When I was in high school, one of my favorite ice cream flavors was mocha almond fudge because it was like a portable coffee and chocolate sundae, with the fudge and nuts neatly packed inside. For some reason I have never really considered making it, perhaps because I was unsure of how to marble the fudge with the ice cream. Last June, Kieran from Ice Cream Ireland put out a call for readers to try out some of his recipes in anticipation of his new book (still not readily available in the US, but you can order it from the publisher if you are eager like me—will let you know when it arrives) and I decided to try making his Kahlúa Espresso Ice Cream (my post about it here). The coffee flavor of this ice cream was amazing, and I knew right away I had to adapt it to make some mocha almond fudge ice cream. Nearly a year later, here it is.

I knew I already had the perfect fudge sauce recipe for this ice cream, but I needed to reduce the hot fudge sauce recipe by about half to provide just the right amount for this ice cream. Of course, I ended making a regular batch of hot fudge sauce later that night since my daughter loves it and was disappointed to learn there wasn’t any leftover after the smaller batch I made for this ice cream. While I was waiting for the ice cream to freeze in my ice cream maker, I thought about how hard the fudge sauce might get when once it was frozen. The original hot fudge sauce recipe is intended to be heated and poured over the ice cream, resulting in a thick, warm sauce. I decided to get a preview of what I might end up with and placed some sauce on a spoon and left it in the freezer. After 10 minutes, I knew that it would be too hard once frozen with the ice cream. I salvaged the first batch of fudge sauce by adding a little more evaporated milk and stirring it in to the still warm sauce, resulting in just the right texture once frozen.

The first time I made this I added the almonds and the fudge to the ice cream maker immediately before shutting it off, but the fudge ended up getting too blended. In addition, the almonds generally sank to the bottom of the ice cream as it ripened in the freezer. To remedy both problems, I decided to let the ice cream firm up in the freezer for an hour before layering in the almonds and room temperature fudge sauce. A few plunges of the spatula into the ice cream broke up the layers and gave the fudge marbling a more random appearance, while still preserving the yummy chocolate veins.

There are a lot of steps to this recipe, but you can take advantage of the chill time of the ice cream base, the initial freezing of the ice cream, or the hour of firming up in the freezer before layering the almonds and fudge sauce. I’ve arranged the steps in the recipe to take the least amount of time possible, but you could toast the almonds or make the fudge sauce ahead of time. If the sauce is chilled, you will want to get it to room temperature so that it will be easier to distribute in the ice cream layers. Once the ice cream is finally ready to eat, you will understand that your efforts were worth it and why I didn’t think twice about making this a second time to refine the steps for this recipe. The Kahlúa, although not necessary if you have issues with alcohol, adds a wonderful depth to the coffee flavor in this ice cream. You will be thinking about your next batch as you finish the first.

Ingredients for making Mocha Almond Fudge Ice Cream.

Beat 5 egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar until light and fluffy.

Heat 1 1/4 cups of whole milk, 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 3 tablespoons of espresso powder until simmering. Slowly add this to egg and sugar mixture while mixing on medium speed.

Return custard mixture to saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until it reaches about 165° F.

Pour custard base through a sieve or chinois to remove any egg bits and chill in ice bath.

While custard base is cooling, prepare fudge sauce. Cook 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp sugar, 1/4 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup evaporated milk, and 3 tablespoons corn syrup over medium heat.

Boil fudge sauce for 5 minutes and then remove from heat. Stir in 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons butter and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and let cool to room temperature.

Once custard base has chilled to less than 45° F, add 1/4 cup of Kahlúa and stir to blend.

Beat 1 1/4 cups of whipping cream until soft peaks form and gently fold this into chilled custard base.

Pour ice cream base into ice cream maker and freeze according to your maker’s instructions.

While ice cream is churning, chop about 2/3 cup of almonds. Use a colander to help remove the smaller, dustier particles.

Arrange chopped almonds in flat layer and toast in 350° F oven for 5 minutes (toaster oven is fine). Let cool to room temperature.

Once ice cream has finished churning, transfer to a dedicated, odor-free container and let ripen in freezer for one hour.

Remove ice cream from freezer and begin layering another container with a layer of ice cream and then a scoop of room temperature fudge sauce.

Add a layer of the almonds and repeat the layering of ice cream, fudge sauce and almonds. Plunge a spoon into the layers several times and then let firm in the freezer for several hours or overnight.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and exhaustive photo gallery can be found on the Mocha Almond Fudge Ice Cream recipe page.

