Kiwano or Horned Melon

Ok, I know.  Not a recipe.  But every once in a while my daughter and I spot some new fruit at the grocery store to try.  This time it was this (slightly dangerous) melon called a "horned melon" for obvious reasons. Yes, those little spikes are sharp. This fruit is also called "Blowfish Fruit", and you can see why. 

Originally from Africa it is now grown in California and Mississippi as well as other countries. The fruit can be eaten raw as a snack, in which some people with suck out the pulp and spit out the seeds. When I tried the fruit I used a spoon and ate the seeds which I did not enjoy and now wish I had spit them out. Apparently you can eat the peel also as it is high in vitamin C. The inside is jelly like.  I've seen recipes for drinks made out of this that might be good.  

The flavor is hard to describe, it was sweet but not overly.  It is described as a cross between a banana, cucumber, lemon on Wikipedia.  You can add some salt or sugar, which I didn't know either until after I'd eaten it. It is also fairly pricy, I think we paid $4 and some change.   Overall, I'm glad we tried it.  It wasn't bad but the price combined with the fact that it wasn't totally delicious makes it highly unlikely we'll be buying it again.  

Scottish Jam and Cherry Tea

As a result of my recent World Market shopping trip, I found more cool stuff to try.  I shouldn't be allowed to go there and I do limit myself to only go every so often.  But I love that store so much.  I haven't been in the kitchen much this past week.  This summer is CRAZY as I'm sure yours is too.  I'll try to be better about it. 

The Cherry Green Tea above was amazing!  If I ever find that tea anywhere more convenient to my house I'm going to buy a dozen of them!

I use this preserve on my English muffins all the time.  I love it.  The fact that it's made in Scotland and I love all things Scottish doesn't hurt either. :)

Honeycomb and Prickly Pear

I'm not sure if you know about my fairly recent obsession with Honeycomb.  My neighbor introduced me to it when we had our annual "baking day" and she made it right here in my kitchen!  I've been enamored with it ever since.

Imagine my surprise when I saw it in World Market today.

Can I just take a moment to tell you how much I love World Market.  I really do.  It's a very good thing the one around here isn't all that close to where I live.

But I digress, the Honeycomb I found there looked slightly different because the homemade kind had little air bubble pockets throughout, and this one is more solid.  The texture is sort of hard to describe.  I think the best I can do is, it would sort of like biting into a crumbly piece of chalk (not that I've EVER done that).  Only it tastes more like the brittle portion of peanut brittle.  The chocolate coating on this candy was chocolate bark, not real chocolate.  Still yummy, you just have to try it.  This particular bag was from Australia but England is where my friend gets hers from.  I think they are called Crunchy Bars there. She says they have them at World Market sometimes so I'll keep looking.

Not much of a "find" here but I thought I'd tell you about it anyway.  This drink tastes like cherry.  I picked it because it uses cane sugar and there isn't any caffeine. I don't believe it was actually made in Sioux City at all, New York more like. But, it was fun to try it anyway.

Don't worry, I've been cooking and will post again soon.

Chocolate Candy Corn M&M Cookies

Imagine my surprise when I was shopping for groceries and stumbled upon these little candy corn m&m's.  I thought they were just halloween colors until I bit into one.  They are white chocolate on the inside and flavored to taste like candy corn. 

I knew these little gems had to go inside of a cookie and to my surprise there weren't any other chocolate cookies that I could find on the internet.  Well, there was a chocolate brownie type cookie but no average chocolate cookies. So, that's how this one came about.  

I really like the contrasting flavors between the chocolate and white chocolate candy corn m&m's. The cookie itself is very chewy, just the way I like them.  Great chocolate flavor, accented perfectly with the candies. 

My daughter helped me put the candies in the cookies.  We decided to press them into the dough rather than mix them in.  This way we get the nice candy corn colors in each cookie.

I was able to find these candies at my local Aldi's, but that just tells me that you can probably find them almost anywhere. Great Halloween Cookie!

Chocolate Candy Corn M&M Cookies

Modified from Remodelaholic

Ingredients

• 2 Cups + 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 sticks or 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 bag Candy Corn M&M's

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350º
2. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper
3. In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk together. Set aside.
4. In the bowl of your stand mixer add the butter and both sugars. Beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
5. Add in the eggs and vanilla extract and mix together.
6. Slowly add the dry ingredients (You will get a nice cloud of flour), mix until blended.
7. Use either a cookie scoop or a Tbsp to achieve a ball about the size of a golf ball, about 2 inches apart on the baking sheet.
8. Press the M&M's into the top of the dough ball, put them close together as the cookie will spread.
9. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
10. Let cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

Chocolate Strawberry Wine

I'm very very happy that I found this wine on my last trip up to Massachusetts.  How can you possibly go wrong with chocolate strawberry wine? Well if you like sweet wine that is, otherwise you probably wouldn't like this. 

There I was, minding my own business at a local grocery store when this caught my eye. I love chocolate.  I love strawberries.  This wine was coming with me. 

Believe it or not it really does taste like chocolate and strawberries.  I had my doubts but it's true!

If you're looking for your own chocolate strawberry goodness I found the Chocolate Shop website. This is not a paid advertisement, I just really liked it.

Lemon Plum?

Have any of you ever seen a fruit or vegetable at the local grocery store and wondered what in the heck it is? That happens to be all the time particularly when I'm at the farmers market.  I even ask the people that are working the cash register what a particular item is and sometimes they have no idea either.

That's what happened here, I was at Wal Mart and I saw this pretty little plum and knew I wanted to try it.  The name made me think it would taste like lemon, but it doesn't really.  I brought it home and looked it up online and learned that the one I had brought home was actually unripe.  They are bright yellowish in color when unripe. I needed to let mine sit for about a week...

Walla! My lemon plum has ripened!

I also learned that this is a rare fruit that comes from Chile and is usually only available in the United States in February, which is when I bought this one. When ready to eat they turn into this beautiful orangish color and can even go a deeper color like reddish purple.  I didn't let mine go that far, I was anxious to try it. To me this lemon plum tastes a lot like a regular plum.  They are sweet and juicy and lovely.  I would buy then again, but in the meantime I will just snack on the variety that we almost always have in the grocery store.  It doesn't hurt that to me these plums sort of resemble a heart.

Good find!