Better than Robert Redford Part 2

Alrighty, today it’s part two of our Robert Redford dessert.

So when we met last, we had made the crust and puddings. Today we start off by making the cream cheese layer. Beat one brick of cream cheese (8 ounces) along with 1 cup of icing sugar. Whip up until smooth. Fold in about 2 cups of Cool Whip (that’s half of a 500ml container).

Spread this cream cheese mixture over the baked and cooled crust.

Now give the vanilla pudding a stir and spread that over the cream cheese layer.

After that, stir the chocolate pudding and spread that over the vanilla pudding layer.

If you plan on eating this right away you can do the final layer and topping now, if not, you can wait until you are ready to eat it. I made this over three days so I waited.

When you are ready, spread a nice thick layer of Cool Whip over the top. The remaining container from the cream cheese filling wasn’t quite enough so I actually used almost half of another 500ml container.

Finally use a vegetable peeler and peel a block of semi sweet chocolate. I used Bakers squares. Cut and serve. This was delicious. People had seconds and even thirds! Divine. 

Better than Robert Redford Cake

I bet you are intrigued by the title. Before we get to that, Happy October. September flew by as has all these months and weeks, haha.

This week we’re trying a new recipe. My mom found it in her recipe box. She first made this about 20 years ago and it is a recipe of my grandmother. We are making Better than Robert Redford cake. This cake involves pudding, chocolate, and whipped cream. It also has five layers of goodness.

I’m making this cake a little differently. It does take a little while as there are a few steps so I started yesterday and will show you what I have so far and then share with you the rest and the finished product next week. I want to have the cake ready for Friday so two days in advance is pretty good for timing.

So here we go…

For the crust part of the cake you will need…

1 cup of flour

1 cup of crumbled graham wafer crumbs or chopped walnuts (your choice; we have a nut allergy)

½ cup of melted butter

Mix all these things together and then press in a buttered 13x9 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

                                                         

Allow to cool and cover before refrigerating.

I also did the pudding in advance. It is instant pudding that you have to use but I always worry about things setting.

So you’re not going to quite follow the box instructions.

Make the puddings in two plastic sealable containers.

                                                      

For the vanilla, use two of the big 153 gram boxes and add two cups of milk. Whisk for two minutes then put in the fridge.

                                   

                                             

The chocolate pudding comes in a 170 gram box so use two of those and add the same amount of milk and whisk and put that in the fridge as well.

                                              

That’s part one. Come back next week to see the finished product. 

Eggnog

This week we are going with a Christmas classic and that is eggnog. We’re used to drinking variations of eggnog in Canada and the US but the origin of eggnog is said to be in the UK.

In early Medieval Britain a drink called posset was consumed and that is what the first eggnog is thought to be. Posset was hot milk curdled with wine or ale and then had spices added. Sounds a lot like eggnog. Posset was also used as a cold and flu remedy and sometimes had eggs added to it as well. As time went on British Aristocrats started drinking eggnog because it contained milk, eggs, and sherry which were foods consumed by the wealthy. Eventually eggnog made its way to North America and President Washington began serving it to visitors and added lots and lots of different types of alcohol.

Over the years eggnog has changed and depending on where you are can have different types of alcohol added. Some of the alcohol that may be in your eggnog are brandy, rum, bourbon, sherry, and cognac.

Most eggnog recipes will include milk or cream, raw eggs (make sure they are pasteurized), sugar, spices (cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg), vanilla, and often times alcohol. The ones you buy in a carton at the store of course will be non-alcoholic but you can add flavours into it when you serve it.

Fun fact, a Tom and Jerry is a hot eggnog cocktail that contains brandy and rum. Another fun fact, a nog or noggin was a Middle English word for a wooden mug for serving alcohol.

Instead of making actual eggnog, this week we made an eggnog pudding and it was delicious. So take a look at what we made with our featured Christmas traditional food.

Eggnog Pudding Recipe

1/3 cup of sugar

2 Tbsp. cornstarch

¼ tsp. of salt

2 ¼ cups of eggnog

3 egg yolks

1 ½ tsp. of vanilla

2 cups of whipped cream for the topping

In a heavy saucepan whisk the sugar, salt, and cornstarch.

Gradually whisk in the eggnog and egg yolks.

Set over medium heat and stir constantly until the pudding bubbles and thickens.

Remove the pot from the stove and add in the vanilla.

Transfer the pudding to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding. Let it cool slightly before putting in the fridge for about 3 hours to set.

While the pudding is setting, you can whip up some cream.

After the 3 or so hours are up, dish your pudding into ramekins and top with whipped cream. You can set out cinnamon, nutmeg, and sprinkles to top your pudding. I even tried milk chocolate chips and that was divine! Enjoy!

