Nutella Brownie Mousse Cake with Milk Chocolate Mirror Glaze

Pillowy milk chocolate and Nutella mousse surrounds a rich cocoa brownie slathered with creamy Nutella. If that’s not impressive enough, the whole thing is enrobed in a gorgeous milk chocolate mirror glaze and decorated with an edible gold splatter.

This stunner of a cake is sure to impress your friends and family this holiday season, and with some well-planned time management, is really much easier than you might think.

I’ve been wanting to make a chocolate mirror glaze ever since I made those blueberry mirror glazed cakes this past summer (can you blame me for wanting to mirror-glaze everything? Too pretty!)

As it turns out, you can easily make milk chocolate or dark chocolate mirror glaze simply by swapping out the white chocolate. Everything else about the recipe is identical, as is the process.

While I normally say, when it comes to chocolate, go dark or go home, in this case milk chocolate is the star (and I wouldn’t have it any other way). Paired with Nutella, it makes for a uniquely sweet dessert with layers of contrasting textures and complimentary flavors.

Just look at those luscious layers, each one good on its own, but great in combination.

A rich cocoa brownie slathered with a layer of creamy Nutella.

A light and airy milk chocolate Nutella mousse. If there were such thing as a Nutella cloud, this is what it’d taste like.

And finally, a stunning milk chocolate mirror glaze to finish it off, complete with gold splatter detail and milk chocolate flakes around the edges.

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2B8pjZe

Perfect Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Homemade Gingerbread Hot Chocolate

White Cheddar Gougères with Apple Butter

Like fluffy, cheesy clouds with crispy toasted cheese bottoms, these savory white cheddar cheese puffs make a perfect party appetizer! They’re easier to prepare than you might think, and freeze beautifully for a perfect make-ahead party snack.

These cheesy little puffs will perk up any party! Serve piled on a platter with bowls of homemade apple butter or tomato peach jam for a sweet and savory combination you’ll simply adore.

When it comes to party appetizers, cheese is king.

But instead of setting out a boring old cheese plate, why not make something a little more… unique?

These white cheddar gougères (if I ever spell that right on the first try, accent and all, it will be a miracle) are like a savory little puff of pastry heaven. While cheese puffs are traditionally made with Gruyère, Comté or Emmentaler cheese (more accents, oh dear), we opted instead for the accent-less but no less delicious sharp white cheddar.

Just be careful, these puffs are so light and airy and flavorful you might find you’ve just devoured half a dozen of them without a second thought.

Cheese puffs are lovely served with a lightly spiced apple butter (for the same reason that cheddar crusts for apple pies are so popular, the flavor combination is simply smashing). If you wanted to go a more savory route you could serve them with a bowl of homemade marinara sauce or even something like a sour cream dip.

I mean, when it comes to dip options, why stop at one?

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2zJDXq2

Gingerbread Oatmeal Pancakes

Raspberry Braided Bread Recipe

Soft Amaretti Cookies

Soft amaretti cookies are quite unlike their crispy cousins, so don’t get the two confused. With a chewy exterior and a soft, marzipan-like middle, they’re a treat for almond lovers everywhere.

Amaretti morbidi is what they’re known in Italy, morbidi meaning ‘soft’ in Italian (not morbid, I promise these are anything but). They’re naturally gluten-free, made with little more than almond flour, sugar and egg white with a splash of almond extract to amp up the almond flavor.

This is a recipe originally posted back in 2013, and one of my all-time favorites, based on a cookie I enjoyed during our honeymoon in Italy. Not to be confused with the crunchy amaretti croccanti you buy by the bag (might I suggest making your next pumpkin pie with those?) these soft amaretti are chewy on the outside and almost marzipan-like in the middle. In other words, simply divine.

While the old recipe always got rave reviews, I’d gotten a few comments over the years noting that the cookies spread much more than the photo, and, if you know me, you know that I am very bothered by recipes that don’t behave as they should.

Being that it’s one of my favorite cookie recipes I figured it was time for an update (and while most bloggers would just update the old post, I’m a sentimental sap and want to keep my old photos and words preserved for posterity. Google probably won’t like the fact that I’m publishing this update as an entirely new post, but, whatever.)

So I set out to figure out the mystery of the spreading cookies.

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2DVJ6hM