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This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly is Double Chocolate Pudding Pie and was chosen by Tessa of Handle the Heat. I was excited when Tessa picked this because I have not yet made a dessert for Craving Ellie in My Belly.

You can find Ellie Krieger’s recipe here or on page 280 of The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life.

I did not have time to make a whole pie, but I was able to fit in the pudding yesterday morning before work. I halved the recipe because I just did not need a whole pie’s worth of pudding. I split the pudding mixture between 4 ramekins so they would be fairly small servings.

I did not make any changes to the recipe, which includes low fat milk, cocoa powder, and 2 oz of bittersweet chocolate. Cornstarch thickens the chocolate mixture and gelatin helps it set.

This was super easy to make and it was really delicious. I took a couple of graham crackers and crushed them and sprinkled them on top. This had a lovely rich chocolate flavor and was creamy considering the low fat milk and small bit of actual chocolate. It was somewhat reminiscent of Jello chocolate pudding, but definitely better, and without whatever additives and preservatives are in the Jello snacks.

I mark this as a win in the Ellie Krieger column. It is a great lower fat dessert option and the pudding alone is a great little treat to make for yourself that you can feel good about eating. I hope everyone else liked this. I think as long as you were not expecting anything uber rich and decadent, this pudding will do the trick.

Check out the Craving Ellie in My Belly blogroll to see what the other ladies thought of this.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was Four Star Bread Pudding and was chosen by Lauren of A Baking Blog AKA Upper East Side Chronicle.

I will start out by saying that I am not a bread pudding lover in general, and neither is Nick. However, I have been wanting to make this recipe for a few months now, ever since we went out to dinner at Central Michel Richard and Geoff ordered some sort of chocolate butter bread pudding for dessert. It was so delicious and I realized how decadent bread pudding could be. I actually bought bread shortly after that dinner to make this bread pudding, but I never got around to it.

So I was super excited when I saw that this recipe was picked. I have to say that it did not compare to the bread pudding from Central, but it was pretty damn good.

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MARZIPAN!!!!!!

After Joe Pastry’s subliminal prodding, I made some almond paste from scratch. Considering how much of the stuff a commercial bakery would go through, I made a very small amount, but I realized that I was only going to need a little bit of it to make the pastry cream to fill my Danish, so I decided to use the rest to make one of Sara’s favorite sweets: Marzipan. Please find the process(es) after the jump.

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This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie is Lemon Custard Cups and was chosen by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles.

I ended up making these twice. The first time around I tried to make a healthier version by using 2% milk instead of whole milk. I think I over baked them a bit and found the whole combination lacking flavor. So, back to the drawing board I went.

When I set out to make these the second time, I caved and used the whole milk and I added additional lemon zest, the lemon extract, and a vanilla bean.

The flavor was definitely much improved the second time around. However, this was not my favorite Dorie recipe. I think my main issue was the texture, which was too eggy for me. I would have enjoyed this more if it was a pudding instead of a custard. I prefer the smooth creaminess of a pudding. To jazz it up a bit, we decided some pyrotechnics were in order. So we turned one of the custards into a crème brûlée (I know, I know, there is only whole milk and not cream in there), which was actually quite tasty and the crunchiness of the sugar helped me get over the eggy custard texture.

Overall, I enjoyed the flavor of these, but I learned here that I just don’t love a custard. If you do, this is definitely something you should try.

See my adapted recipe and pictures (including the curdling of my milk) after the jump.

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Now doesn’t that just look delicious and oh so impressive and complicated? The only one of those descriptors with any validity is delicious. Yes soufflés are a little time consuming (maybe an hour from start to finish with 15 minutes hands on time) and yes they can be a little finicky, but not anywhere near the delicate and fussy light in which they are popularly portrayed. They are basically a roux thickened custard, lightened with whipped egg whites, nothing you can’t handle, trust me. Serve them up in decorative ramekins and you have a plated dessert with little extra effort. I think you will be surprised at just how easy this soufflé recipe really is…

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Meyer lemon season is upon us. A Meyer lemon is a hybrid of a lemon and a Mandarin orange or a sweet orange (Wikipedia entry). They were originally imported from China in the early 1900's and were given the name Meyer lemon after agricultural explorer Fred Meyer, an employee of the USDA who first introduced the plant to the US. Today, most Meyer lemons are grown in California and peak season is November, December, and January.

Nick and I were walking through the grocery store a few weeks ago and came upon these beauties. We threw a couple in the cart with no particular plan for them except that they would become something delicious - and you can see by the title that they fulfilled their prophecy.

The finished product looked something like this. The gelato was super smooth and had a great balance of tartness, sweetness, and creaminess.

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