Tuesday, September 07, 2004
FRO-HOS AND EGG CREAM: Dessert Icons Reunited!
Labor day is now behind us (or behind me, anyway, and it’s my blog), and I’m returning to considerations of a more autumnal nature. Yesterday at the big festive b-b-q down in Belmont, we brought a lovely cobbler of summer fruit - white nectarines, black plums, rosy pluots, with some blueberries and figs thrown in for giggles… despite my best efforts to ruin it by making it too wet and then too burned, it still wound up tasty as hell and was basically totally consumed before we left the party. However, it’s clear that this kind of confection is on its seasonal way out. That’s why, when we went to Trader Joe’s over the weekend, I made sure to get a box of the chocolate Jo-Jo’s. (That apostrophe is neither a possessive nor a contraction - it’s a pluralization of word that ends in a naked vowel. Don’t be giving me a hard time on this one, it’s too early in the week.) As the season shifts to autumn and light fruity desserts become slowly supplanted by heavier, baked goodnesses, there are two good things about Jo-Jo’s: they are great to eat (the creamy filling between the cookies is wonderfully mushy and fun), and they have two identical syllables that end in an “o.” That means that they almost (but don’t quite) make up for the fact that T.J.’s doesn’t sell the primary dessert food that meets these criteria - the Car-o-mel Ho-Ho. (Turns out this link requires a registration for the Philly Inq - usually I’d dump the link under these circumstances but it’s a fun article for anyone who loves the pre-baked cake as much as I do.)
The Car-o-mel Ho-Ho is many orders of magnitude superior to the standard (or “traditional” or “lame") Ho-Ho. I don’t know how it came to be that a product that’s been on the market for, what, 40 years? is now suddenly so magnificently improved. But it has been, and the world is a better place because of it. I am lucky to be alive at this historical juncture so that I can appreciate what god, and king ding dong (may his reign endure forever), have wrought. And I do.
They just don’t sell the car-o-mel Ho-Ho’s at T.J’s, though, so I had to settle for the Jo-Jo’s as the next best, and really very good (but not quite as good), thing. Very tasty cookies. But not Car-o-mel Ho-Hos.
I’s been some time since I favored you with a dustbunny from the ol’ Chucklehut Recipe Corner, but what the hell, I’m in a mood, so I’ll give you a few recipes for really great desserts. I make no claim as to healthiness, but they are damn tasty.
FROZEN CAR-O-MEL HO-HO’S: You need to get the 12-pack box of car-o-mel (not regular) Ho-Ho’s. These come individually wrapped and you get enough to eat yourself sick. Place the box of Ho-Ho’s in the freezer and visit it in no less than four hours. Remove a Ho-Ho from the cardboard box, tear off the plastic wrapper, and consume blissfully. The frozen Ho has a sublime texture, and the slow-moving flavor molecules tend, to my senses, to taste less artificial. They’re great, and anyone who eats a Ho-Ho without car-o-mel or unfrozen is nothing but a barbarian. Of course, some of my best friends are barbarians, but I’m still going to try to get them to change their minds about this.
CALIFORNIA EGG CREAM: The classic New York egg cream is one of my favorite desserts because it’s sweet and chocolately but very light. After a heavy meal it’s easy for me to drink one of these and feel that my sugar jones has been as fully satisfied as if I’d eaten a creme brulee and a few pieces of candy - but I can still stagger away from the table under my own power, insteand of falling into a sugar-crash coma where I’m sitting. I had my first classic NYEC on the boardwalk in - wait for it - Santa Monica, at a very authentic-feeling little Coney Island type of place near the pier. Since then I’ve ordered them in many places, though not in NYC, where I’ve sadly not had enough time to order nearly enough food. The traditional recipe involves a little milk, a little Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, and the rest of the glass filled with seltzer. (NOTE: Seltzer seems to work better than club soda, which actually has more salt in it and tends to foam less and leaves less sweetness in the finished product.)
But now I’m making the ol’ egg cream at home, with a California twist: I use Trader Joe’s Midnight Moo milk chocolatifying syrup as a very reliable stand-in for the U-Bet, and, because I don’t care so much for milk anymore and all we ever have anyway is that weak blue fat-free stuff, I use a little Rice Dream Original Enriched rice milk instead. Head to head with milk, I actually prefer the rice milk - it’s got a light creamy texture, a sweet but delicate nutty flavor, and I can drink a lot more of it a lot faster. It goes down like Yoo-Hoo, if you know what I mean, but good for you instead.
So. In a 16 oz glass I pour about an inch of rice milk and an inch of syrup, and mix them thoroughly. Then I pour cold seltzer over it to fill the glass, taking care not to let the fine effervescent brown foam overtop the rim. Then I drink it, while eating a frozen car-o-mel Ho-Ho. Now that’s living.
Have a great day, and if you have dessert secrets to share, here’s the place to divulge them. Chuckles is listening. And with the hot weather and long weekend, he’s in the mood for the sweet stuff.
