I just realized that I haven’t used ingredients found in the dessert basket yet, so this week, I’m going to discuss what can be made with the following ingredients: carrot juice, baba ganoush, sesame candy and tamarillo.  Tamarillo, according to Wikipedia, is a shurb-like fruit, with a taste that is tangy and sweet.  It also notes that the flesh is a bit on the bitter side if eaten raw, meaning that it could be an excellent sauce.  But then again, baba ganoush IS already a dip/sauce (even though it is savoury).

Seasame Candy – can be broken down into crumbs to use mix with tamarillo

The ingredients reminded me of something friends and I made when we were kids.  It was a no-bake treat where we would mix orange marmalade and cracker crumbs together, creating ping-pong ball-sized bites (and we would get in trouble for doing that since we were “playing with food”).  So why not make something similar for dessert?  First off, the tamarillo would be cooked down to a thick sauce by mixing it with a bit of carrot juice.  Since the sesame candy is already sweet, there isn’t really a need to add more sugar to the tamarillo.  It would be set aside to cool (probably in the blast chiller for a couple of minutes, if we’re talking about the short time one has on a Chopped Canada).  Meanwhile, the sesame candy would be placed into a food processor and made into crumbs.  Plain, unsalted crackers can be added to the sesame to make it a little bit less sweet and sticky.

I would have to say that the toughest ingredient here is the baba ganoush.  It’s just so…savoury.  It would, however, be a good way to temper a sweet drizzle or topping.  Just a tablespoon or two to some yogurt and maple syrup should do the trick (even if it might taste a little weird.  I mean, it’s good to be experimental, right?).  It’s like being a kid again, except I won’t get into trouble! Ha!

Once the jam is cooled, the bites are ready to be assembled by mixing the crumbs with a bit of the jam. Instead of making bites like I did when I was a little girl, I’m going to make more “cookie” like desserts.  I’m actually not quite sure what to call these – the texture isn’t exactly cookie-like (too soft), but it’s not really a cake, either, nor is it a whoopie pie, since it’s a bit sticky.  Texture is actually hard to describe.  In order to do so, I would use an ice cream scoop to spoon out the mixture and then flatten them into discs, three to a plate.  It will then be topped with the yogurt and baba ganoush topping with some strawberries added to garnish and give it some colour.  I have to say that the childhood version with marmalade was good (from what I recall, anyway.  I haven’t made it in more than 25 years), but the grown-up version with baba ganoush?  Who knows?

By Mugu-shisai (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons