ice cream as you like it

A caterer recently told me: “Biscuit tortoni is back!” Having no idea what she was talking about, I took her word for it.

Soon after, a friend of mine described her favorite dessert to me. It involved combining softened ice cream and amaretto and crushed macaroons. She loved it so much, she regularly requested it as her birthday dessert over cake growing up.

It took me some Internet sleuthing, but I soon discovered that the caterer and my friend were talking about the same thing. Biscuit tortoni is a creamy retro dessert that you serve in cupcake liners—it also happens to be extremely easy to make.

Another fantastic thing about this dessert: It’s very tweak-able. Have rum in the house instead of amaretto? Then use that! Prefer chocolate to almonds? Add those instead! Below I give you the dessert and all the options I encountered during my Internet search. (And to give credit where credit is due—I relied on these two recipes most heavily.)

Biscuit Tortoni

• 2 ½ cups macaroons or chocolate-dipped macaroons or amarettini cookies
• ½ cup chopped toasted almonds or chocolate pieces or chopped maraschino cherries or a combination of these things (more or less to taste)
• ¼ cup amaretto or dark rum or brandy or sherry (more or less to taste)
• 1 cup heavy cream, chilled
• 2 tsp almond extract or another liquor/liqueur from above (more or less to taste)
• 1 quart vanilla ice cream, softened
• Maraschino cherries, drained and halved for garnish

1. Crumble the cookies into ½-inch pieces, roughly. (Putting the cookies in a Ziploc bag and running a rolling pin over them tends to work well—macaroons will require you to break up additionally with your fingers.) Toss with almonds or whatever you’re using. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, beat cream with an electric mixer until thickened. Pour in the amaretto (or whatevs) and whip until medium peaks form. Fold the cookie mixture into the whipped cream, reserving ¾ cup or so for topping. (Some recipes suggest you pour the liquor over the cookies and then fold the mixture into the cream.)

3. Add the almond extract to the softened ice cream and stir until blended and very smooth. Fold cookie/whipped cream mixture into ice cream. Will look soupy.

4. Spoon into baking cups or ramekins. Sprinkle each cup with some of the reserved cookie mixture and top with a cherry. (Some of my cherries sunk. You may want to let the mixture sit in the freezer before adding the cherries.) Freeze until firm. Remove from freezer and allow to soften before serving.

Makes roughly 15 individual servings

play dough cookies

By now, we've probably all seen the awesomeness that is the Rainbow Cake. But Play Dough Cookies are poised to steal its multicolored thunder!

Perfect for both the young and the young at heart, these cookies will certainly steal the spotlight on any dessert table. You can find different variations online that include using sticks to make them look like lollipops — my favorite of which is this step-by-step pictorial that makes the whole process seem so simple (don't let it bother you that the text is in Serbian).

take two: brie en croute

Today is Bastille Day! What better way to celebrate le quatorze juillet (or even just a random Tuesday) than with some melty French cheese tucked inside a deliciously flaky crust. Here is Christine's take on the très mouthwatering brie en croûte.

Serving a wedge of brie at a party is a sure crowd-pleaser, but wrap it in puff pastry and bake it, and it’s downright showstopping.

Every time I serve the French specialty brie en croûte, it’s gone by mid-party. No one has any shame about eating the last bit. I’ve seen people spy the last of the brie, pick up the plate right off of the serving table, and walk away with it. I take it as a compliment.

This dish also makes a perfectly satisfying meal accompanied by a green salad — think of it as inverted fondue.

Brie en Croûte

• A round of brie
• Puff pastry (thawed)
• 1/8 to 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup pecans
• Cinnamon to taste
• Egg white, slightly beaten
• Apples and or pear slices

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out pastry with rolling pin until it can envelop the brie. Place brie on pastry and sprinkle with brown sugar, pecans and cinnamon. Close pastry around brie. Seal edges by brushing with egg white, then pinching together. Brush rest of pastry with remaining egg white. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes or until brown. Serve with apples or pears.

Brie en Croûte

• A round of brie
• Puff pastry (thawed)
• 1/8 to 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup pecans
• Cinnamon to taste
• Egg white, slightly beaten
• Apples and or pear slices

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out pastry with rolling pin until it can envelop the brie. Place brie on pastry and sprinkle with brown sugar, pecans and cinnamon. Close pastry around brie. Seal edges by brushing with egg white, then pinching together. Brush rest of pastry with remaining egg white. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes or until brown. Serve with apples or pears.

pie dough change-o

In my family, the leftover pie dough is as big a deal as the actual pie. We make Dum-Dums out of them—a cinnamony pinwheel cookie whose name origin nobody recalls and appears to have no logic.

