Lemon cookie ice cream

I was delighted to find out that I could find Three Twins lemon cookie ice cream, one of the treats on the 50 Treats list, at my local Whole Foods store.  I‘ve never actually had lemon ice cream, only lemon sorbet.  The lemon flavor was not too tart and the ice cream was not too sweet.  I also really liked the little chunks of lemon cookie in the ice cream.  Usually I prefer ice creams that have some chocolate in them, but I was pleasantly surprised by this lemon cookie ice cream.  Definitely worth eating again 🙂

Pecan bars

Over the holidays, my friend Melanie and I (along with the help of her husband Kevin making a grocery run) made pecan bars.  The crust is made in the food processor and then baked.  After the crust comes out of the oven, we dropped some chocolate shavings on top, which melt from the heat of the crust.  Then the top layer, which includes honey and brown sugar, is cooked over the stove and the toasted pecans are added.  These bars are heftier than the previous pecan bars I had made and there is more of a spice flavor.  All in all, a very delicious recipe, seeing as how I couldn’t stop eating them!

More cookies

This week, I made sugar cookies and peanut butter cup cookies.  The sugar cookies are not traditional sugar cookies, as they have more sugar in them than usual and the dough is rolled in colored sugar prior to baking.  Needless to say, these cookies are VERY sweet.

I found the recipe for the peanut butter cup recipes on allrecipes.com.  There is a very similar recipe on the back of the bags of mini Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, which I will probably eventually try.  I followed the advice of many reviewers on allrecipes.com and froze the peanut butter cups prior to pushing them into the cookies.  I also refrigerated the cookies, for about 10 minutes, after they were baked and the peanut butter cups were inserted.  The cookies turned out pretty good, although I feel like I can taste the flour a little too much.  Though I do love cookies, in this case, I think I would prefer to just eat the peanut butter cups alone.

Highly efficient eating

In order to make some more progress on my goal of eating the top 50 treats listed on 7×7.com, I had to do some strategic planning on Saturday when I went to the city.  For lunch, my mom and I headed to the Ferry Building.  After having a delicious porchetta sandwich from Roli Roti, we ventured inside and I first stopped at Miette for their old fashioned chocolate cake with Italian meringue frosting.  You can buy it as an actual cake or as a cupcake.  The cake is probably the best chocolate cake I’ve had.  It’s really moist and has a very rich chocolate flavor.  The frosting wasn’t my favorite, in terms of taste and texture.  It is more gooey and less solid than the usual frostings used for cupcakes.  I prefer the traditional frostings that go on cake.

Old-fashioned chocolate cupcake with italian meringue frosting from Miette

Next, I stopped at Michael Recciuti for some truffles.  I bought a truffle with jasmine tea infused ganache, one with hazelnut, and one called the Peanut Butter Puck.  All three are delicious.  I love chocolates that are infused with tea flavor.  The peanut butter in the Peanut Butter Puck is not super sweet like in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Chocolate truffles from Michael Recchiuti

There was also a guy sampling these amazing pretzels that are covered in chocolate and toffee chips.  The outside tastes similar to Almond Roca candy.  I had to buy a bag because they were that good.  Apparently, they have also been featured on the Rachel Ray show.  The saltiness of the pretzel and the sweetness of the chocolate and toffee are incredible together.

Finally, for dinner we ate at Townhall.  I had two main reasons for eating there, the buttermilk fried chicken and their butterscotch and chocolate pot de crème dessert, which is on the list.  I was also pleasantly surprised by one of their appetizers.  It is a ham and cheese toast with poached egg.  However, what makes it amazing is the cream sauce they pour over the whole sandwich.  It is super creamy and slightly spicy from the jalapenos.  The butterscotch and chocolate pot de crème is seriously one of the best desserts I have ever eaten and definitely my favorite thing (so far) off the 7×7.com list.  They serve it in a bowl and the bottom layer is chocolate and the top layer is butterscotch.  The consistency is more dense than mousse but it is not heavy.  They serve it with toffee (or maybe butterscotch?) pieces that are covered with chocolate on one side.  I could not stop eating the dessert even though I was beyond stuffed at that point.  This dessert is definitely meant to be shared, but not with too many 😛

Butterscotch and chocolate pot de creme from Townhall

My day in the city was quite successful as I can now check off three more treats from my list of 50 and I had some seriously fantastic food.

Peanut butter and jelly bars

You can’t go wrong with the combination of peanut butter and jelly.  So when I found a recipe for peanut butter jelly bars, I had to try it out.   It’s a three layer bar.  The bottom is the basic dough that gets baked first.  The middle layer is strawberry preserves and the top layer is the basic dough with some added brown sugar and oats, which is pretty much like a crumble topping.  The bars tasted just like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, just with more butter and sugar 🙂

Holiday baking binge

Since it’s December, I have started my holiday baking binge.  Christmas is the perfect excuse to bake a ton of cookies for no reason other than the fact that it’s the holidays and you’re supposed to bake cookies at this time of year.  I’ve kicked off the baking season with butter cookies with lemon curd, vanilla salted peanut cookies, and white chocolate cookies with raspberry jam.   All three recipes came from holiday baking magazines that I can’t stop myself from buying every year, even though they probably recycle the recipes year to year.   Of the three cookie recipes, my favorite was the butter cookies with lemon curd.  They taste the best and they’re pretty.  The cookies alone taste pretty good, but the lemon curd is a great addition.

Butter cookies with lemon curd

The vanilla salted peanut cookies turned out really crunchy and brown on the outside.  When I pulled the cookies out of the oven when they were lightly golden brown, the middle of the cookies were not done.  But leaving them in the oven longer to cook the middle makes the outside of the cookie look darker brown than most cookies.  However, this may also be because there is only brown sugar and no granulated sugar in the recipe.  They also turned out really crunchy, which is fine with me since I like crunchy cookies, but for others, this may not be so appealing.

Vanilla salted peanut cookies

The white chocolate cookies with raspberry jam look really festive with the red raspberry jam and white chocolate drizzle.  I’m not the biggest fan of white chocolate or raspberry but I thought that they tasted pretty good together.

White chocolate rasberry jam cookies

Pecan pie bars

I found out my dad likes pecan pie, which led me to make pecan pie bars.  I like how the bars are easier to share with others than a pie.  I found the recipe in a holiday baking magazine from Better Homes & Garden.  It was really easy to make and the ingredients are all pretty basic baking ingredients so I didn’t have to make an extra trip to the grocery store.  I’ve never eaten pecan pie so I don’t know if it tastes exactly like pecan pie.  All I know is that the bars were delicious and I will definitely be making them again.

Pecan pie bars