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Recipe: chocolate hazelnut sandies

This past weekend was closing weekend for our local ski hill. We considered the mobs of people trying to squeeze in one last ski day of the season and decided to head in the opposite direction. Backcountry skiing is more effort than resort skiing. In essence, you are your own ski lift. But the rewards are many and include fresh tracks, solitude, spectacular views, and a great workout. The snow is skiing the way it typically does in early May, so unless we get some promising storms, our ski days are numbered.

skinning up

pausing to admire our backyard

whoop whoop!

skiing out

I’m actually okay with the ski season coming to an end – I mean, my big toenail is okay with ski season coming to an end. I injured it in late January on a ski tour and it has since turned dark purple, doing those things that tell you it is going to fall off in 6 or 9 months. The plan is to ski as long as there is snow and just ignore any pain. So far, so good!

Now on to the recipe. As a rule, when I blog a recipe, I try to have double the amount of impossible-to-get-in-my-mountain-town ingredients needed in case something tanks. I’m happy to say that the backup ingredients are rarely (but not never!) required, which leaves me with extra ingredients. Sometimes they get incorporated into our meals, sometimes they get bumped to the next recipe. Other times, they spark new ideas – like these chocolate hazelnut sandies. It’s a pecan sandie, but chocolate with a different nut!

toasted hazelnuts, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, salt, butter, flour, vanilla extract, hazelnut liqueur

mix the cocoa powder and flour together

chop the hazelnuts into a coarse grind

ground hazelnuts, flour-cocoa mixture, powdered sugar

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Recipe: strawberry semifreddo

Easter always sneaks up on me because we don’t celebrate it. My heathen ritual is to buy a bag of Whopper mini eggs when they go on sale the following Monday and then promptly forget about it for another year. But I happen to have a lovely dessert that is good enough for spring holidays, weekend projects, special dinners, or basically any time you can get your hands on sweet sweet strawberries. California and Mexico strawberries have been in our stores lately, but I held off until they were the right color and smelled like candy.

here’s what i made

That’s a strawberry semifreddo – creamy, half-frozen, soft, fruity, slightly tangy, like a frozen mousse. I’ve had the recipe for many years, but never made it until yesterday. Back in the day, I took a terrific 10-week pastry skills course in Boulder as my reward for defending my dissertation. It was fast-paced and fun, but there wasn’t enough time to make all of the recipes. We were split into teams of two and each pair tackled a different pastry (or two) each week. At the end of every class, we divvied up our finished masterpieces and took them home. Except I never took the strawberry semifreddo home because it was summer and I had a 45-minute drive back to the house. But it sure looked good. Seeing the strawberries in the market the other day, I realized I wanted to finally make that semifreddo.

grand marnier, sugar, lemon, strawberries

wash, hull, and halve the strawberries

strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, grand marnier

toss it all together and macerate

I adapted the recipe from my class, which was adapted from Sherry Yard’s recipe. Her version has a pâte sucrée base, but I didn’t want to deal with baking anything, so I went with a vanilla cookie crumb base like you might find on a cheesecake. You can use graham cracker crumbs if you like. I thought vanilla cookies (scavenged from vanilla sandwich cookies) would be fun. You can leave the creme filling in, if you like, but I scrape it off. Or you can use lemon cookies or vanilla wafers.

sugar, butter, cookies (nor pictured: salt)

scraping off the vanilla bean creme

pile the cookies into the food processor

cookie crumbs

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Recipe: huckleberry mess

It was a great weekend for ski touring since there was plenty of new snow that fell AND STAYED IN PLACE. If you live in the Front Range, it feels like you rent snow more than anything else because it falls and then gets blown into the next county to the east within 24 hours. Erin and I took turns breaking trail through the powder so Banjo wouldn’t have to body plow the whole way up. Normally he doesn’t mind body plowing through snow, but it was 2°F and we wanted to keep our furball buddy comfortable and safe.

winter did not forsake us!

banjo was having a blast

on my ski tour with jeremy, sunday

Last week, I had baked a batch of huckleberry meringues to distribute to friends for the Chinese New Year. I saved one out for Jeremy because he is so fond of them. But before he could eat it, I decided to serve it up with some extra goodies. I personally find meringues a little dull. They’re fun to make and beautiful to look at, but when I eat a meringue straight up, it isn’t terribly exciting. Pop a meringue on top of a cloud of whipped cream and fruit, and you’ve transformed “meh” into “wow!”.

wow!

This is nothing new. It’s basically an Eton mess with huckleberries in place of strawberries. Obviously, I don’t have access to fresh huckleberries in March, but I *DO* have heaps of frozen huckleberries squirreled away in my chest freezer. I thought the frozen berries could benefit from a little lemon, sugar, and heat to make a nice sauce. Jeremy was so utterly smitten with this dessert, that he suggested I blog the recipe. I didn’t think that was necessary, but you can see who got his way.

so i made another batch of huckleberry meringues

whipping cream, vanilla extract, almond extract, huckleberries, lemon, meringues, and sugar (divided)

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