It's A Wrap

One Christmas, a group I was a part of had a gift exchange. We all brought wrapped gifts that were under a certain dollar amount. After the eating and talking and laughing part we placed all the presents on the floor and sat in a circle around them. Then we drew numbers out of a hat. Number One picked a gift. Number Two got to either pick a gift or take the gift from Number One. And so on around the circle. And when everyone had a present, we all opened the gifts.

The first gift to be picked up was gorgeous - shiny silver wrapping paper with a large, glittery silver bow. It was a work of art...that contained a rather lame ornament.

The last gift to be picked was mine. I am not a gifted wrapper and my poor little offering looked like a two year old had helped wrap it (which was probably the case). But, and I say this not to boast, my gift was the best. I had searched long and hard for just the right item for that group and there was a collective intake of envious breath as the last gift-picker revealed her treasure. Each of them had passed over the wonderful gift because of it's appearance.

The moral? Well, the obvious is the one about judging a book by its cover, but the one I'm going for here is that it's all about presentation. This is a lesson I struggle with all the time. I'm in such a hurry to be done that I rush the final step - presentation- and it's the presentation that sells. Whether it's food, clothes, or gifts, you buy with your eye before you reach for your wallet (or fork).


A friend of mine has an amazing gift for making things beautiful. She is the queen of wrapping and has frequently been told she should open up a business doing gift wrapping. But she always says no because it's a labor of love for her to find just the right wrap, just the right gift tag, just the right large ribbon, the right coordinating smaller ribbon, from which hangs the perfect charm.

She gave me a lesson in wrapping once and my packages improved in appearance, as long as I was willing to take the time.

She popped into my mind the other day when I was throwing together a batch of cookies. The son-in-law-to-be is back in town and I wanted to make his favorite cookies. Then I thought, with my friend in mind, why not take it up a notch and make them something special? So to his favorite chocolate and peanut butter cookie I added more chocolate. Then some peanut butter topping. Then a smooth chocolate ganache sliding over it all. The result? A fabulous cookie that was lifted from cookie jar status to first-to-go at the buffet table.

Perfect Presentation Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cookies

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1-1/4 cups butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Peanut Butter layer:

1-1/3 cups peanut butter
2 Tbsp + 2 tsp butter, softened
3/4 cup powdered sugar

Chocolate ganache:

3/4 cup heavy cream
8 oz. chopped semi-sweet chocolate

1- Heat oven to 350 deg. F.

2 - Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

3- Beat butter and sugar in the large bowl of a mixer until it's fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Gradually add flour mixture, beating well. Stir in the chips.

4 - Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 8 minutes. Do not overbake; the cookies will puff up while baking and flatten while cooling.

5- Cool for two minutes on the cookie sheet then remove to a wire rack. Cool completely.

6- In a mixing bowl cream together the peanut butter and butter. Add the powdered sugar and blend until smooth.

7 - Top each cookie with 1/2 to 1 tsp of the peanut butter mixture, spreading it to 1/4-inch from the edge. If possible, place the cookies in the refrigerator to set while making the ganache.

8 - Place the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. Heat the heavy cream in a saucepan till it's steamy but not boiling. Pour the cream over the chocolate. Let it sit for two minutes then stir till smooth. Top each cookie with ganache so that just a hint of the peanut butter shows.

Return the cookies to the refrigerator to set the ganache, at least two hours. Store the cookies in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

The Weather Girl

My family laughs at me because I've become such a weather nerd. I track the weather. Not just the temperature and whether or not it's going to snow, but I track the humidity.

Growing up in an arid desert climate I took two things for granted. One was that if I handwashed a sweater, rolled it in a towel and squeezed all the excess moisture out, then laid it on another dry towel, in a day I'd have a dry sweater. After I moved to Seattle I learned that if I tried the above steps with a beautiful angora sweaterdress that I'd gotten for my birthday, by the third day I'd have a soggy sweaterdress that had mildewed. Euwwww.

