I made delicious-ness!

For a friend's birthday dinner, I made a Raspberry Truffle Tart. Like the acorn squash recipe, it also looks fancy, but is a comparatively easy dessert. I got the recipe from the Joy of Baking website, to which I frequently turn for good dessert recipes. The filling is to-die-for, seriously.

Raspberry Truffle Tart

Biscotti Crust
8 oz. store bought biscotti, broken into pieces
5-6 T butter, melted

Filling
1/3 c raspberry sauce (recipe follows)
10 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 c heavy whipping cream

Raspberry Sauce
1 c fresh or frozen raspberries
2 T white sugar


Preheat oven to 350. Have a 8- or 9-inch fluted tart pan ready. Place broken up biscotti in food processor and process until finely ground. Transfer to bowl, add butter, stir to combine. Press into tart pan. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely before adding filling.
Place raspberries in food processor until broken up. Pour into strainer, set over bowl, press raspberries to extract juice. Add sugar to juice to taste. Set aside.
Place chopped chocolate in heat-proof bowl. Set aside. Heat heavy whipping cream in small saucepan until it just boils. Pour over chocolate. Let sit for 5 minutes. Stir until smooth. Add 1/3 c of raspberry sauce to chocolate. Pour filling into baked and cooled crust. Refrigerate overnight (or, do as I did and put it in the freezer for a super fast chilling session so you can eat it that evening).

Acorns for Dinner

A couple of weeks ago, I made rice-stuffed acorn squash for dinner. It's really easy, but looks fancy, and, if it's too hot to use the oven, you can just put the squash in the microwave. One squash serves two and it's very filling.

Ingredients
1 acorn squash
2/3 peas
1 cup cooked rice
1/4 t basil
1/4 t parsley
1/8 t salt
1/8 t pepper
2 T shredded Parmesan cheese

Halve the squash lengthwise, scrape out seeds. Place cut side down on plate and microwave for 5-7 minutes or more until tender. Cook peas in small amount of water in small saucepan. Drain, add rice, basil, parsley, salt, and pepper. Stir in cheese. Fix centers of squash with hot rice mixture. Serve.

Ice + Coffee Does Not An Iced Coffee Make

Nothing marks summer for me as much as sitting outside a cafe drinking iced coffee. Yet, if you order iced coffee from enough places, you quickly noticed that there are places that serve delicious iced coffee and others that serve essentially a cup of coffee poured over ice. The difference? Admittedly until this summer I was in the dark about this, but the key is cold-brewed coffee.

Below is the recipe, if you can call it that, that I got from this 2007 NYTimes article.

1/3 cup ground coffee (medium-coarse grind is best)
Milk (optional).

1. In a jar, stir together coffee and 1 1/2 cups water. Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight or 12 hours.

2. Strain twice through a coffee filter, a fine-mesh sieve or a sieve lined with cheesecloth. In a tall glass filled with ice, mix equal parts coffee concentrate and water, or to taste. If desired, add milk.

I just used coffee filters for the straining and it came out tasting just like iced coffee in good cafes, bringing out the lighter and sweeter flavors that are completely overpowered if you brew that coffee normally. For a fuller explanation of why, see this NYTimes article.

Next up on the iced coffee agenda: Vietnamese Iced Coffee.