Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The Southern Chocolate Chess Pie... A Giant Chocolate Mess

 A family friend gave me this recipe after serving it for Passover earlier this year. It was the best, most creamy, sinful dessert I had ever had.  Chocolate move over, this pie is more than chocolate. Chocolate doesn't come close to doing this pie any justice. Chocolate only lifts this little pie into the heavens to make chocolate even more heavenly than ever before.  

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Summer Fruit Crisp

I'm back to school next week and I just wanted to share a my Mother's Day celebration with all of you. 
Happy Mother's Day!


Since my family (except me) has turned vegan, I have had a really hard time finding food we can all eat. Desserts are especially hard since my desserts contain some of my favorite ingredients like butter, cream, butter and sugar. Who could live without butter? Who wants to live in a world without butter? This dish was awesome and the vegans ate more dessert than the carnivores. We devoured it all! While this crisp does contain some butter, the butter is in the topping only and don't really count.
I found the fresh rhubarb at a small market outside of Camden. The Summer Kitchen has great produce and fresh homemade treats like homemade Amish wheat bread, jams, jellies, cakes and pies.  I bought 1 loaf of the homemade wheat bread and a jar of strawberry jelly. They were delicious and the wheat bread is the best I have ever had! The blueberries were the ones I picked last summer. They have been in my freezer and once defrosted they tasted even better than I remembered. We served this delicious summer crisp with vanilla ice cream and fresh fruit salad.

Blueberry Rhubarb Crisp 
Adapted from Gourmet  | June 1999/Epicurious
Fruit

1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 pound rhubarb
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups blueberries 
Crisp
1/3 cup shelled natural pistachios- optional
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon mace or 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 
Preheat oven to 375°F. and butter a 2-quart shallow baking dish.
In a bowl stir together sugar and flour. Trim rhubarb and cut enough of stalks into 1/2-inch pieces to measure 2 cups. Add rhubarb and blueberries and vanilla to sugar mixture, tossing well, and spread mixture in baking dish.
Crisp
Finely chop pistachios. In a bowl whisk together flour and sugars. Cut butter into 1/2-inch cubes and with your fingers or a pastry blender blend into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add pistachios and toss well.
Squeeze a handful of topping together and coarsely crumble in chunks over filling. Squeeze and evenly crumble remaining topping over filling in same manner. Bake crisp in upper third of oven until filling is bubbling and topping is crisp and golden, about 50 minutes.
Serve crisp warm or at room temperature.


Mom and I are going to have a special mother & daughter day today at Wolf Park. I have only been once a few weeks ago, during the super moon and it is now my favorite place to visit.  I can't wait to go back and see more wolves.

This is Dharma the Alpha Female and she just gave birth to 6 puppies April 6th. 
The crowd howled and Dharma joined in too!