Pecan Praline Almond Cookies

These may be the absolutely best cookies I've ever made. I'm serious about that. Oh, I love chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies and other cookies just fine. But these cookies are different. The texture is at the same time light, yet crumbly. Crunchy yet delicate.

The flavor is buttery with a whisper of almond. The praline pecan is the perfect topper adding an extra nut flavor that compliments the almond, along with the crunchy sweetness of the praline cookie.

These remind me a little bit of almond cookies that I used to get from a Chinese take-out restaurant, but these have a little more chew and they're not as sandy.

They're really great. You should try them.

The Praline Pecans I used were from Truly Good Foods supplied to me via 37 Cooks for a blogging challenge.

Pecan Praline Almond Cookies

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Praline Pecans (one to top each cookie)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla extract, and almond at medium speed in a medium bowl with an electric mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat for a few minutes, until the mixture is fluffy.

Drizzle the oil in while continuing to beat the butter mixer at low speed.

Add the flour mixture in several additions, beating just enough to blend it well.

Use a small scoop to form balls of dough. Try for about 24 cookies, but more or less is fine - it just depends on how large you want the cookies to be. They will spread a little and puff up as they bake.

Place the balls on the baking sheets, leaving room between them to spread. Flatten the cookies with the palm of your hand, then place one praline pecan on top of each cookie.

Bake at 350 degrees until the cookies are lightly browned, 13-17 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. If you're baking 2 sheets of cookies at a time, you'll probably want to swap them around after about 10 minutes of baking.

Remove the cookies from the sheets and let them cool completely on a rack. Continue forming and baking cookies until all the dough is used.

Beer Cheese and Beer-Cheese Burgers for the #BlondeBBQChallenge

Cheese! Cheese! CHEESE!!!

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, under the shadow of O'Hare airport's many flights, and just a few blocks from the entrance to the tollway that led to the Mecca of cheese - otherwise known as Wisconsin.

While there were a great many Wisconsin cheese products for sale at grocery stores in my suburb, a trip across the border gave me access to small cheese shops and giant purveyors of mountains of cheese.

It was wonderful.

I always brought a cooler with me, and I did a pretty good job filling it. And of course the nonperishable jarred and bottle products didn't take any cooler space, right?

One thing that often followed me home was a tub of beer cheese, often sold in a little crock.

I never really thought about what beer cheese was - I guess I assumed that it was cheese that tasted good with beer. Because that's another thing you can find a lot of in Wisconsin.

But no, beer cheese isn't just something that tastes good with a glass of beer - it has beer in it!

I decided that it was about time I made my own beer cheese, and then I went a step further and melted it on top of a burger. With a side of beer.

I was beery happy with the results.

My good friends at Guinness supplied me with some of their new Guinness® Blonde™ American Lager, along with a few other goodies (mmm ... beer) for my participation in creating a recipe that goes with beer. But once I had that beer cheese idea in my head, I had to go with it. And then I used it in a recipe that goes with beer.

Snickers is skeptical about the big metal tub. She thinks it's a doggy bathtub!

Guinness Blonde, if you haven't tried it, is hoppier than Guinness, but with a nice maltiness as well. I don't usually care for highly-hopped beers like IPAs, but I really liked the Blonde.

Besides being lovely on top of a burger, this cheese is great on crackers. Probably also good spread inside a celery stick, but around here we went for the burgers and crackers.

Beer Cheese Burgers

Mmmmm ... melted cheese!

For the beer cheese:
1/2 pound sharp (or extra-sharp) cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 pound mild cheddar or colby cheese, shredded
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons worcestershire sauce
6 ounces (1/2 bottle) Guinness Blonde

For the burgers:
(do you really need this?)
Ground meat, formed into patties
Beer cheese
Buns, to match the number of patties
Condiments and toppings, as needed

To make the beer cheese:

Cheers!

Pulse the cheeses along with the paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne in your food processor until you have small bits.

Add the worcestershire sauce. turn the processor on, and with it running, add the beer. Continue processing until you have a smooth paste. If you think you need a little more beer, feel free to add it. Otherwise, I'm sure you'll find a really good use for that other half-bottle of beer!

