It seems almost silly to celebrate Mother’s Day. We put so much pressure and emphasis on this one day in particular. Just one day out of the year to praise and pamper the women who gave birth to us. One day dedicated, especially, to the ladies who raised us and put (perhaps still do) our needs in front of theirs, each and every day. One day isn’t enough to show the amount of love and gratitude we have for these women. How could we possibly fit it all into 24 measly little hours? Everyday should be Mother’s Day. After all, they were parents to us every day, not just one day in May when they felt like it. No, they were there holding our hands when we were scared. Feeding us soup when we were sick. Making us laugh when we were sad. Singing us Happy Birthday when everyone else forgot or were to busy to care. These were normal occurrences that happened on the daily and without so much as a thought or hesitation. They were super heroes when we needed them to be because who else would or could be? We know all this and yet we somehow forget that they deserve so much more than just one day out of the 365.

So let’s celebrate their love and dedication everyday. Let’s thank them for being there for us and for all that they did, and still do, more than just once a year. Let’s throw this May day out the window and create our own rules. From now on Mother’s Day is everyday—or subsequently Father’s Day as well—because we owe it to them. Because they deserve it. Because we wouldn’t be here without them.

I could go on record to say that my mother is the best mother any son or daughter could ask for. I could go on and on about the woman who carried me for all those months (as she likes to point out in moments of guilt but I have to remind her that I did her a favor; she only carried me for 7 months). I could reminisce and share stories as to why my mother is the greatest, numero uno, A#1, mother in all the world. Sure, I could do all those things but I’m positive I’m not the only one who feels that way towards their mamma. Also I’m not sure I would even know how or where to begin. So this is dedicated to the woman who taught me everything I know. Dedicated to the days you’d drop me off at school and pick me up. Dedicated to the mornings you’d sing and dance for me to wake up. Dedicated to the moments when you were right (which was like always). To all the answers you had. To the special psychic abilities that freaked me out, the ones only a mother possessed. The jokes you told. The games we played. The meals you cooked. The strength you had. The hardships you survived. Devoted to the days you’d tell me to stop jumping on the bed because I’d get hurt—a handful of stitches above my left eye later—I finally understood you had indescribable super powers to look into the future. Above all this is to the love and commitment you have for your three children. We wouldn’t even be a quarter of the people we are today if it wasn’t for you. Now three grown adults who owe it all to you. With all the love in the world, I thank you.

Okay so I finally got a doughnut recipe in (pat on the back). It only took me 2 years. I love doughnuts. I’m a doughnut addict. I’ll scream it from the rooftops and I don’t care who hears me. I’ve been dropping doughnut hints for a while now (almost in every post) so I figured now was the time. A perfect brunch item for your Mother’s Day feast.

Let’s begin our doughnut dough by making a “starter” or a “sponge.” Those are just fancy bread making terms. It’s basically a mixture of flour, yeast and warm liquid of some sort. In this case we’re using milk. You let the sponge sit for a bit to allow the yeast to waken up and develop flavor. So let’s get started.

In a large bowl (don’t be fooled by that little bowl I started to use. I had to switch it later on, but that’s another story for another time. Learn from my mistakes folks) throw in the warm milk. It needs to be around 110°. Let’s be honest, I didn’t really check the temperature, I mean who has time for that. My rule of thumb is usually this, dip your finger into the warm milk. Is it too hot? That’s bad, it shouldn’t be too hot because it’ll kill the yeast essentially. Is it too cold? That’s not good enough, it won’t waken up the yeast properly. Is it warm and uncomfortably bearable? Then that’s perfect. It should be warm.

Drop in two tablespoons (yes you read that right) of yeast into the warm milk. It is a lot of yeast but not only do you need it to give the dough flavor, it is also key for raised doughnuts.

Add in ¾ cup of flour. For this recipe we are going to use bread flour. I like the texture bread flour gives the doughnuts. However if you really really want to make these but don’t have bread flour on hand and don’t feel like going to the market—because come on who wants to make an extra trip to the market?—then you can totally use all-purpose flour. That’s cool.

So that’s our sponge. Basic ingredients for a bread dough starter. Leave it alone for about 5 minutes, untouched, at this point. It gives the yeast a chance to start dissolving into the milk and it gives it the opportunity to start waking its lazy butt up.

Next step is to give the ingredients a whisky whisk. It needs to be completely smooth. Like a really smooth semi-thick pancake batter or thick paste I guess.

Now we loosely cover the bowl with plastic wrap and store it in a warm place for 30 minutes to allow it to double in size and get bubbly and risen-looking.

**Tip: I like to place it in an oven, that isn’t turned on of course, to let it rest because it’s a dark warm spot that works perfectly for all my dough rising needs.**

After half an hour the starter will look like this, observe exhibit A:

Oh look at that, my bowl also doubled in size! It got bigger in the oven as well (I had to switch bowls realizing the first was too small to contain all of my starter goodness).

See friends, that’s why it’s called a sponge. It looks all soft and sponge like.

Okay, let’s turn our attention back to the doughnut dough making process.

Let’s add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl of an electric stand mixer.

Milk

Another tablespoon of yeast

Sugar

Salt

Vanilla

Egg yolks

And we’re also going to throw into that, our spongy starter.

Now give those ingredients a mix and stir until it is completely smooth.

It should only take about a minute to do that for you. Probably not even a minute. Maybe about 47 seconds. That’s so precise, I know, but I feel like it’s right. It feels right to me. Doesn’t 47 seconds feel right to you for some reason?

Add ½ cup of flour and mix again.

Throw in the butter.

**Tip: If you forget to take out the butter, allowing it to soften on the counter, you can just nuke it in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it.**

Once you’ve added the butter give the mixture another mix to incorporate it into the other ingredients.

We’re also going to switch over to the dough hook at this time. Things are about to get crazy in here. Watch out.

We’re now going to add the remaining flour, but listen closely. Or pay close attention I guess I should say since you can’t really hear me, I’m not talking, I’m typing. We’re going to add the remaining flour in batches, a ¼ cup at a time.

Add a ¼ coup of flour and mix. Add another ¼ cup and mix again….continue on that path until the dough forms into a ball and comes completely away from the sides of the bowl. It should be smooth and slightly sticky but not too sticky you won’t be able to roll it out.

Knead the dough for about 5 to 7 minutes, allowing it to become soft and smooth.

Remove the dough from the bowl and shape it into a smooth ball. Lightly oil the mixing bowl or spray with cooking spray. Drop in the dough ball and turn it over to coat both sides. This will prevent the dough from sticking to the bowl while it rests.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour. But up to a maximum of 12 hours.

I know what you must be thinking, dough needs to rise in a warm place in order for it to double in size properly. While yes in most cases this is true. It’s not always true. If you remember we allowed the sponge to rise in a warm place. That already activated the yeast. Well our doughnut dough just went through a big beating in the stand mixer. So right now it needs a cool place to relax for a long sleep. While it’s sleeping, it will double in size.

Mine only rested for 1 hour, because I don’t have the patience to wait more than that and because I really wanted doughnuts pronto. Who can wait longer than they really need to?

Look how perfectly risen our dough is! It’s all big and fluffy and soft. Like soft doughnut dough pillows that you just want to lay your head on top of, but don’t! That’s unsanitary. We still need to eat these after all.

Transfer the dough to a floured work surface.

Roll out the dough about ½ of an inch thick, into a large rectangle.

Now we’re ready to cut out them doughnuts. You can use a fancy dandy doughnut cutter. I don’t have me one of those, I guess I’m not sophisticated enough. I need to add that to my Christmas list this year and coerce Santa into getting it for me. All I had on hand was a plastic cookie cutter (hey, it worked) and luckily I found a smaller circle cutter as well (that one was made of metal so I’m sorta fancy, give me a break). Believe you me, even if I didn’t have those cutters I would have found a way. You can use a drinking glass and a piping tip to cut out the middle. Let’s MacGyver these doughnuts.

Place the cut out doughnuts onto a baking sheet lined with a non-terry dish towel or cloth. Sprinkle the towel lightly with flour.

Don’t forget to save those smaller inner circles. As we all know those make great doughnut holes, they’re the perfect snack.

Incidentally, you’re going to need two baking sheets, so you might as well get two ready from the start. Cover the pans with plastic wrap and place in a warm place (like the oven again) to double in size.

**Note: They only have to rest for up to 20 minutes. You want to check them every 5 minutes and test to see if they are ready. You’ll know they are ready when you press one and if it springs back slowly it’s ready. If it doesn’t spring back at all, they’ve over proofed and you need to start over. You can punch the dough back together and recut them and proof once more. However, you can only do that once so make sure you don’t over-proof it the second time. But have no fear because I know you wont need to do that. Just check it every 5 minutes, initially, and you should be good to go.**

While the dough is rising, that’s when you should be heating up your oil.

Again I don’t have a deep fryer so I just used a medium-ish pot, filled halfway with vegetable oil. You can also use canola or peanut oil if you wish.

The oil needs to be at 360° no higher than 375°. I don’t have deep fryer thermometer so just do the good ol’ wooden spoon test. What’s the wooden spoon test you might ask? Well it’s simple really, you stick the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. If it bubbles up rapidly around the handle, the oil is ready.

Okay so now the oil is ready and the doughnuts are good to go. What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?

Carefully lower a doughnut into the oil, I like using a slotted spoon to lower it gently. Don’t overcrowd the pot—since my pot is rather small and my doughnuts rather large—I fried them one at a time. The things I do for doughnuts, people.

Cook for about 1 to 2 minutes per side or until they are light golden brown in color, flipping only once.

Transfer the fried doughnuts—allowing the excess oil to drip—onto a baking sheet lined with a wire rack.

AND we can’t forget about the holes!

Continue this until all the doughnuts and holes are fried.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Well if you were thinking that we needed a closer look at those doughnuts, then we’re on the same page…but if you weren’t thinking that, I bet you are now. Eh, eh, eh?

Let’s make the glaze, which as we all know is what makes these bourbon, blueberry, basil doughnuts what they are, B3 doughnuts.

We start with half a pint of blueberries in a food processor (you can do this by hand too, it’ll just be chunky).

We need to purée the berries into a smooth sauce? Liquid? Juice? I’m not sure what we’d call it. Anyhow just pulse it until smooth.

You can use frozen blueberries for this if you’d like or if that’s all you can find at the grocery store. Just thaw them out before pulsing.

We of course need to add the basil and bourbon. It’s only a tiny amount of fresh basil, but trust me, it’s a great combination.

Pop the lid on that once more and pulse until completely smooth.

Then turn your attention to the large bowl. In the large bowl there is an abundant amount of powdered sugar….what else would there be?

Spoon in the B3 mixture a little at a time and whisk after each addition. Also I don’t feel there was enough bourbon in it, so I’m adding a splash more. Just a splash. You can use vanilla extract instead of the bourbon if you so wish.

Whisk until completely smooth. If the glaze is too thin add more powdered sugar. If it is too thick, add more B3 mixture. If you’ve run out of B3 mixture and it’s still too thick, add a splash of milk, but just a splash.

**Note: Remember you can always add some but you can never take some back. No takesies backsies when it comes to cooking and baking.**

Then dunk the doughnuts into the glaze and place them back on the cooling rack.

Allow the glaze to set for a few minutes before digging into the doughnuts. I know I know that’s the worst thing I could have possibly said, but it makes a difference. These 5 minutes will be the worst 5 minutes of your life. I warn you. You will want to scream. You’ll want to pull out your hair and punch a wall. Someone close by will do. You’ll claw at your cheeks with tears streaming down your face. 5 minutes is up in no time and everything will be right in the world once more.

Maybe that was just me. I’m projecting.

Once I’ve we’ve recovered from those torturous 5 minutes you can tell everyone to stand back and just have at the doughnuts. Once you’ve tried one you might be tempted to eat them all. How do you go about keeping other people from eating any? Well that’s simple. You try one with people surrounding you. Then you go on to say they’re the worst doughnuts ever. Just plain awful. Tell everyone that these must be thrown out. No exception. You’ll dispose of them, never they worry. Then you sneak off into your bedroom and keep all the doughnuts for yourself. At that point you twirl your mustache (imaginary ones work too) and laugh an evil maniacal laugh). I think that’s a good plan.

But if you do feel like sharing and don’t want to be greedy like yours truly, well then I guess that would be okay too. I mean those are meant to be shared with the Mothers in your life after all so I wouldn’t be mad if you allowed other people to eat a few.

Also now I’m just being cruel and tempting you with tall stacks of doughnuts. I’m tempting you to try to convince you to make these. soon. Like tomorrow soon.

Your mother doesn’t need fancy gifts. She doesn’t need expensive paper-wrapped packages. I can guarantee you 100% that she’ll appreciate a home cooked brunch way more than anything you could ever purchase at a store. So roll up those sleeves and get in the kitchen. I happen to know for a fact that mom’s love doughnuts. Particularly bourbon blueberry basil doughnuts. Or at least I know one mom that does for sure.

My mamma happens to love these 3 flavors which is where the idea came from. Blueberries are her favorite berry. Basil is her favorite herb and I can’t remember a childhood moment where she wasn’t drinking bourbon. (I’m totally kidding about that last one. She’s going to kill me for that joke, but I’ll leave it in for kicks).

If you’re not feeling the B3 combination on these doughnuts, we’re not friends anymore. Forget I ever existed. Don’t write. Gotcha! I kid, I kid,  that’s okay too. You can top the doughnuts with whatever you’d like. A simple white vanilla glaze? Sure why not. Chocolate? Go right ahead. The doughnuts are a blank canvas so you can paint them anyway you’d like.

Nothing shows your mother just how much you care more than a big platter of doughnuts. Now if said doughnuts happen to be homemade and include bourbon, well then, I’m sure that happiness is doubled if not tripled. Soft pillows of fried dough is the stuff that dreams are made of, well my dreams anyway.

When I was a child I didn’t really care for fish and chips. Okay if we’re being honest, I hated the dish. Well just the fish, the chips I loved. What kid doesn’t like fries dipped in copious amounts of ketchup? Whenever we’d go on family trips to the beach, on the way back, we’d stop by the local seafood restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway. My mom and older sister would order fish and chips or shrimp and chips or fish tacos. My middle sister and I would end up getting a burger—because um hello burgers are delicious—but it was because we were those bratty kids that threw tantrums and yelled out at the top of our lungs, “Seafood is yucky! I DON’T want smelly fish! I HATE FISH AND CHIPS!!” Then we’d start crying and running around the restaurant throwing things off the tables and knocking people’s trays from their hands. Food would fly everywhere. Everyone would stare at my sister and I running amok and shake their heads and cover their mouths in shock. Okay I really wasn’t like that as a child. It was all my sister! I’d just stand back in horror and astonishment and pretend I wasn’t related to her. I’d join in with the crowd and ask “Who is that crazy animal? Who does she belong to?” Okay that really didn’t happen either. But the burgers, those totally happened, sans tantrums or crazy antics.

As I grew up and realized that seafood wasn’t the enemy, I began to love fish and chips, and not just for the chips. I fell in love with the battered and fried fish as well. Who would have thought? And so began a love affair with seafood. All seafood. Everyday seafood! (But not really because of the high levels of mercury). These days I can’t get enough of seafood and I deny ever getting a burger on those family excursions, while my family ate fish. “What burger? Nick ate the burger, I loved fish and chips. It was my favorite dish!” Thankfully nothing was filmed and they have no proof. Seafood and I were best friends when I was a child. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Now I know that spring is in full effect and we should be eating lighter, healthier, fresher meals. But really, who doesn’t have a soft spot for deep fried beer battered fish? Oh wait, and chips? This guy certainly has the biggest soft spot for it. And hey, at least I didn’t deep fry my chips. They’re oven roasted my friends, so completely healthy right? I’m doing my part for spring. Now go make some fish and chips and invite me over, I promise I won’t throw a tantrum.

This is really two recipes combined into one delicious post. On one side we have our perfectly fried beer battered fish, and on the other end we have roasted garlic and rosemary potatoes. I suppose I could have separated the two recipes into two different posts (might be easier for you guys to look through) instead of one long post. Your scrolling fingers would’ve have more than appreciated that for sure.

But what kind of person would I be if I didn’t put the two together? I mean, it’s Fish and Chips for crying out loud! You can’t have one without the other. So really I’m just doing all of us a service. Making sure we have taters with our fried fish. You’re welcome.

