Dessert Panini

In the mood for something sinfully delicious, yet sinfully easy to make? How about this dessert panini? Yeah, I can't think of a more original name and I can't find the original recipe (which I deviated from anyway), but it's delicious and very simple. I did make it on my panini grill, but I suspect any sandwich-grilling solution would work. Let's dive in, shall we?
To start, spread creamy peanut butter (or any other dessert-like spread) over the "insides" of two pieces of white bread (per panini). Quarter a banana in half and then length-wise (like the picture above demonstrates). A whole banana is a lot per panini unless you really dig banana... Put these banana slices on your peanut butter and spread miniature marshmallows all around (they'll kind of stick to the peanut butter). Now for the part that requires coordination: take one half of a panini and, using your mad skillz, flip it on top. You can do this without losing any marshmallows, I swear. Butter a side (or both) and warm up your panini-grilling mechanism. Once it's nice and hot, start cooking each panini (and butter any sides you may have not buttered yet). Grill for only a few minutes (we're not cooking any meats here) and then remove. You should have nice, grilled cheese-looking lines on your paninis. Cover them in a dusting of powdered sugar and then line with chocolate syrup. Diabetes, here we come. Enjoy!
The ingredients are straight-forward:

• two slices of white bread per panini
• creamy peanut butter (or another sweet spread)
  
• a banana or less per panini
• miniature marshmallows (as many as you can manage)
  
• butter (to spread on the outsides of the paninis before grilling)
• powdered sugar and chocolate syrup to cover (and help you die faster)
  

Apple Strudel

I am back from my two week trip abroad and I come bearing recipes! This apple strudel was demonstrated in a cooking lesson on our Viking River cruise ship, the Viking Sky. I brought back the recipe and, since it's apple season here in the Northeast, thought I'd try another dessert. Desserts are tough and my past record hasn't been so bright, but maybe this would turn out better with Marcella's assistance! This strudel is prepared in two parts: making (and then rolling) the dough and preparing the stuffing which is wrapped in the dough before baking. Since this takes some explaining, I'll use a few more pictures than usual. Again, I made half the amount the recipe calls for, which the pictures reflect but the quantities listed don't.
Making the dough required some guess work, so I'll just give you my advice. On a smooth surface or bowl, combine 0.75 or so pounds of flour (with two tablespoons of butter and an egg) with just enough water to keep it held together but not enough for it to be sticky. You don't want to see cracks in the dough nor should you have to pull it off your hands as you knead it into a ball. Cover the dough and let sit for 45 minutes.
Start preparing the stuffing by cutting up half a pound of apples (this is about one apple). Combine with raisins, bread crumbs, cinnamon, rum (Marcella recommends Myers's - great for cooking, a little rough for shots), shredded nuts, and sugar. When the dough is ready, spread it out on a cloth or wax paper (aluminum foil like I used is not a smart choice). Push the dough out to the sides in a rough rectangle (also unlike my picture), keeping it as thin as possible without having any holes. Too thick dough at this stage will result in a tough shell at the end (as you'll see I ended up with).
Tough yet? Here's the hard part: you'll want to use the cloth or wax foil to roll the stuffing up in the dough by forming a 'U' and sort of pulleying it around the strudel until it's completely covered. Try and get it something like the picture above (but more attractive). I forgot this step, but you should paint the top with melted butter. Ooops! Bake this at 340 (a European temperature?) for 45 minutes. Make sure you don't bake the cloth (or wax foil?). Remove and serve hot! The Viking Sky team recommends with vanilla rum or vanilla ice cream (you gotta love these folks).
The ingredients as provided to me by the Viking Sky team (thanks, guys, you were fantastic!) is as follows (twice what I used) for the stuffing:

• one pound of apples (about two apples, your preference of type, I used McIntosh)
• 2 oz of raisins
• 2.5 oz of bread crumbs (plain)
• one tablespoon of cinnamon
• 2 cl of rum (a shot or so, told you it was European)
  
• 2 tablespoons of shredded nuts
• a half cup of sugar

And for the dough:

