Raspberry Dark Chocolate Wonton Cups

Last Year's Post: Banh Mi
Two Years Ago:  Tuxedo Strawberries

Raspberry and dark chocolate, what more do you need to say?  Valentine's Day is coming up, and these little cups would make a very special treat.  For that matter, they're perfect for any time when you want a little special dessert and would also be great as a sweet alternative for an appetizer party or for a Easter or Mother's Day brunch.

Although they look fancy, they're very easy to make - just bake some wonton wrappers in a mini-muffin pan, and fill with whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and a raspberry.  Start to finish this project took about 45 minutes, and most of that was spent waiting for the oven to heat or for the wonton cups to cool.  You can make your own whipped cream, or whipped topping from the store will work just fine.  This will probably be best made on the same day you plan to serve them, and I wouldn't fill them very far in advance so the whipped cream doesn't soften the wonton cups.

You can make your own variations by substituting chocolate (or other flavored) pudding for the whipped topping, white chocolate for dark, blackberries for raspberries, etc.  Whatever combination you use will be delicious, impressive and pretty.

printable recipe

Raspberry Dark Chocolate Wonton Cups

Makes 12 cups

12 wonton wrappers

1 tablespoon melted butter

1 tablespoon white sugar

½ cup dark chocolate shavings

¾ cup sweetened whipped cream or nondairy whipped topping

12 fresh raspberries

Special equipment: mini-muffin pan

Preheat oven to 350d.

Brush wonton wrappers with butter and sprinkle with sugar.  Press sugar side up into ungreased miniature muffin cups.  Bake at 350d for 5-7 minutes until crisp and lightly brown.   Transfer wrappers to a wire rack to cool.

Spoon whipped cream or topping into each muffin cup.  Top with chocolate shavings and a single raspberry.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Last Year's Post: Famous Rum Cake
Two Years Ago:  Wild Rice Salad

Those of you who follow this blog will know that this post is a rather dramatic departure from my normal posts of whole grains, fruit and veggies.  I can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many desserts I've ever posted, much less candy and cookies.  So what gives?   Well, the holidays are coming, and for some inexplicable reason that I've never been able to figure out that means you have to make lots of cookies.  I saw this idea (it's too simple to call it an actual recipe) the other day and was intrigued.  We've all seen cookies with a Hershey's kiss pressed into the top.  What makes this slightly different is that you bake the cookies in mini-muffin tins and press the candy into the top when they're still soft, so the cookie ends up wrapped around the candy.  Sort of a little mini candy tart.  Anyway, I thought it was a cute idea that was worth passing along.

The very simplest approach is to use refrigerated cookie dough, although you could also make your own.  Besides the cookie dough all you need are miniature peanut butter cups and a mini-muffin pan.

You can use any flavor of cookie dough that you want.  I found refrigerated chocolate chip, sugar, and peanut butter cookie dough in my local store.  The chocolate chip and sugar came in long tubes (also called chubs) and the peanut butter came in a flat package with pre-cut dough pieces.  I chose peanut butter because The Lawyer loves both peanut butter cookies and Reese's peanut butter cups.  All you do is cut each dough piece in half, stick them in the muffin tins, and bake until puffed (only about half the time stated on the original cookie package).

My only trauma came when I realized I had 5 minutes left before the cookies came out, which were supposed to be immediately topped with the candies.  Do you know that miniature peanut butter cups have not one, but two wrappings?  How fast can you unwrap 24 of them?  I can tell you from experience that it takes longer than you would think.  If you've ever seen the classic "I Love Lucy" episode where she's trying to wrap candies coming down an ever-faster conveyor belt you'll have a rough idea of what was going on, except I was unwrapping instead.  Those wrappers were flying everywhere.

The cookies are puffed but still quite soft.  Pushing a candy into the center of each one sort of de-puffs it.

The candies melt a little and adhere to the cookies.  At this point, the cookies were still very soft so I decided to put the whole pan in the refrigerator to let them set before trying to take them out of the pan.  I'm not sure that was the greatest idea, because the cookies sort of glued themselves into the cups - I think my non-stick spray probably lost something when refrigerated.  I resorted to using a small sharp knife that I ran carefully around the edge of each cookie to pop them out.  It worked quite well but next time I'll probably just let them cool on the counter rather than refrigerating them.

