Chewy Chocolate Cherry Pop Rock Sprinkled Brownies

Buzzfeed recently posted a video ranking different celebrity brownie recipes. This one by Gordon Ramsay is sprinkled in Pop Rocks (or as he calls them, “popping candy.” We tried this recipe out for a pre-Fourth of July BBQ over the weekend.

We love watching all of Gordon Ramsay's shows, but especially Masterchef Junior. I'm always so impressed by the talent of these 8-12 year olds! Plus, there's a lot less drama and Gordon is way nicer to the kids than the adults... 

I have to say, I followed the recipe and mine did NOT turn out as expected. The brownies were so thick that the inside wasn’t cooking so it was liquid inside at the end of the cooking time. Also, it recommended lining the pan with parchment paper, which ended up being more of a hassle than just spraying the pan like I normally do. I was ready to call it a Pinstrosity, but after cooking them for a bit longer and hiding all the crevices in sprinkles and Pop Rocks, they weren’t nearly as horrible looking.

In addition to Pop Rocks, the brownies have dried cherries inside giving them a Black-Forest Cake flavor. It was kind of a strange combination; I think I’d try the same base recipe but with toasted coconut or nuts on top next time.

If you do end up using Pop Rocks, make sure to wait for the brownies to cool and sprinkle them right before serving, otherwise they may end up melting and losing their pop. Also, I got red and blue Pop Rocks for Fourth of July, however, be warned that the color on the packages does not match the color inside. The green package is actually red watermelon inside and the blue package is green tropical punch (the strawberry was the only predictable color).

Hope you have better success than I do if you try these for Independence Day! At least they tasted better than they looked...

Chewy Chocolate Cherry Pop Rock Sprinkled Brownies (adapted from Gordon Ramsay)

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter
• 1-1/3 cups sugar
• 16 oz dark chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1 t vanilla
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 5 eggs
• 1 cup dried sour cherries
• 2 T milk
• ½ cup Pop Rocks
• Sprinkles

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x13 pan (I’d steer clear of using the parchment lining)

2. Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

3. Melt 2/3 of the chocolate chips. I put mine in the microwave and heated on 30 second increments while stirring until liquid.

4. Pour the chocolate into the butter mixture and combine. Add the flour, salt, vanilla extract, and cocoa powder and mix together.

5. Crack the eggs into a separate bowl and beat with a fork until well mixed. Stir the eggs into the chocolate mixture.  

6. Stir in the sour cherries and remaining chocolate chips. If the mixture feels stiff, loosen it with a few tablespoons of milk.  

7. Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the brownies are coming away from the side.

8. Take the brownies out of the oven and leave to cool.

*At this point, we were running late for the BBQ, so we cut the brownies much too early, then ended up making a mess. Make sure you allow time for the brownies to cool completely

9. When cooled and ready to serve, sprinkle with Pop Rocks and sprinkles.

*We tried to use more melted chocolate as a frosting, which tasted good but caused the Pop Rocks to melt. If you use them as a topping, they shouldn’t touch anything liquid to remain intact.

Want to try out other celebrity brownie recipes? Check out Buzzfeed's video here: 

Valentine's Day Garlic Shrimp Alfredo Dinner for Two

I love Buzzfeed Tasty’s video recipes.  They always make the meal look so simple. Luckily, this one was actually as easy as it looked.

When we were trying to decide what to cook for Valentine’s Day, I stumbled upon this menu for two with bruschetta, garlic shrimp alfredo pasta, and chocolate mousse for dessert. 

While it says “for two,” it really should have said “for two for a week” because we could have fed ten.  Which was fine because the meal was delicious and we wanted leftovers. 

We didn’t follow the mousse recipe from Buzzfeed.  I actually had found a recipe that used coconut cream instead of whipping cream, but it didn’t work at all. No matter how long I whipped the coconut cream, it just wouldn’t fluff up.  We ended up adding normal cream and saving the dessert (I would still include the coconut cream because I liked the slight coconut taste it added). 

We enjoyed the meal with wine from one of our new favorite restaurants, Cooper’s Hawk.  Their Barbera is an amazing deep red wine that we received with our Cooper’s Hawk “Wine of the Month” club. We aren’t connoisseurs of wine by any means (we are happy with our “Two Buck Chuck” Shiraz from Trader Joe’s), but this wine is really fantastic.  My friend James gave us a wine aerator that attaches to the bottle so there's no need for a separate decanter to enhance the wine's flavor.  

The wine of the month club costs $18.99 to sign up, and they give you and your significant other $15 gift cards the month of your birthday. Since Lance and I both have January birthdays, we received a bottle of wine plus a $30 Cooper’s Hawk gift card for only $18.99 (you can cancel the card anytime…)  

Below is the full dinner recipe if you’d like to recreate this dinner!

Tomato Basil Bruschetta  (adapted from Buzzfeed Tasty)

Ingredients:

·        1 6-inch baguette

·        ¼ cup olive oil

·        3 medium tomatoes, diced

·        1 clove garlic, minced

·        1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

·        1 tablespoon basil, chopped

·        ½ teaspoon salt

·        ½ teaspoon pepper

·        1 clove garlic, whole

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450°F
2. Slice the baguette into ½-inch rounds and place on a baking sheet.
3. Brush both sides of the baguette slices with olive oil.

4. Bake for 6 minutes until slightly crispy.
5. In a medium bowl, combine the tomatoes, minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, basil, salt, and pepper.