Let’s start with our beer batter. Not because it’s the most important part of this dish that it needs to go first, but rather we’re starting with it first because it’s best when it sits and rests for a bit. Like a few hours, a bit.

Now I know what you’re thinking….”Who has the time to let the batter rest for a few hours?! I want fish and chips, and I want them NOW!” Well you’re right, when you’re hungry, who can wait hours for the batter to sit? I’ll let you in on a little secret, you don’t have to wait that long if you don’t want to. Just let it sit for as long as you can. Any little bit helps. The beer creates this scientific reaction that I couldn’t even begin to describe because I don’t have a head for science.

That’s why we’re making the batter first and then putting it off to the side and working on other parts of the recipe. By the time you use the batter, it will have rested and it’ll be good-to-go.

So in a large bowl, dump the flour and a teaspoon of baking powder. I like adding the baking powder because it makes the coating puff up while frying the fish. Give the two ingredients a whisk.

You can now add the beer, go ahead I give you permission. You can use whatever light-colored beer you prefer. There isn’t a specific beer that you need to use, most work just fine for this recipe. Make sure it’s a light colored blonde beer, though. A darker brew might alter the color of the batter.

Whisk everything together until you have a smooth and thin batter. You definitely want this to be thinner than a pancake batter, but thicker than a crepe batter.

**Note: If you find your batter to be too thick add a splash more beer or water to thin it out. If your batter is too thin add a bit of flour to thicken it. It’s really equal parts liquid and flour so you can’t really mess this one up. It’s easily fixable.** 

So now that the batter is done, cover it loosely with plastic wrap and set it off to the side. Don’t worry about it until later on. Put it out of your mind and forget about it. Remember that the longer it sits, the better. So if you want to make this in the afternoon way before you start dinner, well then, that would be great. But if you were running late and made it just around dinner time, no worries, that works too.

Now let’s turn our attention to the “chips” of our fish and chips. The perfect accompaniment.

As you know by now the chips aren’t really chips. Or chips in the sense that we’ve come to know.They’re just fries and they are always deep fried. I thought I’d bypass the deep frying of my fries and roast them instead. Sure it’s healthier, but I assure you that wasn’t my attention (not at all). I’m all for deep fried french fries. All day. Every day. Give them to me now. However I always feel like it’s a huge hassle making perfect french fries at home what with the double frying and what not. I’m already frying the fish and that’s enough for me.

So anyhow, where was I? Oh that’s right, we’re roasting the potatoes instead. Preheat the oven to 425°F (yes that high). And wash and dry your potatoes. I don’t like to peel my potatoes out of laziness sure, but also because I like the taste and look of the skin. You want to use a baking potato like a russet. They hold up to the high temperatures unlike yellow or red skinned potatoes.

Cut the taters into long fry-shape wedges.

Drop the cut taters on a foil-lined baking sheet (makes clean-up a breeze — foil is a cook’s best friend).

So at this point we can drizzle our “chips” with oil and season plainly with salt and pepper. Then throw them in the oven and have them roast, and while yes, they’d still be tasty, they wouldn’t be all that flavorful (bland really). So we’re taking it a step further giving them a BOOM-KA-POW with some fresh rosemary and garlic.

Chop some up, what are you waiting for?

Drizzle the potatoes with olive oil. Make sure you don’t skimp on the oil, you don’t want the potatoes to stick to the foil (think of that horrible PAM commercial). After all, we did healthify this by not deep frying our chips, so it’s okay to use a bit more olive oil than usual. Plus word on the street is that olive oil is good for our hearts right?

Sprinkle with the chopped rosemary and garlic.

Which incidentally now would be a great time to say that if you don’t care for rosemary (now now don’t laugh there are people out there that don’t — like my mom for instance, crazy woman) you can use thyme instead. Thyme is fantastic with potatoes as well.

Do you remember back in an old post, a little diddy entitled Irish Nachos, we made our own house seasoning? Well if you have a great memory you’ll recall that we did make a house seasoning. But for those of us (mostly myself) who don’t remember anything past yesterday, it was a simple blend of salt, freshly cracked black pepper, garlic powder and cayenne pepper. You can click on the link above to see the exact amounts. I just eyeball everything, shhhhh.

Anyhow, we’re going to season the taters with our fancy house seasoning. (You can just season with salt and pepper if you’d like, but why? why? WHY?!?!).

Okay so that’s all I wrote, give the potatoes a good mix and stir with your paws and make sure everything is well coated.

After you’ve mixed it all up, spread out the potatoes evenly on the pan in one single layer. You might need two baking sheets if your potatoes are too many and the space too little. Pop them in the preheated oven and roast for 25 to 30 minutes.

**Tip: For the best crispy oven roasted potatoes, forget about them while they roast. Don’t continually open the oven door, letting out all the heat. They won’t roast if you keep interrupting them. Open the door only once, halfway and give the taters a flip. Then close the door and let them roast once again.**

And now let’s make our spicy remoulade dipping sauce. Mostly because we’re still killing time allowing for the batter to sit and the taters to cook, but mainly because I’m impatient and this is a really really good sauce. It’s finger lickin’ good….do I owe the Colonel some money for that one?

So a remoulade is most commonly a cajun sauce with a kick. I’ve often had it with fried catfish as a dipping sauce (yum!). Now you might be asking “What in the world are you doing Jonathan? Cajun dipping sauce with British fish and chips? Where’s the tarter sauce?” Well at the risk of angering many, I do not care for tarter sauce. There I said it. My name is Jonathan Melendez and I loathe with a passion greater than the universe  dislike tarter sauce. I don’t know why that is exactly…..perhaps the tangy flavor that isn’t balanced with any other flavor. Who knows, point is I don’t like it so we’re not making it.

You’ll love this remoulade instead, I promise. You’ll make it and use it as a sauce or dip for all your fishy needs (fishay fishay — where’s the dancing fish when you need it?) It’s AMAZING, help me say UHH-MAZING with grilled shrimp as well. I’m sure you’ll have some extra sauce for grilled shrimp dipping later on so you’re very welcome for that one. I’m always thinking of you.

It might look a little daunting because it appears like there’s a lot going on for one sauce. You’re right, there is a lot going on, I’m not going to lie to you. Mainly because you won’t believe me since you can see for yourself that there are a plethora of ingredients. But it’s worth it, you’ll see.

We start with some mayo and we’re cutting that heavy thick fatty mayo with some sour cream (don’t be bringing any of that low-fat, fat-free stuff to this party. They’re not invited) and some grainy mustard, or dijon if that’s all you have on hand. I’ll compromise.

And now for some chopping and cutting and mincing.

We’re going to need some pickles, I’m using sweet gherkins (you can use cornichons or dill pickles as well).

Next up, capers. Drain them and give ‘em a rough chop chop. Hee-ya!

We’re also going to need red bell pepper. About half of one. We’re just eyeballing everything for this sauce.

There’s no real science to this, just make sure the veggies are all chopped finely and relatively the same size.

A few scallions, throw those into the mix as well. Sliced.

We’re also going to add some parsley because, why not, we’ve added everything else. We’re just missing the kitchen sink is all, but don’t worry that’s next.

Let’s do some fresh lemon juice yes? Well I’m adding it either way so you had better have said yes.

I’m often asked (mostly by my sister, okay always by my sister) if you can use lime juice in place of lemon juice. Um no. They’re both distinct flavors and go well with certain ingredients. Limes I think of more for Latin/Tex-Mex/South West dishes while lemons I correlate with Italian/Cajun/Southern dishes. That’s what’s up.

Feel free to throw in a jalapeño if you’d like to make it super spicy.

I’m just going to add crushed red pepper flake. That’s enough heat for me. And some salt and pepper to taste.

Give it a whisk to combine and check the seasonings, adjust accordingly.

Cover with plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge. Allow it to chill and rest. The longer it sits the better the flavor will be. It’ll give it a chance for all the ingredients to blend together.

We are now ready to start on our fish portion of the fish and chips.

I’m going to be using cod for this recipe. I just think that it’s a perfect fish for frying and it doesn’t break the bank either, which is nice. And as we all know feeding a family can be tough, emptying the wallet doesn’t need to happen in order for us to do it.

Try to use fresh fish (if you can find it or have access to it) but if you must and only if you absolutely must, well then go ahead and use frozen. Either way, cut the fish into big pieces. I just cut it in half on an angle and then seasoned it with our house seasoning (salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cayenne).

The fish is seasoned and set to go, the batter is awaiting us and now we need to get a shallow dish with flour ready. We’re going to dredge the fish with flour before dipping it into the beer batter.

Season the flour with some of the house seasoning as well.

Let’s get started…oh wait, before we get our hands dirty, heat the oil for frying. I don’t have a deep fryer (no available counter space or patience for dealing with a deep fryer) so I’m just using a pot filled with canola oil. Filled about halfway up.

It’s not that large of a pot, as you can see, nothing fancy here.

Okay while that’s heating up (it should be around 350°-375°) you can dredge the fish.

Grab a cod fillet and drop it into the flour, turn it over and coat the other side. Then pick it up and dust off the excess flour.

Then drop it into the beer batter. Flip it over and drain off the excess batter.

Carefully drop, no I should say place, yes oh-so-carefully place the battered fish into the oil. I like to add it to the oil slowly and allow one end of the fish to sit in the oil for a bit before adding it all so that the fish can float and not sink to the bottom. Does that make sense? I might’ve just confused us all.

Repeat with the remaining fish. Do not overcrowd the pot though or else the oil will drop in temperature and your fish won’t fry nicely (it’ll be soggy and greasy and gross). Since I used a small pot I fried two pieces at a time. I got nothing but time.

It’s okay if your fingers are all gunky from the batter, it creates a protective barrier just incase the tips touch the hot oil by accident. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times that’s happened to me. Like a thousand….okay okay, more like 2.

So the fish will fry up rather fast for ya. The first side will take about 4 to 6 minutes. And then about 2 to 3 minutes on the second side. Only flip the fish once, don’t continuously turn it as it wont fry evenly.

As you can see the baking powder really allows the batter to puff up and get crispy.

You’ll know the fish is ready because it’ll look golden brown and perfect like that up there or like that one down there.

Take the fish out with a slotted spoon and drain it on a plate lined with paper towels, brown paper bags or newspaper.

Since we’re frying the fish in batches, we want to keep the fried finished pieces warm and crispy so it’s best to place them on a cooling rack over a baking sheet.

You can place the baking sheet in a 200°F oven to keep the fish warm and crispy while you fry the rest.

By now you’re chips should be done and look like this…

You can keep those warm in the 200°F oven along with the fish until ready to serve.

Once all the fish has been fried, you are finally ready to eat your fish and chips. (It’s about bloody time! See what I just did there?)

Serve it alongside our spicy remoulade for dipping and ketchup and of course some malt vinegar. This is British pub food after all.

(This just in: Fries are also tasty dipped into the remoulade. I had to sacrifice to find that out for you but it was worth it!)

And of course we mustn’t forget about a cold brew to wash it all down.

I like to serve the fish and chips in those fry baskets just because it’s fun and we all need a little fun every once in a while. Sprinkle the fish and chips with fresh parsley for color not really for taste (let’s be honest parsley doesn’t taste like anything. It’s a plant. We’re eating leaves. I’m kidding it totally has a taste…but not really). And also add a few lemon wedges, fish is always delicious with lemon. They go hand in hand. Seafood and lemon, old friends.

I might go on record to say that this is the best thing I’ve EVER made. Don’t hold me to this though, I might retract that statement later on. It’s utterly delicious. If I could, I’d eat this everyday, but my doctor would surely disapprove. But in a perfect world, I’d eat this everyday and finish it off with a doughnut (okay a few doughnuts) for dessert.

If I was on the Food Network and participated on that show “Best Thing I Ever Made……Fried Food Edition” this would be the dish I choose. Then I’d demand it be made for me so I could eat it while on camera and have thousands of viewers see me eat fish and chips. Too much?

The recipes are delicious on their own so if you’d like to make the fish and serve it with something else on the side like a green salad (too healthy, don’t you dare) or potato salad (I approve) or rice (delicious with everything) instead, that would work too. Or you can use the rosemary garlic roasted potatoes recipe as a side for another dish. Like sandwiches or a juicy seared steak.

Or you can just make them together because together it’s just the best meal ever.

You know what’s the best part of this meal? It’s not the yummy friedness of it all, nope. It’s not even the cold brewski to wash it all down with, uh uh. It’s the fact that you don’t need utensils. I can be a cave man for a day and eat with my hands like the animal I know I am within, deep down inside. Eating with your hands is just plain fun. Exciting and inviting is what it is. Having lemon juice running down your hands and fingers and remoulade and ketchup all over your face, while you eat ridiculous amounts of beer battered fish and crispy chips…..yes please. I couldn’t think of anything more entertaining than that, my friends.

I just want to point out that Mother’s Day is coming up very soon, and I speak for ALL mom’s out there (especially mine) that nothing would be better or show more appreciation for the women who raised you, then if you made your mamma’s this Beer Battered Fish and Chips. Just saying.

And although I don’t have the authority to say this because I’m not a mother, I do know for a fact that people love fish and chips. Moms especially. So what are you waiting for? Make your mamma a basket of this incredible fare for her special day. Don’t forget the beer.

We peruse the grocery store aisles looking for inspiration. What calls out to us? No doubt the same boring recipes we always make, week after week. The similar humdrum dishes that have no pizzazz (yes I just said pizzazz. I’m bringing it back. Tell all your friends). More often than not, I end up making everyday a Taco Tuesday. It’s my go-to dinner idea. In my defense, you can wrap anything in a tortilla and top it with cheese and guacamole and you’d have yourself a prey-ty fantastic dinner. But when the awful day comes when you’re tired of tacos (gasp!!), hamburgers (what?!), and pizza (never!!) and they just don’t call out to you anymore like they used to, then the time has come to step out of your comfort zone to make something deliciously simple. But what is this delectably effortless dish I speak of? Well, roasted shrimp-stuffed poblanos of course. I’ve come to the conclusion that if you incorporate shrimp and cheese into any dish, you’ll have a winning recipe, hands down. Without a doubt. Not to mention a satisfied crowd. But if you’re cooking for just yourself, well then, you my friend are the luckiest of us all because you don’t have to share your stuffed peppers with anyone. We envy you because you have more for yourself to enjoy. After all, my days are spent contemplating how I can eat all the food without sharing. I’ve yet to come up with a good solution for that one. One day though, one day (insert evil laugh here).

Normally stuffed poblanos are filled with cheese (like we’re going to) and then they are dipped in an eggy type batter and fried (like we’re not going to). Now, there’s nothing wrong with fried, I’m an advocate for fried foods. I’ll never turn them down. Especially a doughnut…there I go again. I think I just need to make doughnuts, so I can eat them by the dozen and be forever content in happy doughnut bliss. But I digress, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, doughnuts. NO! Stuffed poblanos. These here stuffed peppers we are going to make, aren’t battered and fried. They are baked. So let’s feel a little better about the fact that there’s a plethora of cheese in these shall we?

We start by making a quick sauce for our stuffed peppers. It’s a roasted red pepper and tomato-y kind of sauce. I say this because yep, you guessed it, there’s roasted red peppers and tomatoes in the sauce. Shocking right?

So what do we need? Well, we most definitely need some red bell peppers.

They have to be roasted. I like to use the broiler for this task. So pop these bad boys on a baking sheet, and place them underneath the broiler. Incidentally, don’t line the baking sheet with parchment paper like I did. Only moments later I smelled something burning so I opened the oven door only to be hit with a gush of smoke. Coughing and stumbling I reached for the pan, which was ignited with flames. Screams and shrieks were heard by all. I might be exaggerating, just a bit. The paper did start to burn but there were no flames or smoke, but the smell, that was real. Learn from my misadventures folks, and line the sheet with foil instead.

Keep an eye on them, turning the peppers every so often. You want the skins to be charred and black. Don’t be scared or concerned if the skins get really black. That’s the purpose. We are roasting the peppers to remove the skins, and to create an extra depth of flavor. That’s one of the most important steps of cooking, developing flavor. I recommend broiling them with the oven door slightly open so that it doesn’t get really smokey inside and then you’re hit with a giant puff of smoke in your face each time you open the door to turn them. Also it will prevent the smoke detector from going off. That happens to me all the time, cut to me fanning the alarm with a kitchen towel waiting for it to shut up. It happens.