The other thing I took for granted was divinity. When I was in high school I got onto a divinity making jag and could churn out the fluffy stuff. Delightful, sweet little puffs with a barely firm exterior, meltingly smooth on the inside. Aaaahhh. I made it so much that my mother said I burned out the motor on her KitchenAid. Since winter is the time to play around with hot, steamy pots in the kitchen, divinity was one of the things I associated with Christmas.

Several years after I'd moved here I got a KitchenAid mixer of my very own and was so excited to be able to make divinity again. Except I couldn't. It turned out like a weird, nougaty sludge, making me cry. Every year at Christmas time I'd try again. Same sludge and I'd cry again.

My kids didn't understand this. To them, this was what divinity was. You scooped it off the wax paper with a spoon and it glued your mouth shut. This frustrated me even more; that my children should not know proper divinity!

I went on a quest. Was it the syrup temperature? Were my egg whites too stiff? Not stiff enough? I even had my mother send me the recipe from her cookbook that I'd used all those years, in case it was different from Joy of Cooking.

I'd read the instructions that said this should only be attempted on a clear day. I made it on a rare clear day and still ended up with a sticky puddle of sugar ooze on the counter. I even stumped a call-in cooking show and won a cookbook with my question of why oh why my divinity failed.

Then, I searched the internet and found a children's science fair project on divinity. I guess I don't know as much as a 5th grader! The key to divinity making is the humidity. Just a clear day won't do. You have to have low humidity. Maximum of 60%, preferably below 40%.

Well, a day like that was a snap where I grew up. There, rain was an occurrence, not a way of life. Here, even on a clear day, the humidity is likely to be above 70%. So I check the forecast regularly and if there's a chance of it dipping below 60%, I'm making divinity.

This past weekend the humidity hit 62% and I sprang into action. This was as close as it's likely to get here. Fearfully, hopefully, I hovered over the mixer, and Yeah! It worked! My kids were disappointed, though. It wasn't all sticky and gloopy, like they think it's supposed to be.

Don't attempt this recipe unless you have a candy thermometer and a heavy-duty stand mixer. It was made without either of those in the dark ages of baking, but those women (and men) must have had arms the size of logs. Of course, if you tried that, you might burn off the divinity calories before you even eat any!

Snowdrift Divinity
my grandmother's recipe

makes about 1-1/4 lbs.

2-1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup white corn syrup
1/2 cup water
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Place the sugary, corn syrup, and water in a saucepan over low heat.

Stir until sugar is dissolved. When the syrup starts to boil, cover the saucepan with a lid for two minutes. This helps to wash the sugar crystals off the sides. Cook without stirring to hard ball stage on a candy-making thermometer (252 deg. F).

While the syrup is heating, in the large bowl of a stand mixer, beat the egg whites till stiff. It doesn't take as long to beat the egg whites as it does to heat the syrup, so start once your syrup about halfway to 252 deg.

Once the syrup reaches hard ball stage, remove the pan from the heat and pour it in a thin stream over the stiffly beaten egg whites with the mixer on medium-high.

Continue beating until the mixture loses its gloss and starts to hold its shape (it looks kind of streaky). I timed this and it took 13 minutes, so don't give up hope after 5 minutes. I think this was where my mother's KitchenAid motor suffered a seizure. Now, if it feels hot on top, I place a cold (not dripping!) compress on top of it to cool it off.

When the mixture looks done quickly add the vanilla and nuts. Remove from the mixer and drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper* in individual mounds.


(Note: my husband and I got into a long, geeky discussion while I was making this about sugar solutions, viscosity, boiling points, and the changes a syrup makes as it is heated. After consulting multiple websites and much discussion, we decided that probably the temperature at which the syrup was heated was irrelevant. The recipe says over low heat, but if you turn the heat to medium high, it should achieve the same effect in a shorter time. The syrup won't reach hard ball until a certain amount of the water has been driven off as steam.)

(Subnote: yes, my family is that exciting to be around. Jealous?)

* Eco-tip for the day: If you eat boxed cereal, save the waxy wrappers that the cereal comes in. It's a food-grade material that's tougher than waxed paper. I love to use them for covering chicken breasts that I'm pounding (doesn't shred like waxed paper) and for candy making (it doesn't stick like waxed paper). I also will cover spattery foods that I'm reheating in the microwave (doesn't wilt like waxed paper). So, you get to re-use an item you already bought and you don't have to go buy waxed paper! Thrifty and green!