• 1,5 (1.5) pounds of flour
• 4 tablespoons of melted butter
• one or two eggs
• water and a pinch of salt (to taste, ha, take it)
  

Grasshopper Pie

This pie is made from 100% real grasshoppers. Optionally, replace "real" with "no". My last attempt at a dessert dish met with failure - the likes of which haven't been seen since the latest Bear Stearns board meeting. OK, I'll quit with the terrible jokes. I was fairly sure (and am not convinced otherwise yet) that my bottom oven burner wasn't working. But, as far as this pie is concerned, that wasn't an issue. Ian, my culinarily-inclined friend, shared this recipe with me and it looked so good I couldn't resist ruining it myself.

A grasshopper pie isn't a pie in the traditional sense: it uses crushed Oreos as the primary filler and then a melty, sweet concoction on top. Take 20 Oreos, halve them, and "get rid of" the creme filling. Then crush the Oreos into a particulate homogeneity. Pro tip courtesy of Kaitlyn and Drew: put the Oreos in a closed Ziploc bag and crush them there. Brilliant! Mix these crumbs with some melted butter and pat this down into a regular pie crust. I chose a graham cracker one, but any (even Oreo!) will do. Bake this until it's baked.

That was the tedious part; here's the fun part! Pour a little milk into a sauce pan and melt two dozen marshmallows. The recipe called to mix in creme de menthe and creme de cacao, but I don't speak Chef (and I couldn't find exactly what this referred to), so I substituted with mint chocolate Baileys. [If you're ever unsure what to do, liquor is usually the correct solution (no pun intended). -Ward] "Fold" in some whipped cream (what the hell does this mean?) and then pour the whole mess into the baked Oreo crumb pie.

Freeze this for a few hours and then serve cold! Neat!
Grasshopper Pie

Peanut Butter Cups in the Blanket

OK, let's get it out of the way: this dessert dish ended in abject failure. But at least it was a chance for me to use the word "abject". I hope you'll pardon my tardiness. This week turned out busier than I expected and I had wanted to redo this dessert to give you some better pictures. However, I will just admit defeat and describe what went wrong.

There are two basic components here: the chocolate and peanut butter and the puff pastries. "Puff pastry sheets" are the kind of thing I'm embarrassed to say aloud. They're thin sheets of pastry ready for baking. The idea of this dessert is to make Reese's knock-offs and bake them inside the pastries in mini muffin tins. Sounds good in theory, a little complicated in practice.

Here's problem number one: the recipe calls for a ridiculously large quantity of chocolate and peanut butter mixture. If you only want to make a mini muffin tin full (that's 9 or 12), you may as well cut this part of the recipe in half. Or, I suppose, use normal-sized muffin pans, but I'll get to that later. Anyway, it took some work to get those chocolate "baking chips" to a melted state and that's because what you're seeing is one pound of chocolate. You only need half a pound here (two thirds of one of those bags). Similarly, cut the peanut butter concoction by 50%.

Anyway, fill a mini muffin tin with alternating "layers" of chocolate, peanut butter, chocolate, and peanut butter and let them semi-harden in the fridge. Let the pastry sheets thaw and mold them into the shapes of another (or the same) tin. And here's problem number two: these sheets, when cut into ninths (which are even smaller than the recipe requests), are way too big for the tin's trays. You'll see the results of this problem when they come out of the oven below:

The edges of the pastries where they emerge around the tin are excellently fluffy. The chocolate and peanut butter (and marshmallows, yum!) were also well cooked. Unfortunately, the pastry sheets that overlapped in between the recesses were hardly cooked at all (neither were the bottoms). Ewww. Obviously, only the middles and the tops were baked evenly. The sheets were too large and/or the muffin tin too small. How can we rectify this? Well, maybe use a smallish regular muffin pan, cut the pastry sheets into smaller squares, and/or bake for even longer (put the marshmallows on a few minutes into the baking?). I would have liked to try these changes, but, alas, my job didn't not agree with my desires. Here's to wishing you better luck!
Food Network's Recipe: Peanut Butter Cups in the Blanket