**Tip: If you don’t feel like roasting the peppers or don’t have the time, you can use jarred roasted peppers instead. You’d need a 12 ounce jar that has been drained from it’s liquids.**

It should take about 8 to 10 minutes for the skins to charr.

In the mean time, let’s prepare our poblano peppers. These are going to be stuffed so it’s a different process.

The low down on poblanos. That’s what they look like. There up above. Take a good look at them because at the market you might go around searching for poblanos, but you won’t find a sign for poblanos. For some reason most markets in the US list them as “pasilla” peppers. I’ve seen them listed as both, so look out for them. They’ll be by the bell peppers and what not.

These also need to be roasted to remove the skins and develop their flavors. However, and this is a big however, I don’t like putting these under the broiler because then I feel like the peppers get too soft and cooked and then you can’t stuff them later on. So I roast these over an open flame, like a thrifty boy scout. Pop them on your gas range burner (directly on the flames) and allow the skins to char, turning them to blacken all around.

**Note: If you don’t have a gas range and cant roast the peppers, you can do it under the broiler, but leave the door wide open and turn the peppers constantly allowing for only the skins to blacken, not cooking the peppers with the heat from the oven.**

Once all the poblano peppers have been charred, allow them to cool down on a plate or cutting board.

Okay, so let’s look at the roasted red bell peppers, they should be done by now.

I know what you are thinking, “Jonathan, that is burnt! You’re telling us to burn our peppers!” Yes! That’s exactly what I want you to do. That is okay, believe me. So what happens is that when the skin gets charred like that, it separates from the peppers and makes it a lot easier to peel them. Plus you get that added “roasted” flavor.

Right now you need to transfer the peppers to a bowl.

While they are still super hot, cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Allow the peppers to cool completely while wrapped. The steam will make the skinning process even easier. It’ll be a piece of cake. You’ll see that the skin will just slide off. Practically skin itself for you.

Once cooled, they need to be completely cooled in order to be able to handle them (unless you are superman or superwoman and don’t feel heat on your finger tips then go right ahead while they are hot), transfer them back onto a cutting board.

You’ll notice that the peppers are really soft and easy to handle. Remove the seeds and stems first.

Then with the blade of your knife, scrape the charred skin off the peppers. Or you can do this with your hands and just peel off the skin, that will work too.

And BOOM, just like that you saved yourself a ton of money. It’s insane how much jarred roasted peppers are at the market. You can do it yourself and use the money you saved on other, more important things, like buying a golf cart. Or buying a summer home by the beach. Okay, so you won’t save that much money by roasting your own, but you’ll definitely be able to buy yourself that pack of gum you’ve been eyeing at the check out counter.

Now we are ready to finish the sauce.

You’ll need a food processor or a blender.

Add our perfectly roasted red peppers and a can of fire roasted tomatoes (with their juice). “What?!? You’re using canned tomatoes after all that effort you put into roasting your own peppers?” I know, I know. I could roast my own tomatoes as well, but what am I, a magician?! I don’t have all the time in the world! Plus it would take a lot of tomatoes and I’m waaaay too lazy. Roasting the red peppers took all my energy. Canned tomatoes are just fine. It’s a convenience that’s worth it.

**Tip: If you can’t find fire roasted tomatoes, plain canned tomatoes will do just fine. The fire roasted, however, will give the sauce great flavor.**

Then we’re going to season our sauce with some seasonings.

Salt.

Pepper.

Garlic powder.

Cumin.

Put the lid on it and purée until completely smooth. I let it go for a good minute or so. Okay, I might be exaggerating, but it was almost a minute. It sure felt like it was.

Give it a taste and check the seasonings. If you think it needs more salt or pepper or garlic or cumin, add some. You are in charge, I’m letting you loose. But don’t get carried away. That’s the only leeway you get. I kid. You can do whatever you want, this is your dinner.

Transfer the sauce to a bowl and set aside. We’ll use it later.

Now back to the poblano peppers. You’ll remember that we roasted those and we left them to cool. They’ll be cool by now for sure.

So as you can see, these aren’t as charred or black as the red peppers. They are still slightly firm. Which is good because we need them to hold up when we stuff them. Also if you noticed we didn’t cover these with plastic wrap.

As with before, use the blade of your knife to carefully remove the skins. Be a little more careful with these because you don’t want the peppers to split. You don’t need to remove the skins completely. Just do it in a rustic sort of way.

You’re going to keep the stems on, but need to remove the seeds. To do this, make a slit down the middle of the pepper and remove the seeds by hand.

Then shake off the loose seeds inside.

If some of your peppers rip completely or are too cooked, don’t worry too much about it. The filling will help hold them together.

Put these off to the side, until you’re ready to stuff them.

In the meantime, we do need something to stuff them with. As with traditional stuffed poblanos, this is going to be a cheesy stuffing but with a great twist.

Start by chopping a yellow onion.

Also seed and mince a jalapeño pepper. You don’t have to use a jalapeño if you don’t like your food spicy. It can easily be left out without any major change to the flavor. I just like that added kick. But I promise it isn’t too hot. The cheese helps mellow out the heat.

**Tip: As with most peppers, a great deal of the heat lies in the seeds and membrane of the pepper so remove them before chopping. I like to use a spoon so that I’m not directly touching it with my fingers. If you do touch the jalapeño make sure to wash your hands well before touching important parts of your face, you know, like your eyes or something. That would hurt. I once finished shaving and then went down to cook afterwards, chopped a jalapeño and touched my face for some reason. Open pores and heat not a good combo. I don’t recommend.**

We need to sauté the veggies, so heat a pan over medium heat, and drizzle in some olive oil.

Add the onions, stir and allow to cook for a bit until they begin to soften.

Add two cloves chopped garlic, and the minced jalapeño from earlier, if using.

Again, give everything a stir and allow to cook for a bit. You want the veggies to soften and the onions to get translucent.

Lower the heat, slightly, and allow it to sauté for about five minutes, stirring constantly.

Season with a bit of salt and pepper and ground coriander. I find that coriander goes really well with most latin and hispanic dishes. Most often you’ll see it in the form of seeds. You can crush the seeds in a spice grinder or mortal and pestle if you have that on hand.

And because everything, absolutely everything, is better with shrimp, we’re going to add shrimp to our dish. If you want to keep this completely vegetarian, you can omit the shrimp. But if you want be blown out of the water (what water Jonathan?) then add the shrimp.

Of course, I added the shrimp. It was 100 times better that way.

Stir in the shrimp and allow it too cook in one even layer, making sure the spices and cooked veggies are all incorporated with the shrimp as it cooks. It’ll disperse the flavor that way.

Cook the shrimp until they are pink and no longer translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes. You do not want to over-cook it because then you’ll end up with rubbery shrimp, and there’s nothing worse than rubbery over-cooked shrimp.

Turn off the heat and remove the pan from the stove. Allow it to cool down slightly.

And now for the rest of the stuffing mixture. The cheese. The second best part of this dish, aside from the shrimp of course.

We’re going to use cream cheese, softened, and freshly grated monterey jack cheese. If you want an even more added kick, you can use pepper jack.

**Tip: Always grate your own cheese, it ensures freshness. Who knows how long that pre-shredded stuff has been sitting there in the bag!**

Throw those into a bowl and mix together.

Add the cooked veggie and shrimp mixture.

The slight heat from the shrimp will begin to melt the cheese and make the mixture creamy.

Mix it all together until creamy and smooth and everything is well incorporated.

We’re now ready to stuff the peppers. Grab the cooled, skinned, seeded and open peppers from earlier.

Working with one at a time, spoon in a bit of the stuffing into each pepper. Dividing the filling evenly between each.

You can arrange these on a 9×13 inch baking dish or do individual servings like I did. I just used a couple of creme brûlée dishes.

Spoon some of the sauce from earlier that we made, into the bottom of each dish or the one baking dish if you’re going that route.

You might have some sauce leftover at the end. You can just keep piling on the sauce between each dish or you can save it for later in the week for something else. It’s great with eggs in the morning. Or as simple as can be with some tortilla chips. Both of which I’ve tried and fell in love with. I’m Jonathan Melendez and I approve this message.

Place one stuffed pepper in each of the dishes on top of the sauce. OR like I said before, if you’re just using one 9×13 inch baking dish, arrange the stuffed peppers on top of the sauce in the dish.

Pop these on a baking sheet (to catch any drips) lined with foil paper (to make clean-up a breeze) and bake for 40 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and the peppers have set and the tops have browned.

Allow the peppers to cool slightly, you don’t want to be impatient and burn your mouth. That’s happened to me so many times than I care to remember.

Let’s top with a couple of garnishes while we wait.

A tip on garnishes, they should always be edible and it should be something that compliments the dish well. Since this is hot, I think it’s a good idea to top with something cool and refreshing to offset it and balance the dish out nicely.

Queso fresco, which is a Mexican fresh cheese. You can find it in most markets these days. But if you can’t no big deal, it’s not crucial.

And also cilantro.

The queso fresco is sold in a circle, you’ll want to crumble it so you can sprinkle it over the peppers.

Sprinkle that cheese over the poblanos. Make sure you do it carefully and strategically. Do it one crumble at a time, as if it were rocket science and your life depended upon arranging the cheese perfectly…..I’m totally kidding, just throw it on.

And last but certainly not least, top with a few cilantro leaves here and there. You don’t have to add cilantro if you A) don’t want to B) don’t like it or C) don’t have any on hand. If your reason for not adding cilantro isn’t listed, well then it doesn’t count, you’ll need to add it.

Now we can finally eat! Serve it along side rice and beans. Or rice and a salad. Or rice and grilled veggies. Notice how I keep saying rice? That’s because it’s really good served along side rice. But in all reality rice is good along side everything. It’s even good just by itself.

If you’re not a fan of shrimp, we can’t be friends, then you can totally omit it and add other things instead. Whatever your heart desires. You can keep it strictly vegetarian by adding roasted corn instead. Char the fresh corn under the broiler, like we did the peppers, and then cut off the kernels and add them to the filling. You can also do a medley of sautéed veggies like zucchini, summer squash and mexican squash. OOH or chayote.

If you don’t like shrimp but still want some kind of protein you can add grilled chicken, if you’d like. Season the chicken simply with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika. Grill for 4 to 6 minutes on each side. Allow to cool, dice it and then add it to the filling. Or if you have some store bought rotisserie chicken left over, you can shred it and add it to the filling.

Basically this is an easy recipe that you can switch up and make your own with whatever you’d like. Or you can make it like I did because it’s fantastically awesome as it is. It makes for the perfect weeknight dinner because it’s relatively fast and easy to whip up. Get those tunes turned up and start pour that wine, cooking just got fun and exciting once again.

I know what you’re thinking, “Nachos aren’t an Irish dish Jonathan. This isn’t something traditionally served in Ireland.” And you’re right. Nachos are a Mexican/Tex-Mex treat. But when it all boils down to it, nachos are freaking delicious no matter where they are served or what they are called. I’m referring to these, as “Irish” nachos because of some of the ingredients I decided to use. I’m recipe re-mixing this bad boy. Throwing out the old and boring—not really I still love regular nachos—and bringing in the new and exciting. We now get to enjoy this classic snack and appetizer with a delicious twist. We should be dancing for joy. Screaming from the top of our lungs. Let’s rejoice and declare it a national holiday. Okay, I think I’ve made my point.

So what makes these nachos so special? What sets them apart from all the rest? What transforms them into “Irish” nachos? It’s not because I think I’m so fancy and I felt the need for an elaborate name, no that’s not it. Okay, maybe only part of the reason. I’m not Irish and I’ve never been to Ireland, so I’m not an expert, although I wish I were. The biggest switch up is that I ditched the tortilla chips. Gone. No more. Get out of here, thank you for coming. Instead this delicious snack starts with potatoes. Doesn’t get any more Irish than that, folks. And if it does, lie to me. Play along and let’s pretend that I’m right or that I’m making sense…for once. But I don’t stop there, no. I also used an Irish cheddar cheese. What?! This is madness! I know! (If you’ve never tried it, you’re missing out. I demand that you stop everything you are doing now and go to the cheese section of your local specialty store and find it. But really, finish reading this first and then go get it). I also decided to use sausage instead of beef because I figure perhaps in Ireland people prefer sausage over steak or chicken or something. I know I do.

So I ask you my friends, what can be better than a large skillet of potatoes drenched in a cheese sauce, topped with browned sausage, sprinkled with tomatoes and scallions and jalapeños, dabbled with guacamole, drizzled with sour cream and garnished with cilantro? If you said “Nothing! Nothing!!” then you are right. You deserve a prize. Hey! How about Irish nachos for everyone?! In case I haven’t convinced you yet, well, let’s just take another gander at these images. We don’t even need to go any further into this post, we can stop right here. This is where the party is at. Whip out a fork. Let’s dig in.

Now that I’ve tormented you with that up there, how about we get started on our Irish nachos? What do we need, what do we need? Well let me show you. It’s a rather simple dish. It doesn’t require any fancy ingredients or special equipment, aside from that Irish cheddar which incidentally if you can’t find don’t fret. Normal everyday cheddar will be just fine. Food like this should be easy to whip up so that you can make it multiple times a week and gorge on it because it tastes so amazing. You’ll thank me for this later, believe me.

Before we get started with all the nitty gritty nacho-making, we need to partake in a little seasoning blending. Yeah, I just said seasoning blending, it’s a thing.

Throughout this recipe we are going to use our seasoning blend. Let’s be Paula Deen or Emeril Lagasse (take your pick) for a second and call it our “house seasoning” or “essence.” Those are just fancy ways to say a bunch of spices mixed together. We can be cool too.

Into a small bowl, add:

Salt

Coarsely ground black pepper

Onion powder

Garlic powder

Cayenne pepper

Now give ‘em all a good mix with a fork, or a whisk, or your fingers.

I didn’t want to be a caveman, so I used a fork. I figured I should be civilized on here…for once.

And just like that we have our house seasoning. Essence. BAM!

Nothing to it right?

You can use this for all of your seasoning needs. Fish, chicken, beef, fish, chicken…wait.

Anyhow, use it all the time. We’re going to utilize this multiple times during this recipe, so get used to it.

Let’s get them taters ready!

We need to slice them into circles. Like maybe half of an inch thick? I question it because I’m not entirely sure if it’s half of an inch, but I think so. I didn’t measure it and I’m not great with math and numbers and fractions (headache to the max) so let’s not, and say we did. Half of an inch it is.

**Tip: You can use your knife and cut them by hand. It would take forever but totally doable. Or you can be super genius like me and use a mandolin. What’s a mandolin Jonathan? Well it’s a super cool but super dangerous (I laugh at the face of danger muahahahaha) kitchen tool that enables you to cut things really fast and all the same size without any effort. I found a cheapy one that gets the job done. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. I’ve seen some expensive ones at the stores, and I tell myself, “Self, who’s gonna pay that much for a tool we’re only gonna use every once in a while?!” After I reasoned with myself, I moseyed on over to the cheaper plastic one and bought it.**

So give your taters a slice/run through on the mandolin. But STOP when you get towards the end. You don’t need to risk cutting yourself trying to get that last slice. It isn’t worth it trust me.

But look…

It makes precision cuts! I told you! It’s like magic. So helpful! Whoa! Gosh I sound like an infomercial now.

When you’ve finished slicing all the taters, dump the slices into a large bowl filled with cold water. This is crucial because it removes all the excess starch from them and will allow the taters to brown up nicely.

Of course we can’t cook wet, soggy potatoes. So the next step is to fish the slices out of the water and pat them dry on a clean kitchen towel.

And then place them on a baking sheet lined with foil paper (makes for easier clean up).

**Note: Make sure you place the slices on the sheet in a single layer! Feel free to crowd them snuggly onto the baking sheet but do not overlap any. This will ensure even browning.**

Now drizzle the slices with some olive oil. Or any kind of oil you have on hand. You can even use cooking spray if you’d like, but you’d have to spray the heck out of them to make sure they don’t stick to the pan. Also the oil will help them brown in the oven.

Oh did I mention that we are roasting these in the oven? We’re not frying them. Look Mom! I’m being healthy!

Now sprinkle with some of our special (wink wink) house seasoning.

No exact measurement. Just lightly sprinkle ‘em taters.