Transfer the beer cheese to an appropriate container and refrigerate until needed. It will be soft right after it's processed, but it will firm up as it chills. If you need it softer for spreading - like on crackers - let it come to room temperature, and it will soften.

To make the burgers:
Grill the burgers as you usually do, adding the cheese to the top just before they're fully cooked. Close the grill and allow the cheese to melt - it doesn't take long, maybe 30 seconds.

Put the burgers on buns and add your favorite condiments. This time, I topped the burger with a large slice of tomato and a few pickled jalapenos.

Serve with a refreshing glass of Guinness Blonde, for adults only.

This post was sponsored by Guinness. 

Butterscotch Ice Cream

Yes, I do make a lot of ice cream. So you'd think I wouldn't be needing any more ice cream books.

But here's the thing. I seldom make the same ice cream twice. Oh, I make chocolate a lot - but I try different recipes. And I make vanilla pretty often too. Again, using different recipes.

And every time I get a new ice cream cookbook, I learn something new. If not a new recipe, then it's a new method.

The book, Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, has a lot of recipes for making all sorts of ice cream, sorbets, and even vegan ice cream, along with a few recipes for toppings, add-ins and other things.

There are even a few recipes for using the egg white that you'll end up with after using yolks for ice cream.

I decided to make Butterscotch Ice Cream. Well, actually, the recipe in the book was for butterscotch ice cream with chunks of brownies mixed in.

While that sounded really good, I opted not to add the brownies. It was too hot to bake, and I really didn't want a tray of brownies sitting around. I figured the ice cream would be plenty of dessert for us.

Besides omitting the brownies, I also made quite a few changes to the method for making the ice cream. The original recipe calls for much of the cooking to be done in a double boiler, but I decided to cook mine on the stove.

A double boiler is a much safer method - almost no chance of the yolks curdling. But ... I make a lot of ice cream and I always cook it on the stovetop, so I figured I'd take the risk.

However, if any whites cling to the yolks (and they always do) those are likely to curdle with the stovetop method. They might not curdle with the double-boiler method. But it's not a big deal - I always strain my custards after cooking and there are never very many bits, anyway.

If you're new at making ice cream or custard, you might want to get a copy of the book and use the recipe as-is and use a double boiler.

The book also suggested having adding the hot butterscotch mixture to the milk and cream, but after thinking about it, I realised that was because the rest of the cooking was going to happen in the double boiler. So I added the milk and cream to the butterscotch.

This was a really tasty ice cream, and I can see how it would work well with brownie chunks mixed in. I'll certainly keep that in mind next time I have spare brownies hanging around. It was really good with another chocolate topping, though.

Butterscotch Ice Cream
Adapted from Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream 
by Laura O'Neill, Ben Van Leeuwen and Pete Van Leeuwen with Olga Massov

3 1/2 tablespoons (about 50 grams) unsalted butter
1 cup (227 grams) dark brown sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped out
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 large egg yolks

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan on medium heat. Add the brown sugar and stir until combined. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Add 1 cup of the cream and stir until smooth.

Take the pot off the heat and add the rest of the cream, along with the milk, vanilla bean and scraped seeds, and salt. Place the pot back on the heat and cook, stirring as needed, until you see steam rising from the pan.

Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl.

One ladle at a time, pouring slowly, add the cream mixture to the eggs, while stirring the eggs constantly. Keep adding cream mixture until you've added about half of it to the yolks, then pour the yolk mixture into the pot with the remaining cream mixture.

Cook, stirring constantly on low or medium-low heat until you see steam rising from the pan and the custard coats the back of a spoon.

To hasten the chilling, place the pot in an icebath or in your sink filled with several inches of cold water, making sure the water isn't deep enough to slosh into the pot. Stir to help the custard cool faster. I don't always do this but it's often recommended in ice cream recipes.

Remove the vanilla bean. You can discard it or use it to made vanilla sugar or vanilla extract.

Pour the custard mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a storage container. The sieve will catch any tiny curdled bits. You shouldn't have many, but if any bits of whites were clinging to the yolks, they tend to curdle and you don't want that in your ice cream. Refrigerate the mixture until fully chilled - I usually make the base the day before I want to churn, but 4-6 hours may be enough.

Churn the ice cream in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions, then transfer to a storage container and freeze until firm.