My friend Marissa is a pastry chef, so this weekend when I headed to New York City, I got to head to the restaurant she works at in Beacon, NY, and try some of her delicious desserts!

First of all, this is the view from her restaurant’s patio.

And now, for the desserts:

First, we feasted on this: Apple pie in a jar, with rice pudding and cheddar cheese tuile. This was divine — it was sweet and savory, it had toffee on top, and was the perfect amount of apple to secret rice pudding. Loved it so much I could have eaten another!

This is a peanut butter and chocolate ice cream sandwich with home-made marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate, and salted caramel. This was also so good I could have had two – sweet, salty, nostalgic! It reminded me of the end of a perfect day of camping.

We also tried blue cheese cheesecake with poached pear, walnut chutney balls and toffee walnut crumble. This was amazing – you had to grab pear, chutney, toffee walnut crumble, and cheesecake all in one bite – and then honest to goodness take a minute to think about the amazing thing happening in your mouth. I think this might have been my favorite, if you could pick a favorite (I don’t know if I can.)

We also had triple cupcakes – I don’t know exactly what flavors these were, but I can tell you that I had two bites of each one and did not regret it.

Now, these next two were cell phone photos, because the ladies + H were getting antsy and wanted to taste ’em, so I tried not to whip my camera out every dessert, and just snapped a cell shot instead. But I promise they were delicious, amazing, creative, and mind-blowing.

And, for a savory, seasonal treat, we have peaches macerated in grand marnier, biscuits, candied oranges and pistachio. Imagine everything wonderful about a peach, and everything wonderful about a biscuit, together, as one. Take a moment. This was something I definitely wish I could recreate!

This is coconut sorbet with Balinese corn compote, rice dumplings in palm sugar and coconut macaroons. This dessert brought me away to the world – it reminded me of my time in China, with the rice dumplings and the coconut and the use of corn in dessert. Definitely one that stuck out in my memory as different and for that, lasting.

I do love a meal involving a burger and fried followed by six desserts – certainly made my morning run worth it! I will be trying, in vein, to find some of these around the LA parts, and maybe even make them myself (I see blue cheese cheesecake in my future) but for now, I will simply remember the wonderful days of my trip.

Thanks to Marissa for being so talented and willing to share your treats, and explain them, to your favorite girls!! (And to H, for allowing us to ask and re-ask what stuff was when we weren’t quite paying attention.)

You know how when you go to a party, it’s polite to ask the hostess what she would like you to bring to her event? Jennie hosted a Shark Week party last Sunday and after looking over her menu, I suggested bringing something sweet. This is what she sent me to make. My life will never be the same! Brownie batter dip is a quick and delicious recipe you can whip up (literally!) for any party.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: None!
Yields: Enough dip for one person. Just kidding! About 2 cups.

Ingredients:
8 oz light cream cheese, room temperature
¼ cup (otherwise known as ½ a stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
5 tablespoons all purpose flour
5 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk
chocolate chips for topping
Pretzels, graham crackers, and/or fruit for dipping

In a mixing bowl, beat together cream cheese and butter. The consistency should be light and fluffy.

Add flour and cocoa powder. Mix.

Add powdered sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and milk.

Beat until smooth. You can add extra milk or powdered sugar to achieve the consistency you desire. The goal here is to be able to dip a pretzel easily, without it breaking.

Top with chocolate chips. This dip can be refrigerated and enjoyed 1 or 2 days later, however, I don’t think it will last that long!

What is your favorite sweet dip?

I’ve been on a Mexican kick lately — anything in a tortilla, and I’m all in. So I jumped at the chance to make enchiladas, only light — healthier but still delicious.

You’ll need chicken, onion, garlic, tomato, jalapeno, cilantro, cheese, all spice, and olive oil.

First, you’ll need to chop a bunch of stuff: tomatoes, garlic, jalapeno, and onion. You can also chop your cilantro at this point. You’re going to be pureeing this all, so it doesn’t have to be perfect – dice the onions and jalapeno, smash the garlic, rough chop the tomato.

Also, on jalapeno and onion: has anyone else noticed that its easy to chop onion with contacts in (they act as a built in onion-shield) but that if you cut jalapenos, no matter how many times you wash your hands, when you take your contacts out they’ll still burn? Contacts: both helpful and harmful in the kitchen. [end PSA]

Love me some vegetables. Here’s the good news: you’re almost done with the heavy lifting, so to speak.

So add some olive oil to your heated pan. Then sweat your half your onions and jalapenos and garlic.

After you’ve let them sweat about 8 minutes or so, add about 3/4 cup of water.

