More than a Spread

According to Foodimentary -- a website that keeps track of food holidays -- today is World Nutella Day.  Nutella, a creamy combination of cocoa and hazelnuts, is best known as a dip or spread, but it actually has many other uses.   You can add Nutella to cakes, cookies, pies, candies, ice creams and frostings too!  It's also an ingredient in beverages, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic.

This time last year, a friend gave me the recipe for Nutter Butter Nutella Icebox Cake.  When I read the recipe, I immediately thought of tiramisu. Instead of ladyfingers and coffee, though, this recipe uses Nutter Butters -- the peanut shaped cookies I transform into ghosts at Halloween -- and milk.

The Nutter Butters are softened by briefly dipping them in milk before placing them in the pan.

I use a spring-form pan, but you can use a 9-inch square pan or layer the ingredients in a pretty glass bowl.  Depending on the size and shape of the pan you use, you may need more or less cookies.

Half the filling -- cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, Nutella and heavy cream -- is spread over the first layer of cookies.  If the dessert is scooped out of the pan, you can get away with using low-fat cream cheese.  If the cake is cut into slices, the pieces will be firmer and retain their shape better if you use regular cream cheese.

Repeat the process with a second layer of cookies and the remaining filling.

You don't have to measure the filling, but make sure you leave enough to completely cover the top of the cake.  The cake needs to be refrigerated overnight to firm up.  

The cake is plain so I drizzle some chocolate syrup on the serving plate to add a little color before adding the piece of cake.

If you want to dress it up even more, add a dollop of whipped cream, 

a sprinkling of chopped leftover Nutter Butters 

and top with additional chocolate syrup.

The next time you see Nutella in the grocery and wonder what you can do with it, remember it's more than a spread!

Nutter Butter Nutella Icebox Cake

6 to 8 servings

2 (8 oz.)  pkg. cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

1 (13 oz.) jar Nutella

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

30 Nutter Butters (plus more for garnish, if desired)

1/2 cup milk

whipped cream (optional)

chocolate syrup (optional)

In a large bowl, mix cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth.  Mix in Nutella until combined.  Add heavy cream; beat 2 minutes, or until very thick.  Dip Nutter Butters one at a time in milk.  Line the bottom of a spring-form pan with the cookies.  Top with half the cream cheese mixture. Make a second layer with remaining cookies and cream cheese mixture. Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Cut into slices and serve.  Top with whipped cream, chopped Nutter Butters and chocolate syrup, if desired. Refrigerate leftovers.

© Margaret's Morsels

A Tribute to Mom

With Mother's Day right around the corner, I've been thinking about my mom and all the wonderful meals she cooked for her family.  I've shared many of her recipes over the years from entrees and side dishes to breakfast, desserts and foods she made only for holidays.

After she died, as I boxed up the contents of her kitchen -- the electric skillet she received as a wedding present; the measuring cups and spoons she taught me to use as a child; the white plastic mixing bowl she bought at a Tupperware party -- it hit me that I would never eat her cooking again.

It's been almost two decades and I still miss my mom and her cooking. Although there have been birthday cakes, there's never been another one of her made from scratch, three layer coconut cakes with a cooked white icing sprinkled with coconut.  While I'd love to have one more piece of her butterscotch pie, the food I miss the most, though, is her homemade rolls.

Growing up, I can't remember an Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas that there wasn't a basket of icebox rolls on the table.  These rolls also showed up on birthdays, when we had company, or when there were leftover mashed potatoes that needed to be used.  Family and friends weren't the only recipients of these rolls.

A few months after we moved, a repairman was working in the house while a batch of these rolls were baking.  He raved so much about how wonderful they smelled, my mother buttered a couple of rolls while they were hot and gave them to him when he left.  He started eating one as he walked out of the house and said he would be glad to come back any time she was making rolls.

Mom always told me the secret to good rolls was not using too much flour when kneading and cutting out the rolls.  For years, she made the rolls with homemade mashed potatoes, but later on substituted instant mashed potatoes without any discernible difference.  I don't have any pictures to share because I've never made these rolls.  It's also why I didn't elaborate on the directions.  The recipe is exactly as it appears on my mom's recipe card.  

Thanks, mom, for all the wonderful memories, delicious dinners and the strawberry covered recipe box filled with the recipes of my childhood that I can cook for and with your grandchildren who never had the opportunity to know you.

Happy Mother's Day from my mother's kitchen to yours!

Icebox Rolls

2/3 cup butter

3/4 cup scalded milk

1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs, well beaten
1 cup cold mashed potatoes 
1 (1/4 oz.) pkg. yeast, dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water

4 cups or more all-purpose flour

Melt butter; add to scalded milk.  Add the sugar and salt; let cool to lukewarm.  Add beaten eggs, potatoes, yeast and flour.  You've added almost enough flour when the dough is hard to stir and you have to turn it out on a board and knead it with your hands.  Add flour until the dough will not stick to the board; knead until smooth and elastic.  Put dough into a bowl and let rise until double in bulk.  Roll out and shape rolls.  Place on a greased baking sheet; let rise about 1 hour.  Bake at 400° until nicely brown.

© Margaret's Morsels