Snickerdoodles. I can’t think of too many other cookie recipes with a silly name that gives you no clues about what is in it, what it looks like, who created it or perhaps who frequently consumes them. What is certain, however, is that there are as many versions of this recipe as there are theories about their origin. Snickerdoodles are one of the early recipes I remember baking with my mom 30 years ago. Essentially a sugar cookie with a little cinnamon on the outside, what isn’t there for a kid to love?

As a recipe, I think snickerdoodles are pretty forgiving and hard to mess up. Perhaps that explains the many variations of the recipe. It would be interesting to take a half dozen variations head to head to see what the differences are. Depending on your mood, you can bake these crunchy or soft and the two textures result in very different cookies, equally delicious (though I like them a little soft in the middle).

There are a lot of people that debate the cream of tartar in snickerdoodles. The accepted explanation indicates that the cream of tartar acts as an acid to assist the baking soda. I can see how this would makes sense given my college background in science, but the ingredients in this recipe aren’t all that different from the popular chocolate chip cookie, so I don’t know if the cream of tartar does all that much for the baking soda and probably alters the taste just enough to make it worthwhile to leave it in. Maybe someday I’ll experiment with it, but after 30 years with this snickerdoodles recipe, I don’t have any complaints.

Ingredients for making Snickerdoodles.

Cream 1 cup butter, 2 eggs and 1 1/3 cups of sugar until light and fluffy.

Add 1 teaspoon baking soda to 3 cups of flour.

Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of cream of tartar to dry ingredients.

Add a pinch of salt and mix dry ingredients until thoroughly blended.

Slowly add dry ingredients to butter, egg and sugar mixture, scraping sides of bowl occasionally to ensure even mixing.

Roll dough into 1 inch balls and then roll in cinnamon sugar mixture made of 1 tablespoon cinnamon and 3/4 cups of sugar.

Arrange dough balls evenly on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes in 375° F oven until lightly browned. Let cool for 1 minute on cookie sheet before cooling on racks.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery can be found on the Snickerdoodles Cookies recipe page.

As a kid, I loved pirouette cookies by Pepperidge Farm. Light and delicate, the tube shape also makes them fun to eat. Over the holidays, a neighbor made some cat’s tongues, for which I am still awaiting the recipe, and the cookies reminded me of flattened pirouettes—shaped like a cat’s tongue, of course. Once I get the recipe from her, I will be sure to share it here. While waiting for the recipe, I got to thinking about making pirouettes, especially since they go really well with gelato (see photo from my last post about gianduja gelato). When I noticed that this recipe calls for just egg whites and the gianduja gelato needed the yolks, I knew I had to make them together.

When I first made these cookies, I followed the original instructions, which said to spread the dough with a spatula. That turned out a lot easier said than done, and I just ended up with some messy blobs. I thought about ways to get the dough to spread more, and figured that since these cook so quickly already, why not just add the dough to hot cookie sheets?

I placed the silpat-lined cookie sheet in the oven and let it get nice and hot. I then removed the sheets from the oven and spooned on the dough. It definitely spread better, especially around the edges, where the dough was a little runnier. Finally, I thought I would heat a little dough in the microwave for just a few seconds. Just 8 seconds for 1/2 cup of dough resulted in a thick batter I could coax into pouring without losing any volume. Combined with the hot cookie sheets, this worked really well. After pouring 4 equal dollops on the hot cookie sheet, I tilted the sheet at all angles to help the dough spread into thinner, larger circles.

Handling hot cookies
These cookies come out of the oven hot, but if you work quickly and utilize the spatula and wooden spoon handle enough, you don’t need to wear any kind of gloves while rolling the cookies. The finished cookies are very similar to Pepperidge Farm’s pirouettes, though I think these are a little more buttery. The original recipe instructions advised against browning anything but the very edges, but I found that minimal browning resulted in a cookie that wasn’t very crunchy. We liked the over-browned ones more for this reason, so definitely err on the side of too dark than too light since they are more forgiving for over-browning. I made these two weeks ago and they are still crunchy.

Ingredients for making Pirouette Cookies.

Beat 1 cup of room temperature butter, 1 cup of sugar and 4 egg whites together until fluffy.

Add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Slowly mix in 1 cup of flour until just blended.

Scoop out 1/2 cup of dough and heat for 8 seconds in microwave to thin and warm.

Pour a tablespoon of dough onto preheated, silpat-lined cookie sheet. Once dough for 4 cookies is poured, tilt cookie sheet at all angles to spread dough.

Bake for 4 - 6 minutes in 400° F oven until edges brown. Use spatula to lift hot cookie from cookie sheet and place over handle of wooden spoon.

Drag one hanging edge of cookie under wooden spoon and then lower wooden spoon to begin rolling, pressing on seam when finished.

