- [Sara] "Sara's Weeknight Meals" is made possible by USA Rice and by... - Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child with my grandmother doing fresh pasta, and now I transmit it to all the guests is something made especially for them.

- [Announcer 1] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of "Sara's Weeknight Meals."

(bright music) ♪ Inside out, gotta figure it out ♪ ♪ I'm feeling good ♪ And it feels good to feel good ♪ - [Announcer 2] Sunsweet, amazing prunes and prune juice.

(gentle upbeat music) - Baking and the holidays just go together.

And I've got three sweet recipes to keep your full house full.

Starting with breakfast, I'm talking about an all-time favorite, sticky buns.

Oh, boy, all that yummy sticky stuff at the bottom, can't get much better than this.

The best thing about these, no yeast.

So they're done in a snap.

Ready for more?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, that is so ready.

Essence of pear, it's crunchy.

It's creamy.

It's just so delicious.

You've got to make my glaze roasted pears with the shortbread pecan brittle, and creme fraiche.

Next up, a dessert epiphany.

Bells went off.

Wow!

A hot cheesecake, a hot chocolate cheesecake.

How much more exciting is that than a regular chilled cheesecake?

Well, trust me, it's that much more exciting.

How sweet it is, today on "Sara's Weeknight Meals."

(gentle music) If I could invent my favorite fall dessert, it would involve pears or apples, fall fruits.

Ooh, some nuts, maybe some pecans, some hard caramel, something creamy, little creme fraiche.

And best of all, some shortbread.

So I thought, what the heck?

Let me invent it.

And I did.

So that is what I'm gonna make for you right now.

It's glazed roasted pears topped with a pecan brittle, pecan shortbread brittle, and then with some creme fraiche.

Hey, it's an easy dessert too, which we love during the holidays, 'cause they're so stressful.

All right, so let's get started with the brittle part of this yummy dessert.

I've got here three tablespoons of toasted pecans.

Pecans, I never know which one is right.

And this is on an oiled sheet pan.

And I toasted them at 350 for, you know, like five, six minutes until you start to smell them.

I'm gonna chop into 1/3 inch pieces shortbread chunks.

Shortbread, they're a really good kind.

I mean, of course, you can make your own, but you can buy really good stuff.

Now, in England where they love shortbread, they have a rule, a law that you cannot sell shortbread unless it's 51% butter.

Real butter is in there, not, you know, fake.

And Julia Child would approve.

I mean, she was all about the butter.

So what we're gonna do is sprinkle the shortbread on top.

All right, so that's 2/3 cup of chopped shortbread.

Okay, so now on to the caramel part of this.

I need about 1/2 a cup of sugar.

So this is the dry way, meaning there's no water added.

Another way that people make caramel is to combine sugar and water in a small pot.

The trouble is that the sugar tends to climb up the sides of the pan and crystallize, and then fall back in, and make all the rest of the sugar crystallize.

It never becomes a hard caramel.

So I prefer to put dry sugar in there and just let it melt.

Caramel gets very, very, very hot.

So be careful.

And also don't walk away.

It goes from golden to burnt (fingers snap) like that.

I've got a pie tin here.

I'm gonna brush a tablespoon of melted butter on the bottom, and then two tablespoons of sugar, I'm gonna sprinkle evenly over that.

You can see this is getting a little brown.

I'm gonna pause for a second, and just bring this in there so this cooks more evenly.

Okay, now I'm not gonna do anything else except watch this.

You see how quickly that happens?

(gentle music) All right, you see that's a nice color.

So now I'm gonna pour this very carefully.

Caramel is so dangerous, it really could tear up your skin.

Gonna pour it over the top of my cookies and pecan mixture here.

Okay, so that is gonna harden completely in, I don't know, about 10 minutes.

I'm gonna get my pears going here.

The kind of pear you want to use is either, this is an Anjou or a Bosc pear.

Those are the ones that have the long top and are sort of brown.

And the reason for that is they hold their shape much better.

Okay, so that's two tablespoons of sugar, one tablespoon of melted butter.

And now we're just gonna squish the pear in here.

We put curved side down.

This is a great way to cook pears that aren't ripe.

Now, that is not all.

I'm going to squeeze two tablespoons of lemon juice and brush some of that on top of the pears which keeps them from turning color too quickly.

And then sprinkle another teaspoon of sugar on top.

Now the sugar will help to brown it.

These are all ready.

I'm gonna pop this in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes to get it started.

Okay, while the pears roast for 10 minutes, I'm gonna see if my, oh, yeah, oh, that is so ready.

It's just, it's, you know, they're so much fun.

Look at that.

Isn't that fun in cooking?

And this is one of them.

You know, magic.

I just made candy and you saw how easy it was.