Love Potion and Pudding

It’s almost Valentine’s Day! And today we are making some super sweet treats that are very pink and quite festive.

We decided to try a drink called “Love Potion” and a pretty simple pink pudding with cookie dough brittle. This is kid friendly so you can get the kids to help out and make it as a treat for them or you can serve it for your sweetie and even make the drink a little more adultish (is that a word? Haha) if you want to.

How to make Love Potion

This drink was very yummy. I’ll admit, I drank mine right down when we tried making it.

Ok, so for this we just roughed it. You can look at the link below to see the actual recipe but we partly just winged a lot of it as we went along. The actual recipe makes six servings but we made four instead.

We used regular short glasses but you can use champagne flutes or wine glasses if you want a fancier drink.

In a bowl we measured a half cup of fresh raspberries along with a tablespoon each of lemon juice and granulated sugar and then we mashed it together with a fork. 

Place a spoonful of this mixture on the bottoms of the glasses. Then on top of that, place a nice heaping scoop of raspberry sorbet. 

We used this Chapman’s rainbow fruit swirl because it’s a Peanut and Nut Free brand, and just scooped around the other two flavours; that's why you see some green in the raspberry sorbet scoop.  Feel free to find a plain raspberry sorbet to use instead or you can even make one if you have an ice cream maker. 

Then the actual recipe says to fill the glass to the brim with sparkling raspberry lemonade. So that’s not a very easy thing to find at all so we used this raspberry lemonade and then mixed in some Club Soda to make it bubbly. It tasted really good, so it’s a fine option to go with if you can’t find the sparling raspberry lemonade like us. 

We just filled half the glass with the raspberry lemonade and the other half with Club Soda.  

This is what the drinks looks like all put together. Very yummy and refreshing. 

https://www.sugarhero.com/love-potion-number-9/

Vanilla Pudding with Cookie Dough Brittle

Let’s just say I have mixed feeling about this one. I’ll explain myself at the end of the recipe.

You’ll want to make the cookie dough brittle first as it needs time to set.

For the brittle you will need:

¼ cup of sugar

¼ cup of butter

2 tbsp. light corn syrup

1/3 cup of flour

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 tbsp. of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips or chopped up semi-sweet bits (it was hard for us to find mini chocolate chips)

Line a cookie sheet with tin foil and lightly grease it.

In a small saucepan, stir together and heat the sugar, butter, and syrup. 

Remove it from the heat and stir in the flour until mixed thoroughly and then stir in the vanilla. 

Spread the mixture you just made on the cookie sheet evenly, not too thick, but not too thin. Don’t worry, it won’t fill the entire sheet. We were kinda worried about that.

 

Bake the brittle in a 350 degrees oven for about 12 minutes. If you see it turning too dark of a brown, then you can remove it early. Once you take it out, let it sit for 5 minutes, then sprinkle with the chocolate chips. Let it cool on the sheet and then place in the fridge to firm everything up. We left it in there for a few hours.

When you feel the brittle is hardened enough, you can take it out of the fridge and break it up into various sized pieces. Put it all aside in a sealed container in the fridge until ready to eat.

For the pudding you will need:

2/3 cup sugar

3 tbsp. cornstarch

¼ tsp. salt

3 cups of milk

1 beaten egg

3 beaten egg yolks

3 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. vanilla

In a large saucepan mix the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together. Whisk in the milk. 

Cook and stir constantly over medium high heat until it’s thickened and bubbly. Once it get to this point, cook and stir for 2 minutes more. 

Then remove from the heat and stir in half of the thickened milk mixture into your whisked egg and yolks and then pour that into the pan with the other half of the milk mixture. Bring to a gentle boil (this is where we might have gone wrong because we may have heated it too much leading to the mixture getting lumpy), reduce the heat and cook for 2 more minutes.

Stir in the butter and vanilla until all mixed and melted and then if you want to make it festive, this is when you’ll add the red food colouring to make it pinkish. 

Pour it all into a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Make sure to cover the surface of the pudding with the plastic wrap, don’t just let it cover the top of the bowl. 

Chill and then serve with the brittle on top. You can use regular bowls to serve in or fancy glasses or ramekins work too if you’re trying to spruce it up a bit.

Overall, the brittle was really good, but the pudding was a bit lumpy and the pinkness just kinda threw me off a bit, but maybe if it wasn’t lumpy or pink, I might have enjoyed this better. Probably chilling it overnight might be better as well. It was still a tad warm when we ate it.

 

http://www.midwestliving.com/recipe/vanilla-pudding-with-chocolate-chip-cookie-brittle/