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.)
[addtoany] Yum