Tag: Whipped Cream

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Rhubarb Fool

As soon as the snow is gone, my body starts to crave greens, my eyes long to see green things growing, my mouth starts to water at the thought of rhubarb desserts. Almost as soon as the rhubarb was big enough to pick, I made a strawberry-rhubarb crisp. A couple of days later, I used chickpea flour to create a rhubarb coffee cake. A week went by before I made a rhubarb jam bar. I picked some rhubarb to make my favorite rhubarb brownies, but without knowing my plans, my son asked if I could make something light with it.

“Sure,” I said. “What about rhubarb fool?”

Jump to Recipe

This is not a traditional fool recipe. Because I assumed there were missing ingredients and instructions.

When you google “fool” it’ll tell you that it’s pureed fruit mixed with custard or whipped cream. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_fool) This one, regardless of how great-grandma intended it, is both. We could talk about who the fool is here, but I’m working on keeping my self-esteem high. Also, the dessert is excellent served this way.

Another example of how I go the extra mile.

I had this boss who was fond of cliches, but in the most excellent way. (Teamwork makes the dream work, anyone?) When doing Business Analysis and Project Management work, he reminded us that when the project sponsor wants says they want a can of peas to give them a can of peas. However, if your sponsor says they need a can of peas, but your analysis shows they need a can of corn, give them both the peas and corn and let them decide what they need.

My version of the rhubarb fool is like that. Maybe you want a heavier custard? You can opt out of the whipped cream. Maybe you just want cream with no custard, that’s ok also. I suggest adding the rhubarb no matter if you choose cream or custard, but do you.

If you are one of those quarantine sourdough bakers, this makes an excellent topping for sourdough pancakes or waffles. If we’d had any leftovers, I’m sure they would’ve been good for a day or two, but we had no leftovers.

You’d be a rhubarb fool to not use pie plant in this way…

The Recipe:

Rhubarb Fool Recipe Handwritten

Rhubarb Fool

A light and creamy rhubarb dessert.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Cook Time 30 minutes
Cooling time 1 hour
Course Dessert
Cuisine American

Ingredients
  

Rhubarb Sauce

  • 6 Cups Rhubarb chopped
  • 1 Cup Sugar

Custard

  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1 Cup milk scalded
  • 2 TB Sugar
  • pinch salt
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla

Whipped Cream

  • 1 pt Heavy Whipping Cream
  • 1/4 cup Sugar

Instructions
 

Rhubarb Sauce preparation

  • Combine rhubarb sauce ingredients and cook until tender. Cool for about an hour.

Custard Preparation

  • Combine cream ingredients over low heat and whisk until thickened. In order to prevent your eggs from curdling, mix eggs with a couple of TB of scalded milk prior to adding to the rest of the ingredients. Whisk constantly. Mixture will coat the back of a spoon when thickened sufficiently. Cool for about an hour.

Whipping Cream Preparation

  • I always use my mixer for this, but some people enjoy doing it by hand. Fit your mixer with the whip attachment, add the cream, start whipping at top speed. As cream whips, gradually add sugar. Cream is sufficiently whipped when you can see the tracks of the whip through the cream. When the mixer is stopped and the head is raised, soft peaks should be visible. Whipping too far will create butter, which is really good, but not with sugar and not for this.

Presentation

  • Fold together rhubarb sauce, custard, and whipped cream. Serve in parfait glasses and garnish.
Keyword dessert recipe, Pudding, Rhubarb

If you like this rhubarb dessert and are hungry for other recipes, you might want to try: Pineapple Rhubarb Ring, Cinnamon Rhubarb Cake, Rhubarb Jam, or Rhubarb Dream Dessert. If you play with gluten-free versions of the cakes, let me know how they turn out.

Pinnable Rhubarb Fool Image
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Holiday Confetti Salad

When I was a very small child, my mom dressed me up in my blue and white polka-dot coat and took me to see Santa.  She did not go up to Santa with me, but my brothers did.  We sat on Santa’s lap and told him what we wanted for Christmas.  When we returned to my mom’s side, she took my brothers aside and asked them what I told Santa I wanted.  Disgustedly, my 4-year old brothers told my mom I wanted a blueberry birthday cake.

A picture of me ran in the paper that year.  I’m wide-eyed as I held up my knitted mitten to greet Santa.

40 years later, my eyes aren’t that wide.  I still wear blue and white polka dots.  I still have odd conversations with old men, although not usually while sitting on their laps. My brothers are still confounded by me, but less disgusted.  Any knitted mittens I wear now, I knit myself.  The request for blueberry birthday cake has become a request for much more practical things.  (And I’m adult now, I’ll eat blueberry birthday cake any time I want to, I don’t have to wait for Christmas.)

