Candy Salad and Devil's Food Affogato, and a Simple Halloween Menu

Didya miss me?  ;-)  It's very unlike me to be absent from the blog for long and to miss my usual weekly Monday midnight/Tuesday early morning posting time.  Alas-- however, this week, life just caught up with me, and I had to throw my hands up and just let something go.  It turns out that juggling concurrent classes and research at two universities simultaneously (not to mention the commute hours hopping back and forth across the San Francisco Bay) and attempting to squeeze two years' worth of graduate work into a single semester while still trying to maintain some semblance of sanity isn't such a hot idea.  Yeah.  But, don't worry about me--I'm having a ball doing it all (seriously) and absolutely love it.  I know.  I'm crazy.

But wait--you're going to think I'm even crazier when you see the recipe I'm going to try my hardest to convince you about today: candy salad.  (Boy, I sure hope your kids aren't reading this one, because you might hate me if they pick up on this idea!)  This was a completely accidental discovery on my part, but it's turned out to be an absolutely wonderful one.

Here's how it all started.  When one of our friends came over for our Halloween dinner, he brought along a bag of Skittles.  (My policy for Halloween parties is "I make the food, you bring the candy.")  Now, Skittles aren't my usual candy of choice.  In fact, I don't even remember the last time I had Skittles or voluntarily sought them out.  But there they were, a pail of them sitting on the kitchen table amongst the fixings for dinner.  So, as I was putting together the salad I was making, my hands instinctively hovered over the colorful bowl of candies, reached in, and tossed a few into the salad.  I'm no stranger to unusual and untraditional combinations of savory and sweet, but even I was skeptical at first about what I'd just done.  But the minute I took the first bite and sunk my teeth through the leafy greens and into a burst of chewy candy flavor, I was sold.  Skittles, it turns out, are the perfect finishing touch to a salad of spicy wild arugula leaves, accented with leaves of deeply fragrant purple basil, crunchy shaved fennel,  and nuggets of juicy pomegranate seeds.  Skittles contribute the final texture and flavor to tie everything together: the slight toothiness in the candy's center and the bright sweetness to balance out the herby taste of the fennel, arugula, and basil and slightest tart to enhance and highlight the sweetness of the pomegranate seeds.  The key, of course, is a small, light-handed sprinkling of Skittles--just enough so that it brings a bit of nuanced novelty and surprise to an otherwise straightforward autumn salad.

a Simple Halloween Menu

Candy salad

wild arugula, shaved fennel, purple basil leaves, pomegranate seeds, skittles

Garlic-baked chicken drumsticks

with paprika, fresh rosemary and thyme, lavender salt, and worchestershire

Sweet potato and squid ink gnocchi

with a nutmeg and gorgonzola cream sauce

"Heaven and Hell"

devil's food chocolate cake affogato

For dessert, I did a play on a heaven and hell theme, especially since I had this new devil's food cake recipe I'd been wanting to try out for some time now.  For the actual dinner, I served both devil's and angel food cake with plain ice cream, but the day after, I had some more devil's food cake left over, and it turned out to go beautifully in a devil's food, espresso, and vanilla ice cream affogato--so much so that I wish I'd served it this way instead as dessert on Halloween!

The cake, from the new book Baked Explorations (one of their pastry chefs was on Top Chef: Just Desserts!), is nice and dark and chocolate-y, yet still surprisingly light and fluffy and airy--and moist, too.  I don't know how well it pairs with the frosting suggested in the book, but it goes so well with vanilla ice cream--its crumbs sort of melting into chocolate goodness in the cream--that I'm not sure I'd ever serve it any other way!  Hot espresso poured over it all makes it definitely a heaven-worthy dessert.  (okay, I couldn't resist! :P)

Anyways, I hope you all had wonderful and fun Halloweens!  Happy November, everyone!


[Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of Baked Explorations to review but was under no obligations to post about it.  As always, I will never tell you about something that I don't love myself.]


Read on for recipes...

Sweet Potato and Squid Ink Gnocchi, and Happy Halloweekend!

Just popping in quickly for a sneak peak of one of the items on my Halloween menu this year: sweet potato and squid ink gnocchi.  Isn't the orange-and-black combination perfect for Halloween?

Both my roommate and I have been so busy that we decided to forgo our traditional all-out Halloween party for a more intimate and casual sit-down dinner with close friends.  The menu's all planned, and I'm so looking forward to some down time to be in the kitchen, relax, and enjoy a leisurely, delicious meal with wonderful people.

What are your Halloween plans this year?

Read on for recipe....

Hope you had a Happy Halloween! (and Pumpkin Cake)

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!  My party turned out to be a lot of fun, though I spent the rest of the weekend recovering from it (hence no Pancakes of the Week, please excuse me!).  I promise that this will be my final Halloween-related post--that is, until next year, of course, but I wanted to share with everyone the cake I make every Halloween.

Pumpkin cake

with cream cheese frosting

Every year, I ask myself why I don't make this cake more often.  It's so dense and moist that some have even remarked (in a good way) that it's like eating a solid pumpkin mousse!  I really do need to whip out this recipe more often, if not in pumpkin form then at the very least in loaf pan form.  It's perfect for cool, fall mornings.

