Heavenly Almond Coconut and Pine Nut Triangles

I love baklava!  All the nuts, honey and wonderful gooeyness enclosed in crispy buttery filo...like biting into a bit of heaven!  But what I don't love about it is the fact that it is messy, and you get all sticky when you eat it...so I thought making something similar to individual baklava would be a wonderful idea.  Baklava triangles!  But since I am not one to stick with traditional methods,  I made my filling a bit differently than the classic baklava.  I swapped the walnuts and pistachios out for pine nuts, almonds and coconut and did away with the sugar syrup, simply using honey as the primary sweetener.  I added vanilla beans and extract to make the flavor more complexed and heavenly as well.  I enclosed this filling in the traditional filo dough, brushing it with butter and sprinkling it with sugar in between the layers to make it more crispy and satisfying.  As the wonderful golden triangles emerged from the oven, I was very pleased with their appearance!  Perfect beautiful golden, crispy triangles...I couldn't wait for them to cool to dive in.  So I cut one open and carefully took a bite...nearly burning my mouth, but they were so good!  Like the filling of a carmelized nut tart and a coconut macaroon married!  The pine nuts and almonds were a nice swap with the classic baklava nuts...they were so much more buttery and heavenly!  This is why I named these "Hevenly" Triangles, because I was in some other wonderful world while I was enjoying eating them!  They are really quite simple to make, once you get the folding and brushing down...you simply must try making them! 

Heavenly Almond Coconut and Pine Nut Triangles

Filling:

1 cup toasted pine nuts

1 cup toasted sliced almonds

1 cup toasted unsweetened large flake coconut

3/4 cup honey

1 tsp rosewater

1 Tbsp lemon zest

1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract

seeds of one vanilla bean

3/4 tsp salt

10 Tbsp butter, melted

10 sheets filo dough

a heaping 1/2 cup granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with foil, and spray with non-stick spray.

Combine filling ingredients in a food processor and pulse until blended and partially chopped. Set aside in a bowl. Place one sheet phyllo on work surface, and use a pastry brush to coat one half of it with butter then sprinkle butter with about a tsp sugar. Fold in half lengthwise, and brush top with more butter sprinkling again with about 1 tsp sugar. Fold in half again to make 4-inch strip of dough. Brush strip with butter, sprinkle with about a tsp sugar, then spoon about 2 Tbs. nut mixture on corner of bottom edge. Fold corner across to make a small triangle, then fold up like a flag, enclosing nut mixture in triangle of phyllo. Brush both sides of phyllo triangle with butter, then place on prepared baking sheet. Repeat process with remaining phyllo sheets, butter, and nut mixture. Bake about 20-22 minutes, or until triangles are golden. Transfer to wire rack, and cool at least 10 minutes before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 10 triangles

 

Cardamom Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream with Bourbon Peach Swirl

Summer means peaches!  Flavorful, fragrant wonderful scrumptious fruits blushing yellow and pink...almost too beautiful to eat...but I can never help myself!  When I was young, all I was exposed to was the disgusting canned peaches in syrup...a far cry from the beautiful fruits that I now buy.  So, I did not like peaches much as a child...that was until I had the real thing, then I couldn't get enough of them, and ever since then I have looked forward to their season every year!  So since they started appearing a few weeks ago, I have been buying them by the dozens and scarfing them down just as is. But I realized that I haven't made a peach dessert yet this year, so I decided that now was a good time!  I had some over ripe ones on my counter, so I decided to incorporate them into some ice cream as a swirl!  I combined them with a bit of bourbon, and some vanilla and voila!  Delicious peach puree!  I wanted to use cardamom in my ice cream base, because I think it goes wonderfully with the peaches.  Coconut does as well, so I used my non-dairy coconut milk ice cream base and folded in some toasted coconut for texture!  Peach heaven is what I would call this ice cream!  I have never had anything like it before...it is not like any peach frozen yogurt I had growing up, but a hundred times better!  If you have some over ripe peaches, you should definately try this out! 