Add your chicken and some cumin…

And cover. You’re going to let this simmer here until the chicken is done, about 5-8 minutes. I swear, it really is that fast!

And there is your chicken, rearing to go. Transfer your chicken to a plate.

Here are your jalapenos, onions, garlic, and cooking liquid, all in your blender! (You can use a food processor, too, but mine is sitting in the trunk still, on account of my small kitchen, so I just used the blender.)

Add allspice and tomatoes.

Blend until smooth.

Transfer back to your dish, and heat. The idea is it’ll bowl then you can simmer until it thickens. This will take maybe ten minutes, maybe less. Just keep checking!

Shred your chicken, meanwhile. Also, shred your cheese, and forget to take a picture!

Pour your enchilada sauce into your pan.

Put your oven on to heat up to 450. Take a tortilla, and fill it with cheese and chicken!

Do this repeatedly until all your tortillas are in your pan. I got eight tortillas to all fit! Success!

Put enchilada sauce and more cheese on the top, and heat in a 450 degree oven for about ten minutes.

Put your other onion half and all your cilantro together, and squeeze half a lime or lemon over it. Serve with the enchiladas.

Delicious, light dinner for four! Enjoy!

Despite my being mostly Italian, I had not until very recently, made a lasagna on my own.  I’m not a big fan of ground meat or ricotta cheese . Then there is the whole business of having to find GF lasagna noodles.  But as with lots of things, Whole Foods came to the rescue and I was able to find a steady supplier of said GF lasagna noodles and decided to have a lasagna experiment!

I made up this recipe as I went along with a half plan (I decided on the protein, can’t go wrong with bacon!), half whatever was left over in my fridge (spinach, mushrooms, onion, garlic).

I oven-baked the bacon for 35 minutes at 400 degrees while I was prepping the vegetables, cheese mixture, and the noodles so that I could incorporate it in strips instead of crumpled throughout.

Be sure to add olive oil to the noodle water so that they don’t stick together.  I also took the extra precaution of adding the noodles one at a time as well as gently stirring with tongs so as to keep the fragile GF noodles as intact as possible.

I then mixed the TJ parmesan and romano cheese blend with some cubed fontina and an egg.

I cooked the noodles about two minutes short of being fully cooked as they will continue to do so in the oven.  I also suggest using tongs as they make the process of layering much easier and have the added benefit of not burning your hands on hot noodles.

Another element to be aware of with the GF noodles is that they tend to stick together and therefore break when you start to handle them.  The first layer went fine and the noodles were whole, but the longer they stayed in the colander the more difficult they were to deal with.  Next time I plan on laying them out on a parchment lined baking sheet so they maintain their structural integrity.

I layered all of the different ingredients and ended with a noodle layer.  Then I covered the pan with foil and baked it at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Then I added some of the remaining parm & romano blend and baked it uncovered for an additional 15 minutes.

Next time I’d like to try freezing some lasagna for weeks when I’m too busy to cook!

What meals do you like to freeze?

You may or may not know it, but it my favorite week of the year: Shark Week. Shark Week is on Discovery, and usually takes place in late summer, and is a week long dedicated to shark programming: conservation, stories of shark bites, countdowns of the most shark attacks prone beaches, and usually a special historical reenactment or two of people stranded at sea for weeks being attacked by sharks.

For me, it’s a nostalgic week that reminds me of summers of Popsicles, sandwiches, and getting along with my siblings all week to enjoy watching bull, mako, tiger, and of course white shares getting their chomp on.

This year I decided to share my love with my friends and hosted a Shark Week opening night party. And of course, needed some shark influenced foods.

Enter Ocean dip.

Recipe is:

1 can cannellini beans
1/3-2/3 cup olive oil
Parsley and oregano
3-4 cloves garlic
Blue food coloring

So start by chopping up some garlic.

Measure out some olive oil. I doubled the recipe, and used all that’s pictured above plus some more, to be honest.

Take your beans and rinse them.

Put your garlic, beans, and olive oil together in the blender.

Add your herbs in, and blend that up. And now, it’s time to bring a little ocean into this.

Add some more oil if it’s too thick (mine was) and add some blue food coloring.

Ocean in a blender!

Place in a bowl, and add a fin or two!

And, of course, you can serve it with some fishies, too!

And, for a drink, don’t forget to whip up some ocean punch (soda water, blue Koolaid, a splash of sugar, and the alcohol of your choice!)

Enjoy while watching sharks swim through chummer waters, biting cameras, and generally being awesome!

Do you love Shark Week? Do you love themed parties? Do you love sharks? dips?