Smooth & Creamy

(One Pan & Done!) Artichoke Gratin

November 7, 2017 by mollygilbert520 1 Comment

The holidays are upon us!? How is it that they sneak up on us every year? Have you seen this cartoon yet? It is both ridiculous and accurate.

If you’re looking for a rich and warming dish to dive into in the coming months (either to help celebrate the holidays or to help stress-eat your feelings this season), I think you might like to know about this artichoke gratin.

It’s a gratin! Grah-tin? Grah-TEH? Cheese-filled skillet of indulgence? Yep, that’s the one.

It’s from my most recent cookbook, One Pan & Done, so it promises to be quick and easy to pull together, and packed with rich, cheesy flavor (plus some tang from the artichokes and garlic). It’s awesome served with crisp apple slices to balance out the richness, although crackers and chips are always a good move.

Happy Gratin Season!

(photos in this post by the amazing Aran Goyoaga of Cannelle Et Vanille)…

Creamy Mint Chip Ice Cream

August 24, 2017 by mollygilbert520 1 Comment

Have you made your own ice cream yet this summer? Fall is starting to creep up on us — darker evenings, more back to school sales, fewer sweat-through-your-shirt days — but there’s still time!

We’ll embrace knitwear/closed-toe booties and hot coffee soon enough, but now’s the time to savor a few things (not necessarily in this order):

Tomatoes with olive oil and crunchy salt
Dresses and bare legs
Screen doors
Sprinklers/ankle-dips in the lake/wading pools
Homemade mint chip ice cream

Let’s talk about number five.

My friend Sarah introduced me to this particular mint ice cream — I was visiting her newly built cabin up on Lopez Island, and I had just put Calder down to sleep. I sat on the couch and she handed me a bowl of homemade mint chip ice cream. It was cold and perfectly creamy, studded with chopped Andes mints (how underrated are Andes mints, btw?!), and between the new-cabin-wood-smell, the salty island air and the fact that my child was sleeping soundly a few rooms away, it was, quite possibly, one of my favorite ice cream experiences to date.

You can have it too! It turns out that this treat is on the simpler side to make. It uses mint extract instead of fresh mint leaves (I know, I was skeptical too), eggs, and healthy amounts of half-and-half and heavy cream (among other things – see below). It makes a lot of ice cream, and a bowl piled high with the cool and creamy, chocolate chunk-laden stuff is a true delight, even without the smell of fresh wood or ocean air (or the relief that comes with the knowledge that your kid is finally – finally! – asleep).

It’s still summer! More ice cream, please.

Creamy Mint Chip Ice Cream…

Cool Blackberry Basil Smoothie

July 7, 2017 by mollygilbert520 1 Comment

Summer is feeling HOT here in Seattle, and as a result we’ve been on a smoothie kick in our house lately. Give us all the frozen fruit! (And all the pancakes, too, because it’s actually more like a smoothie-and-pancake-kick, if I’m honest, because #balance (and also #toddler), and it’s kind of my favorite thing.)

Aside from being a generally healthy and cooling treat, I’m loving the smoothie life because have you ever watched a one-year-old with very minimal hair growth slurp smoothie from his tiny cup and then look at you and go “mmm” very matter-of-factly? Hot weather or not, I will keep make smoothies as long as I get to watch this happen.

I love all manner of frozen fruit for smoothies (we’re generally big on peaches, strawberries, blueberries and cherries over here), but when The Oregon Raspberry and Blackberry Commission challenged me to come up with a blackberry smoothie recipe with an unexpected flavor twist, I jumped at the chance. And given the lovely fresh herbs available this time of year, my mind went immediately to basil. I kept it simple, letting the berries and basil shine through, and the result is one of the most refreshing cupfuls of frozen goodness you’ll find — sweet, tart, and very slightly herbaceous, not to mention the most gorgeously gorgeous shade of purple. (Does it exist in lipstick and nail polish form? Beauty experts, please say yes.)

Something in me suspects that, frozen in little cups or molds, this smoothie would transition pretty perfectly into popsicles, too. Popsicles and pancakes for breakfast? Works for me.

Oh, hey! While you’re blending your own smoothie, head on over to Instagram, where the ORBC and I are doing a fun little giveaway — all you have to do to enter is follow our accounts and tell us what you’d do with your own shipment of beautiful Oregon blackberries!

