You know the story about the Jewish people wandering in the desert for 40 years? That’s how long I feel like I’ve been testing recipes for this Passover Menu I did for Good Morning America’s Food page.  And like any Jewish mother, I could not stop with a few recipes. I had to have enough food to give a sturdy dining room table a hernia. It wouldn’t be a Jewish holiday otherwise!

And then, realizing I still have 6 cookbooks to giveaway from my Caesar’s Entertainment campaign I did in March, I looked through the gorgeous Seven Stars Cookbook to see if there could possibly be a Passover appropriate recipe anywhere to be found in Vegas. And whaddya know? A Passover cake from the famous pastry chef Francois Payot. He doesn’t say it’s a Passover cake, but this remarkably quick and easy combination of eggs, coconut, and sugar that magically combines to make an amazing and light macaroonish spongecake you then generously slather with lots of chocolate ganache, has no flour in it and thereby qualifies. If you serve this for Passover, you will immediately help your family heal from thousands of years of remembering suffering that happened thousands of years ago. One bite and your relatives will say “Enough already with the suffering! Life is good!”

Just five ingredients. The eggs and sugar get whipped into a creamy, pale yellow fluffy batter that was beautiful but not photogenic. In fact, all the steps of this recipe did not photograph well. Too white and creamy and well, blah. But the cake! The cake, when done, was golden and crispy and coconutty and buttery, without having any butter in it.

The simple chocolate ganache—just dark chocolate, milk chocolate and cream—make a decadent filling and frosting. Then, it’s just a matter of layering…

and toasting some coconut to dress up the sides…

I cut this before I cooled down the cake, so the ganache is still on the soft side. The layers are not as defined and perfect, but I kind of like it all gooey like this. If you cool it down for an hour or so before cutting you’ll get more straight-edged slices and defined layers…like this. (Though by now the light is fading in my kitchen and the photo is not as warm and delicious.)

I’m giving away all 6 books with this post in honor of the 8 days of Passover. That doesn’t make any sense, but then again, neither does the story about Moses parting the Red Sea and we like it anyway. To enter to win a copy of The Seven Stars Cookbook with recipes from top chefs from Caesars Entertainment properties such as John Besh, Bobby Flay, Paula Deen, Francois Payard, Paul Prudhomme, and Guy Savoy, just leave a comment answering this question:

What is your favorite Passover/Easter food, dish or treat?

And to find out more about Caesars Entertainment and their Total Rewards* program see the link below the recipe. Enjoy!

Flourless Chocolate Coconut Layer Cake
Adapted from Chef Francois Payard, Caesar’s Palace, The Seven Stars Cookbook

Serves 6-8

INGREDIENTS

Coconut Sponge Cake
4 large eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
3 ½ cups unsweetened shredded dried coconut

Ganache

10 ½ ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
3 ½ ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped*
1 2/3 cups heavy cream**

Garnish
1 cup unsweetened shredded dried coconut, toasted (see note)

PROCEDURE

For the gananche: (Do ahead by at least 4 hours)
1. In a large bowl, combine the bittersweet and milk chocolates. In a medium saucepan, bring the cream to a boil then immediately pour the hot cream over the chocolate and whisk until completely melted and smooth. Cover the chocolate with plastic wrap, gently pressing the it directly onto the surface of the ganache. Let cool, then refrigerate until firm enough to pipe, about 4 hours.

For the cake:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 12½” by 17½” rimmed sheet pan or jelly roll pan with cooking spray, then line the pan with parchment paper.

2. Fill a medium saucepan on third full with water and bring to a simmer. Whisk together the eggs and sugar until blended. Place the bowl with the egg mixture over the pan of simmering water without letting the bowl touch the water, and whisk constantly until the egg mixture is warm to the touch.

3. Transfer the egg mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer, or using a hand mixer, beat on high setting until it has tripled in volume and become pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Using a rubber spatula, fold the 3 ½ cups of coconut (non-toasted) into the egg mixture until just blended. Pour batter onto the prepared pan and spread it evenly in the pan with the spatula.

4. Bake the cake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the top is a light golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Run a small sharp knife around the sides of the pan to loosen the cake. Place a wire rack over the cake and invert. Carefully peel off the parchment paper (the cake is extremely delicate). Let cool completely.

