Monday Sweets: Mississippi Mud Brownies

They're rich. They're gooey. They're chocolatey. They're almost as messy as that kind of mud your that your feet instantly sink into. Can you really ask for more than brownies topped with marshmallows and chocolate frosting? 

Usually I think of brownies as more of a simple grab-one-after-lunch kind of dessert, but these can be served on dessert plates like cake (and then eaten with hands for subsequent meals), especially if they're still warm. Mississippi Mud Cookies are tasty too, but these are thicker and richer and therefore better in my book.

Drink: Pimm's Cup

Precious long summer days are gradually getting shorter, and I am not okay with it. Unlike 99% of the South, I don't agree that the advent of football season makes up for nighttime darkness commencing just when I am just being freed after the work day ends. So I am making the most of sunlight while it lasts and make sure to have summery food and drinks for Labor Day weekend, including Pimm's.

Sweet and fruity Pimm's tastes like summer. It's alcoholic but just barely so. Its signature ingredient, Pimm's No. 1, is a sweet, dark liquor that originated and is popular in England, and the Brits like to mix it with lemonade (what they call Sprite), fruit, mint, and cucumber.

After sipping on Pimm's for the first time in several years, I am not sure the drink is worth buying a whole bottle for. But on occasion I having it to reminisce cool summer nights in English pubs, where I first had the drink. This is all in keeping with the Pimm's parties my friends from my summer study program in England and I had upon returning to the States and discovering the liquor store carried Pimm's. Of course, chatting about Pride and Prejudice country and the quaintness of Oxford would make it all the better.

Monday Sweets: Malted Chocolate Cookies

Seeing as today is an all-American kind of holiday, I bring you my all-time favorite dessert: chocolate chip cookies. This new-to-me recipe has a few twists that more than convinced me to actually try a recipe besides Toll House cookies.

Merit 1: Secret Ingredient
When I first tasted these cookies, there was a subtle something distinct about the dough whose taste I couldn't quite place. It turned out to be malted milk powder, which is used to make malted shakes and tastes reminiscent of a Whopper.

I found the Malted Milk powder near the canned milk and Ovaltine at the grocery store, but be wary of trying a similar product. Something like Ovaltine could make the taste a bit funky.

Merit 2: Colossal Size

They're several inches in diameter and perfectly thick and chewy. The recipe calls for 2-inch balls of dough on the cookie sheet before baking. The cookies in the front of the picture are that size and the ones in the back are my normal-sized ones. I recommend making them big because they're thicker and more chewy. One giant cookie is plenty to satisfy.

Merit 3: Chocolate and More Chocolate

Each bite of the cookie is packed with milk chocolate chips and semi-sweet chocolate chunks. Plus, there's chocolate syrup hidden in the dough too, and that along with calling for all brown (no white) sugar makes the dough a bit darker and chewier than average. It's pretty much a chocoholic's dream cookie.

The original recipe called for butter-flavored shortening, but I saw no reason to buy butter-flavored lard when you can use goodness that is real butter.

Dinner: Corn Cakes with Chicken

Stuffed with fresh corn kernels, cornmeal, cheese, and green onions, corn cakes are savory dinner pancakes. The taste reminded me of corn puddings and souffles, but the texture was more firm and bread-like. I wanted to display their flavor as a main dish instead of a measly side dish, so I spiced up some pulled rotisserie chicken to put on top along with a dollop of sour cream.

There are so many summer dinners I want to try before the produce shifts to winter squashes and greens and sunlight tragically disappears at 5 p.m., and this one was totally worth prioritizing.

Monday Sweets: Lime Cupcakes

These lime cupcakes almost ended a friendship. A love of dessert and other similar foods was much of why Colleen and I  first bonded in the dorm. Since then, any food difference beyond the few we originally identified threatens such bond, or at least it does so in our sarcastic jabs. In this case, that threat was the lime dessert I was to make for weekend retreat because she does not favor lemon/lime desserts.

I'd pick a chocolate pie over lemon any day, but in August heat a fruity cupcake sounded more refreshing than standard but delicious chocolate or vanilla. I could have made my strawberry, peach, or orange cupcakes but instead followed a little inspiration from the July/August Cooking with Paula Deen to try lime!

BUT I was careful not to make them lime-y, for as little doubt that I had that Colleen would dislike any dessert I made, my pleaser complex and personal distaste toward super-citrusy desserts reigned. The cakes were distinctly lime-tasting but not overpoweringly so, and icing had just a tinge of citrus.

Colleen did in fact eat multiple of these cupcakes and liked them much better than she was expecting, but our dessert bonding that weekend was stronger over our chocoholism in the new chocolate chip cookie recipe I tried.

Dinner: Grilled Veggie Pasta

Marinated summer veggies on the grill. Colorful red pepper, zucchini, red onion, and mushrooms. I could make a meal of just those beauties.

But in order to make it a "real" meal, I served it with the simple, fresh flavors of penne pasta, Parmesan, and fresh basil. The addition of a grilled chicken breast was optional depending on how much you like meat. Leftovers are fantastic cold; I chopped some chicken to toss into the pasta for lunch the next day.

I recommend chopping the veggies in advance so that all you have to do to prep is grill, cook pasta, chop basil, and put it all together.

Also, this picture isn't all that pretty, but it was pretty darn attractive in person.

Books and Bites: Lemon Cake with Chocolate Frosting

When you read a book with lemon cake in the title and on the cover, of course you have to make one like it for proper discussion of its text. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about a girl who can taste the feelings of whoever prepared the food she eats, and she first discovers her gift when she tastes sadness in the lemon cake with chocolate frosting her mother made. Our book club concluded that the writing and characterization were strong, the concept amusing, and the plot overall very sad but most notably quite strange.

What I enjoyed most about the book was the author's descriptions. I need to learn to talk about food like this: "Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar." That description fit my cake quite well, which is good considering I was mimicking the cake in the book.

I wouldn't have put lemon and chocolate together, but it worked. Really, you can't go wrong with chocolate frosting on anything. Recipe-wise, I stuck with the basics: Southern Living lemon cake and the chocolate frosting from the cocoa box. It was so delectable that I ate the giant slice I cut for pretty photograph purposes.

I don't know that I'd make lemon cake again because citrus desserts aren't my favorite, but this cake made me really want to make a basic white cake with almond extract iced with the same ah-mazing chocolate icing.