I can do romantic sometimes!

Betsy and I had a whirlwind month over the last four or fives weeks. We were both out of town a lot, but not traveling together. When we are in town together, we’ve both had really busy work schedules.

So it kind of felt like we were two ships passing in the night.

We decided to right the problem a few weeks ago by having a dedicated date night. No movies or dinner out though because that’s exactly what we had been doing too much of over the last few weeks. So we stayed at home, came up with a fun menu together, and just relaxed.

I thought I’d share some of the stuff we ate on our very fun date night!

It Was Betsy’s Idea

Betsy came up with a great idea for a date night menu. Instead of having one big meal, she wanted to have a bunch of smaller plates. Kind of like tapas I guess, but mostly appetizers that we could just kind of snack on all night long.

This sounded like a great idea to me! We went to a few stores together during the day and shopped for fun snacks that we would eat later in the night. Betsy never goes grocery shopping with me so it was a nice change to shop together.

For kind of a starter dish to our meal of starters, I set out some olives, roasted, marinated garlic cloves, a wedge of soft truffle cheese (Betsy loves truffles), and some crackers.

Basic starters

I also prepped one of my favorite appetizers: Radishes and butter.

It might sound strange, but it’s really good. Make sure to use a really good European style salted butter. It’s an awesome dish.

Simple but good.

The Mosto Cotto

One of the fun things you can do if you want to plan a night like this is pull out special foods that you might have from trips. We pulled out a small bottle of this stuff called “Mosto cotto” from our honeymoon to Italy.

From what I could tell, to make this stuff they just take a bunch of Sangiovese wine and slowly simmer it down for about 18 hours. The result is a thin syrup that’s sweet and tangy at the same time.

Hard to find... sorry.

You could pour this stuff on your shoe and eat it, but it’s really tasty on cheese.

I cubed up some romano cheese and drizzled the mosto cotto over the top. Tasted just like it did in Italy!

One of my favorite things!

The Crostini

The most substantial parts of our date night meal was a bunch of different crostini that I made. I pretty much took most of these ideas from the most recent Bon Appétit issue which gave six or seven really great crostini ideas.

One of the most important parts of making good crostini is to make sure the bread is cooked well.

Ideally, you want a very crusty exterior and a soft interior. The best way to do this, that I’ve found, is actually on the grill.

Just get your grill super-hot, rub the grates with some olive oil, and toss on the sliced bread. Any baguette will work great for this.

Important!

I made three different kinds of crostini. The nice thing about these is that they all took just a few minutes to prepare once the bread was ready.

The first was a Mexican inspired crostini with Mexican crema (basically sour cream except a bit lighter), grilled corn, and fresh cilantro.

The second one was a standard caprese style crostini with mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes.

Light and tasty!

The most ambitious one that I made had fresh ricotta cheese, ripe peaches, prosciutto, and honey.

It was pretty amazing.

Set all these plates out with some fresh cherries and a big bottle of red wine and date night is served!

Quite the spread!

I was worried that I wouldn’t be full after this, but it worked out fine. The crostini were all pretty filling and since we had been snacking all afternoon on cheese and olives and stuff, it was the perfect amount of food.

The nicest thing about doing a date night like this is that all of the dishes were really quick to make (and clean up). I wasn’t toiling away in the kitchen for hours or anything.

Hopefully, this gave you all some ideas that you can use for a date night or just as a fun appetizer for a party or something!

Of course, I cheated a bit because it is a coffee cake recipe so it’s best with, well, coffee which most people drink prior to noon.

But if you need further evidence that this is a solid coffee cake, it also passed the “Get it out of the house” test. If Betsy instructs me to get it out of the house, then it’s also probably pretty decent because she’s afraid she’ll eat it all.

Ok. I’ll stop with the various tests I’ve created. But really, this was very tasty stuff.

Really delicious.

The recipe for this coffee cake is very straightforward and you can adjust it with all kinds of fun stuff. For this version I added some almond extract and fresh cherries. You could add real almonds of course if you want, but I just did the extract.

