Category Archives: Desserts & Treats

by | April 29, 2013 · 5:05 am

The Inverted Peanut Butter Cup of the Lueck Ladies

[Back hand, stage whisper] “The secret is the chocolate is on the inside!”

The [trademarked chocolate and peanut butter confection] Challenge. This entire meal resulted from Myr having made peanut butter cookies from an Alton Brown recipe. Myr followed the recipe fairly closely, except that she did not have chunky peanut butter. She made do with smooth PB and added fresh chopped peanuts. Even after she had made dozens of large cookies, she still had a quarter of the cookie dough left over. When she told her mother about this, Jan said, “That would make a good pie crust and we could fill it with Claudia’s Chocolate Mousse. I also just bought a bottle of “Voodoo,” a chocolate and peanut stout. Karl, make a dinner with chocolate and peanuts!”

The Inverted Peanut Butter Cup of the Lueck Ladies

The Inverted Peanut Butter Cup of the Lueck Ladies

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by | April 22, 2013 · 3:47 pm

Jan’s Sweet Ethiopia Honey Caramel Sauce Sundaes

Adapted from a recipe by the National Honey Board

Jan was disappointed to find that the Ethiopian idea of dessert was sour cheese or just coffee. (Actually, after all of that good food who has room for “just one little thin mint?”) She decided to make an Ethiopian inspired desert by adding honey and spices to caramel and using it to make a gelato sundae.

Jan’s Sweet Ethiopia Honey Caramel Sauce Sundaes

Jan’s Sweet Ethiopia Honey Caramel Sauce Sundaes

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by | April 1, 2013 · 3:30 am

Jan’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

Jan adapted this from two on-line recipes Baking Bites and The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen for our Easter feast.

Jan’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

Jan’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

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by | March 28, 2013 · 5:31 pm

Jan’s Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake with Kalua Whipped Cream

Adapted from a recipe from Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food by Sam Mogannam and Dabny Gough, found on Two Peas and Their Pod

Around our house the birthday options include: cake, pie or mousse. For his birthday Chris wanted cake. So Jan found this Bundt recipe. She thought this recipe had way too much butter, but it was not her birthday. Jan uses Dagoba organic chocolate power for the cake. In Dutch processing alkaline is added to the chocolate power, so she prefers not to use it.

Many Americans like their cakes really sweet. Jan and the kids think that this is just cloying.  For this recipe she cut the sugar by almost half and dropped the sugar out of the glaze all together. She also added a tablespoon of coffee to enhance the chocolate flavor in the cake without adding to the sweetness.

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by | January 20, 2013 · 6:31 am

Claudia’s Chocolate Mousse

For me this is the chocolate mousse by which all others are judged. I have paid $10 for desert at fancy French restaurant and gotten something that was not even close to the oral satisfaction of my mother’s mousse.

Chocolate Mousse

Before I left home for the first time, I sat down with my mother’s recipe box and wrote down my favorite dishes.  I have made a few changes from my mother’s original recipe. The most significant being that I have doubled her recipe and NO! There is no such thing as too much of a good thing! The only other change I have made is that mom always made this desert with Nestle’s Semi-sweet Chocolate Bits.  Chocolate snobs that we are, we always make it with high end dark chocolate. Continue reading →

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by | December 18, 2012 · 10:17 pm

Karl’s Black and White Peppermint Bark

Adapted from Joy of Baking

Peppermint Bark is something I always look forward to during the Holidays. I never made it myself, because it was the Christmas specialty of one of my wife’s coworkers and it seemed like trespassing to make it. Jan has different job now, so this year we decided to have a go at it. My goal was to make peppermint chocolate bark, not peppermint and chocolate.

Peppermint Bark

I knew that I wanted to make two layered bark, because that is what Jan prefers. But for a seemingly simple recipe (melt chocolate, sprinkle on peppermint chunks), I did find variations and techniques on the internet that I decided to include. Stephanie Jaworski’s blog (Joy of Baking) includes a good video of the process of making two layered peppermint bark.

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by | December 18, 2012 · 8:19 pm

Karl’s Christmas Marmalade

Originally adapted from Joy of Cooking

Many moons ago we moved into the house across the street to be near our friends, Peg and Russ. In the back yard was an orange tree, a grapefruit tree, and three lemon trees (there was also an apple tree, three unproductive plum trees and we planted a fig and a mandarin orange tree in the 10 years we lived there). These trees produced a massive amount of fruit every year, far more than a small family could eat as just fruit. My solution to just throwing out all of the excess was to made marmalade to give away as Christmas gifts. Thus a tradition was born.
marmalade
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by | December 18, 2012 · 8:17 pm

Jan’s Christmas Rum Balls

Adapted from Joy of Cooking

Every Christmas Jan, Myr and Eilene make Rum Balls to give to our friends. Originally they followed the recipe in Joy of Cooking, but a few years ago they started to make changes (adding a little instant coffee, rolling them in cocoa powder rather than sugar, using other liquors rather than rum).

Rum Balls

This year they went a little over the top, but to wild success. They still maintained most of the proportions of the original recipe, but they did strange things to the ordinarily plain ingredients, like rum infused with coffee or spices, and adding crystallized orange peel.

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by | November 26, 2012 · 5:52 am

Jan’s Pecan Tarts

Adapted from a Nutmeg Nanny recipe

Jan was going to make a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, but Myr wanted pecan pie. Jan found a recipe on line, but then pretty much ignored it in making these treats.

Jan wanted to make individual mini-pies, so she ordered pans on line.  They turned out to be much smaller and shallower than she had in mind, but she went with it.

MiniGingersnap Pies

Jan’s Pecan Tarts

She also wanted to use the crust she had created for her Jan’s Five-fold Ginger Pumpkin Pie, but she felt that it was too course for the tiny tart pans. After crushing the gingersnaps with a rolling pin as before, she then ground the course crumbs through a large sieve with the end of the rolling pin to make a fine-sifted ginger cookie meal.

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by | November 23, 2012 · 1:38 am

Eilene’s Fresh Butter

This is not really a recipe in the strictest sense or original in any way. Eilene has made this the last two years and it really is better than stick butter. This is a good task for young children who want to be part of the Thanksgiving cooking process, but that you do not want handling sharp knives.

Ingredients and Equipment

1 pint whipping cream

1 qt. jar, clean with a tight fitting lid

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