To assemble:

1. Trim off any uneven edges of the cake to form a straight rectangle. Cut the rectangle crosswise into three equal rectangles, each measuring about 5 by 10 inches. Place one of the rectangles on a serving platter. (Unless you are a perfectly neat cake decorator, you may want to cut strips of aluminum foil or parchment to slide under the 4 edges of the cake to prevent smudging the platter with ganache. When you are finished assembling and decorating the cake, you can remove the strips and be left with a clean platter.) Using a small metal offset spatula, spread a generous layer of the ganache over the top of the cake layer. Cover ganache with second layer of cake and spread with ganache. Top the cake with the third layer and spread the ganache over the top and sides of cake.

2. The cake can be make up to 1 day ahead. Bring to room temperature before serving.

*For pareve preparation of the ganache, omit milk chocolate and use only dark, non-dairy-containing chocolate.

**For pareve preparation of the ganache substitute sweetened or unsweetened coconut milk instead of milk, and add a ¼ teaspoon of vanilla.

Total Rewards opens up a world of choices and experiences at nearly 40 resorts and casinos. We make sure that you are rewarded in the ways that you want. With innumerable entertainment options, enticing special offers, and an almost infinite choice of rewards, Total Rewards puts you in charge and lets you earn and redeem credits in ways that matter to you. JOIN NOW!
*I am honored to have been an Influencer for the Total Rewards brand. Material and/or financial incentives may be received as a result of my involvement.*

If you think I’m doing a whiskey-and-beer-infused recipe in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, you are obviously under the influence of stereotypical thinking that associates the fine Irish heritage with alcoholic consumption! Then again, this dessert does remind me of an old Irish bartender I worked with back in my college cocktail waitressing days, who served up many a “boilermaker” on many a night to a mostly blue-collar crowd. For those of you who don’t know, a boilermaker happens when you sink a shot of whiskey, shot glass and all, into a 3/4 full glass of beer. The result is a boiling, bubbling-over,  one-two-punch-of-a-drink that quickly helps you forget whatever it is you want to forget and makes you sing very loudly along with the juke box. I think boilermakers have become mostly obsolete, along with the word “bartender”, which has been reverentially replaced by “mixologist”.  Things change.

Still, the gorgeous, smoky, bitter, complex flavors of stout and bourbon whiskey need to be mingled, I think. So, in honor of that carrot-topped bartender (and St. Patrick’s Day) I offer you my Sweet Boilermaker.

The ice cream is a play on Butter Pecan, but by browning the butter, you will take it up a notch toward matching the smoky bourbon you add in at the last moments of the freezing process. The cake, made dark with cocao, gets moisture and a nutty mustiness from the stout. To make it all playful and whimsical and pay homage to the original drink, I made the cake into individual “glasses” hollowed out and ready to receive the “shot” of bourbon ice cream.

I conceived of this dessert when I was in culinary school as part of a menu project I had to complete to graduate. While I was at the French Culinary Institute I kept a journal of sorts on my experience of attending that school, and reinventing myself as a chef, on Blogger page I called “Mrs. Fabulous Goes To Culinary School.” I recently pulled over those pages to FoodFix and you can read them here under the tab “Mrs. Fabulous” along the top of the site. When I reread those pages and looked back at that year— at age 52 I commuted the 3 hours round-trip, three nights a week, for nearly a year, taking classes with kids half my age— I think, no wonder I made up this dessert. I was trying to communicate something: I NEED A DRINK!! A STRONG ONE!

Have a Sweet Boilermaker on me! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Brown Butter Pecan Maker’s Mark Ice Cream
Makes 1 Quart

 INGREDIENTS

For the Ice Cream:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup chopped pecans
1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
8 egg yolks
4 tablespoons Maker’s Mark bourbon
1 tablespoon vanilla extract.