And just one more thing - if you're going to whine about not having a KitchenAid mixer, trot over here to see how you can bid to get one for just $10!

Double Chocolate Goodness

Time is short. We're almost halfway through our chocolate advent calendar and there's still so much baking to be done. New cookies to try, old favorites to produce, and somewhere in there get my kitchen cleaned to the point where I can actually see the counters again. (Too many bookmarked cookbooks piled everywhere!) So today I'm not going to bore entertain you with a rambling anecdote. We'll get right to the meat of the matter. Or, more appropriately, the chocolate of the matter. Double chocolate in fact.

I've had a copy of this recipe from the August issue of Gourmet sitting on my pile for months. When I finally got around to making them, I wondered why on earth I'd taken so long. They are fabulous! Moist chocolatey cookies with chunks of chocolate, pecans, and dried sour cherries. They're wonderful fresh, but they mature nicely in the cookie jar. The dried fruit keeps the cookie soft and chewy for up to a 5 days in an airtight container, if for some reason they hang around that long.

If you wanted to dress them up for a party, you could drizzle a little ganache over the top, but for taste, they are delightful as is. Lots of chocolatey goodness with the crunch of nuts and the tangy counterpoint of sour cherries. Mmmm. This recipe is staying in my keeper pile!

Cherry Double-Chocolate Cookies
adapted from Gourmet

makes about 2 dozen cookies

1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
Scant 12 tsp salt
1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1-1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
3-1/2 oz. fine-quality milk chocolate, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 cup pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped
1 cup dried sour cherries

1- Preheat oven to 375 deg. F with racks in upper and lower thirds.

2- In a small bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

3- Beat together the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, then add eggs 1 at a time, beating until combined well. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, mixing until just combined. Add chocolate chunks, pecans, and cherries and mix until just incorporated.

4- Drop 2 level Tablespoons of dough per cookie about 2 inches apart onto 2 ungreased large baking sheets. With dampened fingers, flatten cookies slighty.

5- Bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, top to bottom and rotating the sheets. After 12 to 1 minutes the cookies should be puffed and set. Transfer cookies to a rack to cool.

Warning: Hazardous Material

Normally I try to be nice and post things that you can make to delight your family, friends, and co-workers. I don't know what it is about me today, though. Too much to do? Not enough sleep? Whiny kids who don't understand the concept of "18 more days till Christmas?" Whatever the reason, I'm feeling evil. Not just cranky, but kicking the dog, taking candy from babies, and putting plastic jugs in the yard waste bin evil. (A little Seattle joke there.)

So I'm going to introduce you to the crack cocaine of the candy world. This stuff is seriously addictive. You cannot take one small nibble and walk away. You will eat a whole piece. And then another. And then another. Till the pan is licked clean and the medics have to come drag you out from under the table where you're huddled in a whimpering ball. You know it will make you feel rotten to eat it all, but you just can't help it. And it doesn't make a wimpy little 8 x 8 panful, it makes a big 9x 13 panful!

Small children should definitely not be introduced to this stuff. It's free-basing sugar and they'll climb the walls and swing from the curtains, only coming down to beg and whine for more.

Adults should stay away from it. It's a train-wreck for any diet, packing more calories into a piece than most third world nations consume in a month. And that's just one piece. And it's impossible to have just one piece.



The only reason that I can think of that you should make this is if you have an annoying neighbor who complains about your dog or your children. You can take them a big plate of it. And then chuckle evilly when you see the flashing lights of the aid car. Or if you have a contractor who's made a gaping whole in drywall and you absolutely want to insure that they come back to finish the job. Give him just one piece.

In fact, there might even be a ban on this stuff, it's so addictive. So if you're ever foolish enough to make it, keep a wary ear listening for heavy boots and pounding on the door. If the drug enforcement officers show up on your doorstep, hide under the bed till they leave. But take the pan with you. You wouldn't want them to take it as evidence. Especially not if there were four more pieces....

