Dessert - quick and easy recipes - page 86

Adzuki beans—also known as azuki or Asian red beans—are frequently used in desserts across Asia, in countries like China, Japan, and Korea. Keeping some of the beans whole in these creamy ice pops helps add a bit of texture. Special equipment: You will need freezer pop molds for this recipe.

Like classic Vietnamese iced coffee, this frozen pop contains strong brewed coffee and sweetened condensed milk. It’s a caffeinated treat that’s not recommended for the kiddies! Special equipment: You will need freezer pop molds for this recipe.

Adding a bit of pumpkin purée, cinnamon, and nutmeg to a basic cream cheese frosting gives it holiday appeal. It’s also easy to make: Just beat butter and cream cheese together in a mixer, then add powdered sugar and spices, and throw in the pumpkin at the end. Use it to frost pumpkin cupcakes, carrot cake, or ginger cake.

Maxime Bilet, coauthor of Modernist Cuisine and the brand-new Modernist Cuisine at Home,* shared this easy, fun way to give chocolate a popping effect. Just melt your favorite type of chocolate with some butter, then mix in crushed puffed-rice cereal and some Pop Rocks—any flavor you like! Once it cools, break it up and surprise kids or adults with this novel treat. What to buy: You can purchase large quantities of unflavored Pop Rocks–style candy online and at some specialty markets.

You don’t need to pull out the ice cream maker for this elegant cold dessert. Just blend frozen pineapple with rum, lime juice, simple syrup, and ice, then freeze the mixture until solid and scoopable. This tart, tropical sorbet hits the mark as both an after-dinner cocktail and a dessert.

This creamy, comforting dessert takes hardly any time to assemble and can be left to cook unattended while you prepare, eat, and clean up after a dinner party. Just stir rice, milk, and sugar together in a slow cooker coated with butter and turn it on high. By the time the dinner dishes are cleared and folks are poking around for something sweet, dessert will be ready. Just before serving, stir in brown sugar, raisins, vanilla, cinnamon, and more milk to bump up the creaminess.

The combination of coffee, cream, and booze is as good in a cocktail as it is in a milk shake, but we also like it mixed with puffed rice cereal and marshmallows—similar to a Rice Krispie Treat recipe. Add instant espresso powder to the crispy base, then glaze the top with a mixture of white chocolate, Kahlúa, and cream, for a sweet, coffee-infused treat.

This chocolate cake recipe is delicious. We love a buttery and dense pound cake, but we thought a chocolate version would be even better so we folded lots of dark cocoa into the batter to give it a deep chocolate flavor. After the cake is baked and cooled, it’s drizzled with a chocolate glaze made from semisweet chocolate, cream, and a bit of corn syrup to keep the glaze gooey and shiny.

Some days a milkshake is all you need to stay cool, other days only an ice pop will do. These chai popsicles are wonderfully fragrant, perfect to end off a rich Indian meal of complex flavors or to punctuate a lazy summer afternoon. They’re super easy to put together—once you’ve made the basic mix for our Chai Frozen Milkshakes, all you need are pop molds and a little patience. Special equipment: You’ll need freezer pop molds for this recipe.

We took the basic elements of a s’more and added ice cream—in this case, strawberry ice cream, for acidity, flavor, and an irresistible pinkness. It’s an indulgent tower of broken-up graham crackers, scoops of ice cream, hot fudge sauce, marshmallow topping, almonds, fresh strawberries, and a charred marshmallow topknot. For a berry-free version, check out these Easy Chocolate S’mores Sundaes.

Gooey enough to satisfy kids, architectural enough to appeal to adults, this ice-cream-sundae take on classic campfire s’mores is literally over-the-top. Broken-up graham crackers, scoops of ice cream, hot fudge sauce, marshmallow topping, almonds, and a charred marshmallow add up to a tower of indulgence. For a fruity variation on the s’mores sundae theme, check out our Strawberry S’mores Sundaes.

S’mores are a campfire classic, but even classics get boring. With canned cherries, a box of Bisquick, and a crackling fire, you can have cobbler in 40 minutes. Serve with Crème Fraîche Whipped Cream or, if you’re more or less roughing it, a spritz of whip from the can. Special equipment: You’ll need a heavy, 4- or 5-quart Dutch oven (with a lid) that you don’t mind setting directly over the embers.

Add a strip of bacon to your s’more to kick it up a notch and make your fellow campers jealous. Other variations include using dark chocolate instead of milk, sprinkling toasted coconut, sea salt … the possibilities are endless for these campfire treats.

Think baking a cake is impossible while camping? Think again. With this recipe you don’t even need cake pans—each cake is baked individually in an orange, infusing the chocolate with citrus flavor. So grab your cake batter and tinfoil and start baking!