PROCEDURE

1. Melt butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring frequently, 2 to 3 minutes or until butter turns light brown and golden.  Add pecans, and sauté to 2 minutes or until lightly browned and toasted.  Remove pecans with a slotted spoon, reserving browned butter and pecans separately.
2. Bring milk, cream, sugar and vanilla to a simmer in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and stir in browned butter.  Beat egg yolks at medium-high speed with electric stand mixer or whisk by hand until thick and pale (about 2 to 3 minutes). Gradually stir one-fourth of hot cream mixture into eggs to temper the eggs. Add yolk mixture to remaining hot cream mixture, stirring constantly. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly for 5 minutes or until mixture thickens and lightly coats back of a spoon. Remove from heat immediately.  Do not overcook, as the eggs will scramble.
3. Pour mixture through a fine wire-mesh strainer into a bowl to strain out any egg curd.  Add vanilla, and pecans. Cover and chill 1 hour or chill over an ice bath until temperature is below 70° F. DO NOT ADD BOURBON AT THIS TIME.  Adding the alcohol before the freezing process will interfere with the mixture’s ability to freeze. Use electric ice cream maker or ice cream maker attachment for stand mixer according to manufacturer’s instructions to achieve desired consistency for ice cream.
4. For this recipe, I used a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker, pouring the cooled cream and nut mixture into the pre-frozen tub attachment for this machine. I ran the mixture on the machine for 35 minutes until a firm but creamy consisteny was attained, incorporating the bourbon at the last minute. If you do not want alcohol content in the ice cream, you can first bring the bourbon to a quick boil in a small sauce pan to burn off the alcohol, then cool before adding to the frozen ice cream. Keep ice cream in freezer until ready to serve.

Bourbon/Maple Syrup.

1 cup pure maple syrup
2 tablespoons MM bourbon

Bring maple syrup to a simmer, add Bourbon. Continue to simmer for 1 minute. Remove from heat

Guinness Stout Cake

INGREDIENTS

11 ounces Guinness Stout
10 ounces unsalted butter
3/4 cup cocoa powder (alkalized preferred)
2 1/2 cups finely granulated sugar
2 3/4 cups flour
3 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

PROCEDURE

1. Preheat oven to 350°.  Butter/grease 2,  6-popover-capacity pans.  (You will have extra in case any break when shaping.) Pour Guinness into a large saucepan, add the butter in small chunks and heat until the butter is melted.  Whisk in cocao and sugar, then remove from heat.  In a bowl beat sour cream, eggs and vanilla, then incorporate this to the beer mixture.  Mix flour and baking soda and then incorporate this into the liquid mixture to form the batter. Pour batter into individual popover forms, filling them 3/4’s of the way full and bake for 40-50 minutes (begin checking muffins for doneness at 40 minutes).  Remove from oven when a tester or knife can be inserted into the cake and removed clean. Allow to cool completely before cutting or shaping in any way.  Remove individual cakes from tin.
2. Procedure: Bourbon/Maple Syrup: While the cake is baking make the Bourbon/Maple Syrup (see recipe). Cool to room temperature and reserve for service.
3. To serve, carefully slice off the “puffy” top of the cakes to reveal a flat surface. With a cookie cutter, or pastry ringmold/cutter, or melon baller that is at least 1/2 inch smaller in circumferance than the cakes, hollow out a cup for the ice cream to sit in.  The idea is to create a “glass of beer” out of the individual cakes. Create a small pool (about two tablespoons) of the Bourbon/Maple syrup in the center of a small plate. Center the cake “glass” in the middle of the syrup. Using a melon baller as a scoop ) or a spoon, fill the cake “glass” with the ice cream (2-3 small scoops). Drizzle with additional syrup over the top.

I must ask your patience, I dropped my camera, while grabbing it with slippery fingers and my wonderful Macro lens that allows me to take such close up and personal photos of my food BROKE! I had to send it off for repair and won’t have it back for 2 weeks!! Boo Hoo. Hence the pics on this recipe won’t be up to my standard. But stick with me…the recipe is still delicious even if the pics aren’t making you salivate, as usual.

How long has it been since you were at a concert? Well, for me it had been a long time. Seriously, I’m talking Elton John or Billy Joel in the 80s or maybe Hootie and the Blowfish and Melissa Ethridge in Atlanta in the late 90s. Really. So to be present at an intimate (just a few hundred invited guests) kickoff to Caesar’s Entertainment Total Rewards concert with Mariah Carey, (that girl can sang!), and P. Diddy, (whose picture should be alongside the definition of the word “swagger”), this past week, had the odd effect of making me simultaneously feel ancient and well, young and invigorated at the same time. I put my hands up in the air and rocked with the rhythm of the music, even as the bass coming off the pillars of speakers made my chest ache. Doug (isn’t he cute?) and I snapped this photo (above) in the Total Rewards photo booth in between acts and satellite streams of other Total Rewards concerts across the country. The glitz and the glam and the great photos of all the Caesars resorts and restaurants made me want to go to Vegas immediately. I haven’t been there in a while either and boy is it a different place than the one I remember!