There, the p’taters are ready to hit the oven. Place them in a preheated 425°F oven. No that’s not a typo. We need it to be super duper hot so that they crisp and brown up for us. We want crispy browned potatoes for our nachos not soggy limp potatoes. Who would eat that? Actually I know someone who prefers their potatoes soggy. I won’t embarrass them by saying their name out here for you all to laugh and point at BUT it begins with a J and rhymes with Benny. You know who you are.

Cook the potatoes for about 25 to 30 minutes. Halfway through, turn them over once so they brown on both sides. Also, some ovens are different so your taters might cook sooner or take a little longer. Keep an eye on them.

Okay now that the base of our nachos is done. Let’s work on one of the toppings. The most important one if you ask me. And I know you were so… Now I’m no vegetarian, so I require that my nachos be doused with some kind of meat. I’m using Italian sausage.

We need to heat a heavy duty skillet. I’m using my new handy dandy cast iron skillet. It’s not really new, I got it about two Christmases ago but just recently (like yesterday) got around to seasoning it. I don’t know why it took me this long, but now I’m obsessed with the darn skillet. It’s my best friend. Awwwww.

So like I said I’m using Italian sausage for our Irish nachos. Go figure. You can use sweet or hot, depending on your preference. I used sweet so that I can gage the heat level. Later on I’ll add some red pepper. But that’s later. Stop jumping ahead. Geez.

Remove the sausage from the casing by squishing it. It should come out from one end, or both. Place it into the hot skillet, with no oil. It’ll render some fat while it cooks. So no need for extra fat.

Use a wooden spoon to breakdown and crumble the sausage. Allow it to brown and crisp and cook and get all beautiful for you.

We’re going to add another layer of flavor by chopping a yellow onion. You want it to be finely chopped so that it blends well into the sausage.

We’re also going to mince two garlic cloves because why not?

Add the chopped onion to the browned sausage.

And the minced garlic of course.

Give everything a stir and allow the onion and garlic to cook and get translucent. Lower the heat a little so that nothing burns on you. You want to cook it low and slow. Don’t get impatient.

If you want you can add some red pepper flakes at this point. I want! So I’m adding some. Again, this is why I used the sweet sausage, so that I can control the amount of heat going in. Sometimes the hot sausage is very hot and I can’t do anything about it later on.

Allow that to cook on low for about 5 more minutes so that the flavors develop. Resist the urge to grab a fork and dig in. Save some for the nachos.

Okay, by now the potatoes should be ready to go. Remove them from the oven and gawk at them because that’s all I want to do right now. Just look at these beauties.

If that doesn’t get you, I don’t know what will. Aren’t you glad we lost the tortilla chips? Sure chips are just as tasty but freshly roasted potatoes that look like that for nachos? Ummm, yes please! I’ll take that any day.

Okay, set the potatoes aside. Leave them on the sheet because we’ll need to reheat them in a bit.

Transfer the cooked sausage to a bowl or plate.

We are now going to make the cheese sauce. That glorious cheese sauce for the nachos.

And since I’m all for getting the most flavor possible, we are going to make the sauce in the same skillet we cooked the sausage.

Don’t clean the skillet, that will defeat the purpose.

Just place it over medium heat.

And add a pat of butter. That’s a tablespoon in butter talk. Yes, I talk butter. I think we all should.

We’re making a roux, and if you recall from our Mac and Cheese lesson, a roux is a thickener. It uses some kind of fat, in this case butter, and some sort of dry ingredient, most commonly flour. Roux thickens sauces simple as that.

I wanted to keep this gluten-free because I want us all to be able to enjoy these nachos. I didn’t want those who are gluten-intolerant to suffer. So I’m using potato starch instead of flour. You’ll learn all about potato starch in the Gluten-Free Carrot Bundt Cake Post. If you don’t have potato starch or aren’t gluten-intolerant you can just use flour.

Whisk the butter and potato starch (or flour if using) together and allow it to cook for a few seconds.

It’ll start to become a light brown color and smell a little nutty.

Pour in the warm milk, slowly, while whisking.

**Note: Make sure the milk is warmed in the microwave or in a small sauce pot before adding it to the skillet. This will make for a better sauce and get thicker for you quicker.**

We’re going to season it with our house seasoning. Again, no specific amount. Just a few pinches. Lower the heat and allow it to bubble and thicken. It’ll be like magic, and thicken right before your eyes. Just keep whisking it every so often so it doesn’t stick to the bottom.

Once thick, add the Irish cheddar. Or any cheese you decide to use. Two big handfuls. The more the better. I abide by the rule that it can never be too cheesy.

Whisk it all together until the cheese melts. You can turn off the heat at this point. The heat from the sauce will melt it perfectly.

At this point you can reheat the potatoes by placing them in the oven for a few minutes and heat up the browned sausage as well, while you’re at it.

Let’s get some of the other toppings ready. The usual suspects when it comes to nachos. We’re pulling out all the stops.

Tomatoes. Give them a rough dice.

Avocados.

Cut, remove seed and scoop into bowl. Squeeze with fresh lime juice to keep it from browning, season with a pinch of our house seasoning and give it a smash with a fork, until completely smooth.

Jalapeños.

I’m using the pickled kind you find in a can. The perfect accompaniment to nachos. Slice them.

And last but certainly not least, scallions.

Slice them on an angle. Just because it looks better that way.

All the components are done! It’s about time, I know!

We are ready to assemble these killer nachos.

I only have the one cast iron skillet (I’m not made of money) and I wanted to assemble the nachos in it so I transferred my cheese sauce and semi-wiped down the skillet.

In an unprecedented event here on the site, I will be quiet for the next several images. I’m going to allow the images to do all the work for me.

Don’t mind that fuzzy image of the tomato step. Only one I got for some reason. Let’s pretend it’s not there. And for that matter, let’s forget I just pointed it out to you. And those last two steps were sour cream and cilantro, in case you were wondering since I didn’t mention it before.

I think I can safely say that we are done. This is about the time I’d set it on the table and ring the bell and tell everyone to come and get it because it’ll be gone in two seconds.

Or this would also be the time where I wouldn’t tell anyone and I’d take it to a corner and eat it all by myself. I can be that greedy when it comes to nachos.

But if you want to share, I guess that’s alright too. You can assemble them into individual portions as well, making yourself the bigger portion. Shhhh, I wont tell anyone.

I don’t want to be the one to say it but I’ll say it anyway, this would go fantastically well with a beer. I know you were thinking it too. An ice cold chilly brew. In a tall glass. Scratch that. In a giant mug. A giant chilled mug. Yup, that sounds about right. Well now that it’s out there I guess it’s okay to have a cold one with this. Maybe a few. This is a bar snack isn’t?

This can be a great appetizer before an even better meal. Or you can serve it as a side to a delicious sandwich, piled high with yummy ingredients. It’s also a perfect snack right before bed. If you’re into that sort of thing. I feel it might be a bit heavy right before bed, but you know what? I don’t judge. If you want this as a late night snack, who am I to say that you can’t? All bets are off when it comes to nachos.

Sometimes I like to pretend I’m participating in one of those challenges on Man vs. Food. I’ll tell myself, “You can totally eat like 20 pounds worth of nachos in half an hour. No biggie.” I’ll eat and eat and eat, chanting “Jon, Jon, Jon, Jon.” It doesn’t matter that I’m not really on a television show. In my head, I am. It also doesn’t phase me that I get to about 10 bites before I’m full and throw in the towel. But hey, the intent is there. Do I get any brownie points for that? I think I should, folks. I think I should.

Good things come in twos is what I always say. Wait, that’s not right. I’m getting my sayings mixed up. I think it’s, “two is better than one” and “good things come in threes,” is what I always say. Yup, that’s it. That sounds about right. Two is definitely waaaaay better than one. And just in case you don’t believe me, I’ll give you some examples. Prime examples of course. For instance, why settle for one doughnut when you can have two? Why only drink one beer when you can have another? And why stare at just one pretty face when you can gawk at two? (I’m totally kidding on that last one…only one of us has a pretty face). With that being said, this weekend I had the pleasure to collaborate with the beautiful and mega-talented Joy Wilson (she’s the one with the pretty face in case you were wondering) from Joy the Baker dot com. I’ve gotten so used to cooking and working and shooting and cleaning alone in my own kitchen that I often forget how nice it is to cook and work and shoot and clean alongside someone else in their kitchen. You get that chance to feed off each other’s ideas and to see what their work process entails. You learn something new through the entire operation and I can happily say I most certainly did. What makes the whole experience even more worthwhile is that I normally wouldn’t have learned all these things if I hadn’t cooked with my friend. If I had just made these things on my own, I wouldn’t have learned much, really. There’d be no insight into another person’s train of thought. The benefits of getting in the kitchen with friends and family is far too grand to not give it a try every now and then, take my word for it folks.

Although we were “working” it didn’t feel like that at all. We were just two friends enjoying each other’s company having a good time, eating and drinking and laughing. And in the end isn’t that what cooking is all about? To me, cooking is so much more than just a chore getting into the kitchen and making something to eat because you have to in order to survive so you won’t starve to death. It’s really a hobby. An entertaining activity. Something I love to do and am truly passionate about. So of course it was exciting to collaborate with someone who has the same passion for food with the same penchant for capturing and sharing it.

Friends, insanely delicious food, and refreshing cocktails; Let me tell you, life doesn’t get any better than this.

As you’ll notice, this post is a little different from what you’re normally used to on here. Not only because it is a cocktail recipe but also in the way it’s presented. It is such a simple recipe that I decided not to show it step by step. The cocktail actually is fool-proof and you don’t have to worry at all about doing it wrong. Most of the ingredients are added to your liking and dependent on whether or not you want to add more or less of it.

One of the things I’ve learned about making cocktails is that they’re just a fun thing to make. Nothing is cooked so if you add too much of one ingredient you can normally fix it right away by adding more of another ingredient to balance it out. The whole point of cocktails are to have fun and enjoy a good drink with family and friends, so the key is to not over-think it and just have a blast.

This isn’t any ol’ cocktail. No, this one is different. This one is grander. Is grander a word? If it isn’t don’t tell me let’s just pretend it is. It’s grander than a normal cocktail. This here my friends is a beer cocktail. Does anyone know why it’s called a beer cocktail? Anyone? Anyone? Yes, that’s right because it has beer it in! Did I just blow your mind? Things just got real, right?

I’m not the biggest fan of traditional Bloody Marys. I find them to be too heavy, thick and tomato-y. But this one, this here light and bubbly Bloody Mary I could get behind.

Let’s get started.

The first step is to add a few grape tomatoes into a cocktail shaker. You can also use cherry tomatoes.

To that you’ll add a pinch of celery salt, a pinch of freshly cracked black pepper and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.

Your next step is to muddle the ingredients at the bottom of the shaker, with a spoon or wooden object (like the handle of a wooden spoon, that’ll work), or a muddler (whatever that is)…whatever you have on hand that will get the job done, use it. A ruler perhaps? Don’t joke about that, I almost used a ruler that was in the kitchen. Joy had to stop me. It was kind of a sad and depressing moment. A definite low point in my life. Now that’s all I’ll think of whenever I see a ruler. “You can muddle drinks with that,” I’ll say.

Muddling is a fancy cocktail term often used by people with vests (not really but sort of) in a lot of cocktail recipes. It just means to squish and stir and mash and blend a few of the ingredients beforehand to develop and bring out their flavors. In this case we’re muddling to draw out the juice and flavor from the tomatoes. The acid in the lime and the grittiness from the salt and black pepper will help with this process as well.

Once you’ve attacked the tomatoes and all you see at the bottom of the shaker is pulp, then you are good to go.

To the shaker, add the cucumber juice.

**Note: You know what else I learned? Markets don’t sell cucumber juice. Yup,  I figured that out the hard way. I went to three different stores and asked in each one in what aisle I could find their cucumber juice. They all looked at me like I was crazy or on drugs. Turns out cucumber juice in the grocery store isn’t a thing. Who would have thought? Not this guy that’s for sure. So you will have to juice your own cucumbers with a juicer like we did. One large cucumber should be enough.**

Add a dash of hot sauce (more or less depending on your preference). I added a few dashes. I like the kick in the background.

Also throw in a few dashes of worcestershire sauce. Another side note—I just right now this very moment as I write this—found out that I’ve been spelling worcestershire sauce completely wrong. (Who am I?) Almost as wrong as how I pronounce it. I was mistaken before about the ruler, this is the lowest point in my life. So please disregard any and all previous spellings of that complicated word. I could go back and fix it BUT “ain’t nobody got time for that!”

Dump in a few handfuls of ice.

Place the lid on the shaker and give it a shake. Shake as if your life depended on it. Shake it as if you were dying of thirst and the only way to get a drink of this was to vigorously shake it. As if this is the last drink you’re ever going to have. Man, what a sad prospect that would be. But thankfully it’s a good drink for it to be the last one.

Once you’ve finished shaking it to death, strain out the juice into two glasses. Evenly divide it among both. You can add ice to the glasses if you’d like. I didn’t feel the need to, so I didn’t, but it’s up to you. You can contradict me, it’s okay. Of course I’ll never speak to you again, have a nice life. I kid I kid.

It’s a good idea to make these in a tall glass to fit in the next step.

Last thing to do is to top off each glass with the blonde beer. It is a beer cocktail after all so we definitely need this step. No specific brand, just make sure it’s a “blonde-colored” beer that you enjoy drinking.

Okay I lied, that wasn’t the last thing to do. Because everyone knows that the best part of a cocktail is the garnish, you can garnish the cocktail at this point. We decided upon a celery stick, a cucumber spear, a lime slice and a tomato and olive skewer. “All the garnishes!” I say that as I twirl my mustache and laugh maniacally. Muahahahamuahahahahaha. Okay I don’t have a mustache you caught me. But the laugh…oh that’s totally there.

That’s it. The time has finally come to drink it. Somewhere out there it’s 5 o’clock. Okay, I’m stopping now because I’m running out of cheesy sayings. Cheers!

To go along with our yummy beer cocktails, Joy made us an amazing dish, Shrimp and Grits.

Yes, Shrimp ‘n’ Grits.

“No self-respectin’ Southerner uses instant grits.” A little My Cousin Vinny quote for ya’ll, ’cause I know I’m not the only one who thinks of this movie whenever grits are mentioned.

Words can’t even begin to describe the flavors of this recipe. It’s so simple to make yet loaded with complex flavor. As if the shrimp wasn’t enough, she makes it even better with browned sausage. The grits make a right turn into Flavortown with cheese, and it all comes together to make a mouthwatering phenomenon of a meal that I cannot wait to make again. Trying it for the first time, I was like a kid in a candy store. Like…like me in a doughnut shop—and if you knew me well enough you’d know that I love doughnuts with a burning passion greater than life itself as you can see with my constant need to bring them up in this post—I just kept wanting more and more. Wishing it would never end.

I managed to get in a few shots in between her working and cooking and shooting, taking advantage of the styling she did and the shots she was setting up for, for her images. So you can have a few, although I don’t do it justice. You have to go check out her take on it.

You can get the recipe, with even more images, over at Joy The Baker. Her site is a marvel of incredible treasures and delectable photographs, you won’t even know where to begin. I suggest the Maple Blueberry Scones, Cranberry Orange & Pecan Coffee Cake, Mini Pretzel Dogs, Kale and Quinoa Cakes, and you gotta, just gotta, check out my personal all-time favorite Happy Hour Hot Fudge Milkshake (there’s even a kick-ass video to go along with it). And if you already have seen these and know all about Joy then go over and check them out again because why wouldn’t you? She’s amazing.

Aaaaaaaand because I’m obsessed with Joy’s cat, Jules Stevens, (I swear he’s my spirit animal) I had to include this image. The sneakiest little monster (with the softest fur on the planet I might add) you’ll ever lay eyes upon and have the pleasure of meeting. Not even two minutes into our session and I already wanted to steal him and take him home with me. I was about to but then I reasoned with myself, “You’re not a pet thief Jonathan are you? You won’t steal a cat!” You’d be surprised what my answer was, because for this cat, I’d happily be a pet thief.

Needless to say I didn’t take him. Joy still has Jules….for now. I’ve come to the conclusion that in my next life I want to come back as Jules circa right now so I could eat, play, nap and climb on things. Life would be so difficult.