I mean you could eat this straight up but we're gonna chop it.

(knife taps) (candy clinks) All right, you know what?

I need to go check the pears.

(upbeat music) We're gonna add 1/3 of a cup of water, (water sizzles) the lemon juice that we didn't use before.

And into the pan, not on the pears, just a little pinch of salt, about 1/8 of a teaspoon.

So now it goes back into the oven for at least a half an hour.

It may take a little longer.

(upbeat music continues) Okay.

Oh, boy!

These look fantastic.

Wow!

Okay.

Okay.

I'm gonna pick two of these guys.

(upbeat music) We're just gonna put them down.

And then we are gonna put some of the glaze over.

We just keep building, building, building.

Now we're gonna do our praline, and be generous 'cause this is yummy stuff.

Oh, boy.

There we go.

And then to top it off, either whipped cream, ice cream, or creme fraiche.

Now I picked creme fraiche, but I just like the richness of the creme fraiche.

There we go.

And then I got some lemon verbena.

We go.

Yum.

Oh, wow!

The great moment has come.

Mm.

Oh, wow.

Mm, mm, the essence of pear, it's crunchy, it's creamy, it's just so delicious.

You've got to make my glaze roasted pears with the shortbread pecan brittle and creme fraiche.

(lighthearted guitar music) I have a recipe for cream biscuits that you can turn into so many different baked goods.

They only involve five ingredients and no yeast, which is a good thing 'cause I'm gonna make biscuit sticky buns.

So we're gonna start here with the cherries.

And so I'm gonna chop some cherries.

These are dried cherries.

You could use dried cranberries, you could use currants, you could use raisins.

And this is 1/2 a cup.

And we have to resuscitate them.

We have to get that water back in.

So what I'm gonna do is put these in a little pan, and then add some water and a bit of rum.

If you don't wanna have any alcohol in the recipe, do not add the rum.

That is absolutely fine.

And we're gonna heat them up.

And what that does, the combination of the heat and the liquid will make 'em swell up.

So that is 1/4 cup of water.

And now two tablespoons of dark rum.

Brandy would be wonderful in here.

Anything you wanted to flavor or you could leave it out, just a little more water.

So I'm gonna bring this up to a boil, and then I'm gonna turn it off and let it sit while I make the rest of the recipe.

'Cause now I'm gonna make the sticky part of the sticky bun.

We're gonna start with some honey.

I'm just using a little liquid measuring cup.

That's about 1/4 cup of honey.

Now we want 1/4 cup of brown sugar.

This is light brown sugar.

You could use dark brown sugar.

What brown sugar is, by the way, in case you ever wondered, it's white sugar with some molasses.

I'm using 1/2 a stick of butter, four tablespoons.

And this doesn't take very much time at all.

Okay, now I've toasted some almonds.

And the reason we'd like to toast nuts is because they just have more flavor and they have a toasty aroma.

(nuts crushing) (knife tapping) All right, let's take a look over here.

Whenever you make biscuits, you always have flour, you have leavener, usually it's baking powder.

It could be baking soda, depending on what else you add.

And then you have a fat.

In the South, of course, they might use lard.

Other people use butter.

And then you have a liquid.

What's really cool about cream biscuits is that the cream does double duty as both the liquid and the fat.

Okay, so now this is gonna go in the bottom.

This is a nine-inch non-stick cake pan.

And then I'm just gonna put these nuts right on top.

So now I've got everything ready.

I am going to start making the dough.

So I'm gonna put in this bowl two cups of unbleached all-purpose white flour, one tablespoon of baking powder, 1/2 a teaspoon of table salt, and three tablespoons of granulated sugar.

Now I'm gonna add somewhere between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 cups of this heavy cream, just enough to form a dough, and stir it up.

This is my favorite kind of thing to make 'cause it's so quick.

You don't wanna overmix it.

As soon as you add liquid to flour, you start to develop the gluten in flour, and that can make a dough tough.

Yeah, there we go.

Now I'm gonna put this in the counter.

Okay, now I'm gonna put a little bit of flour in my hand so I don't stick all over the place.

And I'm gonna take the palm of my hand and schmear this just to get it finished mixing.

I think it's mixed.

There you go.

Now, the only slightly time-consuming part of this recipe is rolling it out.

Put the flour down, and put a little flour on top too.

This is a very good rolling pin and the right kind to use.

(gentle music) Okay, so you can see this is not a perfect rectangular but it's roughly 10 inches by 18 inches.

So I'm gonna drain my cherries.

Okay, now I am going to mix some more brown sugar with two teaspoons of cinnamon.

We're gonna sprinkle this on top 'cause you gotta have that stuff in the middle too, don't ya?

I found the easiest way to sprinkle this over the dough was just with my hands.