Cardamom Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream with Bourbon Peach Swirl

Swirl:

4 peaches, cut into medium dice

2 Tbsp Honey

1/4 cup bourbon

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

a pinch of sea salt

Ice Cream Base:

1 tsp cardamom

1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract

2 3/4 cups full fat coconut milk

1/2 cup honey

1/2 tsp sea salt

2 cups toasted coconut

To make swirl, heat peaches in a saucepan, and cook over medium heat until they are soft, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add honey, bourbon, vanilla extract and sea salt. Cool to room temperature, then puree in a food processor until smooth. Place in the fridge to chill until very cold, preferrably overnight. To make ice cream, combine cardamom, coconut milk, honey, and vanilla extract and sea salt in a food processor, and process to blend. Chill ice cream base in the fridge until very cold. When chilled, pour the ice cream base mixture into an ice cream maker and process according to package directions (mine takes about an hour, and is still a little soupy like the consistency of a malt, but firms up in the freezer). When ice cream is done freezing, stir in toasted coconut, and pour half into a tupperware container. Then top with about a third the peaches and swirl slightly with a knife. Pour remaining ice cream into the container, and top with half the remaining peaches swirling with a knife. Reserve the remaining peaches for serving. Place ice cream in the freezer for at least a few hours, or preferrably overnight to ripen for best results. Serve with remaining peaches. Makes about 4+ cups of delicious ice cream!

Bananas and Bourbon

The combination of bananas and bourbon is simply heavenly...if I made banana's foster, bourbon would be my liquor of choice instead of rum.  One of my favorite combos of bananas and bourbon is in my version of banana cream pie, which actually has a bourbon laced butterscotch pudding as a base for the bananas.  This got me to thinking, how about some ice cream with all the same flavors of my banana cream pie?  So I made the base coconut milk and toasted coconut with vanilla beans, so copy the flavors in the cream part of the pie, since I always top it with billowy vanilla laced whipped cream and toasted coconut flakes.  The butterscotch pudding part would become ribbons in this ice cream...but instead of custard ribbons, I went for roasted banana sweetened with honey and boozy with bourbon.  The ice cream turned out to be very refreshing...and the flavors were just as delicious as the banana cream pie!  The roasted bananas in the ribbons are increadibly good, almost caramel like!  If you are a banana cream pie lover, you simply must try this!  If you like you can top it off with a bit of toasted large flake coconut and banana chips for a crunchy contrast.

 Toasted Coconut Ice Cream with Banana Honey Bourbon Swirl


coconut oil spray
1 Tbsp coconut oil
4 bananas, peeled and halved lengthwise, then cut in half
3/4 cup honey
6 Tbsp honey bourbon
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp sea salt

2 3/4 cups organic full fat coconut milk

1/2 cup honey
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 cups toasted shredded unsweetened coconut

Heat the oven to 475 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with non-stick spray. Toss the bananas with about 1 Tbsp coconut oil, and spread out on sheet. Roast in the oven until starting to brown, about 15-20 min. Let cool slightly, then in a food processor, combine bananas, honey, bourbon, vanilla and sea salt and process until smooth. Remove from food processor and set aside in fridge to cool.

To make ice cream, combine coconut milk, honey, and vanilla extract in a food processor. Slit the vanilla bean lengthwise with a sharp knife. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and reserve the pod for another use (such as placing in a jar of sugar to give it a lovely flavor). Add seeds to to the food processor along with the salt and process to blend. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and process according to package directions (mine takes about an hour, and is still a little soupy like the consistency of a malt, but firms up in the freezer). When ice cream is done freezing, stir in toasted coconut, and pour half into a tupperware container. Then top with about half the banana mixture and swirl with a knife. Pour remaining coconut ice into the container, and top with remaining banana mixture swirling with a knife. Place in the freezer for at least a few hours, or preferrably overnight to ripen for best results. Makes about 4+ cups of delicious ice cream!