I don’t know about yours, but my Easter Bunny happens to be gluten intolerant. I learned that the hard way when for years he didn’t eat the cookies I left out for him. Each year comes and goes; the treats left behind, untouched, while the milk was completely gone. I’d lay them out by the Easter plant that I decorated with colored eggs and chocolate candy….wait….that’s not right. I’m getting my holidays mixed up. Now I know what you’re thinking, “Silly Jonathan. Cookies are for kids. Bunny rabbits don’t eat cookies!” And do you know why that is? Because most cookies have flour in it. Ergo, they must be gluten intolerant. It is the only explanation as to why bunnies don’t eat cookies. So this year I’ve decided to get smart by making a gluten-free cake for my furry Easter friend. Maybe, just maybe, this year will be the year he eats the dessert I leave out for him, so he can get energy to deliver Easter baskets for all to enjoy. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for an Easter miracle.

All kidding aside, I’ve been promising you all more gluten-free desserts on this here blog. So here it is. Or rather, here one is. I thought a carrot cake would tie in perfectly with the upcoming holiday, regardless if you celebrate it or not. I know that Easter tends to be a religious holiday, but you don’t have to be religious to enjoy the seasonal treats that spring up during this time of year. If you don’t care for gluten-free desserts, have no fear, my blog isn’t becoming a gluten-free blog. I still very much enjoy making and posting and gorging on ridiculous amounts of crusty, golden brown, gluten-rich breads. I’m just taking a break to show my appreciation for those fans who are indeed gluten intolerant. I’m trying to expand my horizons and reach out to as many people as possible. I don’t have any special dietary restrictions—as you all may know by now with my penchant for all foods—but I do have to admit this is a really good cake. You don’t have to have celiac disease to appreciate the awesomeness of this recipe.

Growing up, Easter was always a big event at my house. My mom would go all out for my sisters and I. Even now as adults we still go through with our Annual Easter Egg Hunt, and there may or may not still be some baskets filled with goodies for us. If you thought that four grown adults could be civilized while searching for plastic eggs filled with prizes, you are very much mistaken. We get extremely vicious when searching for these eggs. Fighting hard to find the most we possibly can. Hair is pulled, clothes are ripped, siblings are pushed to the floor. Stealing, cheating and sneakiness are traits that are possessed for the day (and that’s just my middle sister, she’s very competitive). We demolish the house looking for eggs that mom has so cleverly hidden. We enjoy the occasional egg filled with chocolate Easter candy here and there, but what we’re really yearning for are the eggs stuffed with the major prizes. Frozen yogurt gift certificates, lottery scratchers and of course money. Those are the treasures that make the black eyes and bruises worth it. Of course at the end of the day we all sit down as a family and enjoy a pleasant meal together. One of us happier than the others because we were fortunate enough to find the perfect eggs. That my friends is Easter in my house and has been for as long as I can remember.

We start by raiding the spice cabinet and grabbing a bunch of delicious carrot cake-y spices.

We’re going to mix all the dry ingredients first. You know my aversion to sifting right? I’m too lazy to sift my dry ingredients so I normally just whisk them. I usually tell you that you can be lazy like me or you can sift. This is the one time I’m going to tell you that you cannot sift at all. We’re going to be using almond “flour” which is just ground up almonds. It tends to be coarse so it won’t go through a sieve, sorry for those of you that love to sift. Insert evil laugh here_________________ . (It should be something like this “Muahahahaha”). I finally came up with a recipe where we can all be lazy together.

So grab a large bowl and a whisk.

To that, you are going to add the almond flour and potato starch.

Now for those of you who are gluten-free baking pros you’ll know where to get a hold of these two products. For those of you who don’t, you may or may not have a little trouble finding them. Most big supermarkets now carry these products. I found mine at a regular super market chain in the baking aisle. The brand that I got was “Bob’s Red Mill.” That brand in particular seems to be in most supermarkets nowadays and is fairly popular.

To that let’s add some spices.

Whenever I think of carrot cake, multiple spices come to mind. I feel like it’s just a given. An unspoken rule, whenever you make a carrot cake you need some sort of spice in there. In this case multiple spices.

Cinnamon, nutmeg, all-spice, and ginger to be exact.

I’m also throwing in some salt and baking powder.

**Note: Read your baking powder container carefully, not all are gluten-free. Usually it will say it on the label. But if not, look at the ingredients to be sure. Some brands use a wheat product in it, which will make it not gluten-free.**

So those are all the dry ingredients. We’re not adding any more. That’s it. No we’re not adding any all-purpose flour or cake flour. This is a flourless cake. That’s the point of the recipe. I was actually reaching for the flour at one point, out of habit. But nope, no flour Jon.

Give it all a whisk or a mix or a stir or a blend until evenly combined.

People always have this misconception that gluten-free baked goods are bland and dry and nasty. I don’t know what sorts of gluten-free treats they are eating because let me tell you the one’s I’ve tried have been amazing. It’s all about adding flavor whenever possible. We’ve done that with the spices and now we’ll add a little citrus.

Nothing too crazy, just a bit of orange zest. It’ll be that zip in the background telling you how great this cake will be.

You want only the zest of the fruit. Which means just grate the orange skin part. Do not grate into the lighter-in-color pith underneath as that can be bitter causing your cake to become bitter itself. Don’t let that happen to you.

Add the zest to the dry ingredients and then turn your attention to the carrots. Which as we all know is the main ingredient in this whole post.

Do rabbits even eat carrots? I’ve never owned one or known anyone who has so I don’t know. I feel like it’s just a tale we’re told or have picked up thanks to Bugs Bunny always chomping on one saying “What’s up Doc?” I mean after all I did base this post around carrots because of Easter and bunnies and what not, but I’m not even 100% sure that they do eat carrots.

This just in: rabbits do like carrots but it isn’t the best thing for them to eat because it may cause digestive problems. Some rabbits will not even eat carrots. We’ve been lied to!! By the way, I may or may not have just googled that. The things we can find on the internets. You’ll be surprised how many people actually wondered the exact same question. It’s nice to know I’m not the only crazy one out there.

There you go, we’ve all learned something new today. Not all rabbits like carrots and we really shouldn’t be feeding them carrots to begin with. The more we know.

Okay, I’ve digressed quite a bit. Let’s turn our attention to this now-faulty Easter post. Peel the carrots.

You need about two cups of loosely packed shredded carrots. That’s about 3 to 4 medium sized carrots.

That seems about right. I used four carrots and it was a little over two cups. I added it all to the batter. No harm done.

Cut off the tips and ends of the carrots and using a box grater, give them a shred.

You can do this with a food processor if you’d like. I normally would have but it seemed rather silly to dirty the food processor for four little carrots.

I started to think of the whole process. I’d have to take out the processor, find the grating attachment, assemble it, grate the carrots, empty the bowl, clean out the bowl and attachment and lid, and wait for it to dry, then put everything away.

OR

I could just whip out the box grater, shred, clean and put away. BOOM. I weighed my options and took the easy road.

Add the shredded carrots to the dry ingredients as well and give it all a mix.

It should be evenly incorporated.

I know it looks like there’s more carrots than dry ingredients. Don’t worry.

Okay set this off to the side.

Let’s add a couple eggs to a bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.

Turn on the mixer and begin to beat.

Slowly stream-in the granulated sugar.

Cream together on high for a few minutes.

About 4-5 minutes until they become thick and pale in color.

It will take a while for the eggs and sugar to get thick. Don’t get impatient.

Keep mixing on high until you think it’s ready and then continue to beat after that, to make sure.

The whole process should take about 5 to 7 minutes.

See?! It’s pale and thick. It’s like magic. Cue the ooooooooohs and aaaaaaaaahs.

It’s not really magic, I think it’s just science. I’m not a scientist so I won’t even try to explain the entire process of chemicals reacting. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Add the reserved dry ingredients to this mixture.

Gently mix in the dry ingredients until just incorporated.

You do not, DO NOT, want to over mix this.

Okay, the first part of our batter is done.

Either transfer this mixture to another large bowl or replace with a clean mixing bowl, if you have extra mixing bowls that it.

The next step is very crucial to this cake. You need a clean and dry mixing bowl.

You also need three eggs at room temperature. We’re going to whip up egg whites, so let’s separate some eggs shall we?

For the sake of this post I’m using an egg separator because I only have two hands to shoot and separate.

If I wasn’t photographing and both my hands were free, I’d just juggle the egg between the egg shells to separate it.

**Note: Make sure NO egg yolk or shell is in the whites. If there are, your whites will never whip up. If some have gotten into the whites, don’t worry, just use one of the egg shell halves to scoop it out. Works every time.”

Before we start whipping we need to do a little extra step.

Combine the vanilla and vinegar together. Why are we adding vinegar? Because it helps stabilize the whites. That’s important. Again, science talk, makes my head hurt. Just add it.

So combine the two and set aside for later. We’ll add it to the whipped whites when we add the sugar.

Start whisking on low until the whites begin to froth and expand.

Then raise the speed to high and whip for a few minutes.

Continue to whip the whites until they are semi-thick and small bubbles have formed all throughout the surface.

At this point you can add the sugar and vanilla/vinegar mixture. Slowly stream them in.

Continue the whisking and whipping until the egg whites become glossy and stiff peaks form.

Just like magic (but not really damn that science) the egg whites will transform.

You’ll know they are ready when you lift up the whisk and the egg whites stand up without falling.

Don’t mind that overexposed area up at the top left hand corner of the photography. It bugs me, but it was the only shot I got. Oops.

Okay, remember our reserved batter from earlier?

Well now we are going to gently, and ever-so-carefully, fold in the whites into that batter.

Do it in three additions. Plop a bit of the whipped egg whites into the batter and using a rubber spatula scrape from underneath and bring it up to the top. Folding, that’s all we’re doing here. Nothing fancy. Anyone can do it.

I’ll show you, it’s rather easy. Just DO NOT over mix or whip or beat or stir at this point. You’ll deflate the whites and your cake wont be soft and spongy and moist. It will be dry and dense and flat. The Easter Bunny for sure won’t touch it then.

After all the egg whites have been folded in, you will have a light and wonderful cake batter.

It should look like this and if you followed my instructions it will look like this.

We’re making this cake into a bundt cake so guess what…we’re going to need a bundt pan.

You can make it into cupcakes or into an 8-inch circle pan, you’ll probably need two of those though.

But I highly recommend the bundt alternative, because that’s how I wrote it.

The tricky thing about bundt pans is greasing it. You spent all this time making a wonderful cake batter and the last thing you want is for the cake to stick to the pan and not come out. That would be a tragedy. SO the best way to go about this tedious process is by using cooking spray.

Spray the pan liberally with it.

Do not flour the pan because this is a gluten-free cake and flouring the pan will render our efforts ineffective. Don’t judge, yours truly just about floured it. Old habits die hard.

Good thing I remembered not to.

If you spray it liberally, the cake will come out just fine after it’s baked and cooled.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake in a preheated 350ºF oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until the cake springs back to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. It should be golden brown on top as well.

Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool down completely.

Run a knife along the sides and center of the cake and pan to ensure it doesn’t stick.

Once completely cool (And I do mean COMPLETELY cooled) you can invert the cake onto a plate or plater or cake stand.

Look at that wonderful gluten-free creation we just made.

How can the Easter Bunny resist that?

If you’re gluten-intolerant you can thank me now……NO WAIT….

Now, you can thank me.

But if you’re like me and don’t suffer from celiac disease or you do have a tolerance for gluten, you can still thank me because you won’t miss the flour one bit. It’s very bit as delicious as it’s floured counterpart.

The cake isn’t finished yet. No not at all. We need a glaze of some sort.

It wouldn’t be carrot cake without cream cheese frosting. This is more of a cream cheese glaze. It’s lighter this way.

What?! The Easter Bunny is watching his figure.

In a large bowl with powdered sugar, add the cream cheese.

Add the vanilla extract.

Squeeze in some fresh orange juice. It will tie in perfectly with the orange zest in the cake. Plus we did just use the zest of that orange earlier and we don’t want this fruit to go to waste.

Whisk all the ingredients until completely smooth.

Spoon the glaze over the bundt cake.

Allow the glaze to set for a few minutes before cutting.

And presto, just like that, the cake is finished. Ready for Easter.

Seriously, can you think of something better to have for dessert on Easter Sunday?

I think it’s a smart dessert to serve. It’s light and health(ier) than most other carrot cakes so those watching their figure will love this cake. The rich glaze will make those of us who don’t care about such things happy and content. It’s a win-win for everyone.

What makes this cake healthier?

Well, If you noticed there is no butter or oil in this cake. The potato starch really helps keep this cake moist. The lack of flour and the fact that we used ground up almonds, which as we all know is a good source of goodness for our bodies, takes this cake to a whole new level.

In a household full of gluten-eaters no one even noticed or realized this was a gluten-free cake. I think we have ourselves a winner here.

Whatever your Easter traditions are, whether you even celebrate this holiday or not, you must give this gluten-free treat a try. I’m not a gluten-free pro at all and I’m not sure I even know all the proper information for it, but I’m learning along the way. I hope you’ll learn with me. Stay tuned for more recipes soon to come. It’ll be a while though because let’s be honest I already miss flour. Enjoy!

When it comes to food there are only a few things that my sister really loves. Sure, she’ll eat and try everything I make and enjoy it, always eyeing it with great suspicion and asking “What’s in this?” There are only a handful of dishes and desserts that will make her smile and ask for seconds. I take advantage of those moments and make a mental note to remember what it is that I made. Cooking for 12 years now, I have come to realize what each one of my family members like or dislike. My sister is very picky. I don’t know if I should call her picky—mainly because she’ll read this—but perhaps I should say that she knows what she likes. She is a woman of stern belief and when she makes up her mind, she likes what she likes. There’s no budging her from this. However, I have come to learn the signs when she doesn’t care for something in particular. If she doesn’t like the way something tastes she will eat really slowly and just smile. “You don’t like it do you?” I’ll ask her. She’ll just scrunch up her face and shake her head and as cool, calm and collected as possible she’ll respond with a sly “Noooooo.” Growing up, or even now, if we go to a party or a dinner at a friend’s house she’ll just reserve whatever she doesn’t like, and when no one is looking move it over onto my plate. Lucky for her, I’m a garbage disposal. I’ll eat anything. Hey, what are little brothers for if not to eat the food you don’t like?

So you might be wondering what does my sister like? Well, if you weren’t wondering it pretend that you were. She will go crazy for anything with banana in it. It’s her absolute favorite flavor. Upon learning this I have made it my life’s mission to make countless desserts made with that yellow fruit. I began brainstorming this post with that idea in mind. I realized that I hadn’t made something for my sister in a long time so I wanted to dedicate a post to her. She loves cheesecake and she loves bananas, so I decided to mash the two together. The outcome is this Banana Pudding Cheesecake. Because I wanted to make it a little more sinful and take it over the edge, I decided to slap on Bourbon to the beginning of the title. I may have incorporated copious amounts of that whiskey into this dessert but I can guarantee you that you cannot taste the alcohol. You won’t get drunk from it. I wonder if it is even possible to get drunk from a dish or dessert that has alcohol in it? I’m sure one could, if the dessert was just drenched in it and wasn’t even cooked. You don’t have to worry about that here.

The cheesecake has the perfect amount of banana flavor which garnered me two thumbs up. My sister practically ate the entire thing herself, and even stole a piece I was saving for our friend. I didn’t want to point any fingers, but I’m pointing fingers. Our friend, if you’re reading this she ate it. Stole it right from the fridge and didn’t think twice about it. I even think there was a maniacal laugh involved when I told her it was for you. She just continued to gobble it away. I guess this just goes to show us how good this cheesecake actually is. And because I don’t want to start WWIII with my family, I’ll take this moment to tell my other sister that I will make her something soon. Another dedication post with her name written all over it. What could be better than surrounding yourself with delicious treats and your family close at hand to enjoy it with? Nothing else my friends, I think that pretty much tops the list.

Let’s start off with the star ingredient. The main attraction to this recipe.

Bananas. It’s B—A—N—A—N—A—S, bananas!!

We’re going to need about three bananas. Peel them and throw them into a large bowl.

**Note: You can use very ripe bananas if you’d like. That will just give your cheesecake an extra sweetness. I don’t like my banana pudding to be extra sweet and I feel like the cheesecake overall has the perfect amount of sweetness already, so I tend to use bright yellow, not so ripe, bananas. But the decision is up to you.**

Then give the bananas a smash with either a fork or a tater masher.