(gentle music continues) Smells wonderful.

Now our cherries.

Okay, good.

So now we're gonna roll up all this wonderful stuff inside of the dough.

So you fold it over like that and press it down, and then just keep rolling.

I'm gonna cut it in one-inch pieces, and then we're gonna lay it in here cut side down.

(gentle music continues) So I'm gonna put this in a preheated 425 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

(bright music) Wow.

Don't those look fantastic?

I've let the sticky bonds sit here on a rack for just five minutes 'cause there's a little bit of carryover cooking time.

You want them to finish setting up.

But now I'm gonna pour a little extra sweet stuff on them.

This is 1/4 cup of honey.

I'm just gonna drizzle it over the top and this way the honey just goes down and sort of soaks through.

Okay, the hard part's gonna be unmolding, but that's okay.

I'm gonna come on down here and take them out.

You know, the first one is always the hardest.

Oh, yum.

Wow!

Oh, boy.

All that yummy sticky stuff at the bottom.

Biscuit sticky buns, doesn't get much better than this.

(gentle music continues) I get all these great questions on my website.

And I have a particularly good one today.

It's from Alex from Ventura, California.

And it's about vanilla.

And there I have you.

Hi, Alex.

So you're a baker - Hi, Sara.

- [Sara] and you wanna do more baking.

Tell me your dilemma about vanilla beans.

- Yeah, thanks for taking my question.

I am trying to be a better baker, and I've noticed that more advanced recipes call for vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract.

And I don't know the first thing about using vanilla beans, how to store them or how to use them.

And I also wanna know, are they interchangeable with extract?

- Yes.

Okay, all right, let's start.

I have two suspects right here.

Here we have a vanilla bean.

And you can see it's nice and plain.

It's nice and fresh.

Here's how you use it straight up.

And the reason to use it is it has a much floral, more intense aroma and taste than extract.

So how you use it, and they'll usually tell you in the recipe, but I'm gonna tell you in a minute how to go from one to the other, from extract to bean.

As you cut it down the middle, right down the middle, the length of it, right?

You go all the way down on both sides you have to separate it.

'Cause what you wanna get out is the insides, the vanilla seed.

And then you scrape out the seeds.

That's where the flavor is.

So when you scrape it with a knife, it all comes out on the knife.

You see all that black stuff at the end of it?

- Yeah.

- So that is what you add to the recipe.

Usually, sometimes you add just the seeds, sometimes you add the split beans.

So sometimes you'll put it into, say a liquid, you're making a creme anglaise and you're infusing it.

A creme anglaise is a custard sauce.

And then you take it out and the seeds will stay in, but the bean, you're like, "Eh, okay, it's done.

I should toss it."

Don't toss it.

We know they're a little bit pricey.

So you rinse the pod, this is after you've used it, you dry the pod, and then you can put it into sugar, just a canister of sugar.

And what will happen is it will infuse the whole jar of sugar with the flavor of vanilla.

So when you have your coffee, you have your whatever, you sprinkle it on your strawberries, the sugar, wow, you got the vanilla.

Okay, but here's another idea.

You can make your own vanilla extract.

So you start the same way.

So again, you cut the bean, the length of it all the way down.

You don't have to scrape out the seeds for this.

And you need about seven to make a batch.

But this batch will last you forever.

And then you cut it into lengths, okay?

And you find a little one cup jar, which we've got right here.

So you transfer your split cut pods, and there'll be seven of them, not just one.

And then you top it off one cup of either bourbon, rum, brandy, or vodka.

Depends on what your favorite thing is.

And then this very complicated recipe, huh?

Vodka's the traditional one.

But you might want the flavor from those other alcohols.

You might prefer it.

But this would be a great gift for any occasion.

You can make a whole batch.

And then you just store it out of the sunlight, shake it every couple of days.

And after eight weeks, you have homemade vanilla extract, yum.

Now one last thing, you asked, the difference between vanilla extract and vanilla bean.

How do you translate one for the other?

Let's say you wanna add bean in place of extract.

So the rule is for every teaspoon of vanilla extract, you use one inch length of a vanilla pod.

Okay?

So, but scrape out the seeds.

Put in the bean, put in the seeds.

Did I answer your question?

- Yeah, thank you.

- I loved it.

The whole tutorial on vanilla extract.

Now, if you have a question that you'd like to ask me for Ask Sara that we can do on the show, please reach out to my website saramoulton.com.

(bouncy guitar music) Although I'm not a fool for traditional cheesecake, I'm very partial to chocolate cheesecake.

And I have to say this is a very special chocolate cheesecake because you eat it warm.

And it's good all by itself or with raspberries or with whipped cream.

I have about 3 1/2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, and we're gonna melt it in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water.

