smitten kitchen

Not a chocolate lover? (Gasp!) Here’s my favorite vanilla dessert sauce cheat. Vanilla ice cream is made with milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. Creme Anglaise is made with milk, cream, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. Do you see where I am going with this? For a quick, delicious Cheater’s Creme Anglaise, melt a cup or so of your favorite vanilla ice cream in the fridge for a few hours, and tell nobody while you drizzle it over a dessert.

All I wanted to give you for Valentine’s Day was some chocolate pudding. My logic was simple: decadent meals and rich desserts are dreamy things but, in my mind, not inherently romantic. More often than not, after such an evening I find myself too full for even a nightcap, quite tired and, while we are being honest, like I need to spend an hour on the treadmill. And I hate the treadmill.

But chocolate pudding is none of these things. The perfect recipe–the one I sifted through dozens and dozens to find–would be chocolaty but not overly heavy, indulgent but not too rich. In short, the kind of thing you’d want to eat with the love of your life without the risk of shortening the length of it. As a bonus, it would be a reasonable recipe to tackle on a weekday night.

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Now that you’ve got that chocolate dessert sauce down, here are ten ways to tweak it: Before the cream but after melting the chocolate into the syrup, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon of almond or peppermint extract, 1 tablespoon of a liqueur, such as Grand Marnier, Chambord, Kahlua, Cointreau or even brandy or rum. For an extra kick, add 1 teaspoon instant espresso granules in with the chocolate chips, melting them together.

Last month, when I was cleaning off my hard drive, I wasn’t just forced to confront pictures of recipes I’d forgotten to mention, but the 250-plus recipe bookmarks I had hoped to get to “one day.” Some people have cookbooks, others have recipe binders and while I have both, they’re never where I am when I’m trying to figure out what to cook for dinner.

Unable to part with them, I created what I affectionately call my “cook this” list, neatly organized into subcategories of sweets, salads and sides, light meals and “mm, cocktails” because we always save the best for last, and swore that I would make every attempt to look there first for inspiration. (Alex too. For my fellow geeks out there, I have this on a shared Google document with Alex so he, too, can help me make very difficult choices like Which Daube Should I Try Next.) Amazing no one more than myself, it is working like a charm. Nearly every recipe I have made since the beginning of January has been a satisfying marking off of a to cook list item.

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Here’s an easy chocolate dessert sauce everyone should have in their repertoire: Combine 1/4 cup corn syrup and 6 oz semisweet chocolate chips in a small saucepan over medium-low, stirring until smooth (about 4 to 5 minutes). Whisk in 3/4 cup heavy cream and serve right away or let cool to room temperature before storing in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks. Rewarm over low or in the microwave. Makes 1 1/2 cups. [Adapted]