Wordless Wednesday: The Frosty Treat

Combination Nutty Dip from the Frosty Treat in Kensington, PEI

iPhone photo, no filters

Wordless Wednesday: Bluesfest

A freshly squeezed lemonade to help cool off at Ottawa Bluesfest 2012

iPhone photo, no filters

Wordless Wednesday: Sangria

Summery sangria at 10fourteen

iPhone photo with Instagram

Wordless Wednesday: Ooooh Yeah

My favorite item at my parent's cottage - Kool Aid cups!

Strawberry Rhubarb Turnovers

Last weekend I was lucky enough to come across local rhubarb and strawberries at the grocery store. I figured neither one was going to be around for too much longer so I'd better take advantage while I could. I wanted to make something tasty that wasn't too complicated so I decided to try my hand at turnovers. 

 

I started off with frozen puff pastry from the grocery store. I may be an adventurous  baker but even I'm not crazy enough to try to make my own puff pastry. Especially in the summer...in a tiny kitchen with weak air conditioning. Then I made a strawberry rhubarb compote to use for the filling. Basically just a mix of chopped strawberries and rhubarb, some sugar, a little cornstarch and a bit of water. Most recipes I came across mentioned cutting the sheet of pastry into 4 and making large turnovers. I decided I wanted to have more to share so I cut each sheet into 16. After putting them together, I can see why they suggest the larger squares. The process was very messy but the taste was probably the same. 

A lot of them exploded but the filling was easily stuffed back in

A little egg wash and large crystal sugar topped things off

I thought these were delicious. I nice small treat. They did lose their crispiness after they were stored overnight but they were still tasty. If I were to make them again I think I would definitely try out the larger size. I think it might be easier and you'd definitely get more filling per turnover. I froze some of them after assembly and I'm going to try to bake them from frozen some day when I need a little pick me up. Hopefully they'll work out just as well that way.

Chocolate Covered Ice Cream Bars

One of the main food sites I follow on a regular basis is Serious Eats. I was introduced by one of my co-workers not too long after starting my current job. It's a great general food site/blog. They do reviews, recipes, advice, etc. There are lots of sub-sections of the site and they recently started up a new one - Serious Eats Sweets. One of the new features is a weekly challenge of sorts. They determine the theme and readers can submit pictures of recipes they've made that fall within that theme. I'm going to try to keep up with the challenge for as long as I can, either submitting pictures of things I've already made or making new recipes to fall within the theme. The new slideshows are posted on the site every Thursday. Last week I was able to submit a picture of my rhubarb cupcakes as part of the Share Your Sweets Summer Desserts feature. 

The theme for this week is "Cool Off". I chose to make a recipe I'd seen on the site the week before - homemade chocolate covered ice cream bars. Mmm. Pretty simple...melt some chocolate with a bit of oil to keep it liquid, cut up a pint of ice cream, stick in some sticks, dip in chocolate and freeze. The recipe I used can be found here. I did make a slight modification. I only had a large bag of chocolate chips so I used 9 oz of chocolate and 5 tablespoons of canola oil for the chocolate dip.

Just like the ice cream sandwiches, start with the best

Cut off the bottom of the carton

Cookie dough and brownies

Slice the pint into 4 and add sticks. I had to use skewers

Dip in the cooled melted chocolate and decorate (if you want)

In theory, this is a super simple and tasty treat. However, I quickly learned that my freezer isn't cold enough to make the process as easy as it could be. No matter how long I left the slices in there, I couldn't get them to freeze really hard. I think the chocolate process would be a lot easier with solidly frozen ice cream. I also couldn't find food grade popsicle sticks so I tried to make due with two skewers. That didn't work out so well either. The skewers seemed to cut the slices in half. The one ice cream bar pictured is the only one that turned out remotely photo worthy. Although they weren't pretty, they sure are tasty! I would try them again. The combinations you could make are endless. 


What is your favorite ice cream treat on a hot summer day?