Food Friday: Just Desserts. 😈

The title is a pun, both a reflection of my anger (see last post) and the fact that going back through my earlier posts looking for food related ones to re-activate, I realized that there were apparently next to nothing showcasing desserts.

BBQ is a specialty of the house, as are Tex-Mex and Italian, BUT… Well, Cheesecake Factory has nothing on us. 😁

That’s a Cinnamon Caramel cheesecake, one of the few we’ve had crack too.

And this one is a triple chocolate cheesecake that we made for her cousin’s son’s birthday. Same cousin who continually took advantage of of good natures until we cut him off completely.

How about a chocolate espresso cheesecake?

We’ve also done Kahlua Mudslide Cheesecake, Standard New York, Pumpkin Spice, and several other flavors of cheesecake. Hopefully more pictures turn up than just these.

Apple Pies and other treats abound as well.

Oh and how about homemade chocolate mini bundt cakes topped with ice cream and chocolate?

Thanksgiving Feast Reveal!

Yes, it was a few days ago, but I needed time to recover, LOL. As usual, I spent WAY too much time cooking. The results and everybody’s enjoyment make it worth while however. 🙂

I once again cooked the turkey on out Recteq (Formerly Rec Tec; they changed the spelling) pellet smoker. I also had my cousin-in-law (is that a thing? 😀 ) drop off a ham since his kids are not turkey fans. Plenty of room in the smoker for both.

200 degrees (93degrees C) for 7 hours…

Since cooking low and slow will turn any poultry skin rubbery, I peeled the skin off the turkey before smoking it. At the point this picture was taken, it was looking better than it did going onto the grill. The ham was pre-cooked and spiral cut, so it went on for a shorter time to simply warm it up and add some smoke flavor to it. We’ve had that brand of ham before and it’s overly sweet out of the wrapper.

I had actually started with the desserts, as they’re the most time consuming. Up at 2:30am start also. There were 2 dutch crust apple pies and a Ghirardelli double layer cheesecake.

Before the dutch crumble topping was added and after it was done baking.

One of those pies went to the next door neighbor, who was kind enough to bring us over a store bought pumpkin pie. The cheesecake (link to recipe at Ghirardelli) was major work. I didn’t remember to get a picture until after we’d cut into it also, lol.

It looked prettier new.

What you have there is a chocolate graham cracker crust, then a layer of regular “vanilla” cheesecake topped by a layer of chocolate espresso cheesecake, then covered with Ghiradelli chocolate ganash, fresh raspberries and mint leaves as garnish.

Since the layers are both liquid when added to the springform pan, they come out with a marbled look instead of even layers. There are some things I’d change with that recipe, having made it now. That will be a separate post in the near future though. 😉 Overall it was a hit, and almost as rich as my goo-goo cluster cheesecake. Something I just realized I’ve never posted here… O_O

Once the desserts were out of the way, I was able to focus on the actual dinner.

One very easy side dish I did was a giant butternut squash:

I know, kind of small. At least it didn’t have a phallic appearance though, lol.

All I did here was skin it, dice it into cubes, throw it in a casserole dish with melted butter, and top it with brown sugar and cinnamon, then bake.

It’s an easy, old school recipe for a veggie dish that even most kids will devour.

There was also some homemade dressing, not stuffing. The difference there is that stuffing goes IN the turkey for cooking. Dressing goes in the oven in a baking dish. Unfortunately, I forgot to get pictures of those two items.

Family also brought over some green bean casserole, fresh baked bread and store bought pecan pie. Yes there was as much dessert as there was food.

From bottom to top: Bread, Turkey, Cranberry Jelly, Dressing, Gravy, Green Bean Casserole, Ham, and WAY at the back off to the side, the Butternut Squash.

Note I wasn’t able to get the skin off the drumsticks or wings, as the picture shows.

How did THAT experiment work out? Reasonably well. I won’t call it a huge success because the turkey was just slightly dry. That had more to do with my thermometer breaking on me though. That, in turn, led to the turkey staying on the smoker a little longer than it should have.

And that’s my Thanksgiving dinner recap. With that, I’ll leave you with this important Thanksgiving thought:

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

4 Hours Down…

12 to go…  What am I talking about?  My writing distraction for the day.  We’re having dinner guests who have all but demanded my brisket:

But 16 hours?!? I hear some of you saying.  A good brisket is slow cooked over wood to give it maximum smoke flavor and tenderness.  Beef brisket and pork ribs are weird critters anyway.  To get to a proper Texas competition tenderness and flavor, you have to cook them to a higher internal temperature than something like a steak.  Ribs are done at about 185.  Brisket can be anywhere between 195 and 210 depending upon the individual piece of meat.  When slow cooked properly, both should hold together but the meat should tear with a gentle pull and still be tender and juicy.  Something like this:

That lovely red around the outer edge is a smoke ring.  The darker the better.  🙂

Oh and another reason a brisket takes so long; a full “packer” cut of brisket starts at about 14 pounds.  You can count on having to trim a couple pounds of fat away though.

I’ve been told by Texas competition BBQers and judges that they like the look of my brisket.  I’ve been told by other Texans that mine is the best they’ve had since leaving Texas.  DivaQ eat your heart out, hehehe.

And for those of you who don’t get the Texas references, brisket is solidly a Texas thing, and they take it serious.  You can talk bad about a Texan’s momma before you badmouth their brisket, LOL.

So yeah, a little food bragging to take my mind off the neighborhood, the way nobody listens anymore, and having to clean house for tonight.

Oh and since I’m bragging…  Remember I said I bake too?  Here’s a Goo-Goo Cluster cheesecake I made last year:

Now, as far as offering any Brisket lessons; just check out Aaron Franklin’s youtube channel or get his book “Franklin Barbeque; A Meat Smoking Manifesto”.  His BBQ is so good people line up at his restaurant at 4am for a noon opening.  He’s free with his secrets too, unlike many professional chefs.