Anyhow, we'll move back to regularly scheduled programming on Desserts for Breakfast this week (I do have a day job that I can't abandon).  Here's looking forward to the holidays!  :-D

Read on for the recipe...

Brittle Bones

the prognosis ain't good.

While everyone else has a 'thang' for macarons, my roommate and I instead have an obsession with meringues.  It's probably one of the most common things that leaves our kitchen, from meringue kisses to lemon meringue pie (light on the curd, heavy on the meringue).  So naturally, I had to do meringue bones for the Halloween party!

But wait! these aren't just plain meringues... A genius idea of my roommate's was adding a strip of licorice string as marrow in the bones.  After baking them this way, I found out, biting into one, that the licorice both looks like marrow and simulates the softer center of bones when you bite into it, too!  Creepy.  :-D

Anyhow, get a good night's sleep, all.  Tomorrow is a big day: Happy Halloween!

(More Halloween treats from this week:
Chocolate mini-cupcakes with pomegranate-orange mascarpone buttercream
Seasalt cacao nib oreos with meyer lemon caramel filling
Candied crabapples.)

Crabby Candied Apples

What's more Americana Halloween than the good ol' candied apple?

pick your poison, Snow White?

For a while now, I've wanted to make candied crabapples because everything is cuter in miniature!  But in years past, I hadn't been able to find a good, reliable, and reasonably priced (and I say reasonably priced because this is important to a grad student who has a kitchen/baking obsession) source for crabapples.  Until I happened to waltz into Whole Foods this past weekend and lo and behold-- a stand of the cutest little apples ever.  :-D  Yippee!

I've also been a little obsessed with the spooky candied apples that I first saw on mattbites.com a few weeks ago and have since been popping up everywhere.  I mean, the black is just downright creepy.

(poor red apple...)

Candied apples are super simple and easy to make.  And, crabapples make for the perfect candied apples.  Not only are they small so that you can actually manage to sink your teeth into them but also they come with a built in stem, so no need to go about forcing twigs or sticks into your apple cores.

Oh--and one more thing.  Here's what I did with the leftover melted sugar:

Black candy corn lollipops!  :-D  Can you say, sugar high?

Anyways, I have to apologize for the terseness of this post!  I've been extremely swamped at work so blogging and baking have been relegated to very late-night tasks.  Tomorrow will be a whole day of more Halloween party-prep, so I'll see everyone back here tomorrow night for another round of Halloween treats!

Read on for recipe...

Hallo-week: Seasalt cacao nib oreos with meyer lemon caramel filling

Here's a bit of a tricky treat for y'all: a cookie that's sweet but salty.

I've been a bit obsessed with making sandwich cookies lately--don't ask me why because I have NO idea, so I couldn't get this idea out of my head for my Halloween party.  Originally, I'd wanted to make pumpkin oreos, but when I realized that I had too many pumpkin-flavored treats on my list of desserts to make, I had to rack my brain for a different flavor of oreo, and these sweet-but-salty cookies came about.

Seasalt and cacao nib oreos

with meyer lemon caramel filling

They are quite a mind trip but soooo good at the same time!  When you first bite into these, you taste the sweetness of the filling and the caramel but then the sea salt hits and the overall impression that you're left with is that you just ate a yummy but salty cookie.  Bizarre!  I also have to warn you that you'll really want to eat this cookie dough because it's nice and chocolate-y and not sweet at all, so I found myself popping cookie dough in my mouth whenever I had a chance.  Oops.  *innocent look*  I can't wait to serve these at the Halloween party and to see the look on people's faces when they expect a sweet cookie but get hit with savory instead!

Read on for the recipe...

Happy Hallo-week!

Happy Hallo-Week! from Desserts for Breakfast!  *Mwahahahahahahaha!*

Halloween is an Event with a capital 'E' in my household.  Since my junior year of undergrad, I've hosted a Halloween bash, and each year, it just gets better and better (or, shall I say spookier and spookier?).  *cue mood lighting*

Homemade Blood Candles

There's just something about Halloween that makes it so much fun.  Like the excuse to eat tons of candy and sugar!  Or the total kitchiness (is that a word?) of those cotton cobwebs and plastic spider rings.  And the permission to dress up as someone or something other than yourself!  Escapism at its best.  And, the best thing about Halloween for me is that it marks the beginning of Holiday Season because right after Halloween, it's Thanksgiving, and right after Thanksgiving, it's Christmas, and I looooove my holiday cheer. :-)  So that's just one more reason to celebrate All Hallow's Eve.

Anyways, this week is all about gearing up for my big party on Saturday night.  So each day, all the way up until the Scary Soiree, I'll be posting recipes and stories from my preparations for the party, provided, of course, that my day job doesn't get in the way.

I'd love to hear how you all are planning to celebrate Halloween and what you're doing to prepare for it!  Here's wishing you all a Happy and Haunted Hallo-week!