Chocolate Sponge Cake Roulade with Chocolate Ganache... AKA Giant Homemade Ho Ho

Kate has been having some serious pregnancy cravings... lots of fruit, lots of sugar... and for the last couple weeks she's been talking about those tasty childhood favorites: Ho Hos.
I told her I could make a homemade version, and since her birthday is this week, so I took the opportunity to give it a try. I searched the internets for a homemade Ho Hos recipe, but all of the recipes I found had poor reviews or the cooks were having trouble executing them without having them fall apart. Ho Hos are really just thin chocolate cake rolled up with a creamy filling and coated in a layer of chocolate, though, so I went to a reliable source for a recipe for a chocolate sponge cake roulade with chocolate ganache. Basically a fancified, giant Ho Ho. Super fluffy flourless cake, lightly sweetened whipped cream, silky ganache. Yum.

Meringues with Berry Coulis

I wanted to give from-scratch meringue making a try after successfully making a pavlova with the pre-packaged mix. I used Ina Garten's recipe for Meringues Chantilly. They came out pretty well, but I think I still have some work to do to really perfect the right texture- these were a little too chewy!

I made a berry coulis to top off the meringues, using frozen blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, loosely based on this Emeril recipe. Tasty!

Topped also with whipped cream and fresh blueberries.

Boozy Peaches and Cream

Got some perfectly ripe peaches in my CSA share this week, and was looking for a simple way to eat some of them as dessert... two recipes from this month's influx of food magazines caught my eye: Boozy Peaches and Cream from Food Network Magazine and Roasted Peaches with Amaretti Crumble from Bon Appetit.

At first I thought I was comparing apples to apples: one boozy recipe versus another. Then, when I realized that what I had understood to be booze in the Bon Appetit recipe was actually amaretti (little Italian cookies), not amaretto (sweet almond-flavoured liqueur, also of Italian origin), my choice was clearly made... go with the booze. Also, I had neither amaretti nor amaretto on hand, and the Bon Appetit recipe required turning on the oven, so the deal was really sealed.

The Boozy Peaches and Cream recipe was very simple and tasty- it's basically sliced peaches with brown sugar layered with bourbon whipped cream. I would make it again, for sure. I did forget to add the toasted pecans on top, but didn't notice they were missing. I bet you could top the recipe with some of Mike's famous candied nuts, and that would put it over the top. Almost as much as writing "Mike's famous candied nuts" put this post over the top. And... scene.

Chocolate Strawberry Shortcakes

I saw this recipe for chocolate strawberry shortcakes in my Food Network Magazine (which I got for free, using my Coke points), and it caught my eye. Luckily, I got really great strawberries in this week's CSA. They were super ripe and needed to be used immediately, so I got a chance to try out this recipe...The shortcakes had a nice flavor, but were kinda dry. Maybe that's how shortcake is supposed to be... but I think I'd just make brownies and top them with strawberries and whipped cream instead next time.