So what do you do if you don’t have 1. flour, 2. yeast or 3. baking powder/baking soda and still want to make a sweet treat for …. say, Mother’s Day? Here is an idea: this Torta Caprese, an Italian Flourless Spiced Chocolate Almond Cake. No flour, no leaveners! Now, you will need a few ingredients that you might not have in the pantry (almond flour/meal, bittersweet chocolate bars, cocoa powder), and some standards (butter, eggs, sugar, salt, and spices). This comes together quickly, but does take some time to cool (and what happens if you don’t let it cool long enough — the top cracks when you cut it, like what happened here.) Nevertheless, delicious, rich and gluten-free, if that is your thing. My recommendation: serve with a bit of Amaretto Whipped Cream!
Browsing Tag
nuts
Cookies, Sweet Snacks
Coconut Toffee Bit Florentine-Style Oatmeal Cookies, with Dark Chocolate Drizzle
I think that I might have mentioned this before, but I am very much a fan of “florentine-style” cookies — very thin, almost lace-like, crunchy and a little sticky. As most of you know, I am also a huge fan of coconut, so with these, I combined the best of both: a little coconutty, very thin and crispy, and just a touch of chocolate for good measure. Great afternoon pick-me-up; very addictive.
Who here has stayed at the Hilton Hotel’s DoubleTree chain? You know how they hand out warm chocolate chip cookies at check-in (or anytime you ask for them, if you didn’t know that… have a cookie craving, go to the front desk!) Anyway, purportedly, these chocolate chip cookies are that recipe. I saw it on FB and even if it was a lark, the recipe looked solid, so I gave it a go. I like to play around with chocolate chip recipes anyway. These have a touch of lemon juice and a touch of cinnamon and you bake them for longer at a lower temperature. Whether they are the actual DoubleTree recipe, I have no idea, but that’s ok too.
Have you noticed this crazy phenomenon called Banana Bread? As a person who follows a lot of food websites, chefs, fellow-bloggers and newspaper food section watcher, there is this crazy phenomenon where, I swear the collective households of the entire US are baking banana bread. Here is an article that jumped on the bandwagen.
And seeing it is bread week here at CSPS, I might as well jump on the bandwagon and make some too, right? This is my second go at banana bread during this pandemic and subsequent quarantine time and this one is simply amazing! Browned butter = yum, spiced rum (ok, if I must), banana overload (goodie) and then caramel pieces (OMG!) and walnuts (optional, but still pretty darn good). It’s sort of like bananas foster without setting the thing on fire. If you have some bananas left over while you’re sheltering in place, definitely give this one a go! (PS: don’t overfill the pans; I’d rather go for two than have an overflow!)