Tag: Dessert

Maple Apple Pie with Walnut Crust

Posted November 22, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Can you believe I’ve never written an apple pie post before? I’ve made loads of apple recipes for my classic lit menus (homemade apple sauce, apple rose tartlets, and apple cider crullers—just to name a few) but never pie. Of course, when I decided to make one for my Sleepy Hollow menu, I knew it needed to be more than your average apple pie. I wanted to kick it up a notch!

I started with seasonal flavors, bouncing a few flavor combo ideas off the Mister, and we both agreed that maple and walnut were great seasonal additions to an apple pie. I decided to swap maple syrup for the sugar usually found in fruit pie filling, and since I’m not a big fan of chopped nuts in my pie filling, I decided to grind the walnuts up and mix them in with the pie crust. I used a basic version of the pie crust recipe from my cookbook, and the filling is just a slight variation on my family’s favorite apple pie recipe: the one from “How to Make Apple Pie and See the World.”

The result was a glorious pie filled to bursting with the flavor of sweet-tart apples, rich maple syrup, and a hint of nuttiness from the crust. I brought mine to Thanksgiving, where it was a big hit!

NOTE: This recipe needs at least 4 hours to set.

Scooby Doo Tie-Dye Spook Cupcakes

Posted October 25, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes, Holidays / 0 Comments

Ghosts are an essential part of the Scooby-Doo cartoon (even if they do usually turn out to be just some guy in a mask 😉), so I thought it would be fun to make a ghost-themed dessert for this month’s menu. I loved the idea of making spook cupcakes, and I decided to tie-dye the frosting for some psychedelic 60’s flair, perfect for Scooby-Doo! I started with my go-to chocolate cupcake and vanilla frosting recipe from my cookbook and gave the frosting an orange, lime green, hot pink, and light blue swirl. Then I used this recipe to make my own homemade marshmallow ghosts (but you can totally go with store bought ghost Peeps, if you want). These sweet little specters are a perfect addition to any Halloween menu or Scooby-Doo birthday party!

Note: The marshmallow mixture for the ghosts needs to set overnight.

Sarah’s Sea Glass Candy

Posted September 27, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Blue and gray and green. In Sarah Plain and Tall, these are Sarah’s favorite colors because they are the colors of the sea. To wrap up this month’s menu, I wanted to make a dessert reminiscent of Sarah’s home in Maine. I loved the idea of making sea glass candy—especially since sea glass reminds me so much of the little ocean treasures she shows Anna and Caleb—so I decided to go a step farther and make them in Sarah’s favorite colors too!

I used this sea glass candy recipe from Make Life Lovely, which turned out great. The instructions are simple and easy to follow, and the final product is delicious. I’m really pleased with the colors too. They came out with just the right misty, ocean-y feel I was hoping for. And they were delicious! They actually taste a lot like cotton candy. I wouldn’t recommend serving them to very young children since the ends can be a little sharp, but they’re great for older children and adults. We ate them right up! 🙂

Calvin’s Snow Goon Truffles

Posted August 30, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Back when I first started planning my Calvin and Hobbes menu, the idea of a snow goon themed recipe easily made the short list. I wasn’t sure exactly what form it would take, but I knew the adorably horrific snowmen from Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons simply HAD to be in my menu. They’re too iconic to ignore!

I played around with a few ideas before settling on Golden Oreo snowman truffles, and although I loved the final product, the fact that this post exists is proof of my devotion to the snow goons. I ran into SO. MANY. ROADBLOCKS.

On my first try, the candy melts I’d chosen wound up being WAY too clumpy for dipping truffles. I tried again with some off-brand white chocolate chips I had on hand, and the results were even worse. On my third try, I rolled the truffles in powdered sugar, but it soaked right in, leaving them sandy-colored. I considered dipping them in almond bark, but the brand my store carried was very yellow (not snowy enough for these truffles).

Not gonna lie, I was tempted to play my “I’m Moving this Month” card and just skip the goons, since they were a bonus recipe. But the idea of finishing this menu without snow goons made me too sad. Luckily, my mom came to visit for a few days to watch the toddler while I packed for the move. She suggested going with Tollhouse white chocolate chips, since that’s what she normally uses for truffles and never has issues with clumping. I gave it a try, and they were PERFECT. Just what I’d hoped for from the beginning. Thanks, Mom! 🙂

Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs

Posted August 23, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment

If there’s one iconic food from the Calvin and Hobbes comics, it’s Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. Calvin eats three bowls every Saturday for breakfast, and it’s hinted throughout the comics that it could be linked to his hyperactivity and short attention span. With its astronomical sugar and caffeine content, this is one intense cereal, and Calvin scoops on EXTRA sugar to boot! The C&H comics that feature Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs are some of my favorites, so of course I chose it as the dessert for our menu. 🙂

I started out with a pretty healthy homemade version of Cocoa Puffs from SheKnows.com. I added sugar to the recipe to amp up the sweetness and coated the cereal pieces in powdered sugar before baking to get that frosted look. The final result was a sweet treat which, thanks to the cocoa powder in the original recipe, had a rich fudgy chocolate flavor.

So pour yourself a bowl or three and chow down on Calvin’s favorite cereal!

NOTE: Apologies to all the email subscribers who accidentally got an email last week containing a post from next month’s menu. My computer was being spazzy, and when I hit “Save Draft” it decided to publish instead ?. I took down the post right away, so I don’t think anyone else saw it. At least you guys have an edge when I send out my photo hint about the new menu on social media next month, right? 😉

Dragon Flame Meringue Cookies

Posted July 26, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Time for our Wizard of Earthsea dessert! While I was developing this menu, I knew I wanted to have a recipe dedicated to the dragons. There isn’t a specific one mentioned in the book, and none of the savory ideas I came up with felt right. Then I thought of making a flame-themed dessert.