6. Rub the garlic into one side of the baguette slices, then spoon the tomato mixture evenly across the slices.

Garlic Bacon Shrimp Alfredo  (adapted from Buzzfeed Tasty)

Ingredients:

·        6 slices bacon, chopped

·        1 pound shrimp, deveined and peeled

·        1 teaspoon salt

·        ½ teaspoon black pepper

·        ½ onion, diced

·        1 medium tomato, diced

·        3 cloves garlic, minced

·        2 cups heavy cream

·        1 pound fettuccine, cooked

·        1 cup parmesan cheese, grated

·        ½ parsley, chopped

Directions:

1. Cook the bacon in a large pot until crispy.

2. Add the shrimp, salt, and pepper, cooking until the shrimp is pink throughout.

3. Remove the shrimp and bacon.
4. Add the onions, tomatoes, and garlic, cooking until the garlic is slightly starting to brown.

5. Add the cream and bring to a boil.

6. Toss in the fettuccine with the shrimp, bacon, parmesan cheese, and parsley, stirring until the cheese has completely melted and the sauce coats the shrimp and pasta nicely.

Chocolate Coconut Mousse  (adapted from Cafe Delites)

Ingredients:

·        1 can full fat coconut cream

·        1 cup heavy whipping cream (not shown below, but the coconut cream did not fluff as expected...) 

·        2 T confectioners’ sugar

·        3 T unsweetened cocoa powder

·        2 squares dark chocolate, shaved

·        Strawberries, raspberries and/or mint to garnish

Directions:

1. Place sealed can of coconut cream in the refrigerator overnight.  Without shaking the can, open and scoop out the thick cream sitting on top of the water.  Discard the liquid.

2. Add the heavy whipping cream and confectioners’ sugar, then beat on high with either a hand mixer or stand mixer (I used my KitchenAid).  When thick and creamy, reserve 4 T of the plain whipped cream to the side to use as a topping.

3. Fold in the cocoa powder and beat until smooth. 

4. Serve the chocolate mousse in a glass topped with the plain whipped cream.  Garnish with the fruit, mint, and shaved dark chocolate.  

Almond Joy Easter Cheesecake

I’ve been slacking on the food blogging lately – way too much else going on right now!  We are less than a month away from getting married (April 30^th!!!) and just bought a house, so it seems every spare moment of my time in consumed with wedding planning & house stuff. 

Despite all the craziness, I had to keep up my Easter tradition of baking a cheesecake.  This was my 9^th annual cake – it’s starting to get difficult to think of new flavors to try out.  Last year was Chocolate Bailey’s – and you can see recipes for all the previous years here. 

I love anything with coconut – so Almond Joys are one of my favorite candies.  (My family agrees – my parents admitted to stealing some of my Almond Joys from my Halloween baskets…)  Although if they combined Mounds and Almond Joys to make them dark chocolate with almonds, it would be even better…

I think this cheesecake was probably the best I’ve made so far.  Not only are there almonds and coconut on the garnish, but they are baked into the crust and in the filling as well!  It was pretty time consuming, but definitely worth it. 

Almond Joy Cheesecake (adapted from The Curvy Carrot)

Ingredients:

·        For the crust:

·        Coconut oil spray

·        1½ cups graham cracker crumbs (I used cinnamon-flavored)

·        1½ cups sweetened flaked coconut, toasted

·        ½ cup sliced almonds, toasted

·        ¼ cup sugar

·        ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:

·        4 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, at room temperature

·        1 cup sugar

·        4 large eggs

·        1 cup sweetened flaked coconut, toasted

·        1 T coconut extract

·        1 cup sliced almonds, toasted

For the glaze:

·        1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

·        ¾ cup heavy cream

·        1½ t vanilla extract

·        Whole roasted almonds, toasted coconut, for garnish

Directions:

For the crust:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Toast all your coconut and almonds for the recipe (keeping an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn…)

2. Spray your springform pan generously with coconut oil spray.

3. In a food processor, pulse the graham crackers, almonds, coconut, and sugar to a fine crumb (my food processer is tiny, so I processed the ingredients individually then added them to my Kitchenaid mixer to blend…)

4. With the machine running, slowly add the melted butter and pulse until it resembles moist sand (or do this in a mixer).

5. Press the mixture into the bottom and 1-inch up the sides of the pan.

6. Bake the crust for about 12 minutes, or until set and lightly browned.

7. Remove from the oven and let cool.

8.  Readjust oven temperature to 325 degrees.

For the filling: 

9.  In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth.

10.  Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

11. Add the coconut and coconut extract.

12.  Stop the mixer, and gently fold in the toasted almonds with a spatula until well combined.

13. Transfer the filling to the cooled crust and bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes (until the crust is puffy and lightly browned).

14. Remove the cheesecake from the oven and let cool completely on a wire rack.

For the chocolate glaze: 

15. Combine the chocolate chips, cream, and vanilla in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently until smooth.

16.  Remove the pan from the heat and let cool to room temperature.

17. Pour the glaze over the cheesecake (which is still in the springform pan) and spread evenly.

18. Garnish with the whole almonds and remaining toasted coconut.

19.  Chill the cheesecake overnight or until firm and set.

20.  When ready to serve, run a knife around the perimeter of the pan to loosen the cake.  Release the pan sides and serve. Enjoy!