Comfort Foods and Indulgences

Panna Cotta is one of those great desserts that you can make ahead of time.  It's so quick and easy and can be served in any pretty glass.  When I make this recipe, I always have some mixture left over and I pour the extra into small ramekins.  You can also pour this into coffee cups or espresso cups for a really fun presentation.

Panna Cotta means "cooked cream" in Italian and is a very adaptable recipe and  can be flavored with just about anything.  If you want to leave out the cocoa powder from this recipe, you can add some vanilla bean and have vanilla panna cotta.  Or add a touch of honey or a little pureed blueberries.  You really can flavor it any way you like.  

I'm calling this a pie. Yes, it resembles a quiche, but I prefer to call it a pie. It seems more manly that way. Plus I wanted a more rustic looking version that does not require rolling anything out or having to make actual dough.

The crust here is cheese based, you just press it in the pan and it's ready to go...no skills required. While quiche is often served for just breakfast or brunch, this is definitely perfect for dinner too.

It's not eggy or flavorless. In fact it's bursting with all kinds of tastes and works great for leftovers. Enjoy this one over the weekend!

A brief summary of what summer represents:

• the beach
• the ice cream man
• lazy day
• sleeping outside in a tent
• staying up late
• movie’s under the stars (at Jeni’s)
• family vacation
• no homework
• s’mores
• fireworks
• Dodger stadium

S’mores, baked in a pan.  Go figure.  I found a FANTASTIC  recipe for a s’mores bar. Although the action of putting the marshmallow on the stick, setting it over the campfire, burning it up is all fun and games, these bars, baked in the oven can’t be beat.  I whipped up these, last minute, for a party that Eli was going to.  

Have you ever had bananas in your kitchen that were so black and shriveled, you almost threw them out? It's happened to me so many times. Day after day I I tell myself I will make a batch of banana muffins. And finally, the day arrives when I actually pick up the deflated bunch of almost unrecognizable fruit and head for the door, with intentions of taking them out to the woods for animals to enjoy. But, I just can't do it. So, this week, I squeezed the mushy fruit from its shriveled, dark skin and stirred it into a rich mix of cream cheese, sugar and eggs to make cheesecake.

I must back up a little bit at this point. Years ago, in 2005 actually, I copied a recipe for Hot Buttered Rum Cheesecakes with Rum-Caramel Sauce from that year's December issue of Bon Appetit magazine. I ordered a bunch of tiny (4 1/2-inch) springform pans, ready to make the cheesecakes and give them as gifts. It never happened that year, or any year since that time. But, I still have the recipe. I vaguely remembered the recipe instructions for reducing some dark rum to stir into the cake batter. With the experience of tasting warm, rum-spiked bananas foster still clear in my mind – I made several flaming pans full of the dessert for a recent fundraising event for the Headwaters Science Center in Bemidji – I wondered if I could match the flavors of that dessert in a cheesecake.