culinary flights of fancy

Home Cooking Adventures in Berkeley Heights

Category Archives: Desserts


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Sweet Corn and Coconut Ice Cream

Sweet Corn and coconut combine to create an ice cream inspired by a classic Latin American pudding recipe.

Sweet Corn and coconut combine to create an ice cream inspired by a classic Latin American pudding recipe.

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Sweet Corn and Coconut Ice Cream:

It is hot out and as such ice cream sounds pretty good!  This ice cream was inspired by a classic Latin American pudding recipe containing the same main ingredients.  To impart a strong corn flavor the corn is removed from the husks and later used as an ingredient in the ice cream.  The husks are retained and steeped in warm milk, which helps impart a strong corn flavor.  I like this recipe because we have such great corn here in New Jersey and right now it both tastes great and is a real bargain.

In this recipe, I kept the corn kernels whole.  If you prefer a more smoothly textured ice cream, feel free to puree it.  If you go this route, you should use approximately 1 cup of the corn puree.  Process it in the same manner you would the whole kernels as indicated.  Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →


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Desserts: Lemon Polenta Cake with Lavender and Tuscan Chestnut Cake

Lemon polenta cake with lavender and Tuscan chestnut cake.

Lemon polenta cake with lavender and Tuscan chestnut cake.

Over the Easter holiday, I made a couple of different desserts and both were great in their own way.  The lemon polenta cake with lavender was a nicely sweet and moist cake that had a lovely crunch and texture from the medium ground polenta.

The Tuscan chestnut cake was only slightly sweet and only calls for a couple of tablespoons of sugar for the entire cake.  The chestnut flour added a nice nutty taste and earthiness to the mix, while the walnuts, pine nuts, and golden raisins provided a beautiful contrast in textures.  This cake is dense and as such, very filling.  A little of it goes a long way but I really loved the unique flavor combinations and the rosemary in the cake adds a nice woodsy herb flavor.

All in all, both were great and neither were very difficult to make.  So, if you are looking for a dessert that is a little bit different than your usual fare, give one of these a whirl.  I definitely can recommend both recipes.

Both of these recipes came from Food 52.  It’s a great site and one that I frequent regularly.  I’ve tried a number of different recipes from this site and each and every one of them has exceeded expectations.  So, if you are so inclined and have the time, I definitely recommend going there and taking a look at the site.

The recipe for the lemon polenta cake with lavender can be found here.

The recipe for the Tuscan chestnut cake can be found here.


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St. Patrick’s Day Part 1: Mint Ice Cream with Cacao Nibs

Mint Ice Cream with Cacao Nibs provides a nice substitution for a traditional mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Mint Ice Cream with Cacao Nibs provides a nice substitution for a traditional mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Add the cacao nibs half way through your ice cream making cycle.

Add the cacao nibs half way through your ice cream making cycle.

Ice Cream!  First one of the year and very excited about it.  My wife loves mint chocolate chip ice cream and my parents visited last weekend love ice cream as well.  So, I decided to multi-task by making ice cream that would please my wife and parents as well as serve as a springboard for the St. Patrick’s Day festivities this week.  This recipe turned out great.  The recipe I used can be found here.  I really like the technique used to extract the mint flavor in this recipe.  The good news is that this particular recipe uses low fat milk and half and half in lieu of whole milk and cream, so you can certainly use it as written for a nice, lighter ice cream.  The bad news is that I used whole milk and cream in exact increments as indicated for the milk and half n half in the recipe.  I mean I don’t make desserts very often so I decided not to skimp.  So, use the lighter version or my version…your choice.

Cacao nibs is a nutrient rich super food when eaten in its raw, natural state.  It has a slight cocoa flavor but really imparts a nice woody bitterness.  This may not appeal to you but it really helped to balance the sweetness of the ice cream while still maintaining that characteristic crunch found in traditional mint chocolate chip recipes.  To add them to the original mint ice cream recipe referenced above, simply take 1 cup of cacao nibs and slowly add them to the ice cream about mid way through the cycle of your ice cream maker.