Mocha Chip Icebox Pie

Most people that know me know that I love to cook and bake! Food Network is on our TV the majority of the day and I just love watching to get recipe ideas and kitchen tips. I saw this recipe while watching Barefoot Contessa one afternoon and thought to myself, "This would be a perfect summer dessert." It is seriously one of the easiest desserts I've ever made! I tried it for the first time while I was in Fulton visiting, and I think everyone approved...it was gone within 2 days! If you are entertaining one summer weekend, or need a simple dessert to take to a gathering, give this a try! (Note: It needs to sit in the freezer at least six hours before serving.)

I always see Giada de Laurentis using mascarpone cheese in her recipes. I've searched and searched for this Italian ingredient before, and finally found it at Whole Foods. It is kind of like an Italian cream cheese. The recipe called for this unique item and I wanted it to turn out as authentic as possible.

Mascarpone cheese wasn't the only rare ingredient required for this frozen dessert. Ina Garten said that she used Tate's cookies in her recipe; they are made locally in the Hamptons. I didn't want to make my own and she said that thin and crispy cookies would work best. While I was at Whole Foods I browsed the cookie aisle to see what it offered. And low and behold, there were Tate's cookies! I bought two bags and left the store very excited about my finds.

The dessert takes chocolate chip cookies and layers them with a cream mixture. I did four layers of cookies and four layers of the cream, starting with cookies on the bottom of a 9 in. springform pan.

See all the layers! After freezing for several hours, the cream mixture really softens the cookies and you are able to slice this just like a cake.

Mocha Chip Icebox Pie (adapted from Ina Garten's recipe)

2 Cups heavy cream
1/2 Cup of sugar
12 oz. mascarpone cheese
2 teaspoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
36 chocolate chip cookies

Pour cream into a bowl and whip just until it's fluffy. Add the sugar, mascarpone cheese, cocoa powder, espresso powder, and vanilla. Whip together until combined and stiff peaks form.

Start with a bottom layer of chocolate chip cookies. Place cookies on the bottom of a 9 inch springform pan until the bottom is covered. You may want to break cookies into smaller pieces to fill in any gaps. Place 1/4 of the cream mixture on top of the cookies. Continue this process, creating four layers. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the freezer for at least six hours before serving.

This recipe didn't completely fill my springform pan. You could easily double the recipe to get a much thicker dessert. Enjoy!

The Fourth in the Flip

Last Friday I left Louisville to head down south to spend a week in Flip and enjoy some much needed time relaxing by the pool and hanging out with family. And this year I was super thankful to celebrate freedom....freedom from summer class that is! I now have about one month remaining of my summer before school starts and am excited that grad school will not be back on the radar until almost September. So this post is being written to you directly from the thriving metropolis of Fulton, Ky, while I sit at my parents' computer and drink coffee that Milton made before he left for work and the only issue I have to think about for the rest of the day is whether I should wear SPF 30 or 70 when I lay out today. :-)

We just enjoyed a great holiday weekend! Matthew came in from Cali, the grill was working all weekend, and we all spent too much time by the pool. And yes that includes Duke, our mini Dachshund lifeguard.

Friday soon after I arrived, we had a great dinner of steak, grilled squash, TWO kinds of potatos (Micah had both, by the way), mushrooms, and rolls. Dessert was brought by yours truly, a very special and hyped up red, white, and blue velvet cake. (The cake is soooo special that it will be getting its own blog post, which includes professional pictures taken by cousin Lauren!) We hung out on the patio after dinner and layed out all day on Saturday.

Saturday night we drove to Pilot Oak to eat dinner at Southern Red's BBQ. We ate outside, enjoyed the sweetest tea you've ever tasted, and had more fried food than we should ever admit to eating. Here are Morgan and Micah during dinner.

The gang at Southern Red's. The Worley-Dean's, Bell's, and Jones's.

Lauren and Mal agreed to pose with the sign!

Sunday morning we went to church and spent the afternoon poolside. With an endless supply of Diet Coke and bottled water we were prepared to beat that hot afternoon sun! Everyone was set to arrive at 6:00 for a dinner full of cook-out must haves: grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, potato salad, watermelon, and baked beans.

