The Salty Pilgrim (& a virtual potluck!)

Do you ever dream up what the Big Gay Ice Cream menu would have looked like in 1621? Nope. Okay, definitely just me.

A few weeks back, Renee from Will Frolic for Food contacted me and bunch of other bloggers about participating in a huge virtual Friendsgiving potluck in collaboration with J. Q. Dickinson Salt-Works and I immediately jumped on board. I mean, wouldn't you want to have two Thanksgivings in a single week too? Sure, the first of the two may be virtual and you can't actually eat any of the food, but I'm sure that we'd all feel a little bit less guilty that way anyways. 

Given my inability to cook real people food (read: anything that isn't sugar), I hopped on the dessert train faster than Michelle Obama could turn up with a root vegetable. Then came the panic over what to make...

I'm not one for pumpkin or sweet potato pies, so the classics were out of the picture for this Thanksgiving spread. I thought to myself — and probably out loud, too — "hmmm, what type of dessert is the farthest from traditional for a Thanksgiving dinner?"

Ice cream sundaes. 

Disclaimer: If your annual Thanksgiving celebration is complete with a sundae bar, I have two questions for you: 1) who the hell are you? and 2) where is my invitation? 

It took milliseconds before I was thinking of ways to reimagine Big Gay Ice Cream's Salty Pimp for turkey day. I don't know how many pimps were roaming around Plymouth County, but my speculation is that the number was preeeeetty low, so I made the executive decision to rename this sundae the Salty Pilgrim and make it all types of first harvest inspired. 

In case you're unaware of the Salty Pimp, it's a cone of vanilla soft serve, dulce de leche, chocolate shell, and flakes of sea salt. Aside from shedding its overtly sexual nature and being much more PC, the Salty Pilgrim is composed of the following:

• Sweet Corn Ice Cream (not soft serve, but just go with the flow)
• Sweet Potato Caramel 
• Valrhona Dulcey Magic Shell (v important !!!!!!!!!!!!) 
• J. Q. Dickinson Sea Salt flakes  

and holy Jamestown, is it delicious! One bite in and my mom was doing the whole *eyes wide open, gasping for air, and kind of muttering "holy shit" under her breath* thing she does whenever I make something really freaking good. I prepped a sundae for my dad later on last night. He practically moaned, then said "you need to give this to somebody. People need to have this in their life." So there you go, a damn harvest sundae called the Salty Pilgrim is Trey Blackall approved. (and that's QUITE the feat!)

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Disclaimer: this post is part of a virtual Friendsgiving potluck with J. Q. Dickinson Salt-Works. All opinions are mine, like the fact that this salt is soooo bomb! 

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Sweet Corn Ice Cream

(adapted from this Jeni's recipe)

• 2 cups whole milk
• 4 tsp. cornstarch
• 1 ear of corn
• 1 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons cream cheese, softened

Directions

1Make the ice cream: In a bowl, stir together 1/4 cup milk and the cornstarch; set slurry aside. Cut kernels off cob of corn and cut cob into large chunks; reserve kernels and cob together. In a 4-qt. saucepan, whisk together remaining milk and the cream, sugar, syrup, and salt; add corn kernels and cob and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook for 4 minutes; stir in slurry. Return to a boil and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 2 minutes. Pour mixture through a fine strainer into a bowl and discard corn solids. 

Place cream cheese in a bowl and pour in 1/4 cup hot milk mixture; whisk until smooth. Then whisk in remaining milk mixture. Pour mixture into a plastic bag; seal, and submerge in a bowl of ice water until chilled. Pour mixture into an ice cream maker; process according to manufacturer's instructions. 

Sweet Potato Caramel

(adapted from Crazy for Crust)

• 1 cup sugar
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, sliced into tablespoons
• 2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/3 cup sweet potato puree
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
• a dash of black pepper
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• a pinch of salt 

Directions

In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, heat the sugar over medium-low heat. Cook the sugar until it melts and turns into an amber caramel, stirring often. Add the butter and stir until combined, it will bubble up like crazy here. Add half of the heavy cream, stir to combine, and then stir in the remaining half. Add the sweet potato, spices, salt, and vanilla extract and stir until smooth. 

Pour the caramel into a jar and store at room temperature or refrigerated. 

Valrhona Dulcey Magic Shell 

• 160 grams Valrhona Dulcey, chopped
• 100 grams coconut oil 

Directions

In a microwave-safe bowl, microwave the chocolate and oil together in 30 second increments, stirring after each one, until melted. Store at room temperature. 

Salted White & Dark Chocolate Pistachio Cookies

I've been baking hella cookies lately. I also can't stop saying hella. Yeah, I don't know what that's all about, but it's happening and even though I cringe every time I say it, I can't stop. The other day I was mistaken for being from the Bay Area, so we can let my excessive "hella" usage slide. 

Okay um... cookies! Yes, that's what were talking about! So I've been baking hella cookies over the past few months because I've been so busy that I don't have: a) the time or b) the patience to bake and frost a lovely three layer cake or make a pie with complete with little fall leaf designs cut out in the crust. I'm starting to think that my teachers convened a devised a special plan to make my life a living hell by extending my original one week of midterms to four consecutive weeks of absolute bullshit. FOUR. WHOLE. WEEKS. Yeah, I'm totally considering dropping out at this point and funding the rest of my life through a series of impromptu bake sales because #sugar. So yeah, this post is super rant-y and conversational but just deal with it, my mental capacity has taken a serious hit so my writing style is definitely more in the vein of "word vomit" than my usual "absurd-story-about-an-absurd-cake-that-doesnt-make-sense-but-kinda-does" act. 

Sorry, but you guys are stuck with yet another cookie recipe for the time being. Wait. Did I just apologize for giving you guys a cookie recipe? Especially one that's hella next-level. 

When I was in New York, I had an epiphany that came in the form of a pistachio cookie at Maison Kayser. I took two bites and I knew that I had experienced something extremely important, so I decided to remake this cookie immediately when I got home. I had a huge chocolate chip cookie taste testing sesh this summer and discovered that the famed Jacques Torres/New York Times cookies actually is the best chocolate chip cookies recipe, even though I hoped I could developed a recipe to dethrone it and award myself the title of Chocolate Chip Cookie King. (It's a real fantasy I have.) Out of 9 other chocolate chip recipes, that one was the surefire winner. To make these cookies, I decided to make a batch of the trusty Jacques Torres dough, but then added hella pistachio paste, hella melty white and dark chocolate chunks, and hella chopped pistachios. Guess what I topped them with. Yep, none other than hella Maldon sea salt flakes. 

How were they? You guessed it. HELLA DELICIOUS. No but really, hella-ness aside, these cookies are amazing and I'm preeeetty sure they're gonna be making the rounds at holiday parties in the coming months. Pin these now, you won't regret it. 

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Salted White & Dark Chocolate Pistachio Cookies 

(adapted from this) 

• 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour
• 1 2/3 cups bread flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
• 2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup pistachio paste (homemade or store-bought) 
• 10 oz. high-quality white chocolate, coarsely chopped 
• 6 oz. high-quality dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup roasted and shelled pistachios, chopped 
• sea salt flakes (I love Maldon)

DIRECTIONS

In a medium bowl, sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugars until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla and pistachio paste. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in chocolate chunks and chopped pistachios. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

Scoop 3.5-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet. Sprinkle lightly (or generously, like me!) with sea salt flakes and bake until golden brown but still soft, about 18 to 20 minutes at 350F. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. 

Fluffernutter Sandwich Cookies

Welcome to the partially new Glazed & Confused! I've been toying around with my layout over the past few weeks and decided to finally make the switch this weekend. There's still some things to be added, redesigned, and put into place. A bigger post showcasing all of the new features and pretty things should be coming at the end of the week. Until then, let's talk cookies. 

I was going to wait another to make a post about these, but I just couldn't keep these away from you guys any bit longer.

I have a confession, I've never had a legit fluffernutter sandwich. I'm going to go ahead and guess that it's just not a Southern thing? But don't worry, I got my fair share of ultra-fattening substances spread onto slices of bunny bread. Case in point: condensed milk sandwiches. I refuse to elaborate out of pure shame.

It wasn't until I started baking that I discovered the (***)flawless combination that is peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. That shit is magical.

Naturally, the next step would be transform the fluffernutter sandwich into a dessert. I'll be honest, these cookies are nothing that innovative or different. They're just damn good. 

Fluffernutter Sandwich Cookies 

• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (do not use natural peanut butter)
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, melted
• 1 container of marshmallow fluff

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add in the peanut butter. Mix in the egg and vanilla. Add in all of the dry ingredients and combine. 

Scoop tablespoon-sized balls of cookie dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake cookies for 10 minutes. Add a sprinkle of sea salt on top of each cookie. Don't leave that out! 

Once cool, spread a small amount of marshmallow fluff in between each cookies. Move cookies to fridge for 30 minutes. Afterwards, dip each cookie into the melted semi-sweet chocolate and place on wax paper. Once set, enjoy with a huge glass of milk.