One of the tricky things about blogging for almost 5 years is that sometimes the ideas you get for new recipes are too similar to something you’ve posted in the past. Flame cupcakes were the first thing that came to mind, but I made them before for my Hunger Games menu and couldn’t think of a way to make a second version unique enough. Then cookies came to mind, but plain old sugar cookies just felt too boring.

Then I thought of meringue! It’s one of my favorite desserts to play with, and I loved that meringue cookies would allow me to make tiny 3D clusters of flame. I whipped up my favorite meringue recipe (a combo of the instructions from my baked Alaska post and this Taste of Home recipe) and started experimenting—and came up with these little beauties! They were SO fun to make. I love that each one is different. It makes you want to take the time to really look at and appreciate them before you take a bite. Enjoy! 🙂

Jiballian Fudge Galaxy Cake Pops

Posted June 28, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Are you all ready for dessert? Because I DEFINITELY am! Jiballian fudge cake is an iconic Star Trek Voyager dessert, and I knew I wanted its blue icing and rich chocolatey-ness to have the place on honor in my Voyager menu. I’ve made many chocolate cakes here on the blog, so I wanted to do something a little different. Then I thought: cake pops! I’ve never done them before, and the concept of a Star Trek-inspired pop intrigued me.

The cake in the TV show has blue icing with a few other colors swirled through (looks like purple and silver/white). I thought it would be fun to make galaxy pops reflecting this color scheme, and away we went! I had to try a few different decorating techniques before I found one I liked, but in the end I think these cake pops turned out super cute. What a fun way to end a Star Trek menu!

Hobbit Door Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie

Posted May 24, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments

The round, green door of Bag End is one of the strongest icons in the stories of Middle Earth. It represents so much—home and journey, beginnings and endings, comfort and adventure—and it holds all these otherwise contradictory ideas in effortless resolution. It’s the door through which Bilbo greets his unexpected guests and leaves for adventure in The Hobbit. It’s a symbol of the home that Frodo longs to return to in The Lord of the Rings, but when he does, he finds that although we can go home, we can never go back. It’s a door that, when opened, leads to the promise of good company, a full larder, and a kettle of hot tea. It holds a special place in my heart (and that of many other Tolkien fans as well), so I knew my Lord of the Rings menu wouldn’t be complete without a tribute to it.

I’ve made giant chocolate chip cookies in the past, and I loved the idea of making one to look like a hobbit door. So here it is! The recipe is the giant chocolate chip cookie recipe from Tollhouse. I love how it turned out, though if I’d been thinking ahead, I might have tried to create a wood grain effect with my smoothing knife as I spread out the frosting for the base. I love the yellow doorknob and Gandalf’s rune in the corner. The quote around the border comes from Bilbo and Frodo’s traveling song, and it couldn’t be more perfect! 🙂

Bruce Bogtrotter’s Chocolate Cake

Posted April 26, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment

There is only one true dessert anyone could ever create for a Matilda menu: Bruce Bogtrotter’s Chocolate Cake! I’ve made my fair share of chocolate cakes in my day, but this one was almost intimidating because it’s just so iconic. It’s practically synonymous with Matilda. I absolutely could NOT get Bruce’s cake wrong. So I hunted high and low for a cake recipe that I new would stand up to the massive dimensions of Bruce’s cake. In the book, it’s 18 inches across, but since that wouldn’t fit in my oven, I went with the size of my largest pan: 10 inches. Still a pretty darn big cake, and one that I wanted to make sure would be stay moist despite having to bake longer than a small cake.

For the actual “cake” part of the cake, I used a recipe I found through Good Housekeeping. It promised to be super rich and moist, which was perfect. What surprised me was that, unlike many intense chocolate cakes I’ve seen, this one didn’t use coffee. I saw a way to sub out part of the buttermilk for regular milk mixed with instant coffee granules, so I made the change. And I’m so glad I did! The cake was that much more chocolatey, and even though you can’t taste the coffee itself, the added depth of flavor helps balance all the sweetness in the cake.

For the frosting, I tried a twist on my own chocolate buttercream. Instead of milk, I used sour cream, which added moisture while making the final product lighter and fluffier than milk would. Plus, I added a bit of cinnamon for a little somethin’ special. The final cake was just what I was looking for: a rich, luxurious chocolate cake with a frosting that matched it for intensity of flavor yet contrasted it with a smooth, light texture.

Of course, a 10-inch, 2-layer cake is too huge for just the Mister and me, so I sent half of it to work with him. It got rave reviews, especially the frosting, so I think it’s safe to say this cake is worthy of Bruce Bogtrotter. Enjoy! 🙂

Bonus Recipe: Where the Wild Things Are Cupcakes

Posted March 29, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments

Three cheers for extra Thursdays! Whenever a month has a 5th Thursday, I get to do a bonus post, which is especially exciting this month since this menu was inspired by my son’s birthday party. It was quite the bash! I made deviled eggs, fruit salad, and a giant chocolate chip cookie, and we ordered pizza for our entree. Plus, both the grandmas made delicious desserts too! My mom made cupcakes, and my mother-in-law made crown-shaped sugar cookies with gold sprinkles. Both were delicious, so for my bonus recipe, I decided to pay tribute to both.

These fun cupcakes come in two flavors: chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and vanilla cake with chocolate frosting (just like the ones my mom made). The recipes are easy, and the fun, whimsical decorations are inspired by my mother-in-laws cookies: white and gold sprinkles on some, fruit roll-up crowns on others. It’s a lot of variety without a lot of extra work, and the results were super delicious. Enjoy! ^.^