But I’m not worried that we’ll ever be those awkward, estranged siblings who never quite figure out how to interact as adults – we get along too well when we actually are together.

Although I haven’t actually heard how his birthday went, due to our extremely poor communication skills when we’re not in the same room (for which I’m giving you 70% of the blame, Ryan), I know he survived, I’m assuming he had a good time, and I know he got my package.  Which contained, among other things, Dark and Stormy brownies.  Lately I find myself drinking a lot of Dark and Stormies – a combination of Gosling’s dark rum, Gosling’s ginger beer, and lime juice.  They’re spicy, flavorful, and moody – they somehow seem very appropriate for this time of year (or maybe I just think that because of the name).  Either way, I have had a recipe from Ideas in Food for these brownies bookmarked for a long time.  If you’ve never checked out Ideas in Food, I’d definitely recommend it.  They are a husband and wife team that generates some of the most interesting and creative material on food I’ve seen, anywhere.  Sometimes I’m sort of turned off by some of their suggestions, as they really push the boundaries of traditional uses for ingredients, and sometimes I wonder how on earth no one else came up with some brilliant idea of theirs earlier, but I’m always totally intrigued by their work.  Part of the fascination for me is the techniques they use – a lot of them are high tech and inaccessible to the casual chef, but a handful of them are totally doable as well as great ideas.  They also have a cookbook, which I haven’t checked out yet but it’s high on my list.  Anyway, these brownies were the first actual recipe of theirs that I tried.  The flavor of the brownies was amazing.  Perfect.  So powerful.  However, the texture was decidedly weird.  They were moist and dense, both pluses, but also very crumbly.  They barely stayed together when I took them out of the pan, and they had a dense, cocoa-y mouthfeel.  Not totally unpleasant, but not very transportable, and not the brownie I was looking for.  The incredible flavor of the brownies came from simply pulsing fresh ginger and lime peel (they suggest lime oil, but I couldn’t find any) with the sugars in a food processor, and of course, adding a bit of rum.  Pretty transferrable techniques, so I decided to apply them to a brownie recipe with a better texture to get the flavor-texture combo I was looking for.  I bet you could even use these tricks to doctor up a batch of boxed brownies, sacrilegious as it may sound.  If you try it, definitely let me know the results.  And Ryan, I hope they stayed in one piece for you and that you enjoyed them – if not, I’ll make you some new ones when you get home.  Happy 21st!

Dark and Stormy Brownies

Inspired by Ideas in Food.  Brownie recipe adapted from Crustabakes.

• 7 oz semisweet baking chocolate
• 1 stick salted butter
• 3 TBS cocoa
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. brown sugar
• zest/peel of 1 lime
• 3 inches fresh ginger, peeled and cut into large chunks
• 2 TBS Gosling’s dark rum
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 c. flour

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grease a 9×13 inch baking pan.  Set aside
2. In a small saucepan, gently melt the chocolate and butter together over low heat, stirring all the while.  Alternatively, you can do this in a bain-marie or double boiler – the point is to keep the chocolate from burning or overheating while you melt it, but you can do this carefully without using a double boiler.  Whisk the cocoa powder into the melted chocolate and stir until smooth.  Remove from heat and set aside.
3. Place sugars, peeled ginger, and lime peel/zest into a food processor, and pulse until the ginger and lime are cut very fine and evenly dispersed throughout the sugar.  In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, ginger-lime-sugar, rum, and salt until combined.  Whisk in warm chocolate mixture and stir to combine.  Finally, fold in flour, stirring gently until just incorporated.  Spoon the batter out over the prepared pan.  Bake for 25-30 minutes, then check for doneness – a toothpick inserted into the center should have a few moist crumbs attached to it.  PLEASE NOTE:  I previously made these brownies in an 8×8 pan and thought they were overdone at 37 minutes, as well as too thick.  I think they would be better in a 9×13 for a shorter cooking time, but 25-30 minutes is really my best guess at cooking time.  It may be worth it to start checking them at 20 minutes, although I doubt they’ll be done that quickly.

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I read recently that cherries are one of the only foods that are hard to enhance beyond their natural form.  Specifically, the comment was that  “nothing captures the essence of a cherry like a cherry.”  (See Ideas in Food, one of the coolest, most inspirational sites I’ve found.)  And it’s so true, isn’t it?  Their texture and flavor are really best when eaten straight out of the fridge, and when I think of cherries, that’s what I think of – how refreshing a cold cherry is in the middle of the summer.  For weeks I’ve been thinking about this and eyeing the piles of beautiful red cherries, and last week, when I saw the $1.99/lb sign, I finally bought some.  (Although they initially rang up at $7 a pound.  Seven dollars?  Per pound?!  Thank you very much but I’d rather have two pounds of steak at that price.)  And as I ran through things I might do with them in my mind, they slowly disappeared, one after the other, into my mouth.  I mean, come on, they’re fun to eat – you get to daintily pluck them off the stems with your teeth and roll them around in your mouth before fully biting into them.  Then your mouth is full of sweet juice, and you get to undecorously spit out the pits.  And your lips and fingers get all stained with cherry juice.  And maybe it’s a little bit sexual.  I digress.