The Oregon Raspberry and Blackberry Commission provided reimbursement for the ingredients in this post. All opinions are my own.…

Orange Yog-sicles

June 30, 2017 by mollygilbert520 1 Comment

Happy #popsicleweek, peepsicles! If you’ve yet to discover the wonder that is this weeklong, summer blogosphere holiday (started by Billy of Wit & Vinegar five years ago 🙌🏼), you’re in for a treat (or, like, a few hundred treats, once the week is through).

The week is basically just a celebration of popsicles and blogging and sharing and probably Mariah Carey, and it’s a brain-freeze-filled good time, so find your favorite pop and get chilling! In years past, I came to the party with Dark Chocolate Pudding Pops (a personal favorite), Date Shake Pops (crowd-pleasiest of crowd pleasers), Honeydew Agua Fresca Pops (real refreshing), and Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberry & Coconut Pops (longest-named pop ever)!

This year, I bring you light yet creamy, tangy and faintly sweet, gorgeously pale-yellowy ORANGE YOG-SICLES.

….Yes. Yog-sicles. Just go with it.

They’re mostly yogurt and OJ, with a splash of cream and vanilla (because balance!), both toddler and grownup approved. If we’re being honest, I threw these together without much thought during nap time (after a very appropriate and on-trend for #popsicleweek toddler meltdown), using ingredients I had on hand, and I’m proud to say they’re some of my favorite pops yet.

So, what do you say? Should we make yog-sicles a thing? ENJOY!…

Pumpkin Chocolate Icebox Cake

October 24, 2016 by mollygilbert520 28 Comments

Happy virtual pumpkin party Monday!

So, yeah. I may have gone too literal here. I didn’t originally intend to shape this softly-spiced pumpkin chocolate icebox cake like an actual pumpkin, but I started frosting and stacking and frosting and stacking and before I knew it, there it was. A mound of cocoa-y chocolate wafers and fluffy, pumpkin whipped cream, begging for a jagged chocolate “stem” and a curly vine of carefully plucked sprinkles.

I couldn’t resist.

My dad is the original icebox cake maker in my family. He makes one every year on Thanksgiving (along with a giant, multicolored layered jello mold — #midwesternforever), and it’s always the first dessert on the table to go. Probably because it tastes like a giant, cool-whip ensconced Oreo cookie?

Yeah. Ensconced.

I wanted to up the ante a little bit here. Real, fresh cream, whipped to soft peaks. Roasted pumpkin purée and warm spices. The original chocolate wafer cookie. In the shape of a pumpkin, WHYNOT?

It’s just my contribution to the giant, blogger-wide effort (lead by the fearless Sara and Aimee) to saturate the interwebs with all things pumpkin today. Which, by the way, is working. Check it:

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Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberry & Coconut Popsicles

June 25, 2016 by mollygilbert520 3 Comments

Hold onto your sticks everyone, because it’s Popsicle Week!

This is one of my favorite weeks of the (virtual) year, actually, because in addition to getting to make slash eat delicious, frozen treats, we also get to mix and mingle with a huge community of bloggers with popsicles on the brain. I mean, have you seen this list of genius?!? So much goodness over there. We’re going to need more popsicle molds.

In previous years I’ve tried to mix it up, tackling everything from Date Shake Pops to Dark Chocolate Pudding Pops to Honeydew Agua Fresca Pops (not to mention the Watermelon Limesicles and Blackberry Root Beer Float popsicles that have shown up around these parts), but this year I wasn’t sure exactly where to go. Creamy or fruity? Chocolatey or chock full of coconut?

The answer, dear friends, is all of the above.

I settled on a creamy, coconut-milk-based, syrupy-roasted-strawberry and handful-of-white-chocolate-chips-for-good-measure-filled popsicle. They are PRETTY GOOD, if I do say so myself. They’re just subtly sweet, but packed with intensely strawberry-ish strawberries, creamy coconut flavor and a hint of brown sugar and white chocolate. Get into it!

I think they’d be Calder-approved, too, if he could, you know, eat things. He mostly stared at them in confusion, if we’re being honest, but I think I detected a glimmer of pop-citement in those baby blues. Gotta teach them young, right?

Happy #PopsicleWeek, everyone!