This is where it would be completely awesome for me to whip out my recipe for blueberry cake of some sort and tell you all that it makes Christmas dinner perfect, but, sadly, I don’t have that recipe in my collection.  What I do have, though, is Holiday Confetti Salad.

Doesn’t that just sound like a party in your mouth?

(Insert your favorite dad joke here about “throwing” this dish together or “tossing” the salad.  You know, because of “Confetti”.)

You know, when I think Christmas dinner, I don’t think about crown roast or fruitcake (although I have some of that sitting in sherry getting ready for Christmas), I just imagine cutting into a nicely molded congealed salad.  Holiday Confetti Salad does not disappoint.

Lime, celery, pineapple, and cherries combine with cream cheese and whipped cream to create a pale green cloud flecked with small red bits.  The Holiday Confetti Salad is quite festive looking, especially when garnished with more maraschino cherries and celery leaves.

I made this before I had proper molds, so the only pictures I have of this beautiful salad are in a glass bowl.  I’d love it if someone else made this and posted pictures for me to see.

The Recipe:

If you like this recipe, check out Fluffy Orange Salad, 24, 24 Hour Salad, Something Different Rhubarb Salad, and Blueberry Salad Mold.

 

 

 

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State Fair Worthy Cherry Cream Puffs

It’s summertime and festivals area going on all around us.  Wisconsin State Fair is still a month away.  The minute I said, “State Fair” people around here started picturing cream puffs.  In an homage to the dairy state, one of the most popular offerings at the fair is cream puffs as big as your head.  The delicate choux pastry exists only as a vehicle (and excuse) for consumption of clouds of whipped cream.  I’m not talking about those wispy clouds that you might see on a sunny summer day as you lay lazily in the grass.  I’m talking about the huge clouds that start to gather right before a sudden cloudburst.  You get the idea.

You are starting to want a cream puff about now, aren’t you?

I’m going to tell you something else that’s going to make your head start to spin in another direction.  It’s cherry season at my house.  Those of you that follow me on Facebook or Instagram have already been treated to pictures of my fabulous cherry stoner (that needs a new handle).  But what was I doing with those cherries?  First I made a Cherry Meringue Pie. It was rapidly consumed.  I probably need to make some Cherry Dessert one of these days and some cherry-limeade jam. But with egg yolks leftover from the meringue, I needed to something.  I thought about various curds, lemon, lime, grapefruit, orange…nothing sounded like what I wanted.

I started searching through my recipes trying to figure out what I could do.  It was staring me in the face.  Right there on the screen.  Cherry Cream Puffs.  I was helpless to resist the pull.  I had everything on hand that I needed.  The egg yolks got used my choux with other eggs.  Most recipes call for additional whites to add more lightness to the pastry, but because these were there just so I didn’t have to spoon cherry whipped cream straight into my mouth, I didn’t really care how fluffy they were.

Because I was using raw sour cherries, I cooked the cherries with the syrup to sweeten them up a little bit.  And then, in a further act of rebellion, I folded everything into the whipped cream instead of serving the syrup as a sauce.  I stand by my decision.

My children could barely contain themselves through eating dinner (a lovely trout with satay sauce, rice, ginger scented beets, and a green salad).  They had watched me pull the cream puffs out of the oven and were ready to dig in without even knowing what I was going to fill them with.  As they were finishing their meals, I excused myself to whip the cream.  While pouring the cream I was interrupted as the girl pulled over a stool and nearly dropped it on my toe.  “Can I help?” she asked.  “What volume do you need it at?” She asked reaching to turn on the mixer.  “10,” I replied.

As the cream whipped she treated me to another of her fascinating stories about her imaginary friends.  When the cream was as thick as it could be without turning into butter, I folded in the cherry syrup I had made earlier.  By this time, I had 3 children watching, begging to be allowed to participate in the tasting.  “After dishes.” I told them.  “I just need to get a picture.”  But once I had licked my finger after putting the cream puff on the plate, I knew it was all over.  By the time the dishes were done, there were 3 lonely puffs left on the tray. (It did take them a long time to do the dishes, but still…)  The last 3 didn’t make it to bed time.

There was still some cream left. Some of it got used to top chocolate marshmallow ice cream, the rest of it was used for…oh, I can’t tell you yet.  That’s going to require another post.