They're cute little tarts of chocolatey-peanut butter deliciousness.  And of course, you could use a different flavor of cookie dough and a different miniature candy - have fun and make your own signature combination.  This would be a great activity to do with children also.

printable recipe

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Makes 24 cookies

  

Note:  the cookies can be made with any refrigerated cookie dough or homemade cookie dough.  Also, other types of miniature candy may be used.

  

1 (14 oz) package Pillsbury Simply Peanut Butter cookie dough

1 bag Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures

Special equipment:  mini-muffin tin pan

 

 Preheat the oven to 350d.

If using the Pillsbury dough, cut each dough round in half.  If using a tube of refrigerated dough, cut into 1-1.5” slices and cut each slice into quarters.  If using homemade dough, cut into pieces that are approximately ½ ounce of dough for each cookie.

Grease the mini-muffin tin pan and place a piece of dough in each.  Bake in the oven for about 8 minutes, until the cookies are puffed to the rim of the pan.  (Note that this is much less time than listed on the cookie package.) While the cookies bake, unwrap as many candies as you need to fit your muffin pan, one per cookie.

After the cookies are removed from the oven, immediately place one candy on top of each and gently press into the cookie with your finger until the top of the candy is level with the top of the cookie.  The candies will melt slightly.

Let cool in the pan, then carefully remove with a small spoon or by running a small sharp knife around the edges to pop the cookies out.

  

Turnovers

Turnovers are incredibly easy to make - they only have three ingredients so how hard can it be, right?  It's mainly just a bit of assembly.  The hardest part is deciding where to categorize the recipe in my plethora of three ring recipe binders - are they a snack, sandwich, breakfast, or dessert?  The answer is "yes", which isn't particularly helpful when trying to figure out where the recipe is.  If I was insanely organized I would probably create an alphabetized index of my hundreds and hundreds of recipes so I could cross-reference by keyword, but that's too much even for me. 

I just noticed that I've done two posts in a row using puff pastry.  Well, at least they're dramatically different recipes and puff pastry is still a magic ingredient - really easy to use but it looks really complicated.  You can put literally any filling in a turnover - savory or sweet - to suite your tastes.  For this post I did half chocolate and half apple turnovers.  I'm thinking of trying cheese, arugula and prosciutto turnovers in the near future.  Any type of jam works exceptionally well also - I recently saw something about cream cheese and blackberry jam that sounded enticing for a turnover filling.  And how about lemon curd?  I love lemon. The only thing to watch is that the filling isn't extremely liquid or it will end up running out of the turnovers and all over your oven.

The other dimension you can vary is the size.  The chocolate turnovers were small using 4" squares of puff pastry.  The apple turnovers were more what you would call a "normal" turnover size using 6" squares of puff pastry.  It all depends on what you intend to use them for - the chocolate turnovers were treats for The Lawyer's office and the apple turnovers were breakfast.

 The other good news is that you can make these ahead and refrigerate or freeze them, then just throw them in the oven when you want them.  Yum!

* * click here for a printable recipe* *


Turnovers
makes 18 small or 8 large turnovers

1 (17-1/4 oz) package puff pastry sheets
1 egg, beaten
Filling: 4 oz finely chopped semisweet chocolate, or 18 teaspoons of jam or lemon curd, or apple filling (below)



Adjust oven racks to the upper and lower middle positions and heat the oven to 425 degrees.

Working with one sheet at a time on a lightly floured work surface, roll the puff pastry sheet lightly and trim to a 12” square. Cut evenly into nine 4” squares or four 6” squares, depending on your preference.  Working with one square of dough at a time, place a portion of filling (chocolate or 1 teaspoon of jam or lemon curd) on the lower corner, brush two edges of the dough with beaten egg, and fold the dough in half diagonally to form a turnover. 

Place each turnover on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Place in the freezer for 20 minutes to harden, then brush the dough tops with the egg wash and pierce the top of each with a small knife.

Bake until golden brown, switching and rotating cookie sheets halfway through baking to ensure even browning, about 15 minutes. Cool the turnovers on a wire cooling rack. May serve warm or cold.


Apple filling:
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

Melt the butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the apples and stir for about 2 minutes. Add the brown sugar and cinnamon and cook, stirring, for 2 more minutes. Stir together the cornstarch and ½ tablespoon water. Pour into the skillet, mix well, and cook for 1 more minute until thickened. Remove from the heat to cool. When adding to the pastry sheets, drain the apples slightly so the turnovers won’t have too much liquid.