I adore these cookies, and they only appear around the holidays, so they’re a real treat. They won't win any beauty contests, but they're awfully tasty and smell divine. Once, my family made Dum-Dums and ate them all before I awoke. I was SO MAD. Perhaps it was my own fault since I slept in so late—that was my family’s stance—but I felt deeply wronged.

Recently I discovered these cookies don’t have to be a holidays-only kind of thing. I made a pie for a potluck, and, as is customary in my family, I used a recipe that gives you enough dough to cover the top of the pie, but then I didn’t cover it. I made Dum-Dums with the extra dough and served them to a friend one early evening. As it turned out, they are the perfect little sweet thing to serve a guest. I told my friend the story of the all the Dum-Dums being gone before I awoke. After eating one, she said: “I would have been mad about that, too.”

Dum-Dums

Leftover pie dough
Butter, melted
Brown sugar
Cinnamon
Nuts, finely chopped (optional)

Measurements are impossible for this recipe since it all depends on how much leftover pie dough you have. (Or make the pie dough, skip the pie and bake these.)

Preheat oven to 325.

Roll out the dough so it’s about 1/8 inch thick. Brush with melted butter. Cover with a layer of brown sugar—add as much as you think you’d like. Sprinkle with cinnamon and nuts, if using. (Pecans are a nice addition.) Roll dough into a log, then slice into roughly 1/4-inch slices. Put on baking sheet and brush with more butter, if desired. Bake for about 15 minutes or until dough is cooked but not brown.

Best served warm.

spike it

When it comes to ice cream floats, two options come to mind: root beer or Coke. I never thought there was more to the float world.

Then, one quiet day, the folks of Tastings in New York told me about an entirely new float. These floats were a giant hit at their summer parties. They involved alcohol. Also fruit. The visionary creation? Prosecco floats!

Bon Appetit introduced Tastings to the light-alcoholic-fizziness-meets-strawberry-sorbato combo. And the drink is, I’ve decided, the perfect hot-day refresher. It's also such a pretty addition to a bridal or baby shower. And while Bon App’s homemade sorbato (sorbet-meets-gelato) sounds delicious and not-that-hard-to-make, my approach is especially low-tech.

Spiked Floats

Place 1-2 scoops of store-bought sorbet of your choice—Haagen-Dazs’ strawberry, raspberry and peach are all great. Fill glass with Prosecco or other sparkling wine; 7 Up also works for a teetotaler version. Add 3 or so raspberries or other pretty fruit. Serve.

And be forewarned: This opens up an entire world of spiked floats. After this, I was an unstoppable-spiked-float force. I created what I call a Southern Spritzer by adding the leftover peach sorbet to 7 Up and bourbon and am officially smitten with this drink. I’m now contemplating my next spiked float move….

4th of july recipe roundup

Like this design? Create an Evite invitation with this image.

Fireworks, check. Charcoal briquettes, check. Sunscreen, check. You're ready for your big 4th of July party. Or are you? Do you have a that cocktail that everyone's going to be asking for more of? How about a summery dessert?

Never fear — we've gone back into our recipe vault to bring you some oldies but goodies to cap off your bash.

• Frozen whiskey sours: They're sweet and citrusy and the perfect cocktail to chill the masses while waiting for the sun to go down.
• Watermelon granita: This dessert takes the ultimate summertime fruit and freezes it into delicious icy goodness. We even tell you how to spike it for the grownups.
• Fruit dip: It doesn't get any easier than this creamy concoction. With ingredients you probably already have in your cabinets, you can whip it up and just add fruit.

a little layering

 

Sometimes you want your cocktail to say “America.” I know I do. So with July 4th on the horizon, I decided to create a red, white and blue striped beverage to toast our country. I figured learning to layer a drink would be easy enough.

I was wrong.

Not that I was unprepared. I did some research on layering drinks and discovered heavy liquids should go at the bottom, lighter ones at the top. So I decided to start with a grenadine syrup-based concoction; blue curacao would be my middle; and a light, white-ish Prosecco would top the whole thing off. The layers would be in the nontraditional red, blue and white order, but people would get the idea. Also discovered during my research: You should pour liquids over the back of a spoon to help them disperse.

chocolate fix, fixed

I have this horrible habit of attempting far more than is reasonable when I entertain. Lately, I’m trying to rein myself in.