The Recipe:
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Cranberry Fluff

Cranberry Fluff

Isn’t there something so nice about the word “Fluff”?  It’s soft and comforting and towels out of the dryer.  When someone tells you that a “fluff” is on the menu, you know what to expect.  Something soft, puffy, creamy, and cloyingly sweet, perhaps with marshmallows and definitely with whipped cream or Cool Whip.  At nearly any deli counter in America, you can pick up a plastic tub filled with pistachio pineapple fluff.  (Sometimes the salads are called “Ambrosia” instead of “fluff”, but we all know what they mean.)DSCN3235I found this recipe when I was looking for recipes to bring to our friends’ house for Thanksgiving dinner.  I scoured 11 different recipes looking for the perfect dish to bring along with my Cherry Meringue, Pumpkin, and Apple pies.  I asked a number of coworkers for their favorite thing to eat at Thanksgiving and one of them mentioned “Cranberry Fluff”.  I had never heard of it.  When I called my grandma to ask about it, she fondly remembered it as one of her favorites.  How could I not make it after that? DSCN3236As an aside, that was such a good conversation with my grandma.  I love talking to her about her food memories and bonding with her that way.  We chatted for a decent amount of time about the blog.  I hope she knows that she’s really the inspiration for it.

 

I had a few minor modifications.  My apple was sweeter than I was expecting it to be.  The grocery store didn’t have green grapes that day, so I used red ones.  I didn’t read through all the instructions and didn’t let the cranberries, marshmallows, and sugar sit overnight.  I let them sit on the counter for a couple of hours instead.  The purpose of this is really just to soften everything and ensure that there are no big chunks of marshmallow.DSCN3239

 

So the verdict…holy buckets.  This was easily the best fluff salad that I’ve had.  It’s not as sweet and mushy as a lot of fluff salads.  The fruit and nuts add texture.  One of the kids thought the “pink fluff” was better than the “green fluff”.  It was good enough that I didn’t mind eating the leftovers (which were gone before I had to go back to work.)  It made a nice change from super tart cranberries.  It was sort of like a Waldorf salad, but not mayonnaise-y.  DSCN3238All in all, this dish is a keeper.  Get yourself some Wisconsin cranberries and make this one.  I think it’s a better dish than the Cooked Cranberry Salad.  (And in case you didn’t read about it before, the teacup is Wedgwood that I found at the thrift shop for less than $1.  I love the color, I love the pattern, it coordinates with my dining room and the rest of my blue and white dishes.)

Cranberry Fluff

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Cherry Dessert

I have this view of Iowans as practical people.  People without a lot of nonsense.  Straightforward, honest, and hardworking.  It’s a stereotype to be sure. But then again, some of those stereotypes are reinforced by literature.  So maybe I’m not totally off-base.

In college, I would take weekend visits to my grandparents’ house.  I usually brought along homework of some sort.  One weekend I brought along a book I was reading for one of my classes.  It was called Making Hay.  Grandpa picked up the book, studied it for a minute and turned to my grandma.  “Dorothy, look at this. Verlyn Klinkenborg.” “Who?” I asked.  “Oh, he used to play with your uncle when they were kids.”  I almost asked if they were sure it was the same guy, but then I realized that the chances of two people having that name were slim.

For Christmas this year, my husband got me the book Prairie Fires since I have been a fan of the Little House books since I was young.   In it, the author discusses both Laura Ingalls Wilder and Hamlin Garland‘s connection to Burr Oak, Iowa.  My grandparents introduced me to Hamlin Garland’s books when I was young.  We went on a tour of his house.  I can barely remember the trip, but my copy of Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly has moved with me for nearly 30 years.  DSCN3362The practical people that named some of these recipes were not nearly as eloquent as the writers which is why we have recipes named things like “Darned Good Candy” and “Cherry Dessert.”

So what is Cherry Dessert?  It’s a nut and cherry filled cake topped with a jammy cherry sauce and whipped cream.  It is delicious and addicting.

 

The first time I made it, I mixed everything up together (with cherries from my trees) and put it into a prepared 9×13 pan.  Before I even got it all into the pan, I realized that I probably should’ve used a smaller pan.  The cake layer was about equal to the whipped cream layer.  The bad part about this was that it took a large piece (or two) to leave me feeling satisfied and the cherry dessert would call my name as it sat in my fridge.  DSCN3368The second time I made it, I had much better results in a smaller 8×8 pan.  I neglected to let the cake cool completely before adding the whipped cream to the top.  The results were a bit runny and messy, but nonetheless incredible.

 

The sweetness of the cake, the tartness of the cherries, and the creamy layer all combine to make a dessert that satiates every dessert craving except chocolate.  It’s cool and a bit crunchy.  This is going to be a staple at my house during cherry season.   Cherry Dessert

Cherry Dessert

1 c sugar
1 egg
1 TB butter, melted
1 c flour
1 t soda
1/4 t salt
1 c sour cherries (reserve juice)
3/4 c nuts

Bake at 350 for 35 minutes

Cool.  Cover with whipped cream.

Heat juice, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 TB flour, 1 TB cornstarch.  Cook until thick.  Add 1 T butter. Chill, spread over cream.