Smash it until it’s completely broken down, almost totally smooth. It can be slightly chunky if you’d like. I like my cheesecakes to be very smooth so I mashed the bananas all the way.

Add the mashed bananas to a small sauce pot, and place it over medium heat.

Cut a lemon.

Squeeze half of it right into the bananas.

Don’t waste the other half of the lemon! Make sure you use it for something else. I think this would be a great excuse to make guacamole with lemon. Or a Caesar salad dressing with lemon. Or hummus with lemon. If worse comes to worse just squeeze some lemon into a glass of water and drink it.

Oh oh oh better yet, slice the other half and add it to your glass of water. And you think you can’t be fancy. Psssh you can be fancy.

Now we need some brown sugar.

You can use granulated sugar if you’d like or if you don’t have any brown sugar on hand. I just feel like bananas go so well with brown sugar, so that’s what I used.

Add it to the pot as well and give it all a stir, allowing the brown sugar to melt into the bananas.

Allow the mixture to cook for about a minute, stirring constantly to make sure that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. P.S. Mine stuck a little to the bottom because I have an old pot—Santa if you’re reading this, hint hint, I need new pots for Christmas—so if it sticks a little it’s okay. Don’t panic. I panicked for a millisecond and then thought to myself “Self, it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world if the banana sticks a little.”

Now we’re going to be a little naughty. Or should I say, I’m going to be a very bad influence and say that you must add some bourbon to this. Bourbon will give this cheesecake unbelievable flavor.

**Note: I don’t want you to think that you’re going to get drunk if you add it. That’s not at all possible. Adding the bourbon now, at this stage while the banana cooks, will allow the alcohol to cook off. Leaving you with nothing but fantastic bourbon flavor. Of course if you want to be a stuffed shirt and not add alcohol don’t have any bourbon on hand,  you don’t have to add it. You can just use vanilla extract instead.**

Give it one more final stir and remove the pot from the heat.

Move it off to the side and allow it to cool down completely. And I do mean completely. Now is not the time to be impatient and just wing it while it’s still warm. We’re going to be adding this to tons of cream cheese and eggs so we need it to be completely cold.

I’ll know if you don’t let it cool down completely, so don’t even think about it.

While our banana concoction cools down let’s turn our attention to the best part of cheesecake. And we all know what that is, the crust.

Yes, the crust is the absolute best part of a cheesecake. Or pie. Or tart. Whoever invented it deserves a Nobel prize or a statue erected somewhere. Perhaps a national holiday? I think so, I think so.

Because this is a Bourbon Banana Pudding Cheesecake, and traditional banana pudding uses vanilla wafers (Nilla Wafers), that’s what we are going to use for our crust.

**Note: If you live somewhere where Nilla Wafers aren’t available to you or if you don’t have any idea what the hell I’m talking about and are like “What in the world is a Nilla Wafer?” or if heaven forbid you don’t like Nilla Wafers (gasp here) then feel free to use graham crackers. Or ginger snaps. Or whatever else you like for your crusts. You can also make this gluten-free if you use gluten-free gingersnaps instead.**

In a bowl of a food processor, dump in the Nilla Wafers, or whatever type of cracker/cookie you are using.

Also throw in the pecans. Or pecons if you will. I like the flavor and texture the pecans give the crust.

Pulse the cookies and pecans until they are nothing but crumbs.

Pulverized edible dust.

**Tip: If you don’t have a food processor, you can throw the cookies and pecans into a large food storage bag and give it a whack with a rolling pin or a heavy duty pot. You’ll get out a lot of anger and stress that way. I highly recommend it.**

Once you’ve got the crumbs, turn on the food processor and stream in the melted butter.

The crumbs should become very moist and clump together. If it appears to be too dry, add a little more melted butter.

But add it a little at a time because once you add too much that’s it, you can’t take any back.

You can’t say “Oh I didn’t mean to add that much butter. I made a mistake. DO OVER. Rewind. Sadly, cooking doesn’t work that way. Believe me I’ve tried.

What were we talking about? Oh that’s right moistened crust crumbs.

Dump the crumbs into a lightly greased springform pan. Lightly greasing it will allow the cheesecake to come off easily from the pan.

Also take note of the aluminum foil. This is very crucial. Later on we’re going to bake the cheesecake in a water bath so that the steam allows it to cook and not crack at the top. The aluminum foil will prevent any water from seeping in and sogging up the crust. I don’t want soggy crust, I want crispy crust and something tells me you do too.

Use your hands or the back of a spoon to flatten out the crumbs and press it onto the bottom and sides of the pan. I love it when cheesecake crusts go all the way up the sides. So that’s what I did here.

You can use your hands to begin to form the crust but then a good trick is to switch to a measuring cup. That will flatten out the crust nicely for you.

Bake in a preheated 350°F for ten minutes. You’re not trying to brown the crust or bake it completely, it’s just to set the crust and allow it to crisp a bit before adding the filling.

After ten minutes, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool completely. Again, don’t try to take any shortcuts and just add the filling while the crust is hot to save time because the only thing you’ll do is ruin the cheesecake. It’ll cook unevenly. And then everyone will look at you, angrily and say “Thank you SO much for ruining the cheesecake!” They’ll throw things at you for messing up their lives. You don’t want that do you?

But I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a little trick. You can place the crust in the freezer and allow it cool down in a short time. Although we haven’t even made the filling yet so you don’t have to worry about that. By the time the filling is down the crust should be good to go.

Okay now for the filling.

We’re using the stand mixer now. I don’t have the strength or the time and patience to mix this by hand.

Throw in the cream cheese into the bowl. The cream cheese has got to be, just has to be at room temperature. This will allow for a very smooth cheesecake and it will blend easier for you.

Now I know that’s a lot of cream cheese up there. It’s only four bricks though. Pssssshhhh….that’s nothing. I put that on my bagel every morning. It could be worse, we could be using 5 bricks. Count your blessings I’m only asking for four.

Also don’t come around trying to make this with fat-free or reduced fat cream cheese. That is not going to fly here. There is no such thing as a “light” cheesecake. If you’re going to have cheesecake, have a really good cheesecake. It needs to be whole-fat, good ol’ ordinary cream cheese. It’s the only way.

If I find out you made this with fat-free cream cheese I will go over and throw it onto the floor before you even have a chance to eat it. Believe me, I’d be doing you a favor.

Turn on the mixer and whip the cream cheese for a few minutes.

Whip the cream cheese until it is light and fluffy.

Like a bowl of fluffy white clouds of delicious whole fat creamy goodness.

Because this isn’t decadent enough, it’s time to add the sugar.

While the mixer is running, slowly stream in the granulated sugar.

Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and cream together for a few minutes.

Okay, we need to throw this cheesecake over the edge. We need to add the eggs.

Whole eggs.

And a lot of them.

It’s not really a lot of eggs. It’s just four.

Add them one at  a time to the creaming sugar and cream cheese.

Add one, mix. Pause. Add another, mix. Pause. Add the third, mix. Pause. And add the final one. Mix.

Once all the eggs have been added, continue to mix the filling for a few minutes more, until it is light and fluffy.

I’m using “light and fluffy” a lot on here, but it’s the only way to describe this cheesecake.

Add the bourbon. Quick, hurry before someone sees you.

Of course you can just use vanilla extract if you’d like.

Mix until everything is completely smooth and well incorporated.

Now it is time to add the banana mixture from earlier.

Don’t tell me you forgot about it! We need it so that this cheesecake becomes a banana pudding cheesecake.

At this point the banana mixture should be cold. Add it.

Give the cheesecake filling one final mix to incorporate the banana concoction.

Okay so as promised, the crust should be cooled by now.

Let’s look at our baked and cooled crust.

Pour all of the filling into the pan, on top of the crust.

Resist the urge and temptation to eat the filling before it bakes. I mean if some happens to land on your finger and you need to lick it off well that’s okay I guess. Although there are raw eggs in the filling so try at your own risk.

Place the filled cheesecake into a large roasting pan or a shallow baking dish where you can add water to it. I just use my turkey roasting pan from Thanksgiving. Might as well give it another useful purpose other than just roasting turkey.

As I said earlier, we are baking the cheesecake in a water bath. It will prevent the top from cracking and it will steam the cheesecake simultaneously while it bakes. Giving you a moist perfectly cooked cheesecake.

Oh also make sure the water is hot because if you use cold water it’ll take a while for it to come to temperature in the oven.

Bake the cheesecake in a preheated 350°F for about an hour. Check it periodically after 40 minutes. You’ll know it is ready when it doesn’t jiggle in the middle. It should be firm.

If you find that your cheesecake is browning rather fast and isn’t done baking yet, then reduce the temperature to 325°F.

When it’s done, remove the cheesecake from the oven. Drain out the water, and place it on a cooling rack to cool down completely. Remove the foil paper and place the cheesecake in the fridge to chill for at least 8 hours.

I know I know it’s torturous to have spent all this time making this wonderful cheesecake and you can’t even eat it yet. To me, cheesecake has to be chilled. The 8 hours in the fridge allow it to firm up and get cold and the flavors to develop.

My suggestion would be to make this early in the morning so it’s ready by the evening. Or you can make it the night before and have it chill over night. Then when you awaken bright and early, you can have a slice of cheesecake waiting for you for breakfast.

So let’s pretend 8 hours has passed and the cheesecake is now chilled to perfection. Here in the internet world, time flies so we don’t have to wait.

Remove the side part of the springform pan.

In the bowl of an electric mixer add the chilled heavy cream and whip on medium.

While the cream is whipping, slice the cheesecake into even slices.

I’ll leave it up to you as to what size the pieces should be, that will determine the amount of slices you’ll get.

**Tip: Use a serrated knife, wiping the blade after each slice, to make the cutting of the cheesecake a lot easier on you.**

When the cream begins to thicken, add the powdered sugar.

Add the bourbon, or vanilla extract if you’d prefer.

Raise the speed to high and whip the cream until it forms soft peaks.

**Note: Be careful to not overmix the whipped cream because it could easily turn into butter right before your eyes. In a heartbeat. An instant. A quick second.**

Okay the bourbon whipped cream is all done.

Or vanilla whipped cream if you decided to go the “good” route.

So grab your sliced cheesecake.

As you can see I didn’t do such a great job on cleaning the knife after each slice. To be perfectly honest I forgot a few times.

Shhh don’t tell anyone. With the garnishes and decorating, no one will be the wiser.

Pour the whipped cream into a piping bag fitted with the star tip.

**Tip: If you don’t have a piping bag with decorating tips, don’t worry, you can still make this look nice. Just pour the cream into a large plastic food storage bag and cut off one of the corners.**

I like to pipe a swirl of whipped cream on each slice, like so…

And because we want people to know that this is a “banana pudding” cheesecake, we’re going to top each whipped cream rosette with a Nilla Wafer cookie. It’s also to create more texture, but really it’s about me finding a way to eat cookies and cheesecake all at once.

You might think it’s all pretty and we’re done now, we can eat it right? No! We’re not done yet! I mean come on, what are you thinking?

I’m a perfectionist when it comes to these things SO I want it to be perfect. It’s still missing another garnish. Some bananas.

Slice a banana anyway you’d like, either on a diagonal or straight down into even slices. I like the diagonal.

Put the slices into a bowl and squeeze a bit of lemon juice into it. Give it a toss.

This will prevent the bananas from turning brown quickly.

Then just place a banana slice alongside the Nilla Wafer cookies on each slice.

One final thing….which is completely optional…but I like to crumble, yes crumble, a few Nilla Wafers right into the middle. Just grab a handful and crush them in the center of the cheesecake.

Okay there, now we’re done. And no one can see the wacky uneven slices I made.

You can take the cheesecake now and serve yourself a slice. Then you can hide it from your friends and family and enjoy it all yourself. It’ll keep in the fridge for a few days.

But if you are not selfish like me when it comes to cheesecake then you can share with everyone around you. Start handing out slices to the mailman, the gardner, coworkers…really anyone who crosses your path. They’ll thank you for it. You’ll be famous for handing out cheesecake to people.

It’s a funny thing really, I didn’t grow up liking cheesecake. As a kid, I felt it was very thick and rich and cheesy. Don’t get me wrong, I loved cheese, still do as a matter of fact, but it was just too overwhelming when I was younger.

It wasn’t until recently when I’ve started making them myself, that I’ve really begun to appreciate the wonderful majestic powers that cheesecakes possess. And I know what you must be thinking, I’m probably only saying that I like cheesecake now because I’m eating the ones I’ve made. You are right. That’s probably the only reason. But really, I think my flavors have just matured. I’m an adult now.

If you still have cheesecake left over just wrap it with plastic wrap and store it in the fridge. You may find that the Nilla Wafers will begin to get soggy because of the moisture. You can just swap them out right before you’re going to serve it.

Or only garnish the pieces you know you will eat right away.

I’m going to go on the record to say that this is my all-time favorite cheesecake. I’ve made up my mind and decided to grant this particular Bourbon Banana Pudding Cheesecake the luxury of being referred to as my favorite.

That is until I make another cheesecake which I’ll inevitable call my favorite as well.

By this point in every post I feel like I’ve talked your ears off. Or written you all into boredom, I guess I should say since I’m not really talking but it feels like I am. Like you’re over and we’re having a chat you and I.

I’ve nothing else to say other than to make it for yourself. Give it a try. Make it for your family and friends and have it be the centerpiece for your next gathering. People will pat you on the back and say “good job.” Maybe you’ll get a statue erected as well. Probably not, but you never know. If you do get a statue put up I think my name should be on the inscription as well, after all I paved the way for it to happen. That’s J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N M-E-L-E-N-D-E-Z, in case you were wondering.

Enjoy!

I tend to come up with any excuse to eat dessert for breakfast. What can be more appealing than frosting and sprinkles and whipped cream and chocolate as soon as you wake up? Forget about the healthy egg whites with whole wheat toast, and fruit on the side or a giant bowl of oatmeal. Give me cake or pie or dare I say it, ice cream any time of day. Like a child who gets excited about the prospect of eating leftover birthday cake the next morning, I will do anything to bypass a “proper” morning meal in order to eat copious amounts of sugar at the start of my day. And in those moments when I reach for a slice of pie or cake, a voice comes into my head yelling at me to eat a substantial breakfast. A healthier breakfast. A more nutritional breakfast that will give me the energy to face my day. That voice in the back of my mind, spoiling the fun, is my mother’s. Much like any parent, she never allowed us to eat desserts in the morning, and I’m sure with good reason, although I fail it at the moment. There were times in my childhood when I was about eight, I would wake up early and sneak in some cake or ice cream before anyone else woke up. I would inevitably get caught, like a guilty culprit, walking out of the kitchen, as my mother was walking in. She would stop me and ask, “What did you eat? Did you have cake?” I would look at her innocently, not flinching, and say “Nothing. I didn’t eat cake. Wait, we have cake?” The frosting, icing, and chocolate smeared across my mouth and all over my face would give me away instantly. It wouldn’t even cross my mind to wipe away the evidence. What can I say, I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

I sometimes forget I am an adult now and can eat whatever I want. So on days when I do remember, you better believe I’m eating ridiculous amounts of sweets for breakfast without a care in the world. Why? Just because I can. I’ll find myself in the kitchen screaming out, to no one in particular, “I’m eating cake for breakfast. I’m shoveling ice cream into my mouth by the spoonful at eight in the morning!” No one stops me so I continue on my quest to break the rules. There are days, however, when the guilt creeps in. Days when I feel like I should make my doctor proud and eat something not so sweet. On those days I have “morning pastries.” Desserts disguised as breakfast like doughnuts, muffins, and coffee cake. I’ll reach for one of those instead to stop the guilt from forming. Happiness all around.

Much like any other great cake recipe, we need some butter for ours. People who don’t eat butter or avoid it like the plague should not be trusted. And since I eat butter like apples (kidding, I don’t really, only on days that end with a “y”) I can be trusted completely.

We are starting off by putting together the best part of coffee cake. Do you know what the best part of coffee cake is? If you said the cake, you are wrong. That’s not the best part. If you were thinking the crumb topping, then let’s you and I be friends forever. The crunchy crumbly streusel topping is absolutely the best part of any coffee cake. It’s really the only reason why I eat it.

For the crumb, the butter should be slightly firm but not completely right-out-of-the fridge-cold. It should be slightly softened.