Killer Crack Peanut Butter Fudge

3 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1 cup JIF peanut butter
1- 7 oz jar marshmallow creme
1 tsp vanilla

Combine sugar, butter, and evaporated milk in a heavy 2-1/2 quart saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Continue boiling over medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. Remove from heat. Add the peanut butter, stirring until melted.. Add marshmallow creme and vanilla; beat until well blended.

Spread in a buttered 9 x 13 x 2 - inch pan. Cool at room temperature, then refrigerate. Cut into squares when firm.

Modern Art Cookies

I am not a patient person. It makes me crazy to wait in lines, especially with a slow clerk at the head of the line who's barely able to figure out which end of a ballpoint pen goes down. I want to charge up to the head of the line and shriek, "Give me the darn thing and I'll clear this line out in 2 minutes!"

I recently made cut-out cookies for my daughter's piano recital. I had visions in my head of lovely, decorated cookies, like those seen in catalogs, bakeries, and artful blogs. Of course, what happened was I made frosting and slapped it on. I got really creative and put two colors on one cookie, but that really tested the boundaries for me. I just don't have the patience to delicately hand-paint each cookie. They're going to get eaten, not framed!

That's why I love bar cookies. They're usually easy with little wait time till hungry scavengers can pop one into their mouths. And no time-consuming artistry is involved. Unless you so choose.


I was looking at a new recipe to try for December and thought it looked good but needed a little something. Chocolate? No, my daughter said. White chocolate. White chocolate should always be in a recipe with cranberries, she said. So I drizzled white chocolate over the top. It turned out kind of artsy. Not in a Renoir or Rembrandt kind of way; more in a Jackson Pollock kind of way. But hey, it's still art, which is a big accomplishment for me. Plus, they're wonderfully delicious. While I was cutting the bars into squares, two of them just leapt out of the pan and into my mouth. Mmmmm. Tart cranberries and sour cream, chewy crumbs, sweet chocolate. One just isn't enough!

Cranberry Pollack Bars
adapted from Taste of Home

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups quick-cooking oats
1-1/2 cups plus 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour, divided
2 cups Craisins or dried cranberries
1 cup (8 oz) sour cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp grated lemon peel
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup vanilla milk chips (white chocolate chips)

(Note: I used Craisins, because that's what I had on hand. If you use the dried cranberries, the bars will be slightly less sweet.)

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Combine oats and 1-1/2 cups flour; add to creamed mixture until blended. Set aside 1-1/2 cups for topping. Press remaining crumb mixture into an ungreased 13 x 9 x 2- inch pan. Bake at 350 deg. F. for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine the cranberries, sour cream, sugar, egg, lemon peel, vanilla and remaining flour. Spread evenly over crust. Sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned. Place on a wire rack to cool.

Microwave the chips on high in a glass dish for 30 seconds. Stir until all the chips are dissolved. Use a spoon to drizzle the melted chips over the bars in the pan. You can get creative here and get in touch with your inner Jackson Pollack.

Life On The Treadmill

My parents didn't approve of television. I remember when we got our first television set. I was probably 4 or 5 years old. The set was black and white. And my parents didn't upgrade to color till I moved away to college. It blew my mind when I found out Star Trek was in color.

We were limited to one hour of TV time a day, so we had to plan and prioritize our shows that we wanted to watch. As an adult I can see the advantage of limiting the brain rot, but as a child I resented having to choose between The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

One scene in The Jetsons has stayed in my mind. George Jetson goes out to walk the dog on the treadmill, the dog chases the cat, the treadmill goes haywire, and George is running for his life on the treadmill, getting sucked into it, and coming out running, over and over, screaming, "Jane, stop this crazy thing!"

For me, December is that treadmill. I always seem to hit December 1st running, with a to-do list a mile long. Shopping, wrapping, mailing, cards to make, write, address and send, and, of course, baking. And baking in December means cookies. Lots of cookies. Cookies for neighbors, cookies for the office party, cookies for the cookie exchange, and cookies for my family to snork up. I'll be posting all (or mainly) cookies in December, so today is my last pie post for a while. (This also fits in nicely with the writer's strike since there will be no new episodes of Pushing Daisies until that's resolved.)