(upbeat music) We're gonna get our cream cheese on.

This is full fat, but you know, I really like the 1/3 less fat cream cheese, also known as neufchatel.

It's a fresh cheese in France.

But all the regular brands here are making the 1/3 less fat cream cheese.

And I like it 'cause it tends to be less gummy.

We're gonna add vanilla.

It always seems so funny that you add vanilla to a chocolate dessert, but they work well together.

Use the real McCoy, a teaspoon.

And we're actually gonna use vanilla sugar too, 'cause that's what I happen to have in-house today.

Let me turn this up just a little more so it melts a little quicker.

Give it stir.

But when you're melting chocolate, you wanna make sure that no water gets into it 'cause it will seize up.

And that also you don't cook it over direct heat or it will get grainy and scorched.

Okay, let me go get my sugar and my flour.

Now, I set this up, and I just always have this in-house.

I take a couple of vanilla beans and I split them, and I put them just in with my sugar.

I'm gonna measure 1/4 cup plus two tablespoons of my sugar.

(upbeat music continues) And I'm gonna add two teaspoons of all-purpose flour.

And this is so ridiculously easy.

This is the perfect candidate for a ooey-gooey chocolate dessert on a weeknight.

Gonna stir this up.

Give my chocolate little check, and, you know, nothing fancy here, just with a fork.

Very easy.

Yeah, let me turn this down.

We don't want it to be too high.

The finer you chop the chocolate, the faster it would melt.

And you know what?

If you were feeling like you just wanted to use chocolate chips, that would be fine too.

You wouldn't get quite the same depth of flavor as you do with the bittersweet darker chocolate.

When I was developing my cookbook, my partner on the cookbook, Joanne, made this at home.

Everything was made at home.

We tasted everything at home.

And she'd just taken it out of the oven, and she was getting ready to let it cool.

And I said, "Oh, I can't wait.

I gotta taste it right now."

So I tasted it pretty much five minutes out of the oven or maybe I didn't even wait that long.

And suddenly, it was like bells went off.

Wow!

A hot cheesecake, a hot chocolate cheesecake.

How much more exciting is that than a regular chilled cheesecake?

Well, trust me, it's that much more exciting.

Not that this is bad when it's cold, but wow, it's ethereal when it's hot.

Okay, it melted.

And now I'm gonna add the chocolate to my cream cheese mixture.

(upbeat music) Don't wanna waste any of this delicious chocolate 'cause we only have 3.5 ounces.

(spatula tapping) Okay, now we're gonna whisk this up before we add our flour sugar mixture.

And the softer the cream cheese, so let it come to room temperature before you do this, the faster this all will go.

(processor buzzing) (jazz music) And then in goes my flour and sugar mix.

(jazz music continues) (processor buzzing) One last thing is the egg.

(processor buzzing) Okay, I'm gonna quickly butter my casserole.

I'm gonna make it in this cute little container.

You could do four individual ones.

This really actually is enough for four, but that's okay.

I'm gonna share it with my sweetie on the first night, and then later on we can revisit it when it's cold.

But the first time around, we're gonna spoon some out and have it hot.

You wanna get all the sides, you wanna butter it really well so it doesn't stick.

(upbeat music) So now we're gonna pop this in the oven, 350 for 20 to 25 minutes.

And I would check it at the early end.

Check it maybe even at 18, 'cause you don't wanna overcook it.

All right, so while that bakes, I'm just gonna tidy up and get my garnishes together.

(upbeat music continues) Oh, boy, that looks delicious.

Now you see it's a little jiggly in the center.

That is just fine.

We don't want it totally firm all the way 'cause we want it to be ooey-gooey.

And I'm gonna do what I can to just wait for two or three minutes before we scoop it out, and then we're ready to serve.

All right, now it's time to build dessert.

(upbeat music) Wow!

Look at that.

So a nice spoonful, and I can see it's still wonderfully moist in there.

And then just a little bit of whipped cream.

You can leave the whipped cream off if you want, but I like the contrast of this extra creamy whipped cream.

And then Ruthie likes raspberries.

I actually, I love raspberry and chocolate too.

Why not?

And finally, the little bow, some mint.

Whoa!

That is gorgeous.

I hope you'll give these dishes a whirl.

I'm Sara Moulton.

I'll see you next time for more weeknight meals.

For recipes, videos and more, go to our website, saramoulton.com.

"Sara's Weeknight Meals" is made possible by USA Rice, Sunsweet, and by... - Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child with my grandmother doing fresh pasta, and now I transmit it to all the guests is something made specially for them.

- [Announcer 1] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of "Sara's Weeknight Meals."

(bright music) (gentle tinkling music) (jubilant music) (bright music)