While sampling great finger food from Great Perfomances, (the caterer for the event at beautiful Gotham Hall), such as mini melt-in-you-mouth crab cakes, juicy sliders, mushroom and truffle tiny cannoli’s, seared scallops on a bed of something fried that I can’t identify at this time, all washed down with anything you want from an open bar, which of course featured Ciroc, P. Diddy’s vodka brand, we also signed up for Total Rewards and this cool game they are sponsoring online in which you can win fantasy vacations and prizes at Ceasars Entertainment resorts and properties. One grand prize involves a private jet and flying in a private jet to an exotic locale is one of my personal “bucket list” fantasies. So, signing up and playing with that as a carrot on a stick was a no-brainer for me. As an official “influencer” in this campaign (I’m so honored to be chosen as an influential influencer by Total Rewards!) I invite you to get your own Total Rewards ID and start playing this game too so you can win things and get points you can redeem at all sorts of good places that Total Rewards has ties too. TR gave me a special code to share with you all that you can use for extra entries in the game, which will improve the odds that you will be enjoying some fantasy level prizes and destinations in your future!! Here it is: PW7D66. I hope you win!! 

Another lovely treat I got from Total Rewards was a gorgeous, coffee table quality cookbook called Seven Stars, Recipes from World Class Casinos. It’s filled with delicious food and full-page photos of finished and beautifully plated dishes from Ceasars Resort restaurants. The recipes are very accessible and I’m excited to try a few of them here over the next few months and share them with you. And I also want to share this book with you too. I’ll be giving away a copy of this stunning book everytime I post a recipe from it, starting now. I have 6 to give! All you have to do is leave a comment after the post and answer this question: Do you have a fantasy “bucket list” trip you’d like to take or have taken? Where? Who would you go with, if you could go with anyone!

This post is already long so I’m going to cut to the chase and get to the recipe! Penne Alla Vodka is one of my daughter, Lily’s, all-time favorite pasta dishes and when I saw this recipe in Seven Stars, I knew this was the one I wanted to start this series with. It’s from Chef De Cuisine Carla Pellegrino from Roa’s at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas (the original Rao’s is in Harlem). There are many Vodka Sauces in jars in the grocery store, usually with preservatives, additives, and that bottled sauce taste that makes the often hefty price-tag not worth it. This recipe is quick and easy enough to make from scratch and you probably have all the ingredients you need already in your pantry and fridge, (except maybe the pancetta, but you could substitute regular old ham in a pinch). Double the recipe and you can freeze some in 8 oz. containers for future great meals. I am even going to have some, albeit with gluten-free pasta from BioNaturae that tastes like the real thing! Enjoy…and don’t forget to leave a comment for a chance to win the book….and go to this Total Rewards link to sign up and plot your fantasy escape!!

Pennette Alla Vodka
Adapted from RAO’s at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, Chef de Cuisine Carla Pellegrino

Serves 8

INGREDIENTS

4 cups half and half
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
8 oz pancetta, finely diced
5-6 cups canned crushed tomatoes, or whole peeled tomatoes, blended to puree
3 tablespoons flat leaf parsley, minced
3 cups vodka
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 lbs good quality penne pasta (i.e. De Cecco)
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggianoto cheese to finish.

PROCEDURE

1. In a medium saucepan, bring the half and half to a simmer and cook until reduced by half, about 10 minutes or more. Set aside.

2. In a large, heavy sauté pan or skillet, melt the butter with the oil over medium-high heat until the butter foams. Add the onions and sauté for 5 minutes, or until lightly golden. Stir in the pancetta, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sitr in the tomato sauce and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add the parsley and simmer 2-3 minutes.

3. Add the reduced cream. Remove pan from heat and add vodka, mixing well. Return to medium-low heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside and keep warm until pasta is ready. (Can be made ahead and stored in airtight container in refrigerator for up to 3 days.)

4. Add the penne to a large pot of well-salted boiling water; stir well, reduce the heat to medium, partially over the pot, and cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente, about 11 minutes (or according to box instructions), drain. Immediately add pasta to warmed sauce in large skillet or pot. Simmer for 2 minutes, allowing the pasta to absorb some of the sauce. Serve immediately with grated Parmigiano-Reggianoto. (Optional)

Total Rewards opens up a world of choices and experiences at nearly 40 resorts and casinos. We make sure that you are rewarded in the ways that you want. With innumerable entertainment options, enticing special offers, and an almost infinite choice of rewards, Total Rewards puts you in charge and lets you earn and redeem credits in ways that matter to you. JOIN NOW!

I am honored to be an Influencer for the Total Rewards brand. Material and/or financial incentives may be received as a result of my involvement.*