Micah, Matthew, and Mallory enjoying our delicious dinner. I didn't tell them I was taking this picture, so hopefully none of them hate me for posting it to the web.



Our little cousin Allie! She'll always take time to pose for a picture. She and the other little ones kept us entertained all night!

After dinner on the patio, we headed to the other side of the house to enjoy the Fourth of July tradition of FAMILY BASEBALL! This event has been the source of patriotic entertainment for many years, as well as a source of some embarrassing moments. Micah and Morgan have always served as team captains. And Morgan may not run inside after being tagged out anymore, but he still is competitive, which makes it all the more fun.

Setting up the bases

About to pick teams and trying to recruit all family members!

These are the fans that decided to enjoy the game from the driveway.

A shot from the outfield, where I hid out trying to avoid any activity whatsoever. I've never really been good at what is referred to as "defense," but I did hit a double! I believe Micah's team won, but not without some minor injuries to our older veteran players and some good laughs along the way.

This is the family after the game! We missed everyone who wasn't there!!

After the game we went back to the patio for Karen's Fourth of July trivia game, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? Because mom teaches 5th grade social studies, she coordinated a trivia game for everyone that tested our knowledge of the history of Independence Day, the Revolutionary War, etc etc. I won't mention who actually won. ;-)

After trivia, Morgan helped the little ones have fun with some sparklers.



Isabella, Gabriella, and Allie had their time in the spotlight of course! Choreography included!



Aunt Sandra's traditional Fourth of July flag cake! We also enjoyed Barbara's Heath Bar Cake and Wanda's homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert!

Monday morning we had a delicious breakfast of sausage breakfast casserole, cinnamon streusel muffins, and fruit. We were greeted by a couple of hours of stormy weather, but it soon cleared out in time for some of us to catch a few hours of sun by the pool. Unfortunately Mal had to go back to Lex on Monday, but the rest of us were planning to spend the evening at Pontotoc Park in downtown Fulton. We took a picnic dinner to eat, including Mom's favorite apple dessert, and watched the fireworks with a few hundred other local residents. Believe me when I say that this show rivals both Thunder over Louisville and Cincy's WBN fireworks show. Be jealous that you weren't there!!


Pontotoc Park in downtown Fulton. There aren't many people in this picture, but by the time the fireworks had started the lawn was completely full!



Here is our picnic set-up downtown. Of course mom brought the patriotic tablecloth and the American flag to ensure that we had a very festive locale.

Happy Fourth of July!!!!

Louisville Bats

Dan and I have been talking about going to a Louisville Bats game for a long time. This past Tuesday his office rented out a suite at the stadium. Free suite...free food....what better way to spend our first visit to see the Bats right?? The weather was perfect, we had a great time, and I managed to snap a few photos for the blog!



Outside the stadium





Inside the stadium. I liked these lights. A lot.



Supposedly this location is prime time foul ball real estate. We were skeptic. And then proved wrong.




The perfect seats, right? We had a great view. Unfortunately the Bats lost. :-(



This is just a sign that I thought was neat.



Shapeskpeare in Central Park

Just a few blocks from our apartment is Central Park. We love having a park within walking distance to where we live. Occasionally we'll walk over on a Sunday evening just for fun or to suffer through enjoy a game of tennis.

This summer is the 51st year of Shakespeare in the Park. Kentucky Shakespeare will hire actors from Louisville and across the country to star in various Shakespearean plays that last throughout June and July.

The first time we enjoyed this 100% free activity was two summers ago, shortly after we got married. We saw Romeo and Juliet and we both remember it being a miserably hot Sunday evening in July, but a fun thing to do nonetheless. So last night we decided that it would be a perfect night to partake in this local event. This time was sure to be better than two years ago; the combination of a great forecast and the new beverage tent was sure to make for a more pleasant experience. This time we also decided to pack a picnic dinner to eat at the park before the play started.