Tuxedo Strawberries

Valentine's Day is coming!   What better way to surprise someone than to make them a very special treat?  These cute little guys would make the perfect dessert or even a evening treat with a glass of champagne.  There's something about the taste of fresh strawberries and chocolate together that is just heavenly.  And they're really easy to make!  Just dunk some strawberries in two kinds of chocolate and chill in between.  To make it really fancy, buy some raspberry or strawberry syrup for a drizzle on the plate.

People go crazy for these.  Try them and you'll find out for yourself!


* * click here for a printable recipe version * *

Tuxedo Strawberries
Makes 10 strawberries

10 medium heart-shaped strawberries with green tops (try to find perfect red ones)
4 ounces white chocolate, chopped
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
Raspberry or strawberry syrup (optional)


Wash the strawberries and dry thoroughly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Melt the white chocolate by placing in a small bowl in the microwave for approximately 3 minutes at low power, stirring after each minute.

Dip each berry up to the shoulder in white chocolate while holding by the green top.

Let the excess drip off while swirling gently, then place on the baking sheet. 

Chill in the refrigerator until the chocolate is hard, approximately one hour.

Melt the semisweet chocolate in the same manner as the white chocolate. Dip two sides of each berry in the chocolate to cover most (but not all) of the white chocolate, resembling a tuxedo jacket. Place on the baking sheet. Dip a wooden skewer in the chocolate and dot two “buttons” on the white chocolate front. 

Chill until ready to serve.

To serve, drizzle the syrup on a plate (optional) and top with strawberries.

For best flavor, serve within 5 or 6 hours.

The Holidays are Coming! Time for Chocolate

If you would like to receive email notifications of new Cracked Pepper posts, you can sign up in the upper left portion of this page.

 
Ready or not, here come the holidays.  I've been seeing Christmas decorations in stores since the first day of October (!) so I figured it was time to do a holiday recipe.   I wanted to post a contender in the "United Way Bake Sale/Cookie Swap/Holiday Present" category that will appeal to everyone with a sweet tooth and especially chocoholics (that would be you, Terry!).  It works great for all three occasions - if your company has a fund-raising bake sale, if you participate in a cookie swap, or if you want a little present to give to someone this season.  Did I mention that it's chocolate?  How about DOUBLE CHOCOLATE?

Speaking of presents, I have to tell a brief story.  Several years ago The Lawyer stumbled across some bright green felt pea pods in a store and for some unknown reason decided they would make great Christmas presents for his sisters.  I've mentioned his sense of whimsy before, right?  Anyway, the pea pods had a zipper.  When you unzipped them there was a row of plump little peas with smiley faces.  It was bad enough that he decided to give them to his grown sisters, but when I found out that he signed both of our names to the gift cards I was appalled.  Luckily they're well acquainted with his sense of humor and understood.  Thank goodness - enough people think I'm a little off center without adding zippered pea pods to the evidence pile.

So, back to food.  Biscotti are stylish and a little bit fancy, but they're surprisingly easy to make.  Basically they're just a cookie that's baked twice - once as a big log, and then again after they're cut into pieces.  This particular recipe is much more chocolate-y than anything you would buy in a store due to the combination of cocoa powder and chocolate chips.  Great dunked in coffee!


* * click here for a printable recipe version * *

Double Chocolate Biscotti with Walnuts

Makes 30 biscotti

2 cups all purpose flour

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips (or mini chocolate chips)
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

  

Preheat the oven to 350d and either butter and flour a large baking sheet, or place parchment on the baking sheet.

In a medium bowl whisk the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together.  In a large bowl with an electric mixer beat together the butter and sugar, then add eggs and beat until combined well.  Stir in the dry ingredients by hand, then stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips.

Flour your hands, then divide the dough in half and form each into a log on the baking sheet that is approximately 12 inches long and 2 inches wide.  Flatten the tops slightly and sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. 

formed and ready for baking

Bake for 35 minutes, then remove from the oven and cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes.  With a large knife cut each log diagonally into fifteen ¾” slices. 

baked and cut

Flip them on their sides on the baking sheet, return to the oven, and bake for 10-12 minutes more until crisp.  Remove from the oven and immediately place biscotti on a wire cooling rack until completely cool.  Store in an airtight container.

cooling on a rack