Pantry Collective

Cake and ice cream. Is there any better pairing? (Answer: Obviously not.) This cake takes both ingredients and combines them in a single, delicious unit. Each slice has three layers of cake, two layers of ice cream, and two layers of chocolate crunchies. (No ice cream cake is complete without that delicious crunchy cookie layer!) Top it all off with whipped cream frosting and a drizzle of chocolate topping and you have a beautiful, delicious, impressive dessert, worthy of your husband’s 28th birthday celebration.

I used french vanilla cake mix and Edy’s Slow Churned French Silk ice cream, but you can use whatever flavor (and recipe) of cake you like, paired with any ice cream. I think white cake with strawberry ice cream would be delicious… or Devil’s Food cake with black cherry or mint chocolate chip ice cream… so many choices. You can do different kinds of ice cream on each layer, too - maybe a Spumoni-inspired white cake with pistaciho and strawberry ice cream layers. Have fun with it!

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Spring in Chicago is temperamental. We’ll have some hot days, so hot you’re considering installing the air conditioners, and then BOOM, it’s 45 degrees and cloudy for a week. Then a warm, sunny day that makes your heart sing, which leads right back into a chilly rain or even some hail. On one of those chilly, gray days, I needed something comforting. I had some beef in the fridge and some root vegetables on hand, so beef stew was the obvious choice. I decided at the last minute to add a hint of sweet (or at least the idea of sweetness) to this otherwise savory dish with some cinnamon and nutmeg. Make this in the crockpot and your house will smell AMAZING all day long.

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Success! Despite almost forgetting the eggs and only having quick cooking steel-cut oats and dark brown sugar, these cookies came out really well. I added the eggs after the flour because I get flustered when I bake things; for some reason, I am convinced that I’m not good at baking (well, not “for some reason” - I have several failed scone attempts and a lot of other over-or-under-cooked bakery items that are proof enough). Feeling incompetent MAKES me incompetent, I think. But these came out so well that they are either foolproof or I am not as terrible in the baking department as I like to think.

The cookies came together really easily. 12 minutes in my oven was the exact right amount of time. They don’t look browned enough when you take them out, but trust me, when they cool, the edges get cripsy but the middles are still a little chewy, and they are perfect. The orange zest is a great addition. I didn’t measure it specifically, I just zested about half an orange. It may seem like a strange accompaniment, but I really like it. I got four dozen cookies out of one batch, which is quite a few cookies! I am going to have to pass some off on my friends; I don’t think they’ll mind.

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My grocery store is almost always out of curry paste, and while I can make curry without it, I love the simplicity of preparation and the complexity of flavor that you get with good curry paste. So I shopped around on Amazon and found Mae Ploy curry pastes, for about $6 a tub. There is a lot of curry paste in there; I’d guess about 8 batches of curry made per their instructions. I bought two - Masman Curry Paste and Yellow Curry Paste, but they also have red and green curry paste as well. I fell in love with the Massaman/Masman curry at Opart (a local Thai restaurant) and was excited to try to recreate it at home. The reviews for this brand said it was very close to authentic, and after trying it, I agree.

I made this dish once before, and it wasn’t quite right. Delicious, but lacking a certain something. Turns out I am not good at reading directions, and right there in the recipe on the little tub of curry paste it specifically says to add tamarind juice and sugar at the end. Let me tell you, that made all the difference. The curry we had last night was perfect - spicy but with a great sweetness that makes you down the entire bowl in about 3 minutes flat.

Mae Ploy’s recipe says: “Stir-fry 50g of Masman Curry Paste with 1 cup (200g) of coconut milk, then add another 1 cup of coconut milk and heat until boiling. Add 200g of meat, and continue cooking. As the meat is done, add 100g of potatoes, 50g of onion, and 10g of peanut, then add 1/2 cup of water, and cook until the potato and onion soften, add 1 tbsp of tamarind juice and 1 tbsp of sugar. Taste before seasoning.”

As usual I sort of loosely followed the recipe based on what I had and what sounded good. I don’t have tamarind juice, but a quick google search told me to substitute 4 parts brown sugar and 1 part lime juice. I also didn’t have peanuts; we didn’t miss them, but I’m sure if they were in there I would have loved them.

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