On Friday, I shared a recipe for shiitake cookies as part of #shroomify October. Mushrooms for desert is something I enjoy thinking about because it seems so contradictory. Savory, earthy, woodsy is not usually how I describe my desserts — although isn't cocoa powder an earthy taste? If you make a cheesecake more interesting by incorporating goat cheese, might you say the taste is a little woodsy? Or if you've got a dessert component that's overwhelmingly sweet — like meringue — isn't it best balanced by something salty, and maybe even a little umami?
Wow, I need a PNW forager connection to get my hands on some candy cap mushrooms stat! I’ve been making bread with fenugreek sprouts (which smell a lot more maple-y than they taste) and the idea of pairing that with candy caps to sustain the maple through to the taste has got me so excited. I love all these ideas - thank you!
Yep! Just soak fenugreek seeds for a couple of days in plenty of water and then leave them to sprout (loosely covered with a thin cloth) in a sieve. They have that same slight bitterness and earthiness as fenugreek, but then they taste a little fresher because of the…sprouts, I guess? Hard for me to pin the flavour down precisely! I like them a lot to eat in the morning with some nuts. In the bread I make with them you get this unbeatable maple smell when baking and then again every time you toast a slice.
This is very interesting. I started reading the article accompanied by a healthy dose of skepticism. By the time I finished, my head was already in the kitchen working on some applications for the sweet world (I'm already heavy into mushrooms in my savoury recipes)...
At the moment, my thoughts are aligning with your ideas.... One idea I want to explore is using mushrooms to infuse tea to create a base to marinate various dried fruits and nuts - I plan to sweeten and reduce the liquid, then serve it with the fruits and nuts along with a vegan vanilla (and mushroom) ice cream. Apart from that idea, most of my thoughts keep heading toward chocolate...
Oh I love that! There's a Russian fruit cake I like to make in the winter that involves soaking dried fruit and I was already thinking about using some pieces of mushroom as well. But they could also be soaked in mushroom tea...https://kateray.substack.com/p/russian-holiday-cake-with-nuts-and
Agreed, chocolate is always a good pairing for mushrooms.
Thanks for sharing this - love all these ideas! Have been hooked on the chocolate and mushroom combo ever since accidentally trying it at school as a teenager (it was a boarding school in the UK where breakfast involved a fully cooked English breakfast and one day there was a happy collision in my mouth between some friend mushroom and some toast with chocolate spread - heavenly!).
There is also a small chocolate store in Gent, Belgium I always recommend to visitors in part because of their mushroom flavoured chocolates!
Wow, I need a PNW forager connection to get my hands on some candy cap mushrooms stat! I’ve been making bread with fenugreek sprouts (which smell a lot more maple-y than they taste) and the idea of pairing that with candy caps to sustain the maple through to the taste has got me so excited. I love all these ideas - thank you!
Fenugreek sprouts! Amazing. Do you make them yourself by sprouting the seeds? Do they just taste like fenugreek?
Yep! Just soak fenugreek seeds for a couple of days in plenty of water and then leave them to sprout (loosely covered with a thin cloth) in a sieve. They have that same slight bitterness and earthiness as fenugreek, but then they taste a little fresher because of the…sprouts, I guess? Hard for me to pin the flavour down precisely! I like them a lot to eat in the morning with some nuts. In the bread I make with them you get this unbeatable maple smell when baking and then again every time you toast a slice.
This is very interesting. I started reading the article accompanied by a healthy dose of skepticism. By the time I finished, my head was already in the kitchen working on some applications for the sweet world (I'm already heavy into mushrooms in my savoury recipes)...
I would love to hear some of your ideas!
At the moment, my thoughts are aligning with your ideas.... One idea I want to explore is using mushrooms to infuse tea to create a base to marinate various dried fruits and nuts - I plan to sweeten and reduce the liquid, then serve it with the fruits and nuts along with a vegan vanilla (and mushroom) ice cream. Apart from that idea, most of my thoughts keep heading toward chocolate...
Oh I love that! There's a Russian fruit cake I like to make in the winter that involves soaking dried fruit and I was already thinking about using some pieces of mushroom as well. But they could also be soaked in mushroom tea...https://kateray.substack.com/p/russian-holiday-cake-with-nuts-and
Agreed, chocolate is always a good pairing for mushrooms.
hmm...the Russian fruit cake looks marvelous... Here's a link to the recipe I referred to earlier https://myfreshattitude.com/recipe/winter-fruit-and-black-tea-stew/
I think the mushroom-infused black tea is an interesting idea to play around with...
Thanks for sharing this - love all these ideas! Have been hooked on the chocolate and mushroom combo ever since accidentally trying it at school as a teenager (it was a boarding school in the UK where breakfast involved a fully cooked English breakfast and one day there was a happy collision in my mouth between some friend mushroom and some toast with chocolate spread - heavenly!).
There is also a small chocolate store in Gent, Belgium I always recommend to visitors in part because of their mushroom flavoured chocolates!