Mexican Food

I like Mexican food. It's fun and much of it is surprisingly healthy. Plus, as it turns out, it's much easier to make than I'd anticipated. I got to try out a couple Mexican recipes from Tyler Florance's new book, From the Test Kitchen, for work.

 

Peppermint Chocolate Bundt

Just because it's after Christmas doesn't mean I can't still use peppermint. I like peppermint! This moist bundt was nicely minty but not as richly chocolaty as the deep color indicates; it's made with high quality cocoa, you see, rather than melted chocolate, so it looks chocolaty but could be richer. That's why I made a nice chocolate glaze to kick up the flavor a bit. Then I just sprinkled on some crunched up candy canes. Yum!

Brownies with Citrus Salad

I tried the brownie recipe from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. It's not the simplest brownie recipe, but it's well worth the extra effort. They were perfect. Richly chocolaty, tender, fudgy but still extraordinarily light. Oh gosh.

Individual Apple Bread Puddings

After the success of the waffle and chocolate-hazelnut ice cream, I decided to have fun and make another plated dessert at home. I had slightly stale sourdough bread and some lovely but somewhat bruised apples so I made bread pudding! I made each mini pudding in a well buttered ramekin so I could turn them out onto plates a bit like a baked Charlotte.

I topped the warm bread puddings with vanilla-yogurt cream, apple caramel sauce, and some crushed oat and walnut "nougatine". I put quotes around nougatine because typically it's made of slivered almonds coated in caramel; this is a granola-y version. This breakfast-y but still very dessert-y plated dessert was delicious and, perhaps, a bit whimsical (beiWng breakfast inspired and all that)!

Caramelized Waffles and Chocolate-Hazelnut Ice Cream

I bought myself a small Breville waffle maker for the holidays. It's a great waffle maker! So great that I have made far too many waffles. So I froze some. To heat them up I coated them with cinnamon sugar and fried them. They got all nice and caramelized and toasty warm. I served them with homemade ice cream.

The ice cream was amazing. It's a creamy chocolate and sour cream ice cream base (from the New York Times food section) with some toasted hazelnuts and a dash of Frangelico added in for good measure. I didn't add much liqueur because it can interfere with the freezing point of the ice cream, but with Frangelico on top of the hazelnuts, a little went a long way. This was, hands down, the best batch of ice cream I've ever made, and I've made some good ones. I think it was the sour cream. You couldn't taste it at all (which was good, sour cream would have been all wrong with the hazelnuts) but it made the texture unbeatable.

Plated all together, the warm, crisp waffles and the cold, creamy ice cream were just perfect! (Happy New Year, by the way.)