It’s healthy (homemade yogurt ice cream on fresh sliced apples,) it tastes great, and best of all, it’s very, very messy. These ice cream sandwiches are meant to be eaten outside, hopefully not too far from a hose or a pool. You must remember that feeling: hot and sweaty meets messy and cold and delicious. It’s a little adventure.
Ginger snaps are my favorite cookie, so as we swelter through this ‘worst-that-I can-remember-in-forty-years’ summer in Washington, I realize it might be time to start thinking about changing how we eat to accommodate these weather changes. I took my favorite ginger snap recipe and made several half batches, adding varying amounts of chili powder to find just the right amount of heat to get the body glowing and cooling off. I really like these; in fact they may be the first cookie meant to be paired with a beer.
You say you love to grill out? Here’s a ‘dessert on the grill’ recipe with panache. I love this cake because you can prep it, pack it up, and take it to a beach picnic, barbecue, or the park – any place that has a (clean) grill for the last-minute prep. It’s a summer novelty that can be eaten multiple ways, as a plain chocolate cupcake for purists, a lovely grilled and caramelized chocolate cupcake, or – as its highest and best self – a mouthwatering caramelized cupcake with serious vanilla ice cream melting on top.
Do you all know who Donna Hay is? Her cookbooks are my favorite, because everything is beautiful and inventive. She takes a familiar recipe, adds an unexpected ingredient or two, and all of a sudden there’s this amazing thing you can’t wait to eat. Blackberry elderflower pie is one of her recipes.
There’s an English dessert called Knickerbocker Glory – a lot like an American ice cream sundae but with lots of delectable summer fruits. I came upon Mary Berry’s recipe for a Knickerbocker Glory a while ago and filed it away for future reference, and then the other day I came upon a recipe for a healthy version of a Knickerbocker Glory and knew I had to try them both.
