Red Wine Roasted Cherry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

The best laid plans always seem to go awry, doesn’t it? I try to stick to a blogging schedule… but when that fumbles and I’m up to my arms in the best ice cream I’ve ever made that I just know would be perfect for this holiday weekend, I have to wipe my hands of this pre-made schedule and just hit publish. I love this holiday, not only because it celebrates America, but also how communal it is. BBQ parties, seafood boils, watching the fireworks explode across the sky, giggling as you see who actually coordinates their outfit to be red/white/blue… but of course, what interests me more is seeing the beautiful red/white/blue treats that permeate the blogging community, like this, this, this, and this. What I’m sharing now is not a specifically July 4th dessert, per say. Instead think of it as an ice cream that screams summer. That happens to include red hues. That’s just delicious, and really, isn’t that the only reason you need to make this?
This ice cream is entirely inspired by Skye. She keeps posting photos of red wine marinated plums, red wine poached pears, and red wine roasted figs and stuff. I had opened a bottle of cabernet sauvignon for our one year anniversary and had some left over, so I immediately knew what to do with the rest. I let the cherries marinade in wine for about an hour, then tossed it with some olive oil and threw it in the oven to roast. I highly recommend you make double what you need, because you’ll want to just eat these wine-roasted cherries straight out of the oven.

Chocolate Pistachio Orange Biscotti

Biscotti. People call it the Italian cookie. Others say it’s heaven dipped in coffee. I say, let’s stop talking and just eat them. Biscotti means “twice cooked”. This is indeed the case for this cookie. The dough is formed into a loaf and cooked until it is set. While it’s fresh out of the oven, the loaf is chopped into biscotti pieces. Then, they are popped back into the oven to achieve that delicious crunchiness. They’re meant to be dry and crunchy – so you can imagine how great it would taste when dipped in coffee!

I can’t believe I’m getting married in a week and a half!! I will be leaving Boston for California this Saturday, so I’ll have a week to do last minute preparations. For most of the wedding planning time, I’ve felt pretty relaxed and stress-free, especially since I have an awesome wedding planner to back me up. However, now that it’s within two weeks, I can feel the stress start to creep up on me.

What do I do when I’m stressed? I bake of course -such a cliched answer, but so true. My friend J first introduced me to baking biscotti, something I would never have thought of before (I don’t know why). He made these awesome pistachio-orange biscotti drizzled with dark chocolate, and they were amazing. The biscotti I made here were inspired by his, but instead of drizzling with chocolate, I used cocoa powder to give the whole cookie a tinge of chocolate.

Chocolate Cinnamon Swirl bread

Disclaimer: This is a decadent, not-so-healthy bread. You will use lots of butter in this: for the bread, the chocolate filling, and the cinnamon filling. Just do what I do: don’t think about it and concentrate on the end product 🙂

This weekend, I was ready to participate in Joy the Baker’s Baking Bootcamp. However, I realized I didn’t have any berries! I’d just driven back from Connecticut and had no desire to hop over to a grocery store to pick up berries. The berry swirl bread will have to wait for next week (the deadline is June 22nd, so I have time, right?), but I couldn’t stop staring at the beautiful braided bread. I mentioned I’m also obsessed with breads right now, didn’t I? What choice did I have? I had to make some sort of braided bread. I had a dark chocolate baking bar, cocoa powder, and cinnamon – the answer was obvious, really – a chocolate cinnamon swirl bread!!!

Before baking: