Gluten Free Cardamom and Chocolate Napoleon Pastry Recipe

Our friend Carol came to visit the other day to see how much our daughter Aria has changed. I always make sure that I serve her special dishes because of her celiac diet. Since sweets are Carol's guilty pleasure. I made gluten free chocolate wafers and layered them with cardamom-flavored cream. Chocolate and cardamom are two of my favorite flavors, and I love using them together. 

If you're thinking that gluten free means sacrificing flavor or texture, you have to try this recipe. It tastes just as good as it looks.

Mango Lemonade Recipe

I love Kesar mangoes. The fruit is so soft and juicy that we usually just cut them in halves and scoop the flesh out. Unfortunately, I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach at the Asian market this week, when I bought two cases of mangoes. To put a dent in my stockpile, I made mango purée, cooked it in sugar to enhance the flavor, then mixed it with regular lemonade.

I added cardamom to give a more exotic twist to this already tropical drink. If you're looking for something special to serve for your Memorial Day weekend barbeque, mango lemonade could be it. And to satisfy the adult palate, you could always spike it with rum!

Chewy Pecan Caramels with Cardamom

The key utensil for making chewy caramels is a candy thermometer, as it's the only way to control the temperature of the sugar. A few degrees too high and the candies become hard.   

On a recent trip to San Antonio, we discovered these delicious Texan Pecan praline specialties. We brought a lot of boxes home but unfortunately they disappeared fast. Whenever my father-in-law or my husband come back from a trip to San Antonio, they bring back a boxes of the wonderful Texan delicacies. My mother-in-law always asks: "Honey, did you bring home my "magazines" from your business trip?" She refers to them as magazines because if the kids hear that there are caramels in the house they gobble them up right away.

This recipe is the result of several attempts to make the candies at home. To add my own touch, I flavoured the caramels with cardamom which pairs incredibly well with the crunchy roasted pecans. Until my father-in-law or my husband go back to San Antonio for their work, our family can enjoy these homemade caramels; they're perfect for the holidays!

Coffee Cardamom Creme Anglaise Recipe

As a child, I remember being so crazy about crème anglaise that I would lick the plate clean whenever I drizzled the sauce over a quatre-quart ("pound cake" in French). When I first met my husband Lulu, I knew from the very beginning that he had a sweet tooth but I was shocked when he told me he found crème anglaise to be too eggy to his taste. I was determined to prove him wrong. To do this, I dressed it up with strong flavors; I made Vietnamese-style coffee using condensed milk and cardamom-flavored cream. I poured the sauce over salted caramel swirl ice cream.

Lulu loved it, unsurprisingly. Seriously, who can resist anything with half and half and condensed milk in it?

Gulab Jamun (Indian Sweets)

Gulab jamun is my husband Lulu's favorite Indian dessert. The sweets are deep-fried balls of dough, bathed in rose (gulab) and cardamom syrup. The texture resembles the liquor syrup-saturated French cake Baba au Rhum.

I've just experienced making my own for the first time and it tasted pretty similar to the ones I've had in the past. I added a few saffron threads to impart a brighter yellow color to the syrup and I didn't add finely crushed pistachios as Lulu's great-aunt does, because of my little sister-in-law's nut allergy.

You can eat them cold, but our favorite way to enjoy gulab jamun is to warm them a bit before serving. It adds another dimension to the dish. Gulab jamun is a bit too rich to eat on a regular basis, but it's perfect for special occasions when you want something more exotic than cake.