Cherry Almond Coffee Cake

Yield: 8x8 pan

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: hour

Ingredients:

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 Cup sugar
2 Teaspoons baking powder
1/2 Teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 Teaspoon almond extract
1 egg
3/4 Cup milk (I had to add an extra Tablespoon or two due to a heavy hand with the flour I think)
1 Cup fresh cherries, pitted and diced

Streusel:
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 Cups sugar
3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 Teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 Cup chopped almonds (optional)

Directions:

1) Mix Streusel ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside for later.

2) Remove pit from cherries and dice them (about 15-20 cherries should be enough).

3) Mix wet batter ingredients together and set aside for later.

4) Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl and cut in butter with your fingers. Just mix it in roughly until the butter resembles pea-sized pieces. Then add the cherries.

5) Stir in the wet ingredients and mix until combined.

6) Add half of your batter to a buttered 8x8 baking dish. Top with half of the streusel topping. Then the remaining batter and finally a streusel topping.

7) Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. Let cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Adapted from How to Cook Everything.

Making the streusel

The streusel isn’t rocket science people, but it’s very important to the recipe. A coffee cake is just a cake without this. Making it is as simple as adding all your streusel ingredients to a bowl and mixing them up with a fork until they are well combined.

Butter is hiding in there.

Prepping the batter

The only annoying part about this batter is getting the cherries ready. They are kind of a pain to pit and then chop. The way I get the pits out is to put the cherry down on a cutting board and slice it down the middle until your knife hits the pit of the cherry. Then roll the knife forward. The cherry should roll all the way around.

The pit should dislodge pretty easily once the cherry is cut all the way around. Then you can just roughly dice both halves! Luckily you only have to do like 15-20 of these for the whole coffee cake to get the cup of cherries you need.

I was a bit worried here.

Also, I like to get all my wet ingredients (milk, egg, extract) together so I can just add them all at once.

The almond extract is key.

To prep the batter just mix the dry ingredients together and then add your butter. Use your fingers or a fork to roughly mix in the butter to the dry ingredients. Then add your diced cherries to the dry mix and mix everything together.

Finally, just pour in your wet mixture and stir stir stir! I had to add a few extra tablespoons of milk to my batter because I added a bit too much flour.

This was my finished batter.

It's good like this honestly.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9×9 baking pan. It’s pretty important to butter the pan if you ever want to actually be able to remove your coffee cake from the pan.

Then add about half of your batter to the pan and spread it out evenly. It’ll be pretty thick. Then sprinkle on half of your streusel topping.

Good stuff.

Next, add the second half of your batter to the top. This creates the signature layer of streusel that coffee cakes have. It might be kind of hard to spread the coffee cake over the streusel but just do your best.

Then sprinkle the remainder of your streusel mix on top.

Bake it at 350 degrees for about 30-35 minutes until a toothpick comes clean from the center.

Kind of crunchy on top.

The hard part

You really need to let this cool for 15 minutes before eating it. I know that sounds like a long time, but trust me. That gives time for the sugar crust to kind of develop on top.

Then serve it up!

It's good with um... coffee.

I was a bit worried about the fresh cherries in this version. I thought they might all sink to the bottom or just get really mushy but they held up great actually and added some nice flavor to the finished cake.

So there you have it. The coffee cake that pasted both the “Get it out of the house” test and the “By noon” test!

One of my absolute favorite flavors of ice cream is the Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. I mean that stuff is like crack to me. Except I don’t think I could ever OD. I think I could eat it until my stomach exploded a la Se7en. If you don’t know what Cherry Garcia is it is basically vanilla ice cream with large chunks of dried cherries and chocolate.

Last weekend I was scrounging for something for breakfast and realized that I had all of the necessary ingredients to make pancakes. I also happened to have some cherries and some chocolate laying around, so I thought I would try making a pancake that tasted like my favorite ice cream.

These guys were rich.

My idea was a good one! These pancakes were moist and fluffy and had large chunks of cherry and melted chocolate throughout. They were super-rich, but they were delicious. Turns out pancakes are not one of my magic foods. In fact, I only made it through about 1/2 of this dish before calling it quits. They were that rich.

Before we even get to the pancakes though, let’s discuss something that I think is essential to pancake heaven: fresh whipped cream. Everybody always seems impressed by it, but it isn’t that hard. This is the basic formula I use:

Whipped Cream

- 1 Cup whipping cream
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 1/2 Teaspoon vanilla

There is also this fear that it takes forever to make. In fact, once you get the hang of it, it takes no time at all. In fact, I think it is faster with a normal whisk than with an electric mixer.