Place rolled pirouettes on lowered cooling rack to cool and help prevent unrolling.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery can be found on the Pirouette Cookies recipe page.

Pictured above is a bowl of Gianduja Gelato. Until I started making candies a decade ago, I had never heard of gianduja. In case you have never heard of it, gianduja is a chocolate product made from chocolate, hazelnuts and almonds. It has a similar texture to milk chocolate, although slightly less firm. I have been using gianduja every year to make gianduja truffles, but I always ended up with about half a pound of gianduja left over. This year was no exception, so I found myself thinking of ways I could prevent it from going to waste. With the weather being nice this last week, it seemed like a good excuse to make some gelato. I poked around looking for some recipes, but most seemed to call for milk chocolate and hazelnuts, so I just sort of made this recipe up.

The first time I made this I used whole milk—common for many gelatos—but the finished gelato was a little icy. The first batch also had issues with appearance since the gianduja didn’t full incorporate with the hot custard base. The custard was more than hot enough to melt the gianduja, but there were still little flecks that no amount of stirring would remedy; it looked like diet ice cream. It is worth noting that whole milk alone wasn’t an issue when I did the same process with dark chocolate in the dark chocolate gelato. I still had some gianduja left, so I made another batch later in the day. This time, I first melted the gianduja in a double boiler and then slowly tempered it with small amounts of the hot custard. This resulted in a silky smooth gelato free of the flecks of gianduja in the first batch. I remedied the icy texture by substituting half & half for the milk.

The resulting gelato has a wonderfully smooth texture with nutty overtones. The addition of a couple tablespoons of Frangelico liqueur helps promote the hazelnut flavor while keeping the gelato texture nice and soft.

Ingredients for making Gianduja Gelato.

Heat 2 1/2 cups of half & half over medium heat until simmering, stirring frequently.

Mix 3/4 cup of sugar with 5 egg yolks until light and fluffy.

With the mixer on medium-low, slowly pour the hot half & half into the egg and sugar mixture.

Heat the eggs, sugar and half & half until it reaches 165 °F to form a custard base. Remove from heat.

Chop 6 ounces of gianduja and melt in a double boiler over very hot (not simmering) water.

Mix in about 1/4 cup of the custard base into the melted gianduja. Stir until blended. Repeat with gradually larger amounts of the custard base until smooth.

Transfer the gelato base to an ice bath and chill until less than 45 °F. Add 2 tablespoons of Frangelico liqueur.

Freeze according to your maker’s instructions and transfer to a dedicated, odor-free container to ripen in the freezer for several hours.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery can be found on the Gianduja Gelato recipe page.

I knew I wanted to make some cookie for Valentines Day, and I thought some heart shaped sugar cookies would do the trick. What better way to say, “I love you”, than with a heart shaped cookie? It was late January when I set out to find some heart shaped cookie cutters, so I figured that it would be easy to find some heart shaped cookie cutters at the mall. I went to 4 different kitchen supply stores and nothing. Finally, Crate & Barrel came through with a 3-piece set. I guess marketing hasn’t gotten the jump on Valentine’s Day like it has on Christmas.

For some reason, I always think rolled cookies are a lot of work, but they really aren’t that much extra effort. The really cool thing is that most other people also think they are a lot of work, so when you present them with a heart shaped cookie made with different colored dough, they really think the cookies are extra special.

This recipe calls for what I thought was a lot of food coloring—up to 1/2 teaspoon—but unless I added 1/4 teaspoon or more, the color was just too pale. I also found that it’s nearly impossible to have too much sanding sugar; a couple different colors really add a nice touch.

These are the first cookies I have listed on the site that do not have any leavening, so they have a nice shortbread consistency. This recipe is also has a pretty short list of ingredients, so you are almost guaranteed to have them on hand. I made these cookies twice in the last 2 weeks, and both my kids and my wife’s co-workers really enjoyed them. Use coarse sanding sugar as it adds a little crunch to the texture of the cookie.

Below are some of the highlights of making this simple, but delicious sugar cookies.

Ingredients for making Valentine Sugar Cookies.

Beat 1 cup of room temperature butter until fluffy.

Sift 3/4 cup of powdered sugar to remove lumps.

Use a whisk to gently mix 2 1/4 cups of flour with the sugar.

Slowly add about half of the sugar and flour into the butter.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla to the dough and then finish adding the flour and sugar mixture.

Form the dough into a ball and split in half. Return half of the dough to mixer and mix in 1/2 teaspoon of red food coloring.

Roll the uncolored dough until 1/4 inch thick. Repeat for the colored dough.

Cut out large and small heart shapes, cutting the small shapes from the insides of the larger cutouts.

