While surfing the web last summer, I discovered Coolhaus, which sells a large assortment of ice cream sandwiches (you get to choose not only the ice cream flavor but also the cookie type). Here’s the thing though – Coolhaus doesn’t have a storefront but rather a cart that moves around NYC. They have a Twitter, but whenever I checked it, they were in inconvenient locations.
I finally tried one of their ice cream sandwiches today. I got chocolate ice cream with molten chocolate cake bits sandwiched between two chocolate chip cookies. Though very pricy ($6), look at that massive amount of ice cream! I would give the sandwich an 8.5/10. The ice cream was superb, but the cookies weren’t the best. I prefer the ice cream sandwich from Jacques Torres, which has better, fresher tasting cookies.
I put the picture of the chocolate chip mocha cake from Alice’s Tea Cup first even though that was the last event of my day. This cake was so good! The mocha frosting was delicious but not overwhelming, and I enjoyed the chocolate chips interspersed in the cake. (I even shared this with a couple of friends, so you are witnessing portion control right there!)
This fine morning, one of my friends (who also was at Alice’s Tea Cup with me) and I decided to leave the island of Manhattan and embark on a journey to Brooklyn. With no real plans in mind, we took the subway and got off at the first stop in Brooklyn. We walked around Brooklyn and eventually decided to walk on the Brooklyn Bridge and head back to Manhattan. (I hadn’t walked on the bridge since elementary school, so it was a nice experience).
We ended up in downtown Manhattan and meandered there for a few miles freestyling. (We are just spontaneous people). We got hungry (of course you know I would), so we found a cute American restaurant. We picked a table outside, prime for people watching.
I ordered a sandwich with chicken, brie, pear, and pesto. It came with fries, and it was rather tasty though I have to say that it was a bit too oily because of the oil from the pesto and the oil from the melted brie.
After lunch, my friend and I walked all the way uptown. We must have walked between 8-10 miles! In the evening, my friend and I met another friend at Alice’s Tea Cup, where we enjoyed that delicious cake in the first picture. I also ate a salad with chicken (I just realized I ate chicken twice today), apples (similar to the pears in my lunch sandwich!), carrots, eggs, and a very good ginger dressing.
I declare this a healthy day!
I was inspired to make these after I tried some candied pecans my mom bought me from Georgia. They are perfect for snacking or as a salad topper.
(Recipe adapted from Cooks.com)
Ingredients
Directions
1) Mix sugars and cinnamon together in a medium bowl.
2) Put half of sugar and cinnamon mixture with pecans in a large saucepan under medium heat. Cook for 1 minute.
3) Add water, vanilla, and remaining sugar and cinnamon. Stir often with a wooden spoon.
4) Once the mixture starts boiling, lower heat (mixture should simmer). Continue stirring pecans and cook for another 7 minutes or until the mixture becomes hard to stir and most of the liquid has evaporated.
5) Pour pecans onto the lined sheet pan and immediately sprinkle pecans with 1 tbsp water.
Cool for 30 minutes.
6) If not eaten right away, store the pecans in a container and put in the refrigerator.
Happy eating!
My grandmother introduced me to this perfect summer soup. It’s cold, refreshing, tastes a little like vichyssoise (leak and potato soup), and best yet, it’s easy to make! Here is my grandmother’s recipe:
Ingredients
Directions
1) Melt butter or heat olive oil in a large pot. Drop onions in and cook until transparent.
2) Add chicken broth, cucumber, potatoes, dill (keep whole), and salt and pepper.
3) Cook for 15-20 minutes.
4) Fish out the dill, and purée cucumber and potato mixture in a blender until the soup has a smooth consistency.
5) Chill soup in the refrigerator for a few hours. Serve cold. Optional: mix in yogurt and add chopped chives or dill to each bowl.
Enjoy!
Grilled corn on the cob is by far my favorite way to eat corn in the summer. I cook the corn in boiling water for a couple of minutes and then put them on a charcoal barbecue for roughly 25 minutes (or until they char). The corn tasted so good today that my grandmother thought I had put butter on them! (Just to clarify, I didn’t).
Dinner is served!
Nonfat yogurt, honey, raspberries, blueberries, walnuts, and almonds. This tastes delicious and looks patriotic for July 4th! (I guess I am getting a little ahead of myself here).
I am tempted to order gnocchi whenever I see them on a restaurant menu. But when the words “sweet potato” precede gnocchi, my eyes bug out a little, and I start salivating (no joke). I close my menu, determined to order my sweet potato gnocchi.
If you asked me last year to make you some sweet potato gnocchi, I would have laughed and said “You’ve got to be kidding me.” But now that I have my own food blog, I am dedicated to trying new things, and surprisingly, these vegan sweet potato gnocchi were easy to make, super light (something seemingly impossible for gnocchi), and delicious. I followed the exact recipe from Food Republic. What I love about this recipe is that it does not call for any cheese.
The one unusual ingredient was chickpea (garbanzo) flour. I could not find this in my general supermarket, so I had to go to a health food store.
I also decided to eat my gnocchi with tomato sauce (instead of the almond sage sauce).
Happy eating!
I honestly had sworn off pizza for the summer since I ate so much of it during the school year (pizza is one of the only edible things in the cafeteria).
But for some strange reason, I was craving pizza today. I bought fresh ready-made pizza dough (I did not make my own dough because I am too lazy and impatient to deal with yeast).
I put the dough onto a large parchemnt-lined sheet pan and flattened the dough with my hands to form the shape you see below. (I do not know how the pizza guys make their ever-so-fancy circular pie crusts). I decided to add grilled chicken breast (which I cut into bite-sized pieces), fresh tomato slices, and grated part skim mozzarella cheese to my pizza.
I baked my pizza in a 500°F oven for 20 minutes. I then added the baby arugula (which I had drizzled with balsamic vinegar and a little olive oil) to my pizza and baked the pizza for another 5 minutes (or until the pizza crust was golden brown and the cheese was all melted).
Who says you need to eat out to have good pizza?
Pizza dough flattened out
Tomato sauce
Tomatoes
Grilled chicken breast
Cheese
Arugula
If you wanted to be “creative” in the college cafeteria, you could make an ice cream sandwich for dessert. Granted, you could only do this when they were serving cookies. It’s simple enough though – just take two cookies and some ice cream or frozen yogurt. Put the ice cream or frozen yogurt on one cookie and then put the other cookie on top.
Now that I am back home, I made chocolate chip cookies from scratch. Here is my recipe (adapted from Smitten Kitchen):
Ingredients
Yield: 21 cookies, but this could have easily made 2 dozen if I made the cookies slightly smaller
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar.
3. Add the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk to the sugar and butter mixture.
4. Stir the flour, baking soda and salt into the wet ingredients.
5. Pour in the chocolate chips and incorporate into the batter with a wooden spoon.
6. Use a large spoon to form the cookies and put them on the parchment-lined or greased cookie sheets. (I measured cookies roughly 2 1/2 inches in diameter for regular cookies and 3 inch cookies in diameter for the ice cream sandwiches).
5. Bake cookies for 12-15 minutes in the oven.
6. Take your cookies out of the oven and cool for 10 minutes and then transfer them onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
Once your cookies are room temperature, you can add the ice cream! Take your ice cream (I used espresso-flavored ice cream) out of the freezer and let it sit for 5 minutes, so it is easier to scoop. Using a spoon or an ice cream scooper, add ice cream onto half of your cookies. Gently flatten the ice cream and cover with the other cookies. Roll the edges of your sandwiches in chocolate chips. Freeze your sandwiches for a couple of hours, so that the ice cream fully hardens.
Enjoy!
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