Cut the butter into chunks, to make it easier to incorporate into the other topping ingredients.

In a large bowl throw in the flour.

To that, add the brown sugar and cinnamon (it wouldn’t be a coffee cake without cinnamon, am I right ladies and gentlemen?)

Give those dry ingredients a stir.

You can use a fork or a whisk or your hands to do this.

Add the diced butter and cut it into the dry ingredients.

You can use the two knife technique, or a fork, or a pastry blender, if you are super fancy and own a pastry blender.

At this point I quickly realized, as will you, that the fork just doesn’t cut it (pun intended). Of course if you have that pastry blender that will probably work out for you.

BUT if you are like me and used a fork, it will start to become rather tedious and all you’ll want to do is throw the bowl across a wall. You’ll scream out in anger and yell at the fork for not doing it’s job.

Oh maybe that was just me.

I yelled at the fork for not doing it’s job, then threw it across the kitchen and just used my hands to breakdown the butter. It was easier.

If you use your hands to do this, you want to work rather fast because the warmth from your paws will start to melt the butter and soften it too much. We don’t want that to happen.

Squish and squeeze and mix until the mixture is crumbly and coarse.

And because this isn’t an ordinary coffee cake, we are going to take it a step further by adding chocolate chips. This is a chocolate coffee cake after all.

I decided to use mini chocolate chips because I felt that they were the perfect size for the crumb topping. If you LOVE chocolate so much and want bigger chocolate chunks at the top, then by all means use the regular sized chocolate chips. Or go all the way and use the jumbo ones. No one’s stopping you.

Add it to the crumb topping and give it a mix.

Once the chocolate is mixed in, set the crumb topping off to the side. Forget about it. Don’t even look at it.

I know how difficult that might prove to be, or at least for me it was difficult because all I really wanted to do is grab a spoon and eat it all like cereal.

Okay, now let’s make the actual cake shall we?

In the bowl of an electric mixer add butter. More butter? Yes more butter.

Turn it on and whip it up.

Reduce the speed to low and slowly stream in the granulated sugar.

Raise the speed once more and whip on medium-high for about five minutes until the butter and sugar are creamed together, light and fluffy is the way to go.

In the meantime, let’s turn our attention to the dry ingredients.

Like in almost every recipe we need to mix the dry ingredients together before we can add them to the rest of the batter.

In a large bowl dump in the flour.

You can use cake flour if you have that on hand, it’ll make your cake a little softer and lighter in texture. Not lighter as in “healthier” because let’s be honest this is cake and cake shouldn’t be light. If you’re out there looking for a “light” cake, you shouldn’t be eating cake.

I used all-purpose flour because that’s what I had on hand.

I’m trying to make this cake as easy as possible for you. Baking is so tedious at times, but it really shouldn’t be like that always. Don’t worry too much about this cake being exactly the way it’s written. Feel free to swap out ingredients or add some if you’d like. Within reason of course. Don’t start just throwing in random things here and there that don’t make sense or omitting big portions of the recipe.

To the flour, add the rest of the dry ingredients:

Cocoa powder (unsweetened).

Espresso powder (just a little bit, you know me and my belief that coffee enhances the flavor of chocolate).

Baking powder.

Baking soda.

Salt.

Give it all a mix or a whisk or a sift.

Of course I just whisked it all together.

Now let’s turn our attention back to the creaming butter and sugar.

It’s egg time.

Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, occasionally, to make sure everything gets well incorporated.

Once the eggs are mixed in, it’s time to add the flavorings.

Of course we need vanilla.

And we are also going to add a little bit of coffee liqueur.

It’s just a tad, and it’s completely optional. You don’t have to add it if you do not want to. I do feel like it gives the cake a boost in flavor. If you happen to have some on hand for any particular reason, then add it. I always have some on hand because I’m constantly baking with it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Mix it all together for a few minutes to fluff it up.

Fluff it up. It’s a thing.

Now add the dry ingredients.

You need to alternately add the dry ingredients and the sour cream. The sour cream will give this cake a great crumbly moist texture.

**Tip: If you’ve made it this far through the recipe and have just realized that you do not have sour cream, you can use equal parts buttermilk instead. It will still work out, don’t panic.**

So add a bit of the dry ingredients and mix it.

Then add a bit of the sour cream.

Continue this alternating process until both the dry ingredients and the sour cream are fully used up.

Dry, wet, dry, wet, dry…

The only rule of thumb here is that you need to make sure you start and end with dry ingredients. I don’t know why this is the case but I’ve always been taught that that’s how it’s done. So let’s make sure we continue that tradition.

Okay now both components of the recipe are done.

Let’s put it all together.

Prepare a 9×13 inch baking dish.

You want to grease and flour it.

That will prevent the cake from sticking to the baking dish. It’ll also prevent you from pulling out your hair and crying on the kitchen floor because your cake is stuck to the bottom of the pan and it won’t come out.

**Tip: Whenever I make a chocolate cake of some sort I don’t like to flour the dish because you’ll be able to see the white flour at the bottom, after it bakes. So what I like to do is dust it with cocoa powder instead. It works just as well.**

Spread out the cake batter and even it out with a spatula.

Okay now it’s time for the best part, sprinkle the entire top with the crumb streusel topping we made earlier.

You don’t need to pat down the crumb topping, it will stick when it bakes.

Just lightly, sprinkle it on top.

Bake the cake in a preheated 350° oven for about 40 to 50 minutes. It depends on your oven. I would check it after 40 minutes to see how it’s going, just to be on the safe side.

Halfway through baking, rotate the pan to ensure even browning.

You’ll know the cake is ready when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a rack.

After it has cooled for at least 20 minutes—I would probably do 30 minutes but that seems like an eternity when all you want to do is eat a giant piece of this cake—you can cut it and serve it and guess what, you can eat it too.

You can cut it into smaller sizes to get more servings out of the cake, but since I’m greedy when it comes to cake I sliced it into 12 rather large pieces.

If you are used to eating cinnamon coffee cake and want to reinvent a classic, I would recommend trying this chocolate coffee cake for yourself. I don’t want to make any promises, but I can guarantee you that you’ll fall in love with this moist cake the minute you take the first bite. I did, but granted it doesn’t take much to make me happy. I’ll eat anything.

This is the perfect brunch cake. On the weekends I make a big morning feast for my family and I’ll sometimes make muffins, scones, or coffee cake to have something sweet to balance all of the savory action going on. It’s the perfect way to please a crowd, even a tiny one like mine. The idea of chocolate coffee cake, might sound weird to you, but it’s actually the best combination ever. Cinnamon and chocolate belong together forever.

I’ve run out of ways to convince you to make and eat this. I’m now heavily relying on the images themselves to tempt you into chocolatey submission. I could say things like this cake is delicious and the best thing you’ll ever eat (again and again) but I think that close up images will do the work for me.

It is the day before Valentine’s Day. February 13th, in case you did not know. It has just dawned on you that you have not given tomorrow’s holiday a lick of thought. You have not stepped foot in a mall or a flower shop or a bakery. You have nothing, not even a card. Slowly the realization that someone is depending on you to show them how much you care is creeping up on you. You kept putting it off, telling yourself “eh I still have time. I have days left to think about it. I will deal with it later.” Well guess what, later has arrived. There is no more time left. Tomorrow is the big day, and unless you want to really cut it close and find yourself wandering the crowded shops—rubbing elbows with all the other soon-to-be-sleeping-on-the-couch spouses—you better think of something fast. You begin to panic, sweat beading down your forehead, heart pounding. You quickly go online to find what florist delivers on such short notice, crossing your fingers that you might be able to pull a miracle out of where the sun don’t shine. The panic rises as you are only met with sky rocket prices, and without a guarantee that the delivery will even get there on time. You stare at the screen absentmindedly, mouth slightly agape, and all you can see spelled out on the monitor is the impeding DOOM. You begin to cry a little. What else is there left for you to do?

I hope you like the dog house, because that is where you are headed. You have a one way ticket to Fido’s house without a return in sight unless you can turn things around, which is highly unlikely at this point. Let’s be real. That is what you get for waiting until the last minute. You cannot say I did not warn you. After all if I do recall, I did tell you to make ice cream did I not? That surely would have smoothed things over. Well, you did not listen to me did you? And now you are facing the prospect of a hurt loved one and there is nothing you can do about it. But you are wrong. There is something you can do. Thankfully I am here. The first thing you need to do is snap out of it! Let’s try and salvage the car wreck you are driving into. Okay, so you did not buy anything. Big deal. Any ol’ Joe can purchase something from the store. Who cares that you did not buy flowers? Those die within a week, and what do you have to show for it after? Nothing but dead flowers that are now garbage. Eh, you do not need roses or expensive gifts. Last resort, chocolates. You have been to every bakery and store, and all that the vultures have left behind are a few boxes of prepackaged, cheap looking heart-shaped boxes. Who knows what lies inside? Do you want to take that chance, and risk them finding out that you picked up that pitiful box up at the corner liquor store on your way to the house?

The way I see it, you have only one option left. The one you should have taken from the beginning. Get your butt to the grocery store and pick up a few ingredients. Make your amour a special treat. Do not mention your lack of investment this year, we will keep that between you and I. Make it seem like you had this planned out from the beginning. That you put all this effort into making them something they could truly enjoy. A sweet dessert that means so much more because you made it from scratch and with all the love in your heart. Just stand back and wait for the swooning, the tears, the hugs and kisses. You can thank me later. So what do I have for you? Ice cream sandwiches, because chocolate and strawberry are Valentine’s Day star ingredients and nothing says I Love You more than ice cream between two cookies.

And if you cannot even do that and all else fails, dishevel your hair, lose a shoe, rip your clothes and rub your face with dirt. Tell them that you were at the office/house/car and a squirrel/raccoon/dog came in through the window, and went straight for their gift. You tried to tackle them down to the ground. At one point you were wrestling with the squirrel/raccoon/dog, both of you holding on for dear life to the gift with a death grip. The two of you growling and biting. You tried reasoning and pleading to let the gift go. Say that you offered the squirrel/raccoon/dog some money/food/shelter in exchange for the gift because you had a caring and beautiful loved one at home that you needed to give this to. Eventually the squirrel/raccoon/dog won by punching you in the face, and then ran off with their gift. Start crying and say that it was a great present too, and that you put so much thought and effort into picking out the diamond necklace/keys to a brand new car/deed to a bigger house. For shame. Woe to me. Finally, top it off with a sympathy “I’m just glad I made it out alive. I need a hug and a kiss after everything I just went through. Hold me.”

Let’s start by making the chocolate cookies. Valentine’s Day would not be complete without some sort of chocolate. Stuff a heaping amount of ice cream in between, not one but two, chocolate cookies and you are golden. Sounds like the best dessert to me.

As with all good things in life, we need butter.

Softened butter, which is just butter left at room temperature, placed in the bowl of an electric mixer. Side note, every time I have to type butter I write out better and then realize I added an “e” instead of a “u” so I have to go back and fix it. Even my subconscious knows that everything is better with butter. I’ve trained my subconscious to think food thoughts as well. It’s a nifty talent, you should try it.

Turn on the mixer and start creaming the butter.

As it is running on low, slowly stream in the granulated sugar.

Raise the speed to medium-high and whip together for a few minutes.

You want to beat it until the two are light and fluffy.

And somewhere in between that process you can add the vanilla extract.

You can add it now. Right this second. Hurry! Your vanilla window of opportunity is going to pass. Don’t miss it.

And once you’ve added the vanilla, you can continue to mix for a few minutes.

Remember, we’re looking for light and fluffy.

As those ingredients are dancing around in the mixer, this would be a great time to mix the dry ingredients.

In a large bowl, add the flour.

To the flour, add the cocoa powder (I’m using regular ol’ unsweetened cocoa powder) and baking powder and salt and a tad of espresso powder.

**Note: I am a strong believer that coffee has magical powers. I don’t drink coffee so I can’t really address the “coffee wakens you up” or “coffee helps you get through the day” rumors. The magical powers I’m referring to is the baking with coffee powers. Coffee and chocolate go so well together. If you want to make a dessert more chocolatey, and let’s be real who doesn’t, then add a bit of coffee liqueur or instant espresso powder. You’ll be amazed how much the chocolate flavor is transformed. Now I’m not saying to add a whole bunch of coffee that you can taste it in the dessert and have people say “ooooh I don’t like coffee so I don’t like this dessert.” No, I’m saying add a teaspoon and call it a day.”

Okay those are all the dry ingredients.

You can whisk them all together. Of course any book will tell you to sift all the ingredients together.

These aren’t delicate cookies that need airy dry ingredients. I don’t have the patience to sift, so I always just whisk my dry ingredients. I’m sure I’m angering someone out there, but I can’t help it. I’m just plain lazy when it comes to sifting.

You can be a goodie-two-shoes if you’d like and sift away. I’ll just stand back and watch and laugh a little.

Set that bowl off the the side and forget about it for a bit.

Right now, let’s turn our attention back to the creaming butter and sugar and vanilla.

It’s time to add the eggs.

Add them one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the mixer with a spatula to make sure everything is getting incorporated.

After all the eggs have been added and the mixture is smooth, add the milk.

Whatever kind of milk you have on hand will do. It doesn’t have to be whole milk.

Mix the milk in, and then add the dry ingredients.

Can you guess what the next step is? That’s right, mix in the dry ingredients. Look at you, you’re reading my mind.

Mix until all the dry ingredients are incorporated and the dough comes together.

It will be very sticky.

Divide the dough in half and place each half on a piece of plastic wrap.

Wrap each half of dough tightly with the plastic wrap and shape it into a disc.

Place the dough in the fridge and allow to chill for at least one hour. You can leave it over night at this point if you needed to run off and do chores and errands. Or you can just leave them in the refrigerator for an hour because you are like me and are impatient and all you really want is for time to go by faster for that one hour so you can make cookies and eat them by the handful!

Here in the internet world the hour flew by. I swear, I don’t know where it went. It’s like I just blinked and poof the dough is chilled.

Place the chilled dough on a lightly floured work surface. Get out a rolling pin and a heart-shaped cookie cutter. You know, because of Valentine’s Day and all.

If you’re anti-Valentine’s Day this year, don’t worry you’re not alone, you can just beat the crap out of the heart-shaped cookie cutter and break it into small pieces you can just use a circle cutter or a squared one.

Working with one half of dough at a time, roll it out to about ⅛ of an inch thick.

**Tip: When rolling out dough it is crucial to frequently rotate the dough itself so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the work surface. If it starts to stick, slightly lift the dough and sprinkle with more flour. Also, keep your rolling pin well-floured because that will stick too.**

Once the dough is nice and flat and even and ⅛ of an inch thick—now don’t bust out the ruler and start measuring out an ⅛ of an inch just eyeball it—you can start cutting out hearts. Or circles or squares if you don’t like hearts for whatever reason. You don’t have to share why you don’t like hearts. No one needs to know.

Did you notice my ultra, super-duper, mighty, fancy heart cookie cutter? Oh you know, I just roll with the highest quality of plastic in my kitchen. It even has a fluted edge, I mean come on, try not to be jealous.

Place the cookies onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet. These cookies don’t spread out much so you can snuggle them up on the sheet and fit more onto it so that they bake faster which in turn means you can eat them faster.

I didn’t know what image of pre-baked cookies to add so I’ll just added both.

Really it’s just an excuse to stare at unbaked cookie dough for longer.

Also, while we’re on the subject of unbaked cookies, make sure that you count out the cookies and have an even number so that each sandwich has a top cookie and a bottom cookie. Although I guess you can have an odd number so that you can eat one before you make the ice cream sandwiches.

Okay so you know those rectangular ice cream sandwiches that we used to get at the ice cream truck? The Carnation ones? Maybe it was just me, but anyhow, said ice cream sandwiches always have those holes throughout the cookie. Do you know what I’m talking about? Are you visualizing it? Are you just staring at me blank faced and nodding because you have no idea what I’m talking about but don’t want to be rude and say that I’m crazy? That’s okay. Well those ice cream sandwiches always had holes on the chocolate rectangular cookies, so I wanted to poke holes on these as well so they look like the real deal. Authentic.

I used a wooden skewer to make nice precise even holes.

I made sure the holes looked nice and even. Took my time to make the cookie look good. Then I got super tired after just one. I glanced over at the other three trays and almost fainted because the thought of me using the single skewer to make ALL those holes on ALL those cookies caused me pain. I felt like a sweat shop worker.