So, I timed myself. Under a minute flat.

I rule.

If you aren’t willing to spend one minute to make heaven in a bowl, then to you, Sir/Madam, I bid good day.

There are a lot of different pancake recipes out there, but this is the recipe I’ve used the last few times I’ve made pancakes and loved it.

Buttermilk Pancakes (Adapted from Simply Recipes)
Serves 3-4 easily

- 2 Cups all-purpose flour
- 2 Tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 Teaspoon salt
- 1/2 Teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 Cup buttermilk
- 1 cup milk
- 3 Tablespoons melted butter

Also, you will want:
- 20 (apprx.) cherries, pitted and quartered
- 4-6 ounces milk chocolate, crumbled or just buy chocolate chips. You could use dark chocolate also I think.

Helpful Equipment:
- Nonstick Griddle

This recipe is great, but I had a quandary. I didn’t have any buttermilk and the corner store was out. So I did some research and read that you can approximate buttermilk by adding a few Tablespoons of lemon juice to a cup of milk and letting it sit for 10 minutes.

Buttermilk?

Note I say approximate, but this doesn’t actually make buttermilk. I tried it and it only sort of worked. It just tasted like milk with lemon juice in it. It didn’t have that signature tang that actual buttermilk has.

Anyway, combine all your dry ingredients in a bowl and then whisk in your wet ingredients which you should mix together separately.

Perfect consistency.

I also let my pancake batter rest for 10-15 minutes in the fridge to let some of the flour absorb the moisture a bit. You could make them right away though if you were in a rush or something.

For me, this gave me time to prep my cherries:

Quartered and pitted.

And my chocolate:

Chocolate chips would work better.

You want everything ready when you start making these guys.

Before you start cooking the real deal, I always like to do a pancake test. Heat up some butter or oil in your pan or on your griddle over medium-high heat. When it is hot, add a few Tablespoons of batter and cook a small pancake. The batter should spread out evenly. If it stays in one spot, your batter is too thick and you need to add more milk. If it runs all over your pan, it is too thin and you need to whisk in some more flour.

Once you are happy with the batter, it’s time to make the real deal. I like to use a bit of butter to cook my pancakes, but you could use oil also. Just use a little bit to lube the pan up.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to pancakes with stuff. First, is to mix all the things into the batter and then pour the batter onto the griddle. This works fine as long as you remember to stir your batter before each pancake because the goods will sink to the bottom.

I prefer to pour my pancake, and then after it has been cooking for 2 minutes (it will start to set up), then I sprinkle in my ingredients. This allows for an even distribution of awesome.

Nice.

There are two sure-fire ways to know when you need to flip your pancake. First, you will start to see good sized bubbles forming on the surface of your batter. This means that the center of your pancake is pretty much cooked. Second, the edges around your pancake will start to firm up and you’ll be able to easily maneuver a spatula under it.

Then the flip!

Just a minute or two now.

Now, the second side doesn’t need as long to cook. The first side will need probably 4-5 minutes and the second side will only need one or two minutes. Keep a close eye on it! It will burn quickly.

In fact, if I were to make this again (and I will because it was delicious), I think I would try mixing the chocolate chips into the batter before baking. The way I did it worked okay, but I had to keep a close eye on the pancakes after the flip because when I flipped them, the chocolate came into instant contact with the hot griddle and they would burn pretty quickly. I lost one pancake soldier due to this…

I think if I mixed in the chocolate before, it would maybe not be so bad because there would be a small layer of batter between the chocolate and the hot pan. The cherries worked great though and you can sprinkle those right on top to assure even distribution.

Oh man these were good.

These are kind of a surprise because from the top you can’t notice any cherry or chocolate. All of the goodness is on the underside or inside.

Then you cut them open and BAM:

A good bite.

I was totally going to call these Cherry Garcia pancakes but I was afraid that the Ben & Jerry’s lawyers would be knocking on my door. What? You don’t think hippies have lawyers?! They most certainly do.

Regardless of what you call them though, these pancakes were everything I hoped they would be. Top with a little whipped cream and syrup and you are in heaven.

You can, and should, use the icons below to share this post with your friends and lovers.