This is a fabulous pie. It's easy to put together, it's dressy enough for company, and it's totally delicious. If you choose to use a pre-made crust it's even faster to make. When I made my glut of Thanksgiving pies I had enough pie dough left over to roll out a single pie crust. Dorie's instructions for making a single pre-baked crust were different than I'd ever used before and I had such good success with them that I'll include them for you.

Raspberry Ribbon Pie
Adapted from Taste of Home

1 pre-baked pie shell
1 package (3 oz.) raspberry gelatin (Jello)
1 cup boiling water
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
1 Tbsp lemon juice
3 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Dash salt
1 cup heavy whipping cream

To make a pre-baked pie shell, use a 1/2 recipe of Dorie's Good For Almost Everything Pie Dough from Baking and chill, wrapped in plastic, for an hour or more. Roll out the dough and place into a 9-inch, buttered pie plate. Trim and finish the edges. Refrigerate the crust, covered with plastic wrap, while you preheat the oven to 400 deg. F.

Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil, fit the foil, buttered side down, tightly against the crust and fill with dried beans or pie weights. (I use old kidney beans and store them in a jar labeled "Pie Beans." You don't want to try cooking those beans afterwards.)

Put the pie plate on a baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil and beans. If the crust has puffed, gently press it down with the back of a spoon. Return the pie plate to the oven for another 10 minutes, till the crust is golden brown. Transfer to a rack and cool to room temperature before filling.

To make the pie filling, place the gelatin in a bowl and dissolve it with the boiling water. Add the sugar, raspberries and lemon juice and stir till the sugar is completely dissolved. Refrigerate until partially set, about 1-1/2 hours.

In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Add vanilla and salt. In another mixing bowl, beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form. Fold into cream cheese mixture. Spread 1/2 of this mixture over the bottom of the crust.

Spread 1/2 of the raspberry mixture over the top. Repeat the layers. Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.

Yield: 8 servings.

Une Affaire de L'estomac

My sister and I used to do a lot of jigsaw puzzles together. Since we had a limited number of puzzles we did the same ones over and over again and got pretty good at them. We learned that in the bird puzzle the one piece that was dark green and looked like feathers was actually a piece of a pine branch that the goldfinch was sitting on. And the one really red piece didn't go with the cardinal, it was the ruby-throated hummingbird's throat. We could throw together a 750 piece puzzle in an afternoon. Unless there was a missing piece. A missing piece messed everything up.

This happens to me in cooking a lot. Whether I knew I had nutmeg (but didn't) or have no idea what an ingredient is, let alone how to pronounce it to ask for it at the store, missing an ingredient is frustrating.

Recently, I saw a beautiful soup on Nook and Pantry that called, nay, sang to me. I like mushroom soup, but this one was promising a torrid love affair. It had chantarelles. Ooh la la, an affair with a French mushroom soup? Yes, the possibility stayed with me.

And then, just as I thought I'd overcome that temptation, it happened. Right there in Costco, in the chilly produce section. I didn't care that other people were watching. I went weak in the knees and succumbed to the package of fresh chantarelles. Throwing caution (and budget) to the wind, I picked up the chantarelles and the crimini's* next to it. I was making soup!

But then, when I got home and printed out the recipe, I hit a snag. A major snag. According to the recipe, her delicious soup owed it's flavor to dried porcini mushrooms. Argh! They didn't have those at Costco. Or Safeway. Or Trader Joe's. Or Whole Foods. I knew when I couldn't get it at Whole Foods, I was out of luck. I was even willing to pay Whole Paycheck prices, but they were out.

But I was determined now to have my soup. Those lovely mushrooms would not rot in my fridge for lack of porcinis. I turned to my trusted Splendid Soups and it did not fail me. The soup was breathtakingly beautiful and and slid over the tongue like a gossamer curtain of creamy mushroom flavor. My whole family inhaled it and made happy, contented noises. Aaaaaahhhhh. It was as satisfying as finding the missing puzzle piece and putting it in place to complete the picture.


