Millionaire's shortbread

Shortbread crust. Dulce de leche filling. Chocolate glaze. Magic in my mouth.

That's pretty much the only way to describe these delicious Millionaire's Shortbread cookies. They're sweet and rich and melt in your mouth. Everything you could want in a dessert. Well, everything but magically subtracting calories. But, I can live without that.

I took these from one of my favorite dessert cookbooks -- Baking for All Occasions, so I can't really share the recipe. But, I'll let you follow along with pictures :)

You start with a buttery shortbread crust. All good recipes should start with a cookie crust. You just can't go wrong there! The best part about using shortbread for the crust is it can't fall apart. The first time I ever tried to make shortbread cookies, the dough fell apart every time I tried to shape it. For this crust, you just press it into the pan and *presto*, it comes out perfectly.



While the crust cools, it's time to make the filling. Dulce de leche. And by that, I mean sweetened condensed milk with sugar and butter, boiled until it thickens. Incredible!



Spoon the filling on to the shortbread crust and spread into an even layer.



Once the filling has cooled, it's time to add the chocolate. I love the rich and velvety texture of melted chocolate. And the aroma that fills my house while I'm melting it. And, of course, the fact that I can never scrape it all out of the bowl with my spatula, which means I'm forced to eat a little chocolate every time.



The chocolate will set into a shiny (and wonderfully rich) layer. See, the foil reflect off of it! (Side note -- I lined the pan with foil to make it easy to lift the bars out later.)



And you're done!



See the three delicious layers? These were gone in no time!

Plain Jane brownies

The s'mores brownies got me thinking. I've never actually made brownies from scratch. I never use mixes for cakes, cookies, or bars. I always make my own frosting. But for some reason, I've always used boxes for brownies. And I decided that had to change. After all, they can't really be that hard, right? Anything that can turn out well when you mix powder with oil, eggs, and water has to be pretty foolproof. One thing I didn't count on, though, is that they compensate for lack of correct texture with lots of extra chocolate in the boxed mixes. I mean LOTS of extra chocolate. I doubled the chocolate in the recipe, and I still feel like these were a little lacking. I guess every first try can't be a success, right?



The color of these just isn't what I was expecting! Brownies from a box are dark brown, not the buttery brown of these. But the texture was amazing! Honestly, it made up for the lack of chocolate. Not that I won't add more chocolate next time. That's just crazy talk. And it definitely didn't make these last more than a day.



So, this recipe is definitely not perfect. But it was pretty darn good.

Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter
2 cups chocolate chips
3 eggs
1.5 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 C flour

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Melt 1 stick of butter with 1 cup chocolate chips over low heat
Let cool to room temperature -- you don't want warm chocolate compromising the texture of the brownies!

3. Beat eggs in a mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and vanilla. Beat on high until mixture becomes stiff. It will happen, I promise. You just have to be patient.

4. Mix in flour until just combined.

5. Fold in melted chocolate with a spatula. When combined, fold in the remaining 1 C chocolate chips.

6. Pour into 9x13 baking dish lined with greased foil. Bake 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. You know the drill. Let cool completely.

Gooey S'mores Brownies

When I said that this next post would feature roasted marshmallows



I meant a whole lot of roasted marshmallows. Roasted marshmallows on top of some chewy, chocolately brownies, finished off with a graham cracker crust. S'mores -- in brownie form.



The gooey marshmallows on top made these a little hard to serve, but it was worth it. My favorite part of cheesecake has always been the graham cracker crust. So crumbly and buttery.



I stole this recipe from Jessica at How Sweet Eats and modified it a little. She had a bit of a hard time with the brownies being underdone, so I have to admit, I was a little terrified when I started this project. But, since I only had 3 left after 24 hours, I'd say they were a success.

Preheat the oven to 350 ° F

Graham cracker crust:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 stick butter, melted

Combine the graham cracker crumbs and melted butter and stir until crumbs are evenly coated and sticking together. Press into the bottom of a 9x13 cake pan.

Brownies:
I'm a little embarrassed to say that I cheated and used a box. Ghiradelli double chocolate brownie mix, to be precise. If I'm going to cheat with a mix, at least it's a good one, right?

