"Chopped" Challenge - Mini Carrot Latkes with Chocolate Rum Caramel Sauce

Rachel at Diary of a Chocoholic is a girl after my own heart!  Here is her dare for my "Chopped" challenge: "Dessert (because it's my favorite!)? Carrots, Chocolate and Rum!"


Well, how can we go wrong with chocolate and rum, and with a hint of nutrition to delude us into thinking we're behaving ourselves?

Today is sadly the last day of the challenge, in which I had asked readers to suggest ingredients that I would then have to use in creating a dish for a specific course of a meal.  It's been so much fun!  But at least we're going out on a sweet note.

I knew immediately that I didn't want to resort to making carrot cake with the suggested ingredients.  It is one of the great foods in the universe, absolutely!  But it's too obvious.  I debated candying carrot sticks, turning them into gorgeous translucent rum-scented dippers with a chocolate fondue-like sauce.  But adapting a candied orange peel recipe for a vegetable with a different consistency seemed to have too many variables to predict success - too soft or too hard or too gumdrop-y?  A noble notion to tinker with some day when I have time to play.

So, being a girl with a Jewish soul and appetite, I then thought of latkes.  They don't always need to be made with potatoes, and they don't always need to be savory; carrots offer an inherent sweetness that could be played up for dessert.  The combination of mini spiced treats with a luscious chocolate sauce started to sing a Siren song to me.

These little pancakes have a fabulously enticing fragrance, and are utterly enhanced by the addictive sauce.  (Pour it over ice cream and it thickens like fudge ... sigh.  I'm almost - but not quite! - ashamed to admit that I made a full batch of the sauce, ate and enjoyed it with a few of the latkes, and then simply took a spoon and ate the rest of it "as is." )

Thanks to Rachel, we can all be chocoholics today while still eating our vegetables!


Mini Carrot Latkes with Chocolate Rum Caramel Sauce


Latkes:
1/2-pound carrots, peeled, finely shredded
4 ounces sugar cookies, crushed fine
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup brown sugar
pinch of kosher salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup oil, for frying

Combine carrots, cookie crumbs, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, salt, and eggs in a large bowl.

Heat oil over medium-high heat.  Add batter by the tablespoon and cook 3-4 minutes per side, until nicely golden brown.  Remove from pan, drain on paper towels, and continue with remaining batter.  Makes 16 latkes.

Sauce:
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons dark rum
2 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
1/3 cup half-and-half

Melt butter, brown sugar and rum together in a small saucepan over low heat.  Add chocolate and stir until melted.  Slowly stir in half-and-half.

To serve:
Whipped cream

Drizzle chocolate sauce over 4 dessert plates.  Place 4 latkes onto each plate, and top with whipped cream.

Serves 4.

Peanut Butter Pancakes with Nutella Sauce

Been streamlining, tweaking and redecorating ye olde blog a bit ... an insomniac's version of entertainment in the middle of the night! Hope everyone likes the new decor! It was time for a new look, with the start of a new season and the Jewish New Year beginning on Wednesday evening ... :)

Rosa Parks lived an extraordinary life, and saved many memorable items - everything from gifts given by Martin Luther King, Jr. to her own personal address book - before her death in 2005.

Guernsey's auction house has now been given the responsibility of selling this collection, as a permanent home is sought for the treasures.

On one slip of paper that was found amidst everything - a simple receipt from a Detroit bank - a recipe was found scribbled on the back in Rosa's own handwriting: a recipe for Featherlite Peanut Butter Pancakes.

Well, considering that today is National Pancake Day, it only seemed fitting to put this find to good use!

I did tweak the recipe just a bit, and I turned it into a dessert complete with chocolate sauce ... well, not just chocolate sauce, but rather Nutella sauce. Thus, the pancakes are small instead of plate-sized; they're perfect for a special treat, rich and decadent.

Celebrate the holiday in style!

Peanut Butter Pancakes with Nutella Sauce
(slightly modified from Rosa Parks' original recipe)

Pancakes:
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
2/3 cup peanut butter
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In another bowl, whisk the egg and the peanut butter together with a fork; whisk in the milk and the lemon juice, then pour the liquid over the dry ingredients and combine well.

Grease a 10" skillet and pour batter by 1/8-cupfuls into the skillet; cook over medium heat for 2 minutes per side, until the pancakes are golden and the edges don't appear to be raw. Continue until all of the batter is used up.

Nutella Sauce:
1/2 cup Nutella
4 tablespoons half-and-half

Combine the Nutella and the half-and-half; microwave for 45 seconds until warm, and stir until smooth.

Serve pancakes topped with Nutella sauce and whipped cream.

Makes about 20 3" pancakes, serving 6-8.

"Fried" Ice Cream Torah Scrolls

The holiday of Shavuot [shah-voo-OHT], which celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, begins at sundown tonight and continues through Thursday evening. It is a major holiday, though one that isn't as well known as some (i.e.: Passover, Chanukkah).

Jeremy can never remember Shavuot by its proper name, and likely couldn't tell you what its signifcance is; but he does know it as the "Cheesecake at Midnight" holiday.

Yup - you read that correctly! According to About.com:

"Tikun Leyl Shavuot is a kabbalistic (mystical) custom that is relatively new to Jewish tradition. It is increasingly popular among modern Jews and is meant to help us rededicate ourselves to studying Torah. Kabbalists taught that at midnight on Shavuot the skies open for a brief moment and God favorably hears all prayers."

A tikkun leil shavuot (the spelling I'm accustomed to, pronounced [tee-KOON lay-EEL shah-voo-OHT]) is an evening of communal study which generally ends at midnight with a sweet treat featuring the holiday's traditional dairy products; and cheesecake - which is so luscious! - is often the preferred indulgence.

Many people eat blintzes at Shavuot, since the folded and stuffed crepes resemble Torah scrolls and the tablets containing the Ten Commandments.

But I have my own traditional dairy dessert for Shavuot: "fried" ice cream. Blintzes require making the crepes, filling the crepes, folding the crepes, frying the crepes ... a lot of bother, even if the end result is utterly fabulous.

So I just make these easy "fried" ice cream cylinders, shaping softened ice cream and then letting it set before rolling the "scrolls" in sweetened cookie crumbs and drizzling them with chocolate sauce. This still honors the dairy tradition whose origins are unknown, though it is thought to be a reference to Israel being the "land of milk and honey"; and it still offers something sweet and celebratory, but without a lot of effort.

Shavuot is a holiday, after all!

"Fried" Ice Cream Torah Scrolls

1-1/3 cups ice cream, any flavor, softened a bit
8 vanilla wafers, finely crushed
generous sprinkle of cinnamon
3 tablespoons sugar
chocolate sauce

Place a square of plastic wrap onto the countertop. Place 1/3 cup ice cream in the center.


Shape into a 3" long cylinder, then wrap it up in the plastic wrap, twisting the ends, and place into the freezer to set. Repeat with remaining ice cream until you have 4 cylinders.



When the ice cream is set, combine the wafer crumbs, cinnamon and sugar on a plate. One by one, unwrap the ice cream cylinders and roll them in the crumb mixture until they are very well coated.



Place the coated ice cream onto a freezer-safe plate that has been covered with plastic wrap, then repeat with the remaining ice cream. Freeze until set.

Place 2 ice cream cylinders onto a dessert plate. Place froofy toothpicks into the tops and bottoms of the "scrolls" (to represent decorative crowns). Drizzle chocolate sauce over the ice cream. Repeat with remaining cylinders.

Serves 2.