Wild Mushroom Soup
adapted from Splendid Soups by James Peterson

1 medium-size onion, finely chopped
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dry sherry
1 quart chicken, vegetable or dried porcini broth
8 oz. fresh crimini mushrooms, rinsed and dried
8 oz. fresh chantarelles, carefully rinsed and dried
1 cup heavy cream
Good salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream, lightly whipped

Prepare a velouté base by cooking the onion in butter in a 4-quart pot over medium heat, stirring almost continuously to prevent browning. When the onion turns translucent, after about 10 minutes, add the flour and stir over medium heat for 5 minutes more to cook out the starchy taste.

Add the sherry and broth, whisking the soup to get rid of any lumps, and bring it to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Put the mushrooms in a blender and add 1 cup of the hot soup base. Blend the mushrooms on high speed for about 2 minutes, adding a little more soup base if necessary to get them moving, and blend till smooth.

Put a strainer over the pot and pour the contents of the blender through it into the pot with the rest of the base. Add the cream. If you want the soup perfectly smooth, strain it through a medium- or fine-mesh strainer. Bring the soup back to a simmer and season it with salt and pepper. Ladle it into hot bowls and put a dollop of whipped cream on each serving.

Serves 8

* Criminis are actually baby Portabello mushrooms. It's just size and marketing that separate them. Interesting, no?

Living Rubies

I'm a sucker for children's books. I love picture books, story books and kids' adventure books. When my to-be-husband met me in college he was mystified by my collection of children's books. It wasn't like I had any kids. I told him they were for my some-day kids, but the truth is, they were for me.

One of my all time favorite series is the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. If I were forced at knifepoint to pick a favorite out of that series, it would probably be The Silver Chair. It has plucky children, a comic foil, giants, a quest, near misses, a serpent, and a prince held under enchantment. Toward the end of the book, when the prince is released from the spell and is trying to escape from the underground cavern in which he's been held, a chasm opens up leading to the deep land of Bism. One of the creatures from that land tempts the prince into joining him there saying that the jewels there are alive. You can bite into them and they're juicy, unlike the cold, hard, dead jewels we scratch out of the surface of the earth.

When I had my first pomegranate, I figured that this was what C.S. Lewis had in mind when he wrote that. The sparkling seeds are like living rubies, spraying ruby red juice when squeezed. I always feel like a Bism princess when I eat a pomegranate.

Last year my daughter fell in love with pomegranates. Every time we saw one in the store she'd beg for one (hey, it's better than begging for Twinkies) and I'd usually give in. So when I told her she could pick which dish for me to make first from my new Nigella Express cookbook, it was a no-brainer. Pink and perfectly delicious - No-Churn Pomegranate Ice Cream.

This ice cream is so easy that anyone can make it. No ice cream maker required (sighs of relief from everyone who complained over my summer-long ice cream making spree that they had no ice cream maker), only 4 ingredients, and it tastes heavenly! As the first bite slides over your tongue you taste pure, fresh pomegranate flavor and then you feel the silky cream. Beautiful enough to wow company, simple enough to indulge yourself anytime.

No-Churn Pomegranate Ice Cream
adapted from Nigella Express

1 large pomegranate or 2 small ones
1 lime- juiced
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 cups heavy cream

1- Place about 3/4 of the pomegranate seeds into a sieve placed over a bowl. Reserve the rest of the seeds in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Using a spoon or your hand, crush the seeds down to release their juices. Then pick up handfuls of the seeds and squeeze them to get every last drop of juice. You'll have a pile of sad, used seeds to throw away and approximately 3/4 cup of pomegranate juice.

2- Add the lime juice to the bowl through the sieve.

3- Add the powdered sugar and whisk to dissolve.

4- Whisk in the cream and keep whisking until soft peaks form in the dainty pink cream.

5- Spoon and smooth the ice cream into a rigid plastic container with a tight-fitting lid, about 32 oz. size. Freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight. Scatter the reserved pomegranate seeds over the top when you serve it.