Prepare as directed on the box, and spoon over the graham cracker crust. It will be tricky to spread it evenly over the pan without picking up the crumbs, so just do your best. I definitely didn't notice the crumbs all mixed up in the batter, and I definitely had more than a few!

Because of the crust, you'll need to adjust the cooking time. Add 15 minutes to whatever the box says. Test with a toothpick when you think they're done, of course.

Allow to cool completely (or cool a bit, since I was impatient and wanted to try the finished product).

Marshmallows:
About half a bag of jet-puffed marshmallows

Spread marshmallows evenly over the surface of the brownies. They'll expand in the oven, so don't worry about spaces between them.

Broil for about 10 minutes, watching carefully to make sure they don't burn. Of course, some people like burned marshmallows on their s'mores. Definitely not me. Personally, I like them a nice, rich golden brown. Which is just how my marshmallows turned out.

Let fully cool and serve. The marshmallow will be sticky, so the pieces are difficult to separate. Maybe this is a sign that you should eat 2... or 3... or a whole row, just to make the serving process easier.

Kicking this blog off right!

For a long time now, I've been thinking about starting a blog about food. When I came up with the name "Shelly Bean Sweets", I obviously intended for it to be all about desserts. I absolutely love to bake! But recently, I've been experimenting more with cooking creative and healthy meals as well. So, this blog will really be a mixture of all sorts of culinary adventures. So, let's get this started off right! After all, what would a food blog be without some pictures?

Recently, I've been trying to design dinner menus with a theme. For instance, this Indian-themed dinner with coconut curry, homemade naan, and mango chutney.




The coconut curry recipe is from one of my favorite websites: Oh She Glows.

Now that the sun is out for more than 20 minutes a day and we can walk outside without fear of frostbite, Hubs and I got bit by the grilling bug. We couldn't wait to take the cover off and fire it up! We decided that this grilled veggie salad would get our spring off on the right foot.


Last summer, we bought some Jamaican Jerk marinade from Williams-Sonoma (definitely one of my favorite stores!) but never got around to opening it. I was so excited when I found it a few weeks ago! We decided to make some Jerk shrimp and it turned into a delicious salad!


The grilled bananas really made this salad! It was sweet, smoky, and spicy! Such a great combination! I made the dressing out of a reduction of the reserved marinade, but that turned out to be a bit of a mistake. That marinade has some kick! Next time, I'll stick to making my own. I think something with oil, vinegar, garlic and a little sugar would be perfect!


These salad tongs are great! They were a gift from my little sis after a trip to Kenya. I just had to include a picture!

And now on to the "sweets". First up is a chocolate raspberry frangipane. What? You don't know what a frangipane is? Honestly, neither did I. I picked this recipe out of the cookbook because I thought it looked amazing! Actually, the recipe called for cherries instead of raspberries. Unfortunately, Hubs has a strong dislike of cherries, so a small substitution was needed. But the raspberries were great! Frangipane is an almond filling. According to Wikipedia (my go-to source for just about everything...) it was originally an almond custard, but the term is now applied to a general almond filling for cakes and tarts. From the pictures below, it's pretty obvious that this one is a tart. And a delicious one at that!


It starts with a pastry shell. Then, you scatter the bottom with chopped chocolate and cover the chocolate layer with raspberries. Honestly, any recipe that starts this way is bound to be good in my book! The almond filling then goes on top of the raspberries.



What dessert would be complete without a chocolate drizzle on top? Definitely not this one! The raspberries poked through the filling more than I would have liked. But in the end, the dimpled top with the red tips sticking out gives it a bit of an unpolished charm.


Pastry, chocolate, raspberries, and almond? This tart was amazing!

Last up is the pound cake I made as dessert for our Easter dinner. Some friends were kind enough to invite us to join them for a wonderful Easter dinner with lamb and some awesome veggie sides. So, we brought this cream cheese pound cake with lime glaze (recipe from Williams-Sonoma).


This cake is so dense! I love how the tart from the lime complements the sweetness in the cake and the glaze.

Wow! That was quite the marathon post! They definitely won't all be like this, but I had all these pictures on my camera that I wanted to share. Please excuse the roughness of the site as I get everything set up. I've had this blog in the works for about 6 months now, and I finally decided that if I didn't just start posting, it would never got off the ground. Enjoy!