Assemble the cookies on a silpat baking mat using contrasting colored dough, gently pinching them together at the seams.

Sprinkle the tops of the cookies with red and pink sanding sugars.

Bake for 13 minutes in 350°F oven until edges just begin to brown. Remove from oven, let rest on sheet one minute, and then transfer to cooling racks.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery can be found on the Valentine Sugar Cookie recipe page.

First off—no, I did not make these! Pictured above is a homemade candy bar from BonBonBar.com. BonBonBar was started by fellow blogger, Nina, over at Sweet Napa. I’ve been reading her blog for over a year and was excited when she announced she was going to start her own candy business last October. I ordered her BonBonBars online last week and was hoping to hide my identity from Nina, figuring that if I purchased the chocolates anonymously, that this unsolicited review would be more genuine. I assumed she wouldn’t remember my surname since our last email correspondence was a good 6 months ago. I even used my work email address during the checkout process, hoping she wouldn’t figure out it was me, but when I opened the package I saw a hand written note on the invoice. Nina wrote that she threw in some marshmallows so I would have a complete sampler of her products since I had ordered the candy bar sampler.

I carefully opened the packaging and examined the contents before unwrapping a dark chocolate Caramel Nut Bar. I smelled the candy bar and right away I knew this was going to be a completely brand new candy experience. It’s funny how the prevalence of mass-produced confections sets our expectations of what a “good” candy bar is. We settle for the familiar and await the new ways that a machine can assemble chocolate, caramel, nuts, and/or cookies. Hey, why not fry them? King size, fun size—the candy bar has long been a commodity defined by convenience and thrift. So why on earth would you want to pay $5.00 for a candy bar?

“Oh, that’s expensive” you say between sips of your venti nonfat half-caff vanilla soy triple mocha. Actually, it’s kind of a bargain considering how much it costs to keep things out of a candy bar. These BonBonBars are missing a few things that you might have become accustomed to like corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, artificial flavorings and—oh yeah—a long shelf life. You don’t see candy bar ads from manufacturers extolling their products’ freshness over competitors. These candy bars are the freshest tasting candy bars I have ever had. It’s amazing what happens when you combine fresh ingredients and consume them soon afterwards. My BonBonBars indicated a “best by” date only 3 weeks away. My wife and I quickly discovered that being perishable was of no concern as we quickly consumed 3 different bars in a single sitting.

The buttery Caramel Nut Bar was just amazing and definitely our favorite. The molded chocolate shell makes for a very attractive bar and helps you ration the bar into smaller chunks to savor one at a time. The caramel was so soft and buttery I first thought the nuts were chunks of toffee. The salted nut flavor quickly follows and makes for a very nice finish. The taste was incredibly fresh and the quality of the chocolate and caramel were second to none. I’m already thinking about how I can make my own caramels with so much rich, buttery goodness.

Next, we tried the Malt Bars. I’m a huge fan of dark chocolate so I was surprised to discover that I actually prefer the milk chocolate Malt Bars more over the dark chocolate version. Although the fillings are presumably the same, I felt that the dark chocolate overpowered the malt flavor and wasn’t a harmonious match like the milk chocolate and malt pairing. The crunchy shortbread cookie in each of these bars was really good. I would have liked to just munch on the cookies alone. Finally, we opened the marshmallows. I wasn’t really expecting much since I’m not a huge marshmallow fan outside of campfires, but these were really good. The Vanilla Marshmallow had texture and freshness unlike any marshmallow I have had before. Equally fresh and light, the Passion Fruit Marshmallow was accurately described as tart and refreshing. Before trying it, I thought passion fruit seemed like an odd flavor to choose, but after eating one you want another.

These BonBonBars were fantastic and really opened up my eyes to the true potential of a candy bar. Brava!

The candy arrived safely thanks to a cushion of starch-based packing material.

The packaging was very eco-friendly yet stylish.

The dark chocolate Malt Bar was very good, but we liked the milk chocolate version best.

The milk chocolate Malt Bar was amazing and the shortbread cookie inside was fantastic and crunchy.

The Vanilla Marshmallow packaging hides 4 neat, cube shaped marshmallows.

The Vanilla Marshmallows were incredibly fresh. My wife, not one for marshmallows, even thought they were delicious. Brava!

The Passion Fruit Marshmallows in their packaging.

The Passion Fruit Marshmallows were really good and had a nice aftertaste.

So fresh and free of preservatives these bars are perishable. We couldn’t imagine how you could let them sit for 3 weeks—we succumbed and ate it all in 24 hours.

Find out more about Nina and BonBonBar on her blog, Sweet Napa.