We saw The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. We didn't know exactly what to expect from the performance, but whatever expectations we had were far exceeded! The performance consisted of only three men taking turns playing different characters (at times modernized versions) from Shakespeare's works...and they were hilarious! Both Dan and I were laughing the whole time. The highlight had to be when the three performed a brief choreographed dance to Beyonce's famous "If you liked it then you should've put a ring on it." Hilarious!

We had a great time and have talked about attending one of the other shows this summer. Here are just a few pics from the night.

A view from our picnic table of the fountain and playground area.



Dan is enjoying his sandwich and pasta salad.

Dan managed to snap this very flattering picture of me!

The stage. As you can see, there was a good crowd for the show.

A Very Tepe Anniversary Weekend

It is quite impossible to imagine that Dan and I are already celebrating our second wedding anniversary! The past two years have absolutely flown by, but we have enjoyed every moment. It seriously seems like yesterday when we were celebrating on June 13, 2009 with our friends and family.

This year's anniversary celebration was all planned by Dan himself. And as you'll see, he deserves major props because it was a great weekend! We had a great time. Seriously. We both blocked school and work out of our minds for a few days and spent time together and it was wonderful. Here are a few pics we took along the way.

Dan had given me no information about what we were to be doing, but told me to pack a bag for one night for Friday night. Soon after he I got home from class and he got home from work, we got in the car and drove a short two miles down the road to the Galt House, a hotel that overlooks the Ohio River downtown. This just happened to be where we stayed the night we got married, so it was fun to return for our anniversary.

At the very top of one of the towers in the hotel, 25 stories up to be exact, there is a restaurant with a revolving floor. Dan had made reservations for us to eat there, so we got settled into our monstrous room and took the elevator to the very top. Rivue is a place neither of us had been, so we were excited to go there. We sat on one of the revolving floors. (If you know me, you know I have a horrible case of motion sickness, so I was nervous about this.) The floor revolves at a very slow pace. It took us a little over 30 minutes to make a full rotation. There are huge windows with wonderful views of downtown.



  


For the first time in my life I ordered a beef filet. It was most delicous!



Dan got a steak and said it was very good as well.






 


We were given this dessert in celebration of our anniversary. Yum! Layers of chocolate cake, strawberries, lemon curd, and whipped cream.



In addition to dessert, a candy cart was brought over and we were given a selection of candies to eat.



The candy cart had chocolate covered strawberries, a peanut brittle, turtles, candy covered almonds, and candied fruit slices (orange slices, mom).




Our waiter, Carl, snapped this photo of us before we left. Rivue was a great chocie for celebrating!

The view of the river from our room on the 14th floor.



Saturday morning I enjoyed a one-hour massage at the hotel's spa. Thanks Dan! We only were able to stay in the hotel one night because of some dumb teacher's conference that was being held there. There weren't any rooms available for Saturday night. But we still had a great rest of the weekend!





Dan loves his Chik-fil-A! (okay, I do too; I can't lie.) It seemed like a good anniversary lunch to us.

After an afternoon of running some errands and just hanging out, we ordered pizza from Sicilian. Good stuff!



After pizza, we enjoyed playing scrabble together. We ended the game early because it was taking so long. I guess I won because I was ahead when we stopped playing.  (I think Dan wanted to stop the game b/c he had no hope of winning.)



Sunday we walked to Central Park and played some tennis. The weather was perfect, and I think my body is still sore from it. I think Dan got his share of entertainment for the day, as I am NO GOOD at tennis.



I asked Dan what he wanted for dinner on Monday, our actual anniversary, and he said chicken parmesan. I had never made this before, so of course I went straight to my source for most things food related: foodnetwork.com. I ended up making the sauce from scratch and we both thought it turned out pretty well.



While we ate dinner on Monday night, we enjoyed watching our wedding video. This was the first time we had watched it since our wedding. We enjoyed being spectators at our own wedding. It was a good reminder of our supportive family and friends and our commitment to each other.

We were very sad to see our anniversary weekend go. We agreed that it is unfortunate we can't spend every weekend this way. But we had to face reality at some point, or as Karen says, go back to the "real world." But each day is special, even without nice restaurants, because we are spending it together!

Happy Anniversary!