So the cherries remained in their perfect, natural form for several days.  But two pounds is a lot of cherries for one person to eat alone, and those beautiful, perfect cherries were beginning to get soft.  They needed to be used, and so I began to think.  Key to my musing was the fact that I wanted to share the goodness of cherries with Trevor, who, although he continues to eat them rebelliously, is allergic to most fruits with pits unless they’re cooked.  So I wanted to go against my better judgment and achieve the impossible – to cook the cherries while maintaining their integrity, and also enhancing their flavor.

As I browsed through cherry recipes, I found that I kept clicking recipes with titles like “Boozy Cherry Molasses,” “Red Wine and Cherry Soup,” and “Kirsch-Soaked Cherry Sauce.”  Hmmm.  There was a trend.  And just like that, I knew what I wanted. I closed all of those recipes, and I just started inventing.  Into a saucepan went stemmed and pitted cherries, then some rum, some red wine, some lemon juice, sugar, corn-starch.  I almost added black pepper but I didn’t want to push it.  I think it might work though.  I’m trying it soon.  Then the cherries, robbed of their integrity despite my best efforts, went into the blender, and back into the pan.  I tasted it – the flavor had been enhanced, decidedly.  It was one of those rare times when tinkering in the kitchen goes completely right.

Now I had a pot full of delicious, boozy, fragrant cherry puree, and it needed a stage.  What I really wanted was danish.  Cherry, cream cheese, and almond danish, but grown-up, elegant, subtle.  I was all ready to go, cherries simmering, cream cheese softening, philo sheets defrosting on the counter, when Trevor reminded me, again, that philo and puff pastry are not the same thing.  Having never used either, I get confused.  Frequently.  So the philo went back in the freezer, the cream cheese went back in the fridge, and the cherries continued to simmer.  Now what?

The answer came to me quickly – brownies.  Ever since I saw these brownies on 101 cookbooks, I’ve been continuously craving a cherry-chocolate brownie.  My original plan was to wait until I got around to getting some dried cherries and kirsch, and do the whole soaking thing, but I decided that this puree would have exactly the effect I wanted.  So brownies, tinged with almond flavor and swirled with cherry puree, were created.  And they were chewy, moist, chocolatey, nutty, fruity, boozy, goodness.  Things in the kitchen are going right.

P.S. I haven’t given up on the idea of the cherry danish.  As soon as I get the time to make some puff pastry it will be here.  Hopefully on Friday.  Stay tuned.

Grown-Up Cherry Puree

Makes 1 1/2 cups

• 1 lb cherries, washed and pitted (yields around 3 cups)
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 6 TBS red wine
• 4 TBS rum
• 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 4 tsp cornstarch
• 4 tsp water

1. In a medium pot, combine cherries, sugar, wine, rum, and lemon juice.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes, stirring and pressing the cherries apart with the back of the spoon.
2. Remove the cherries from the heat and carefully pour into blender.  Pulse 3 or 4 times, just enough to break the cherries up into small pieces.  (You want the puree to have some texture, and the fruit will break down more as it continues to cook).
3. Return the cherries to the stove, and continue cooking over medium heat.  In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and water until cornstarch is fully dissolved.  Slowly pour the cornstarch into the hot cherries, stirring constantly.  Cook the cherries for another 5-10 minutes, stirring continuously, until they have started to thicken.  Depending on the desired consistency of the cherries, you may need to use more or less cornstarch.
4. Remove from heat and allow to cool.  Keep cherry puree in airtight container in fridge.

Grown-up Cherry Brownies

• 3/4 c. + 2 TBS cake flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate (2/3 c. chocolate chips)
• 1 stick butter
• 1 1/2 c. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/3 c. grown-up cherry puree

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Butter and flour an 8×8 baking pan.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together cake flour, salt, and baking powder, set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine butter and chocolate.  Microwave for 15 second intervals, stirring vigorously in between, until chocolate and butter form a thick, completely smooth, mixture.  Do not over-microwave or you will burn the chocolate.  This step can also be done in a double boiler.
4. Whisk sugar into chocolate mixture.  Incorporate eggs one at a time.  Whisk in almond extract.
5. Add flour mixture to chocolate mixture in 3 batches, gently stirring with a spatula in between additions.  When flour is fully incorporated and batter is smooth, pour into prepared pan and smooth top with spatula.  Spoon cherry puree on top of brownies and drag your spatula through the puree and brownies, swirling in large motions, as you would to marble a batter.  Smooth top as best you can.  Bake for 40-50 minutes.

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