So I ditched the skewer and used a fork. At that point I didn’t care about whether the holes were even or not. I just started jabbing the fork all over the cookies and wherever the holes were made, they were made. My OCD almost killed me though because the holes weren’t precise.

Bake the cookies in a preheated 350°F oven for about 12 minutes.

Make sure to rotate the pans halfway through baking.

Allow the cookies to cool on the pans for a few minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack to cool down completely.

**Note: The cookies have to be completely cooled down before we proceed to the next step. When we add the ice cream, the cookies can’t be warm because it’ll melt the ice cream.**

Please note that one cookie at the bottom row towards the middle. That’s the one I used the skewer to poke the holes. Yup, the fork was a better tool.

Okay now we are ready to start making some ice cream sandwiches.

If there are any cookies left, because let’s be honest we snacked on some as they cooled down, get them ready with your ice cream of choice.

You can use any store bought ice cream you’d like. Whatever flavor that you prefer. BUT if you recall the post is entitled “Chocolate Strawberry Ice Cream Sandwiches” and the last post was for homemade No-Churn Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream. You  do the math. I planned it all conveniently well didn’t I? You’re welcome.

This would be the time to take out the homemade ice cream, because I really recommend you make it for this recipe, and let it thaw for a bit.

I can just stare at those images all day long. Homemade ice cream, without a machine, it’s like a dream. A dream I never want to wake up from. Let’s stare at another image.

I mean, come on, What can be better than that? Excuse me while I lick the screen repeatedly.

What were we talking about? Oh yea, ice cream sandwiches. That’s right.

Let’s focus.

We are going to utilize the flat underside of the cookie so get two and flip them over.

I used a medium-ish sized ice cream scoop and placed a scoop of ice cream on one of the cookies. Then you grab the other cookie and sandwich them together.

Since the cookies are heart-shaped, when you go to sandwich them together, the ice cream will ooze out and it might be a little difficult to smooth it out. I used a butter knife and just smoothed out the sides, it worked.

Place the sandwiches on a baking sheet and stick the sheet in the freezer for half an hour to firm up the ice cream.

Then you can let loose and eat as many as you’d like.

I, myself, would like a giant stack please.

If you are not going to eat all the ice cream sandwiches all at once then something is wrong with you then you can wrap each individually with plastic wrap, pop them in a freezer storage bag and leave them in there for whenever you want a delicious icy treat. They will keep in the freezer for about a week. But I know, I know, I know, that they will not last one week. Or at least they didn’t in my house. I was the guilty party that had about ten myself.

I had to force myself to give some away because I knew that if I didn’t I would’ve just eaten them all. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but let’s face it, it’s not the greatest.

These are the perfect Valentine’s Day treat for that special someone (or someones, I don’t judge) in your life.

Also if you’re like me and are a citizen of SingleTown, well then, these are the perfect treats to eat in bed while you cry and wallow in your loneliness and misery, while watching romantic movies on this evil day. They comfort you and help the day go by faster so that you can put February 14th behind you and you can move on. But I’m not bitter. I’m happy for those who will make these for someone special.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Red, white and pink balloons are floating around. Heart-shaped chocolate boxes can easily be found at every store, for your convenience. Oversized teddy bears have made their appearance, eager to go to a loving home. Roses are springing up all over everywhere. We cannot walk down the street without being hit in the face by some kind of constant reminder that the Day of Love is fast approaching. We get it, we get it. Time is ticking. The pressure is intensified, even more so on the days leading up to the big event, where we have to prove our love for those we truly care about. Sure it seems like any other day, so what really makes this random holiday so important? What makes this day so special? Why do we have to show our appreciation and prove our love on this particular day? Perhaps it is because throughout the year, we sometimes forget to let those close to our heart know just how much they mean to us? February 14th is the day we get to redeem ourselves. It is the day that counts. We have to make it count. We know that deep down inside one day does not define an entire relationship yet we, for some unexplained reason, hold it up to such high standards. We keep our hopes high that we will not be forgotten. Our busy schedules are put on hold and we move our cares off to the side and wrack our brains for ideas to make each year unforgettable.

Valentine’s Day is not just for wives, husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends. Those people lucky enough to be single sometimes go into a “we hate Valentine’s Day” funk, one which we cannot seem to get out of until the day is long gone, and completely behind us. We forget that V-Day is every bit as important for our family as well. It is still important to take the time to do something small, yet meaningful, for our parents or our siblings. Families deserve some love and attention and recognition on this special holiday too. For all the singletons out there, myself included, make this February 14th about the friends you love, the family you cherish, and the one person who truly matters; yourself.

The stress leading up to the 14th of February can be scary. We fear that we have not done enough. Or worse, we are terrified by the prospect that we have not found the perfect gift. Planning out a Valentine’s Day date whether you are making something at home or making plans to go out and take the night by storm, can be a lot easier if you take one tiny rule into consideration; simple is better. You do not need to purchase the most expensive and extravagant gift to prove that you love someone. Money does not define love. After all, is it not the thought that counts? Instead of beating yourself up to plan out the perfect day, think about making a simple dinner at home, renting a movie, and making dessert. Get your mind out of the gutter, I mean real dessert. Make a chocolate that will impress your loved ones, whomever they might be. They will appreciate something thoughtful as a homemade meal, dessert included, much more than having dinner in a crowded restaurant. Surrounded by people and being served by those unfortunate souls who could not get the day off. Your wallet will thank you too. Who says we cannot be economical and romantic at the same time? Gentleman, you will avoid sleeping on the couch if you take my advice. Make your significant other a sweet dessert. Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven. If  you do not have any idea of what to make, do not sweat it. Even you can make this dessert, it’s relatively fool-proof. Happy planning.

For anyone who is cursed by living in a house or apartment with a tiny kitchen, you know how precious counter space can be. We have to plan things out to get the most out of the little space we have. We are forced into making sacrifices like not purchasing certain kitchen equipment because we don’t have anywhere to put it. Ice cream machines are a luxury for us, because it would mean finding a place for said appliance. We often go without one because well, we have to. We have no other choice.

In turn this causes us to be upset and mad at the world, maybe it’s just me, because we can’t make homemade ice cream. If you know what I’m talking about and can relate, your life is about to change. Forever.

Maybe not forever because you might be lactose intolerant and you probably just think I’m crazy, but let me tell you something, my life sure has changed. And I’m happy that it did because drum roll please…………….I bring to you, no-churn ice cream. Da dum! Queue round of applause, roses flying towards me, spotlight shining. Yes you heard me right, no machine ice cream. And yes it tastes just like the churned stuff. And we’re better people for it because those suckers with machines just wasted money and precious kitchen space. Let’s all take a moment to laugh at them. Hahahahahaha. Laugh at their face and point at them. Hahahaha. Okay too much. Reel it in. That’s enough. Let’s begin.

We’re starting off this amazing ice cream recipe with fresh strawberries.

**Tip: If you don’t have access to fresh strawberries feel free to use whole frozen strawberries instead. Make sure they have thawed completely before proceeding to the next steps. Although if your market doesn’t have any fresh strawberries at the moment, I give you permission to go up to the manager and demand for some fresh berries. If he doesn’t respond to reasoning then start throwing things. Kick down the store displays. Run down the aisles and knock the items off the shelves. Know your rights! Stage a walk-out! Make signs! Protest!**

The first thing we need to do is rinse our berries. It is important to not clean any type of berry until you are ready to use them. If you clean berries and store them in the fridge, guess what, the moisture will cause them to mold fast. They wont keep as long. So lesson of the day is to wash your strawberries until moments, no seconds, before you are ready to make this ice cream.

Give them a thorough rinse making sure to toss the berries around the colander as the water runs through.

Allow the water to drain through and the berries to air dry for a bit. You don’t want any excess water going into the chunky syrup we’re about to make. It’s really a compote. Look at us, we’re being super fancy and making compote. Ou la la.

Once dry, you can cut off the leafy green tops with a pairing knife.

Slice the strawberries in half and place them in a medium sauce pot.

Place the pot over medium heat.

Throw in the sugar. Don’t just throw it in. Ever so carefully, stream it in. Believe me it makes all the difference on how you add it to the strawberries.

If you were to just dump the sugar in, the entire dessert is ruined. Might as well stop trying. Throw it all away and give up.

I’m totally kidding. It doesn’t matter how you add the sugar. If you believed me, let me know, I want us to be best friends.

We’re using granulated sugar for this recipe. Essentially we are making a sort of thick strawberry compote to fold into our ice cream base later on.

And just because I happen to love sugar, here are two more images of cascading sugar for you to enjoy.

Stir the sugar and berries together and allow them to cook for 5 to 10 minutes. The moisture in the strawberries will begin to come out and stew the fruit. The sugar will give a good sweet balance to the tart berries, and it will help draw out the moisture as well.  That’s my fancy food science talk right there for ya.

Allow it to simmer away, stirring occasionally. After about ten minutes the stewing strawberries will look like this:

If you like big chunks of strawberries in your ice cream then you can just leave the berries like this. But if you don’t, you can use a wooden spoon to break down the berries a bit.

Little bubbles should start to appear around the liquid as the berries continue to simmer.

Right now, the compote is a little too runny. We want the consistency of syrup so we need to thicken this up.

Pour a bit of water into a small bowl or cup, and mix it with the cornstarch. Whisk completely with a fork.

Pour the cornstarch mixture into the simmering fruit.

Give it a good stir and allow to cook for about 5 minutes, in which it will start to thicken and continue to cook down the strawberries.

You can remove the compote from the stove and transfer it to a bowl to cool down.

It needs to be completely cooled before we can add it to the ice cream base. And I do mean completely cooled, not sort of cool or slightly warm. No, absolutely cooled. Cold.

If your are impatient, like me, and you want to speed up the process—I mean who has the time to wait for strawberry compote to cool down completely?—you can place the bowl in the freezer and cut the waiting time by half. It should take about 15 to 20 minutes in the freezer. You can stir it occasionally to make it cool down even faster. Look at all these cooling tips. So many we won’t know what to do with them after this recipe.

In the meantime let’s make the ice cream base. Did you think you were going to be able to rest? No! We have more to do! Let’s multi-task. It’s Valentine’s Day. We need to be ready.

We need cream cheese. That is our “cheesecake” part of the recipe. Purely decadent and completely sinful.

Funny little side note about the cream cheese. I forgot to include it in the ingredient picture at the beginning. You know when you have a lot on your mind and you go over a list again and again to make sure you haven’t forgotten something and you still forget something? Well it happened to me. I got the cream cheese ready and it was on it’s little plate, but I forgot to add it to the picture. I only realized at this point when I looked for it to start the creaming process. I glanced over at the counter and there off to the side was the cream cheese. By itself. Waiting to be used. Ooops. Just pretend it’s in the picture.

Anyhow, let’s get back to the recipe. Boy, you sure can talk my ear off. Always distracting me.

We need to cream the cream cheese. So drop it into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.

Whip on high for a few minutes, until it is creamy and light.

Now add the sweetened condensed milk. This will help make the ice cream creamy without churning. Who needs an extra machine cluttering up our much needed counter space? Not us!

Add the condensed milk and mix again.

**Tip: Slowly add in the condensed milk to prevent the cream cheese from lumping.**

**Note: Make sure you pick up and use sweetened condensed milk and not evaporated milk. They are entirely different products. Most people confuse the two. Evaporated milk will not work here.**

Add the vanilla extract.

And now, with the mixer running on low, slowly and ever so carefully add in the cold, very cold, heavy whipping cream.

Once all the heavy whipping cream has been added and it is all mixed together, you can stop the mixer. And swap out the paddle attachment for the whisk attachment.

Start the mixer again and whip the cream mixture on medium.

When the mixture begins to thicken, you can raise the speed to medium high and continue to whip.

Whip the cream until stiff peaks form when you raise the whisk. 

Make sure to keep an eye on it, it can easily turn into butter in a flash if you overmix it.

We’re not making butter, we’re making ice cream here.

Stiff peaks will look like this:

Okay, now it starts to get a little complicated. Just a little, don’t start to freak out and hyperventilate. You can do this.

Remove half of the mixture from the bowl and place it in another bowl.

Reserve that for later.

To the half of the cream mixture, still in the mixing bowl, add half of the strawberry compote.

So, so far we have half of the ice cream base in a small bowl and the other half in the bowl of the mixer. And we have half of the strawberry compote in a small bowl and the other half in the bowl of the mixer with half of the ice cream base. Right? Yea, that’s right.

I think I just over complicated it. But read it again, it should make sense.

Mix together until it becomes a pale pink color.

Okay that’s it, we have all the steps prepared. We are now ready to put the ice cream all together.

Believe me it’s worth it. It’ll make making ice cream so much easier.

We’re going to be laying several things together.

Pour half of that pink mixture into a freezable dish. I used a spring form pan.

And top it with half of the leftover compote.

Okay, now top it with the remaining white untinted ice cream mixture from earlier.

Now top it with the remaining pink mixture and the rest of the compote.

Okay everything should be used up right? Look around you, did you add all of the compote? Is all of the ice cream mixture used up? If you have anything remaining in a bowl somewhere, then you did something wrong. You didn’t follow my complicated steps right.

But shhhhhh, don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone. Neither should you. Just add it on top right now, no one will know.

Now grab a spatula and start to swirl everything together.

Swirl as much or as little as you’d like. It depends on how you like your ice cream to be. Do you like lots of strawberry swirls? Or not as much? I’ll leave the decision up to you.

Once you’ve reached your desired strawberry swirl consistency, you can stop swirling. I know it’s difficult. Swirling is fun, but you must stop.

Walk away from the ice cream. I know it must also be difficult to not grab a spoon and start eating it now. But we must resist the urge.

Of course, you can try a tiny bit, you know to make sure everything is alright. We wouldn’t want it to taste bad and serve it to our loved ones. We must perform a quality control. Yeah, we have to try it, but just a try. Don’t get carried away and start gobbling it up.

Look at that. We are done. It now needs to chill in the freezer.

Wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and then with a piece of foil. This will prevent frost bite or freezer burn, however you say it. It will prevent it.

Place the pan in the freezer…..and now this is the downside of the recipe. So yes it does make delicious irresistible ice cream without the use of a machine and without the tedious churning, but like most good things in life their is a catch. I purposely waited until the end to spring it on you so I can entice you to make it.

It has to freeze for a total of six hours. WHAT!??!?! I know I know. Who has that kind of will power and patience?! I don’t, believe me. But I had to force myself. Trust me though, it is completely worth the long grueling hours of torture.

It’s best if you do it the night before and allow it to freeze overnight, but at least a minimum of six hours will do.

Then after six hours or the next day, for breakfast even, you can serve it up.

You’ll have the best strawberry cheesecake ice cream you’ve ever tasted.

And the best part is that we didn’t need an ice cream machine to make it. I’ve always wanted to make ice cream but I don’t have a machine. Mostly because I don’t have space for yet another appliance, but also because let’s face it, I’m cheap and I don’t want to buy an ice cream machine that I’m sure I wouldn’t use all that often.

It’s not that I wouldn’t use it because I don’t love ice cream. I happen to love ice cream. I wouldn’t use it because I would have to clean it and then freeze the bowls and then pull out the machine when I needed it and churn the ice cream. So much work. No thank you.

With this recipe I can make ice cream without all those complicated steps. Gosh, now I sound like a cheesy informercial. Real like customer. Believe me it works!

And it’s perfect for a Valentine’s Day treat.

Of course I had to pull out the ice cream cones because we all know that ice cream is best served on a cone. Reminds me of my childhood days.

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was enjoying a heaping serving of ice cream on top of a cone. Wait, I think it was yesterday.

If strawberry doesn’t float your boat, have no fear, you can mix-in whatever flavorings you want. Use the ice cream base as your blank canvas and mix-in whatever fruit you want or you can add Nutella and chocolate chips. Whatever your heart desires. Valentine’s Day pun there for ya.

Oh oh oh you can do a pistachio ice cream, which happens to be my ALL time favorite ice cream. If you recall. 

Or you can make it with the strawberries, as it is shown here, because strawberry ice cream is kind of awesome.

Plus Valentine’s Day is around the corner so it goes with the theme. See? I’ve got your back. Make this for Valentine’s Day. Your loved ones will love you for it.

Stay tuned for another Valentine’s Day treat coming soon.