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Creamy Maple Steel Cut Oats

September 25, 2015 by mollygilbert520 2 Comments

Oh look! A new recipe! Well hallelujah and glory be.

Is anyone else getting totally zonked by mercury in retrograde this month? If you’d asked me a week ago if I believed in this crock, I’d have told you to take your crock elsewhere, because I wasn’t buying it. But a batch of burned brownies, several stress-induced/bizarro dream-y sleepless nights, and not one but TWO clogged pipes later, the joke seems to be on me.

At least I’ve got a handle on breakfast.

Did you know that oatmeal could be luscious? Because it can! These are steel cut oats, cooked gently in water and milk, with plenty of salt and just a touch of sugar. They’re beautifully simple, but simply perfect – warm, incredibly creamy, just slightly chewy, and doused with a healthy amount of maple syrup. Plus a scatter of roasted pistachios and yeah, okay, maybe a handful of (un-photographed) chocolate chips because IT’S BEEN A WEEK.

Make these oats (or make a double batch!) this weekend, and eat breakfast like a goddess for days. Just store leftovers in the fridge, and scoop out a bowlful each morning to warm with some milk, or even a splash of cream. Because you deserve it! And mercury in retrograde can eat my oats.

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Blackberry Root Beer Float Popsicles

August 10, 2015 by mollygilbert520 6 Comments

There are certain things in life which, no matter the spin you try to bestow, scream ADULT. Things like vacuuming. Lady doctor appointments. Home improvement projects. MORTGAGE PAYMENTS. Amiright? (Note: a decidedly un-adult pastime is googling the spelling of “vacuuming.”)

Ben and I fixed our broken dryer this weekend (so, fine, Ben fixed the dryer and I kind of helped by holding a thing (technical term) in place while he replaced the belt. Because, apparently, dryers need belts? #teamwork), which I think pretty much glues our “grown-up” badges in place, front and center.

Also, today, I contemplated buying a new bath mat AND a magazine storage container.

…IS THIS MY LIFE??

Most days, being an adult is fun. Because I can have gummy bears for lunch if I want, and also bedtime schmedtime. Other days, when I remember that I need to pay my dentist bill and mow the jungle that has become our lawn, being adult seems… less fun.

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Strawberry Lilac Pavlovas

May 4, 2015 by mollygilbert520 42 Comments

Happy Monday, friends, and May the 4th be with you! Today I’m just bursting with bright, springtime bloominess (not a word but should be) because there’s an Edible Flower Potluck petaling up (also not a thing) the interwebs!

This gorgeous, flower-filled potluck started with Renee (as lots of good things do), and I have to say, I’m not sure a more beautiful (if virtual) potluck ever existed. Just look at all of these gems!

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Blond Bottom Coconut Cream Pie

March 13, 2015 by mollygilbert520 4 Comments

Get ready to pull out all of your best emojis, peeps, because it’s the return of Pie Day Friday!!!!

Except it’s actually PI DAY Friday (in anticipation of tomorrow, March 14th), which is a similar concept, but also pretty different. More numbers. Infinity of them, to be exact. But also more pie!

Which, I think we can all agree, is a good, good thing.

The first time I can remember eating coconut cream pie was in Charleston, South Carolina which, if you’re in the business of eating coconut cream pie, it turns out is a good place to be. It was summertime, a year or so after college and mom, dad, Casey and I (where was middle sis Emily?? Did she opt out or did we forget her? It’s really hard to say) piled into a booth at Jim ‘N Nick’s. Before we paid the check but after we stuffed our faces with thick slices of barbecued brisket (and weren’t really sure we could handle any more), dessert arrived. A single slice of coconut cream pie, billowing with fluffy mounds of custard and cream, as cool and smooth as a southern summer’s day is hot and sticky…

We dug into it and just looked at each other, eyes wide, mouths working. Because THAT was some pie.

This one’s got the same sweet, toasted coconut flavor, the same piles of cooling custard and cream, plus an extra, blond layer of salty caramel, just to sweeten the deal. It’s still a balanced slice, though, because instead of using sweetened coconut, we call for unsweet. (What goes around comes around, as Justin Timberlake said that one time).

If ever a day called for pie, it’s tomorrow. Make this one! 3.14159265359 times. (Give or take a few).

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