Desserts

Bailey’s Cookies and Cream Parfaits

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Bailey's Irish Cream Parfaits
Bailey's Irish Cream Parfaits

Back in the early days of our relationship, I may have poked some good-natured fun at Matt for being what I would call a “Prom Drinker”. A prom drinker, for those of you who don’t know, is someone who would walk up to a sophisticated bar and ask for a Malibu Sunset, a Midori Sour, or, God forbid, a Mudslide. Matt was nowhere near that embarrassing, but the first time he ordered a Bailey’s on the rocks, I pinched his cheek and called him adorable. And then I tasted it and was like, hot damn, that’s really good.

Bailey’s Irish Cream was invented in 1971, so it can’t really be classified as “classic Irish drink”, but it’s no less delicious for it. It’s rich and creamy, with a whisky bite tempered to a dessert-like sweetness. An indulgence all by itself. So why not use it as the inspiration for a St. Patrick’s Day dessert: Bailey’s parfaits?

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Best Blondies Ever (with Brown Butter, Bourbon & Butterscotch)

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Brown Butter Bourbon Blondies

I was that weird kid who, when offered the choice of a brownie or a blondie, would always choose the blondie. Something about that cookie bar, packed with chocolate chips and toasty nuts, was just more interesting to me than straight chocolate (though I wouldn’t toss a good, fudgy brownie out of bed either. I’m not a monster).

Unfortunately, more often than not, blondies can be underwhelming — either dry and crumbly or doughy and flavorless — so we set out to develop a foolproof recipe for what we consider to be the perfect blondie: a tender, moist crumb filled with deep caramel flavor from brown butter, vanilla and (optional, but oh-so-delicious) bourbon. Then we packed in our favorite mix-ins: chocolate chunks, butterscotch chips and toasted hazelnuts. 

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Strawberry Lemon Curd

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Strawberry Lemon Curd: A balanced spread, not too sweet, not too tart, that lets all the fruit shine through. 

Getting a reputation can be a mixed blessing. I once revealed to the cook in our local deli that we own chickens, and from that day on, whenever I walk through the door, she yells “Hey, chicken man!”. Over the years, we’ve made several friends in Beacon through introductions to our lemon curd. We’ll meet a new person, tell them about Nerds with Knives, and then their eyes will light up and they’ll exclaim “I made the lemon curd! It was so lemony!” It’s very flattering, but it does mean we feel that we have to keep ahead of expectations. After all, we can’t coast on lemon curd forever. So it’s a good thing that we have a glut of garden and local farm strawberries, because that means we can make Strawberry Lemon Curd! (It’s like normal lemon curd. But with strawberries.)

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British Bourbon Chocolate Biscuits with Three Buttercream Fillings

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Bourbon chocolate biscuits

Call it winter blues, call it having a massive sweet tooth, or call it being homesick for my mother country’s dessert items, but over the last few weeks I’ve had a big old hankering for biscuits. Brits (and Commonwealth-based readers) will know exactly what I’m talking about, but just to make the point clear: I don’t mean American-style “biscuits”, the savory (sometimes cheesy) risen doughy product with a soft interior that you might slather with butter and eat for brunch. Neither are they exactly “cookies”, in the strictest sense.

What IS a biscuit?

If I was the dedicated type, this is where I might insert a Venn diagram of dessert snacks with a big circle in the middle representing the set of “cookies”, and another circle representing the set of “biscuits”. Depending on who you ask, “biscuits” might totally be a subset of “cookies” (i.e., all biscuits are cookies), or it may have a significant overlap (many biscuits are cookies, but not all), but it’s hard to make the argument that the two are completely separate. As for the “all biscuits are cookies” camp, while that may be technically true, if you asked me for a cookie and I gave you a Rich Tea biscuit you’d be pretty miffed. So here’s the best definition of “biscuit” that I can come up with:

A small, lightly sweetened, unrisen baked item, that will break with a snap (it should definitely not bend), and is typically eaten as a light snack with a drink (tea, coffee, milk). Some are a single layer (digestive or Rich Tea), and some comprise two layers sandwiched with a thin cream filling (custard creams, Bourbons). 

If it helps you to think of them as “tea biscuits” or even “sweet crackers”, feel free. Of course, living in Britain, few people would go to the trouble of making a variety of a store-bought biscuit, since it’s a matter of minutes to pop into the nearest shop and pick some up. Here in the US, though, we’re just going to have to roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves. And we’re going to start with the classic sandwich chocolate biscuit, the Bourbon.

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