I had a successful foray in restraint when I prepared an Easter dinner and decided to nix the homemade apricot custard tart I was planning in favor of a build-your-own-s’meeps station. The s’meeps were a hit (mainly for their sheer kookiness), and, quite frankly, a good lesson for me in successful-yet-totally feasible entertaining.

So when friends invited me over for dinner recently and gave me dessert duty, I decided to go interactive again. But this time with five-minute microwavable individual chocolate cakes.

First, I’ll give you the recipe—it’s from a forward my mother sent me that doesn’t list the original source of the recipe. (Sorry, Original Source Person—speak up if you’re out there!) Next, I’ll tell you how my friends and I fared on the project.

Fun with pancakes

Have you noticed an increase in expensive kitchen gadgetry for kids, like bendy man spatulas and mouse measuring cups? The aim is to make cooking fun for children. Hello! Put away the credits cards and just do this: Clean an empty plastic ketchup bottle and fill it with pancake batter.

The opening is perfectly sized for making funny pancakes. Before the ketchup bottle discovery, the most I could do to impress my toddler was drop two blobs of batter into the skillet to make a lopsided snowman. Now I can spell names and create turtles, flowers, puppy dogs, caterpillars and bunny ears (well, that one looks more like the “peace sign” hand gesture, but whatever). The point is, the sky’s the limit, almost.

Here are a few tips:

• If you’re spelling a name in batter, write backwards so the pretty, golden brown side will be on top when you flip it.

• Since the batter expands, it's best to stick to shapes with rounded features, avoiding sharp angles and triangles. Sadly, that means no kitty ears.

• Use ¼ more mix than your recipe calls for. Otherwise the batter will be too thin to hold a shape.

• To fill a standard 24-ounce ketchup bottle, use about 3 cups of batter.

• Add a tablespoon a flaxseeds for a tasty health boost. Flaxseeds are a great source of Omega-3s, but they also add a mild nutty flavor to pancakes.

Chickens are the new black

Sure, the Obamas planted a Victory Garden, and these days urban and backyard gardeners from Brooklyn to the Midwest to San Fran are impressing their guests with salsas and salads plucked from their own sunny plots.

But can a tomato plant decorate your party? Will it entertain your guests? Certainly not. That’s where chickens come in. They’re budget-friendly — we paid $11 for each of them, plus a coop — and they even supply food!

Plus, chickens bring:

• An element of drama. Where will they run next? What are they scratching at? Can I pet them?
• The ultimate eco-friendly appetizers. From the backyard to the kitchen, there is no carbon footprint for fabulous deviled eggs!
• Coolest kid on the block status. Sure, your friends have the newest iPhone, but chickens? That’s the next level.
• Children love chickens! For petting, have an adult hold the chicken, beak facing away, while the tyke pats the smooth back feathers. Kids love chasing them too; don’t sweat it, chickens outrun little ones. Warning: My birds peck at beak-level food; when kids eat ice cream cones, put your feathered friends in the coop.

Ultimate, No Carbon Footprint Deviled Eggs!
Match the herb to the cuisine you’re serving. Going Greek? Add oregano. Good old American? Chives or dill will do. Italian? Try basil.

• 1 dozen fresh eggs
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise (low-fat will taste just as good)
• 1 teaspoon. dried herb of your choice, plus a dash for sprinkling (got fresh? Use about 3 times as much, minced)
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Place eggs in pot; add cold water until eggs are covered by an inch. Bring to boil over high heat. Cover, remove from heat and let sit 17 minutes. Fill a large bowl with ice cubes and water. Transfer eggs to bowl, and chill until cool enough to handle, about 5 minutes (this makes eggs easier to peel and prevents the dark coloring around the yolk).

Crack shells gently; peel, rinsing if necessary to remove shell. Slice each egg in half lengthwise. Transfer yolks to medium bowl and whites to platter.

Using back of fork, break up yolks. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add mayonnaise, 1 teaspoon dried herb and mustard; stir to blend thoroughly. Correct seasoning if necessary.

Using small spatula or spoon, portion yolk mixture evenly into halved whites. Sprinkle yolk mixture with herbs and serve.

Serves 12 as appetizer